Here are my state’s accomplishments this past year:

More money to create government jobs.

More money to expand education.

More money to “save” (read: expand) the subsidy safety net

More government to help implement ObamaCare.

More money for abortion.

More money for college tuition grants.

And yet MORE money for college tuition grants.

Oh… and gay marriage.

There was also legislation to create a new type of business: a “social purpose corporation.” Basically, this is a corporation that can get around the pesky expectations of stockholders by having a stated purpose other than making money.

Hey, Democrats! You know all those rich businesspeople you want to tax to pay for the above? Yeah. Those would be the people this type of corporation will bankrupt, leaving fewer and fewer of the one percent able to foot your incredibly large bill.

I’d like to propose a new bit of word usage:

The one percent – those people not yet robbed of all wealth by the government.

(Next year, this definition will apply to the 1/2 percent.)

Thanks to Misters Chopp and Pedersen for the expensive mailer telling me I’ve lost my future. I really appreciate the heads up!

Read the original post at Chris Is RIGHT.

If you can stand the journalistic fellatio, The Seattle Times notes Obama derided Romney as an out-of-touch multimillionaire, before getting onto his plane headed for California and a $15 Million private fundraiser at the home of George Clooney.

In case you haven’t noticed, talking about the evils of wealth has become the new celebrity cause. Bette Midler. Stephen King has done it. Holland Taylor tweeted to me personally wishing she were taxed more. She couldn’t help that she and her friends were rich; it was an unfortunate side-effect of show business.

In my mind’s eye, Elizabeth Warren stands next to a highway, staring down at a discarded hundred dollar bill, one tear rolling down a noble cheek.

This sentiment – that Hollywood hates its own wealth and success – is everything you need to know about modern liberalism. People who have made it off the set are out of touch, whereas those with show business royal blood are out there, bravely eating canapes and caviar for the poor.

Oh, the struggle.

“I know just how Obama feels,” my friend James Cameron told me while we were scraping together money for a meal at Taco Bell yesterday. We couldn’t afford the bargain basement price of $100 it would have costs us for the privilege of worshiping at the alter of President Every Man. David Geffen echoed the sentiment, then hurled on my shoes. Poor David hasn’t had a decent meal since the 80′s. Just then, Holland Taylor walked by. We begged her for a dollar, but she told us to get lost. She had a president to see!

OK. None of that really happened, but that’s the point. I don’t get invited to George Clooney’s house ever! Who the hell is Barack Obama to tell me about the common man?

Most Hollywood actors and directors have become nothing more than bumper stickers, parroting liberal talking points in an attempt to show how much they empathize with the little people. Hoping, of course, that we will continue to pour money into their coffers so Clooney can afford private staff ensuring he never actually has to brush up against one of the serfs, unless the lighting is perfect.

And these are the people driving Obama fundraisers. The fundraisers Obama gravitates toward like a starving man gravitates toward a puppy mill. How stupid of Republicans to choose a rich candidate who actually knows something about business and finance, over one who fetes with the star of “Ocean’s Eleven.”

Read the original post at Chris Is RIGHT.

Fortunately, Twitter was there to answer that question for the Times, and everyone else in Washington State gnashing their big gay teeth over Republican blood in the water.

As one, just about everyone I follow on Twitter announced that Barack Obama was against gay marriage before he was for it. (When a Democrat does it, it’s called “evolving.” When a Republican does it, it’s called “flip-flopping. For those playing at home.) There were also reminders that Obama’s position now echoes that of Dick Cheney. Some even recalled Laura Bush. In fact, there are lots of conservatives who support either legalizing gay marriage or getting government out of the business.

Naturally, The Seattle Times views Obama’s “pivot” as taking away a talking point from McKenna.

When questioned on his opposition to legalizing same-sex marriage, McKenna and his allies have frequently compared his views to the president’s public position — essentially using Obama’s postion as a shield to make Democratic criticism look hypocritical.

By which The Seattle Times means agreeing with the President who, until yesterday, was “evolving” on gay marriage. It’s totes hypocritical for anyone to point out what Obama believed, before he changed his mind to pander to an increasingly powerful special interest group. Yeah. Obama’s stance and pivot makes McKenna the dirty player.

I think McKenna needs to make just one statement: “Unlike Barack Obama, I am not a weather vane.”

Read the original post at Chris Is RIGHT.

Photo by Gage Skidmore

I love waking up to Twitter discussions. You learn a lot about the issues by paying attention to what others are saying, especially before your first cup of coffee, after which you’ve thrown up your mental barriers a bit.

At issue this morning was this article, wherein a a Pima County GOP Executive Committee member claims Reince Priebus has violated the national RNC rules, specifically rule number eleven.

Supporting evidence for this claim seems to consist entirely of the two quotes toward the bottom of the article, where Priebus states Mitt Romney is the presumptive presidential nominee, and further asserts he plans to merge RNC efforts with the Romney campaign.

“It’s my intention to have a seamless and complete merger between the presumptive nominee and the Republican National Committee,” Mr. Priebus said. “That means political, communications, fund-raising, research and the chairman’s office, along with the governor’s main operational team, are completely merged.”

Wow. The RNC chair says the RNC will do their job. Clearly, Priebus must be flogged.

But is intending to merge with the Romney campaign a violation of Rule 11? Not as far as I can see.

Actually giving money or services (in-kind aid) to Romney’s campaign would be, but only while he runs opposed, and only if the same offer wasn’t made to Ron Paul. After Paul’s inevitable campaign suspension, merging with the Romney campaign would not only be perfectly legal, but kind of the whole freakin’ point.

Is there any evidence the RNC has started funneling money or services to Camp Romney at this point in time? The inference I gather from Priebus’s statements is that he has “intent” to do something, which I think might indicate he hasn’t done it yet.

If I told you I was going to rob my neighbor’s house, would you have me arrested for burglary?

No. You might warn me that breaking and entering is against the law. Now I’ve stated my intentions, should my neighbor’s house be broken into, you’ll know a likely suspect. I’m not guilty of robbery until I actually … rob somebody!

Let me borrow a trick from our political adversary’s book and be clear. We should not condone any violation of election law, or of the RNC rules. If there exists proof the rules as written have actually been broken, then heads need to roll. If, however, planning is now an actionable offense, maybe it’s time we just admit we’ve embraced the Thought Police.

Read the original post at Chris Is RIGHT.

Do you ever read something so stupid that it makes you want to jump out a window? Because I just did. Apparently, Seattle has scrapped its municipal broadband/WiFi dreams after years of studies, trials and taxpayer dollars.

What with the monorail, about a million imagined stadiums and even an old plan to put in a Disney theme park at Settle Center, our lovely city spends more money on studies than the entire country of India has ever seen.

What do we usually get for it? Squat.

Never mind that the city decided to spend $100,000 “elsewhere” (Clowns: will they improve the mental health of your neighborhood? Let’s find out!). You just have to wonder about anyone who thinks government run anything will spur “creativity, collaboration and innovation.” When has the government ever done that? Never, that’s when. The government spurs useless studies, uniformity and getting things done as half-assed and as cheaply as possible. Nothing about that creates anything within me but derision and scorn.

Providing more and better access to the Internet is a national priority. It’s seen by local governments as key to improving quality of life, attracting entrepreneurs and nourishing business.

A national priority? Really? I guess that would help take people’s minds off the fact they can’t find jobs.

It’s vital that the government step in to take back the Internet from businesses (the same entrepreneurs the article’s author claims municipal broadband attracts) and put it back in the hands of smart people, like politicians.

I want a collaborative innovation network built by the same people instituting more quota systems in public employment to ensure “social justice.” The same people who created the laws that allowed cable companies to have “near monopolies” in the first place. Once again, for The Seattle Times, it’s “evil business vs. benevolent government sugar daddy.” Did the city buy this socialist rag at some point, or are the studies still be conducted?

What I can’t help but notice is how all these projects guaranteed to make our lives better almost always fail to pan out. How the city government decides it can best use that money somewhere else, and yet homeless people still wander the streets looking for enough spare change to buy a Big Mac.

DSHS offices have cut back on hours. Shelters are overflowing. Crime is increasing. Jobs are fleeing the country. I know! If only I had access to that “Girls Gone Wild” torrent site, everything would be better.

Liberalism has become the belief that if one hundred government programs don’t do a lick of good, adding another fifty will surely solve the problem. And always twirling, twirling, twirling toward freedom!

Read the original post at Chris Is RIGHT.

Like the Law of Inertia, Newton’s Third Law of Motion is a pretty simple concept. So simple, in fact, that people get really lazy when they talk about it, and it sounds more like a Far East philosophy than a law of nature.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Wrong. Wrong, I say!

That statement is entirely inaccurate. Parts of it are even false, when viewed from a certain perspective. But this is what people think the third law says, and inevitably some hippie chick is explaining to you at a party why science substantiates her belief that the bunnies are going to get what’s coming to them.

So, please, stop the insanity. The mind you save may be your own.

The correct way to phrase Newton’s Third Law of Motion is as follows.

When Object A exerts a force on Object B, then Object B exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction on Object A.

“Aren’t they the same?” You ask.

No.

They’re Not the Same

The first statement is inaccurate because it implies cause and effect. If you push me, I’ll push you back just as hard. The pushing force doesn’t bounce back and forth between you and me. The pushing force exists between you and me. The pushing force that exists between you and me affects us both at the same time.

The first statement is wrong because action and reaction imply movement. If Object A moves Object B, Object B will move Object A the opposite direction. That’s not right at all.

Nor is it right to imply Object A and Object B will be affected the same. Imagine a Prius having a head-on collision with a freight train, and you’ll know this is true. The force the train exerts on the Prius is of the same magnitude as the force exerted on the train by the Prius, but keeping in mind that F = ma, and the masses of the Prius and the train are wildly different, then the acceleration of each object will also be different. (F/m = a)

That’s All There Is To It

Not even worth drawing a picture, really. So simple. Yet people forget it all the time.

The post after next, or thereabouts, I’ll be talking about force vector diagrams – a very handy tool you make yourself to help solve motion problems (all sorts of problems, really.)

You’ll see plenty of the Third Law of Motion in action. And in stasis. You’ll also see how easy it is to forget it exists.

Read the original post at Chris Is RIGHT.

Quick! Think of one peaceful use for a bunch of lighters taped together.

Despite what the media and Seattle’s gonad-free mayor, Mike McGinn, will continue to tell you, the May Day protests taking place in Seattle weren’t “mostly peaceful.”

Angry mobs roaming the streets and preventing citizens from moving freely from place to place aren’t peaceful. They are lawbreaking thugs who think they get to deprive others of their rights in order to make their points. In this case, the points seems to be that cops are lawless thugs, and immigrants have “no rights,” and that all corporate greed is evil. (One national group paid several hundred thousand dollars to twitter to promote the tag #CorporateGreed. Think of all the immigrants that money could have clothed, housed and fed.)

Naturally, The Seattle Times is happy to perpetuate the myth of the “mostly peaceful” All the other protesters just want hugs and bunnies. You know, the other protesters, the ones that witnessed the “black bloc” splitting from and returning to the crowd, yet said nothing.

The response from the oppressively spineless McGinn was to issue an order giving police the right to seize anything that might be used as a weapon.

The order, imposed after a noontime vandalism spree by about 75 apparent anarchists armed with poles, contributed to arrests and later clashes between police and protesters.

Here’s where The Seattle Times‘ omission of facts becomes dangerous. The vandalism spree was conducted by anarchists armed with poles, it’s true. But also with incendiary devices (Wikipedia defines an incendiary device as a bomb designed to cause a fire) and at least one bag of feces.

Removing the right of law-abiding citizens to arm themselves against violent mob tactics, which McGinn’s executive order effectively did, just means people with bombs, hammers and quarterstaffs will  feel more empowered to commit acts of lawlessness.

McGinn said any lawbreaking will be dealt with swiftly, but I can’t help wonder if the roving mobs had permits to parade through the streets and block traffic. No? Didn’t think so. So just unpopular lawbreaking will be dealt with.

Say. Has anyone else noticed a sharp decrease in robberies on Capitol Hill since the Occupy camp left the grounds of Seattle Central Community College? Not to mention illegal seizure of property. Funny how the occupy folks seem to employ the same sort of greed and lawlessness they claim to be fighting against. And funny how idiots like McGinn keep clamping down on the rights of all citizens in an attempt to show sympathy.

He said he feared that the vandals — who evaporated into the crowd after the noontime violence — would return. Several protesters were arrested during an impromptu march through Belltown in the afternoon — including one man who threw a bottle at officers, according to police.

Notice the language here. “Evaporate” implies they faded away. But they didn’t. The hid in a larger crowd of people. They were right there marching with everyone else. I’d attribute the word choice to bad thesaurus usage if it wasn’t so prevalent.

It has become a popular leftist meme that the Tea Party is whipping conservatives into a racist, violent mob. I can count on zero fingers the number of times a mayor had to issue an executive order expanding police powers to prevent dangerous Tea Party members from doing … anything.

The violence – real, not imagined – from far left groups like Occupy just keeps happening.

Once again, it is the liberal bias and liberal policies of sanctuary and drug-friendly cities like Seattle that empower thugs to march through the streets, terrorizing citizens, damaging businesses and conducting a Kristallnacht against people with whom they disagree.

Think of how many poor and suffering could have been helped with the money Seattle will now have to spend cleaning up the mess. And then get mad.

Think about how you or your kid could have been inside the old Federal Building or Nike Town when the masked cowards mobbed it and started smashing windows. Think about what would have happened if the incendiary devices seized by police hadn’t been seized by police. And then get furious.

The same liberals idiots calling these protests “mostly peaceful” will be the ones screaming the loudest at the police when they’re forced to make a split-second decision in an attempt to contain the angry mob. There will be demands for more reform and oversight. People will be forced to resign. And the violent lawbreakers who didn’t evaporate into the mob, but became a part of it, will snicker with the secret knowledge that next time, they can get away with more.

It’s time Seattle wake up and elect officials with enough testicular fortitude to enforce the laws in the name of real justice, not this social justice crap that allows violent criminals to walk unscathed.

Read the original post at Chris Is RIGHT.

Photo by Helen Adamopoulos

By now, most people know of Dan Savage’s screed against The Bible at a recent high school journalism conference in Seattle, Washington. The popular clip from Savage’s speech has him referring to “the bullshit in the Bible,” and calling it a “radically pro-slavery document.” When Savage turned his attention to biblical matters, some high school students in attendance walked out, a move Savage called “pansy-assed.”

The left agrees, to a large extent. Their argument seems to be that kids attending a journalism conference should be obliged to listen to profanity and have their actions labeled “pansy” (It Gets Better!) because journalism and critical thought!

This begs the question: why was Dan Savage speaking at a conference on journalism in the first place? By his own admission, Savage commits what the Left would call hate crimes. He willfully attempted to infect a politician with the flu, including licking doorknobs. On an episode of “Real Time With Bill Maher,” Savage voiced the wish that all Republicans should be dead. He also wished a Green Party candidate would be dragged behind a truck until there was nothing left but rope.

Savage apologized for the comments, but this only means he is himself a hateful bigot at worst, and an insincere person who says things he doesn’t mean at best. Why would any student of serious journalism want to give Savage the time of day in the first place?

Savage believes he is fighting against intolerance and bigotry. He and his partner founded the “It Gets Better” campaign, designed to ensure youth struggling with sexual orientation issues that the world at large will be an easier place for them after the turmoil of youth. Is it possible Savage himself doesn’t understand that wishing his political enemies a violent death and calling teens who don’t want to hear his bile “pansy-assed” undercuts the credibility of his own movement?

Of course, Seattle liberals don’t seem to care about anything Savage does (until he does it to them.) When charged with voter fraud, Savage’s employer found it hilarious and boring.

Perhaps Savage likewise just doesn’t care. Predictably, Savage has apologized for his rant, and for calling the walk-out by students “pansy-assed.” Sort of. He admits he was wrong to use the term (a term I usually associate with anti-gay slurs, oddly enough). But here is the conclusion to his apology.

All Christians read the Bible selectively. Some read it hypocritically—and the hypocrites react very angrily when anyone has the nerve to point that out.

Hmmm…. Savage admits his own reaction was inappropriate, but then infers anyone “very angry” about it is a hypocrite. Savage has to apologize for himself quite a bit, which seems to me he thinks the people “very angry” about the bile so often spewing forth from his mouth and fingertips actually have valid points.

Maybe it’s time Savage do a little introspection. Or does he not care that it ever get better for anyone but himself?

Read the original post at Chris Is RIGHT.

With the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, the nation has been abuzz with talk. Not only of Martin and Zimmerman (the Hispanic man labeled white by the media, because it fulfills the pernicious crazed Caucasian quota), but of gun laws and when it’s OK to defend oneself.

It’s not bad enough we have to hear constantly from people like Al Sharpton and the New Black Panther Party about how we need to get us some payback. (NBB not only put a bounty out on Zimmerman, but openly advocates killing white people in retribution. Of course, before Trayvon, they just wanted to “kill some cracker babies” for the hell of it.) Now, we have to have sympathy for criminals invading homes with the intent to rob, or worse.

Apparently there is bad gun violence and good gun violence. Police and the mayor this week raged against a spike in deadly crime-related shootings on the street while gun-rights activists have been cheering a jump in self-defense shootings at home. As noted earlier this week, gun-rights columnist Dave Workman thought the recent accidental shooting deaths of several children were balanced out by the increased body count of home intruders.

The statement by Dave Workman sounds horrible, until you realize it was mostly written by the same apparently anti-self-defense nut who wrote the article quoted above. Workman wasn’t trying to say dead kids are collateral damage. He was saying that you can’t only look at gun accidents in the home when considering gun ownership. One has to consider the spate of violent crime in Seattle, which includes gun owners defending themselves against break-ins and attacks. Huh. Thinking about multiple points of view – obviously the sign of a deranged lunatic.

It’s no surprise SW’s Anderson wants us to have more sympathy for the drug-addled, feces smearing lunatics who burst into our homes in the middle of the night.

In a statement, Henderson’s family says “He wasn’t a villian, nor was he a drug addict or alcoholic. He was a good man with a million dollar smile…” They called his death a “tragic accident.” When he entered the North Bend house, “We fully believe he thought he was home,” as he may have thought when he entered the Benton County home in 2003.

Henderson is the guy who broke into a home while “enraged” and spread feces on the walls. How did he get into the home? He threw a propane tank through a window. He had been out that night drinking, and wanted an angry, physical confrontation. He knocked on other doors in the neighborhood. I gleaned all this from Anderson’s own article, and yet Anderson finds it credible to believe Henderson may have thought he was home when he pulled a similar stunt almost a decade ago.

I hate to disagree with the bereaved, but when your family member breaks into a stranger’s house and smears his own bodily waste on the wall, yes, he is in fact a criminal.When he does so after a night of drinking and pounding on doors, he may have problems with alcohol and violent tendencies. Radical notions, I know.

Please, won’t someone think of the violent repeat offender?

Anderson begrudgingly admits that many of the instances he cites in his article are the fault of the home invaders, so that’s something. But then he goes on to quote cases that aren’t related. A man chasing down people who had tried to steal his boat, for instance, hours after the attempted theft occurred. Which, of course, is not self-defense at all, but vigilante justice. The same type of justice people are openly advocating for George Zimmerman. And for the judge overseeing the trial. And for white people in general, including babies. (Gosh! My sympathies are aroused already.)

It’s nutty to see an increase in violent crime, combined with a push for more gun control laws (hint: this will only affect people who obey laws in the first place), and conclude that maybe arming oneself is a legitimate response. Absolutely insane to see a possible link between squishy, love the perp policies that want us to sympathize more with criminals and a spike in violent crime.

As for actual insanity, the type exhibited by someone throwing propane tanks through your window late at night and wiping excrement on your stucco, well, defending yourself against them isn’t as “easily justified.” Remember kids! When the knife-wielding lunatic rushes into your boudoir late at night, it’s important to draw a distinction between him shouting “Kill! Kill! Kill! and “Bunnies stole my Member’s Only Jacket.”

In the split-second you have to decide whether you or the perpetrator comes out of the confrontation alive, make sure to analyze your intruder’s mental health. Perhaps he will helpfully write “I take Seroquel” on an alert bracelet.

It takes a particularly simple mind to think violent criminals and people defending themselves against violent criminals are cut from the same cloth.

Apparently there is bad gun violence and good gun violence.

Yes, yes there is. Saving one’s own life and the lives of one’s family members is not only a law, it’s a right. And it’s not only a right, it’s basic human nature – we call it “survival instinct” here in crazy gun land. God forbid Mr. Anderson ever has to learn that lesson firsthand.

Read the original post at Chris Is RIGHT.

1. An Object Accelerates When an External Force Acts
2. What That Means
3. Zero Does Not Equal Nothing
4. Units of Force
5. Examples

An Object Accelerates When an External Force Acts

What’s the shortest sentence in the English language? “I am.”  Subject, verb, and punctuation. Can’t get much simpler than that. But then you start to think of all the philosophical consequences of that statement and it becomes not just an extremely easy to diagram bit of language, but a very powerful statement. You may recognize it as part of a statement put forth by Descartes: Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am.

Physics has a similarly fundamental and powerful statement. Unsurprisingly, it is written in the language of math, and it is Newton’s Second Law of Motion:

F=ma

I’m sorry. Did I say, “F=ma?” What I meant to say was

If I wanted to stretch the Descartes metaphor, I could phrase this as: An object accelerates when an external force acts on it. That’s not quite correct, though. A better way to say this in English would be

The sum of forces acting on an object can be found by multiplying the object’s mass by its acceleration.

Boom. There, as the kids say, it is.

What That Means

(Top)
We’ve talked about what acceleration is, so it’s easy to see how one can arrive at the measure of force by multiplying acceleration at any point in time by an object’s mass and arriving at the net force acting on that object at that time.

We also talked about Newton’s First Law – that of inertia. More specifically, we talked about inertial reference frames, and how an object can appear to be accelerating when viewed from a different frame. I’m not going to harp on this one every time as it can muddy the waters, but it’s important to keep in mind.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that acceleration is a vector, and therefore force is a vector. If there is a change in speed or direction at any given point in time, then there is force. But, also, if there is no change in speed or direction, there may still be force.

How can that be?

Because F is the sum of all forces acting on an object (in this case.)

Zero Does Not Equal Nothing

(Top)
Up until now, we’ve really been talking about motion in one direction. The Universe is not that simple, of course, and an object can move in any one of three dimensions (back and forth, up and down, toward or away), or a combination thereof.

If there is a force acting on an object in one direction, but there is a force of equal magnitude acting on the same object in the opposite direction (ominous foreshadowing!), then the sum of those forces will be equal to zero: f – f = 0.

Fortunately, because we can relate acceleration to time, we can break down those three directions (x, y and z) and consider them separately, so that F_x = ma_x, and so on. (I’ll talk about this later when I get to some example problems. Yes, this means more math.)

The takeaway point here is that F=ma does not tell us whether a force is present or not. It tells us that adding up all the forces acting on an object will give us a number, and sometimes that number is zero.

Units of Force

(Top)
Since Newton was the guy who formalized the laws of everyday motion, it is reasonable that he get some credit, right? The unit of force is the Newton, typically written as “N.”

The unit of mass (m) is the kilogram, and the unit of acceleration is meters per seconds squared (m/s²). (Sometimes “m” means meters and sometimes it means mass. It can be a little confusing, but there are only so many letters. It should all become clear contextually when working with the various units.)

So

N = kg*m/s2

Mathematicians think physicists are crazy, but this isn’t just alphabet soup with some math symbols thrown in. 1 Newton is the amount of force required to accelerate an object with a mass of 1 kilogram by 1 meter per squared second.

Examples

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“Dude, where’s the math?” I can hear you asking, astonished I would even attempt to describe any law of physics without lengthy problems involving trains, baseballs, and things falling out of windows.

I’m getting there. Personally, I think it’s better to tell you about these three basic laws before getting to any problems where one can apply them. They all work together. Even though you don’t always have to consider each one when performing a calculation, it’s better to get used to thinking of them as a set first.

Did I say three laws of motion? Yes, yes I did. Only one more to go!

Read the original post at Chris Is RIGHT.