1984 Is So Here

This seems impossible, but it is on "The Atlantic" website....unless it's a pretty neat hoax.

Apparently, it is now a CRIME to unlock your smartphone (the one you bought....your property), so that you can use it with any carrier you want.

Now, does that seem a bit draconian?

Ya think?

Has this been updated? Revised? Revoked?

How is this possible? 

The Gunslinger

UPDATE:  Another Source.

Un-Fucking-believable.

I just made it under the wire - NOT A FELON! Yipee!

I bought my smartphone through T-Mobile, the worst of all possible carriers. I worked with them from the beginning to actually get signal to my house. When it proved impossible, the "grace period" for cancelling my contract had barely passed, and they refused to let me out of it without demanding a termination fee. 

THE FACT THAT I ONLY WANTED TO CANCEL BECAUSE THEY COULD NOT PROVIDE THE SERVICE DESIGNATED IN THE CONTRACT TO WHICH THEY ALSO WERE A PARTY....didn't matter to them. They had me on timing, regardless of the fact that they had never fulfilled their part of the contract: TO PROVIDE ME WITH SERVICE at my residence.

They also refused to give me the unlock code for the smartphone I had, which was tied to their network.

So. T-Mobile could not provide service. Yet, would not allow me to cancel the contract without penalties, and insisted on making my smartphone useless to me.

They're REAL ASSHOLES.

Happily, I purchased my phone before the effective date of this freedom-crushing law, and was able to purchase an unlock code from a third party and now have a functioning smartphone on another network, that actually provides service. 

AT&T. They should get credit for good service and good signal. Even as T-Mobile should be cast into the sea and forgotten by history.

Except as an example of how NOT to run a company.

So, anyway, given my experience...this fucked up law would have made my VERY EXPENSIVE phone nothing more than a doorstop. Would have forced me to buy another VERY EXPENSIVE phone in order to get the service I originally contracted for with T-Mobile...but never got.

So the government is now in league with T-Mobile to fuck the next sucker out of service, signal, termination fee, and phone.

Nice.

Goodbye, sweet America.

How did is come to this?

/Gun

SECOND UPDATE:

Isn't there an opportunity here? Start a company that sells unlocked phones directly to consumers...with the guarantee that they can take them anywhere, to any carrier, to any network at any time.

I like it. If you make it happen before I do, great. More competition, the lower the prices go.

Let's get on that!

/Gun
 

A 236-Year Run?

I know it's blogs like this where you find the apocalyptic conversations and predictions...and there are a lot of very nice people (some of them are my friends) who just don't think any of that is likely, feasible or probable. They believe America will somehow muddle through as it always has, and the cycle will continue back around, or the pendulum will swing back...or whatever metaphor is convenient.

But here's the deal:

When the Supreme Court takes on the Øbamacare forced-mandate-on-individual-citizens it will be the critical moment for America.

If the SCOTUS decides that the mandate is unconstitutional, we're cool. Øbamacare falls apart and we return to some semblance of normalcy.

But, if they decide that it is legal, WE ARE SCREWED. And the SCOTUS will have abandoned the Constitution, the Rule of Law, Freedom, The Founders, and the Idea of America.

And the United States of America will be over. Dead. Done. Kaput.

If the government can mandate that you must buy healthcare, simply because you are alive, it can force you to do anything it wants, using the same argument: (1) it is good for the collective or (2) it is good for the individual.

Once that power is claimed by the State, individuals will have no defense against it on any ground whatever.

Every one of our civil rights will have been stripped away in one fell swoop.

By that reasoning, religion, speech, gathering, due process, gun rights will all be subject to the determination of the State as to whether they are "good for the collective" or "good for the individual"... and will be permitted or forbidden as decided by the whim or preference of our masters.

Others will make more refined arguments using fine points of law, and will no doubt understand them far better than I do, but that will not alter the fact that once the State can force you to buy something just because it wants to...it can do whatever the hell it wants by using the exact same reasoning...and legal precedent will have been set for the end of liberty and the flowering of tyranny.

On that day SCOTUS decides this one case, America will survive or America will die.

Yeah, it's that important.

The Gunslinger

Small Kings

Here is a comment I want to draw your attention to. By RedStater, at American Thinker.

"The one thing that has happened over the past 80 years to cause the Small Person Effect is that the system has been steadily rigged to enrich those small people disproportionately to their job. Getting elected to federal office has become a bit like winning the lottery. Instead of being a lowly public servant sacrificing potential gain for the good of the country, today's elected officials have made themselves kings, rulers and emperors for life, demanding perks reserved for royalty, flying on personal Air Force planes, chauffered limos, huge expense accounts, 5 star hotels, exemption from the laws they enact for the rest of us, a ridiculously lavish pension for short stint in office, the ability to legally profit from investments based on information that would put you or I in jail, and an almost guaranteed middle 6 figure income at a large corporation for "consulting" them on legislative issues after leaving office. Oh, there's more, too, lots more. So huge are the benefits of "public service" in the house or senate than a good number of them become millionaires in just a few years after getting elected. Where else can you get a job where you can vote yourself your own pay raises? Where else can you "redistrict" and rig your voting constituency to virtually guarantee perpertual re-election?


What this does, of course, is attract a class of people who are drawn by self interest. Ego, lust for power, and desire for wealth all converge in a person to form the perfect storm of the modern public servant. I believe that this is the reason they are so vicious and destructive to one another. The office they seek is much like Tolkein's Ring; the power it hold infects the soul of the one seeking and holding it. Of course, the type of person needed to withstand such attacks and to launch them at others must have a complete disconnect from their empathy for others. They mush be shut down emotionally to the point that the opposition can say the cruelest things about them and they just smile at the camera. The must be able to allow themselves to be treated like a product and managed by a team of handlers. They must be able to lie and really believe the lies, or at least rationalize them. They must be so convinced of their greatness and so enamored by the payoff that they will allow themselves to be dragged through a sewage trench of two years, having much of it splash all over their families and friends, see their every past mistake turned into national news, and be willing to spend 50 times more of other people's money to get elected than the job will ever pay. And we wonder why we're in such trouble as a country."

Here is the article to which this comment refers. I consider the comment more potent. (Though the article is good too.)

The Gunslinger

For Your Own Good...

Here's the story that illuminates this ('shopped) photo.

The Gunslinger

So Egregiously Out of Control

You think I'm paranoid.

Not so much...

Red State's Francis Cianfrocca's piece: The Stakes in the Catholic Church Abortion Debate are Higher than You Might Think.

In this case, the Obama Administration has ruled unilaterally that health insurance programs provided by the Catholic Church must pay for abortions. Forget about the welter of discussion about whether the Federal mandate extends beyond those of many states. That’s not the core issue here.

For the government to say, as it has, that its goals are prior to the Catholic Church’s core beliefs, is precisely to say that government power is unambiguously senior to all other claims.

This is radically counter to the doctrines of the American founding. It’s more radical than anything that even FDR said during the New Deal. It quite simply elevates government to the level of a religion.

Democrats should beware. Imperial Government is bad for everyone; even them, eventually.

The Gunslinger

Killing Christ

You think I'm....

Never mind. You get the idea:

"When the attacks on freedom of speech and religious liberty are coupled with the dangerously imprecise National Defense Authorization Law, the nation is faced with a poisonous mix that could well prove fatal to liberty.

If American Christians and others of faith, including those in the military, don't rise up against the tyrannous conduct of this administration, they shouldn't be surprised when their local priests, pastors, or chaplains are hauled away to prison for teaching what the Church believes."

Read the whole thing.

This foulness isn't defeated in November, we are totally screwed. And unless we get a real conservative to immediately start rolling back the worst of the asshole's offenses and outrages, we're screwed anyway.

The Left WILL NOT STOP. But we have not been vigilant.

And this is what happens.

Evil does not rest....so neither can righteousness.

The Gunslinger

Connect the Fucking Dots...

Congress okays using drones in American airspace for spying on citizens.

Is it still too early to shoot the bastards?

The Gunslinger

Will We Survive?

This is very distressing. We'd better get ready. The Left will not tolerate our survival.

Honestly, I don't know what to do. For me, in Kaliførnia, it doesn't matter, there is hardly a conservative to target. But one of the things I cling to for mental and emotional stability and comfort, is that elsewhere in the country, in Red States...there are people, regular American Voters who elect the Right people.

And it is my fervent hope that they continue to do so, so that when I can get the fuck out of here...I can go to one of those places and live among "my people".

When I see them targeted in what one thinks of as "safe" places, by loathsome fanatics with bottomless treasuries at their disposal, and armies of mindless, lurching zombies...I despair.

I despair.

The Gunslinger

The Media's Favorite Dictator

We live in a madhouse. I just don't understand the determined refusal to accept reality.

The horror is grossly obvious, for everyone to see...if only they will.

Shame, shame, shame on the United States Media....all the world's media. Shame as they help deliver mankind into the jaws of tyranny.

The Gunslinger

Mentally Disordered Statists...

From a comment out there in blog land:

...The wise approach, however, has an additional problem for President Obama beyond his deeply self-absorbed personality: As a Progressive, Obama believes that government should be able to do almost anything…and should do everything it can. Obama is part of a presidential Progressive lineage going back through FDR, Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson who believed that technocrats should be in charge of most aspects of American life, that private citizens are too stupid to manage their own lives so we need Progressives to do so for us. One might say that Progressivism is an inherently narcissistic philosophy...

Emphasis mine.

I think that final sentence is a very important and insightful observation. It makes perfect sense once you've been introduced to the idea.

And...if I might add, it lends credence to Michael Savage's dictum that "Liberalism is a mental disorder"!

The Gunslinger

2010 = 1984?

The next big power grab. Will "Right Wing" opinion be considered a "threat"?

What am I saying...to the ØbamaZømbies, it already is.

Demons...er....Democrats in action.

Hold onto your souls. Because THESE are the times that try 'em.

Some talk about a "soft tyranny". I don't think there is any such thing. Hardcore tyranny just starts out that way when necessary to seduce the sleepy sheep.

The Gunslinger
(Awake and Wolfish)

More Øbama Bad Choices

More on the corruption and Progressive Tyranny front:  Obama's  absurd commission to look into the BP oil rig explosion includes at least two anti-oil, global warming activists.

What a friggin' surprise. Almost as brilliant as putting a pedophile in charge of school safety.

Or an enemy of Free Speech in charge of the FCC...

Or an enemy of Equality Before the Law in charge of the Justice Department...

Or an enemy of the Free Market in charge of Green Jobs...

Or an enemy of Freedom in charge of Regulation...

...et cetera ad nauseum

It's pretty hard to be surprised. But it's still easy to be disgusted.

Wes Tunnel of Texas A&M, (apparently someone whose brain has not yet been eaten), said...

...the selections indicate the panel will look at broad energy policies. "That's too bad," he said. "We need to focus on what happened here and what we can learn from this."

Ya think?

The Gunslinger

Words Have Meaning

I heard a "news" man on the radio to day talking about shooting at a church in Oakland at the funeral of a guy who had been shot by his teenaged girlfriend. I'm sure it was gang related. So I don't have a drop of compassion for anyone involved. But that's not what this is about.

The announcer said, "Five people were arrested and three guns were recovered."

Now....what's wrong with that sentence?

"RECOVERED" is what's wrong with that sentence.

What the hell does "three guns were recovered" mean? Were they "recovered" by the owners?

I don't think so.

Were they "recovered" by the police? Apparently. Does that mean the police lost them? That they previously owned them? That the guns were stolen from them?

Isn't that a bigger story? How the police lost guns that were subsequently used in a crime?

If not, how is it they were "recovered"? Of course, what the mindless idiot reading the pre-written copy should have said is that "...three guns were confiscated".

Three items of personal property were TAKEN by police.

Recovered.

That, my friends, is NewSpeak. Making is sound like guns taken from citizens are actually being returned to their rightful owner...the State.

Recovered.

So....that's what they're calling it now.

I wonder how long it will be before the jackboots come to "recover" MY guns?

Words have meaning. And the meaning of this is that private property now properly belongs to the State.

We have been warned.

The Gunslinger
(Have Dictionary Will Travel)

"I don't pay no stinking Taxes..."

Nearly Half of US Households Escape Federal Income Taxes.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Tax Day is a dreaded deadline for millions, but for nearly half of U.S. households it's simply somebody else's problem.

About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That's according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization.If you don't pay Federal Income Taxes, you should not be able to vote in National elections.

If you don't pay Federal Income taxes, you should not be allowed to vote in National elections.

If you don't pay State Income Taxes, you should not be allowed to vote in State elections.

If your NET liability is ZERO....you can't VOTE!

This is not a difficult concept.

Indeed, it's the concept on which this country was established.

You don't get to decide who pays how much in taxes, what it goes for,  and to whom... if it ain't your money.

I want to start a movement.

'Course, since almost 50% of "citizens" are getting a free ride...I guess the chances of it passing if put to a vote are pretty slim.

Maybe we need to create a new country on the original American principles...and keep the parasites, zombies and vampires out this time.

I'm working full time trying to "save the country", but sometimes I lose faith that it can be done. And statistics like these add to my pessimism.

"Voter" doesn't mean anything anymore. It certainly doesn't mean "Citizen". And now it doesn't even mean "Taxpayer".

The Gunslinger
Vampire/Zombie Hunter

No. No. No. HELL NO!

This is not just an outrage. This is a disease. Infecting the Federal judiciary.

We cannot live in a world where such decisions are made by people in authority. Or by people who consider themselves "normal".

Keep in mind that this comes from a group of so-called "worshipers" in the congregation of a so-called "church." Applying more disgrace to their evil tactics, they also use children to hold signs with hate-filled slogans. Evidently, they think that it's perfectly natural to teach kids to spew acid-laced venom at innocent bystanders, but it's unnatural to inform them that gays are different from straights but no less human or deserving of civil rights. In 2006, in another example of mind-numbing malice, they picketed the funeral of Lance Corporal Mathew Snyder, a twenty-year-old Marine who died in Iraq.

The Marine's father, Albert Snyder, sued the church because its members brought signs that read "God hates fags" and "God hates the USA" to his son's funeral. In 2007, Snyder was initially awarded $11 million in damages because the jury found that the church intentionally inflicted emotional distress. The amount was later reduced to $5 million, and then the verdict was overturned on appeal. In addition, last week, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Snyder to pay $16,500 in court costs to Fred Phelps, the founder and pastor of that pathetic excuse for a parochial institution. (In a display of true decency and heartfelt concern for the Snyder family, Fox News Host Bill O'Reilly said that he'll put up the money.) They have a website that says it all: http://www.godhatesfags.com. The very idea that this church exists is frightening. Can anyone assemble a group of hateful misfits and call it a church?

This is not just bad judgment. This is uncivilized. We might as well be cannibals.

Social cohesion cannot survive this kind of undermining. And we cannot depend on the kindness of strangers to save us from a criminally insane autocracy.

Read: False Prophets are Ravenous Wolves

The Gunslinger

Coming to a Neighborhood Near You...

I can't figure out why they didn't just execute her...

Welcome to Utopia!

The Gunslinger
Weren't Jesus' Apostles FISHERMEN.
And doesn't fishing KILL fish??

Just askin'

Saving the Earth

If the Liberal Environmentalists are so interested in saving the Earth from human beings, what are they interested in saving the Earth for?

According to their theory, Man is not supposed to leave footprints on the Earth. Why do they never demand that Earth not leave footprints on Man?

Why doesn't anybody complain that "Nature", whenever given the chance, slaughters us by the millions, and with gusto. What are viruses, drought, disease, germs, famine, storms, floods, fires, earthquakes, frostbite, heatstroke, allergies, colds, flus, cancer, wild animal attacks? They are Earth's TITANIC FOOTPRINT on Man's back, crushing the life out of him!

I don't think I'm being overly HomSapCentric to suggest that Earth's greatest claim to fame is being the source/home/cradle of that completely amazing thinking animal, Homo Sapien. Honestly, one lifeless, mindless planet more or less in the universe can hardly make much difference. Earth without Man wouldn't even rate honorable mention in the Planet Hall of Fame.

I think it's about damn time she started appreciating us!

The Gunslinger

(Originally posted on Gunslinger's Journal Novermber 2, 2007)

Any Questions?

American Thinker Link where you find this:

"Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), the Dean of the House of Representatives for being the longest serving member of the body (he was first elected in 1955, succeeding his father, Rep. John Dingell, Sr.), made an amazing admission during a live telephone interview with Detroit WJR News/Talk 760 radio talk show host Paul W. Smith on Smith's show Monday morning, March 22, 2010. The night before, Dingell had been a featured speaker at the Democrat Congressional leadership victory press conference after Obamacare passed the House.

In response to a question posed by Smith, Dingell said:

"Let me remind you this [Americans allegedly dying because of lack of universal health care] has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you're going to pass legislation that will cover 300 [million] American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people."

The comment by Dingell begins 6 minutes 23 seconds into the twelve minute-long podcast of his interview on Smith's radio show. The podcast is titled "Congressman John Dingell tells Paul W. Smith he is thrilled with the passage of the health care bill." It can be streamed or downloaded as an mp3 audio file from this page at WJR's Web site."


These little blurts of truth are popping up all over the place. Let's not let one of them get away unexploited!

Glenn Beck said the Democrat Party has been consumed by the "malignant tumor" that is its Progressive caucus, and has given birth to the Socialist Party. (So graphic and delightful!)

Dennis Prager concurs (separately) and says we ought to call the Democrats the "Social Democrats" as the same sort of people are called in Europe. And only return to referring to them as Democrats when they abandon their love affair with Marxism.

I like Glenn's better only because nobody has to translate to Americans that "Social Democrats" MEANS "Socialists".

It's the Progressives that use words to obfuscate. Let's always use them to clarify.

The Gunslinger
Use words like bullets

Why Stuff doesn't make us "Materialistic"

America is an IDEA. It's not about an accumulation of cool "stuff".

Communists, aka Democrats/Progressives/Socialists are all about the "stuff". They see ours and want it. And they believe that when they get it, they'll have what we have. That they'll be "equal".

What they don't get is that our stuff is just the byproduct of our IDEA. And without it there just isn't that much stuff to go around.

What's even funnier is that they call us "materialistic" because we've got stuff. But from our point of view, it's just what accumulates when you implement our IDEA.

And of course it's the Commies that are completely materialistic—they are completely obsessed about our stuff, how much we have, where we got it, how they can get it and how to prevent us ever having more of it than they.

It's all they think about. It's all they talk about. Just listen to them. Whether it's clothing, housing, education, broadband, televisions, shoes or health care...they want our stuff.

And they never, ever, get the IDEA! And they always end up losing all their stuff, and then want more of ours.

Losers by definition. Losers by historical fact. Losers till the end.

What's even funnier is that when they've used up, broken or lost all the stuff they've stolen or wheedled from us...they've got nothing again, and no prospects or any more. But as long as we keep our Idea first and foremost, and don't worry about stuff....we'll have more of it than we'll ever need.

You can't miss that point when you compare the quality of life in America to everyone else on the planet...including Europeans.  Our IDEA created, innovated, manufactured, imagined, invented more stuff than the world knew what to do with.

And they all still think it's about the stuff.

I guess it's hard when you're just looking in the window at our success. You don't understand the inner workings, the inner life...all you see is the grand, glorious, sparkling, shining stuff.

But their ignorance does not excuse their attempts to murder our American IDEA. And I for one won't tolerate it, or ever forgive it.

I will die to defend the American IDEA, if necessary, kill to preserve it. And so will millions of others.

Our domestic enemies should really try and understand this...

The Gunslinger
(fair warning)

A DECLARATION OF WAR! - David Horowitz

"The President was right about one thing: The vote on Obamacare last night  was a historic one.

The Democratic Party has in the course of the nine-month health care debate revealed itself to be an anti-democratic Party and an anti-liberty party. It is a party that has demonstrated its contempt for the Constitutional framework,  for the democratic process, and for the expressed will of the American people. Its brazen contempt for the compact that holds the diverse factions of this country together has initiated a political war at home that will extend not only into the next elections but into the next generations that will be encumbered with the trillions in debt and oppressive government controls that the socialist majority in Congress has demonstrated that it is intent on inflicting on this country.

The people of this nation are still sovereign, and their voice will be heard. Last night’s vote was lost but it is not the end of the battle.

It is the beginning."

FRONTPAGE