Category Archives: Homeland Security

America Close to Civil War?

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I was out and about yesterday with my wife and we stopped at several stores that sell guns and ammo because I’m trying to decide if it would be cheaper to order my ammo off the Internet and pay a big shipping charge or buy here. Because I’m in the market for unusual rounds (.410 Buckshot, 20ga Buckshot, .327 Federal Magnum) I have to check around to find what I need. What I found is a series of big box sporting goods stores like Dick’s and Sports Authority desperately short on inventories and even some of the better gun stores here light on the most common calibers. A few months ago a pawn shop owner told me there were a lot more gun purchases because of the election, but frankly there is more to it than that.

We live in a deeply divided country politically, but more importantly we live in a time when the the left has spent years demonizing the right and with the left’s near monopoly on the media we have generations of young people who literally think I and many of my readers simply don’t deserve to live. We’ve all felt it, I have the death threats to prove it and that palpable sense of menace, the recurring incidents of left on right violence here, is one of the reasons I moved from just owning shotguns to buying a handgun.

In normal times the rule of law constrains the rabid foot soldiers of the left, leaving them to the occasional assault after which they are arrested and dealt with. But as the economy flounders, and the thin veneer of civilization slips from society the left is becoming more lawless, and the right more aware of how close we are to the brink. Now many governors are asserting their state rights in the face of a “stimulus” package that includes modifications to existing state laws and the left is predictably demonizing those governors.

Is it me or does this sound familiar:

In the first five weeks of his presidency, Barack Obama has acted so rashly that at least 11 states have decided that his brand of “hope” equates to an intolerable expansion of the federal government’s authority over the states. These states — “Washington, New Hampshire, Arizona, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, California…Georgia,” South Carolina, and Texas — “have all introduced bills and resolutions” reminding Obama that the 10th Amendment protects the rights of the states, which are the rights of the people, by limting the power of the federal government. These resolutions call on Obama to “cease and desist” from his reckless government expansion and also indicate that federal laws and regulations implemented in violation of the 10th Amendment can be nullified by the states.

Why are these states (my new home included) rejecting the money? Mostly because the money comes with strings attached that will hurt the states in the future, but it is also justifiable fear of a Federal Government which is printing money to cover its bills, that will give $900,000,000 in aid to the Palestinians Islamists and is taking active steps to make us less safe. This government is trying to enact sweeping national laws which would result in a defacto gun ban as Cartel Violence spills into Texas from a fatally destabilized Mexico. States are fearful that Obama’s quasi-Socialist administration is going to encroach on the rights of it’s citizens:

For example, Family Security Matters reports that Missouri’s “House Concurrent Resolution 0004 (2009) reasserts its sovereignty based on Barack Obama’s stated intention to sign into law a federal ‘Freedom of Choice Act’, [because] the federal Freedom of Choice Act would nullify any federal or state law ‘enacted, adopted, or implemented before, on, or after the date of [its] enactment’ and would effectively prevent the State of Missouri from enacting similar protective measures in the future.”

The resolution in Montana grew out of concerns over coming attacks on the 2nd Amendment, thus its preface describes it as, “An Act Exempting From Federal Regulation Under The Commerce Clause Of The Constitution Of The United States A Firearm, A Firearm Accessory, Or Ammunition Manufactured And Retained In Montana.”

New Hampshire’s resolution actually references certain federal actions that would be nullified within that state were they pushed by Obama’s administration, according to americandaily.com. Among these are “Any act regarding religion; further limitations on freedom of political speech; or further limitations on freedom of the press, [and any] further infringements on the right to keep and bear arms including prohibitions of type or quantity of arms or ammunition.

Understand what is happening here. Eleven States are telling a wildly popular authoritarian philosophically Marxist federal government that has already announced their intention to forever alter our country in their “Hope and Change” campaign that the states will not allow the Federal government to implement its program. With a charismatic leader who has mobilized the radical left around him in a way no other leader has, this is a recipe for Civil War, especially as the economy, and rule of law, continues to flounder.

But in this new civil war I’m with the States. What about you?

I hope the states can assert their authority peacefully, but with a world in chaos I fear what the reaction of the left will be when they do. And judging by the ammo shortage here so do a lot of other people.

The People’s Stimulus and the Fall of New York

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This video is making the rounds and while The Rebel Economist is indeed “Fox News hot” the real draw in this video is showing how even Obama’s most ardent supporters understand that a tax cut would be better for the economy than the America busting stimulus package that just passed:

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The tears of Obama’s supporters will be like sweet wine to those of us who foresaw the economic collapse worsening due to the government policy of printing billions of dollars of unbacked, essentially worthless currency and dumping tax money into Democrat special interest payola. Which will be good since this year’s grocery inflation will make it so that aside from the metaphorical feasting on others’ sorrow most of us will be skipping meals as food prices go sky high.

Hopeful that Obama can save the economy? Think again, as goes New York so will go the rest of the country and this Peggy Noonan piece shows that New York is definitely experiencing some of the hardest times anyone living there today can remember. This passage will speak more to people who have spent long periods of time in New York, but even someone who has only seen the city on television can in part appreciate the House of Usher like decline of New York Noonan invokes:

A moment last Monday, just after noon, in Manhattan. It’s slightly overcast, not cold, a good day for walking. I’m in the 90s on Fifth heading south, enjoying the broad avenue, the trees, the wide cobblestone walkway that rings Central Park. Suddenly I realize: Something’s odd here. Something’s strange. It’s quiet. I can hear each car go by. The traffic’s not an indistinct roar. The sidewalks aren’t full, as they normally are. It’s like a holiday, but it’s not, it’s the middle of a business day in February. I thought back to two weeks before when a friend and I zoomed down Park Avenue at evening rush hour in what should have been bumper-to-bumper traffic.

[…]

If you want to feel the bruise of what’s happened, pick a neighborhood full of shops and go up and down the street. Here’s Second Avenue in the 80s. A jewelry and consignment store on 84th has a new sign on the window: “We Buy Gold.” Paul is at the counter, spraying the tarnish off a silver chain. How’s business? “No buyin’, no sellin’, no nothin’. It’s a joke. People scared. They’re in shock.” Nearby, an empty storefront, a bar that had been in business only 10 months. The sign on the window—you see it all over Manhattan now—says, “Retail Space Available.” Next door, in a small beauty salon, the owner says “We’re trying to survive.” In September business plummeted. It’s down “at least 30%,” she says. July and August had been surprisingly good; her clients didn’t go away on vacation. In the fall they were fired. “They lost the job, so they don’t need to cut and color so much.”

In a liquor store just off 82nd, the owner, from India, says volume is still high but profits are down. “In business, if you have a product under $15, is good. People used to spend $70, $80 on a bottle of wine, all the bankers, the young kids. Nothing moving more than $15.”

On 81st, the kosher restaurant has closed. On 79th, the Talbots is gone. “Left a few months ago,” says the doorman next door.

Turn down to Madison Avenue in the 80s. A high-end butcher who’s been in the neighborhood more than 30 years is moving to the West Side because his rent has been raised more than he can afford. Why are landlords raising rents in a recession? It’s not landlords, he says, you can reason with them, it’s co-op boards that own a building. The people in the apartments upstairs are paying high maintenance, and they’re worried about their jobs, their businesses, their bonuses. So they raise the rent on the shop downstairs to cut their maintenance. When the shopkeeper says he’ll move and who’ll take his place in this economy, the boards say, “It’s Madison Avenue, we’ll be able to rent it.” He says, “They will for a while. But not if it gets worse.”

And thanks to unbridled spending in the guise of stimulus things will get worse. When I lived in New York I was given to hiking through the city and even several years ago when the economy was roaring you could see the creeping decay on the edges of the city. You could feel the quiet flight of overtaxed middle class New Yorkers and witness the third world poverty filling the vacuum they leave behind. No amount of government spending will make people return to New York, only the knowledge that the cost of living there would go down to more reasonable levels would reverse the flight of wealth from the city. Tax cuts like The People’s Stimulus would do just that.

Until then only the super rich and the desperately poor will remain.

But New York will continue to raise taxes, the federal government will print money and the left will cheer both on until New York, and most big cities, collapse. Welcome to the beginning of the new America, the richest banana republic in the world.

Leftist Hamas Supporters Assault College Republicans in Florida

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When people claim America isn’t slipping into 2nd world status I just point out that we have raised several generations of Americans who adopt banana republic style political activism. Whether it’s the attempted murder of people whose only crime is attending the Republican National Convention, attempting to bomb conventions, shooting soldiers or threatening political opponents with guns, leftists in this country are no longer interested in debate with anyone who disagrees with them. The left in this country is only interested in silencing, then destroying, any who are not part of their ideological cult. We are only an incident, or perhaps a malicious prosecution, away from uncontrollable political violence in this country.

This video shows what kind of young adults decades of leftist indoctrination produces. Police have to physically stop them from assaulting and killing the college Republicans:

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Arm yourselves.

Bubonic Plague Carrying Mice Missing from New Jersey Lab!

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I don’t know what is scarier, the fact that plague carrying mice went missing or the fact that authorities don’t think it’s a big deal. From Fox:

TRENTON, N.J. —  The frozen remains of two mice injected with the organism that causes plague have not been accounted for seven weeks after being discovered missing at a University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey facility in Newark, the university said Friday.

The FBI investigated and determined there was no risk to public health or any indication of the terrorist link.

It wasn’t the first time plague-infected mice have disappeared from the New Jersey facility. Four years ago, in September 2005, three live mice infected with bubonic plague bacteria disappeared from various cages. Officials later said they believed the rodents had died.

UMDNJ’s Public Health Research Institute issued a four-paragraph statement about the December incident late Friday saying it believes the red hazardous waste bag containing the dead mice was sterilized and incinerated along with another bag.

“Although the mice in the missing bag were used in vaccine experiments involving the bacteria Yersinia pestis, the organism that causes plague, UMDNJ has no reason to believe that this situation poses a risk to the safety or health of UMDNJ staff or the community at large,” the university said in its prepared statement.

University spokesman Jerry Carey said he did not know why UMDNJ waited seven weeks to disclose the missing mice.

I’d like to know that as well. But first I need to go stock up on disinfectant and breathing masks.

h/t Tammy Bruce