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Read!

It is fortunate for a lot of people that I no longer have the ability to call in airstrikes.

This is why you never apologize for anything. No matter what you say, they will say something worse and call you partisan if you object.

Karl, your boy prepared for war by telling people to go shopping. Karl, I’ve been in a few tight spots with people shooting at me and I have to tell you that “Go Shopping!” is the absolutely worst war cry I can imagine, although it is a fitting shibboleth for your party.

1. It’s Okay If You’re A Republican

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High court OKs personal property seizures.

These are not run down slum buildings being removed for low-cost housing, or a road, or a school; these are peoples’ well kept homes being taken so a private developer can built his project on their land.

This is the eminent domain taking of private property by Community Redevelopment Agencies to increase property tax revenues or provide new jobs except: there are no guarantees that the projects will ever be built, that what that gets built will actually increase property tax revenues, that any extra jobs will be created. What is guaranteed is that the property owners are being pushed out of their homes or businesses.

I have a history question for the Supremes who voted for this: how, exactly is this different from what Andy Jackson did to the Cherokee over your Court’s objection? If it was wrong for Jackson to steal land from the Cherokee, how can it be right for a city to take these peoples’ homes? Haven’t you just negated the value of real estate law in the US, I mean why bother to file a deed if elected officials can decide to take your property?

It is decisions like this that helped to create Timothy McVee, Ted Kaczynski, et alia. The militias will be pushing this as an example of various conspiracies. The people faced with being ejected now know there’s nothing the courts will do for them, that the majority has been given the right to oppress the minority.

Are they so isolated from reality that they don’t understand that this can lead to violence? They can talk all they want about “representative government”, but everyone knows that most local governments belong to the people with money, and it isn’t going to make much difference to the people who have lost their homes when some official goes to jail later for corruption.

Added Extra: Roger Ailes [the good one] fires up the “wayback machine” to remind us that Bush used eminent domain to “steal” a baseball stadium and make a fortune.

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By now I guess you’ve read that having absolutely nothing left to do, like overseeing the federal government or budgeting, the House has decided that it is necessary to start the long process to amend the Constitution of the United States to protect the flag. If not Susie Madrak has the article.

It doesn’t make any difference that no one in the US bothers to burn the flag anymore. Even flags that are supposed to be burned because they are really ratty looking tend to be stuffed in the bottom of the trash bag to be dumped in a land fill rather than contributing to air pollution and global warming by being burned.

Giving that Congress has never even bothered to pass a law specifying the dimensions of the US flag, [the military has a flag regulation specifying the various ratios, but there is no counterpart for non-military flags] it’s odd that they are showing so much interest.

I think it’s disrespectful for all of these people to be wearing flag patches, for General Myers to wear a flag shirt, for Bush I to have a flag on the back of his boating jacket, for Bush II to sign small flags, but I didn’t feel obliged to tell them that these are violations of the US flag code. Somehow I don’t think these violations are going to be punished under this new amendment, which means the purpose is to punish political expression.

If they want to pass an amendment to protect something that really fits the common definition of sacred, and which is burned a good deal more often than flags in the US, they could be pushing a bill to make it illegal to burn crosses.

[Update: Thanks to August J. Pollak for the flag signing.]

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