That’s the thing about Progressives / Liberals / Progressives – they burn out phrases about as fast as they can open their mouths. They burnt out “Progressives”, switched to “Liberals”, and have had to switch back. I foresee another switch coming up soon on this idea. Ditto for that politically made up meme of “assault weapons” (the dufuses kept saying assault rifles, too, showing they know diddly squat about what they’re talking about) and started off with “Weapons of War” – and are again getting skewed for the exact same reason (AR-15s are not any of those things). And now we see the Dems, in the form of DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, trying to float another one:
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Deja Vu: US House Republicans screw over bondholders like Obama did with the auto industry.
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Remember how the Republicans howled (and gave more credence to the nascent TEA Party) when the Obama Administration bailed out the auto industry? That it thumbed its nose at the Rule of Law? Secured bondholders, by law, had first dibs in any bankruptcy actions – and the Obama Administration cut them off at the knees and emasculated them for 29 cents on the dollar.
Notable Quote – President Calvin Coolidge on Independence Day
My favorite President on Independence Day’s meaning and letting us know how Progressives are not America’s friends or patriots (emphasis mine) given their false suppositions and ideology:
About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.
-President Calvin “Silent Cal” Coolidge
Progressives are full of themselves (and another assorted dark
So which is it?
Shot: Concord Fishwrap – Eversource gets approval to sell its power plants
State energy regulators approved the sale of Eversource Energy power plants Friday, including Merrimack Station in Bow.
The nine hydro facilities and three fossil-fuel plants, including coal-fired Merrimack Station, Newington Station and Schiller Station in Portsmouth will be sold at auction overseen by the state Public Utilities Commission. New ownership is expected to save customers money by creating a more competitive market to generate power.
Chaser: UL – Eversource ordered to sell its power plants
The Public Utilities Commission handed down a long-awaited decision Friday on the fate of New Hampshire’s largest utility, ordering Eversource to sell off its power plants in a move that regulators hope will lower electricity prices in the long run by completing the deregulation of the electricity market that began 20 years ago.
Freaking Republican State Senator Jeb Bradley (you know, one of the
Another instance of “You don’t need that”
Yep, another “tell” to recognized that there be Progressives afoot in the land with one and only one purpose – to find your wallet and return the money in it to its rightful owner – Government. So, along comes Joanna White, Tom Shamberg (looking to go to Concord) and Rep. Eric Schmidt from Grantham (part of a group of residents from the Kearsarge Regional School District looking for a broad based tax to hike one of the country’s lowest tax burdens. Those evil people that won’t give us more money – “it’s for the children”!!!
Nice of them to decide, a la Bernie and his disdain for 23 types of deodorant in the [evil] free marketplace, that what is “you don’t need that” should be taxed more:
Something has to give. No one wants to take away from the schools. But an ever-increasing property tax is unsustainable. If not another broad-based tax, perhaps a specifically directed tax would work. Rep. Schmidt suggested taxing fizzy drinks, a popular but unnecessary item. (Philadelphia just put a 1½% tax on all sweet drinks). Surely there are others.
A good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a hostage
I should do this more often as we see a good outcome from what could have been a disaster; from The Blaze (emphasis mine, reformatted):
A robbery suspect armed with a knife entered a Kangaroo gas station in East Ridge, Tennessee, on Thursday with intentions to steal cash and cigarettes — but he didn’t make it out alive. During his escape attempt, police said the suspect took a female clerk hostage.
That’s when a law-abiding gun owner witnessed the robbery in progress and grabbed his firearm from his vehicle and confronted the suspect. The heroic bystander then “fired at least one round, striking him in the body,” East Ridge Police Capt. Tim Mullinax told WDEF-TV. He also revealed that the suspect was still holding the female victim when the gun owner took the risky and accurate shot to the suspect’s chest.
The armed customer will not face any charges. The robbery suspect has not been identified by police because they are still trying to notify his next of kin.
Good for the law abiding citizen for freeing the innocent hostage by ventilating the perp. Decisions have consequences and if
Notable Quote – Matt Ridley
[T]oday few people appreciate just how similar the arguments made by Smith and Darwin are. Generally, Adam Smith is championed by the political right, Charles Darwin more often by the left. In, say, Texas, where Smith’s emergent, decentralised economics is all the rage, Darwin is frequently reviled for his contradiction of dirigiste creation. In the average British university, by contrast, you will find fervent believers in the emergent, decentralised properties of genomes and ecosystems who yet demand dirigiste policy to bring order to the economy and society. But if life needs no intelligent designer, then why should the market need a central planner? Where Darwin defenestrated God, Smith just as surely defenestrated Leviathan. Society, he said, is a spontaneously ordered phenomenon. And Smith faces the same baffled incredulity – How can society work for the good of all without direction? – that Darwin faces.
-Matt Ridley ( The Evolution of Everything)
And then Socialists of all spectrums, like Bernie and Hillary, come along and
Data Point – US Muslims and US Law vs Sharia
Assimilating (reformatted, emphasis mine)?
From October 22 to October 26, 2012, Wenzel Strategies polled 600 U.S. Muslims of high socio-economic status. They were asked:
- Do you believe that criticism of Islam or Muhammad should be permitted under the Constitution’s First Amendment? 58% – “no”, 42% – “yes”
- Those who criticize or parody Islam in the U.S. should face criminal charges. 45% – “yes”; 38% – “no”; 17% – “unsure.
- Americans who criticize or parody Islam should be put to death. 12% – “yes”
- Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to Sharia. 51% – “yes”
- Violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad. 25% – “yes”
The post also has this:
Blogline of the Day – Who loves ya, baby!
“The left loves power, not people. Repeat: The left loves power, not people. If that is not understood, the left is not understood.” (H/T: Instapundit)
Blogline of the Day – Socialist cheerleaders? I’d have to agree
But if only we could go back to a media that, as Mencken did, believes that “the prime function of a really first-rate newspaper to serve as a sort of permanent opposition in politics,” rather than as socialist cheerleaders. (H/T: Instapundit)
Never bet WITH the Malthusians amongst us
Again, I’ve been listening and have been lectured to by these dour losers for 40 years – every time we turn around we’re told we’re running out of this, running out of that, and either we all are gonna die NOW, in 5 years, in 10 years, or that I HAVE to stop doing this, that, or something else. Each and every time, it is clear that these Eyores keep forgetting one very important item – the ingenuity of humans to either overcome, find a technology “override” making a problem irrelevant…
…or find more of what the dismal-deathers say we don’t have:
As one of the researchers put it, “[t]here’s a lot more fresh groundwater in California than people know.” The breakthrough here involved searching for water deeper underground than aquifers designated for human consumption typically lie. The drawback (there’s always a drawback) is that the deeper water tends to be more brackish, and is naturally more difficult and costly to extract. Moreover, the deeper one drills for water, the closer one gets to oil and gas drilling (typically thousands of feet of rock layers separate hydrocarbons from groundwater tapped for consumption), and the greater the chance there is of contamination. All of that being said, this remains a remarkable find for the parched state.
Halfway across the world a different group of scientists employing a novel new detection technique found an enormous new supply of helium gas—an increasingly scarce element that’s critically important for advanced scientific research and medical technologies—in Tanzania. . . .
Notable Quote – Steve Mac Donald on Chris Sununu (R) “Browning” himself
I thought Steve’s thoughts needed a bit of amplification – posted up front instead of at the end of his post (emphasis mine, reformatted):
As Predicted – Dems Kick Sununu to the Curb
…So it wasn’t a pat on the fanny, it was a kick in the ass.
But you did do us all a favor. Now we know you can’t stand on platform or principle or in defence of taxpayers over Democrats and their lobbyists. You’re a cheap tent. Expensive lesson. Nice job dumb-ass.
So I have a question for the GOP foot-soldiers – how much longer are you going to
BlogHeadline of the Day – it speaks for itself
A sterling example from the Union Leader: Salisbury grants NH man’s license for strip club, says he’ll be a hands-on owner
Notable Quote – Barry Goldwater
Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who … Read more
Blogline of the Day – Sin of commission and sins of omissions
WORSE THAN CONTROLLING WHAT YOU SEE, THE MEDIA CONTROLS WHAT YOU DON’T SEE: The House unveils its Obamacare replacement plan—and have you heard about it? I actually read some of it – and some of it is quite good. But none of the MSM usual suspect outlets had it – only the Right of Center blogs … Read more
Bias much, journalist Dave Solomon?
Show bias much, Dave Solomon? To wit: “while anti-abortion Republicans David Wheeler of Milford and Joe Kenney of Union are reliable votes against it. Sununu, a self-avowed “pro-choice†Republican” Those that are fine with killing unborn babies are “pro-choice” but those that champion keeping them alive are “anti-abortion”. Again, as we see in this case, the Left being portrayed as the positive (“pro”) while the Right is portrayed as the negative [haters] with “anti”. While technically correct, the nuance slants the reporting. And for the record I ask the question: why IS Chris Sununu trying to “Brown” himself (i.e., Scott Brown who, in running for US Senate from NH, tried to out-abortion the NH abortion queen, Jeanne Shaheen)?
So tomorrow is supposed to be the day that the NH Executive Council is going to grant tons of money to Planned Parenthood of NE retroactively. After all, the Council voted against it last time, with Chris Sununu playing so coy with how it was going to vote (he did vote no at that time), he certainly irritated a ton of possible voters that might consider him for NH Governor. But WHY do we ever have to wonder how someone is going to vote? I, for one, want to Trust the votes that my candidate will cast on my behalf. I vote for people that I don’t have to wonder about.
But also irritating, especially from a “conservative” outlet, is when the “journalist” is portraying the Right as the negative and the Left is the positive. Like Dave Solomon did in reporting (opining?) on this upcoming vote (reformatted, emphasis mine) that caused me to leave the above comment:
New Democrat buzzword: “Weapons of War”. Guess they figure they’ve burnt out…
…the politically generated “assault weapon” like they did “Progressive” and started calling themselves “Liberals” – and promptly burnt that out and now have reverted back to “Progressive”. It’s all nonsense anyways – while Hillary won’t answer the question (or the others we’ve posted here) of what the diff is ‘tween Democrats and Socialists, they’re Socialists. … Read more
Steven Crowder schools an insufferable Brit-twit on Orlando and guns
Cue Sky News host British McStuffy Pants who invited Crowder on air to discuss the House Democrats’ sit-in for gun control. Although McStuffy Pants tried his darnedest to steer the conversation using incorrect terminology and outright falsehoods, Crowder stuck in there for the entire segment, finally working the conversation back toward the real issue of … Read more
An Ex-Conservative turned Liberal turning Conservative again?
H/T: Powerline for putting up this snippet from The Week columnist Damon Linker “How Brexit Shattered Progressives’ Dearest Illusion,” piece. Read it all but I thought this was the essence of it (emphasis mine, reformatted):
I used to be a conservative. I now consider myself a liberal. But I have never called myself a progressive. There’s a reason why, and it has nothing to do with policy. Liberals believe in the rule of law; in individual rights to speech, worship, assembly, and private property; in an independent judiciary and civilian control of the military; in representative institutions founded on the consent of the governed; in democratic elections, not as ends in themselves but as checks on the power of government and as a means of gauging and forging popular support for policies pursued by public officials in the name of the common good.
Actually, that is a TRUE Western Liberal in the grandest tradition and not the run-of the mill Democrat Progressive today who hides their Socialist monster.
“They’re not buying it to go out and hunt deer. You don’t need an AK-47 or an AR-15 to hunt deer. “
That’s what the US Progressive Federal Government’s Ambassador to NH, Jeanne Shaheen, said a week ago. Spoken without care, spoken for slanderous purposes, spoken with a “if you don’t agree with me you are EVIL” condescention and haughty air – spoken only as what a true blue civilian disarmament ideologue could say. So Jeanne, whatcha think … Read more