A dream season continues

A Division title - the first in 9 years. A playoff victory - the first in 9 years. Oh, but it wasn't just ANY playoff victory. It was one of the most exciting and suspense-filled games I've ever witnessed, and, trust me, in my 53 years I've seen a metric shit-ton of football games.

The 49ers jumped out to a 17-0 lead on the strength of 4 forced turnovers in the first half. The Saints rallied to close to 17-14 by halftime. Going into the fourth quarter, the 49ers lead 20-14. The Saints hit a field goal. The 49ers hit a field goal. At 23-17, it was exciting, but nothing special. Ah, but the last 4:11 was something beyond special.

The Saints scored on a quick strike pass to Darren Sproles to take their first lead of the game, 24-23, with 4:11 left on the clock.

Now, you gotta understand what goes through the mind of a fan who's lived through the torture of 8 straight losing seasons. Not just losing seasons, but seasons ranging from putrid to merely mediocre...but mostly putrid. I'd seen this movie about a half dozen times over the previous 8 years. Niners exceed expectations, jump to a big lead....and then managed to lose -- sometimes badly. This seemed oh so much like deja vu.

Ah, but the script changed. The Niners marched down the field, getting a big play in the process on an Alex Smith to Vernon Davis pass for 37 yards. It wasn't the first the two had during the game. It wouldn't be the last.

With 2:18 remaining in the game, on third and eight from the Saints 28 yard line, the Niners pulled a complete surprise out of the back of the play book. Alex Smith took the snap from shotgun formation, then sprinted left. A seal block by diminutive wide receiver Kyle Williams on 280-lb defensive end Will Smith made the first down certain. But it was sprinting left tackle Joe Staley, who laid out a Saints safety at the 5 yard line, who assured the score. A two-point conversion attempt failed, but no matter; the 49ers had retaken the lead, and their top-notch defense was going to seal the victory. I was sure of it.

Uh, yeah.......about that.

Drew Brees is one of the most amazing quarterbacks I've ever seen. He's a first-ballot Hall of Famer, for sure. A 5 point deficit with just over 2 minutes to play is nothing to him. He connected with all-world tight end Jim Graham for a 66-yard lightning bolt, and I was right back to those deja vu feelings all over again.

Now the shit was real. A poor kickoff return left the Niners stuck on their own 15 yard line. Only 1:37 left. I might have been optimistic had the QB been named Montana or Young. But, as much as I like and admire Alex Smith, he's no Montana, no Young. Or, at least he wasn't prior to this game. It was time for Alex to step up and play like the former greats.

It seemed so obvious at the start of the drive; get down the field, kick a tying field goal, hope for the best in OT. The 49ers had other plans.

On the second play of the drive the 49ers surprised the Saints with a deep crossing pattern to Vernon Davis that went for 47 yards down to the Saints 20. I started to believe again - we were going to get that tie, and we were going to overtime. Two plays later, the 49ers showed me and the world that OT wasn't in the plan. Alex Smith hit Vernon Davis on a skinny post for the game winning touchdown with a slim 9 seconds left in the game. A squib kick, a gimmicky desperation play by the Saints, and it was a final. The 49ers were headed to the NFC Championship Game, the team's first since 1997.

This team has brought me more sports-fan happiness than any team since the '94 champions. More than the '89 monster team that outscored the competition by 100 points in three playoff games. More than the '88 team that beat Cincy with 34 seconds left in SB XXIII. More than the 18-1 '84 champions. Even more than the '81 team, the first SB championship team, and the team that most reminds me of the '11 group.

No matter what happens Sunday in the Championship game I am thrilled with what has happened this season. But I don't think they're done.

Can this team win the Super Bowl? I wouldn't bet against it.

Not a dummy after all

Vox Day wrote a post about Big Media's surprise at Sarah Palin's writing ability. Her overall level was 8.5 on the Flesch Kincaid scale. However, it was Vox's own rating that piqued my attention, not Sarah's.

Out of curiosity, I popped my most recent column into the Readability Calculator: "Flesch Kincaid Grade level: 13.10". And my recent email to KW came in at 14.74.

It made me curious. So I popped a few of my blog posts in to see how I fare. This is the scorecard.

The Eisenhower Warnings - 10.50
An idea whose time has come - 10.07
Taking credit - 8.74
Prosecutorial misconduct - Texas style - 8.39
Maryland's Lost Icon - 7.61
Who to believe? - 8.38
The Circus is in Town - 9.00
A Retraction of Sorts - 8.59

That last one was a puzzler to me. I used the words "plausible deniability" and "habitue" in it! And STILL couldn't make a 9th grade level! My average score for the 8 posts was 8.91, not a whole lot higher than Sarah Palin's. And these posts were more or less cherry picked; I only included longer posts with minimal slang in my sampling. Sarah Palin's sampling was 24,000 fricking pages!!!!

If my writing, which hardly qualifies as simplistic, can't make it out of High School, what's a moron like Al Gorebells score? 3rd grade?

Kinda puts all of those "stoopid Sarah" stereotypes in perspective, doesn't it?

Like I couldn't have guessed it

I was shocked -- SHOCKED -- to find out that Leftists are behind the big push for Net Neutrality. [/sarcasm]

Documents made public yesterday by Judicial Watch describe extensive collusion by Federal Communications Commission officials with a left-wing advocacy group in a campaign to expand government regulation of the Internet.

The documents, obtained by Judicial Watch in a December 2010 Freedom of Information Act request, were created after Democrat appointees solidified their 3-2 control of the agency in March 2009.

The coordination between FCC officials and Free Press, the advocacy group, supported a proposal for the agency to regulate access to the Internet as if it were a public utility, in the interest of ensuring "Net Neutrality."

Proponents said doing so would assure equal access for all Internet users by barring companies from offering preferred rates for higher delivery speeds. Other users, especially in communities with limited Internet access, would be forced to accept poorer service.

But critics said the proposal would actually give the FCC a tool to regulate content, and they argued that the FCC has no authority over the medium in the first place. It would be akin to forcing FedEx and UPS to treat all packages the same way the U.S. Postal Service does.

Anyone with half a brain knows that (1) any effort to regulate the interwebs, regardless of stated purpose, is an attempt to regulate content, and (2) Leftists are the primary movers and shakers behind any effort to restrict speech.

Next thing you know someone will report that Leftists are behind efforts to ban handguns, or some other piece of obvious information.

The obvious, stated

It appears that someone FINALLY gets it.  Anne Applebaum of Foreign Policy magazine says in a mainstream publication what I've been saying for years on my little blog.

HOMELAND SECURITY HASN'T MADE US SAFER

Hardly anyone has seriously scrutinized either the priorities or the spending patterns of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its junior partner, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), since their hurried creation in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Sure, they get criticized plenty. But year in, year out, they continue to grow faster and cost more -- presumably because Americans think they are being protected from terrorism by all that spending. Yet there is no evidence whatsoever that the agencies are making Americans any safer.

DHS serves only one clear purpose: to provide unimaginable bonanzas for favored congressional districts around the United States, most of which face no statistically significant security threat at all. One thinks of the $436,504 that the Blackfeet Nation of Montana received in fiscal 2010 "to help strengthen the nation against risks associated with potential terrorist attacks"; the $1,000,000 that the village of Poynette, Wisconsin (pop. 2,266) received in fiscal 2009 for an "emergency operations center"; or the $67,000 worth of surveillance equipment purchased by Marin County, California, and discovered, still in its original packaging, four years later. And indeed, every U.S. state, no matter how landlocked or underpopulated, receives, by law, a fixed percentage of homeland security spending every year.

As for the TSA, I am not aware of a single bomber or bomb plot stopped by its time-wasting procedures. In fact, TSA screeners consistently fail to spot the majority of fake "bombs" and bomb parts the agency periodically plants to test their skills. In Los Angeles, whose airport was targeted by the "millennium plot" on New Year's 2000, screeners failed some 75 percent of these tests.

Terrorists have been stopped since 2001 and plots prevented, but always by other means. After the Nigerian "underwear bomber" of Christmas Day 2009 was foiled, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano claimed "the system worked" -- but the bomber was caught by a passenger, not the feds. Richard Reid, the 2001 shoe bomber, was undone by an alert stewardess who smelled something funny. The 2006 Heathrow Airport plot was uncovered by an intelligence tip. Al Qaeda's recent attempt to explode cargo planes was caught by a human intelligence source, not an X-ray machine. Yet the TSA responds to these events by placing restrictions on shoes, liquids, and now perhaps printer cartridges.

Given this reality -- and given that 9/11 was, above all, a massive intelligence failure -- wouldn't we be safer if the vast budgets of TSA and its partners around the world were diverted away from confiscating nail scissors and toward creating better information systems and better intelligence?

Amen, sister!

Now that it's been said out loud in the mainstream, can we PLEASE have a rational debate about this colossal monstrosity Washington has created?

Keep in mind that the REAL purpose of DHSS* isn't to protect us. The real purpose of DHSS is to convince the American people to forfeit their freedoms in exchange for purported protection and safety.  As Ms. Applebaum has appropriately noted, we haven't gained a lick of enhanced security from the agencies of oppression, DHSS, and its bastard stepchild, TSSA*. 

Isn't it time to stop pretending and put an end to this mindless charade?

* You can't abbreviate Schutzstaffel without the double 'S'

Two-bit terrorism in the PRM

Terrorism has hit in the Great State People's Republic of Maryland!  Call the National Guard!  Call DHSS*!  Call Janet Napolitano!

Terrorism in the PRM?  Uh, yeah....about that...

State and federal officials are investigating small incendiary devices that "flared up" at the Maryland Department of Transportation's headquarters in Hanover and a state government building in Annapolis on Thursday.

What do you mean "small incendiary devices"?  Who's behind it?  What kind of damage did the devices cause?  The answers:

A disgruntled "lone wolf" is believed to be behind incendiary devices sent to Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and Transportation Secretary Beverley Swaim-Staley, investigators believe.

The two devices burned the fingers of two employees when they were opened in Annapolis and Hanover 15 minutes apart Thursday.
[...]
When the worker opened the package that had five holiday postage stamps on it, it produced a "puff of smoke and a sulphur-type smell, like if you would strike a match."

That's it?  A stink bomb that resulted in some burned fingers?  C'mon, are you kidding me?  I've had camping trips that resulted in more carnage than that!

Yes, one of the packages was address to Governor Martin O' Owe-Malley...hey, how 'bout that [/sarcasm].  Old Marty was unharmed by the "attack".  He can go on taxing and spending with impunity.

Of course, you just KNOW that law enforcement and the DHSS are going to WAAAAAAY overreact to this little prank.  Are we going to be subjected to TSSA* groping when we go to the post office?

Kinda adds new meaning to the phrase, "Let me inspect that package, sir!"

* You can't abbreviate Schutzstaffel without the double 'S'

A change in talk radio?

I don't normally listen to Quinn and Rose in the morning.  Oh, sure, I used to on occasion, if for no other reason than for confirmation of the latest "conservative" talking points and for their histrionics about "the most importantest election ever!", whichever election it might be.

But this morning Mike Church went to commercial and The Sports Junkies were in a commercial break as well, so I tuned in Q-n-R.  What a surprise!  Rose (of course it wasn't Quinn!) was waxing wroth against a dangerous man.  And it wasn't Il Duce!

Rose read from an article written some months ago by WorldNetDaily founder Joseph Farah.  The last sentence of the article reads,

There is perhaps no more dangerous man in America today than Mitt Romney. If he succeeds Obama, it will be the final nail in the coffin of American liberty. You've been duly warned.

That Farah, a man of principles, would say this about Mitt Romney is not unexpected.  Farah isn't one of those "vote for the guy with the 'R' after his name or we'll all die!" pseudo-conservatives.  He sees the Elephants for what they are.

But for Rose to read his article -- and agree with it wholeheartedly -- is something of a "man bites dog" moment.

Is there something happening out there in Talk Radio land?  Have the blathering heads seen the writing on the wall and started distancing themselves from the Rockefellerite elitists of Team Elephant?

It's too soon to say for sure.  But I, for one, hope that, like the old folk song says, "the times they are a changin'".

Moral victory? Still, it's 0-2

Whoever said there are no moral victories in the NFL must have had last night's game in mind.  Following a cringe-inducing loss to Seattle last week, I gave the 49ers zero chance of posting even a respectable showing against the defending world champion Saints.  Then the Niners go and post a showing that was WAY beyond respectable: they tied the defending champs at 22-22 with 1:19 to go, only to lose on the last play of the game, 25-22.

I really don't understand the NFL.  At all.  How the deuce could the 49ers look so cover-your-eyes gawd-awful against the mediocre Seahawks (who were trounced on Sunday by the equally mediocre Broncos) and look so damn good against a Saints team that wiped the floor with the Niners last year?

Oh sure, there's a LOT of room for improvement.  The Niners went down 9-0 right away because David Baas thinks Alex Smith is 7'9".  Honestly, that snap over Smith's head was the absolute worst I've ever seen.  But then, seemly having gotten the jitters out of their system, the 49ers turned around and played near flawless football for the rest of the game.

Let me amend that.  Near flawless except for the four turnovers.  Four.  You just can't do that.  The offense moved at will, but a pair of tipped balls ended up intercepted.  Dulaney Walker, fast becoming one of my favorite players, made a costly fumble inside the 10 yard line with the team driving for the go-ahead score.  Phillip Adams muffed a punt inside the 15 yard line.

The defense played very well.  Patrick Willis put on a show, including a crushing sack of Drew Brees and a tackle of Reggie Bush that had Bush's head whipping around like a bobble head doll.  Twice the defense held the Saints to a field goal after they advanced the ball into the red zone.

Even the "turd twins", Michael Crabtree and Nate Clemons, made plays.

Frank Gore was amazing.  Alex Smith played the game of his career.

And yet.  Yet.  It still shows up in the 'L' column.

Damn it.

Something different

Too often this blog is nothing but a giant bitch fest.  Bitch, bitch, bitch.  Moan.  Complain.  Grumble.  Kvetch.

Not today.  Today I wanted to share something I stumbled upon while reading Will Griggs's excellent article entitled Shadows and Foreshadowing at Nagasaki.  The "something" to which I refer is this paper written by scientists and engineers detailing their findings in the wake of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings of August 6th and 9th of 1945.  The paper was published on June 29th, 1946, so it contains none of the faux PC bullshit hand-wringing or political overtones we've come to associate with present-day reporting on that topic.

I highly recommend giving it a look.  I found it quite enlightening.

A brilliant campaign strategy

If you're going down - I mean going down hard - and you know it, what do you do?  You could just give up, I suppose.  But if you're Team Donkey, you never say die!  In what may be perhaps the single most brilliant campaign strategy ever, the Donkeys are unveiling a brilliant strategy of threats of what they will do if they lose Congress in the 2010 elections.

That's why there have been signs in recent weeks that party leaders are planning an ambitious, lame-duck session to muscle through bills in December they don't want to defend before November. Retiring or defeated members of Congress would then be able to vote for sweeping legislation without any fear of voter retaliation.

"I've got lots of things I want to do" in a lame duck, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D., W. Va.) told reporters in mid June. North Dakota's Kent Conrad, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, wants a lame-duck session to act on the recommendations of President Obama's deficit commission, which is due to report on Dec. 1. "It could be a huge deal," he told Roll Call last month.
[...]
Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, chair of the Senate committee overseeing labor issues, told the Bill Press radio show in June that "to those who think [card check] is dead, I say think again." He told Mr. Press "we're still trying to maneuver" a way to pass some parts of the bill before the next Congress is sworn in.

Other lame-duck possibilities? Senate ratification of the New Start nuclear treaty, a federally mandated universal voter registration system to override state laws, and a budget resolution to lock in increased agency spending.

Then there is pork. A Senate aide told me that "some of the biggest porkers on both sides of the aisle are leaving office this year, and a lame-duck session would be their last hurrah for spending." Likely suspects include key members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Congress's "favor factory," such as Pennsylvania Democrat Arlen Specter and Utah Republican Bob Bennett.

"SOOOOOOOOOOOO! You think you can just discard us like yesterday's trash!  Try it an we'll unleash hell!"

How brilliant is this strategy?  My first thought after I read the article was, "OMG!  We'd better pray that the Donkeys win in November!"  Then the portion of my brain dedicated to cynicism (that would be 99.9%) kicked in and I realized that the reaction I had is the reaction their strategy is intended to trigger!

Give credit where credit is due.  They're evil geniuses, those Donkeys.  Evil effing geniuses.

Colin Quinn - role model

I was never a fan of Colin Quinn before.  I thought he was a big tool.  How wrong I was.  I just happened to catch the last few minutes of the Joy Behar show (a show I normally wouldn't watch on a bet) and witnessed this exchange (the subject being Jesse James).

BEHAR: I see, well he did have a little bit of a Nazi thing, he dressed up like a Nazi. But he`s just --

QUINN: Oh so what, I like the fact -- here`s how politically correct our country is. That he`s actually more horrified, the worst part is that people think he`s a racist. That`s how politically correct our country is. All the other stuff, like, whatever, but people might perceive me as a racist. I`m sick of it.

BEHAR: What are you sick of, which part?

QUINN: People acting like racism is the worst crime than murder in the (EXPLICATIVE DELETED) country.

MO ROCCA: Well he didn`t murder -

QUINN: That`s what I`m sick of.

MO ROCCA: Did her murder somebody?

QUINN: Well it`s funny you bring that up -

BEHAR: What are you saying?

QUINN: I`m saying did you see how he goes the worst thing of all is people think I`m a racist.

BEHAR: Yes, yes.

QUINN: Right. I`m saying this -- the culture that we live in, everything else is -- if you`re a racist that`s the worst thing in the country.

BEHAR: Well he`s saying it`s worst than being a philanderer. I agree with that. Don`t you?

QUINN: No I don`t.

BEHAR: Because racism causes more trouble than philandering.

QUINN: I don`t know about that, not in this country.

BEHAR: Not in this lifetime for you but other people in Arizona, for example, they`re having problems.

QUINN: You`re right, I can`t believe that -- that`s brutal, trying to get people to show their I.D.

BEHAR: Yes.

QUINN: Anyway --

MO ROCCA: should we be talking to Paula Abdul?

QUINN: That`s brutal.

BEHAR: OK speaking of "AMERICAN IDOL" --

QUINN: I had to show I.D. to get into this building.

That. was. AWESOME!  "I had to show I.D. to get into this building."  Priceless.

He's right.  He's absolutely right.  People view racism as worse than cheating on your spouse.  Worse than beating your children.  Worse than embezzling, fraud, or lying under oath. 

Notice how both host Behar and guest Mo Rocca kept trying to change the subject.  The truth tends to bring out that reaction in the politically correct.

Colin Quinn, I salute you.  You're an American Hero.

The search for truth

During the course of my current work situation, where I find myself desperately in need of two or three clones at to handle the workload, this humble blog was visited by an individual identifying himself as Ontological Comedian.  I'll call him OC for short.

Apparently, OC got the idea from one of my posts that I was one of those goofball frothing-at-the-mouth "conservatives" who find in Il Duce all of the necessary attributes to conclude that he is the Antichrist.  His first comment post was very mocking and sarcastic in tone and content.

Rather than "go off" on OC like I might have done in the past, I tried to explain my perspectives and point-of-view in a more reasoned manner.  And much to my surprise, this approach resulted in an equally reasoned response from OC.

Though OC and I are never going to agree on much of anything, I find in him the same intellectual honesty that I found in Whateverman back in the day, before his grandmother died and he pretty much abandoned the blogosphere.  I have always been consistent in saying that there ARE honest, reasonable Left-leaning people out there - Camille Paglia being my "Exhibit A" to back that argument.  Though I have nothing but a hunch to back it up, I believe that OC falls into that category.

He blogs at The Real Truth.  You're not going to agree with everything he writes - God knows I don't - but he shows a certain fairness in presenting both sides of issues and seems to share my disdain for the Rush Windbags, Sean Hannitys, and other dirtballs of this world.  Give it a look.

Man bites dog

Criticism of Il Duce and his administration by Big Media (the BM for short) and popular commentators of the Left (is that redundant?) has been virtually nonexistent up to this point.  But the times, they are a changin'. It seems that the near non-response of the Duce administration to the impending ecological catastrophe about to hit the shores of the Gulf states is a chicken come home to roost.

Of all of Il Duce's cheerleaders, no one has been as "in the tank" for their Messiah as the editorial writers of The New York Times.  Until now.

BP seems to have been slow to ask for help, and, on Friday, both federal and state officials accused it of not moving aggressively or swiftly enough. Yet the administration should not have waited, and should have intervened much more quickly on its own initiative.

A White House as politically attuned as this one should have been conscious of two obvious historical lessons. One was the Exxon Valdez, where a late and lame response by both industry and the federal government all but destroyed one of the country’s richest fishing grounds and ended up costing billions of dollars. The other was President George W. Bush’s hapless response to Hurricane Katrina.

Now we have another disaster in more or less the same neck of the woods, and it takes the administration more than a week to really get moving.

Wow! You could knock me over with a feather.  Every word of that critique is true.  And damning.  And, had the President in question been King George the Dim, this singular criticism would be echoing from every media orifice.  But, given that so much of Big Media follows in lock-step behind The Times, more criticism should be forthcoming.

But if you think that The Times criticism of the administration is unbelievable, this is even more unbelievable.

HBO's Bill Maher on Friday asked an extraordinary question of his guest panel: "Why isn't Barack Obama getting more s--t' for the oil spill in the Gulf?

Almost as surprising, the studio audience applauded after the "Real Time" host said this.

Talk about your "man bites dog" moment! Bill Maher, as big a Lefty as you'll ever find in a "political" context, a man who excoriated King George without mercy, questioning why his Messiah wasn't being (correctly) criticized for his lackadaisical response.

Just when you think you have it all figured out, something like this happens [/sarcasm].

I'm the first to criticize the BM and pundits like Maher when they go 24x7 hammering on something that matters to them and harms opposing points of view and then, predictably, fall silent on issues that make "their side" look bad (Climategate, anyone?).  So I salute The Times and Bill Maher for breaking from the pack and criticizing where criticism is due.

Well done, chaps.

The lapdog growls

This is truly a "man bites dog" story.  Okay, I'm being snarky.  What it really is is a bunch of whiny snivelers griping because their hero isn't as nice to them as they are to him.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs met with a delegation from the White House press corps for 75 minutes on Thursday in an effort to improve frayed relations between the two sides.

Ed Chen, a White House correspondent for Bloomberg News who is president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, said he asked for the meeting “to clear the air because in my 10-plus years at the White House, rarely have I sensed such a level of anger, which is wide and deep, among members over White House practices and attitude toward the press.”

Stop, please! I'm laughing so hard I'm about to wet myself! "Anger" at the White House and its attitude toward the press. Child, please!

I'll grant that the press has been disrespected by the White House, particularly the little incident on April 10th when Il Duce took off for a "soccer game" and ditched the press.

But COME ON!  For this bunch of ass-kissers to whine about their "treatment" by the White House is beyond laughable.  Write a story that's actually critical of Il Duce once in a while, and then I'll take your "grievances" seriously.

Pompous douchbags.

Weapons-grade peppers

I love hot, spicy foods.  Love them.  Of course, I've pulled back quite a bit as I've gotten older and wiser; that unfortunate incident with Dave's Insanity Sauce has made me think twice about anything much beyond jalapeno peppers these days.

There has always been a market in weaponized peppers - pepper spray being the most commonly employed method.  But now there's a new player on the scene.  The pepper race escalates.

The Indian military has a new weapon against terrorism: the world's hottest chili.

After conducting tests, the military has decided to use the thumb-sized "bhut jolokia," or "ghost chili," to make tear gas-like hand grenades to immobilize suspects, defense officials said Tuesday.

The bhut jolokia was accepted by Guinness World Records in 2007 as the world's spiciest chili. It is grown and eaten in India's northeast for its taste, as a cure for stomach troubles and a way to fight the crippling summer heat.

It has more than 1,000,000 Scoville units, the scientific measurement of a chili's spiciness. Classic Tabasco sauce ranges from 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville units, while jalapeno peppers measure anywhere from 2,500 to 8,000.

One million Scovilles. Now THAT is a powerful pepper!

Here's my question.  People eat those things? I enjoy a jalapeno pepper every once in a while.  But something 125,000 to 200,000 times more hot?  That's nuts!

I think I'm more afraid of the dudes eating that stuff than I am of the weaponized peppers!

Fred Reed: prophet

Fred Reed is one of my go-to reads.  He's an expatriate Gringo holed up in Mexico, a glass of Padre Kino in one hand, a cigar in the other.  He's half blind and half loco.  It must be the 'half-loco' part that makes him such a great writer.

His latest musings deal with how the American people should deal with opposing the degenerates in Washington.

Washington is out of control. It does as it likes, without restraint. It spends American money and American lives to fight remote wars for which it cannot provide a plausible reason. It determines what our children will be taught, who we can hire and fire, to whom we can sell our houses, whether we can defend ourselves, even what names we can call each other. The feds read our email and track the web sites we visit, make us hop around barefoot in airports at the command of surly unaccountable rentacops. They search us at random in train stations without even a pretense of probable cause. We have no influence over them, no way of resisting.

Except, perhaps, to ignore them.

He goes on to clarify.

The government doesn’t work. It is broken. It can’t be fixed. It can’t be fixed because only those within it could, and their interest lies in not fixing it.

The only remedy short of armed rebellion is civil disobedience at the level of the states. Clear constitutional justification for refusal to obey Washington lies in the Tenth Amendment:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Hmmm. Intriguing. Do go on.

Now, if Idaho passes a law (I’m making this up) saying that no restrictions on the ownership of guns will be enforced within the state, Washington might choose discretion over valor and ignore it. Legalizing marijuana, however, or refusing to accept compulsory medical care, would be a direct if not necessarily intentional challenge to the power of the central government. The feds could not afford to let either of these things slide. The danger of the precedent to the grip of the governing classes would be too great. A deadly serious confrontation would ensue.

Now Fred has crossed over from writer to prophet. Because Idaho HAS, as point of fact, crossed that line, as has Virginia.

Idaho took the lead in a growing, nationwide fight against health care overhaul Wednesday when its governor became the first to sign a measure requiring the state attorney general to sue the federal government if residents are forced to buy health insurance.

A spokesman for Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) said this afternoon that Virginia will file suit against the federal government if the Democratic health care reform bill is approved by the U.S. Congress.

Well, Fred. What will Washington's answer to these challenges be?

What could, or would, the federal government do in response to defiance? Send the Marines to occupy Sacramento? Or the FBI to arrest Arnold and the legislature of California?

Or cut off California’s financial water? No bailout for the state’s tottering economy, no more fat subsidies to the universities, and so on?

The question is how ugly might things get. Washington may be able to make the states back down. It may not. The peril for the feds is that it might occur to the states that, while they get their money from Washington, Washington gets its money from the states. The central government depends absolutely on the states, whereas the states would get along swimmingly without the current central government.

That last couple of sentences tell the tale. Washington IS wholly reliant on the states for its parasitical sustenance. It should be very interesting watching this play out. Very interesting indeed.

Poem for the People

For quite some time now the chorus of the song "Poem for the People" has been displayed prominently in the masthead of this blog.  But today it's the verses that have meaning.

If the people only knew
If they could visualize
Just open their eyes
Even stop to think about
If they could open their minds
They could get beyond

The world's a funny place you know
But most of what goes on
Is rarely funny
Rarely funny at all

Could the people understand?
In only whisper and screams
And colorless dreams
Could they finally comprehend?
If they could suddenly see
And suddenly feel

The world's a funny place you know
But most of what goes on
Is rarely funny
Rarely funny at all

If they only knew.  If they would just open their friggin' eyes, stop and think about what's happening around them, and realize what their government is doing to them.  THEN we'd have a chance to stop our ghastly march to serfdom.

As fate would have it, perhaps we've reached a Center of Gravity moment.  The people can suddenly see, and suddenly feel.

A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll.

Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government's become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of those polled disagree.

Queue the chorus of angels singing "The Hallelujah Chorus".

I don't want to get my hopes up too much.  But when you see THAT MANY people awake and aware of the danger our government poses to our God-given rights, you have to be somewhat encouraged.

Now if we can just awaken the other 44%.

Earthquake

Chile was hit with one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded this past weekend. The 8.8 monster killed at least 214 people and was felt as far away as the River Plate in Argentina.

I have some history with Chile. I lived there for a short time in the late 70's. I have very fond memories of the Chilean people. They are very warm-hearted and giving.

Just recently, thanks to the world-shrinking technology of the old WWW, I was contacted via Facebook by two old friends from Chile, whom I'll refer to as 'Carlos' and 'Pati' in the interest of maintaining their privacy. My prayers are with them.

I've never experienced an earthquake bigger than about 4.5 to 5.0 in spite of having lived in a couple of places reknown for their earthquakes (California and Chile). I can't imagine the horror of a three minute quake of that intensity.

Let's keep Chile in our prayers, gang.

CPAC shocker

Will wonders never cease? The annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) presidential straw poll wasn't won by that phony Mitt Romney. It wasn't won by that phony Mike Huckabee. It wasn't even won by whiny "you hurt my feelings talking about retards" Sarah Palin. It was won by the man himself.

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, a stalwart foe of government spending, won a blowout victory Saturday in the annual Conservative Political Action Conference presidential straw poll.

With participants naming "reducing the size of federal government" as their top issue, the 74-year old libertarian hero captured 31 percent of the 2,400 votes cast in the annual contest, usually seen as a barometer of how the GOP's conservative wing regards their potential presidential candidates.

Right on Dr. Paul! And right on Young Conservatives.

Paul's victory might be seen, in part, as a result of his support among anti-establishment Tea Party activists -- who turned out in force at this year's conference and expressed some frustration with the Republican Party.

Reflecting the college atmosphere of the annual event, young people dominated the voting: 54 percent of participants were between the ages of 18 and 25.

It seems that the generation that will get stuck with the bill for government's profligacy wants its voice heard.

Team Elephant's neocommie wing had a beef with the poll results.

The announcement of Paul's win, a surprise victory unlikely to have a major impact on the 2012 presidential contest, drew a volley of loud boos from the CPAC audience.

"How dare those impudent curs vote against our platform of fascism (albeit implemented more slowly than it has been by Il Duce) and war without end!"

Two positive things or one negative thing can come out of this straw poll. Guess which I'm betting will happen?

• More and more mainstream Elephants will get behind Ron Paul and his vision of a return to Constitutional government.
  


• The Rockefeller wing of Team Elephant will kick and scream and fight, driving the Tea Party wing to split and form a third party with Dr. Paul as its standard bearer.
  


• The Rockefeller wing of Team Elephant will rig the next straw poll to favor a candidate more to the liking of the oligarchical elite that has run the party since...well, for as long as I can remember.

Team Elephant hasn't got the brains to see the writing on the wall. They will once again buck the will of the party faithful in favor of the party elite and push forward with their stubborn neo-commie agenda and slate of bland, phony-baloney candidates. They're too stubborn and too stupid to realize the gift that Il Duce has laid in their laps that could lead to them dominating the political scene for generations if they'd only listen and act accordingly.

Expect Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee in 2012. Trust me on this one.

The kitty of death

When one imagines the Grim Reaper they seldom conjure up the image of a cute, fuzzy kitty. But in one Rhode Island nursing home that appears to be the case -- Death is a cat.

A cat with an uncanny ability to detect when nursing home patients are about to die has proven itself in around 50 cases by curling up with them in their final hours, according to a new book.
[...]
The tortoiseshell and white cat spends its days pacing from room to room, rarely spending any time with patients except those with just hours to live.

If kept outside the room of a dying patient, Oscar will scratch on the door trying to get in.

When nurses once placed the cat on the bed of a patient they thought close to death, Oscar "charged out" and went to sit beside someone in another room. The cat's judgement was better than that of the nurses: the second patient died that evening, while the first lived for two more days.

The doctor who wrote the book detailing the cat's "uncanny gift" believes the cat to be gifted with an amazing predictive ability. I, however, have a different take.

I believe that this filthy vermin is preselecting victims and, once the staff is out of the room, the Kitty of Death administers the Kiss of Death.

I always suspected that cats were evil! Now we know just how evil they can be! *

* This post is entirely tongue-in-cheek. I don't really believe the cat is killing people. And I don't really hate cats - I just hate that they love to climb all over me to trigger full-blown asthma attacks -- as if they know that they're causing me distress.

Week 14 - Bringin' it on national TV

You can bet your bottom dollar that Cardinals fan yodaddy is going to like this post about as much as he liked the outcome of Monday night's game. It was a complete dismantling, as the 49ers whipped the Cards 24-9 in a game that was more of a blowout than the score would indicate.

On a night when Alex Smith wasn't his sharpest, and when his receivers all had a case of the dropsies, the 49ers went to an old, reliable friend: Frank Gore. Gore took over the offensive load, rushing 25 times for 167 yards and a touchdown, earning him Offensive Player of the Week honors.

And it's not like Smith was terrible; I swear Michael Crabtree is the worst route runner in NFL history! He's seldom in the right place to receive the ball. So Smith threw for only 144 yards and threw 2 picks, one a fluke on a deflection, the other just a poor pass. But he also threw for 2 touchdowns. He's still looking like the future at QB for the Niners.

Though Michael Crabtree is an awful route runner, he did make a highlight-worthy play on his 32-yard touchdown reception. The catch was a beauty, and the run to the end zone even prettier.

Okay, enough offense. The offense got the job done, to be sure, but it was the heroic effort by the defense that made this game a blowout. The Niners forced 7 fumbles, recovering 6. They also intercepted Kurt Warner twice, ending a streak of 165 passes he had thrown since his last pick.

Safety Dashon Goldson had his best game as a 49er: 6 tackles, an interception, and 2 forced fumbles. He is definitely playing at a high level of late.

Patrick Willis shined on national TV, with 9 tackles - 4 for a loss! - 1 sack, and a forced fumble.

Perhaps the individual who most stepped up his game was Ahmad Brooks - 3 sacks, 2 forced fumbles. Others deserving accolades include Justin Smith, who seems to always be around the pocket disrupting, and Tarell Brown, who intercepted Warner.

So...what does it all mean? Had the Cards won Monday night, they would have clinched the Division. Now they have to win twice or win once and have the 49ers lose a game in order to clinch. But last week's loss by the Niners to the Seahawks put them in a deep hole in terms of their playoff positioning. The 49ers can still win the division if the Cards lose twice (not likely; their next two games are Detroit and St. Louis, the two worst teams in the league) and the Niners win out. More likely is a Wild Card spot; it will STILL require that the Niners win out AND it will require help; the Falcons have a tie-breaker, and other teams will as well, depending on their record in Conference. It doesn't help that the next game is against Philly, one of the hottest teams in the League right now.

Still, it's the first time since 2002 that a Niners fan has had playoff hopes for his team. That's certainly worth something.

Update

This just in from espn.com's Mike Sando:

Bill Bidwill owns the Cardinals 363 days a year. The 49ers own them the other two days.