Monthly Archives: May 2008

Quote of the day–Glenn Beck

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It comes down to Larry, Curly, and Moe?

Glenn Beck
NRA Annual Convention
Keynote speech
May 17, 2008
[He was referring to the remaining three viable candidates for president in 2008.

He showed us his cummerbund decorated with a skull and crossbones, said he was going plunder, rape, and pillage this evening. He did not disappoint.

After McCain had given a speech here the previous day with lots of favorable things said by the NRA. The Three Stooges reference above was just one of many negatives toward the Republican candidate. Across the table from me Bitter Bitch covered her mouth with her hands and her eyes bugged out as Beck ragged on McCain as well as the Democrats who “sold their soul to Karl Marx”.

I have more great quotes from Beck (and some pictures) but right now I have to get ready for dinner and then prepare for a 7:00 AM flight tomorrow.–Joe]

Dinner with bloggers and 5000 others

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I had dinner with 5000 people tonight. I only had a chance to talk to a few at my talk and the people in the next table over. But it included Bill and Denise. I have corresponded a bit and had some comments from them occasionally. It was nice to finally met them.

I met and talked with Caleb and his wife for a quite a while before dinner. Very nice but I think I have a preference for my daughter and her Caleb but then I suppose there is a possibility of bias.

Afterward we went to some bar that was running the music at about 20 decibels above what you need hearing protection for in an industrial environment for continuous exposure. We found an empty room in the back and asked that it be ours. The staff agreed and we went in and ordered drinks. I only ordered the one orange juice because they said it was free and I didn’t think that was quite right. Others ordered beers that cost $8.00 each and other stuff that they wanted to check your credit card limits before they would bring it. We asked they turn the sound off in our room and the sound level dropped to where we could talk if we only yelled a little bit. After about 15 minutes I realized we are humans and humans adapt the environment to themselves and don’t have to adapt to the environment. I shut the doors to the room and everyone cheered. I credited the two engineering degrees for enabling me to figure that one out.

Squeaky Wheel wasn’t quite as entertaining as she was last night but then she probably will be capable of remembering most of tonight. I promised not to blog about last night and she agreed not to post the video either. Kevin and Squeaky did a blog a little bit about last night (I didn’t realize I was scaring anyone, honest!) but the best parts will only be available on a need to know basis.

Speaking of Squeaky, she is famous now. She was misquoted by the LA Times.

Everyone was bummed that Tamara and Roberta only connected with a few bloggers today. Tamara should be back tomorrow and some people are hanging around a little longer just to make sure they get a chance to met her. I’m hoping Tamara can roll Roberta up in carpet and throw her in the trunk or something so we can met her too.

Another great day except everyone wimped out by 1:00 AM. It was 2:30 before we broke up the last two nights. You would think that with the practice we got with three and four hours of sleep the two previous nights they would be able to tolerate staying up until at least 3:00 this morning. But for some strange reason the non-engineers didn’t seem to think the practice helped them.

So, it’s now just about 3:00 local time. I’ll show them in the morning!

So that is what an Instalanche looks like

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Just a couple hours ago I was showing Say Uncle what a high proportion of my referrals were coming from him via his link to me. Uncle’s referrals just became noise.

My blog just got an Instalanche via this post (my post was A time machine and scoped rifle ) by Glenn Reynolds (thank you Mr. Reynolds):

Update: At the dinner tonight (Glenn Beck was awesome!) I bragged to Kevin that I had an Instalanche. He said, “Yeah, I know. Ask me how I know.” I replied, “They visited you after visiting me?” “Yup.” I just looked at his sitemeter. Over 20% of Kevins hits were from referrals from my post on the time machine and a scoped rifle.

 More numbers for most of the day:

SAF is looking for people

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I stopped by at the Second Amendment Foundation booth today and talked to Alan Gottlieb and Joe Waldron. It was really nice to catch up on things. One of Alan’s daughters is essentially the same age as James (and they actually met once) and we talked kids, Microsoft matching donations for 501(C)(3)s, and other stuff for a while. Then he said they were looking for people for the Bellevue Washington office.

They need someone technical (in the web site programming sense) who knows the gun issue, is smart, and wouldn’t mind working for a non-profit organization (read that as lower than industry standard compensation). Other duties would involve organizing and putting on the annual Gun Rights Policy Conference (if you are a gun rights activist you should attend this if you can). I’d love to do this but I’m too much in love with the money at Microsoft to consider it. Alan suggested that it’s a job for someone that is retired. It used to be there were a lot of Microsoft people that retired in their mid and late 20’s but with the stock flat for the last 10 years that doesn’t happen anymore.

A girls best friend

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Trying to get the woman in your life interested in guns? Maybe this will get her attention. It’s very pretty and shiny:

1193 Mounted stones, 90 Carats, Estimated Value: $360,950.

Wife Barbara doesn’t wear jewelry so I can’t imagine she would like all those stones but I think daughters Kim and Xenia would each like one (hint to their husband and boyfriend–you would get on my “good side” with a gift like this).

Quote of the day–Chris Cox

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They don’t fear me. They fear you.

Chris Cox
NRA-ILA Executive Director
9:32 AM May 16, 2008
[Regarding talking to politicians and what motivates them. It is the voters and the activists, not the lobbist themselves that have the power to influence politicians.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Aaron Zelman

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Our main goal is to destroy gun control. We are an organization that believes we have the moral authority to point out to the rest of the world the evils that have come from gun control and how humanity has suffered because of gun-control schemes.

…

We’re not interested in compromise. We are only interested in the destruction of something we consider to be a very evil and deadly policy known as gun control.

Aaron Zelman
May 15, 2008
No Compromise Against Gun Control
[The goal must be to drive anti-gun bigots into complete and total political destruction. Too many people have died to let these people have their way any longer.–Joe]

Louisville Kentucky and random stuff

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My bags are almost all packed and I’m scheduled to arrive in Louisville tomorrow night. The Second Amendment Blog Bash and the NRA Annual Meeting are the attraction. Blogging may be lighter than usual. I tend to stay up way late into the night/morning talking to people.

Other bloggers that I have meet who will be attending include Kevin, Say Uncle, Sebastian, and USCitizen. That would almost make it worth the trip. The other 40 or so bloggers I haven’t met will make it more than worthwhile. Then there are the 65,000 other people that are expected to show up. It should be quite a party.

What interests me is not just the pleasure of meeting thousands of other like minded people but knowing that the Brady Bunch, the VPC, and all the other bigot organizations would have trouble getting as many people together on an annual basis as I do for Boomershoot. Isn’t that odd?

The NRA can get tens of thousands of people annually and how many does the “Million Mom March” muster every year? Why isn’t the voting on legislation and legislators just as lopsided? We have some tremendous advantages because we have something besides hate binding us together. We have our love of freedom, our interests in firearms, and all the activities that go into that. Their goals are the destruction of a culture that enables them to exist in freedom, peace, and security. It’s as if they are, in essence, suicidal. With such mental problems I guess it isn’t a surprise their numbers are small and that unless they are collecting a paycheck from their efforts they usually soon lose focus and drift away. That’s good for our side but it seems odd they wield as much power as they do. It must be the appeal of simple solutions to complex and/or unsolvable problems.

Quote of the day–Kevin Baker

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And now we’re at a point, politically, where there are three candidates running who have a realistic shot at the Presidency, and I wouldn’t urinate on any of them if their hair was on fire.

Where the hell is the space colony they promised me when I was a child, watching men leave bootprints and tire tracks in the lunar dust? Where is my new frontier, my place to go to so that I may live free?

Kevin Baker
That’s 35 in Dog Years
[That’s me on a “down” day.–Joe]

We must not be the parents

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I think she must have been swapped at birth with someone else’s child.

Barb and I wouldn’t have a child that received her lowest grade in math! We meet each other in algebra class and each took four years of math in high school followed by I can’t remember how many math classes in college.

I suppose we have to keep her now.

Update: This just in–a picture of Xenia and I are in this article about an Ohio dad jailed after daughter fails to get GED. We are the picture on the far right of the row of pictures.

What Gun Laws Would You Accept?

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This is a post I made on thehighroad.org in response to the same question:

No victim, no crime.

The tool does not matter. For those who think the tool does matter, please read on:

My sister and her three year old daughter were stabbed and strangled to death back in 1977 in their own home.

The weapons were a kitchen knife and a shoestring.

Are you seriously going to argue that since no gun was used, this was somehow less of a crime than it would have been if a gun had been used?

Upon reading of this crime, how many of you thought, “Oh, thank goodness he didn’t use a gun. That would have been really bad.”?

I’m guessing no one would think that. Ever.

And how many of you thought, “What if she’d been able to defend herself?”

I’ve asked myself that a thousand times.

I submit that the only reason we’re even talking about this is because of the nuttiness we’ve been subjected to all our lives. For some reason it is hard to resist when we’ve grown up with it and so many people around us, people we respect even, have embraced the the false premise that says gun control equals crime control.

It’s time to say, “Enough already. We do not accept the premises of gun laws. We can see for ourselves that, no matter how ‘reasonable’ they may sound when promoted by politicians, their effects have run counter to their stated purposes.”

As for making it illegal for criminals to have guns; How’s it been working? Uh, criminals don’t obey the laws, remember? Gun laws do not apply to them.

“Gun control” is about one thing– controlling the law abiding. The Framers knew it. Why aren’t we teaching it?

And so it comes down to education.

As for the “under aged”: Parenting, anyone? And the same thing applies here as to criminals– the good kids will obey their parents and the laws. The bad ones will have guns, just as easily as they have drugs and alcohol.

A gun law is nothing more than a government enforced monopoly, reserving guns for criminal use only.

When are we actually going to enforce the Constitution, and protect it against all enemies, foreign and domestic? That’s my question.

As Oleg put it, regarding politicians: What do they have in mind, that they would prefer us unable to resist aggression?

What, indeed.

Letter to Dave Barry

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With these links the following should be self-explanatory:

May 12, 2008

Dave Barry
1 Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132

Dear Mr. Barry,

Please find enclosed some of the pieces from the toilet we blew up April 27th at Boomershoot 2008. We used four pounds of high explosives, five gallons of gasoline and six road flares in the process. As you can see the disassembly and disinfecting process was quite effective. Pieces were found over 100 yards away and most were seared with high temperature flames.

The next Boomershoot will be April 26th, 2009. We would be honored if you were to attend and were to fire the first shot at a low-flow toilet suitably equipped with appropriate aggressive chemical “cleaners”.

Regards,

Joe Huffman
Boomershoot Event Director
joeh@boomershoot.org
208-301-4254
http://www.boomershoot.org/

Datastorm V1.0

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Transfers data wirelessly at 2.88 MBytes per second. It also doubles as a gun effective against squirrels, vegans, clowns, hippies, street urchins, hooligans, carpetbaggers & scalawags. Don’t try it with the girl scout though. She shoots back.

H/T to Kevin I. of the Lewiston Pistol Club.

What happened to “never again”?

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This is from Chicago so it’s not a big surprise they could find someone who thinks like this:

Rabbi Harold Kudan of nearby Temple Am Shalom went on record as challenging aggressive leaflets the gun lobby circulated a month after the shootings that claimed, “If Jews had been armed they could have fought the Nazis.”

“If Jews had guns in Nazi Germany, no one would have survived. It would have been an excuse for Nazis to kill with even greater abandon,” he told the assemblage, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The Nazis didn’t stop killing because they finished the job they set out to do. They were stopped because men with guns, tanks, ships, and planes forcibly stopped them. Had the Jews been able and willing to put up some resistance, particularly in Eastern Europe in response to the police battalions, it would have significantly delayed the implementation of the Final Solution.

With a stated goal of ridding Europe of Jews entirely it seems unlikely the Nazis could have been motivated further. What would have the goal been had they had “even greater abandon”? Kill them twice?

Quote of the day–Thomas F. Dailey

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…the recent signs of violent times occasion an opportunity for broadening our collective sense of what ”rights” should be in terms of our social consciousness. Our political and judicial discourse would benefit from moving beyond a purely libertarian view of rights, which emphasizes freedom from governmental coercion or constraint, to incorporate also a dignitarian view of rights, which promotes freedom for the good of each other and for society as a whole.

Thomas F. Dailey
May 11, 2008
Let’s think carefully about gun ‘rights,’ society
[“Freedom for the good of each other and for society as a whole?” Hasn’t this already been tried a few times by others? And the body count from these efforts just keeps growing. There are only individual rights. Collective “rights” are more properly called powers.–Joe]

A time machine and scoped rifle

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What would you do if you were given a time machine and a scoped rifle? Or would you want a scoped rifle to go with the time machine?

In the science fiction short story The Return of William Proxmire Proxmire doesn’t want a scoped rifle–he wants a syringe full of antibiotics and he is “gunning” for Robert Heinlein. I loved this story. It articulates the fantasy of changing history via what Niven claims, perhaps rightly so, the common fantasy assassinating some horrendously evil person before they had a chance to do their evil. It put the twist on that fantasy that perhaps you could change history in remarkably good ways by doing some small act of good as well.

Barb and I have been watching The Nazis: A Warning from History. This presentation casts doubts on my fantasy of going back in time to assassinate Hitler. And it makes me a little more sympathetic to all the people I read about in Plotting Hitler’s Death: The Story of German Resistance who had the opportunity but then failed to follow through because they didn’t have all their plans in order about what to do after Hitler was dead. Some of them spent months debating what type of government (a parliament? A representative democracy? Or perhaps even install a King?) would they put in place after they had successfully killed Hitler. My frustration with them boiled down to “just kill the SOB and worry about the details later”. But perhaps it wasn’t so simple.

In the The Nazis they claim Hitler wasn’t the dictator with a finely detailed plan we, or at least I, thought he was. Hitler had the broad goals of expanding the geographical territory and economic power of the “Germanic people”. Yes, many people blamed the Jews for the poor outcome of Germany in WWI and Jews as a scapegoat were a useful tool to motivate people. But in many ways Hitler was very lazy and let his subordinates do pretty much whatever they wanted. He had obtained great power through his gift of rhetoric and ambitious people sought access to that power. These power seekers put great effort into trying to please him. Hitler didn’t command them to commit all the great atrocities. They devised and implemented them in an attempt to please him and obtain still more wealth and power. If they furthered the broad goals of more territory and power for the Germans then Hitler did not interfere and they obtained the resources to further their work.

The above is background for the questions posed in the first two sentences of this post. If you could change history with a little nudge (what is one bullet into the brain of Gefreiter Hitler during the middle of WWI in the big scheme of things?) what would that nudge be?

Books such as Because They Hate, Hatred’s Kingdom, Preachers of Hate, The Truth About Muhammad, and Infidel put Muhammad on my list. And because Barb and I just finished Genghis Khan he would get some “special attention”. Both of these butchers could perhaps be better “nudged” with something other than “a scoped rifle”.

The introduction of the principles of scientific inquire and a little schooling might have changed Muhammad into something much more compatible with civilized society. And certainly the Arabs had the talent and even a strong tendency for pursuing science instead of superstition. Could the education of the illiterate Mohammad have made the desired difference?

And what of Genghis Khan? Was the poisoning of his father by a neighboring tribe, the resulting dissolution his tribe and him being hunted and marked for death as the eldest son of the dead tribal leader the motivation for his climb to power? Could his father have been warned about the poison and the results in the following decades been much different?

But the books Free to Choose, Freedomnomics, The Big Three in Economics and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal have influenced me the most. I am inclined to go with the “scoped rifle” approach for dealing with Rousseau, Marx, Hegel, and Engels. These were brilliant men of ideas and persuasion that influenced and enabled Hitler, Stalin, and scores of other brutal dictators to kill hundreds of millions of people and enslave billions more right up through the present day. Perhaps this graphic from Kevin will make it more clear as to why these people are at the top of my list: