[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

Update: See this follow up post showing the Beatles v. the Taxman.

Update (II): Where are my blog manners? I forgot to thank Instapundit for the link.

He said it in the prepared text and in the speech itself:

The bipartisan Fiscal Commission I created last year made this crystal clear. I don’t agree with all their proposals, but they made important progress. And their conclusion is that the only way to tackle our deficit is to cut excessive spending wherever we find it – in domestic spending, defense spending, health care spending, and spending through tax breaks and loopholes.

(emphasis added).

You got that?  When you are allowed to keep your money, that is considered “spending” by the Federal Government.  Because in reality all of the fruits of your labor belong to us, the government.

Is it wrong to say it almost the attitude of a master toward his slaves?  Consider this passage from Jeffrey Rogers Hummel’s history of the Civil War, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men, which I have to cut and paste from a screen cap:

(more…)

Leave your comments below. If I get a chance, I’ll put up a live chat when I can. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Sorry no live chat. Boy, that was awful, huh?

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

Update: You can read the order here.  The only interesting part is that they haven’t actually granted the appeal, only the stay.

Update (II): The Illinois Supreme Court will actually hear the case.  And Huffpo has the inevitable attack on the integrity of the appellate judges.  I won’t deny the possibility of corruption exists, but isn’t that all the more reason to ask judges to stick to the law?

They haven’t reached the merits, yet.  But they have stayed the ruling below, meaning he will stay on the ballot, for now.

I will say that yesterday I was underwhelmed by the logic of the court below.  I wasn’t ready to pronounce them wrong, but so far I was unconvinced.  But I did find it interesting how many people normally in favor of judicial activism were complaining about…  judicial activism.

Anyway, you can read about it, here.  But the link pretty much tells you what I just told you.

Ballet dances for everyone!

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

Now be careful, folks, because this is a scary one:

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants.

Oh my gosh, this writer is calling for bloodshed!  Run for your lives!  Lock up your children!  The end is nigh!

Of course anyone modestly literate in history recognizes the quote and saw my “head fake” for what it was.  It’s from Thomas Jefferson.  Ah, but I am taking him out of context, right?  Mmmm, except not really.  Here’s the context.  He was arguing that the Constitutional Convention was being inappropriately stampeded into founding a new constitution by fears of uprisings like Shay’s Rebellion in Massachusetts:

[W]hat country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it’s natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusetts: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen-yard in order. I hope in God this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted.

So to him a little rebellion now and then is a good thing.

And the deeper thought is this (and Charles Johnson, you complete idiot, notice this is me speaking only).  There are some who say that violence is never justified.  But we as a nation were founded on violence and it has been preserved by violence.  We have said that when we are under the boot of tyranny we have a moral right to rise up in arms against that tyranny.  That is precisely why the Second Amendment exists.  To quote Justice Kozinski’s classic opinion:

The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed — where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

So it is incorrect to say that violence is never, ever justified.  The better answer is that violence is rarely justified and only under extreme circumstances.  And if we are going to accept that violence is rarely justified, we also have to accept that occasionally inopportune calls for violence will occur.  Jefferson was wrong to say that Shay’s rebellion was a good thing.  He was wrong to say a little rebellion now and then is a good thing.  But rather than demonize him as evil, evil, evil, we simply say he was wrong.  Why can’t people do that in our modern disagreements?

Oh right, because it means then we can’t score political points.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

Wow, talk about clueless here.  Paul Ryan has been a rising star because he has regularly torn apart the bullshit involved in Obama’s proposals.  So the Democratic hate machine is getting all fired up:

Senate Democrats are pouncing on Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) role in delivering the Republican response to the State of the Union address to make the case that Republicans are intent on destroying Social Security and Medicare.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), the master political strategist for Senate Democrats, wants to turn Ryan into a bogeyman that voters think about whenever they hear about a Republican proposal to cut federal spending.

Schumer’s strategy reflects an effort to revitalize a party messaging operation that many Democrats say fell apart after Obama won the White House. Senate Democrats face a daunting political map in 2012 and are looking to launch early, coordinated attacks on Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) new majority.

Schumer’s strategy is to highlight the link between GOP efforts to cut as much as $50 billion from the federal budget and a “roadmap” to create private accounts for Social Security and Medicare that Ryan created.

One way or the other, these entitlements are going to end.  The question is whether the U.S. will destroy its credit in the process.  And demonizing every person who points out these ugly truths is not governing.

And no amount of messaging is going to fix that.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]