Three Parabellum MG14 machineguns positioned atop a German Zeppelin.

—————————————-

via GIPHY

Oregon Live

Unfortunately, the store apologized and suspended its employees.

First such debate since 1566.

Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con):

An article in The Guardian in July 2013 pointed out that hedgehogs are prickly in character, have a voracious appetite and a passion for gardens, and have a noisy sex life. I leave it to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, to decide which of those traits I share. In a BBC wildlife poll, hedgehogs were chosen as the best natural emblem for the British nation, beating the charismatic badger and the sturdy oak. The victory for the ultimate underdog came about with 42% and more than 9,000 votes cast for the hedgehog. … In short, the British people have taken hedgehogs to their hearts.

Full text of this important debate.

Hat tip to Angèle Dowmunt-Iwaszkiewicz.

El Rushbo is laughing.

This is great. I have been laughing all morning long. I have been laughing starting with last night. Can we agree that Donald Trump is probably enjoying this more than anybody wants to admit or that anybody knows? So he fires Comey yesterday. Who’s he meeting with today? (laughing) He’s meeting with the Soviet, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov! I mean, what an epic troll this is. The Democrat Party is going bananas — completely, totally unhinged — on the road to literal insanity. …

This has gone beyond mere political posturing. These people on the left — led by the media and the Democrat Party and the political apparatus — I’m telling you, are sick. I have never seen… I wasn’t thinking about it last night. I’m 66 years old. I have been following politics honestly since I was 10. I’m not kidding. I have seen unhinged behavior. I have seen the wild allegations that Democrats make and repeated. I have never seen this degree of collective insanity. I have never seen this degree of so many people literally being out of touch, devoid reality, and unhinged.

I’ve never seen this degree of hate. I understand it because of what’s happened. Trump has totally embarrassed every one of these people inside the Washington Beltway, and he’s taunting them, meeting with the Soviet (chuckling) Russian ambassador today, after the Democrats are convinced the Russians stole the election! They have repeated it so many times; they actually believe it now. The only way this rage can exist is if they really believe this election was stolen, and if the really believe the Russians colluded with Trump.

Nine months and not a shred of evidence, and most recently this was acknowledged by Clapper and Sally Yates. It’s been acknowledged by Comey himself in recent congressional testimony. It’s been acknowledged by Dianne Feinstein. There isn’t any! It was acknowledged by Maxine Waters yesterday. There isn’t any. And yet they believe it. That’s all they’ve got. They cannot, will not blame themselves. So they literally believe that the Russians somehow colluded with Trump, even though there’s no evidence for it.

They really believe Trump fired Comey because he might have been getting close, under the assinine belief that firing Comey’s gonna stop the investigation? How many investigations are there? The House has one. The Senate has one. The FBI’s got their own. Do you know who’s running the FBI today? McCabe, a Democrat! His wife ran for the Senate or ran for governor of Virginia. He’s very close to The Punk, Terry McAuliffe. The guy is a hardened Democrat. He’s now running the FBI. He’s in charge of the investigation to get Trump.

Nothing comes to a screeching halt here just because Comey’s been let go. But the hysteria and the panic and the outrage is rooted in raw hate. The Democrats, wherever you find ’em — in the media, think tanks, don’t care where you find ’em — they’re being consumed by it, folks. They’re literally being eaten alive with an irrational, raw hatred literally absorbing them. Nothing good for them can come of this kind of hate and resulting derangement. Nothing good. This is not how you put together winning movements.

This is not how you build or grow anything, this kind of raw, unfettered hate that they now have lost total control over — and Trump is just taunting them. Trump is just feeding it. He’s doing everything he can to drive them even crazier, and they’re falling for it each and every occasion. Now, nobody’s focusing on the detail that Comey has told Trump three times there’s nothing there. Three times Comey has told Trump, “I’m not investigating you.” They’re looking past that. They’re not even seeing that.

All they’re seeing is that Trump put it in the letter, and that must mean that Trump’s got something to hide or he’s trying to put Comey on the spot or there’s some kind of power play going on. They’re incapable of rationality. They are incapable of reason. They are incapable of just taking a moment to absorb things. They are into knee-jerk reactions based on whatever triggers set them off, and they have stopped thinking, they have stopped pondering, they have stopped considering, and they’re just reacting like spoiled brat little kids.

RTWT

Michael Goodwin, in the New York Post, defends Trump and mocks democrat hysteria.

Comey’s power-grabbing arrogance is why I called him “J. Edgar Comey” two months ago. His willingness to play politics, while insisting he was above it all, smacked of Washington at its worst. He was the keeper of secrets, until they served his purpose.

As such, the president did to Comey what no president had the courage to do to J. Edgar Hoover. Five presidents wanted to fire Hoover, with Harry Truman accusing him of running a police state and of blackmail. But all were afraid of Hoover, so he died in office.

Trump acted before Comey could get that kind of lifetime protection, which has no place in American democracy. At our best, we are a nation of laws, not of people who accumulate power and ruthlessly wield it without accountability. …

Democrats who not so long ago were furious with Comey over the Clinton probe [are seen now] rushing out condemnations of Trump for firing him.

“Nixonian” was a common theme, a shot both cheap and predictable. When you’re a hammer, everything is a nail. When you’re a Democrat, everything is Watergate.

A must-read.

Trump gets well-deserved applause from Kurt Schlichter for firing that crook Comey.

We always knew Donald Trump was brassy, but until he sent half-stepping ex-FBI Director James Comey packing, we didn’t know that his manparts were made of brass. You gotta be hardcore to step up to that sanctimonious tool, that Kasich-With-A-Badge, and cut him off at the knees in the face of the inevitable monsoon of fake news media panic, girlish Democrat howling, and sputtering Menschian Russianoia.

No hesitation. No apologies. When it became inarguable that this pumped up functionary with delusions of omnipotence had finally passed his sell-by date, Trump pulled the trigger. That’s taking charge. That’s leading from the front. That’s regulating. Damn, it’s nice to once again have a chief executive who’s not a simpering femboy.

The pathetic Democrats were caught so utterly off-guard, and were so completely bought-into their spittle-flicking Comey hate, that their 180 from calling for Comey’s head to calling for his restoration will give them mental whiplash. They’ll be in figurative neck braces just like the one their hero Ted Kennedy wore after he left Mary Jo in the pond.

RTWT

The Rohm/Omega RG 10 is a serious contender.

Knowledge Nuts informs us that Lee and Johnson may have surrendered in 1865, but the last Confederate stronghold, Town Line, New York, which seceded and joined the Confederacy in 1861, held out without rejoining the Union until 1946.

Unusually for a town so near the Canadian border, Town Line, New York voted to secede from the Union in 1861 and join the Confederacy. While the circumstances surrounding the treasonous act is shrouded in urban legend, the secession—ignored by the Union government—remains a curious aberration. Town Line was the only Northern town to turn rebel during the Civil War, and didn’t rejoin the US until 1946, making it the last stronghold of the Confederacy.

Town Line in Erie County, New York is only a few miles from the Canadian border. Go to the local fire station and until recently, you might have seen the personnel wearing shoulder patches reading “Last of the Rebels 1861–1946.” During Civil War celebrations, townsfolk display the Confederate flag and wear the Confederate gray. Any visitor would be baffled. It is well-known that the loyalty of towns farther south, near the Mason-Dixon Line, wavered along the divide between North and South during the war. But in upstate New York a few minutes from Canada? In a town populated in the 1860s by first- and second-generation German immigrants with no kinship ties to the South?

Nobody really knows the reason why, in late 1861, the men of Town Line gathered in a schoolhouse and voted 85–40 (or by some accounts 80–45) to leave the Union and join the Confederacy. They clearly supported Abraham Lincoln in the previous election. Among other provocations, perhaps the most likely was President Lincoln’s call for 75,000 men, to which the German farming community refused to comply.

The secession was largely symbolic, as the government did not recognize it. It never sent troops in to compel the town to return to the US, the Post Office continued its business and taxes were still duly paid. That didn’t mean, though, that the entire thing was a sham. There were real rebels in the town, and a few even left to actually enlist in the Confederate army. On the other hand, some of the men also fought for the Union. By 1864, as the tide of war turned against the South, the town’s secessionists were being harassed, forcing some to flee to Canada.

Things settled back to normal at the end of the war. The secession was conveniently forgotten until 1945. In a wave of patriotism accompanying American victory in World War II, residents realized that they were technically not part of the US. Returning veterans were chagrined and infuriated that they were not American. A special committee wrote to President Harry Truman about the situation. Truman responded good-naturedly, “Why don’t you run down the fattest calf in Erie County, barbecue it and serve it with fixins, and sort out your problems.”

The matter was once again put to the vote. Incredibly, the first vote held on December 1945 still failed to secure unity. The town had by now become national news, and the next attempt at reunion was attended by celebrities like movie actor Cesar “the Joker” Romero. Finally, on January 26, 1946, Town Line officially voted to be readmitted into the Union. (Still, 23 rebels decided against the measure—truly the town’s last Confederates.) The rebel flag that had flown for 85 years was hauled down, and the residents took the oath of allegiance.

RTWT

WFSB:

Avon [Connecticut] residents called police after a bear tried to get into a home this weekend and one neighbor got the whole incident on camera.

Neighbors talking to 911 dispatch stated that the bear was trying to gain access into a home on Stagecoach Road.

“My neighbor across the street just came over in a panic. She’s a little old lady, screaming that a bear got on the back porch and is slamming on her glass door,” one call to 911 stated.

Members of Department of Energy and Environmental Protection were not called to the scene. They said a bear “spent considerable time on a deck and was reluctant to leave.” This incident was especially terrifying for the female homeowner who was baked brownies as the bear pressed up against her glass door.

“We have a bear attempting to get into a house and he’s not afraid of noise, screaming or yelling or pounding,” Avon resident Bob Belfiore said when he called 911.

DEEP said a neighbor, who was later identified as Belfiore, rushed to help his neighbor get the bear to go away. The animal made its way onto the deck’s railing before standing up and peering in.

“Though it looks cute on the railing, this bear was angry about not being able to get at the food,” Belfiore said.

At one point, the bear was able to open up the screen door, but thankfully couldn’t manage to open the glass slider. Belfiore told Eyewitness News this bear was persistent.

“He actually left the kitchen area and went to a second set of doors off the deck,” Belfiore said. “And I tried those and then went to a third set of doors into the living room and attempted to get into those.”

Avon police did head up to the house after getting the 911 calls, but the bear had already left the area. There were no reported injuries.

“It was a rather harrowing experience although it looks cute in the photos,” Belfiore said.

RTWT

In 1949, Sir Samuel Fildes’ painting “The Doctor” (1891) was used by the American Medical Association in a campaign against a proposal for nationalized medical care put forth by President Harry S. Truman. The image was used in posters and brochures along with the slogan, “Keep Politics Out of this Picture.” 65,000 posters of The Doctor were distributed, which helped to raise public skepticism of the nationalized health care campaign. By 2008,
unfortunately, the AMA was controlled by the Left and fighting for doctors’ and patients’ rights to private health care was no longer part of its agenda.

Kevin Williamson debunks the “Health Care is a right!” rhetoric.

With the American Health Care Act dominating the week’s news, one conversation has been unavoidable: Someone — someone who pays attention to public policy — will suggest that we pursue policy x, y, or z, and someone else — someone who pays a little less careful attention, who probably watches a lot of cable-television entertainment masquerading as news — responds: “The first thing we have to do is acknowledge that health care is a human right!” What follows is a moment during which the second speaker visibly luxuriates in his display of empathy and virtue, which is, of course, the point of the exercise. …

Here is a thought experiment: You have four children and three apples. You would like for everyone to have his own apple. You go to Congress, and you successfully persuade the House and the Senate to endorse a joint resolution declaring that everyone has a right to an apple of his own. A ticker-tape parade is held in your honor, and you share your story with Oprah, after which you are invited to address the United Nations, which passes the International Convention on the Rights of These Four Kids in Particular to an Individual Apple Each. You are visited by the souls of Mohandas Gandhi and Mother Teresa, who beam down approvingly from a joint Hindu-Catholic cloud in Heaven. Question: How many apples do you have? You have three apples, dummy. Three. You have four children. Each of those children has a congressionally endorsed, U.N.-approved, saint-ratified right to an apple of his own. But here’s the thing: You have three apples and four children. Nothing has changed. Declaring a right in a scarce good is meaningless. It is a rhetorical gesture without any application to the events and conundrums of the real world. If the Dalai Lama were to lead 10,000 bodhisattvas in meditation, and the subject of that meditation was the human right to health care, it would do less good for the cause of actually providing people with health care than the lowliest temp at Merck does before his second cup of coffee on any given Tuesday morning. Health care is physical, not metaphysical. It consists of goods, such as penicillin and heart stents, and services, such as oncological attention and radiological expertise. Even if we entirely eliminated money from the equation, conscripting doctors into service and nationalizing the pharmaceutical factories, the basic economic question would remain. We tend to retreat into cheap moralizing when the economic realities become uncomfortable for us. No matter the health-care model you choose — British-style public monopoly, Swiss-style subsidized insurance, pure market capitalism — you end up with rationing: Markets ration through prices, bureaucracies ration through politics.

RTWT

Claiming that you have a “Right to Health Care” usually amounts to the assertion that you have a right to force somebody else to pay for goods and services for your benefit, in essence a claim that you have a right to enslave other people.

———————————

Avik Roy puts it a different way. Avik argues that our right to health care consists of our right to obtain health services through voluntary interactions with health care providers, and Government is taking away that right.

For those enrolled in government-run health insurance, it is illegal to try to gain better access to doctors and dentists by offering to make up the difference between what health care costs, and what the government pays.

That basic right—the right of a woman and her doctor to freely exchange money for a needed medical service—is one that 90 million Americans have been denied by their government. …

You see, health care is a right, in the same way that liberty is a right. And that liberty—to freely seek the care we need, to pay for it in a way that is mutually convenient for us and our doctors, is one that our government is gradually taking out of our hands.

RTWT