the secession petition

as of tonight, the petition for texas secession has nearly 60,000 signatures.

Peacefully grant the State of Texas to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government.

The US continues to suffer economic difficulties stemming from the federal government's neglect to reform domestic and foreign spending. The citizens of the US suffer from blatant abuses of their rights such as the NDAA, the TSA, etc. Given that the state of Texas maintains a balanced budget and is the 15th largest economy in the world, it is practically feasible for Texas to withdraw from the union, and to do so would protect it's citizens' standard of living and re-secure their rights and liberties in accordance with the original ideas and beliefs of our founding fathers which are no longer being reflected by the federal government.

notice that registration is required.

"A whitehouse.gov account is required to sign Petitions."

as part of obama's "transparency in government" initiative, i have added a full disclosure to the registration info box (lower right)

the founding fathers

...missed a few things:

Three things that the Founding Fathers did not anticipate:

• They underestimated the centralizing force and tendency of the national government,
• They expected the States to more jealously guard their rights, powers, interests and responsibilities,
• They never expected such a fawning Press, whose lick-spittle worship of All Things Obama is beyond incestuous.

(from steve soeren's comment here)

the devil, via instapundit

, brings up a question that should be considered when reading any internet forum:

The problem ... is this: How does one tell, and tell about, the difference between right and wrong? Why ought one - a person or a society - do any particular thing rather than any other? How can one ground any statement in the form "It is right to do X" in anything firmer than the quicksand of bare reiterated assertion? As intellectual puzzles go, this one is a lulu... no one else has come up with a satisfactory solution, from the beginning of the world to the date hereof.

you should read The Book for the answer.

jeremiah

(edit: removed first half)

a true prophet:

To whom shall I speak and give warning
That they may hear?
Behold, their ears are closed
And they cannot listen.
Behold, the word of the Lord has become a reproach to them;
They have no delight in it.

But I am full of the wrath of the Lord;
I am weary with holding it in.
“Pour it out on the children in the street
And on the gathering of young men together;
For both husband and wife shall be taken,
The aged and the very old.

“Their houses shall be turned over to others,
Their fields and their wives together;
For I will stretch out My hand
Against the inhabitants of the land,” declares the Lord.

“For from the least of them even to the greatest of them,
Everyone is greedy for gain,
And from the prophet even to the priest
Everyone deals falsely.

“They have healed the brokenness of My people superficially,
Saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ But there is no peace.

“Were they ashamed because of the abomination they have done?
They were not even ashamed at all;
They did not even know how to blush.
Therefore they shall fall among those who fall;
At the time that I punish them,
They shall be cast down,” says the Lord.

Thus says the Lord,
"Stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths,
Where the good way is, and walk in it;
And you will find rest for your souls."
But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’

“And I set watchmen over you, saying,
"Listen to the sound of the trumpet!"
But they said, ‘We will not listen.’

“Therefore hear, O nations,
And know, O congregation, what is among them.

“Hear, O earth: behold,
I am bringing disaster on this people,
The fruit of their plans,
Because they have not listened to My words,
And as for My law, they have rejected it also.

Declaration of Independence 2

SECEDE. NOW. SERIOUSLY.

...and put Cold Fury on the Committee of Six for our second Declaration of Independence:

"(Obama) is no President; he’s a sick and cruel practical joke the American people played on themselves. Time for him to go shambling off into the ash-heap of history, time and past time."

• His repeated disgracing, debasement, and humiliation of our country, exemplified by his bowing to foreign potentates, his high-handed insults to allies such as Israel and Great Britain, and his cowardly kowtowing to our enemies in the Muslim world
• His absolutely abominable Benghazi disaster and the pitifully incompetent attempt to hide it from the American people
• His willful and wanton destruction of the American economy and his clearly-stated intention to replace it with an unworkable and unsustainable one modeled on Eurosocialism
• His dismissive contempt for and continuing insults of freedom-loving, Constitution-revering Americans, particularly those involved with the Tea Party movement
• His disregard and disrespect for our military, even as he usurps credit for their bravery and skill, thumping his scrawny, sunken chest in undeserved triumph for his “gutsy call” in killing bin Laden
• His underhanded promise to our Russian adversaries to be “more flexible” about selling out US security and strength after he’s re-elected and no longer accountable to the American people
• His cheapening of the American political process via his astounding core dishonesty; his refusal to grant any intellectual legitimacy to positions that differ from his own, positions that are nothing more or less than the founding ideals of this nation; his sleazy partisanship even as he declares himself “bipartisan”; his steamrolling right over our system of Constitutional checks and balances on his power via executive order and rule by bureaucracy and fiat; his unbelievable arrogance and pre-adolescent inability to take criticism with grace or even forbearance; his smugness in victory (“I won”) and pettiness in defeat; his open contempt for the people he presumes not to govern but to rule, in direct contravention of everything this nation was supposed to stand for; his rejection of our core principles in favor of a tyrannical ideology that has failed every time it’s been tried; his overweening sense of entitlement even though he’s done nothing, achieved nothing, which would justify it
• His disgusting assertions of false moral equivalence: equating our Israeli allies with their evil, genocidal tormenters; reduction of pride in American exceptionalism to mere egotistical frippery (“I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism”); asserting that genocidal fanatics running a brutal, lawless, belligerent regime in Iran have the same moral right to develop weapons of mass destruction as more responsible Western governments
• His subversion of the Department of Justice into the vote-fraud and voter-intimidation supporting, gunrunning, wholly-corrupt intimidation and enforcement arm of his Gangster Government
• His abysmal, near-total ignorance of American history and basic high-school-level civics, in bizarre combination with his incomprehensible and unshakable belief in his own intellectual superiority
• His emptying of the Treasury, in part to bribe his cronies in the failed “green energy” industry, and then turning around and demanding that “millionaires”–families of four who earn 250k a year–pay “their fair share” to support his socialist folly when they’re already paying the overwhelming majority of the taxes collected, a sum far disproportionate to the percentage of the income they earn
• His braying jackassery in claiming that his bailout not of continuing-failure GM but of his ever-reliable flunkies in the UAW–nothing more than a payoff of the old-school Tammany/Daley sort, a quid pro quo for election-time services rendered–was some sort of “success” story, as if it was something worthy of being proud rather than ashamed of
• His relentless, multifaceted assaults, both regulatory and rhetorical, on the people who make this country work–small business owners and the entrepreneur/achiever class–as if they were an Enemy of The People rather than their main hope for prosperity and success, worthy not of encouragement and gratitude but scorn and persecution
• His intellectually dishonest refusal to grant his opponents the fundamental respect of engaging their ideas honestly, preferring to attack strawmen instead: “There are some who say…” and “My opponents seem to believe that…” followed by a deceitful litany of positions no one holds and policies no one has promoted
• His insulting refusal to present anything resembling a real agenda for his undeserved second term, spewing empty platitudes about how “We will create over eleventy billion jobs,” “We will establish American energy independence,” and “We will work towards balancing the budget” without ever once presenting even one concrete proposal as to how he intends to accomplish any of these things

jeopardy!

the ups
and
the downs

i love this country

just not everything that goes on within it. (via imao)

writ small

just as it is in national politics, it's called a "scummy, despicable tactic" to tell the truth about a democrat campaign:

The Dallas County Republican Party is accusing a Democratic candidate for state House District 107 of hiring felons to work for his campaign.

Dallas County GOP Chair Wade Emmert sent a recorded message to voters Tuesday
that accuses Robert Miklos of hiring workers with criminal backgrounds to go
door-to-door for his campaign. Miklos’ Republican opponent is incumbent Rep. Kenneth Sheets.

"This is a scummy, despicable tactic by a Sheets campaign and Sheets campaign allies, who know they have a failing campaign," Miklos told NBC 5. "Most of our canvassers have been recruited from community colleges -- teenagers, 20 yearolds -- and we've done a tremendous grassroots effort."

The county GOP provided NBC 5 with the text of the recorded message:

"This is an important voter safety alert. Please be aware that the campaign of Robert Miklos is employing people with serious criminal backgrounds to canvass your neighborhoods. Mr. Miklos pays numerous people with criminal backgrounds in car theft, aggravated assault, theft, criminal trespass and prostitution to possibly knock on your door. Please be careful if you see anyone in your neighborhood wearing a Robert Miklos T-shirt, as that person may have a dangerous criminal background. This is Wade Emmert, chairman of the RepublicanParty in Dallas County. I want to make sure voters and our families are safe during this election season. This call was paid for by the Dallas County Republican Party."

NBC 5 ran the names for a criminal background search, and found some with felony charges...

yesterday

i walked into "atlas shrugged part 2" the same way i walked into "lord of the rings part 1": surprised and disappointed the series would be a *three* parter...

i walked out of "atlas shrugged part 2" the same way i walked out of "lord of the rings part 1": glad i saw what i did, and anticipating seeing the trilogy intact.

---

edit: to be clear, i am only a fan of rand's ideas about creativity vs the collective, and definitely not a fan of her ideas about romance or religion.

it's the end of the world as we know it

...and i feel fine

vice-presidential debate wrap up

joe biden vs paul ryan

a new hope

related:

All I really want you to do is act like you actually want your country back, not like it would be kind of convenient if (obama's anti-american cronies) could see their way clear to considering the possibility of potentially relinquishing at least a small portion of the nation they’re crushing with their intolerable regime of lies.

just wondering

update 2 - this idea has been done before...

update 1 - related:

“…before the Obama administration knew who [the film maker] was, they had to mount a deliberate investigation, determine his identity, and then do a comprehensive background check to find out if there was anything they could do to him.”
That’s the problem... The FBI investigated him for causing trouble for the administration by making a (lame, tedious, misleading) movie insulting to Mohammad.

If he’d made a movie insulting Jesus Christ he would have caused no trouble for Washington, he’d never have been investigated by the FBI, and the same people who now condemn him would have given him an NEA grant for being edgy and transgressive.
The administration deliberately outed this film-maker, but the story is supposed to be all about western insensitivity and Moslem outrage.

do you think anyone would find this offensive?

since i'm offended by all the beheadings, suicide bombings, female mutilation, and "honor" killings, i have trouble seeing anything offensive in cartoons any more...

metajokes plus one

from a forwarded email:

"Three people of different nationalities walk into a bar. Two of them say
something smart, and the third one makes a mockery of his fellow countrymen by
acting stupid."

--

"Three blokes walk into a pub. One of them is a little bit stupid, and the whole
scene unfolds with a tedious inevitability."

--

Q: "How many members of a certain demographic group does it take to perform a
specified task?"
A: "A finite number: one to perform the task and the remainder to act in a manner
stereotypical of the group in question."

--

There once was an X from place B,
Who satisfied predicate P,
The X did thing A,
In a specified way,
Resulting in circumstance C.

--

Q: How many geeks does it take to ruin a joke?
A: You mean nerd, not geek. And not joke, but riddle. Proceed.

a simple question

absentmindedness makes the stomach growl longer

lileks has more patience with meal negotiators than i do:

So people take a lot time looking at (the large menu over the counter)... The people in front ordered like you’d expect: lots of peering, consultation, discussion about sharing portions, and so on. All of which could have been settled earlier. Then it’s time for drinks. What would you like to drink?

Oh, gosh, I don’t know. Do you have Sprite?

We have sprite.

I’ll have a sprite.

What size?

Oh, medium.

And so on with the kids. And then the husband with the beer list and the studied consideration of each fine craft-brewed option.

dissembly not required

just had this ad pop up in a sidebar (the right side is the original, i 'shopped in the left text):

it's probably just an innocent mistake, but still...

these days...

...there's just so much to ridicule

update 1:
so
very
very
much

update 2:
so very much

a teachable moment

local malcontent explains illegal immigration:

...do you own your own home...? Let's assume that you do. Nice place, fenced yard, a swingset for your kids. But... I want to come live in your house too! I like your place, and I really like your full refrigerator and pantry.

So I intend to come climb through a window, and live there with you, and I don't care what you think of that. I intend to eat my fill of your groceries, I intend to use your family's electricity and phone. And you have plenty of room... I'll just take this bedroom, the one which used to be your kid's.

The food and the utilities I'll be consuming means that your family will have to eat less, and your OG&E bill will be larger. But Not To Worry!! I will "pay" for my invasion of your home by planting you a great garden, and raising some great veggies and fruit... Which I will sell to you, your wife and your kid. Cheap, but not Free.

update: barbara bellar explains obamacare:

So let me get this straight: ... We're going to be gifted with a health care plan we are forced to purchase, and fined if we don't, which purportedly covers at least 10 million more people without adding a single new doctor, but which provides for 16,000 new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that didn't read it (but exempted themselves from it), and signed by a President who smokes, with funding administered by a Treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, for which we will be taxed for four years before the benefits take effect, by a government which is already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, all to be overseen by a Surgeon General who is obese, and financed by a country that's broke.

two reruns

these posts from six years ago are still relevant - please read them both