I do think a Bonfire of the Vanities is brewing. In modern terms that bonfire means an assault on society, prosperity, and wealth by the forces of entitlement and ignorance. It is violence committed by the entitlement class, not only because they feel deserving, but because they know they can get away with it. Thomas Sowell notes in several of his books how the left's soft-on-crime approach (blaming "society" and "root causes" rather than punishing criminals) has lead to skyrocketing crime rates. Why? Well, because criminals are less likely to be punished, and they know it and soon take advantage of it. Misguided anti-gun laws have also devastated communities. Again, when criminals know their criminality can go unchallenged, they are more likely to commit crimes.

The interesting modern twist on "The Bonfire of the Vanities" is the number of people who are now dependent on hand-outs by the government. It is well known that such hand-outs, instead of invoking gratitude, ingrain a sense of victimhood and entitlement. In short, we make a meaner society the more we move towards socialism. "Socialism" is yet another bogus feel-good word by the left. Capitalism (the free market) is the most social thing we have other than churches and other voluntary private clubs and organizations. You have to be social to make a living in the free market. But, ironically, under "socialism" you need only be a parasite and a pest.

Once a person receives hand-outs, the ego protection system kicks in and, instead of thinking of themselves as free-loaders, they think of themselves as deserving. When this is ingrained into a society and is widespread, you create a hostility against people and towards wealth itself. That is the seeds our President and his Marxist-socialist cohorts on the left are sowing and intentionally sowing, and have been doing now for decades, sometimes unopposed. And when the money runs out — and it will and is running out — that bonfire will sweep across our society. What took place in France a year or so ago in a prolonged riot of burning cars will look like a Boy Scout Jamboree compared to what is coming.

And then our society will really face its moment of truth. Will we listen to the Democrats, Marxists, and socialists as they continue to blame George Bush and everyone else under the sun but themselves? I honestly don't think we're at the point yet where we will pass this test. But what has me thinking of this subject at the moment is that our business was broken into yesterday. Little damage was done, but I was talking to the alarm company guy and he told me that there has been a surge of break-ins with his customers, and he doubts it's simply a phenomenon happening just to his customer base. He thinks it is likely a sign of something larger going on. This could well be so.

Anyway, as well as talking about cats and such, this will be the place to talk about the recurring bonfires as they flare up. It should be quite an ugly show as Marxism and socialism begin to reap what they have sown.

Oh jeez BN sorry to hear that it is such a violating circumstance.

New York City is a bastion of the handouts. I remember a symposium I saw were college students were able to ask this high ranking official from the Governors office questions. First they all attacked him claiming the state spent more money on prisons. When he said no that is not true the NY state spends the majority of it's budget first on healthcare and second on education. The crowd went ballistic calling him a liar. They didn't want the truth they only wanted to believe the lies their local community leaders lead them to believe.

The best one was this young women. She gets up to the microphone then says I am a single mother of three. It is hard going to school. What are you going to do for me. The girl was probably no more than 20 years old. Well for starters sweetheart lets learn to keep our legs shut. But NYC is to blame for such scenerios. The entitlement programs only encourage such behavior. Without doubt she was getting free housing free food free cloths free healthcare etc etc etc. What she was looking for that day was free daycare a free nanny and whatever else she could milk from the system.

The best thing about all of this the guy they were attacking was black.

You just wonder how long the answer will be to just keep increasing the deficit and the debt to shore up the fact that the government is too broke to nanny state fucking ONE person, forget millions upon millions.

I think it would be kind of liberating for the government to just say, OK, we fucked up, you're on your own. Just because that's closer to reality anyway.

Yes, there will be rage that the government can't be all things to all people. Yes, blood will run in the streets. But I'd rather live in a world with at least some grip on the truth of the situation, instead of fantasy lollipop-land reality.

Yes, you'll have a lot of people wondering "what'll I do?"... well, what do crack whores do when they need cash? Suck dicks. Anything. But it'll drive home the point that you're living life as a crack whore instead of a self-actualized human being.

A small crackle of flame. There's a big controversy in Seattle where a police officer finally had to resort to punching this lunatic chick who was attacking him. What we're hearing from police officers more and more is that yutes are dangerously arrogant and have little respect for the law. It's not just disrespect. It's becoming open defiance.

Up another 1/4 degree.

Oh, I see bonfires stuff happening all the time on TV now. BP money is going to go to Unions (eye roll), to try and forestall some of it... but we're so damn close to riots in the streets.

About this recent Seattle event of the woman beating on an officer until he finally has to punch her, the local conservative radio guy, John Carson excoriated the black community agitator leader of some organization (NAACP?) who was reflexively trying to gin up racial division and "never waste a crisis." This kind of stuff has become a snake oil industry. But this morning, conservative radio morning guy, Bryan Suits, noted that general reaction of the people and media has been fair and generally supportive of the officer.

It just doesn't look good hitting a lady. But I say that's what tasers or pepper spray is for. Exactly that kind of situation.

I came from a school system where this kind of thing happened all the time. Cops used to break up fights, including those between large and formidable female teenagers who started resisting and fighting back. And just from sheer size and strength, they were an actual physical match for many of the officers. But even back then, the police knew that punching, or laying a nightstick on a teen girl was going to make them look bad. So they had to stick with wrestling moves. And if they couldn't... they just used backup until they could get the girl under control.

Tasers are the right answer. Lots of people say no, but it's basically phasers on stun.

quote:

It just doesn't look good hitting a lady.

That was no lady. You know, the more I learn about the religion of the left, the more I'm comfortable with the idea of humanism if only because I'm tired of all the other little undeclared religions infesting society. The left is no longer primarily a different vision of economics, as it arguably once was. It's now a full-blown religion infested by an anti-American-tilted version of pacificism, an anti-scientific version of environmentalism, an anti-individual version of politics and economics, and just an overall mythical belief that rough spots in life are somebody's fault and that those rough spots can be eradicated by our secular Popes, whether they be presidents or high-ranking EU officials. This is a full-blown religious-like orientation to life utterly disconnected from even the common-sense notions of Christianity where suffering is understood to be a part of life.

This is a religion heavily infested by the idea of the "noble savage," the mythical idea that man, in his native form before the advent of his corrupting capitalist greed and technology, lived in harmony with nature and each other. This noble savage idea is further articulated with the idea that white men have exploited the "people of color" and that is why there is poverty in the world. We are rich not because we've worked hard and made use of technology, but because we (primarily white people) have exploited the poor. In the eyes of the Cult of Liberalism, it's not more free market opportunity that is needed, but less. The election of Obama, for all intents and purposes, was the attempt by a lot of gullible white people to absolve themselves from the sin of being all that they are (free, hard-working, educated people producing wealth in the free market).

Terrible things have happened in the past because Christians believed in a perfect afterlife. Sometimes they have jumped the gun on heaven and have waged a war on "sin" that was unreasonable. Heaven could still exist without burning people at the stake for having different beliefs, but Christians did not always see it this way, and today's Muslims even more so show their lack of faith in an afterlife as they try to bully their beliefs onto others in the here-and-now.

Arguably good things have also been the result of a heavenly vision as it has allowed man to live reasonably and non-zealously with a world that was never going to be able to be shaped in a way that would match a perfect vision and thus people could be allowed to make their way in the real world. Perfection is put in the afterlife and there is an acknowledgment of the "tragic" aspect of human existence. It can't be perfect and never will be perfect. Sowell calls this the "tragic vision" and it is a necessary one because unless you account for the facts of the world and of human nature itself, you will create havoc. To put blame onto other people for the inherent difficulties of the world is to create a nightmare.

Doing just that has been the record of the left everywhere they have gone as they really do believe they can, and should, create a social utopia on earth. When their vision falls short (as it always will), it's not the fault of the vision. It’s the fault of people for being ignorant, selfish, or rebellious. It is the left that must try to govern via "reeducation camps" and propaganda of all kinds because it is reality itself they are attempting to overcome and overturn. It all blends itself into a deeply and obnoxiously religious orientation to life, and one (like any fundamentalist religion) that is an enemy to humanity and, of course, to any conception of humanism as well.

The main reason it "looks bad" when a cop defends himself from a criminal is that the dogma of the left (quite contrary to fact) is that crime is caused by "society" or poverty and thus the resulting behavior of the criminal (especially ones who are "people of color") is just a somewhat righteous and understandable "acting out" against injustice and oppression. As many have noted, if the officer had been black or the woman white, the usual agitators from the left would have been silent because it wouldn't have been an offense against their religion (and certainly not an opportunity to dredge up discord).

The left is striving for heaven on earth. And this child-like and somewhat narcissistic orientation to life leads many to think they can do anything they want, and if the result leads to something bad, it's not their fault. The left teaches the "if it feels good, do it" orientation to life. Individual impulses are always true and right in keeping with the conception of the human as inherently good, corrupted only by ignorance, prejudice, or any other thing you can conceive of that can, of course, be eradicated with the right "re-education" (which is to say "with the right propaganda"). But sometimes what we want isn't right or good. Sometimes our impulses, no matter how right they feel to us, are dumb, destructive, or evil. Any conception of human beings as "noble savages" corrupted only by a world made evil my technology, competition, and ambition is a vision destined for a tragic result.

The left has always been somewhat of a child-like mindset, but never more so than today. And note how the left is weakened, not strengthened, by reality, facts, and hard work. Their ideology tends to undermine all three as, through big government, they increase dependence on government, dumb-down the education process, and punish work through high taxes while rewarding laziness. That is the world we're living in now. The punch the officer threw at the "lady" was most offensive because it ran contrary to the religious mythology of the left.

Fueling the Bonfire of the Vanities are the changed and changing rules of crime-and-punishment. Sowell in a couple of his books cites statistics about crime before and after the left changed the rules. As you'd expect, after we started treating criminals as victims and law enforcement as the perpetrators, crime rates soared. The myth of the left is that they are the compassionate and caring people, but this is only a myth.

All very well put. But men close-fisted hitting women looks bad no matter which way you slice it. I mean that's easily misconstrued as Taliban-grade. Of course, every Taliban saw that video and went, "what's the big deal? Punch the bitch!" lol.

Now, I will grant that some women are formidable when they resist, and to physically subdue them is not much easier than subduing a man. A woman with military training, for example, could probably kill a cop with her bare hands. But again I say, that was a job for a taser or pepper spray. Like it or not, one of a cops' jobs is PR... not looking bad in front of the cameras.

I think the rules are different for women unless they are armed. Subdue with an armlock or other hold, and failing that, go for nonlethal debilitating force rather than hitting them with a closed fist. The cop should probably come off looking chivalrous in these situations. But I do agree it's because of leftist victim culture, and all the stupid associations and mischaracterizations you cite.

You're probably right in terms of image. But I wonder how much better a taser looks in front of the camera? Would it remind one of a cattle prod? (Here's the video for those who havebn't seen it.) With the taser, is there a body that squirms around in convulsions on the ground for a while? In some ways, a straight punch seems more human to me. Ultimately, I'm not sure what means of law enforcement will ever please the "black community" other than just doing nothing. But, of course, there are the people who live in the community who are often begging for more law enforcement, and then there is the ACORN-like agitating "black community" that draws its power from stirring up as much racial hatred and paranoia as they can.

It may look like this is just an emotional housewife who is out of control for a moment, but police who have been on the street a few years probably learn quickly that deadly threats to themselves know no race or gender. My brother (an ex firefighter) told me that responding to domestic disputes were the most dangerous of all, for both cops and firefighters. A woman might be beating the hell out of her husband one minute but then the next pull a knife on the cops who came to break up the fight. The PC image is that men are always the abusers, but this doesn't even barely square with reality. Women can be very dangerous.

The main problem of political correctness is image trumping reality. Well, the reality is that someone who is not only not cooperating with a police officer but is assaulting that officer is a threat, not a nuisance. When you face this stuff every day, you either take it seriously or you die. Modern politically correct culture states it's better for the officer to increase the risk he will die then to muss with the PC images we hold in our head. Granted, I have no problem whatsoever with a taser being used instead of a punch. The point is to disable a person who is an out-of-control threat. But a harmless "attention getting" punch (which the officers are trained to use) works the same way. It just doesn't look as good. These guys see so many situations where one person is distracting them while another looks to shoot or stab them. The officer simply must keep a zone of safety around himself. If that was my own mother hassling an officer like that, I'd say she got exactly what she disserved and I would call AARP a Nazi-like organization if they then tried to make a big deal about it. In fact, even so this woman was treated with kid gloves. Any man would have had a knee implanted in his back as he was driven to the ground and cuffed.

There's a great book out (I forget the title…I haven't read it yet) that shows that racial profiling and other abuses by police, much like the other claims of the left, is either largely exaggerated or an out-and-out myth. We have so built up this idea that our police are bullies that we've tied their hands. We have become so enamored with the idea it isn't people running wild and committing crimes who are the problem, it's "society." And the police are the very embodiment of the protectors and power of that society. Things are so sick and out-of-balance now, that we wring our hands at the slightest errors of police (or even things that just look bad) while often saying little about the scumbags these police are in daily contact with. Where cops overstep their authority or use excessive force, they need to be disciplined (but not made into scapegoats). But I don't envy them their jobs. What they face today because of political correctness is nearly an impossible task.

More dry tinder being piled upon the growing stack waiting to be lit. This time it's the black racism of the Black Panthers.

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And speaking of anarchy and crime, I have a cousin who travels somewhat regularly to Brazil on business. He tries to schedule his arrivals for Sunday morning when the airport and streets are less crowded. He told me he tells his driver "Let's just get going and don't stop." I guess Rio (and not just in the City of God) is extremely crime-ridden.

Now they want to kill Glenn Beck, who they resent for calling them out. He needs a bodyguard. Beck's show on the Panthers was such a humiliating pie in their racist faces. No wonder they are worked up.

Beck played that "kill white babies" clip about twenty times on radio, and about five times on TV last night. It was great. And great how he called out Cuntlosi for tearfully telling us how she's seen ugly racist rhetoric like the Tea Partiers before. About the New Black Panthers? Not a peep. Not a tear.

Our Democracy the rule of law the checks and balances do not exist as it stands right now.

We are being governed by an out right Dictator that has been given carte blanche to do what ever he wants in absolute terms by the blessings of Congress run by the terrorist duo House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority leader Reid.

I am certain when the Justice Department dropped the voter intimidation case against these radical bigots it would only open the flood gate to make them even more radical. Here we are and the very same lunatic is telling black people to free themselves they need to kill white crackers and their babies.

Bravo Neo-Marxist President Hussein.

Bad Moon Rising

I see the bad moon arising.
I see trouble on the way.
I see earthquakes and lightnin'.
I see bad times today.

Don't go around tonight,
Well, it's bound to take your life,
There's a bad moon on the rise.

I hear hurricanes ablowing.
I know the end is coming soon.
I fear rivers over flowing.
I hear the voice of rage and ruin.

Don't go around tonight,
Well, it's bound to take your life,
There's a bad moon on the rise.

Hope you got your things together.
Hope you are quite prepared to die.
Looks like we're in for nasty weather.
One eye is taken for an eye.

Don't go around tonight,
Well, it's bound to take your life,
There's a bad moon on the rise.

Don't go around tonight,
Well, it's bound to take your life,
There's a bad moon on the rise.

That song always cracked me up because the melody is so peppy and happy, and the lyrics are so dark.

But holy crap, the voice of rage and ruin is right. But I don't think the bonfire is coming from racist crackpots. It's going to come from union and government pensioneers whose benefits will suddenly be cut. It's going to come from foodstamp and other welfare people whose benefits get cut. The true bonfires and rioting comes when you promise free stuff and then run out of other people's money to pay for it.

That's what we're heading for. And historically, the pattern is to point the mob at the rich or the middle class. And get the mob to blame them for the fact that they are fucked. Rather than the politicians who fucked them.

Speaking of racist rants, holy crap have you heard the Mel Gibson crazy ass phone call released to the press by his extortionist Russian girlfriend? Jeez Louise. Only a woman can drive a man that nuts. Oh, and bottle upon bottle of booze.

It's full of career ending postmodern soundbytes, as he rips into this chick for having fake tits, and dressing provocatively. The coup-de-grace is something about her looking like "a fucking bitch in heat" and running the risk of getting "raped by a pack of niggers".

He doesn't trust her. He doesn't want her. He doesn't love her. But he's letting her live in the house, and he'll take care of their daughter.

I've heard that nasty, spleeny tone before, it's the signature of drunks. All it tells me is that Gibson is a textbook nasty drunk. And he's drinking again. That's the bottle talking. It's one of the typical symptoms of advanced alcoholism.
Drinking causes Mel to turn into his racist father. The more he drinks, the more he rails on blacks, jews, hispanics. I'm telling you, the sauce does this guy no good. And he's never matured past his daddy issues, whatever the hell they are.
audio of the phone call

LMAO. That would make great dialogue for a Jack Nicholson film.

There could indeed be alcohol involved. But what Mel's got going on is the need to degrade other people in order to make himself feel better. We saw that with all the really rude and crude remarks regarding Palin. We see it when Jeremiah Wright goes off on his tirades against Jews. We see it when Eric Holder affirms the idea of black racial superiority when he lets Black Panthers off the hook. We see that fierce need for superiority just about every time a liberal opens their mouth.

You know this is the operative thing when (like the left) someone takes something good (whether big boobs or the Constitution) and tries to degrade it. What we need need to do is view the words coming out of Keith Olbermann's mouth in the same way, even when he isn't drunk. And we need to understand that same thing is coming out of our president's mouth every time he degrades and dumps on America and the Constitution.

Mel's got nothing on these other abusers.

Pack of Niggers? Shouldn't it be a Pride of Niggers?

Oh Lord don't touch that. Humor. Better broeder Fang than me.

The best part of all of this the networks will be running the Gibson sound clips add nausea. His statements are bigoted.

On the other hand we have the new black panther leader King Samir Shabazz better known as Maurice Heath the same guy the Hussein White House Justice Department dropped clear and evident voter intimidation charges against was recently ranting to black people to free themselves they need to kill crackers and their babies.

There is no coverage of this on the networks. There is no coverage on the racist system that has been instituted in the Hussein Justice Department lead by AG Holder that dropped the case turning a blind eye by the government involving black on white racism.

I don't know if this is old news or new news, but here's another call where Mel Gibson is whispering sweet nothings in his lover's ear.

"You went to sleep and didn't blow me. I deserve to be blown first before [you use] the fucking Jacuzzi."

"I just want my daughter and a maid. It's a lot less fucking trouble. They clean up after themselves. They make their god damn bed, which you did not. You do not have to worry about emotional blackmail or any of that other bullshit you put me through."