Archive for April, 2014

Fascism is always descending on America, but landing on Europe

Tuesday, April 8th, 2014

I’ve seen that a number of times over the past several years. It’s obvious to me that it’s now landing on the US. What with the IRS scandal (still scandalously being ignored by the media), the lies about Benghazi, overreach in several areas by the EPA, the federal bunny inspectors, and a whole host of other things just in government, it’s obvious that we’re no longer a nation of laws, we’re a nation of oligarchs and bureaucrats.

Then you get into the media, which drives the popular culture, and it’s equally obvious. I seldom go to the movies or watch popular television shows anymore, because the viewpoint is blatant and almost omnipresent.

Because of the leftist orientation of Hollywood and the news media, and because of the leftist indoctrination being performed in the public schools and the colleges, our rights as citizens are being abrogated at all levels.

The First Amendment?

Freedom of association is a dead issue now. The Supreme Court has declined to hear the case of a Christian photographer penalized for not agreeing to photograph a gay wedding.

Freedom of speech is also gone. What with free speech zones on college campuses, free speech zones being set up by the BLM, federal plans to monitor newsrooms, and speakers of conservative and pro-Israel stances being prevented from speaking publicly, it’s obvious that free speech is for the left, and nobody else.

Free exercise of religion? Please. You’re not allowed to disapprove of gay marriage, except perhaps if you’re Muslim. Christian holidays are downplayed, because Muslims and atheists don’t approve of them.

The Second Amendment?

Besides all the other efforts to restrict availability of weapons, we now have a new argument: since Leland Yee was running guns and involved with Islamic terrorists, we have to pass the legislation he supports to restrict citizens’ access to weapons. Don’t know who Leland Yee is? See the mention of media bias, above.

The Obama administration has set up new rules that allow a single health worker to abrogate the Second Amendment rights of veterans.

Some Common Core lessons state that the Second Amendment requires gun registration.

I only know of one case recently that involves a Third Amendment argument.

The Fourth Amendment?

We know have municipal SWAT teams being used for “dynamic entry” in situations where a knock on the door would suffice. We have people being searched without the ability to see the search warrant, and the warrant being sealed when they ask about it, and their complaint about it being itself sealed, as well as the order sealing everything.

The Fifth Amendment?

Members of this administration seem to use it a lot, don’t they? When they’re not outright lying under oath, that is.

We’re starting to see some efforts by the states to assert their rights under the Tenth Amendment, but I don’t hold out a lot of hope.

The First Amendment issues also go into the Eich situation at Mozilla. California requires that anyone who donates $100 or more to a cause has that donation associated with them in a public database. Mr. Eich supported Proposition 8 in California some years ago, which stated that marriage was considered to be between a man and a woman. He’s now been forced out of his job by what some are referring to as the “Gaystapo.” That’s enforcement of an approved position in favor of homosexual marriages; it’s no longer permitted to hold a contrary opinion.

I can remember when the position of most homosexuals (at least, the vocal ones) was, “Marriage? That’s for breeders.” That’s gone down the memory hole, and don’t dare think that way, or you may lose your job, too.

I’ve deleted Firefox from my computers, in response. Currently, I’m using Safari at home, and I’ll be trying Iron. Vox Day has an interesting graph showing feedback received by Mozilla. I think it’s telling. So does Will Best.

It’s not looking good for this country. It’s not looking good at all.

It’s all over now

Tuesday, April 8th, 2014

Today marks the end of support for Windows XP. Well, for most of us, that is.

I still use XP at work. Some of the software on the machine won’t run on anything else. I only got rid of my Windows 95 box at the office last year – a decision that’s cost a fair amount of my time recently, since we no longer have access to an obsolete-but-still-useful cross-compiler for a processor that’s past end-of-life, but still in use.

I understand why Microsoft wants and needs to kill XP, but I’ll keep using it. As I said, some of the software on my work machine won’t even run on Windows 7, how can it run on Windows 8?