Category Archives: Politics

Quote of the day—Adam Baldwin @AdamBaldwin

Posted on by
4

The 2020 Bumper Sticker battle –

Trump: “Keep America Great!”
vs.
Dems: “Beat Trump!”

Adam Baldwin @AdamBaldwin
Tweeted on February 22, 2020
[I had my phone Twitter app email this to me the next morning. Last night I got around to looking at it and preparing to make it my QOTD for today. I found this tweet no longer exists. I reviewed Baldwin’s tweets. He only has 114. What?!! That’s not right. But yet that is what I see. The first tweet was on June 19, 2019. Then there is a retweet of something from November 29, 2015. Then a tweet from February 24, 2020.

What’s even more “interesting” is that neither Bing nor Google can even find the exact phrase “The 2020 Bumper Sticker battle” anywhere on the Internet.

One must conclude that I emailed it to myself from an alternate universe and/or timeline. The alternatives are just too farfetched to be believable.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Molly Carter

Posted on by
2

What has the 20th Century shown us about gun control? That an unarmed country is not a safe country. That when citizens don’t have the right to bear arms, governments can and do grow too large and become a threat to their people. That in the 20th Century, governments murdered four times as many people as those that were killed in all the world’s wars during that same time period. That millions more people were killed by their own governments than by criminals.

Molly Carter
American Gun Ownership: The Positive Impacts of Law-Abiding Citizens Owning Firearms
[The first publication of this essay is unclear to me. It was sometime in 2019 or earlier. I found it on many sites with the most recent being Zero Hedge (via email from Tony P.).

Reading it I was struck by so many references to materials from the 1990s that I suspected it was over 20 years old. Even the quote above appears it may have been derived from an article written by the late Mike Vanderboegh in June of 1999. This, however, does not detract from the substance. The truth is still the truth.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Scott Adams @ScottAdamsSays

Posted on by
5

I have no intention of being objective about Bloomberg’s presidential run. If I can be a small part of helping you imagine him less as a president, and more like a desiccated turd in a punch bowl, wearing a tiny suit, I have served karma.

Scott Adams @ScottAdamsSays
Tweeted on February 24, 2020
[Sounds fair to me.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Micah Uetricht and Meagan Day

Posted on by
10

Eventually, after the Left has won significant gains at the ballot box and in civil society, the capitalist class will take the gloves off against socialists and do whatever it takes to destroy our movement. We’ll need to fight back. The democratic road to socialism seeks not to elide this confrontation, but to make it possible.

Micah Uetricht and Meagan Day
February 22, 2020
Why Bernie Sanders is just the beginning of an American turn to the left
[Via email from Chet.

Remember when I said the other day that these crazy laws have to be deliberate attempts to destroy society?

Take appropriate action.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Tana Senn

Posted on by
15

I’ve never thought about it.

Tana Senn
Washington State Representative, 41st District
February 22, 2020
This was in response to the question, “What sort of gun law do you think would violate the Washington State constitution?”
[The Washington State constitution says:

SECTION 24 RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired, but nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain or employ an armed body of men.

My guess is that she has never read it. Another guy at the town hall meeting asked a related question and she went off with something about the militia. Which, of course, might have been relevant if we didn’t have the Washington State constitution protection for the right to keep and bear arms clause and the Heller decision. The Heller decision, of course, making it very clear the militia clause does not limit the right to keep and bear arms to the militia.

I got the last question of the meeting and I decided to directly ask her to address the Washington State constitution clause. The QOTD above was the beginning of her response.

The rest of her response was about hunters, she has “no problem” with hunters—as long as they don’t use “military type guns” which are only for hunting humans. She was a bit more hesitant but also said she didn’t have a problem with people who wanted to have a gun to defend themselves.

But, of course, the Washington State constitution does not give lawmakers a “military type gun” loophole to write laws restricting individual possession and use of firearms.

I find her response very telling.

If she has never concerned herself with the limits to the power she has under the constitution this isn’t going to stop. Whatever restriction she and her type can get passed this year or next, or the year after is just another step toward the practical, if not literal, elimination of the right.

I was telling someone else about what Senn said and I got a surprising response:

Crazy must run in the family.

It turns out that Senn is is a first cousin, once-removed of former Washington state Insurance Commissioner Deborah Senn. Deborah Senn had a reputation such that many people suspected she was a sociopath and perhaps had other psychology issues.

My live tweeting of the meeting:

This should be good evidence. I hope she enjoys her trial.—Joe]

Quote of the day—UBY: @ZubyMusic

Posted on by
12

Nazism was attempted once. It killed 6 MILLION+ people and the ideology was abandoned. Those who promote it are rightly shunned.

Communism has been attempted multiple times, in multiple nations. It has killed 100 MILLION+ people. Yet many still think it’s a ‘good idea’.

UBY: @ZubyMusic
Tweeted on February 20, 2020
[It’s amazing the price people are willing to pay for “free” stuff.

It would appear to me that the only way to avoid repeating the many lessons in the history of communism and socialism is to increase the cost on those who attempt to implement it rather than on those it is implemented on.

Never give up your guns.—Joe]

It’s back….

Posted on by
10

Two days ago I reported the good news that an oppressive gun control bill severely restricting magazines with capacity more than 15 rounds was defeated.

In the comments John Hardin suggested:

they could just convert it into an Appropriations bill, which has a longer deadline

This is exactly what they did:

A proposal to ban the sale of high-capacity gun magazines in Washington died after not receiving a vote by a key deadline Wednesday evening, but gun-control advocates quickly reloaded with a new proposal.

House Democrats failed to put a bill up for debate that would have banned magazines holding more than 15 rounds. It needed to pass the House by Wednesday to continue being considered in the 2020 session.

The bill was pulled from consideration by the full House after Republicans filed 120 amendments to be debated before a final vote on the bill could be taken, Speaker Laurie Jinkins, D-Tacoma said.

…

Later Thursday a new bill calling for a ban on the sale of magazines holding more than 15 rounds was filed in the House with a provision that would allow it to ignore the deadline.

Along with the policy that limits the number of rounds, it also calls for a buyback program that would compensate gun owners who turn in as many as five high-capacity magazines to the Washington State Patrol between this July 1 and June 30, 2021. To pay for the program, it proposes repealing the tax exemption for the sale of precious metals or bullion.

Bills that require the state to spend money or levy new taxes aren’t subject to Wednesdays if they are included in the General Fund budget. The House and Senate will release their supplemental budget proposals Monday.

I find it “interesting” they plan to tax sales of precious metals to pay for the confiscation of our magazines.

My representative and Senator have a townhall meeting tomorrow:

10:00 – 11:30 AM
Saturday, February 22
Bellevue College
Room N201
3000 Landderholm Circle SE
Bellevue

. I plan to attend. I already submitted questions via a webpage they provided.

Quote of the day—Lyle

Posted on by
1

The underlying message in such talk of “gun violence” and “felons with guns” etc. is that violence, per se, is not the problem. If violence were the problem then the particular weapons being used wouldn’t be the central focus as they are now. They wouldn’t even be an issue.

Turning the populace into cattle, for the benefit of the “common good” (the rulers’ good) is the issue, and that means there must be disarmament.

So of course this is not, and has never been, about crime or violence or “public safety”. In the minds of the power-mad, common criminals are not the problem. Rather, YOU are the problem which needs to be “solved”; the more principled, peaceful, law-abiding and productive citizen patriot. The truth is a threat. You are the threat.

Lyle
February 20, 2020
Comment to Quote of the day—ReelFun.
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—ReelFun

Posted on by
5

the shooters in seattle a week ago have over 60 felonies between them and several each with firearm convictions. Why are they out of jail and on the street with more guns after those convictions? anyone with more than one conviction with firearm should be in jail for decades, not on the street after 30 days. Start there and there is all the data you need. put in jail felons with firearms period.

ReelFun
February 19, 2020
Comment to Pass bills to reduce firearm violence through research, limiting magazine capacity
[Truth. But, almost for certain, it will never happen in Seattle.

One of the reason this suggestion is almost never heeded by the progressives is because such criminals are their demographic. Remember, felons in prison who identify as Democrats outnumber all other political affiliations combined by a factor of two to one. Another reason is that firearm restrictions are not about reducing violent crime. It’s about making the average citizen more dependent upon the state and giving power and control to the government.—Joe]

Washington office of firearm violence prevention

Posted on by
3

Via email from Luis we have this:

This bill just passed the senate, the implications are that, is almost certain that it will passed the house and become law.

This is a tax payer funded, new agency, to take your 2nd amendment rights, capable of issuing  grants to Bloomberg gun control organizations.

Heavy sigh.

If it were an agency with a charter to prevent criminal violence I won’t mind too much. But the way it is worded they could easily conclude that eliminating the use of firearms for self-defense is a positive goal and spend taxpayer money to achieve that goal.

Quote of the day—Julia Musto

Posted on by
5

Criminal justice reform is a lot like gun control. It’s not about changing the rules for everyone. It’s about selectively enforcing them along political lines.

So for example, the left will lecture you for hours about gun crime and how afraid they are of guns and they hate guns and guns are bad. But they don’t really feel that way. They oppose stop and frisk, which saved thousands of lives by taking many thousands of guns off the street. But they’re totally opposed to that.

Meanwhile, they’re working deep into the night, for example, to disarm law-abiding Virginians in rural Virginia who commit essentially no violent crime and are a threat to no one.

They’re not for gun control. They are for punishing people who don’t vote for them, and the same thing is happening here.

The left doesn’t want criminal justice reform. If they did, they’d be on Roger Stone’s side. No. What they really want is to send their political enemies to jail and that’s what they’re trying to do.

Julia Musto
February 15, 2020
Tucker Carlson: Roger Stone case is about the left wanting to send political enemies to jail
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—David Kopel

Posted on by
5

Tiers of scrutiny (strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, and the variants thereof) might sometimes be appropriate for judicial review of non-prohibitory gun regulations. Under Heller, bans on common arms are categorically unconstitutional, without need for use of the means-ends balancing tests of strict or intermediate scrutiny.

David Kopel
February 12, 2020
What arms are “common”?
Amicus brief challenging California rifle ban
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Washington state anti-gun bill action

Posted on by
3

From the NRA ILA:

This week, two bills have been pulled from the House Rules Committee and are eligible for a vote at any time. Please contact your Representative and ask them to oppose House Bills 2240 and 2623!

House Bill 2240 bans the manufacture, possession, sale, transfer, etc. of magazines that hold more than fifteen rounds of ammunition. This bill is strongly supported by the Governor and the Attorney General. These so called “high capacity” magazines are in fact standard equipment for commonly-owned firearms that many Americans legally and effectively use for an entire range of legitimate purposes, such as self-defense or competition. Those who own non-compliant magazines prior to the ban are only allowed to possess them on their own property and in other limited instances such as at licensed shooting ranges or while hunting. Restricted magazines have to be transported unloaded and locked separately from firearms and stored at home locked, making them unavailable for self-defense. Anti-gun legislators are attempting to bring HB 2240 up for a floor vote on Sunday.

House Bill 2623 prohibits an individual from possessing firearms if they are convicted of the misdemeanor crime of unlawful aiming or discharge of a firearm. This poorly conceived legislation even applies to airguns and slingshots and has no exception for an individual aiming or discharging a firearm for self-defense purposes in a location that would have otherwise not been authorized.

Their web page on this makes it easy contact your representatives with a prewritten letter. You can also edit the letter to make it more personal.

Quote of the day—Rolf

Posted on by
4

That’s the problem with too many rules: it rewards gaming the system more handsomely than actually being good, useful, productive, and wise.

Rolf
February 15, 2020
Comment to Quote of the day—Karlyn Borysenko
[Excellent observation!

Perhaps some elaboration is worthwhile. More rules restrict those who are rule followers. But those who are more “flexible” will see the advantages of bypassing the rules and do so when they cannot compete with the rule followers or desire the profits obtainable by disobeying the rules more than the safety of following them.

Those willing to bribe, blackmail, and threaten those who enforce the rules have an even greater advantage over those who follow the rules. And in fact, want even more rules created to hinder their competitors even more. And, of course, the enforcers and creators of rules/laws are more likely to become and/or attract corrupt people the greater the potential for profit from excess rules.

California state Sen. Leland Yee is a prime example.—Joe]

Facebook is evil

Posted on by
3

Michael Z. Williamson gives us numerous examples of the Facebook bias against certain people and/or political viewpoints.

Here is just one of the examples:

20200213224654-25732c6e

The others are just as, or more, perplexing as to why they would be justification for censorship—unless there were a deliberate bias against him and/or those who are opposed to socialism and/or question the validity of the climate change narrative.

Facebook is truly evil. Never click on the links of their advertisers.

Quote of the day—Alan M. Dershowitz

Posted on by
5

This hypocrisy of this double-standard — by political leaders, media pundits, academics and ordinary folks — is shameful, but done not only without shame but with self-righteousness. It was similar during the McCarthy era of my youth. Now as then, the “cause” — anti-Trumpism today, and anti-communism back then — were seen as so righteous that any means, no matter how unfair, is justified in achieving the end. Outright wilful lying is justified by anti-Trump zealots in the interest of getting rid of Trump.

Alan M. Dershowitz
February 12, 2020 at 1:00 am
Demonizing Defense Lawyers: The True Road to Tyranny
[Calling it tyranny will not be sufficient to stop such acts. Tyranny is their goal. It’s going to require prosecutions, convictions, and stiff sentences.—Joe]

It has to be deliberate

Posted on by
6

Last Monday Seattle passed a ban on evictions during winter months.

Sometime last week I read about the ordinance proposal and with zero emotional content to avoid a biased response mentioned it to Barb to see if what was obvious to me would be recognized by her as well. Her reaction was:

What? That’s crazy! Did that actually pass or did someone just propose it?

Good. It’s not just me.

We discussed it a bit. We concluded the action has to be deliberate. They have to know the side effects of this feels-good law will be the raising of rents to cover the loss of rent from those who abuse the loophole in the law.

You can see it in the laws that make it more and more difficult to acquire and use firearms to defend yourself against violent criminals. You can see it in the refusal to prosecute property crimes. You can see it in the use of the legal system to prosecute political enemies while giving political allies a pass.

As I have said before, these people are deliberately trying to destroy society.—Joe]

Political alignment

Posted on by
1

Will asks:

It has been my personal observation that people who support Democrats tend to be much more likely to have flexible morals than those on the other side. I am not at all sure if it is a case of cause or effect. Is the political position chosen because it fits their internal morals better? Or, does associating with that political thinking lead to moral decay?

It’s more than a personal observation: 7 in 10 felons register as Democrats. More than twice as many felons identify as Democrats than all other political affiliations combined.

I can’t say for sure what is cause and what is effect, if any. It could be some independent vector causes both.

I have another observation that might be related. I managed to get myself on fundraising email lists for both Democrats and Republicans. I probably get a half dozen emails from each every day. There are some themes both have in common such as they both try to invoke fear. Here are some examples:

Our conservative values are under attack, Joe, which is why I have teamed up with loyal conservatives who have agreed to DOUBLE every donation.

—

my campaign manager says we need to raise $24,864 in the next 48 hours, or we won’t be able to continue this campaign to protect the American Dream.

—

Mitch McConnell’s conservative mega-donors are dead-set on CRUSHING our momentum and keeping McConnell in power so he can confirm more justices like Brett Kavanaugh and dismantle even more of Barack Obama’s legacy.

—

We have to fight back immediately! I set a make-or-break goal of raising $150,000 by midnight tonight, and I need your immediate help to hit it.
Please, Joe Huffman, click here to give a triple-matched contribution of $5 (it’s worth $20) or more to help Democrats flip the Senate.
I need to make this clear for you: Our country’s future is at stake!

There are things each side does which the other does not do. Republicans appeal to rule of law, respect, and principles. Examples:

The progressives in Washington are acting like grade-school children with a substitute teacher. It’s time to send them home, restore dignity and responsibility, and stand with President Trump in keeping America great.

—

Schiff has been at the center of every investigation, witch hunt, sham trial, and false whistleblower outrage. He even lied about the President on national TV to deceive the media and the American people. There is no bottom for Adam Schiff.

—

The future of conservative values is on the line in 2020, Joe. It’s up to YOU to help keep our values alive.

—

Pelosi threw a temper tantrum and ripped up the copy of the President’s speech. She didn’t just deface the President’s speech; she spat on our nation’s history, the Tuskegee airman, Rush Limbaugh, a little girl from Philadelphia, a mother weeping for her child, and a soldier returning home to his family.

—

While the Democrats are focused on bringing our country— and its policies— to the far left by embracing socialism, we are striving to go back to the basics on which our party was founded: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people.” – Abraham Lincoln

Democrats tell people they are special:

Hi, Joe Huffman — We’re shaping our strategy to elect more Democratic women to the Senate in 2020, and we need your help. Please, will you give your strategic input before our official focus group closes? You can use this link: http://www.dscc.org/wsn-focus-group

Right now Democrats have seven amazing women candidates running against Republicans in key battleground states. And as the chair of the DSCC, I’m personally reaching out to a few highly-informed, dependable supporters like you for input.

This is your chance to directly influence our 2020 strategy and play a crucial role in electing more Democratic women to the U.S. Senate. So please, Joe Huffman…

—

As the DSCC’s Executive Director, I want to invite you to join a small and exclusive strategy group by taking a survey that will provide crucial input to our Senior Leadership Team.

The responses from the handful of Democrats who join this strategy group will provide a critical grassroots perspective, which we will use as we develop the Democratic Party’s strategy to flip the Senate and remove Mitch McConnell from power.

Joe Huffman, I want you to know that you are one of the DSCC’s most informed supporters and I am confident your input will make a real difference for us.

Please, click on this personalized link before midnight tonight to accept my invitation and enter your members-only strategy survey…

**We respectfully ask that you do not share this link with non-members.

—

Joe Huffman — Time is running out to vote for your favorite design for our BRAND NEW 2020 DSCC Membership Card!

Top Democrats all across America have already voted and reserved their personalized card, but we just double-checked everyone’s voting record and here’s what we have on file for you…

—

Hey Joe Huffman,
I’ve been searching through our database of Washington supporters, and I selected a few highly-informed and very active Democrats to get input from. I’m happy to let you know that you are in this group, Joe Huffman.
More than 437 of the Democrats I selected have agreed to be interviewed — but our team’s data analyst tells me we need 10 more responses before we can consider these results for our party strategy.

Your input is crucial as we finalize our strategy to help Democrats flip the Senate from Mitch McConnell’s control in the next election!

This is consistent with what I observed in reading The Communist Manifesto a few years ago:

The Communist Manifesto tells its readers that supporters of Communism are the intelligent people. They deserve, are destined to, and the good of all human kind depends on them, being in charge. That they “understand” the benefits of Communism to the bafflement of others is probably proof to them that they are the intellectual superiors of those that think Communism is, at best, prone to abuse.

In other words the second plausible answer to the obvious question is that those that advocate Communism are not very bright people who want to believe they are the brightest of all people. And that The Communist Manifesto tells them they are the brightest enables them to then claim themselves as intellectuals.

That Democrats think the law and rules do not, or at least should not, apply to them is consistent with the messages they tell their followers—they are special people.

Quote of the day—Karlyn Borysenko

Posted on by
8

I think the Democrats have an ass-kicking coming to them in November, and I think most of them will be utterly shocked when it happens because they’re existing in an echo chamber that is not reflective of the broader reality. I hope it’s a wake-up call and causes them to take a long look in the mirror and really ask themselves how they got here.

Karlyn Borysenko
February 11, 2020
After Attending a Trump Rally, I Realized Democrats Are Not Ready For 2020
[Republicans should not get cocky. If they are going to win they need to beat the margin of fraud as well as the margin or error. And to be able to do anything once they win they need to win enough seats to make blackmail, bribery, and extortion difficult.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Gary North

Posted on by
2

The reason why gun control advocates want this right overturned is because they are in favor of centralized political control. They believe that their class, namely, the intellectual class, is in control of the agencies of civil government. For the most part, this assumption is correct. They assume that their class, and only their class, has the wisdom to allocate weapons. They believe that their class alone possesses the right to determine which citizen has access to weapons, under which circumstances, and for how long.

In effect, the gun-control advocate is rather like a medieval knight in the 15th century. He resents the fact that weapons are becoming cheaper, and that the common man who joins the Army becomes a threat to his social class, and therefore to his social standing. He resents the fact that his weapons no longer give him a monopoly of violence. Weapons have come onto the market, and these weapons can be used effectively by commoners who do not spend decades of training in their use.

Gary North
December 24, 2012
In Defense of the Second Amendment
[H/T to Chuck Petras @Chuck_Petras for bringing this to my attention.—Joe]