By Nathan Barton
Good day! An odd historical reference/discovery is my theme for some of the stories today, and I think you will have as much fun reading them as I did writing!
According to the WaPo, “DNA evidence proves that King Richard III’s remains really did end up in a parking lot. Scientists are 99.999 percent sure, in their most conservative estimate, that remains found in 2012 really do belong to King Richard III.” Continue reading
By Nathan Barton
Good morning. I guess some folks were upset about stool pigeons, yesterday. Sorry, I just calls ’em as I sees (or reads) ’em.
And it might not have been the Taleban: given that it happened at Thanksgiving time, it COULD have been the Turkey Liberation Front, or even a rival group that is trying to combat Chick-fil-A‘s cow-conspirators in the black and white suits. And the story said nothing at all about ANY involvement by Turkey, I should add. Someone else points out that it MAY have been a very low-budget competitor of Rutan’s SpaceShip 2 and this was a failed test flight. Unmanned, of course. Continue reading
By Nathan Barton
Good morning, and welcome to December, 2014. We are in the midst of the holidays, and things are fun for many folks, dreary for others. Travel is more difficult, and apt to be delayed due to weather. Please, be careful and get to your destination safely!
As we continue to see the blight that is Ferguson (on ALL sides: government officials and cops, protesters and rioters and activists), there are other places where cops are in the news. One is actually from early in November, after a policeman shot and killed someone. A friend (Thanks, Margaret) sent me this interesting video of the Milwaukee Police Chief interviewed immediately after a public forum about the shooting. Continue reading
By Nathan Barton
What if?
Actually, I am NOT really REALLY suggesting that we treat the government like they treat us (the normal, everyday citizen or resident of a state or county or city or town). After all, here is how the governments treat us:
1. They continually kill, wound, and maim us – or allow their employees to do so: from twelve-year-olds gunned down for having a toy gun to two-year-olds burned and scarred for life because their cribs were where the cops threw the flash-bang grenade to assault the wrong house, to the 80-year old maced for not getting off his tractor quickly enough. Continue reading
by Nathan Barton
Writing this on Thanksgiving Day: As we give thanks this day, one thing I am thankful to God for is that I do not live, nor have any friends or relatives that live, in or near Ferguson, Missouri. The spectacle and agony of Ferguson continue, seemingly unabated for all of several weeks of apparent calm. Their situation is both their own doing and that of the occupation army present and active. I think that the radius of the disturbances and the occupation is greater than the first series. Wise were the people that heeded suggestions to make sure they and their households were well-armed. Not that we aren’t seeing the opposite being suggested. Continue reading
Editorial By Wendy McElroy
at The Daily Bell
The first rule of the politics of fear is that if you want to make something sound scarier than it actually is, you add the word ‘culture’ at the end of it. – Brendan O’Neill, Editor of Spiked
It is the c-word*: culture. Depending on the political agenda of the alarmist du jour, we live in a rape culture, a gun culture, an abortion culture, a culture of racism. A standard definition of culture is “the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.” When a specific adjective is used to define a society, it means the adjective captures a dominant attitude and behavior that characterize the society.
But a culture does not rape, buy guns, have abortions or express racism. Individuals do. In some cases, like rape, the individuals engaging in the activity are a small percentage of the population. This is especially true today when incidents of rape have fallen dramatically. According to both the U.S. Department of Justice National Crime Victim Survey 2008-2012 and the Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network (RAINN) – the largest anti-sexual assault organization in America – sexual assault has decreased by more than 50% in recent years. Why, then, are we hearing so much more about a rape culture?
(Please click here to see the rest of this article. Well worth the read.)
By MamaLiberty
I never really knew my father, since he died when I was four years old. It is impossible for me to sift out any actual memories I might have from the stories and photographs mother shared with us while my sister and I were growing up. I do know he was the product of the Scottish Highlands, both of his parents having come from Scotland in the mid 1800s. He was quiet, frugal, and very much an independent spirit. He was gentle and loving, hard working and beloved by family and friends.
I’ve been thinking about him, and all those I respect and love as I contemplate this Thanksgiving, concerned about the days and months ahead in our changing and often frightening world. It is so easy to neglect gratitude for what we have in reaction to the fears and threats we see all around us.
But it is all relative, in a real and meaningful way. Blessings and threats, challenges and victories always come mixed, and one seldom cancels out the other. The blessings we wish for, even expect, can often obscure the blessings we actually have… if we allow that to happen. And, if we do, we wind up with emptiness and only regrets.
I am all alone today, and I could weep or complain about it if I wished to do so… but I have chosen the path that led to this situation, and am content with it in so many ways. We choose, and then we must choose how we respond to the consequences of those choices.
My meditation for today is on my father’s favorite saying:
“I cried because I had no shoes, until I met the man who had no feet.”
I have both shoes and feet, friends and family, food and warmth, life and love. I am truly blessed.
Bless everyone here. I wish you all joy and love.
By Nathan Barton
Happy Thanksgiving!
I wrote about thanks yesterday; fortunately, most of us still have many things to be thankful to God about, but we also need to include both prayers for deliverance (and the strength of will to work out our own) and for freedom; the kind of things in these first two stories, which are examples of how evil and twisted many in our society have become. Continue reading
By Nathan Barton
It is morning, the day before Thanksgiving Day, when Americans traditionally thank God for their blessings, material and spiritual.
The Indianapolis Star’s Thanksgiving week political cartoon was pulled because its message, critical of the Fuehrer’s immigration “reform” because the cartoon was racist. This was a two-part withdrawal, though: the first change just took away one of the character’s mustache. A mustache is racist? Just like, oh, a turban or a burka or a fez or what? How about a cowboy hat? or a baseball cap? Why is the mustache racist but the baseball cap in the cartoon is NOT racist? Why are “journalists” such idiots? (Or is that being “professionist” because I are an inginuer? (engineer)”) (An additional thought: it seems that cartoonists in particular are an exclusion to the First Amendment, as the Danish “Prophet” cartoons and many Doonesbury and Mallard Fillmore cartoons demonstrate. Continue reading
Racism and society in 2014 – cops, bureaucrats, and Congress (was Libertarian Commentary on the News #14-49D1)
By Nathan Barton
Walking while black, with your hands in your pocket on a cold November day makes you a suspect in robberies, according to a Michigan cop. Sweet. Heaven forbid he have a face mask, partial or not, against a cold wind and frostbite, or a hood on his parka in a blizzard. But this IS typical of the bad behavior of the “boys (and girls) in blue.”
And it isn’t limited to “normal racism” of course: although these days home-schoolers must seem like another race, even aliens! Consider this next story. Continue reading →