Bought Episode III today, and watched all of it, even the credits. As the cast & crew were being listed, I noticed a familiar name:
Stand-In for Ewan McGregor: Thomas Maynard
That’s right. When it gets too hot for a Jedi, call a Maynard, we’ll get the job done.
I’ve been working on a little something in my spare time. It’s a map of the First Manassas Civil War battlefield, and I hope you like it. It’s a work in progress, and there’s many more pictures to add, but eventually I envision a complete AJAX and GMaps driven interactive guide to the battle.
There’s more to come, too. Enjoy.
There’s this story out of the People’s West Coast Republic (aka Kalifornia, as opposed to the East Coast one, aka Massachusetts) about mylar balloons earning the same status as normal capacity magazines and regular firearms. Apparently the trouble is that when they are let loose, they get tangled in high voltage power lines and cause blackouts.
Some might look at this and think that Kalifornia has gone to the loony bin, but I suggest a different perspective. If government is not internal in form, then it must be external. If people are not self-governed enough to control their property (the balloon) so that it doesn’t do damage to another’s property (the power line), then they will (and should) be restricted, because they do harm to someone else.
We wouldn’t have this problem if people were kind enough to keep a handle on their balloons. But then again, we also wouldn’t have the problem if they were willing to put in the effort to provide themselves with their own generated electricity, instead of relying on someone else to give it to them, even if for money. Imagine - the entire state of California with enough solar and wind generators at each house to provide enough power for that house. Think of all the mylar balloons we could have then, and how much money the Kalifornia government would save by not having to plan for a terror attack against their power infrastructure.
The extremely junior senator from Illinois came out last week in San Francisco (not like that, get your mind out of the gutter) and said - well, let’s let him speak for himself:
You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, a lot of them — like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they’ve gone through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, and they cling to guns, or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
I’ve got a news flash for junior. The reason I cling to guns is because I can’t trust the government to protect me. The reason I cling to God is because I can trust Him to do so.
Audio below, I got it from here.
OK, OK, so I fell for the ThinkGeek USB Pregnancy Test and thought the Google Custom Time idea was funny. But I will be switched if I Rickroll anyone today. I can’t stand that song.
You want funny? Here’s funny:
9/11 Conspiracy Theories ‘Ridiculous,’ Al Qaeda Says
As I look at the stock market today, I see that Visa has made it’s initial public offering and has cashed in big-time, with a 28% rise over their opening price. Meanwhile, gold and silver have fallen approximately 3.8% and 6.6%, respectively.
So let me get this straight: a company that peddles debt as money (in an economy where faith in the ability to repay debt is in serious doubt) has found a market price for its stock that is almost a third higher than what they thought it should be, while the two things that have been treated as money for millenia have lost roughly 1/20th of their when measured in paper money?
Well, I guess Barnum was right.
No matter who makes the better argument before The Robed Nine today, your gun rights will be intact. Regardless of the outcome, you have a right before God to defend yourself from hostile others, and as a consequence, you have the right to the tools for such. If five of the nine decide you don’t, at least in DC, well, they’re full of it. The right is both Constitutional and Natural, and the jurisdiction of the court only covers Constitutional rights.
Remember, rights come from God, not man. Man is merely the protector or usurper of those rights, and God have mercy on the latter.
In all likelihood, both sides of the debate probably have unrealistic expectations. The rights-usurpers want the law upheld in full and the rights-protectors want it struck down in full. It will likely be upheld in part and struck down in part, in a narrowly applicable precedent.
Or it could be that it gets struck down completely by a 5-4 decision. I’m not a bookie, so I’m not placing odds for wager. I’m also not a lawyer, but I do know where rights come from.
Pray for your rights, you may have to use them someday.
When I said I was getting in touch with my inner libertarian, I did not mean that I was adopting the entire Ayn-Rand-Ron-Paul-everybody’s-free-now-pay-for-everything worldview. As an example, take the typical libertarian position on prostitution - that it is a victimless crime, illegal only because we say it is, not because of any natural law that is violated.
For those of you who are looking at the Elliot Spitzer shenanigans and saying “prostitution should be legalized, since it’s a victimless crime”, go read this article. No, there certainly are victims.
How many battles can you identify?
I particularly like the Midway scene.
