Thursday, May 15, 2008
The Smallest Minority Turns 5...
Be sure to drop by Kevin's, and wish our blog-brother-in-arms congratulations!
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Posted By: geekWithA.45  
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Sometimes, the Process Is Important...
I'm a huge fan of outcomes, because at the end of the day, its the results that matter. Process is important too, because it is through process that you can reliably and repeatedly arrive at good outcomes. The thing is, good outcomes can come from either good or bad process, and sometimes, you have to look at the second or third order consequences before you can see why a process is no good, and more likely to promote bad outcome than good.
As an experienced corporate warrior and student of parliamentary/governmental/bureaucratic procedure, it is wise to be automatically skeptical whenever someone should propose even an innocent seeming process change.
Some processes are so open to abuse and subject to taint that their outcomes are guaranteed to be either corrupt or suspect.
In order to illustrate what's wrong with one real Democratic proposal on the table, I'm going to show how that proposal would work if it were applied to...oh..say, electoral voting. (Note, for people who need things spelled out: The Democrats ARE NOT proposing to apply this procedural change to electoral votes. I'm sure they'd love to, but they know they'd never get away with it there in a million years, so they're not going to try. )
Let's say that it's a fine, sunny Sunday, and you're lounging on your hammock in the back yard, drinking an ice tea, and generally enjoying the swirly chaos of your wife, dogs, and kids all chasing each other around the yard. You hear the doorbell ring, but you don't want to roll off the hammock, so you send one of the kids round to tell whoever it is to come around the back.
A moment later, your kid's back, with four nicely dressed men you've never seen before in tow. THAT gets your attention, so you roll off the hammock. You're not really interested in changing your church, and so you resolve to tell what you believe are religious proselytizers that you're not interested.
As you move to intercept them, two move forward, smiling to speak to you, while the two larger ones hang back, gathering unto themselves a vague aura of menace. The two big goons look around, with a neutral expression, noting your back door, windows, dogs and kids. Perhaps, they jot a few notes down in their little black books.
The two front men are all smiles and light, as they begin to tell you the virtues and benefits of voting for The Other Political Team. In fact, they want you to vote for Their Team, Right Now. All you have to do is sign the voter's card, which they happily provide, for their candidate, and give it to them.
These guys, they're pretty good at their job. They've detected, perhaps, a lack of sufficient enthusiasm for their plans for you. The front men continue their patter, while the goons aura of menace increases. No one has to actually say “Gee, that's a nice house/dog/wife/kid you got there, it would be a shame if something would happen to it.”
For you, time stops, and through the miracle of quantum mechanics and the writer's art, we split the story to follow both paths.
In one alternate universe, you don't happen to be an unintimidatable master of arms. You happen to be Joe or Jane normal, who “knows what's good for you”. You sign the card, you picture is taken with it for the timestamp, and that's that. You've voted, and the vote can't be recalled or taken back. (And, for our purposes, we'll lay aside just how easy it is to outright fabricate a vote in this system, and how tough it is to verify one.)
In another universe, you do happen to be a master of arms, and it takes a lot more than 4 goons to intimidate you. But since there's no need to be rude, you smile back, ignore the vote card being offered to you, and politely ask them to leave. Perhaps they go into hard sell mode, basically refusing to leave unless you escalate, just to test your resolve, and you find yourself obliged to make a scene to get them to leave. Or perhaps they've noticed the pile of guns you were cleaning on the picnic table, or your own bulging muscles, and decide that you're not a pushover, and that there's a lot more people for them to cover to make their quota.
A week or two later, the dogs are upset. By the time you've snapped on the porch light, a nondescript car that had been idling out front glides away, lights off. You have no opportunity to read the plates. Perhaps a night or so after that, a brick sails through a window, or your garbage cans are upended, strewing rotten muck all over your driveway. Perhaps things escalate from there, your daughter tells you about a stranger who was watching the school bus stop. Where does it stop? No body knows, the sky's the limit!
And of course, when push comes to shove, the four guys who showed up in your back yard will have airtight alibis for whenever something bad should happen to you.
Having said all that, I invite you to go read about unions and card checks.
Democrats and Unions: mutual parasites. The unions deliver votes and bux to the Democrats, and the Democrats deliver governmentally sanctioned privileges and power to the unions, all at the expense of the (Re)public.
{h/t: Instapundit}
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Monday, May 05, 2008
Quote of the Day...
From Reader Jeff, in comments:
Quote
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"It goes without saying that a population that is largely disarmed is not in the habit of defiance or even independent thought."
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That goes very near to the heart of the matter, doesn't it?
It's hard to beat an armed man.
Being armed is less about the terminus: the preservation of the means of insurrection, as it is about creating and preserving the place within which the habit of defiant, independent thought is cultivated.
Humans, like any animal, can be beaten down into submission. When that happens, the very first thing to go is the habit of defiance, and because critical, independent thought inexorably leads to defiance against a cognitive tyranny and is inconsistent with the lack of defiance, it too is deleted from the person's psyche, and the end result it the perfect mass man, awaiting whatever demagogue comes along to render him into a useful tool.
That is the wage of helplessness.
The opposite of helplessness is power, and the flip side of that coin is responsibility.
Power comes with responsibility, but responsibility cannot exist without power. The two are inextricably linked.
Responsibility demands power.
The powerless don't think big, responsibly defiant thoughts.
They think little, compliant "please don't hurt me" thoughts.
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Friday, May 02, 2008
Quote of the Day...
Quote:
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"You know your country is broken when even your illegal immigrants say you suck."
Kim du Toit, commenting on British asylum seekers trying to sneak OUT of Britain.
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Thursday, May 01, 2008
State of PA
Sponsors Deceptive Website!
My friend and colleague in liberty Dave made the find, and has the goods.
Clicky forth!
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Holy Crap!
The "McCains" really are Cylons!
Chris Palmer noticed that "John McCain" is a copy of Col Tigh, a closet cylon:
That's all ha-ha-ha, until you see a picture of "John" next to his wife/beer baronness, "Cindy":
"Cindy" is clearly a gracefully aged copy of Number Six:
Frack it. I'm voting for them anyway.
I for one, welcome our new Cylon overlords, the least objectionable repulsive Democrat running:
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Friday, April 25, 2008
An Idea for Obamaby Egregious Charles
I was just listening to Fear a Bhata (your spelling may vary*) and became curious about the first line of the chorus. It's usually sung in translation except for that line, "Fear a bhata, na horo eile"*. It sounds really significant for some reason. It turns out it actually means something like "O my boatman, and more tra-la-las".
So, I bet Obama could leverage this phenomenon by answering all substantive or otherwise awkward questions in cool-sounding nonsense syllables, and claim it was 'Ebonics'. None of the MSM would dare to question this, or admit they didn't understand it. The few in the MSM who would be sure it wasn't 'Ebonics' probably would still support Obama in their writings if he couldn't speak anything but nonsense syllables or if he was the right ethnicity of mollusc.
Side note: Somehow I seem to be channeling Frank J. recently.
* I've seen it spelled various ways and picked this one because all the characters are in the 7-bit ASCII set, meaning that pretty much any computer will show them right.
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Posted By: EgregiousCharles
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