Protest Songs

Advertising is expensive, and people are good at tuning it
out. Memes catch on because the are pithy and may be hitting at a core truth.
Music can carry a message, tell a story, or just get into someone ear and buzz
there for a while. To get a message across, to teach, you can use massive repetition, or strike an emotional chord
in someone’s brain to trigger a this is
important
signal, or massive repetition. Political advertising goes for the
massive repetition, from both sides. But protest songs are almost almost exclusively
a tool of the left. I think it’s because artists tend to be on that side of the
spectrum. What we (the conservative / right) need are some good protest songs to reach the young and the undecided’s in the middle.
The thought came to me that

Four dead in Benghazi” sounds an awful lot like “Four dead
in Ohio

A person could either make the song to Neil Young’s tune,
and change the words appropriately, something like:

Two soldiers and no-one’s coming
We’re abandon, on our own
This winter I’ll hear the piper
Four dead in Benghazi

Gotta get to the annex
Terrorists cut ambassador down
We warned higher ups long ago
If you knew him
And found him dead on the ground
How could you tell us to stand down?

SEALS and marines are ready to go
Jets are fueled on the strip
Targets are all lit up
AC130 overhead being called
On for help
Need some rounds on the ground

Two soldiers and no-one’s coming
We’re abandon, on our own
The winter I hear the piper
Four dead in Benghazi

Or they could make a mocking, sarcastic, satire, something
sung to the tune of “Hero of Canton” from firefly, which was (in the show) a
serious folk song, but to us (the audience) is was hysterical because it
misrepresented the facts and Jayne so badly. For that, something that mocks and ridicules
the entire Obama presidency would be best. Something like:

O, the man they call O! / He robbed from the children / and
he gave to the old! / Stood up to the kings / Then he bowed to the floor!

It could reference many of the different doings, from
fund-raising scandals, “green energy, deficits, no budget, Benghazi, etc.

 Know any bored song-smiths?

Moral Issue

Posit; Your kid is suspected of having knowledge of other kids smoking pot.  Your kid’s school wants your kid to talk to some lying, immoral cops who lie every day as a matter of course and brag about it.  Your wife says No– that we aren’t going to talk to cops like that.  What about talking to some other cop from another jurisdiction?


I say that it is none of any cop’s business whatsoever.  If we’re going to talk morals, a teenager trying pot is no business of anyone on Earth except for the kid and the parents.  Further; the fact that pot was made illegal is in and of itself immoral, and unconstitutional.  The cops’ only possible interest in “talking” with said teenager is so they can harm other people  besides.  There is no victim  except for the “perpetrator” himself, and hence there is no moral obligation whatsoever to talk to cops and possibly thereby to allow them to harm other people.  All the parents in town already know.


Now say that the school threatens to suspend said teenager if said teenager does not talk to some cop or other.  What then?  I say that doing the right thing isn’t always the easy thing.  I say to hell with all of them– let them suspend said teenager.


We had a kid in our community kill himself a while back over this exact sort of thing, and with this recent case there is talk of it again.  There is talk of other kids beating the crap out of one of the kids for “snitching”, and talk of him committing suicide.  All because you nasty, sick, evil, broken, twisted sacks of shit maintaining our drug laws, enabling and enriching violent criminal trafficking networks and torturing innocent kids for being curious, and you in the public schools playing right along with it, going straight to the cops at the drop of a hat.  Shame on you all.


You cops out there; you had better think long and hard about the damage and destruction you’re perpetuating.  Make the right choice– knock it off or get out.  I have no sympathy for you, as you knew you’d have to hurt innocent people as a regular part of the job.  You were set up just as all of us have been set up, but you KNOW IT.  So FIX IT!  You’re as guilty as any drug gang kingpin unless you knock it off right now (they couldn’t exist without you).  The law doesn’t make you right and you know it.  Plus you swore an Oath, remember?  I’ll hold you to it you stupid bastards.  Don’t give me the crap about the thin blue line either– YOU are making the trouble here.  You want to be treated like a damned hero?  Fuck You, then act like one.  Stand up for what’s right even if you pay a price for it.  THAT’S a hero.  Turds.  You really are dispicable.


We’ve already had the talk in our home about how evil laws result in people suspecting each other, fearing each other, hating each other, in violence, in ruined lives, the militarizaion of our law enforcement and all the rest.


Washington state a measure on the ballot.  Best you look into and right now.  I deleted the stuff I wrote about shooting cops in the face.  For now.  Anyway; shooting cops in the face is probably not the best way to get people to understand.  For now.  And so I will speak out against it unless there becomes a time wherein there is no other choice.


ETA, 11-01-12;  The cops, through a round about set of circumstances, including a parent telling the school principle that there’s no way their kid is talking to the cops, have stood down.  They’re leaving the matter in the hands of the school admin.  So I have to hand it to them– for whatever reason, they’ve done the right thing.  For now.

Mocking the Brady Campaign

Barron continues our video series and posts mocking Brady Campaign Board member Joan Peterson with Pumpkins for Joan:

Think about this… The Brady Campaign wants to, and has tried for decades, to get various types of guns banned. Handguns were their first target back in the 1970’s. They were originally the National Council to Control Handguns (NCCH), then the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence (CPHV), then Handgun Control, Inc. (HCI) in 1980 and finally The Brady Campaign in 2001. And as recently as the brief they filed for the DC v. Heller case in 2008 they claimed the Second Amendment did not protect an individual right and even if it did it did not extend to handguns. Not only have they failed in their decades long mission the U.S. Supreme Court has explicitly said handguns are protected. And using the phrase “in common use” the court strongly implied that the secondary target of the Brady’s, “assault weapons”, are also protected. They have some extremely high hurdles to overcome to even get back to the position they were in as late as 2008, let along where they were when they were founded in 1974. And today on our side we use not only “assault weapons” but explosives to mock them.

When guns and bullets just aren’t enough aren’t you glad we have Boomershoot?

Push / Pull (Remedial Physics)

There is a theory that gravity is a pushing force.  That is to say that gravity is a property of space and not matter.  I say fine; it’s entirely plausible, but that for all purposes we can understand at the moment it makes no difference, and there is currently no way to prove it one way or the other.


An idea that never seems to die (millions of people believe in it completeyt) is that we can extract electrical power “from gravity”.  I can’t believe I wasted an hour on YouTube on something that sounded interesting, but ended up as another of millions of perpetual motion energy system assertions.  I’m not linking to it.  Stay away.


Again; No, Little Grasshopper.  Gravity is a part of the mechanism by which we might extract energy for our own purposes, but in and of itself it isn’t energy in the sense that we can “extract” power from it”.  Hydroelectric uses gravity, but the energy we’re extracting came from the sun (sun heats ocean water, water evaporates as a result…you know the rest).  It’s like a spring in engineering.  My Victrola phonograph’s turntable isn’t powered by spring energy.  You have to put energy in before you get any out, and there’s loss along the way.  The spring stores energy from the muscles I used to wind it up, my muscles get their energy from the food I eat, and the food I eat gets its energy from the sun through photosynthesis.  The Victrola is powered by trillions of tons of exploding hydrogen nucleii, which I suppose you can call “the energy of the universe” or “God Power” if you like.  But it isn’t spring energy anymore than hydroelectric is gravity energy.


But everyone wants desperately to believe that they’re smarter than all physicists and engineers, past and present, combined, and that they have The Secret to endless, essentially free energy.  Tidal power (extracting some of the energy of the Earth’s rotation), hydro power, solar power (photovoltaic) and all the rest are all perfectly viable but certainly not free and some of them require massive engineering projects.  You are never going to build a “gravity power” machine without some source besides gravity, at least not until we can figure out what gravity is, and exactly how it interacts with matter.  So far it’s a mystery, and I assert that it will remain a mystery for a very long time, or until some “quantum leap” of understanding of the nature of the universe is achieved.


In the same YouTube piece they, again, for the nth time, brought up the suppressed technologies meme– Big Dark Corporation buys up patents for endless free energy machines and locks them away from human eyes forever, so they can continue to make BIG BUCKS POLLUTING THE EARTH.  As if there is no money in selling and maintaining endless free energy machines.  Naw; it’d never sell, and for sure no government or other company could ever find out about it, no matter what.  Ever.  And someone with more power than anyone else snuck into the patent office and erased the patent before anyone, including the patent office workers, ever saw it.  That 100 MPG carburator we heard about back in the 1960s (you just bolt it onto your Chrysler 440 V8 and presto, your 5,000 pound 1966 Town & Country gets 100 MPG) was suppressed by the Big Oil Companies more effectively than any secret in the history of history.  And I am Karl Marx’s uncle. (Hillary Clinton be goin’, “I can’t believe you’re Karl’s uncle because you’ve obviously been bought off by the oil companies!”)


While we’re dismissing silly ideas; that asteroid belt out there is constantly, almost universally, being referred to as “leftovers” and suchlike, from the formation of the solar system.  That’s a misunderstanding or at best a disservice to the students.  Those hard, dense, nickel/iron chunks we keep finding can be only one thing– planet core material.  If the Earth were smashed all to hell, resulting in another asteroid belt for a time, and you somehow managed to survive, would you want the pieces referred to as “leftover flotsam from the formation of the solar system”?  One could argue that the asteroids are “leftover” in the sense that total planet annihiliation is part of solar system formation but the implication has  been they just never ended up as anything and so there they are, still out there.  Maybe I’ll start referring to the asteroid belt as “collateral damage”.  And now that I think about it I’m sure Bush had something to do with it.


Please, because this needs to be said until it is understood;  It is entirely possible to be a towering genius in one field and be a blithering idiot in another.  It happens to me all the time.  So for you blithering idiots out there (you know who you are because you think you’re a towering genius); you just need to get into some other field.

Looters and the right to keep and bear arms

There are reports of looting in the aftermath of hurricane Sandy. The National Guard has been mobilized to help stop the looting but what I don’t see or mentioned are people defending their homes and stores like what we saw after hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Most people in New Jersey and New York probably do not have a firearm which would give them a decent chance against the supposedly planned “flash mob robberies”.


I wonder if this will change any opinions on the right to keep and bear arms. Will more people purchase a firearm and get some training so that next time they will be better prepared? Or will government workers with guns do such a wonderful job that people will see no need for private citizens to own guns?


A search of Google news for hurricane sandy gun turns up nothing of interest. I wonder why that is.

The Setup: Explosions Don’t Just Happen, You Create Them – Boomershoot

This is the fourth in the series of ESS Boomershoot videos.

The first three, and my comments, are here:

This one features me doing a lot of talking. I’m so pleased they edited out all the “umm”s and “ahhh”s.

There is also Rolf juggling the targets, scenes from our target/explosives production facility (Mecca), bowling ball mortars, anvil launch, Ry‘s fireball, both long range and High Intensity events, and people pounding stakes and putting targets on the stakes.

As I have said before ESS makes good stuff. They gave me a couple pair of their glasses and I use them whenever I need eye protection or even sunglasses.

I expect Barron will have something up with this video soon as well.

There are still 16 Boomershoot positions open. Sign up and be a part of Boomershoot 2013 here.

Quote of the day—Stanley G. Buford

The Second Amendment clearly states that citizens of the United States have the right to “keep and bear arms” for “traditionally lawful purposes.”

Stanley G. Buford
October 29, 2012
Why Gun Control Has Nothing to Do With the 2nd Amendment.
[It would appear Buford has a reading comprehension problem. There has been some debate over the existence of commas in the Second Amendment but Buford had to be closing his eyes and imagining things or spending time in an alternate reality to come up with what he claims it says. The Second Amendment in my universe as passed by the Congress:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

As ratified by the States and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

But one should not be surprised. The anti-gun people are used to lying. In order to have any hope of winning they have to.—Joe]

Hiking in the Cascades

I had originally planned other activities but the weather forecast said “0% chance of precipitation” for a few hours today. The forecast beyond that looks a lot like rain until the end of time.

With a few seconds of conversation Barb L. agreed to go on a hike with me and suggested a place she had been a few years earlier. I got a little winded climbing up to the top of the waterfalls but it was more than worth the effort:

IMG_3484_Corrected

IMG_3498

IMG_3509

IMG_3515_Corrected2012

IMG_3516

IMG_3520

It reminded me a lot of another hike I went on five years ago and told the gist of the story to Barb as we hiked. This is not Missouri.

Modern parables regarding self reliance

My brother Doug sent me an email with a link. This gives you a hint of what it is about.

Professional trappers don’t catch fast-breeding and destructive feral pigs using hunting dogs and guns, or in little traps one or two at a time. The wily pigs quickly learn to evade humans after such fleeting contacts. So how do the pros trap entire feral pig herds, eliminating them all, from granddads to piglets, in one go?

They feed them, most generously. They kill them with kindness.

The moral of the story: If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Don’t go inside the “free corn” pen, not even when all the doors are open. Free food is as dangerous as the sirens’ song to ancient mariners. It is all too easy to get used to being fed, and then to miss the exits closing one at a time.

I read the entire post and all the comments. Most will stop after the first parable which is probably enough to get the point across. Just to make sure read the second one also.

Quote of the day—Thomas Jefferson (NOT!)

All the terrible instruments of war are the Natural Birth Right of the American citizen.

Attributed to Thomas Jefferson
[Awesome quote!

I received this in email recently and it looked just a little too good to be true. I went searching for it and was only able to find one instance of it. This instance does not appear to be supported by any reference to any of Jefferson’s writings or speeches. I did extensive searches on http://www.monticello.org which I have found to be a good source for Jefferson quotes in the past.

I must conclude this is not correctly attributed to Jefferson.

While searching I did discover two other quotes I had attributed to Jefferson are probably bogus as well. I have update my posts here and here.—Joe]

Election predictions

There is an election coming up, so I thought I’d update my
last prediction.

You can create your own scenario here: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/obama_vs_romney_create_your_own_electoral_college_map.html

As I write this, at RealClear FL, NC, VA, CO, NV, IA, WI,
MI, OH, PA, and NH are considered “Toss-up”, and Obama has a solid 201 Electoral
College votes, Romney a solid 191.

I think that the polling data showing a MAJOR shift in party
self-identification from D to R (shifting from about a 5 point D advantage in
2008 to about a 2 point R advantage now), a shift in independent support toward
Romney now giving him a double-digit percentage lead (52% to 39%), greater R
enthusiasm / fear-of-consequences, and the persistently underwater job approval
numbers on Obama will all lead to Romney coming out ahead, beyond the
margin-of-fraud, in FL, NC, VA, CO, NH, and IA, for 267 (two shy of a tie). I think he’ll most likely
also take OH, WI, and NV, giving Romney 301 EC votes. That also means Romney could
afford to lose or have contested any one of those, even for FL, or Ohio AND Wisconsin,
and still have 270+.

If the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy suppresses voting in
Philly significantly, or the Benghazi thing blows up further in the DMC
(Democrat-Media-Complex, aka ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, etc), he may get PA and MI,
too, for 337 EC votes. I consider this only about one chance in five.

If Benghazi goes politically nuclear in the popular press,
and the political rights’ worst fears are realized and popularized prior to the
election (slim chance, but theoretically possible), then the O implosion loses
OR, MN, and ME2, because so many Dems stayed home rather than vote for their former
hero, giving Romney 355, almost as many as Obama did – which would also mean
that the Rs get a solid lead in the Senate, and keep the House. Maybe as much as a 5% chance, here.

If a lot of Dems stay home in disgust because of the national scene, then McKenna wins in WA state as Gov, but Cant(vote)Well will still win re-election in the Senate, because the R party can’t put forth any good candidates in WA, and the Libs in WA are still clueless as to the importance of senators and Cantwell’s ineffectiveness. If party “turnout” is normal, then it’s too close to call, but I’m afraid Insley will have enough friends counting votes that he’ll pull it out.

Pumpkins for Peterson

As per request from my previous post on this topic we now have video of the pumpkins we blew up for Joan Peterson, board member of the Brady Campaign:

Joan Peterson, and the entire Brady Campaign organization, should just get used to the idea that they cannot win this fight. We outnumber them by hundreds to one. We make people happy. They wallow in the pain, misery, and suffering of victims. We will spend hundreds of dollars, and countless hours mocking her and her kind.

You are on the wrong side of history Joan, give it up.

Priceless

Barron made another video for Brady Campaign board member Joan Peterson. Read his blog post for the complete story with this as the dessert. It’s dessert because it is sweet (even if Barb L. says it can’t be dessert because there is no chocolate):

I’m working on a video of my own from last weekend. It will have a different focus but it still should give Peterson heartburn. Some people don’t like just desserts.

Quote of the day—NYPD Officer

When I came into this police force I wanted to help people, but the civilian population, they’re being hunted. Instead of being protected by us they’re being hunted and we’re being hated.

NYPD Officer
On the Department’s Feudal “Stop and Frisk” Policy.
From 11:28 in the following video:

[H/T Tyler Durden and Michael Krieger.

Also of interest is, from 2:11, “I had this captain who walked into the precinct and gave a speech about harassing the public. His words were, ‘We’re going to go out there and were going to violate some rights’.”

The police should realize this will not be tolerated for long. If legal recourse fails to get them in compliance then they should expect ‘game on.’ With no rules.—Joe]

About voting fraud

Since the left is convinced that you cannot be trusted with a gun, cannot be trusted to educate your own kids, feed your own kids, feed yourself, deal directly with your medical care providers, chose the vehicle you want, run your own business without being told how to do it, hire the right people, chose your own light bulbs, chose the energy sources you want, or keep your own money, et al, why on Earth would it trust you to vote?  Why should it?


If the very future of the planet itself is in jeopardy, as is claimed, well then; the left would be “out of its mind” so to speak, to allow any election to go the wrong way if there were anything that could be done, by any means necessary, to fix it.


If we want to go further with this line of thought, we could make the same case.  If we’re headed for the cliff due to socialist creep, and there is very little time to make a correction, and since the constitution is no longer a functional barrier to socialist creep, since we’re now a de facto pure democracy seemingly bent on self destruction, then what are OUR options?


No; we don’t need election fraud.  The left needs it.  All we need is the truth, the light of day, and to find a way to begin restoring and enforcing the constitution.  We know that the Republican Party as constituted today will not do that, so we’ve refined the context of the question, but not answered it.  What are our options?


As little help as it may be, I can answer that in the negative; One option that we do NOT have is that of trying to make everyone like us.  We’ll have to tell it like it is, with malice toward none (and that’s a challenge, isn’t it?) and let the chips fall where they may.  Pandering and beating around the bush, being afraid of the bare truth, is what got us in this mess, and it is what defines the Republican Party today.

Quote of the day—Charles Woods

I want to honor my son, Ty Woods, who responded to the cries for help and voluntarily sacrificed his life to protect the lives of other Americans. In the last few days it has become public knowledge that within minutes of the first bullet being fired the White House knew these heroes would be slaughtered if immediate air support was denied. Apparently, C-130s were ready to respond immediately. In less than an hour, the perimeters could have been secured and American lives could have been saved. After seven hours fighting numerically superior forces, my son’s life was sacrificed because of the White House’s decision. This has nothing to do with politics, this has to do with integrity and honor. My son was a true American hero. We need more heroes today. My son showed moral courage. This is an opportunity for the person or persons who made the decision to sacrifice my son’s life to stand up.

Charles Woods
Father of Tyrone Woods one of the former Navy SEALs killed in the terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.
October 25, 2012
Joe Biden to Father of Former Navy SEAL Killed in Benghazi: ‘Did Your Son Always Have Balls the Size of Cue Balls?’
[The entire attitude of this administration toward the family of the dead is extremely troubling.

That doesn’t even address what Hillary Clinton said. She said they would “make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.” Yet we now know the Whitehouse had a live video feed of the attack and could not have seriously believed it was a riot rather than a planned attacked with mortars. The wounds that killed the SEALs were from mortar shrapnel!

I’m reminded of a book I recently finished, How Do You Kill 11 Million People?: Why the Truth Matters More Than You Think.

Take your blood pressure medication then read the whole thing.—Joe]

Atlas Shrugged II

Barb L. and I saw the movie Atlas Shrugged II Tuesday night. There were only a few people in the theater. And after the movie I ended up spending a few minutes explaining bits of it to Barb and the three guys who sat behind us. None of them had read the book.

I liked the casting better than what they did for part 1. I liked that many scenes were essentially directly from the book. But I can see that it fails to get across the points essential to appreciating Rand’s message. And reading the book just doesn’t work for many people. I know several people that just couldn’t “get into it”. Whereas son James and I were spellbound by the book. It resonated with us like few books ever have.

Because the movie doesn’t resonate as well as I wish it did I almost think the movie would be better described as a documentary of our future with the script published in 1957. Judged from that standpoint it does amazingly well.

This is sad considering (from here) “Atlas Shrugged is the ‘second most influential book for Americans today’ after the Bible, according to a joint survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club.”

Overheard

Minor changes were made to give additional context.

B: I can’t keep my balance in them so you won’t ever find me wearing high heels.

Me: That’s fine with me. You are nearly 6′ 1″ in your bare feet. Why would I want you to wear high heels?

B: Okay. I’m just letting you know.

Me: Thanks. And I’m just letting you know you won’t ever find me wearing high heels either.