Scattershots – 18may15 (updated 20may15)

“Islam was never the religion of peace.  Islam is the religion of fighting.”  Abu Bahr Al-Baghdadi, ISIS Leader

George Rebane

Indeed Islam has never been the religion of peace.  History and ongoing worldwide Islamist terror attest to that.  The above quote from a recent ISIS online video is just the latest testimony to a truth understood by all but the most deluded of western progressives.  We recall that for war it only takes one to tango, peace requires at least two.  Today Islam survives as the only religion whose adherents regularly commit mass murders of people embracing other faiths, and even versions of Islam that are not acceptable to their various sects.

That we in the west still deny the demonstrably bloody nature of a self-declared bloody religion is testimony that ours may no longer be a strong and vibrant culture ready to defend itself against a faith that numbers some of the most sincere, devout, and self-sacrificing followers on earth today.  Nowhere is ignorance of this existential threat to civilization displayed more than at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech by liberal Democrat, media pundit, and national correspondent Kirsten Powers represents a long overdue watershed.  For years RR has cited the total asymmetry of how those of the Left and Right interpret the First Amendment.  The Left continues to prosecute and expand its attacks on Americans who seek to freely voice their beliefs and strongly held convictions.  A flood of examples are available at every level of public discourse from Krugman’s recent attack on Alan Greenspan (‘A Liberal Speech Cop Targets Alan Greenspan’) to the chorus of our local leftists (see 'TechTest2015 Survivors' Breakfast' comment stream) ever seeking to silence voices they consider disagreeable or expository.

The collectivists’ cacophony on silencing free speech has become so loud that some prominent liberals are getting worried.  Democratic strategist Donna Brazile stated on national TV, “We have to be very careful that we are not practicing a new McCarthyism.”  But McCarthy never dreamt of having the levels of speech control that are now routinely practiced by the Left; controls that range from our schools and colleges, through government bureaucracies, to our mass media outlets.

For a snoot full of very disturbing specifics, I urge RR readers to peruse this excerpt from Kirsten Powers’ new book.

[update]  On the matter of equivalence in the proscription of free speech.  The awaited comment below came from a sincere mid-roader who took up the gauntlet for the Left which has always maintained that its efforts to roll back the First Amendment are no different from and matched by those of the Right.  I suppose that it is an indelible part of the mid-roaders' litmus test to always seek balance in their ascribed sins of the Left and Right.

However, there is not a shred of evidence for maintaining the argument for such equivalency.  Anyone from the Right who stands to limit the Left's speech is immediately dunned by his colleagues, and, if unrepentant, is publicly drummed out of the conservative corps.  The facts of the matter are that more sensible Democrats (leftists) see the asymmetry to be so blatant today that they are beginning admonish the more rabid colleagues to back off from their Orwellian quest.

[20may15 update]  Demilitarization of nation’s police - don’t believe it.  Obama's recent order to not sell tracked vehicles, grenade launchers, and 50 cal BMG rifles to local constabularies makes no never mind to the military gear that they already have and can still obtain.  As long covered in these pages, military equipments that will remain in local police inventories include armored combat vehicles (e.g. MRAPs), automatic weapons, night vision gear, ... . The main point here is that the feds still want the police to have overwhelming tactical capability to quickly quash any uppity uprising by a more lightly armed public.  In the interval full military style SWAT assaults (many erroneous) on private residences continue to increase unabated.  A careful look will reveal that Leviathan has shed neither a tooth or claw.  (more here and here)

Comments

[Todd Juvinall]

Jon, sorry you are incorrect. You just showed up here lately so I will give you a break on your ignorance. I actually received more votes as a Assembly candidate than Ben Emery did in his run for Congress. You really don't know squat do you?

[fish]

Substance, stick to substance!

It's not a slam of Ben or his intent.....and I rate myself certainly no better than Ben in the creative solutions department. The difference is that as a self described "progressive" I think there is always the nagging compulsion within a guy like Ben to "do something". At the local level this is usually fine as the impulse tends to be self extinguishing. At the national level what progressives hath wrought is an ever metastasizing governmental monstrosity. I'm more of a don't just do something, stand there type.

Paul, Ben, JoKe et al. haven't made the connection that once this monstrous edifice of power is established others might also have plans for it. I find it entertaining when they act surprised when it's used for things that they don't like.

[Jon]

Congratulations Todd on getting that chunk of financial support from the Repub Party when you ran and lost. Ben had none except small amounts from individuals in his district. I was proud to chip in a little.

[Gregory]

The only reason Ben got a significant number of votes in the race against McClintock was the absolute fact that the Democrat on the ballot was a certified carpetbagging (he left his native FL to attend a law school down the hill) lunatic given to conspiracy theories, and the leftist free rag in his home town referred to him as "Clint Curtis, D-Mars".

Even I voted for Ben in that race, but only because I knew neither he nor Curtis had a chance in hell of winning. I suspect many Democrats held their nose and only voted for Curtis because they also knew he didn't have a chance in hell of winning. It's a shame Ben didn't run again so we could estimate just what the Clint Curtis effect was.

Regarding Ben on this blog and elsewhere, I disagree with George: Ben isn't representative of cogent left-liberals, he's just a weak minded ideologue who never makes arguments that aren't ridiculous and easily countered. I don't know if it's by choice or lack of reasoning ability, but Ben has never just made a simple claim and then logically supported that claim against criticism. His May 18 8:11PM is a case in point.

Ben, it's simpler than you think. The basic transaction worldwide is "I got this, you got that. Want to trade?". That is the cooperation you seek. We (the royal we if you please) don't have more stuff because we stole it. We built it, we bought it, we taught others how to build it then bought it from them. It ain't the trader's job to insure the government of the entity they're trading with isn't a kleptocracy because most of them are.

At least the Brits elevated their native criminal class to fill a purely ceremonial role.

You can blame the USA for one thing... without what we've done in the past couple centuries, more than half the world would be dead (or just never born in the first place). Some of Ben's cohort would probably say that's a good thing.

[Todd Juvinall]

Jon, your ignorance about things is apparent. I ran in a primary against six other R's. I raised and spent my money from individual donors none from the Party. That is also how I ran in the Supervisor races. You are sure ignorant Jon.

[Jon]

OK, who the heck would follow, particularly care, or even know about your run for Assembly? With your extreme puffery we see here on display, I would have assumed you could have prevailed in your primary. 6th out of 6th was it?

[Todd Juvinall]

3rd put of 7 and I spent the east. What a hoot. You are truly a ignorant person.

[Jon]

Gregory, if lack of logical support of a particular claim is a measure of one's deserved level of derision, then we certainly have at least 2 commenters here who should be perpetually ripped for that offense. I rarely see any of their kindred political spirits ripping into the blabber of these obvious offenders of the lowest form of intellectual discussion. At least you responded mildly to Walt and his Beale AFB conspiracy theory. Ben bears an incredibly skewed and unfair quota of derision.

[Don Bessee]

No surprise that 'jon' expects quotas. Troll on Troll on.

[Gregory]

The commenters "Jon" expects me to excoriate haven't smeared me like Ben has, and, unlike Ben, occasionally make sense.

Perhaps "Jon" would like to rip Jeff Pelline a new one for smearing TechTest, or would the initial rip hurt Jon too much?

The "lowest form of intellectual discussion" on this blog have been writ by the likes of "Jon", Jeff Pelline (one and the same?), Ben, Steven Frisch of the wretchedly misnamed Sierra Business Council, Michael P. Anderson of Clientworks (though he belatedly decided to curtail that bad misbehavior) and one or two others who are best not disturbed from their nap.

Pushing back on the list I give here doesn't give me joy or cause angst... it's more like cleaning the catbox.

[Jon]

"3rd put of 7 and I spent the east." "Jon expects quotas."

now there is some real high intellectual discussion on display!

Gregory apparently doesn't like honest discord on a blog he does not control. Clearly bad behavior is in the eye of the beholder, and not within the province of any particular group of political kindred spirits.

[Todd Juvinall]

"Jon" you are too funny. You are a troll. You come here simply to trash the people here. Look at your simple minded attacks on Walt for instance. No you are a anonymous troll no one knows who you really are while all know who the rest of us are. The Rebane blog and the hosts intellect are far superior to yours and it is trolls such as yourself that are the problem. My guess is you still live at home, mom cooks and does your laundry and you don't pick up after yourself even at your advanced age. You have never done public service of any kind and are on the dole. So, as long as you remain anonymous you are simply a troll.

[Todd Juvinall]

Oh and the reason we know you are a troll is you don't post on Pelline's blog. Either you are Pelline or his pal.

[fish]

Posted by: Jon | 20 May 2015 at 04:12 PM

Gregory apparently doesn't like honest discord on a blog he does not control.

Don't know why you make this claim? He isn't constantly whining for "moderation" like that certain someone does.

[Don Bessee]

Ya Todd, I noticed that too. Verbal mannerisms, never shows on liberal lament land and spouts the same idiocy that is just recycled FUE tripe. Oil is a dirty business, so is farming, mining and pretty much any of the trades. The sock puppet brown nosing Ben hates all those things and can barely hide his contempt for any business or hard worker. Go back to your give away food rag.

[Jon]

fish, which progressive/moderate voice here has Gregory ever had a good-natured dialogue with? Koyote perhaps? Also would like to know what Steve Frisch or the SBC ever did to him personally to warrant such vitriol in return.

Don, contempt for farming and the trades? come now. I must hate working those hours per week I put in farming on my property! Silliness.

[Don Bessee]

Gee that makes no sense at 533, guess we should be used to that by now from the likes of you. You are clearly anti business and continue to forget that we the people own corps. with our retirement funds and 401ks. Ohhh evil oil company , ohhh evil bankers, ohhh evil corporate farmers, blah blah blah. What is really hilarious is you acting like you moderate this blog too!! Cant say that, that's mean, leave ben alone. You can tell your therapist about your yard work phobia. Lame misdirection. LOL

[Todd Juvinall]

Come on JON tell who you really are and where you live. Chicken eh?

[Greg Goodknight]

5:33

Paul Emery, many times here and face to face.

As Cartman would say, ...

nah can't write it

[Jon]

speaking of making no sense...Don... Your rants need no commentary. They are great exhibits.

[Todd Juvinall]

Don has done a lot for the community. What about you "JON"?

[Barry Pruett]

Open comment to all RR commenters: Ignore Cartman as he predictably and with malice tries to drag you down his bunnyhole of irrelevance. Don't allow him to degrade the conversation. Thanks.

[fish]

Ya know we're at the tail end of this comment thread but I would be remiss if I didn't mention.....that Kirsten Powers is indeed a handsome woman!

[Todd Juvinall]

Fish, she is a babe. All those FOX women are babes. I think FOX needs to hire blondes.

[Gregory]

"At least you responded mildly to Walt and his Beale AFB conspiracy theory" - "Jon"

He had no "conspiracy theory". It takes no conspiracy to think a USAF government reconnaissance plane circling overhead for hours might be spying on people, but it is a favorite smear by the left.

"Walt" just suffered from a lack of knowledge... there's no bloody reason for a (wild guess) $40k a hour plane and crew to park over some stoners grow all day. Overkill plain and simple. Beale AFB has a training mission and that's a training flight for the equipment operators before they're sent into hostile territory to do it for real. They move it here and there because people get tired of it being overhead; the Grass Valley airport regularly gets calls.

Here's more info about the thing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdpJYu-cAFQ
http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/mc-liberty/

Now, given that there's no "conspiracy" whatsoever, why did "Jon" use that word if not to libel Walt as a conspiracy nut?

[George Rebane]

Administrivia - Doing my best to delete the nasty threads that FUE attempts to start.

[Gregory]

"Gregory apparently doesn't like honest discord on a blog he does not control." -"Jon"

Honest discord is great, it's the dishonest variety brought by the usual suspects (like Jon, Jeff, Mike, Steve, take your pick). I'd include Ben here except I don't think he has the intellectual horsepower or English comp skills to tell the difference.

[fish]

You should leave them.

[fish]

As the night grows longer, the truth about this book’s message is revealed

Indeed it is.....we appreciate attractive women....apparently jeffy doesn't.

Hmmmmm.....that explains much.

NTTAWWT!

[Michael R. Kesti]

George Rebane 20May15 08:40 PM

Why risk reducing yourself to his level? And why not let him demonstrate how nasty he is?

[Don Bessee]

Kesti, kesti, kiesti....

[Jeff Pelline]

Don,
It's getting late: You misspelled "Kesti" in your response. It's "Kesti" not "kiesti." ROFLOL.

[Bill Tozer]

Ok, I like and respect Ben a lot. Won't ever tell him that cause I don't want my humble Brother to get a big head. Ben has a big heart and in the "if only" place, there is no suffering, very little poverty, and we live out Dr. King's dream. Where to start? Next door or in the heart of Darkest Africa, it don't really matter to people like the Emery Brothers.

You know why I never ever have to try to understand Ben? Because we have a shared idealism, or have shared the same thoughts, desires, power to the people chants at one stage of our lives. Peace on Earth, goodwill towards mankind. Nothing wrong with that. I understand totally, and dear reader, what if Ben is right and we are wrong? Now, wouldn't shake us to the core.

Ben and I just have different priorities. Not even saying good or bad, just the way it is. And I will be the very first to concede his ideals are more morally pure than mine. I just wish he would include human nature in the mix when considering solutions. You know, the 7 deadly sins, which corrupts everything. The great spoiler, the rotten egg.

Moving on, I just put a higher priority on individualism and personal responsibility for most answers to life's dilemmas than Ben, who in turn puts a greater priority on using a top down approach. All this is, of course, generally speaking. We both chant Power to the People, just with different meanings of how to get more power into the hands of the people, and different meanings of the chant Power to the People.

[Bill Tozer]

Yes I need, it's getting late.

[Todd Juvinall]

Giants win, great game. Lots of Feul's there though.

[Jon]

Gregory, can you just get to the point of why you despise Ben and Steve so much? Again I ask you, if intellectual horsepower was some sort of test of one's ability to post here, there are 2-3 people on here who would have been voted off this island years ago.

What did Ben or Steve do to you personally that would account for the vitriol?

[Gregory]

"Jon", where did I even intimate intellectual horsepower is required to post here? You seem a touch confused.

[Barry W. Pruett]

Posted by: Bill Tozer | 20 May 2015 at 09:53 PM
"You know why I never ever have to try to understand Ben? Because we have a shared idealism, or have shared the same thoughts, desires, power to the people chants at one stage of our lives. Peace on Earth, goodwill towards mankind. Nothing wrong with that. I understand totally, and dear reader, what if Ben is right and we are wrong? Now, wouldn't shake us to the core."

There are certainly those folks whose intentions have to do solely with personal destruction and narcissism. Those people are not the folks about whom I am about to speak.

Bill's point is really it, isn't it. Aside from a handful of hateful people, all of us want world peace, all of us want our fellow man to greatly succeed (not just survive), and all of us want each of us to experience the entire fullness of life. The real important take away is that you all need to understand that about the other side before you respond to another's thoughts. Ben's, George's, Paul's, Steve's, and most everyone else's intentions, as well the vast majority of liberals and conservatives, come from a place in the heart, and it really is not fair to demonize such intentions. Most all of us want the same thing for our fellow man, but we have different ideas of how to get there. Please do not forget that each of our intentions are true.

[Todd Juvinall]

I thought the Arabs in Iraq wanted freedom along with Bush. That all people wanted to be free. Boy was I wrong.

[George Rebane]

Our Designated Reader emailed me this morning with a report that our local looney Left has detected some disallowed remarks about Kirsten Powers' beauty in this comment stream. Such explicit assessments of the woman's appearance used to be the natural, if not expected, outpourings of heterosexual males, and they in turn were received with gratitude by the so designated females.

Over the centuries a multi-billion dollar industry arose to entice and assist all females to approach such a standard of social admiration. And these sentiments were reciprocated by females who gave males their critical once over, then sharing their conclusions with their friends. But according to the new social order of the Left, this type of behavior is now proscribed in the politically correct public fora.

In today’s Newspeak the moral measure of such expressions have been turned on their head. And when their Agenda21 world will descend upon us, no one will dare utter such praises about the opposite sex for fear of having to go through the most dreadful of social correctives imposed by the state – for it will then be the law.

So I invite the reader to review BarryP’s 739pm in the light of such hubristic criticisms, and what such ‘true intentions’ indicate about the goodwill that may still glow deep within people like that. To me these admonitions are of a revelatory piece of the high morals touted by state erected local boards in the former USSR, and today’s China, Cuba, Iran, … . These were and still are commissioned to ferret out and expose incorrect thoughts and words, and then recommend correctives of sufficient severity to inhibit future infractions. In those lands such proceedings are far from toothless since they always have the gun of Leviathan under the stack of such codes of conduct. In many areas of government, education, and even business our moral betters have already achieved equivalent powers to suppress and punish.

Today’s America has legions of such self-appointed minions, educated in political correctness by our public institutions, always on the lookout to moderate all thought and expression that stray from that narrow road to their new world of Perfected Man.

[fish]

Our Designated Reader emailed me this morning with a report that our local looney Left has detected some disallowed remarks about Kirsten Powers' beauty in this comment stream.

I wince when I see the term "Designated Reader"...talk about taking one for the team. Of course it's only painful briefly as there really isn't much "content" to read and the comment threads are more often then not just jeffy talking to his homemade "action figures".

[Todd Juvinall]

The PC crowd's appetite for power over even beauty is amazing. How can people like that even exist in such a crazy world where a hot babe is now not to be recognized?

[fish]

16, 141, 77, 132, 114, 13, 105............

vs.

0, 2, 1, 11, 2, 10, 0 ,0 , 0, 7...........

Discussion vs. Moderation

[Bill Tozer]

Some of us are not as spiritually developed as others and have evolved at a slower pace.

http://www.memecenter.com/search/hooters

[Don Bessee]

So latest polling has 51% of dems favoring criminalization of speech. Well we see that here from our hard lefties who troll around. - In another interesting poll Americans estimate 23% of the population is gay when the most recent CDC blind self reporting shows 1.6% self reports as gay. What would you think is driving such a dramatically wrong view of the reality of the situation?

[Bill Tozer]

Nothing new, except a U.S. President whining about Fox for 8 years straight. A new record. Sure, all Presidents have made some insightful comments now and then what they really think of a certain segment of the press, but enough is enough. Go play golf....unless he can't let it go, which is evident by something stuck in his craw.

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-viewpoint/052015-753563-obama-wants-to-change-how-americans-think.htm

[Todd Juvinall]

Anyone see that Democrat panel of "common folks" who are voting for Hillary? Asked to identify one thing she did they could remember from her recent four years as Sec of State. They could not name one thing and they looked like total doofus's. But they are voting democrat! Any wonder the country is in the mess it is in with dumbkoff democrats in charge? All grads of their own education system.

[joe smith]

Uh, Todd, you got crushed in your run for assembly. Last place as I remember. Of course you had all your excuses lined in a row. Bragging' rights? For what, having your name on a ballot?

[George Rebane]

joes 931pm - Don't know where you're going with that little bit of snark. ToddJ was talking about voting for Hillary. Love to hear your ideas about that, but going after Todd's unsuccessful run for the assembly is hardly an adult response.

[Todd Juvinall]

George, Joe Smith can't help himself (those libs are so infantile). What a hoot. His facts are wrong anyway but the libs make it all up. Yes Joe Smith, the post had to do with your candidate Hillary and her clueless voters.