The Occasional Observer

I am stunned by the scope of the damage in Moore. The area impacted is just enormous. The utter destruction of the homes in the path of the tornado is worse than I'd imagine it in a nightmare.

Watched the video below this morning. A bit of warmth amidst all the sorrow.  I'm struck by how composed this woman is, at her age, despite being confronted by the complete destruction of everything she owns and knows:

"I know exactly what happened here. Exactly."

"All too easy."

Link to Varvel cartoon

Karl Rove's Crossroads PAC dials it down to the essentials. And the details are still coming.

Link.

Godspeed, Baroness Thatcher.  You will be sorely missed.

Link.

“The EU previous stated that individuals will not be harmed, and they will not take money from pensioners. But here they have done just that. They are stealing money in order to support bond holders, which is of course hypocritical because all nations like Germany want to support their own banks who hold these bonds”,added Young.


EU has put the Cypriots in a very “appalling situation" argues Young. “What the Cypriots are being told is that if you are lucky you got a leaky lifeboat, but other than that no one is coming to your rescue”...


All the EU and IMF care about is to “make sure that the big‘euro ship’ can sail on entirely safely.”

...there are more austerity measures ahead, but ultimately, “the Cypriots have been left alone with a loaded revolver with all six barrels full and being told to go play Russian roulette.”

Rioting in Greece last year

Greek Riot Police

Cypriot Police Tank

Man threatening to bulldoze bank to get to his money in Cyprus.

Putin denounces EU confiscation of assets (which happens to include significant offshore Russian assets).


In summary:

"The Dark One is gathering all armies to him. It won't be long now. He will soon be ready."

If you have an interest in leadership, group dynamics, politics, sports, or human interaction. Link

and will miss him. God bless you in your retirement, Holy Father!

Shoot first, look at your target later.  Link:

F&S: What about the other uses, for self-defense and target practice?

BIDEN: Well, the way in which we measure it is—I think most scholars would say—is that as long as you have a weapon sufficient to be able to provide your self-defense. I did one of these town-hall meetings on the Internet and one guy said, “Well, what happens when the end days come? What happens when there’s the earthquake? I live in California, and I have to protect myself.”

I said, “Well, you know, my shotgun will do better for you than your AR-15, because you want to keep someone away from your house, just fire the shotgun through the door.” Most people can handle a shotgun a hell of a lot better than they can a semi-automatic weapon in terms of both their aim and in terms of their ability to deter people coming. We can argue whether that’s true or not, but it is no argument that, for example, a shotgun could do the same job of protecting you. Now, granted, you can come back and say, “Well, a machine gun could do a better job of protecting me.” No one’s arguing we should make machine guns legal.

America! F*ck Yeah!

BTW: Is Joe always drunk, or is this just the way he talks? If he actually was sober, can you imagine how much fun it would be to get Biden in a hunting cabin for a week?

Read this for more information.

Read 'em and weep.

Of the many articles discussing the Pope's resignation, this WSJ piece is worth discussing here, as it touches on the intersection of religion, culture, and politics, and makes some very important points about Benedict's agenda and the nature of Western Civilization:

Perhaps the most important religious development in our time is the rise of Islamist fundamentalism. Benedict courted controversy over Islam with his 2006 speech, "Faith and Reason," in Regensburg, Germany. He quoted the 14th-century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus saying uncomplimentary things about Islam, quotes that led to death threats against the pontiff.

Largely lost in that controversy was the Pope's purpose in delivering the speech—an insistence that Faith and Reason need not be antagonists. Their convergence, he argued, "created Europe and remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe."

You might also call it a defense of Western civilization, or simply the West. In the modern West, however, we have turned skepticism and tolerance into such pre-eminent values that we are in danger of rendering ourselves incapable of defending the virtues of the Western tradition. Pope Benedict refused to turn a blind eye when radical Islam suppressed freedom, notably freedom of conscience.

In the Middle East, China and elsewhere, Christians face persecution, expulsion, imprisonment or even death for cleaving to their faith. Coptic Christians in Egypt have suffered greatly after Mubarak, and in Iraq some of the oldest Christian communities in the world cling to a tenuous existence. Benedict's pontificate deserves to be remembered for the attention and energy he gave to the plight of Christians living in unfree conditions for religious practice.

There is much to say, and for those who are interested, you can undoubtedly find pieces ranging from recaps of his Papacy, to analysis, to conspiracy theories, most of which are by writers with competence far exceeding my own. The only thing I wish to add are my personal feelings.

I am grateful to an incredibly learned, deeply prayerful man for accepting the call of the College of Cardinals, at a time in his life when he had lost a close friend, and had hoped to be peacefully resting in his native Germany. I am moved by his love of God (the theme of his first Papal Encyclical), and how that love filtered into a love for all doctrines and traditions of the Church, especially the Sacred Liturgy.

As far as the Holy Father's resignation, I am saddened to see him go. I have no standing to "analyze" it as a matter of institutional precedence. I have only hopeful belief that it is in the best interest of the Church and humanity, and the conviction that Benedict would not have chosen this path unless he believed it so.

Or put another way, if you were focusing on the category with the smallest number, maybe saving lives isn't really your priority. ht: US News

The Daily Caller's Matt Lewis sounds like a fan of Sen. Paul, but throws up familiar caution flags w/r/t a Paul campaign:

Conservatives who witnessed how Mitt Romney was demonized (in a pretty similar manner as I predicted) must now realize that it is the goal of liberals to cast Republicans as crazy, evil, racists.

Fair or not, Paul would be easily cast in that negative light.

Some of it is his fault. His comments to Rachel Maddow about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 will be used against him. This, of course, would only confirm the negative narrative his liberal opponents (and their friends in the media) wish to perpetuate. (Note: I get that Rand Paul hates racism — and that his position is a nuanced one. But that won’t matter in our sound bite media culture.)

Some of it’s not his fault. It’s not fair to blame him for the sins of his father, but that won’t stop the media or Paul’s political opponents. It might not be fair for Rep. Ron Paul’s racist newsletters to impact his son’s presidential ambitions — but you know they will.

ICYMI, here are Sen. Paul's comments about the Civil Rights Act. His intent was to advocate for the right to free private association, but instead left himself vulnerable to the charge that he is indifferent to racial discrimination:

Maddow: Do you think that a private business has a right to say that 'We don't serve black people?'

Paul: I'm not in favor of any discrimination of any form. I would never belong to any club that excluded anybody for race. We still do have private clubs in America that can discriminate based on race. But I think what's important in this debate is not getting into any specific "gotcha" on this, but asking the question 'What about freedom of speech?' Should we limit speech from people we find abhorrent. Should we limit racists from speaking. I don't want to be associated with those people, but I also don't want to limit their speech in any way in the sense that we tolerate boorish and uncivilized behavior because that's one of the things that freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized, but that doesn't mean we approve of it...

Maddow:... How about desegregating lunch counters?

Paul: Well what it gets into then is if you decide that restaurants are publicly owned and not privately owned, then do you say that you should have the right to bring your gun into a restaurant even though the owner of the restaurant says 'well no, we don't want to have guns in here' the bar says 'we don't want to have guns in here because people might drink and start fighting and shoot each-other.' Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant? Or does the government own his restaurant? These are important philosophical debates but not a very practical discussion...

Maddow: Well, it was pretty practical to the people who had the life nearly beaten out of them trying to desegregate Walgreen's lunch counters despite these esoteric debates about what it means about ownership. This is not a hypothetical Dr. Paul.

From the NY Post:

Federal tax rates are the same in Florida and New York.

But there’s no state income tax in the Sunshine State. Compare that to New York, where the state and local governments took $14.71 of every $100 earned in 2010, according to state records.

The only state with a higher rate is Alaska...

The demand is so high that officials in Palm Beach County have set up an entire office to answer questions from city hedge-funders looking to relocate.

“We’re not doing a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign. We don’t need to,” said Kelly Smallridge, who heads the Palm Beach County Business Development Board, which set up the special unit to handle inquiries and marketing.

“They’re coming to us.”

Because Hollywood's gonna try to erase him if he keeps this up.  In the midst of a brilliantly written defense of the second amendment, one paragraph just jumped off the page.  Copied and pasted for your reading pleasure: