Obama's Kill List, And Mine

Barack Hussein Obama has a kill list. Kill lists are for tyrants. That is all I have to say about that.

I too, have a kill list, but it is predicated on time travel, so I probably don't fit the description of a common tyrant. I would use time travel to go back and kill the following people at birth, or at least before they became powerful enough to defeat me. Using advanced technology, I would locate them in time and space, and dispatch them with weapons not available in their time:

• Mohammed - dictator, tyrant, warrior, pedophile, false prophet. Invented a religion as a form of crowd control. He and his religion are responsible for much death and destruction since its inception. 
• Vladimir Lenin - political theorist, revolutionary, tyrant, dictator, communist, father of the USSR. He and his ideology and regime are responsible for much death and destruction since its inception. 
• Josef Stalin - politician, dictator, bureaucrat, communist, successor of Lenin as premier of the USSR.  He and his ideology and regime are responsible for 20,000,000 deaths since its inception. 
• Adolph Hitler - politician, dictator, tyrant, national socialist (Nazi), fuhrer of Nazi Germany. He and his ideology are responsible for much death and destruction during World War II. His regime killed 6,000,000 Jews. But WWII claimed approximately 66,000,000 lives. Hitler was responsible. 
• Mao tse Tung - politician, dictator, tyrant, communist, premier of Communist China. He and his ideology and regime are responsible for 40,000,000 deaths since its inception. 
• Pol Pot - terrorist, dictator, tyrant, communist, leader of Kmer Rouge in Cambodia. He and his ideology are responsible for approximately 1,650,000 deaths during his reign of terror from 1975 ~ 1978.

I saved the worst for last:

• Karl Marx - political theorist, invented communism (and communist lite -- socialism), he and his ideology is responsible for much death and destruction since its inception (61,650,000 deaths, if you add up the deaths from all major communist regimes -- double that if you include Hitler's "contribution"). Also responsible for much pain and suffering in this country from around 1913 to the present time, due to the perversion of our constitutional government by his socialist followers in the US. 

Oh, and if I had a time machine, I'd stop and see if I could get Beethoven to play me a piano sonata if I gave him a ride in my time machine.

Know Your Pot Holders

When selecting kitchen accessories, it is important to choose the right tool for the job. If you pick the wrong one, you could be seriously burned. You never want to choose form over function. Be sure you get it right next time. Select Mitt vs. Pot Holder, below.

Useful Tool

Useless Tool

Free Stuff

This has been going around the internet as a perpetually forwarded email.

The folks who are getting the free stuff don't like the folks who are paying for the free stuff, because the folks who are paying for the free stuff can no longer afford to pay for both the free stuff and their own stuff.

And, the folks who are paying for the free stuff want the free stuff to stop.

And the folks who are getting the free stuff want even more free stuff on top of the free stuff they are already getting!

Now... the people who are forcing the people who pay for the free stuff have told the people who are RECEIVING the free stuff that the people who are paying for the free stuff are being mean, prejudiced, and racist.

So... the people who are getting the free stuff have been convinced they need to hate the people who are paying for the free stuff by the people who are forcing some people to pay for their free stuff and giving them the free stuff in the first place. We have let the free stuff giving go on for so long that there are now more people getting free stuff than paying for the free stuff.

Now understand this. All great democracies have committed financial suicide somewhere between 200 and 250 years after being founded.

The reason?

The voters figured out they could vote themselves money from the treasury by electing people who promised to give them money from the treasury in exchange for electing them.

The United States officially became a Republic in 1776, 236 years ago. The number of people now getting free stuff outnumbers the people paying for the free stuff.

We have one chance to change that in 2012. Failure to change that spells the end of the United States as we know it.

Thanks to Dave for forwarding this one to me.

Actually, last I heard, the US still has 49% receiving free stuff, and 51% paying for free stuff. So we're still barely above break-even, although I suppose it depends on how you account for it all.

A Great Society does not create a helpless, dependent class (The 99 Percent) with only a few producers (The One Percent -- slaves, essentially) to provide for them. That's not a Great Society, it's a Pathetic Society. A Great Society has no classes; it is simply a collection of self-sufficient individuals working at whatever level each is capable of, and who voluntarily help the less fortunate, while keeping them responsible for themselves, and guarding against malingerers and unscrupulous opportunists.

12 Year Old Victoria Grant on Banking

Replace "Bank of Canada" with "The Federal Reserve" and "Canada" with "United States", and her thesis applies here.

With talent and insight like that, she'll be "The One Percent" of her generation, as everyone should aspire to be.

Note that she isn't anti-bank, or anti-capitalist; she is anti-corruption, anti-crony capitalism, and pro-economic sanity.

My youngest son participates in a debate club (NCFCA), and many of those kids sound just like Victoria here. Their debate coach says (with a wink) that he expects "his kids" to rule the world (as opposed to merely winning the next debate round). They will be The One Percent, and they will get there through hard work, superior knowledge (but I repeat myself), and ethics. See if they don’t. They might do it even if the government takes and artificially redistributes 99% of their earnings. They understand that wealth redistributes itself without government intervention. Even the "evil" corporations would come by it fairly and honestly if the government would quit (un)leveling the playing field all the time.

(Hat tip to Primordial Slack)

Demi-God, or Demagogue?

I imagine a hypothesis in which Man releases a miniscule percentage of trapped CO2 into the atmosphere, which causes runaway climate change.

And everyone believes me without any verification.

Around world, Obama's presidency a disappointment

That is the headline from an AP news story that was highlighted on Drudge Report today.

In Europe, where more than 200,000 people thronged a Berlin rally in 2008 to hear Barack Obama speak, there's disappointment that he hasn't kept his promise to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, and perceptions that he's shunting blame for the financial crisis across the Atlantic.

In Mogadishu, a former teacher wishes he had sent more economic assistance and fewer armed drones to fix Somalia's problems. And many in the Middle East wonder what became of Obama's vow, in a landmark 2009 speech at the University of Cairo, to forge a closer relationship with the Muslim world.

In a world weary of war and economic crises, and concerned about global climate change, the consensus is that Obama has not lived up to the lofty expectations that surrounded his 2008 election and Nobel Peace Prize a year later.

That's because you don't award the Nobel Peace Prize to someone on a lick and a promise -- duh! And yet, when I think of Obama's presidency, I am disappointed for exactly the opposite reasons. He has done too much along those lines.

• You don't close a military prison unless you're sure you have no need for it anymore, as I'm sure Obama discovered upon taking office.
• Shunting blame for the financial crisis across the Atlantic -- what, to the twilight Euro zone? Say it ain't so! I hate to admit it, but he got that one partly right.
• Armed drones are one thing, but if forging a closer relationship with the Muslim world means appeasing Islamic extremists, then no.
• War weariness will not be addressed simply by calling home the troops. Wars happen because of cultural differences and human ambition. Those things won't go away by ignoring them, or by creating one world government. Dream on.
• Economic crises will not be addressed by creating class warfare, nor by imposing the same old, same old collectivist non-solutions. Maybe they were "progressive" 150 years ago, but now they're just a cruel joke.
• Climate change will not stop whether we impose a "sustainable" world government or not. The climate has always changed, and it always will. The idea that humans can affect climate on a global scale is not verifiable, and is most likely false. Having the premise wrong guarantees that we'll get everything else wrong for as long as we cling to that cockamamie hypothesis.

The rest of the world seems to think The United States can bail them out of the doldrums, but that isn't going to happen. The United States has its own recipe for prosperity and the pursuit of happiness -- The Constitution of the United States -- if only we would follow it. If the other nations of the world were to adopt similar forms of government, they'd be a lot happier too. But they haven't. Most of them have embraced the same collectivist claptrap that Obama wants the US to embrace, with entirely predictable results. There's some real diversity for you: Compare the results, and go live where you think you'd be happiest. And please, take Barack Obama with you. What? You're still here?

Cher doesn’t want to breathe the same air as Romney and his ‘racist homophobic women hating tea bagger masters’

According to Twitchy Entertainment, Cher said, "If ROMNEY gets elected I don't know if I can breathe same air as Him & his Right Wing Racist Homophobic Women Hating Tea Bagger Masters."

You lost me there, Cher... Let’s see... First of all, Romney isn’t Tea Party. Second, despite what you may have read in the dead-tree media, Tea Party is neither woman-hating, nor racist. Third, if we really were homophobic, we probably would not be "tea-baggers".

Read the article...

Can 33 Kilo Volts Deter Crime?

A lot of social engineering is devoted to the deterrence of crime. I have to wonder if it's worth it, after reading this: 

A would-be copper thief was gravely injured early Saturday morning when he attempted to steal copper wiring from a live Edison vault, according to authorities. 

The story continues:

Officials say the suspect is “extremely grave” and that it’s likely he was burned by 33,000 volts of electricity.

(Read the entire story...)

Think about it: You have a man who wants to steal copper. Copper is much less valuable than gold. Copper thieves sell it by the pound to scrap dealers. But this Poindexter is not deterred by thirty-three thousand volts of electricity? That is 275 times higher than the voltage of ordinary  house current, which is already quite lethal. If 33KV  doesn't deter someone, then I really don't know what will. It isn't as if he wasn't warned: If you have ever spent any time around high tension equipment, you know that it hums and buzzes; corona discharges snap and spark. And it's loud, too -- it's all very intimidating.

That smoldering bozo is lucky an arm or a leg didn't simply explode -- being turned instantly to steam when he contacted the hot wiring -- assuming the electrical disruption didn't reset his brain, or send his heart into instant fibrillation. What a maroon.

US Navy Presidential Ceremonial Honor Guard Drill Team

Our U.S. Navy Ceremonial Guard Silent Drill Team was invited to compete in the International competition in Norway . The Navy competed against military units from all over NATO and won first place.

And now for something completely different: This drill team didn't do so well...

Happy Sinko dey Kwatrro

What if G.W. Bush had said something so culturally clueless? Do I even have to ask? No, Mr. 57 states gets a pass. But this is cute.