Category Archives: Scribbles

Britain’s speech crimes

This is amazing stuff. Wear a nasty tee shirt, go to jail. Make a stupid joke on Facebook, go to jail. Use a politically-incorrect word on your blog, go to jail.

The very concept of speech crime is abhorrent. It’s what you’d expect in Iran, North Korea or Communist China. But Jolly Old England?

The birthplace of John Milton, who famously said: “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience”?

No more, obviously. One more place to scratch off the tourist list.

Via Instapundit.

In which I buy three books

Getting up early can be risky. But it’s what old men do. Our bladders control our sleep cycle, especially when we drink soda or water before bedtime.

Anyhow, this morning I was browsing Amazon and got intrigued by a book, and then another one, and then another one, and, almost… Amazon, so wisely, makes buying so easy. Fortunately, I finally realized what I was doing and stopped. For now. There’s always next time.

Biden’s inept white man role

More than a month before the vice president made a fool of himself in his “debate,” Daniel Greenfield did a masterful takedown of Joey Hairplugs (The Scarecrow of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue) and his feckless boss, who (Greenfield says) purposely chose Biden—the very model of the inept white man—as his No. 2 to make him and his women-and-minorities administration look good by contrast.

“No halfway responsible man would have deliberately chosen an idiot as his potential replacement. But an administration that has done the things to America that this one has done is not in any way responsible.

“If you step into Obama’s head for a moment, you realize that he does not care at all what happens if he should die. A man who can’t be bothered to take care of his own extended family is not likely to care one way or another what happens to a country of several hundred million, most of whom are not even related to him.”

Read. It. All. Here.

Austin couple sued for insider trading

They’re not members of Congress, you see, and therefore not exempt from the insider-trading laws like our get-rich-quick “public servants” are when trading stocks and bonds on their inside knowledge of impending new regulations they themselves often have written.

But if the lawyer for the Jantzens is on the ball, he’ll raise that issue forthwith—via a written news release and an in-person presser with the usually-snoozing news media and subsequently with the federal court. About time somebody did besides author Peter Schweizer.

The media’s mechanical men (and women)

Hammer. Nail.

“Consume enough media and you come to understand that the people manufacturing it are not only hacks, they’re clueless hacks, who like their master in the White House, have absolutely no idea how to solve any of the country’s problems and no interest whatsoever in even bothering to try.

“They are mechanical men [and women] marching to an ideological beat and have no more interest in reality than do the denizens of a mental ward.

“Our economy is on its last legs, our national security is shot and the only reason we’re still running is that the country still has reserves of wealth that haven’t been plundered and the dregs of a counter-terror policy that carried over to these [past] four years.”

And, just like in 2008, the media is doing all it can to once again drag Ophony and his goofy sidekick over the finish line—so much so that even a Democrat notices it. As a recovering journalist of thirty-five years it never fails to amaze me that anyone takes the biased and formulaic news biz seriously. “First draft of history,” my arse.

Obamacare in one (long) sentence

Summed up rather neatly by a congressional hopeful in Illinois. (Considering how easy it is for federal pols to legally get wealthy these days, who wouldn’t want to be a congressional hopeful?)

“We are going to be gifted with a health care plan that we are forced to purchase, and fined if we don’t, which reportedly covers 10 million more people without adding a single new doctor, but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman 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 any benefits take effect, by a government which has bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese and financed by a country that is broke.”

And it passed without a single Republican vote. So it’s strictly a Democrat thing. Ah, but their “intentions” were soooo good. They surely get points for that. Just ask any of their acolytes.

Via Bernie at Planck’s Constant.

Pflugerville blogger in squab-ble with state

Many people (I can think of one in Israel) wouldn’t consider eating a pigeon (dirty birds that they are) but when they’re called white-winged doves and this being dove season you can bet a lot of Texas hunters are eating them right now.

Turns out, however, that you can’t legally do it without a hunting license, as Pflugerville blogger Ryan Adams found out when he posted pictures about his preparing, cooking and eating a dove that was killed when it flew into the side of his house.

Now he’s trying to get the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department off his back. Good luck, Ryan.