Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

This is EXACTLY Why We Sent Ted Cruz to Washington

April 30th, 2013

Republican Senators have been yelling at Ted Cruz. At the top of their lungs, no less. “How dare you make me stand on principle???”

We won the gun control fight because Senators Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Rand Paul stood up for principle and shamed other Republican Senators into standing up as well.

We sent Cruz to Washington to shame Republicans into acting like Republicans. No, you don’t get to to betray conservative principles and expect us to keep donating and working for you merely because you have an (R) after your name. No, you don’t get to cave into Washington’s permanent liberal establishment without cost. No, you don’t get to enjoying fawning “strange new respect” profiles from the media without getting primaried. “You could just not be a bunch of squishes.”

Does anyone doubt that we’d now be seeing fawning profiles of Senator Dewhurst for his help in forging a “compromise” on gun control?

Tags: gun control, Republicans, Ted Cruz, video
Posted in Guns, Republicans, video | 1 Comment »

Spain IS Beyond Doomed, But It’s Not Practicing Real Austerity

April 30th, 2013

Take a look at these charts. Unemployment in Spain is up over 25%, and most have been unemployed more than 2 years. Matthew O’Brien is correct when he says that Spain’s inflexible labor laws contribute greatly to the unemployment, but errs when he says that “austerity hasn’t been the path to prosperity. It’s been the path to perma-slump.”

Austerity hasn’t failed in Spain. It hasn’t been tried.

Spain last ran a budget surplus in 2008, and since then it has engaged in deficit spending. In 2012, Spain’s budget deficit was 9.4% of GDP, and this year it will be 10.6% of GDP.

Remember, real austerity isn’t trying to tax-and-spend your way to prosperity. Real austerity is cutting budgets until outlays match receipts. Estonia bit the bullet and balanced its budget, and its economy is now growing at a steady clip. Meanwhile, governments all across Europe continue to try the same deficit spending Keynesian pump-priming, and keep having the same recession. In most of Europe, “austerity” has meant digging their own graves more slowly rather that stopping digging.

And European elites refuse to stop digging because their power and perks all stem from swaddling voters in an unsustainable cradle-to-grave welfare system.

If all this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Europe makes the same mistakes, gets the same results, and keeps doubling down on stupid, content to keep the farce running as long as they possibly can. Instead actually of solving the interrelated problems of debt, unsustainable entitlements, and the Euro, the Euroelite seem content to preside over the world’s slowest, most boring train wreck. Yes, it’s a pity the train is sliding inexorably toward the chasm, but there’s such fine vintages to be had in the saloon car, and it offers such a magnificent view of the coming crash…

Tags: Budget, debt, Economics, Euro, Europe, European Debt Crisis, PIIGS, Spain, unemployment, Welfare State
Posted in Budget, Economics, Welfare State | No Comments »

As a Fractional Indian, I Approve This Message

April 29th, 2013

This one:

And while we’re on the subject, I suspect that the Comanche and Apache warriors of the 19th century would far rather have bad-ass war machines named after them than be depicted as the wimpy, politically correct proto-Greens Hollywood tries to make them out to be…

Tags: American Indians, Guns, Media Watch
Posted in Guns, Media Watch | No Comments »

Rosemary Lehmberg: Seen at The Gun Show

April 28th, 2013

Hat tip: Dwight, who brings us news that Lehmberg “won’t be seeking reelection.” Well, duh. People who have been removed from office don’t run for reelection…

Tags: Austin, Crime, Democrats, DWI, pic, Rosemary Lehmberg
Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats | No Comments »

LinkSwarm for April 26, 2013

April 26th, 2013

For a startling change of pace, this week the Friday LinkSwarm will be on…Friday!

So where are those violent mobs of Americans attacking Muslims the media keeps implying are common? Nowhere to be found.

“Clearly, some observers fear ordinary Americans more than they do terrorists; they fret more over how dangerously unintelligent and hateful Yanks will respond to bombings than they do over the bombings themselves. But where is this Islamophobic mob? Where are these marauding Muslim-haters undergoing a post-Boston freakout? They are a figment of liberal observers’ imaginations.”

Finally catching up on work Andrew Breitbart and Lee Stranahan were doing three years ago, The New York Times finally discovered that there was massive fraud in the Pigford “black farmer settlement, namely hundred of millions of dollars going to people who had never farmed in their life for “discrimination” by the Department of Agriculture.

It takes some chutzpah to lobby against voter ID bills when you’ve already been convicted of voter fraud.

Walter Russell Mead on the Wreck of the Euro. “Meanwhile everything in Europe gets worse. As we’ve said before, with the exception of communism itself, the euro has been the biggest economic catastrophe to befall the continent (and the world) since the 1930s. Politicians in Europe thought they were living in a post-historical period in which mistakes didn’t really matter all that much. They were horribly wrong, and the wreck of the euro is blighting lives and embittering spirits on a truly staggering scale.” Quibble: $500,000 won’t just buy you “a pretty nice house;” in most of the country, it will buy you mansion.

Iowahawk’s new digs. (Though he’s also escaped from his captors at his old digs as well.)

Denmark rethinks welfare. “Denmark’s long-term outlook is troubling. The population is aging, and in many regions of the country people without jobs now outnumber those with them.”

Back-to-back record lows for Texas. How’s that global warming working out for ya?

Drink, Drive, Get Public Employee of the Year. (And yes, of course she’s a Democrat.)

“If Maureen Dowd’s evisceration manqué of President Obama’s gun control strategy in the New York Times is any indication, Ms. Dowd is in the wrong line of work. She doesn’t understand American politics. She doesn’t know how votes are gained and lost, she doesn’t know what presidents do or understand what powers they have, and above all she doesn’t understand how politicians think.” On the plus side, Dowd did say that Obama “still has not learned how to govern.”

Max Baucus to retire. “Mr. Baucus is the sixth Democrat since the start of the year to opt not to run for re-election in 2014, following Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Tim Johnson of South Dakota and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey.”

Funny what 4+ years of Obama has done for Bush43’s image. “Among registered voters, his approval rating today is equal to President Obama’s, at 47 percent.”

“Kerry possesses neither principle nor expertise, and so the odds of him saying something both daft and morally bankrupt are always high.”

Shotgun beats baseball bat.

Feminist political correctness now trumps rights of the accused and due process of law on campus.

Infowars has a dating site. No, really.

Tags: Bombing, Boston, Bush43, George W. Bush, LinkSwarm, Maureen Dowd, Max Baucus, Media Watch, New York Times, Pigford, Political Correctness
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Jihad, Media Watch | No Comments »

Gun Update for April 25, 2012

April 25th, 2013

A random basket of gun news, including more fallout from the Senate’s failure to restrict gun rights:

“Why is opposing the will of the majority a mark of “cowardice,” as Giffords says, rather than a mark of courage?… I suspect that Giffords credits the majority with wisdom only when the polls are going her way, just as she credits politicians with integrity only when they agree with her.”

A very nice infographic of gun facts.

Here’s one woman who isn’t having any of the gun-grabbing blather: “You say, ‘If it saves just one life.’ I hear ‘Except yours, you stupid bitch. We’d rather you get raped and murdered while waiting for the police to arrive.'” (Hat tip: Borepatch.)

They only want to control guns as a way of controlling you. (Also Borepatch.)

Why we won:

Gun owners care year in and year out. And they vote on the issue. This had little to do with the fearsome power of “the NRA”, or their fundraising efforts. It had to do with gun owners who will do their best to unelect any politician who votes to deprive them of what they view as constitutional rights. Those gun owners are more likely to live in swing states than the most avid gun controllers: progressives who cram themselves into a handful of cities. And they vote on the issue, unlike progressives, who, for all their furor at the outcome, put a large number of issues–taxes, abortion, welfare programs, and so forth–much higher on their list of priorities. By 2014, the odds of any “No” vote losing their job over it are pretty slim.

Did Harry Reid want the gun bill to fail?

Reason debunks that 90% number.

Put down O.F. Mossberg & Sons as another gun manufacturer getting tired of the irrational hoplophobia of their Blue State politicians.

And Mossberg is one of three Connecticut gun manufacturers that Texas representatives (including John Carter, my own rep) asked to move from their gun-hating blue state to someplace more enlightened.

Tags: gun control, Guns, Harry Reid, John Carter, NRA
Posted in Democrats, Guns | No Comments »

Boston Bomber Roundup for April 24, 2013

April 24th, 2013

So much new Boston Bomber information has come to light that I thought I’d put a big old LinkSwarm on just that topic:

It’s the Jihad, stupid.

Mother of the Boston bombers: “If they are going to kill him. I don’t care. My oldest son is killed, so I don’t care. I don’t care is my youngest son is going to be killed today. I want the world to hear this. And, I don’t care if I am going to get killed too. And I will say Allahu Akbar!” Media: Just what is she trying to say? I don’t understand! It’s like she’s speaking in code!

Mark Steyn: “As is now traditional in these stories, we’re now being told that the Brothers Tsarnaev are merely the latest card-carrying members of Local 473 of the Amalgamated Union of Lone Wolves.”

Kurt Schlichter: “’Extraordinary’ is the natural condition of Americans.”

John Hindraker asks why does evil make liberals stupid?

The Boston bombers were living the life of welfare queens.

After it bombed in Boston, the bombing brothers were looking forward to taking their show to Broadway.

Here’s all about the mosque at the center of the bombing investigation. If it’s at the center, I guess that makes it the Ground Zero Mosque…

Speaking of which, the mastermind behind the original is buying up more New York City property in the area.

Victor Davis Hanson: What the Tsarnaev case teaches about immigration.

Naturally, clueless apologists set up a #FreeJahar tag on Twitter. As Aaron Gardner noted: “If twitter had been around in the time of Jesus there would have been a #FreeBarabbas tag.” And just imagine the reality show potential! “It’s down to two! No one will want to miss the stunning climax of Survivor: Golgatha!”

To me, Free Jahar sounds like a heartwarming, direct-to-DVD Disney film about a boy and his magic genie trying to free an Islamic whale.

Russia tried to warn us about the Tsarnaev brothers. Repeatedly. By the standards of perfect hindsight liberals applied to Bush43 after 9/11, doesn’t that make Obama a traitor?

A Venn diagram of terrorist watch lists.

So who was Misha, the radical Islamist who became Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s mentor?

Via Michael Totten comes Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Amazon wish list. Hard to tell from that whether he wanted to become a terrorist, a singer or a Mafia wiseguy…

I’m seeing a report that the Boston Bomber Brothers are members of a Wahabist terrorist cell Problem: That report comes from DEBKA, a site that has a track record only slightly better than Infowars, so take it with a shaker full of salt.

Speaking of Infowars, guess what site Tamerlan Tsarnaev like to read?

The Onion: “I’m starting to think that maybe when Tamerlan first said ‘Let’s bomb the Boston Marathon,’ I should have said no.”

While you were paying attention to Boston, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police broke up a plot to bomb a passenger train.

Tags: Bombing, Boston, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Ground Zero Mosque, Islam, Jihad, Kurt Schlichter, LinkSwarm, Mark Steyn, Media Watch, New York City, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Victor Davis Hanson
Posted in Crime, Jihad, Media Watch | No Comments »