Your Tax Dollars At Work: National Endowment for the Arts Burns 100,000 Dollars On A Politically Correct Video Game

Can't make this stuff up. It's really happening.

Safe Sex In Topeka Kansas: Pastor Peters Tells The Tale

Welcome to Topeka, where broad-minded stupidity meets the toothy grin of the welfare state.

Topekan William Marotta sought only to become a sperm donor — but now the state of Kansas is trying to have him declared a father. Nearly four years ago, Marotta donated sperm in a plastic cup to a lesbian couple after responding to an ad they had placed on Craigslist.

Marotta and the women, Topekans Angela Bauer and Jennifer Schreiner, signed an agreement holding him harmless for support of the child, a daughter Schreiner bore after being artificially inseminated.

But the Kansas Department for Children and Families is now trying to have Marotta declared the 3-year-old girl’s father and forced to pay child support. The case is scheduled for a Jan. 8 hearing in Shawnee County District Court.

Mr. Marotta's life has gone seriously pear-shaped, because it never occurred to him that Murphy has a way of riding his black steed into these sorts of situations.

Pastor Peters has wise words to share on this situation, and OS commends them to you. 

My point is not to dwell on the detail but just how much we crave an escape from consequence and responsibility.  By all accounts this was a selfless act (as far as sperm donation goes).  He got no money for it and he had the approval of his wife.  He was helping out a lesbian couple who wanted to be mommy and mommy.  But life is not so simple.  Actions are not without consequence.  Responsibility cannot be written off with a signature on paper.

The state acts in the interest of the state.  It seeks a father and a mother, a stable home, for children.  Absent this ideal, it seeks financial address to help make something as close as this possible.  You may not like it here but we cheer the actions of states who seek out dead beat dads to cough up child support and stand up to their duty. 

Well and truly said, Pastor Peters! But we must further consider this: If Mr. Marotta and his wife decide, since they will be supporting this child, they wish a role in parenting her--up to and including some form of custody if Mommy and Mommy appear to not be getting the job done, there will be hell to pay. The Gay Left will draw their knives on this gent and his family. Wait for it. This story is just getting underway.

By the way: There is a three-year-old child involved here, who is now the legal and political equivalent of a hockey puck. Welcome to the Culture Wars, young lady.

Welcome To 2013, And Hang On To Your Hats: Gunshops Are Packed Out

The good news as we woke up yesterday morning was: Congress, unwilling to watch the markets drop 20% on Wednesday, cobbled together and passed a bill to keep the government running.

The bad news as we woke up yesterday morning was: Congress, unwilling to watch the markets drop 20% on Wednesday, cobbled together and passed a bill to keep the government running.

On another note, Mr. and Mrs. OS purchased a new automobile late last week, and drove to the dealership to pick it up, in a suburban location north of Nashville. Typical suburban small-town, gas station followed by restaurant followed by hardware store followed by gun shop.

Gun shop. Holy cow. The parking lot is jammed, and the store is filled...

Holy Cow.

Bob Owens,  a knowledgeable writer on the subject of firearms and firearms law, etc. posted much the same report. Only he went into the store, to find it had been cleaned out by purchasers.

Gulp.

In a related incident, OS visited a pawn shop in Louisville a few weeks ago, before the Newtown atrocity, to find people from the poor black neighborhood nearby purchasing inexpensive 9 mm pistols for home defense. One 60+ year-old gent explaining, 'I've got to protect my little grandbaby from the home invaders'. The salesman explained that, with a pistol at that sub-200 dollar price point, reliability may be a big issue, which could prove very dangerous for the purchaser. The old gent replied, 'I can't afford that four-hundred dollar model, I'll have to take my chances.'

Holy Moly.

OS fears bloodshed, the operative word being 'fears'. All nerves seem to be on edge, from all corners.

If you are one of those new gun owners, OS urges four things:

1. Join the NRA. Today. Even if you don't own a gun, join to support those millions of responsible owners.

2. Get training, both in markmanship, behavior, and the law. Every county in every state with a concealed-carry-permit law has several good law enforcement officers who offer training. No excuse not to get trained. It is a safety issue, for you and everyone around you. The TV shows make pistol marksmanship look easy, but that is pure fiction. It is not an easy thing to place a  group of shots in an acceptably tight circle from twenty yards, or ten, or five--especially for a novice in a stressful situation. Bullets that miss hit people.

3. Practice. Regularly. Preferably at a range with an instructor.This is a learned skill, not a magic trick. Read, stay informed. And practice. If you are not willing to practice, you are not a good candidate for ownership.

4. Safety first. One of OS's early childhood memories is of his next-door neighbor, a police detective with two young boys in the home. Every evening, he would come home, unholster his service revolver, empty the chamber. The shells went into a dish above the reach of the boys on the mantle, and the revolver was placed in a closed china cabinet, out of reach of the boys. 'Nuff said?

And finally--there are people who should never be allowed to handle deadly weapons.  OS can immediately think of five homes where no guns should be in residence. Period.

Your home may be one of them.

OldSouth Wishes A Merry Christmas To One And All

OS could release a torrent of words upon the world and not begin to describe the depth of his gratitude to his Creator, Saviour and Sustainer; his Prophet, Priest and King; the Word made flesh, full of grace and truth.

Christ reached down and did for OS what was otherwise impossible--out of his mercy and love he reached down and rescued a young man whose life was completely swirling the drain, restored him to health, sanity, productivity, and placed him into an extraordinary marriage and family. Every bit of it completely undeserved, and yet granted in love. Every day since, Christ has done the same.

While OS is loath to preach, he does wish to convey that the Babe in the manger, who is Lord of Creation, offers you the same grace.

Merry Christmas.

Susan Rice Learns The True Cost Of Loyalty To The Winner Of The Nobel Peace Prize

Liberals become enraged when reminded that words have meaning, and that words spoken by government officials about serious matters really do have consequences.

OS has been amused to hear the name-calling at Outside The Beltway to just such assertions.

Susan Rice will never be Secretary of State. That's because she deliberately spread misinformation about the attacks on Benghazi on September 11, 2012. Not just one time, off-hand, but on five different networks, repeating the same disinformation--that the attacks were 'demonstrations' about a YouTube video that simply got out of hand.

That story was coming apart at the seams even as she was attempting to sell it.  She never refuted it, never returned to any of those networks to withdraw it. It was a case of loyalty trumping integrity, and she is shocked to find that the Senate wants a Secretary of State who is in the habit of telling the truth.
  
The Obama White House knew from the get-go that there never was a demonstration.

They knew it was al-Qaeda.

 Obama was too busy fund-raising to bother to rescue those poor people.

She says she was handed an intelligence briefing, one which the CIA later disavowed. Apparently, she didn't bother to ask questions before being sent out to take one for the team.

So, either she knew it was a lie (likely), or was just too lazy to ask questions (possible). In any case, she was completely willing to go out and try to sell the implausible story that a disorganized mob armed itself with mortars and instantly learned how to use them in a coordinated attack viewed real time by the White House situation room.

 It all fell apart, rapidly. She never went back to correct the record, and salvage her credibility.

Obama won his election, but just like Nixon, the odor of a major scandal lingers in the air.

And in dangerous times like these, the last thing this country needs is a replay of that soap opera.

Just Remember, Our Tax Dollars Rescued These Union Members. Violent Mob Outside The Capitol In Lansing Michigan

And Duh' Left characterizes people who attend Tea Party rallies as goons, people who attend church as intolerant morons, people who vote GOP as racist know-nothings.

And these are The Heroes of Duh' Left, doing what they do best.

Expecting to hear a peep of protest from the White House? Don't hold your breath.



Three cheers for the Michigan legislature and governor. Here's hoping and praying that more legislatures gain inspiration from their example. State by state, county by county, village by village, the Obama agenda can be disassembled, one little Leggo block at a time.

By the way, the governor of Tennessee announced today that his state won't bend its citizenry over the table by establishing one of Obama's 'Health Care Exchanges'.

He concluded that HHS is run by a clown circus, and he wants no part of it. And, he realized that the Tennessee legislature would never cooperate in the scheme.

If Himself wants to run the health care system, he can certainly try. He'll be finding fewer and fewer people willing to cooperate, especially as this video of his most loyal supporters circulates.

Julian Hattem: The Campaign That Never Ends. The Presidency That Never Began

Yep, he nailed it on the head.

Already, it feels like he's back on the trail. Just a month after the election, as the fiscal cliff approaches, President Obama has held just one meeting at the White House with Speaker John Boehner in the last three weeks, yet has taken the time to go to Pennsylvania and Virginia and chat with suburbanites and business owners. From the outside, he's building the consensus that he's looking for in Washington. 

But, but. but---we all thought Himself won the election.

Silly us!

The November election was just a way-stop on his endless campaign. This man possesses zero, nil, no skills required for actually governing. It's a point that many have tried to make about Himself for years. He's a Chicago machine pol, with a couple of years in the Illinois Senate, followed by a couple of years in the US Senate, and then to the White House.

He doesn't negotiate because he doesn't know how to actually hold serious conversations about serious things. He doesn't know how to work with Congress or the states of  the Union, so he issues executive orders and has the Justice Department sue the bejeezus out of anyone who dares go off his script.

He does know how to do one thing: Pander to crowds of disaffected people who look to him as some type of secular Messiah. So, he does that.

It beats working.

Meanwhile, OS encountered some other disaffected people last week:

He enjoys visiting pawn shops and antique malls, a guilty pleasure perhaps. But, he has also purchased some real treasures in these places. Last week OS had two hours free, so off he went to pawn shops in Louisville. He browsed at two, before his free hours expired. The first featured lovely, lovely jewelry--and OS regretted not having enough liquid cash to walk out with one particular ring for the sainted Mrs. OS. It was a dandy!

The second was in a less prosperous neighborhood, to state things diplomatically. For all its loveliness, there are swathes of that fair city which are, well, not prosperous. This pawn shop was flogging a model of a 9mm pistol that sells for well under $200.  There were buyers at the counter, one older black gentleman in particular, eager to buy. The salesman told him "I won't promise you it will be reliable. It may only get one shot off before it jams, and that could be dangerous for you. The brand names we feel confident of start at four to five hundred dollars." The old gent says, "I can't afford that, but I've got to protect my grand-babies from the burglars who are breaking in at night."

He handed over his drivers license for the background check, and the salesman called back to the stockroom for one of the 9mm MaybeItWillFire guns.

There weren't any thugs in the store, just middle-aged and older black folks desperate to protect themselves from the thugs. They aren't criminals--they can legally purchase firearms because they have no criminal records. They used to live in lovely middle-class neighborhoods, where their parents felt no need to lock the doors.

This is Life Under Obama. The Campaign That Never Ends. The Presidency That Never Began.

Right-To-Work Arrives In Michigan: The Protests Seem Hollow To OS

Wow. The Michigan House and Senate, both firmly GOP institutions, passed identical Right-To-Work legislation yesterday.

Man bites dog. Someone got something done.

The Democrats, predictably, screamed cursed and walked out.  That's who they are, that's what they do. They can't stop the legislation from being passed, signed, and made the law of Michigan. Since it contains an appropriation, it can't be put on the ballot for recall, either.

Remember 2009/2010, Washington DC, when the Democrat Congress and Democrat House pushed through the BiggestPileOfPorkInHistory, followed by Obamacare? The GOP members did not scream curse and walk out. They did vote against it, though, and were chastised for being 'partisan'.

Labor types flooded the capitol building in Michigan Thursday, cursing and screaming, attempting to disrupt business. No one in the press or GOP called them names.

Tea Party types wrote their representatives, called their offices, traveled to DC to respectfully protest. They were called horrible names, characterized as ignorant, racist, the scum of the earth. Dads and Moms and children, the people who still maintain intact families, own little businesses and go to church. These became The Enemy.

In early 2009, there was a meeting with House GOP members and Himself, with the GOP members begging the President not to pursue this course of action. They were dismissed out-of-hand, with Himself not attempting to conceal his contempt when he crowed 'Elections have consequences'.

Then he accused them of partisanship.

So, here we are, in Michigan, the home of the US Labor movement. Elections do have consequences, and the GOP is control. (How was it that Obama won the state, given the House and Senate results?)
The place is bleeding jobs, with firms moving to Indiana.

Legislation has been passed, which states that union participation is voluntary, and that payment of dues is voluntary. The Democrat cash cow has just been taken to the slaughterhouse. Union leaders will have work for their money, just like everybody else. Businesses will be able to establish and hire people without threat. Employment may return. Can't have that, you know--it may mean the free market actually works, and make people suspect that the union types may just be thugs after all.

The Justice Department will, of course, sue to overturn. It will lose, but it will burn a lot of Michigans' time/money/energy in the meantime.

So, one final thought for the Michigan Democrat and labor machine: Elections have consequences. 
It sucks to be you.

Once Again, Three Loud Cheers For Dean Dad

OS probably votes differently from Dean Dad, but he admires this gent so much.

Dean Dad has the unenviable task of helping to run a community college in the Northeast. He sees the realities of the lives of the young people (and now many not so young) that he is tasked with shepherding through the lower realms of American post-high-school education.  It gets seriously ugly sometimes. Dean Dad is a far better man than OS, by far.

This post is one of the best that has ever, ever, ever appeared on his little corner of cyberspace. It realistically describes, concretely, why young people need to pursue further education, and the consequences for those who don't. He also makes the case for the states to keep paths to education available for everyone, not just the well-heeled.

Well worth reading and taking to heart.

If Only If Only If Only...

'...the Left and its comrades in the press would express even twenty percent of the outrage about the dictatorship now forming in Egypt as they did about Todd Akins ill-informed view of gynecology, Mitt Romney's wealth, and NFL referees--we might have a chance of the entire Middle east not blowing up just now.