MatthewMaynard.net

Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, right?

If Obama wanted to be that post-partisan president he was initially attributed to be, he would have released the certificate long ago, even before he took office. But that wasn’t his goal. Remember, he’s a politician, and politicians are always interested, above everything else, in getting reelected. And what’s one of the best ways to help your campaign along? Divide the opposition into one camp that says something and another that is embarrassed by what the other says.

Congratulations, the joke’s on you.

Those who are caught up in this are staring at the amazing bark on the tree while ignoring the forest. Sure, if he’s a foreigner not born to American parents in a foreign country, or born here to foreign parents not under US jurisdiction, then he’s ineligible under the Constitution. It would create a Constitutional crisis of the first order if it were conclusively proven to be true. But it doesn’t matter.

Consider who would take over if he were thrown out of office: JOE BIDEN. Do you think Biden will just stand still while Obama’s first term is rolled back? Nope. He would keep as much of it as he could and ignore anything Congress did. It would be no different than if Obama loses in 2012. Consider a different alternative – Obama is not a legitimate US citizen, but stays in office because no one believes the birther story. If he isn’t legitimate, this is essentially what’s happening now. He still won’t be removed from office because too many people believe he is legit, and they will not be convinced otherwise.

Concentrating on the birth certificate while ignoring the amazingly unconstitutional things he’s done in office is short sighted, especially since the one who would replace him would continue the unconstitutional acts. The one thing birthers could do, more than anything else, would be to push for legislation that requires candidates at every level to show their eligibility for office when registering their campaign.

But that would be taking a page from that damn Soros’ playbook and his Secretary of State project, and we can’t have that, can we?

From The Firearm Blog comes news that my birth state has followed the lead of Utah and adopted a pistol as the official state firearm. The AZCentral.com article in full:

Arizona is getting an official firearm – the Colt Single-Action Army revolver.

Gov. Jan Brewer on Thursday without comment signed a bill passed by the Legislature to designate the weapon as the state’s first official firearm.

Connecticut-based Colt had lobbied for the legislation.

Legislative supporters argued that the designation was appropriate because the revolver was widely used during Arizona territorial days.

Opponents said it was inappropriate to give the official designation to an out-of-state company’s commercial product.

Democratic Rep. Albert Hale also called the gun an instrument of destruction that was used against Native Americans.

Several points come to mind:

• Signed without comment – yet she vetoes the campus carry bill and cries that that bill goes too far. So you can buy an official state gun, but you can’t carry it on certain state land.
• Colt lobbied for the legislation – perhaps Springfield Inc. can lobby for the M1A as the official state rifle. This raises the obvious question of why the company had to lobby for it, instead of the legislature doing the deed on its own. Now Colt gets a freshly minted marketing campaign.
• “…an instrument of destruction that was used against Native Americans.” – and also by some of them, no doubt. The object is neither good or bad, it is the user who bears the moral weight of the action. I don’t understand why this fact escapes some people.

It’s bills like this that make gun owners call Republicans fair-weather on the 2nd Amendment. Practically speaking, this bill does nothing except create a marketing opportunity for Colt. At the same time, anyone on a college campus is prohibited from using the 2nd Amendment for what it was written for – defense against tyranny (albeit from the lowly thug, not the government). The legislature should double down and override Brewer’s veto of the campus carry bill.

Like HAYEK-splosives, get it?

Hat tip: Tam.

Oh, good, glad we cleared up the fact that bacon is not reduced in calories. Wouldn’t want anyone eating false bacon.

For when your Passover can’t end soon enough.

I know correlation doesn’t indicate causation, but I definitely see a correlation between agnostics/atheists and unhappy people.

I support zombies too – WITH LEAD!!!!!!

Apparently he made a break out of that French prison and got all the way to Charlottesville without anyone noticing.

Click to enlargify.

Seriously, is this what we spend how many billions on every year? And no, this is not a joke, try it yourself.

No wonder the Founders didn’t like standing armies.

Farmers pleased with annual bunny-hunt

Dr. McCoy approves.

One of the current home improvement projects is the installation of a ceiling fan in the master bedroom. The house circulation is stiflingly bad, and it gets to be about 5 degrees hotter upstairs than downstairs in the summer. So, obvious solution – get a fan and cool things off.

Of course, this requires multiple trips to Lowe’s, including the first trip to pick out the fan, a second trip to get the necessary hardware to mount the fan and wire it to the switches (which were also purchased in trip two), and a third trip to get three-strand wire instead of two-strand, so that the fan and light can turn on separately.

Of course, it all benefits Lowe’s bottom line, which I don’t mind. What I do mind is the Hunter instructions that say you just need 14 gauge wire, but don’t specify if it should be two or three strand.

Stinkin’ instruction writers. It would help everyone if they had to take a class in writing. There would be a lot less frustration, but then Lowe’s might not have as good a quarter.

Oh well, you have to take the good with the bad sometimes.

Luke 24

1. But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared.
2. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb,
3. but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
4. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men suddenly stood near them in dazzling clothing;
5. and as the women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living One among the dead?
6. “He is not here, but He has risen Remember how He spoke to you while He was still in Galilee,
7. saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.”
8. And they remembered His words,
9. and returned from the tomb and reported all these things to the eleven and to all the rest.
10. Now they were Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James; also the other women with them were telling these things to the apostles.
11. But these words appeared to them as nonsense, and they would not believe them.
12. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen wrappings only; and he went away to his home, marveling at what had happened.

Jennifer and I have a guilty pleasure called Showtime. Fortunately, they have a habit of putting their shows out on DVD, which means we don’t have to subscribe to see the shows we want.

Weeds season 7 is coming up. We were less than impressed with season 6, when the Botwins went on the run. Part of the fun, as we see it, is their interactions with the other families (Celia and the Hodes, for example), which was missing in season 6. The season ended with a cliffhanger that made you wonder just how they were going to get out of their situation.

Then there’s King Henry number eight.

Showtime has finished its series The Tudors, and it has entered syndication on BBC America, and is available on NetFlix. We watched the first episode, and it seemed to make a slow start to the story. This is understandable, since there’s so much to it. The ancient welfare recipient who claimed authority over the great big foggy island does appear to have a rather trim physique, which makes me wonder how much license they took with the rest of the story. For example, in the first episode Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (played by Red October XO Sam Neill) is shown in competition for the papacy eventually given to Alexander VI, a.k.a. Rodrigo Borja. In reality, Alex #6 was dead six years before Henry took the throne, which happens before episode 1.

Speaking of …

This looks much more interesting. This time there was a free preview weekend for Showtime a while ago, so we recorded the pilot. It covers the basics of where Borgia/Borja came from, his ascendancy to the papacy, the alliances for and against him, and his family. As a study in drama it looks wonderful – for one, there’s the contrast between today’s popes and the bad popes, for another, there’s the attention to detail, and for a third point, there’s a Shakespearean level villain named Leonardo Michelotto. Imagine G. Gordon Lidddy’s moral scruples mixed with the ruthlessness and violent temperament of Luca Brasi from The Godfather, with an equal part of Barack Obama’s oratory, cunning, and deceitfulness from the 2008 campaign trail, and you have a good idea of who Michelotto is.

At least we don’t have to pay every month to watch them, if we’re willing to be patient just a bit.

One of the blogs I read on a semi-regular basis (that is, I skim his feed every day and read a story slowly and in full about every 2 to 3 days) is Karl Denninger’s Market Ticker. He used to work in Internet telecommunications, then sold his business or got bought out and moved on to bigger things, like economic market analysis.

Anyway, the WSJ broke today’s banner Drudge headline, claiming that ZOMFG GOOGLE IS GOOGLING YOUR PHONE WTFZOMFG. Unfortunately the WSJ article is a bit short on technical details, but it does bring up a concern – why does Google want to know which phones are connecting to which networks? This is important because there could be the possibility that they could transmit network access keys without you knowing it, if they ever decided that their prime directive (don’t be evil) was at least a little flexible.

That being said, what evidence is there that they transmit data, what data, and under what circumstances? Denninger doesn’t go into a whole lot of detail on how he ran his tests, but he claims that unless “use wireless networks” is checked, the unique IMEI number does not appear to be transmitted. Now, he’s not claiming that absolutely, but his claim stands unchallenged (so far). While a carrier can figure out where you are (because they have to in order to operate the cell network and pass you off from one tower to another without dropping the call) there method can be a bit error prone. Denninger says that when his phone uses just the cell carrier’s triangulation as the mapping source, the location it derives has an error greater than 3200 meters.

Something to keep in mind when you’re getting fitted for a new tinfoil hat.