Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

I'll be celebrating the holiday with two of America's finest traditions: driving really far with a van full of my young kids, and shooting stuff.

How to Clean and Prepare Fresh Carrots

All you need to know, right here.

They Said That During the Bush Administration People Would Lose Their First Amendment Rights, and They Were Right!

Happy SCOTUS Day!

The Bush administration won the first case of the new Supreme Court term.

For the past 40 years, the Navy has been using active sonar to conduct training exercises off the coast of southern California. An animal rights group sued the Navy, claiming the exercises are hurting marine mammals. The Navy responded that in the past 40 years, there has not been a single documented case of injury caused by sonar. The animal guys say they don't care, Navy has to stop. Navy says "tell you what, we'll voluntarily scale things back a bit." Animal guys say "we still don't care, we're not dropping the lawsuit." Navy goes to the President and gets a waiver to the law under which animal guys are suing. Animal guys say "we still don't care; we're still suing even if you have a waiver." Ninth Circuit agrees with animal guys (big shock there).

SCOTUS reversed, 5-4. I'm still reading the opinion. I'll let you know how it goes.

Catholic Leaders Stick Up For Catholic Doctrine

I like this:

The nation's Roman Catholic bishops vowed Tuesday to forcefully confront
the Obama administration over its support for abortion rights...

"They cannot call themselves Catholic when they violate such a core belief
as the dignity of the unborn," Naumann said Tuesday.

They specifically went after theoretically-Catholic Joe Biden, who doesn't think that Catholics need to believe in Catholicism.

Can anyone explain to me why Catholics tend to be so casual on this point? If I were a secular voter, I could see how Catholic arguments would be unpersuasive. "The Church shouldn't force its beliefs down other peoples' throats," or something to that effect.

But consider this: the Church condemns murder. No one argues that just because the Church condemns murder, it is too political and should shut up, or that murder should be legalized so that people can exercise their free will. Basically, no one ever argues "I disapprove of murder, and I wouldn't want anyone in my family to murder someone else, but I don't think the government has any business stopping people from murdering anyone else."

For a secular voter, the question remains whether abortion is murder. That is not the case with Catholics. Your Church teaches you that life begins at conception. Either you think your Church is wrong (in which case you're a pretty sucky Catholic), or you acknowledge it is right but you are cool with murder. Not just any murder, but murder of the unbaptized unborn.

If you don't care what the Pope says, why bother calling yourself a Catholic?

(Obviously I'm not talking about all Catholics. I'm talking about the 54% of American Catholics who voted for Obama, who supports legal infanticide and federal funding to kill fetuses.)

Don't Read This Story

Unless you are interested in a story that involves the words "The internal bleeding caused his penis and testicles to turn black - and his testicles swelled to more than three times their normal size."

You know how sometimes you get a tip or find a link that says something like "don't read this?" Why is it so hard to just follow that simple instruction? Wouldn't life be better if my first reaction were something other than "wow, I think I'll click that link!"?

Idaho: okay, this is isn't the best stupid criminal story by any means, but what it lacks in dumb it makes up in ugly.

Whale snot. Obviously I picked the wrong major in college.

"They say she had been drinking alcohol before the crash happened." Well duh.

What does a guy who tries to steal 15 communion wafers from a Catholic church look like? Pretty much exactly what you would expect.

Best Act Ever.

See, this is why I just prefer plain ol' hamburger.

The Bass Fisherman & The Balloonist

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a bass boat below. She shouted to him, 'Excuse me,can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am.'

The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, 'You're in a hot airballoon, approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude, and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.'

She rolled her eyes and said, 'You must be a Republican.'

'I am,' replied the bass fisherman. 'How did you know?'

'Well,' answered the balloonist, ' everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me.'

The man smiled and responded, 'You must be a Democrat.'

'I am,' replied the balloonist. 'How did you know?'

'Well,' said the bass fisherman, 'you don't know where you are or where you are going. You've risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it's my fault.'

H/t older brother. And yes, I know it's old.

Have I Mentioned That I Despise John McCain?

John McCain's campaign will get audited. Obama's? Not so much, even though his campaign deliberately disabled standard credit card fraud protections so that, for example, North Koreans could donate to him.

Allah puts it well, as usual:

Why would they want to audit Obama? The biggest fundraising operation in
political history, infused with hundreds of millions of dollars from
contributors whose names the campaign refuses to reveal, dependent upon a
donation mechanism whose security measures were suspiciously and inexplicably
disabled, and accused by reputable publications of having looked the other way
at fraudulent donations that would have been detected immediately with cursory
oversight.

Aside from that, I mean, why would they want to audit him?

Hey McCain, remember how you said you'd rather have clean government than so-called free speech? Thanks for giving us neither, you Constitution-shredding sack of crap.

More Prop 8 Blowback

Video of gay protestors shouting down a little old lady, stealing her cross, stomping on it, and spitting on her. These are the folks who are upset that others won't recognize their "love."

Okay, well I'll just learn a little lesson from these same protestors. If a gay protestor can call a black man the n-word and say "most black people hated gays," then obviously the same rule must apply to gay groups.

It stands to reason, then, that all gays are hysterical bitches who throw nasty, thuggish temper tantrums when they don't get their way. Lesson learned.

Also.

More on Prop 8

Last post I suggested that gays would never protest against the blacks in the aftermath of Prop 8. I stand corrected:

It was like being at a klan rally except the klansmen were wearing Abercrombie
polos and Birkenstocks. YOU NIGGER, one man shouted at men. If your people want
to call me a FAGGOT, I will call you a nigger. Someone else said same thing to
me on the next block near the temple...me and my friend were walking, he is also
gay but Korean, and a young WeHo clone said after last night the niggers better
not come to West Hollywood if they knew what was BEST for them.

And:

Three older men accosted my friend and shouted, "Black people did this, I hope
you people are happy!" A young lesbian couple with mohawks and Obama buttons
joined the shouting and said there were "very disappointed with black people"
and "how could we" after the Obama victory. This was stupid for them to single
us out because we were carrying those blue NO ON PROP 8 signs! I pointed that
out and the one of the older men said it didn't matter because "most black
people hated gays" and he was "wrong" to think we had compassion. That was the
most insulting thing I had ever heard. I guess he never thought we were gay.

Wow. The irony is so rich and creamy that I want to spread it on my pancakes. I wonder if the guys shouting the N-word had signs that said "End Hate."

Via D.C. Thornton, who has some other links on this. Muslihoon has some thoughts on Lefty protests.

For My Brother, Who Wants to Know My Opinion About Prop 8

Quite pleased, as a matter of fact.

That would be in stark contrast to, for example, this guy:


...who is apparently cool with judicial tyranny, and who participated in a protest at the Mormon temple in L.A., where said temple was vandalized.

My questions for said protestor: did you protest at any synagogues? Any Catholic churches? Did you go to Compton to protest the African-Americans, who overwhelmingly voted to pass Prop 8 (and without whom, incidentally, the Prop would not have passed)? Just curious.

And suppose, hypothetically, a leftist decided to create a website that listed Jews who contributed to Prop 8, with their city and zip code, and encouraged people to dig up dirt on said Jews, would that be cool with you? (hat tip Retired Geezer for the link)

The Bright Side

The Good News

Hey, at least the world will like us now, right?

Piss Off, John McCain

John McCain, there are precious few silver linings for me after last night, but one of them is that you lost. Overwhelmingly. You got your sorry butt kicked, and I'm glad. You are a worthless legislator, and I'm glad to see your political career end so ignobly.

McCain-Feingold is a direct assault on the First Amendment, one of the most important liberties in American political life, and you had the audacity to put your name on it. That alone should have gotten you immediately fired by the people of Arizona, and it is to their deep and abiding shame that they did not.

Mr. Senator, remember this line?

"When asked whether McCain-Feingold violates freedom of speech, McCain said, 'I
would rather have a clean government than one where quote "First Amendment
rights" are being respected that has become corrupt. If I had mychoice, I'd
rather have the clean government.'"

Well now you have neither. Did it ever occur to you that free speech tends to encourage clean government? I suppose not.

You called your base racist when they wanted to secure their own borders. You attacked your own party to curry favor with a press that turned on you the second you were no longer useful to them. You refused to make legitimate attacks against Obama, or to let other Republicans do so. You let Obama silence you by playing the race card in the most absurd situations. You founded the gang of 14, undermining the President's ability to appoint conservative justices (and incidentally, let's see how Obama's Senate will honor the spirit of that agreement).

I sincerely believe that you could not have had a second term. You would have screwed things up and doomed the party in 2012, just as Obama will screw things up and doom his party in 2012. My only regret is that you chose to screw things up in a year when the president will have the power to replace at least two Supreme Court Justices, dooming us to decades more of heavy leftist influence.

Congratulations to Barack Obama

Congratulations to Barack Obama, and to his supporters. You fought hard, and you clearly won.
Mr. President-elect, I do not respect you. But I respect your office, and I will not do or say anything to undermine that office. When you take the oath of office, you will be the Commander-in-Chief of the finest armed forces in the world. I will not undermine your office in that role, or countenance those who would do so.

I fully intend to disagree with you strongly throughout your administration. But I will only do so when I think you are substantively wrong -- not just because I disagree with your party as a whole. And when I disagree with you, it will be on the substance, and not based on paranoid conspiracy theories. I will not countenance to any degree any suggestion that you or your family should come to harm.

None of the above means I won't make fun of you. I don't even spare members of my party the occasional photoshop treatment.