Fort Awesome — Trey Garrison

Craig Watkins Even Gets on the Last Nerve of His Supporters

March 4, 2010 By Trey Garrison Leave a Comment

Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins, let’s never forget, should be praised for his work in exonerating the wrongly convicted. No one can take that away from him.

But that’s not a “Get Out of Jail Free” card on all the apparently dirty stuff he’s up to — cover ups, misappropriation of campaign funds, vendettas against the Dallas County Republican chair, and so on.

Worst of all, he’s engaging in one of the great crimes on teh Internets: sock puppetry.

Use your eyes to read my Internet crush Bethany Anderson’s take on the whole thing plus some election commentary here.

Filed Under Bethany Anderson, Fort Awesome, Novelty Cake Toppers, Politics

Dallas Tea Party Takes on Whites-Only MSNBC

February 24, 2010 By Trey Garrison 7 Comments

Awesome.

Filed Under Boob Tube, Fort Awesome, Media, Tea Party Animals

Could Medina Beat Perry? Burka Suggests It Could Happen

February 10, 2010 By Trey Garrison 14 Comments

And I don’t disagree with his take.

The bonus — aside from seeing Perry and Hutchison taken to the woodshed — would be the tea party movement showing its independence from any single leader, including Sarah Palin who just endorsed Perry. WGS-Debra-Medina-GU_101027e

And after the Massachusetts upset, a Texas upset where the incumbent from the right is likewise tossed could cement the credibility of this fiscally focused independent wave.

I may pull for Medina based on this picture alone. She’s a Glock babe. Awe-some.

Filed Under Culture Jamming, Fort Awesome, Writer on Deadline

How One Civil Right Protected Civil Rights Heroes

February 9, 2010 By Trey Garrison 17 Comments

51l689ISD+L._SL500_AA240_ There was a time when the fight for civil rights involved courageous men standing up to government-imposed segregation. (This was before it became the shake-down racket it is today.)

Over at Volokh Conspiracy, there’s a wonderful account by one such civil rights bad-ass, John Salter, about how when the media cameras weren’t around, the only thing that kept him and his fellow rebels safe was the fact they exercised their most important civil right — their right to self-defense with whatever arms they so chose.

Here’s a taste:

Later, I worked for years in the Deep South as a full-time civil rights organizer. Like a martyred friend of mine, NAACP staffer Medgar W. Evers, I, too, was on many Klan death lists and I, too, traveled armed: a .38 special Smith and Wesson revolver and a 44/40 Winchester carbine.

The knowledge that I had these weapons and was willing to use them kept enemies at bay. Years later, in a changed Mississippi, this was confirmed by a former prominent leader of the White Knights of the KKK when we had an interesting dinner together at Jackson.

Again, I was glad I had many firearms and, again, we guarded our home and let this be known. We responded to hate calls on the telephone by telling the callers we were quite prepared for them.

(Notably, the gun control movement in America traces its roots to the effort to keep free blacks disarmed. See this book, the Spirit and the Shotgun. Great read.)

Filed Under Fort Awesome, Guns

Ungovernable? Really? Or Just Incompetence at the Top?

February 8, 2010 By Trey Garrison 17 Comments

So, yes, there are reasons to be suspicious of government, and yes, our yearning to be “masterless” has created a culture that sends adventurers on the open road and pioneers looking for the next frontier. But it’s also making it increasingly difficult for government to function.

I’m not unsympathetic to the argument that vigilance — protest, activism, anger — is the price of freedom. But with the national government in gridlock, I’m beginning to worry that our “don’t tread on me” birthright has a deeper and darker cost.

Have you considered that Americans have always been like this — you admit it in your column, Mr. Rodriguez.

Maybe the problem is that Americans just don’t want the agenda government is pushing right now, and maybe the leader of this government activism is a guy with no real experience despite two autobiographies, no skills anyone would pay him for in the real world, and who isn’t really half as smart as your side tells itself. Ever consider that, chief?

I mean, you weren’t complaining about this before January 2009, were you?

Filed Under FAIL, Fort Awesome

In Post-Obama America

January 15, 2010 By Trey Garrison 13 Comments

It’s not, to cop the cliche, that “the honeymoon is over” for Mr. Obama. It’s that his presidency is, effectively, over.

I’ll skip the overused “emperor has no clothes” and the “you can fool some of the people some of the time” points, and just leave it at this: he’s done.

The election of 2008 wasn’t a triumph for the leftist agenda. (I refuse to cede the word “liberal” to them, and there’s nothing “progressive” about believing in an political economic system that was proven not to work 70 years ago.) It was a rejection of President Bush.

And good that rejection was. Mr. Bush was not a small government, pro-market conservative. Government and regulations grew under him faster than they did under any president since FDR.

People didn’t want any more of the Bush/Republican brand, but that didn’t mean they were embracing the left’s agenda. It was a perfect storm for an empty suit like Obama, who had no record and absolutely no accomplishments, and thus could talk about fiscal discipline and responsibility to the point he even got support from some prominent conservatives. He could tell people what they wanted to hear and, unlike the other Democrat candidates, he had few votes and no legislation bearing his name that anyone could say contradicted whatever the line of the day was.

But now it’s a year later. The soaring sweet talk people fell for then falls on deaf ears now. People see behind the curtain and realize there’s no there, there. The Nobel Prize pretty much put an underline on this whole farce.

People have seen his scheme for the government takeover of healthcare, and they’re saying they don’t want it. (The continued push for some foothold, in any form, for government health care proves that socialized medicine is, in fact, the “crown jewel of socialism.” They just want some kind of framework they can add to later. Once they get people thinking health care is a right and not a service like any other, they’ve changed the mindset. This is why Democrats are risking their House majority and safe Senate seats for ObamaCare.)

People have seen that all the bailouts and stimulus — which will be billed to people not even born yet — has not only failed to stimulate; it’s made the recession worse. Recessions only last this long when government monkeys with the economy. The “smartest guys in the room” are wrecking the economy by trying to save it. They can’t see that nothing is “too big to fail.”

Cap and trade is, thankfully, DOA. People have awoken to the fact that they’ve been hoodwinked by unscrupulous, agenda-driven junk science, and that hey — they really haven’t established that anything man has done is affecting global temperatures. Certainly not enough to go sticking a samurai sword into the belly of the economy as a “just in case” measure.

Almost a year ago — the day of the inauguration — I declared Mr. Obama’s presidency a failure. I wasn’t entirely kidding. The new president was entirely a creature of the campaign — all speeches, no action. All theory, no real world experience. A year has proven that his presidency was pretty much doomed the day he started governing.

Hype and marketing can close a deal — especially when your last purchase was such a lemon. But the empty promises and the false hopes that were peddled make the buyer’s remorse all the more powerful.

Filed Under Fort Awesome, Mickey Maoist

Angry Racist Mob on Sept. 12 Actually Just 300-500K Concerned About Government Spending

September 14, 2009 By Trey Garrison 25 Comments

Filed Under Capitalist Superheroes, Fort Awesome

I’m Just Glad the Founding Fathers Were Timid and Meek

August 13, 2009 By Trey Garrison 15 Comments

Question from the Dallas Morning News:

The health care debate has gone crazy. Earlier this week in New Hampshire…on the road outside the meeting, a man held up a sign that appeared to support the bloodshed of “tyrants,” while sporting a pistol (legally) strapped to his thigh.

What have we come to when an American citizen is bold enough to do something like that?

Answer: A good start.

Or would we prefer that American citizens be scared to legally exercise two of their most fundamental constitutional rights?

PS — the sign the guy held “that appeared to support the bloodshed of ‘tyrants,’” was a quote from President Thomas Jefferson.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Jefferson also said:

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

And: