Monthly Archives: March 2009

Very telling

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The ironically named “Freedom State Alliance” has this to say:



With over 30,000 gun deaths in the U.S. each year — including the 4 police officers shot and killed in Oakland, California on March 21st — an appropriate response to this carnage should be bold and comprehensive policies to prevent further homicides, suicides and unintentional injuries.


…


Meanwhile, little is being done to address the elephant in the room: the 280 million guns already in circulation and how to reduce this staggering number. Although there are some good gun laws in place, thanks in large part to the tireless efforts of gun violence prevention advocates and survivors, there has been little success in addressing the sheer volume of guns.


…


Japan is a good case in point as to why fewer guns make a difference. With a population of 128 million people, it is estimated that Japan has fewer than 400,000 legally owned guns resulting in a total of 22 gun murders in 2007 according to Japan’s National Police Agency.

The United States on the other hand has a population of 306 million, 280 million guns and over 12,000 gun homicides each year. Even if, for arguments sake, we were to more than double Japan’s population to match the U.S. population, that would leave Japan with just over 50 gun homicides compared to America’s over 12,000 gun murders. It’s shameful.


America needs to decide what kind of country it wants to be. Do we want to be a nation willing to be bullied by an extremist lobby and misguided in our way of thinking about our nation’s gun problem?


I find it very telling the one-man show at the “Freedom State Alliance” (FSA) refers to “the extremist lobby” which is composed of several million members of the NRA, hundreds of thousands with SAF and CCRKBA. And 10 of millions of people that are members at local gun clubs and ranges. I probably have more people attend Boomershoot each year than the “Freedom State Alliance” can count as members.


I find it very telling that the FSA looks at only the GUN related homicides in Japan and not the total homicide and suicide rates which paint a very different picture when compared to the U.S.


I find it very telling that FSA uses the number 30,000 dead. Because that includes legally justified defensive shootings by police officers and private citizens! In order to get the numbers up FSA uses praiseworthy uses of firearms–then they spin it to be something negative.


I find it very telling the FSA laments the number of people exercising a specific enumerated right. What would the the response of the general public if the KKK were whining about the number of blacks running around free and unregulated instead of being slaves?


What this tells me is the FSA is a bigoted organization that must spin and deceive in their attempts to get traction on the destruction of a critical portion of our Bill of Rights.

Enemies of the community

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Interesting perspective on the shooting of the police officers in Oakland:



This time, instead of the Gaza Strip in the Middle East, we’re talking about the MacArthur Strip in East Oakland. Instead of the occupation force of the Israelis in Palestine or the Americans in Iraq or Afghanistan, the low income Black communities in America are dealing with the police, FBI, ATF and DEA, to name a few. Instead of a suicide bomber or a sniper holed up in a building, Lovelle turned out to be a suicide sniper who used a gun instead of a bomb to take out enemies of the community.


I wonder how tolerant of that sort of attitude the MSM would be if it were some “gun-nut” or religious group who holed up and shot it out with the police.


I take that back. I don’t need to wonder. I remember the MSM treatment of Ruby Ridge and Waco. And in the case of Ruby Ridge the DOJ agreed with the “gun-nuts”–the FBI was way out of line.

Do you know what this is?

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Last month at Tam’s place people were commenting things we had which were old. It was sort of “back when I was a young’n…” story telling time.


I visited my parents last Saturday and picked up my contribution to the discussion:



I brought it in to work today and asked my office mate if she knew what it was.


Her eyes got big and she said, “Oh my! Is this a punched card? I have never seen one of these before!”


I told her that it was more than that. “This”, I told her, “Is proof I was writing software before you were born.”


I took Engr 131 fall semester 1973 at the University of Idaho. Punched cards is a tough way to program a computer. There is no back space or delete and retype. There is no “white out”. If you make a mistake on a card you get to type a new one (there were rare exceptions but that is beyond the scope of this discussion).


We would leave our card deck on a table in the hall and come back three DAYS later to read the print-out result of the submission to the IBM 360. Usually it was something like ten pages of paper that boiled down to something like “Syntax error on card five, column 17.” Or “Program error. Core dump follows.”


The next year using a line editor on a teletype that looked like an IBM Selectric typewriter with a box of paper in back was such a thrill. You could get the compile and run results in a minute or two instead of days. And “editing” was just AWESOME compared to punching cards.


In the early 80’s I started programming on a CRT. It was still a line editor but listing lines 120-140 only took a couple of silent seconds instead of 30 seconds of clattering with the teletype. I started hearing rumors of something called a “visual editor” about the time son James was born in ’84. I couldn’t imagine what the fuss was about. “Visual editor?” What is that about? How much better than Edline could an editor be? I didn’t bother to check it out for several months.


Even then I would tell people about programming the microprocessor system I had build on a plug-board. I had typed in hand assembled hex codes into a PROM programmer. Then I plugging the PROM into a socket and powered up the system trying to debug it from the deciphering the way the LEDs blinked. Now that was a tough way to program.

Australia–police state in training

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We all know about the mass destruction of guns in Australia but the oppression didn’t stop there and it doesn’t generally make the news here. My Australian friend emailed these tidbits to me:



http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=77&ContentID=131675


Tracks where you go, measuring your speed between two points.


Emphasis on the tracks where you go part.


And:



http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,25229239-5014239,00.html


AUSTRALIA’S third largest internet service provider (ISP) has pulled out of the Government’s web filtering trials, saying the plan is “no longer just about stopping child porn”.


The Government’s plan involves a nation-wide filter that stops “unwanted material” from appearing on Australian user’s computer screens.


iiNet says the ambiguity of “unwanted material” is what caused it to pull out of the trials.


Ambiguity of “unwanted material”? Like Tiananmen square? Between the speed cameras and this, I’m not so sure I would be happy living there anymore…


Update: Comment spam is coming in at the rate of about one every two minutes. I’m turning off comments to this post. If you want to post a comment send it via email to me (blog AT JoeHuffman DOT org) with the name you want associated with it and I’ll post it for you.

Quote of the day–Dorothy Parker

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You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.


Dorothy Parker
When asked to use the word “horticulture” in a sentence.
[Sebastian’s post from yesterday reminded me of this. I laugh every time I hear that classic truism because I immediately think of Parker’s twist on it. And it is rare that I am in the sort of company where I can explain why I am laughing.–Joe]

Reasoned discourse?

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I just posted a comment to this article. My comment was:

I have just one question (https://blog.joehuffman.org/2004/12/14/just-one-question/) for you:

 

Can you demonstrate one time or place, throughout all history, where the average person was made safer by restricting access to handheld weapons?

The website response was:

This discussion is moderated. Your post will be displayed when a moderator has reviewed it.

I wonder if it will really will be displayed.

Quote of the day–Austrian

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Let me just tell you, Congressional/Executive Branch Scumbag, Esq., if you do this… if you take this turn… I won’t even think twice. I will move my firm to Switzerland, or to London before the year is out. Those employees who do not follow me, I will have to fire. The corporate taxes I pay will no longer be yours. Instead, they will go to something useful, like a nice tunnel through a mountain for high speed trains that actually work. Further, I will dedicate a substantial portion of my personal time, effort and capital to frustrating your every attempt to collect personal taxes on me thereafter- given your draconian anti-expatriation laws. But that’s not all. My job is to make money for my clients, in whatever way I can. I will short your flagging financial firms mercilessly and remorselessly. I will buy QGRI puts to bet against any firm that took bailout money. I will buy credit default swaps on every firm you put your greasy paws on, because I know your fingerprints are laced with poison. For every boneheaded centralist move you make, I will be there, profiting from your lunacy. I will never again take a client who pays taxes in the United States. I will not permit any capital or profit to be diverted to any such. I will do this because in the same way you believe it your divine right to punish “greed,” I consider it my duty to punish the stupidity and arrogance that is central planning, and because I believe in economic freedom. I will divert as many of your resources to my new home and its relative economic freedoms as I can. I will promote free markets in this way, and I will never look back. You will have made it clear that you are my enemy, and I do not forget such declarations.


I take no pleasure in this fight. I did not ask for it. I only asked for liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Deny me these at your peril. In the end, I can only hope I’m not alone.


Austrian
March 22, 2009
Wait a second… you want to blame ME for the financial crisis?
Via Ry.
[It seems to me there are hundreds or thousands of ways one can legally declare war against the enemies of freedom. Look around and find yours.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Phil Mendelson

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The Supreme Court in Heller struck a balance between the right of individuals to protect themselves and the right of individuals to be protected. If we so limit gun control as to favor individuals to protect themselves, but then disadvantage the right of individuals to be protected by the police, what will we have gained for the public good?


Phil Mendelson
An at-large member of the D.C. Council and chairman of the council’s Committee on Public Safety & the Judiciary.
D.C. Vote: This Is About Safety, Not the 2nd Amendment
March 22, 2009
[People don’t have a right to be protected by the police. Nowhere in the constitution, the law, or in court rules can you find such a “right”. Just the opposite in fact. The courts have ruled the police have no duty to protect individuals. This is just the worst of the lies in this article. Read the rest and be sure to take your blood pressure meds first–Joe]

Live blogging from the Boomershoot site

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I replaced most of the Wi-Fi gear at the Boomershoot site and things appear to be working well. There have been no drop outs.


We have full signal strength on my laptop at the intersection of the creek and the road. All places that I have tested have higher signal strength than before I need to get my signal strength mapping software out here and remap the area.


Lots of snow still but it got up to 54F this afternoon and it’s still 44F at 1740. The snow is melting fast. That means there is lots of water in the low areas.

Who cares?

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It’s just a law. Rulers don’t need to obey the law. Just their subjects.


Never mind they aren’t rulers. They are public servants. And when they don’t obey the law it becomes obvious they wish to change the relationship between servant and master.


Had the troops put on a reflective vest over their civilian clothes and directed traffic as civilians I wouldn’t have a problem with it. But they didn’t do that.


It sounds like some officers are taking it seriously but don’t expect most government officials to care in the slightest. They might need those troops for controlling the serfs someday.

Quote of the day–Dmitry Orlov

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So that’s what we have now. The ship is on the rocks, water is rising, and the captain is shouting “Full steam ahead! We are sailing to Afghanistan!” Do you listen to Ahab up on the bridge, or do you desert your post in the engine room and go help deploy the lifeboats? If you thought that the previous episode of uncontrolled debt expansion, globalized Ponzi schemes, and economic hollowing-out was silly, then I predict that you will find this next episode of feckless grasping at macroeconomic straws even sillier. Except that it won’t be funny: what is crashing now is our life support system: all the systems and institutions that are keeping us alive. And so I don’t recommend passively standing around and watching the show – unless you happen to have a death wish.


Dmitry Orlov
February 13, 2009
Social Collapse Best Practices
[I don’t know whether to believe we are really in a life or death situation but I suppose it is possible. What I am fairly confident of is that the current administration doesn’t have a clue as to what to do. They may think they have a clue but it’s all “hope and change” and almost zero knowledge.–Joe]

Doing fine

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“Fine” can be a relative word. A prime example is this case:



“For being hit in the face with a shotgun, he’s doing fine,” said Tennant.


I reported on this incident yesterday but the latest news report has a lot more details.


I”m glad the injuries aren’t serious and that the perps were arrested quickly and without incident.

General Wesley Clark is in good company

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Via Sebastian I discovered something General Wesley Clark said:



If people want machine guns, let them join the military. We got em! But for public and personal use, absolutely not.


That is eerily close to something else said by a national leader a few decades ago:



If any citizen wants to possess arms, let him join the Party.


Adolf Hitler


That isn’t the only instance either. See also the Council of People’s Commissars a few decades before Hitler.


You can tell a lot about a person by the company he keeps.

Quote of the day–Chris Cox

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Yesterday afternoon, DoD additionally confirmed the lifting of the suspension to pro-Second Amendment United States Senators Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who sent the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) a joint letter vigorously opposing the suspension, on the grounds that it had “an impact on small businesses who sell reloaded ammunition utilizing these fired casings, and upon individual gun owners who purchase spent military brass at considerable cost savings for their personal use.”


…


DLA also put to rest various theories and rumors that were circulated on the internet, concerning the reason for the suspension. As DLA explained to Senators Baucus and Tester, and to NRA-ILA, DoD officials responsible for the demilitarization of military property temporarily halted the release of the cartridge cases last week, pending review of a policy change issued last year by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which, in the interest of national security, halted the sale of items within a broad category of government property including, but not limited to, surplus small arms cartridge cases.


Chris Cox
March 18, 2009
Military Surplus Cartridge Case Issue Resolved
[I was working on a post comparing the destruction of the brass to destroying used books that were being sold to underfunded schools in black neighborhoods. But I procrastinated long enough to avoid the appearance of jumping on the Obama conspiracy train.


Appearances are not always what they seem.–Joe]