I have a gun. If someone wants to take issue with my being gay, I can present my own argument.

Saw this at the airport today. Somehow it seems apropro.

click to enlarge.

in memorial of Ted Kennedy i present you a picture of the offshore wind turbine farm he opposed.

“I am for doing good to the poor, but…I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed…that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”

— Benjamin Franklin

archived here should the original go down the rabbit hole.

The audience was stunned yesterday when Vice President Biden spent 20 minutes on the podium eating a ear of corn.

President Barack Obama, calling current deficit spending “unsustainable,” warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U.S. continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries.

So stop spending dude!

Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails, so you’re saying, ‘I hope America fails,’ you’re, like, ‘I dont [sic] care about people losing their homes, their jobs, our soldiers in Iraq.’ He just wants the country to fail. To me, that’s treason.

Someone should remind Wanda that “Dissent is Patriotic” *.

* this slogan may be void when a Leftist Democrat is president

despite it being dis-proven again and again and again the “Evil guns from teh United States are taking over Mexico” story persist.

Ian Tomlinson was attacked from behind by a police officer during the G20 demonstrations in London

More information here

and here

Just got back from the Austin, TX Tax Day Tea Party (My very first protest. WOOT!)

Crowd was around 5,000.

gallery of photos below

poster win!

It’s that time again… everyone’s thinking about taxes (and tea parties).

someone sent me the link to Jess’ beautifully designed ‘Death and Taxes‘ poster but I thought I noticed something missing…

Entitlement Programs!

Jess does admit that they’re left off on purpose;

Entitlement spending is also not included in detail for practical reasons. Social Security and Medicare cannot be broken down into small programs as other governmental departments can. The bulk of the funds are small payments to millions of people which cannot be graphed in the same manner as the rest of the poster. If entitlement spending were included to scale with the discretionary budget the overall detail of the poster would have to be decreased dramatically if the 24″x36″ size were to me maintained.

So, I’ve tweaked it just a little bit (sorry jess) to show the two largest entitlement programs (size is approximate but should be damn close).

click to view full size.

Be sure to check out the original over at Wall Stats

Another one of those DHS ‘Right Wing Radicals‘.

More info directly from the Governor

Too funny…

South Park’s creators Trey Parker(L) and Matt Stone(R) were given a signed photo of Saddam Hussein<
During his captivity, US marines forced Saddam, who was executed in 2006, to repeatedly watch the move South Park: Bigger, Longer And Uncut, which shows him as gay, as well as the boyfriend of Satan. He was also regularly depicted in a similar manner during the TV series.

From USA today

A small but growing number of cash-strapped communities are printing their own money.

Borrowing from a Depression-era idea, they are aiming to help consumers make ends meet and support struggling local businesses.

The systems generally work like this: Businesses and individuals form a network to print currency. Shoppers buy it at a discount — say, 95 cents for $1 value — and spend the full value at stores that accept the currency.

Workers with dwindling wages are paying for groceries, yoga classes and fuel with Detroit Cheers, Ithaca Hours in New York, Plenty in North Carolina or BerkShares in Massachusetts.

Ed Collom, a University of Southern Maine sociologist who has studied local currencies, says they encourage people to buy locally. Merchants, hurting because customers have cut back on spending, benefit as consumers spend the local cash.

From the Washington Post in 2006

Norfed struck the first gold- and silver-backed coins — which, to avoid charges of making its own money it calls “rounds” — in 1998 at its private mint in Idaho. Today the group claims to have more than $20 million in Liberty coins and notes in circulation, and about 2,500 merchants who accept Liberty Dollars for goods and services from doughnuts to tattoos.

But there’s a potentially more sinister side to all this. A 1999 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center calls Norfed a far-right anti-government group that has “long claimed that American dollars are . . . part of a vast conspiracy by international bankers to defraud the rest of the world.” The center links some Norfed devotees to far-right hate groups.

There’s your hopey changey right there.

I’m actually pretty surprised by the results of this sidebar poll conducted by the New York Daily News. I would have thought the numbers against would be higher. Especially in NYC.

I would have thought the numbers agains would be higher. Especially in NYC.

Instapundit says

WHO NEEDS A GUN — THE GOVERNMENT WILL PROTECT YOU:

A Queens judge ruled yesterday that subway employees do not have to do anything but pick up their phones if they see a crime — as he threw out a suit against the MTA and two workers who did nothing more to stop a rape.

A conductor saw the rape from the window on his train, and a station agent in the booth witnessed a screaming woman being dragged down a staircase inside the desolate 21st Street station of the G line. But neither one left the safety of their assigned posts to help her.

In a previous day, in a different culture, such men would have been afraid of being called cowards for failing to help a woman under such circumstances. Nowadays, they’re probably proud of acting “sensibly.” (For the record, the story says their names are Harmodio Cruz and John Koort.) And in a different world, Judge Kevin Kerrigan would have been ashamed to describe picking up a phone as “prompt and decisive action.” But he probably thinks it is.

I’m surprised he didn’t mention Kitty Genovese.
‘White Flight‘, budgets out of control, maybe it IS the ’70’s again.

(yeah, i know the Genovoese killing was in 1964)