Mission creep

Six carloads of jackbooted "Homeland Security" officers showed up at a couple's house in Statesville, North Carolina the other day, in a massive show of force.

The alleged violation that precipitated the overwhelming response?  The couple had purchased a 25-year-old Land Rover on eBay that the Feds believe violates EPA emissions standards. 

The buyers apparently believed an exemption applied because of the the vehicle's age and historic status.  Boy, were they ever disabused of that notion in a hurry. 

What minor administrative violation is going to send the goons over to your house?

Why I carry a handgun for protection, Vol. 56

Because, despite disingenuous propaganda to the contrary, unprovoked bear attacks can and really do occur everywhere from Yellowstone National Park (fatality) to Pinetop, Arizona (massive head trauma and probable loss of movement in both arms).

That's odd.  Wasn't it just a few short years ago that the Brady Campaign filed suit (and lost) to prevent the government from jettisoning their unconstitutional rule banning law-abiding citizens from carrying firearms when visiting national parks, loudly claiming that there was just no earthly reason for "allowing" people to exercise their inherent right to self-defense in such places?  Sadly, the Yellowstone incident has proven the Bradyites to once again be completely wrong.  Innocent people should indeed be able to defend themselves from predators (whether two- or four-legged) wherever they may happen to be, particularly when hiking in a popular yet remote tourist attraction.

The Arizona case is especially illustrative of our position because the 61-year-old woman involved apparently sustained many of her injuries while trying to fight off the 300-pound black bear with her bare hands.

Would an appropriate-caliber handgun have allowed the victims to successfully fight off their ursine attackers?  We'll of course never know for sure, but one thing is for certain - an immediately available and properly used firearm would undoubtedly have given these victims a much better chance at a happier outcome.

His master's voice

Another reason to never again purchase something made by Government General Motors:

"General Motors Co. CEO Dan Akerson wants the federal gas tax boosted as much as $1 a gallon to nudge consumers toward more fuel-efficient cars"

We're sure that naked endorsement of government-controlled social engineering will make prospective customers just fight to line up in front of Chevy dealerships from coast to coast.

This is exactly what happens when the government unconstitutionally gets its hooks into a private company - its putative head (who makes a reported 9 million dollars a year and gets a new company-provided vehicle every quarter.  Think Mr. Akerson has fretted at the pump lately?) ends up having to parrot the Obama Administration line in order to stay in their good graces.

The article also informs us just how much this little exercise in corporate favoritism is going to cost the peasants:

"At the current stock price, U.S. taxpayers would be out more than $12 billion on GM's bailout."

What happened to all those hearty assurances that the taxpayers were more than likely going to end up making money from this wretched deal?

"Asked if GM is considering buying back its stock, Akerson paused for eight seconds before declining to answer directly. 'But we have a lot of cash,' he added."

So get out from your deal with the devil already.  Unless, of course, that's exactly where you want to be.  We can't imagine the government would show up disgruntled at the stockholder meeting, after all.

"'We are in the midst of transforming an iconic American company so 20 and 30 years from now (taxpayers) will look at this company and they'll say, "Absolutely it was the right thing to do,"' Akerson said. 'And it shouldn't be measured on did it sell for $43 or $53 (a share) or did they lose a couple billion dollars?'" 

Unbelievable.  What's a few billion taxpayer dollars between friends if it ends up "transforming" a company that just couldn't manage to do so itself and thus deserved to fail, right, Mr. Akerson?

Only in Britain

Trash collectors in Stockport, England refused to empty 74-year-old grandmother Kay McIntyre's compost waste bin after she and her grandson filled it with weeds from her garden because "they claimed the plants had too much mud stuck to their roots."

Ms McIntyre filed an official complaint over the incident, and in response a low-level bureaucratic functionary actually showed up and dug through her bin to verify that the dirt-to-weed ratio was within acceptable parameters (which it indeed was).

It must be so heartening for those British subjects to learn the insane lengths to which their government is going to ensure their "health and safety".

By the way, here's the entire trash sorting process for that particular town:

"In addition to their green bin for garden and food waste, householders in Stockport are issued with a blue bin for paper and card, a brown bin for plastic bottles, glass and cans, and a black one for everything else."

4 large wheeled bins for every household.  How efficient (and attractive).

A must read

Victor Davis Hanson takes a multi-week field trip to observe firsthand the wreckage of his once-great home state of California, and the journey leaves him with several insightful (and poignant) observations.  Here's just one of them:

"Fresno’s California State University campus is embroiled in controversy over the student body president’s announcing that he is an illegal alien, with all the requisite protests in favor of the DREAM Act. I won’t comment on the legislation per se, but again only note the anomaly. I taught at CSUF for 21 years. I think it fair to say that the predominant theme of the Chicano and Latin American Studies program’s sizable curriculum was a fuzzy American culpability. By that I mean that students in those classes heard of the sins of America more often than its attractions. In my home town, Mexican flag decals on car windows are far more common than their American counterparts.

I note this because hundreds of students here illegally are now terrified of being deported to Mexico. I can understand that, given the chaos in Mexico and their own long residency in the United States. But here is what still confuses me: If one were to consider the classes that deal with Mexico at the university, or the visible displays of national chauvinism, then one might conclude that Mexico is a far more attractive and moral place than the United States.

So there is a surreal nature to these protests: something like, “Please do not send me back to the culture I nostalgically praise; please let me stay in the culture that I ignore or deprecate.” I think the DREAM Act protestors might have been far more successful in winning public opinion had they stopped blaming the U.S. for suggesting that they might have to leave at some point, and instead explained why, in fact, they want to stay. What it is about America that makes a youth of 21 go on a hunger strike or demonstrate to be allowed to remain in this country rather than return to the place of his birth? "

If you read nothing else this week at least check out Hanson's entire piece.

The old saying goes something like "As California goes, so goes the rest of the nation".  If that maxim is indeed true then we as a country are in big trouble indeed.

From the Department of Glaringly Obvious Headlines

"Obama's thuggery is useless in fighting spill"

Michael Barone describes in great detail exactly why this is the case.

"Thuggery is unattractive. Ineffective thuggery even more so. Which may be one reason so many Americans have been reacting negatively to the response of Barack Obama and his administration to BP's Gulf oil spill."

Amen.

The entire column is well worth your time.

"Heckuva job, Barry"

It turns out that members of the crackerjack Obama Administration, whose oh-so-smart leader just loves to take shots at former President George W. Bush over his (admittedly poor) handling of the Katrina disaster, have been sitting on their collective hands doing nothing about the BP oil spill for the last ten days, even though the NOAA already had a pre-approved burn plan in place to deal with precisely this sort of calamity in that very area:

"Federal officials should have started burning oil off the surface of the Gulf last week, almost as soon as the spill happened, said the former oil spill response coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

...

'They had pre-approval. The whole reason the plan was created was so we could pull the trigger right away instead of waiting ten days to get permission,' [Ron] Gouget said. 'If you read the pre-approval plan, it speaks about Grand Isle, where the spill is. When the wind is blowing offshore out of the north, you have preapproval to burn in that region. If the wind is coming onshore, like it is now, you can't burn at Grand Isle. They waited to do the test burn until the wind started coming onshore.'"

The article quotes Mr. Gouget as estimating that 90% of the spilled oil could have been burned off (avoiding the far worse, and now sadly likely, prospect of most of it washing ashore) had someone in the Federal Government simply got off their rear end and ordered the response plan to be implemented in a timely manner.

The mainstream media absolutely crucified former President Bush over Katrina.  Let's see if those sycophants, some of whom actually wrote the jokes Obama delivered at this past weekend's White House Correspondents' Dinner while the disaster in the Gulf increased in magnitude (his own version of fiddling while Rome burns?) will hold their Dear Leader to anywhere near the same standard they applied to his predecessor.

Frightening, not funny

The Super Bowl commercial for Audi, that is:





This is a picture-perfect portrayal of Al Gore's dream society (one that dear ol' Al himself wouldn't have to endure, of course, seeing as how he's one of the "elites").

This sort of governmental overreach into every aspect of the lives of the peasants is already pretty much reality in today's England:

"The UK's soft-crime initiative is now a multimillion-pound industry: parking fines levied last year totalled £330m, with another £100m from speed cameras. These numbers are expected to grow, along with fines for a burgeoning range of offences for everything from overloading wheelie bins to feeding the ducks. Some 200,000 spot fines for these garnered £12m last year...

  

...Watching you, watching me

Parking

Millions of aggrieved motorists will tell you that parking wardens have no interest in reasonable excuses, such as "I only stopped for two minutes to look at a map" or "The yellow lines were obscured by snow." Appeal away – but in the meantime drivers often risk seeing the fine double after two weeks. Wardens in Islington, north London, recently ticketed a woman who left her scooter at the scene of a crash. Another familiar complaint is the use of anti-crime CCTV – supposedly meant to catch crooks stealing cars, and record street muggings – being used to dole out yet more tickets. In total, drivers paid out £330m in parking penalties last year. Another £100m was raised in speed-trap fines.

Putting out the rubbish

Some local authorities are so strict on wheelie-bin etiquette that even the slightest shred of black bin-bag poking out of the top of the bin can lead to a fine being issued. A family in Copeland, Cumbria, were given a £210 penalty when it was discovered – horror of horrors – that their bin was over-filled by four inches. Leicester City Council recently began fining residents £100 if their wheelie bins were put out on the wrong day.

Smoking

We all know that pubs, cafés, offices – and any other public place with a roof over it – are no-go areas for smokers. But surely you can puff away in your own home or car? Aberystwyth Town Council handed out a £30 fine to a decorator for smoking in his van, arguing that the vehicle represented his workplace.

Litter

You might think this one would come with a sliding scale, with fines relevant to how much mess you leave behind. How much, then, for a dropped ice-lolly stick? Schoolgirl Sorrell Walsh, 16 at the time, was told to pay £75 in an on-the-spot fine in 2006 after leaving one on a wall. Flicking a dab of ash out of a car window and dropping a slice of tomato out of a sandwich have led to fines elsewhere. Police officers issue around 200,000 on-the-spot fines each year, roughly amounting to £12m.

Feeding the ducks

The traditional fun of kids throwing bread for the birds in the park is fraught with financial danger in the West Midlands. Sandwell Council issued a £75 penalty to Vanessa Kelly in November last year for feeding geese "outside designated feeding areas". Her son, Harry, had the last laugh: At 17 months, he's too young to be prosecuted and can fatten up the birds to his heart's content.

On your bike

If police officers in Yorkshire manage to spot unwary cyclists riding without lights at night, they will issue them with a £30 fine. In London, around 100 people a month are fined for riding their bicycles on the pavement."

and is well on its way to becoming solidly entrenched in this country as well, unless we as a nation wake up and prevent it from happening.

Audi may have unintentionally done the U.S. a huge favor by airing this ad.  Once regular people see exactly what liberal Democrats and the eco-Nazis have in mind for us, they just may be nauseated enough to change their minds about blindly going "green".

UPDATE:  Edited to add additional content quoted from the Independent article.