"Acoustic Song Circle" this Sunday afternoon in Fort Worth

"Acoustic Song Circle" at The Corporate Image, this Sunday at 2:00.  5418 Brentwood Stair Road in Fort Worth.  Bring your guitar and 3 chords, or just show up and listen and drink a few.  It's a fun time!

(The gent who is 2nd from the right in the gray T-shirt is our infamous Dr. Ralph.  Dr. Ralph can play his Democrat rear end off, BTW.) 

Here's how it works.  Somebody starts a song.  The people who know the song play along with whoever is taking the lead on it.  The people who DON'T know the song play along with whoever is taking the lead on it.  Sometimes harmonicas are brought into the equation.  No fake British accents are allowed. 

Other people take turns soloing over the chords every now and then. 

This is me, trying really hard to remember the lyrics to something. 

We're doing this every Sunday afternoon until football blows up the Sunday afternoon time slot.  Hope you can make it this weekend !!

A modest proposal from Perry de Havilland for those who are under attack

Samizdata's Perry de Havilland, one of the guys whose excellent typing got me hooked on this blogging thing, has an excellent suggestion for those trying to respond to the London rioters:  Be a vigilante. 

I am delighted to see that some people are 'taking the law into their own hands' and not just abandoning their communities to the barbarian thugs...

When the trouble came, hairdressers, sales assistants and butchers were among the scores of Turkish and Kurdish workers who stood outside their businesses in Green Lanes, Haringey, from 8pm having been warned by police to expect trouble.

The Guardian filmed others – some armed with baseball bats – on guard outside shops and restaurants in Kingsland Road, only a mile away from Hackney's burning high street. Three workers from Re-Style Hairdressers were among those out in Green Lanes, after word spread that an attack was imminent at about 4pm [...]

"We were outside ready and expecting them," said the manager of Turkish Food Market, who asked not to be named. "But I felt very panicky because we are not safe from either the rioters or police. We put all of our efforts into this shop. It took 20 years to get it like this. But we do not know about our rights. I'm scared that the police and the government will attack us if we defend our businesses. We are being squeezed between the two."

Firstly, to those blaming 'immigration' rather than the welfare state, and the utterly grotesque way the state demands you do not protect what is yours, well people would do well to emulate the Turkish and Kurdish community in Britain. Indeed the looters we see on television and streamed over the internet are so multi-racial it must gladden the hearts of the Welfare Statists who created them.

So when the police decry 'vigilantes', I would point out that communities can often do a better job at protecting themselves than the police can and the folks who got out on the streets, not to loot but to defend their neighbourhoods, well they are the real heroes here.

The safety of you and your property is only tangentially of interest to the state (certainly they want to tax what you own, so to that extend they do indeed care about your life and property), but as demonstrated starkly over the last few days, the state also created the conditions that led to these riots and is therefore rather uneasy about punishing people who, after all, only do what the state does every day only without having to smash any windows.

A community of few people with rifles and something worth protecting are not such a soft target to thugs, even armed thugs, than a disarmed general population looking vainly for the Plod to save them. But for all sorts of reasons, the British state has so effectively propagandised this country that to even suggest armed self-defence puts you on the lunatic fringe... so crowbars and cricket bats it is then.

If these last few days shows anything it is that when push comes to shove, only you and your neighbours can defend against what can only be called barbarian scum. Contrary to what the state would have you believe, you have the right to defend yourself and your property that morally supersede any law that would deny that right. The rioters 'took the law into their own hands' so I applaud those Turks and Kurds (and many others whom the Guardian would not be so keen to report on) who did the same... they took the law back from the barbarians with and put it where it belongs: in their own hands.

Go here to read de Havilland's last sentence.  It says it all. 

If any Fort Worth readers disagree or think it is over the top, come live in the East Side for a while.  Yeah, some places aren't safe.  But if you have proper armaments in your castle, you can sleep like a baby. 

Good luck, London !!!

Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?

From The Boston Herald:

A Quincy mom has disconnected her support for striking Verizon workers yesterday after a group of mouthy picketers surrounded non-union repairmen and turned a phone-line fix at her home into what she is calling a “ridiculous” protest scene.

“I looked in the street and there are picketers, 10 of them or more, doing a circle around the Verizon truck,” said Karen Austin, 64, a mother of five who lives on Forest Avenue. “Every time (the repairmen) would walk up to my house they would follow them. I couldn’t believe my eyes. This is ridiculous. Why are they picketing my house?”

With tensions rising in a work-stoppage now in its fifth day, Verizon filed lawsuits in five states, including Massachusetts, yesterday to limit picketing by the 45,000 striking workers.

The company claims picketers have harassed non-union workers, and has reported suspected sabotage, such as sliced cables. The union has denied sabotage.

Paul Feeney, spokesman for IBEW Local 2222, the Dorchester-based union for 6,000 Verizon landline workers, said picketers take to the streets because that’s where the work is done.

“For us to be able to effectively picket the work that’s being done we have to go out in the field,” he said.

Feeney said the union strategy is to send its message to management outside Verizon offices and stores, and to the public on main streets with high traffic volumes.

“We haven’t actively sought out residential work,” he said. “The last thing we want to do is disrupt the neighborhoods.”

But Austin, who reported the 9 a.m. protest to Quincy police, said she believes the union went too far in her neighborhood.

“I’m not on a main street ... I’m not a business. I’m a person who needed a line fixed,” she said.

The upside of the London riots

From Zero Gov:

The Worshipful Company of Glaziers and Painters of Glass has released a statement in support of the economic stimulus activities undertaken this week in London.

“Over the past three nights,” said guild spokesman JM Keynes, “The brave young people of London have taken it upon themselves to guarantee the economic health of our city for years to come.” Keynes went on to explain that the Glaziers expect a 10,000% increase in demand for new glass windows over the coming weeks, which will employ hundreds of new glassmakers, who are paid as much as six francs for each new window produced.

Shopkeeper F (Frederic) Bastiat took a rather dimmer view of the stimulus package, citing its cost to his business. “Look here,” he said, gesturing to his store’s broken window. “They broke that, broke the door, came in and took things right off the shelves.” Bastiat expects that his insurance will cover some of the damages, but that much of his inventory will be a total loss. “I had a year’s profits tied up, just in what was on the shelves,” he explained. “And some of it they just destroyed! This television was too heavy to steal, I suppose, so they just smashed it.”

Bastiat’s selfishness, though, is not representative of most Londoners. In addition to creating jobs and increasing private spending, the stimulus is providing an increased standard of living for some participants. ”I got tones of stuff todayyyy!” explained one of the stimulus agents via twitter, ” … whop whop … wat ev;; it was free so i took it ennit,, didn’t get caught so[.]”

Hit the link up top to read the rest.  This guy is greatness. 

There is no chance of a U.S. credit default

I heard former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan say this on Meet The Press yesterday. 

"The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default."

There.  Don't you feel better already? 

Why don't we go ahead and print 14 of some trillion dollar bills, and call it even?

Obama 2012 Campaign Poster

This poster isn't fair. 

The Republican Party should be featured in the background of this thing.  The Obama/Reid/Pelosi Axis Of Incompetence didn't get us downgraded by acting alone. 

But damn, this is funny !