Thursday, December 18, 2014

Sony Pictures Press Release about "The Interview"-

"Our experts and  lawyers tell us that the threats about this movie endanger our customers and that it will cost our stockholders millions if there's an attack on a theater showing it.

We're responsible people, and we won't release it in theaters.

So it's free now. We abandon our copyright.

We'll mail a free DVD to anyone who wants one.

It will stream free on our own web site as long as someone wants to see it.

We'll post it free on YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and anywhere else that will let us.

So there, murdering North Korean tyrant trash."

I wish.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

November 11 2014

 

   We went to  the terrible thinga couple of days ago. I had never seen it from a distance, the only other visit was in fog. On a clear day Lutyens' effect is even more aweful. From a distance, it looks tiny and playful, like some sort of chinoiserie folly.  As one drives up it grows and grows, but it still is just a massive, vast ornament without a clear purpose.

   Not until you're within thirty yards or so, when the whole thing is so big the eyes' field can't hold it and its massiveness oppresses, do the names just pop into view.

   Astounding.

   But today, we went to Vauxbuin which is a French  ,  British , and German cemetery.  And although they were removed and buried elsewhere, Americans from Company D were killed right here on July 19, 1918 pushing the Germans- some in this cemetery- off the road we parked on.

   The stones put three thoughts in my head today.

   Mrs. Gartside-Tipping's reminded me that there are all sorts of people who volunteer to help in an emergency, even patrician old widow ladies whose (twenty year over age for service but volunteered anyway at age 67) husbands vanished into the icy sea the year before. And that soldiers losing their minds is not just ripped from the headlines.


  


   The French graves of men from (L-R) Morocco,  Madagascar, and Somalia made me think about how bewildering the European diaspora, and the diasporas it spawned, are.

   And finally I am sure that many of the Jewish tombstones in the German cemetery name fathers, who in their minds served and died to protect their children from a foreign menace.

   How savage we are.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

David Weigel, Wrong but Brave Journalist...



     At last, a trained journo chooses to be responsible about a publicity murderer-


"I'm simply not comfortable printing the name of the killer. More than most of his spree-murder peers, he made it very clear that he wanted to be loved and worshiped, saying as much in a self-pitying manifesto and a series of mopey vlogs. Let's forget the guy and leave him for the worms."


     Although we disagree about a lot of things, THANK YOU Mr. Weigel for not printing the killer's name, and adding insult and degradation.  That's the only practical way to deter them.

     Everyone knows the next one is watching, and the way other media outlets  persist in rewarding publicity killers  is so irresponsible that it suggests they want more of them .

     I wish he ran CNN, or at least could convince his employers to stop encouraging these useless losers- because the sidebar to his Slate article is full of killer-building stories.

     One of which is the most next killer encouraging story I have ever seen, from the New York Post-  a cover and skimpy clothing pictures of a woman the trash loser blamed for his acts. Not only is her life wrecked, but copiers will see their power to use our trained, expert journos'  "news"  "judgement" to embarrass and injure the targets of their perverse wrath.

     Beyond shameful, if they had the ability to feel shame.


Thursday, May 22, 2014

Chipotle? Gun owners used to have some self-respect.



"armed to the jowls..."

This is seriously funny and NOT anti commentary, in the Guardian forsooth.

"There was no apparently interest in reporting that, while many people say "kill me" after eating Chipotle, most gun deaths are caused by people who do, in fact, kill themselves."

Saturday, May 17, 2014

Farmers Giles, Butch and Thom...

Proof that our government is entirely too straight- that this program isn't named the  Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Economic Information and Equality Yokel Outreach.

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Mass Murderer Posthumous Endorsements!

So, looking at building a house with TheGirl. She told me about this clever modular design technology, showed me some pictures. Interesting....

Let's check their facebook, shall we?

Look, endorsed by




dead mass murdering terrorists!



I think Speer would have been better, though, what with being a prize winning architect and having at least supervised the construction of modular barracks  housing by slave labourers unskilled labour.

And Stalin, with that White Sea Canal!

Friday, February 14, 2014

Monday, January 27, 2014

Web site of the day....

The NSA should be here any time now-


Monday, January 06, 2014

The Easternmost Explication of the Second Amendment...

     So, a little while ago I went to Eastport, Maine. It bills itself as the first place in the United States to see the sun each day, and it certainly is the closest to where God sets his watch.  Well worth the trip, TheGirl and I made lobster pigs of ourselves at the Eastport Chowder House, which we closed down. Friendly real Yankees.  Then watched a gorgeous Sunrise.

     Eastport is a pretty little town, once a busy port but now they have tourists in the summer and the rest of the year just take in each others' washing. A pleasant, tasty  breakfast at the Liberty Cafe and walking over the town. We  ended up in front of the Peavey Memorial Library.

Before which stands, as one might expect,


a cannon.

     Being from down South and always interested in artillery displayed, I thought I'd wander over to see if it was a trophy from Tredegar, or a Yankee veteran.

     I was surprised to see that it was neither. Aside from a Boston founder's name and an 1836 date, the tube was devoid of any marks of State or National ownership.

     And that got me thinking.  Uh oh...

     Our master's latest push to disarm his subjects concentrates on what he calls "weapons of war",  which have "no business on our streets".  Funny, that "our", coming from a man who will never again walk a street unguarded. And the Government's weapons of war seemed to be perfectly fine on the streets of Ludlow and Detroit, and for special occasions like Katrina and Kent State. Not to mention Libya and Syria. Or just riding around in ordinary police cars.

   But I riot. Back on the line, weapons of war.

     When our Republic was new,  a  bronze muzzle loading cannon was the most deadly weapon there was.  Unlike an infantry musket, cavalry horse, or M-4, there was and is no use for artillery other than killing people and smashing their buildings.

      This six pounder was the cutting edge and definition of a "weapon of war".

     In pretty much every time in every culture with a coast, the ship of war is the most complex, expensive, and deadly thing a society's brains and technology can combine to make. Salaminia, Sao Martinho, Victory, Gloire, Freidrich der Grosse, Nimitz- all embodiments of the top end of an entire country's ability to do violence.

      And in 1836 the killing end of the warship was artillery just like this.

     What does this have to do with the Second Amendment?

     Our Betters assert that the Second Amendment does not apply to "weapons of war" and they always advert to artillery as an example. They read the initial clause to mean that although "weapons of war" are not the arms referred to in the Amendment and are not protected to the people, the Amendment's purpose is to insure that State and Federal reserve forces are able to have, um, "weapons of war". Go figure.

     'Ware riot again. Anyway, in 1836 the Second Amendment was 45 years old. Quite a few of the men who adopted and ratified it were still around. I'll submit that they knew what it meant.

     And in 1836, someone- some private citizen- maybe a few yards away at America's oldest ship chandler-  (still in business today, with a lovely line of yellow leather gloves) laid down gold and bought this pure "weapon of war".

     In fact, anyone with the cash could have gone into any big port in the country and bought just as good a warship as the Navy's best.  The seas were infested with pirates, armed ships were ordinary components of  commercial voyages. You didn't need permission, or registration, or anything else but the money or credit.

     Commercially produced ships of the era were fully war capable. Golden Hind was private property. Before 1600 or so, national navies were largely formed of commandeered private ships and their civilian crews. American, British, and French privateers- privately owned and operated ships of war- were very active in the World Wars of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. On occasion East Indiamen and Mail Packets fought and captured Naval vessels.

     A quarter of a century into this gun's life was the apotheosis of the cash and carry weapon of war. An insurgent organisation used its money and credit to buy high tech ships of war on individual private account, and then  swept the seas clear of the second largest commercial fleet on the planet.

    And when the dust settled, the United States' position was not that  John Laird
shouldn't have sold warships to private individuals, but that the yard shouldn't have sold them to known representatives of active belligerents  knowing that the buyers would use them as "weapons of war" in violation of local neutrality law.

    I don't know when it became unlawful in the United States for an individual to just put down money and buy a navy for himself, if in fact it is. I know the various neutrality acts interfered with the ability of nations to buy warships, and applied the Alabama Claims' rules to sales to those acting for governments.  And I know that British, French, and American shipyards supplied most of the warships, and nearly all the capital warships, to much of the world on a straight up cash and carry basis until after 1914. After 1918,  the cut price sale, loan, or gift of surplus ships in government hands as a tool of policy killed the business.


     Private possession and sale of artillery in the United States wasn't Federally regulated until 1968 (thanks Tam), which means that  when this gun was 131 years old an American could still buy and own a destroyer, battleship, or aircraft carrier for his own use if he could find one for sale.

     And I suspect he still can, if the artillery and torpedoes are properly NFA registered.

     So no matter what the bien pensants assert, there's no indication from our past that the Second Amendment is meant to confine "weapons of war" to government possession.

     This little cannon proves it.






Thursday, January 02, 2014

The Funniest Sentence in the News Today...





The agency sent its new marijuana inspectors to recreational shops to monitor sales and make sure sellers understood the state's new marijuana-tracking inventory system meant to keep legal pot out of the black market.

Marijuana tracking system. Forsooth.

"Umm, I think I have some pot, somewhere..."

For serious,

"Medical pot users worried they'd be priced out of the market. Colorado's recreational pot inventory came entirely from the drug's supply for medical uses.
"We hope that the focus on recreational doesn't take the focus away from patients who really need this medicine," said Laura Kriho of the patient advocacy group Cannabis Therapy Institute."

 the FIRST DAY begins agitation for special medical weed subsidies.  Already trying to get some market control and distortion based on the power of guilt.

Also, the Colorado State Marijuana Inspectors- are they subject to Colorado's pre employment drug screening?

And if they test negative after they are hired, is that grounds for termination?

Because how could they be inspecting if they aren't around it?

P.S., can't sell these any more- it's Impersonating an Officer!
Again, economic seriousness. Talking about this with two people who know the economics of marijuana- one a user, one a drug squad officer.  The question, how much would it take to make it worth while to drive to Colorado  and buy for a syndicate? I said your expenses would be about $300, and I'd want to make $1000 profit for the trip. Figure 10 friends- more is risky. An ounce of good weed sells here for about $400, so that's what,  $530 an ounce?

The Colorado price, according to the article? $560. Go, free market. Instant pricing.

I suspect there will be a quick drop though, because of competition. Most people buying illegal things have a single source. 24 legal marijuana shops puts an end to that.

I predict a hotel and gasoline boomlet. And an uptick for Colorado UPS and FEDEX revenues too.