Category Archives: Crap For Brains

People and especially governments do some incredibly stupid stuff. This is about those stupid actions.

I can’t wrap my mind around this stuff

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I just finished this book over the weekend and while there are many aspects that I am skeptical about some things resonated well. One thing was that struck me was that the psychology of progressives (r selected populations in his terminology) is in a large part about “equality”. Gun control can be interpreted as government mandated equality of victimization. Everyone must be equally vulnerable. It is “unfair/unjust” that some people be able to protect themselves better than others. It is better than victims of violent crimes be selected at, essentially, random than for some people to be able to avoid and/or defend against criminals. If you are successful in defending your self you must be punished.

The case below via the author, Anonymous Conservative, could be a case in point:

A homeowner in Finland has been sentenced to four years in jail and a hefty fine after fighting off three intruders who attempted to rob his house. The thieves, meanwhile, got lesser prison terms and are to be paid damages by their victim.

In April, a 35-year-old man from Hyvinkää, a town just 50km north of the Finnish capital, Helsinki, heard a knock on the front door of his suburban house and rushed to open it. As soon as he unlocked it, three strangers rushed in and launched at him, toting baseball bats and a gun. The man retreated to the kitchen, where he found a knife and with it was able to overpower the intruders, two men and one woman.

…

The homeowner has been convicted of “excessive self-defense and attempted manslaughter,” Helsinki news reports. He will serve an unconditional sentence for four years and two months, which he has to spend in prison. The man also has to pay damages to his attackers, with the fine totaling €21,000 (US$23,000). The newspaper does not provide information on the severity of injuries sustained by the home-invaders, however, it is known that they survived the event.

…

All three received one-year-and-two-month conditional sentences, which is similar to probation or house arrest in Finland, depending on the case. The offender serves the sentence outside of jail, but has to follow strict jail-like rules.

The trio was also ordered to pay the homeowner damages, but their combined fine was ruled to be €3,000 (US$3,300).

A friend from the U.K. once explained to me that over there you were allowed to defend yourself as long as you used proportional force. If your attacker was using their fists you couldn’t use a knife. If they were using a knife you couldn’t use a gun, that sort of thing. I asked about a large man attacking a much smaller or weaker person. What then? Well, “It depends…”

I totally reject such thinking.

In the free areas of the U.S. if someone is using deadly force against an innocent person then you are allowed to use deadly force, of whatever type, against your attacker. The attacker could have both hands cuffed behind his back but if he has your kid on the ground and kicking them in the head and you would be justified in using a .50 BMG on full auto against him (take care not to hurt innocents yourself).

In my book the home intruders in the case above should have been made to pay for not only the damages done to the home or people, the lost time spent cutting up the bad guys and dealing with the police, and replaced the knife.

Maura Healey, dictator of Massachusetts

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Maura Healey,attorney general of Massachusetts, wrote an editorial for the Boston Globe and said:

Here in Massachusetts, 10,000 assault weapons were sold just in the last year…

Interesting. In just one year 10k a particular class of guns were sold in the state. Since that class of firearm has been around for well over 20 years there must be something on the order of 100K or more of them in the state. That must mean those type of guns are “in common use” and protected by the Heller Decision, right?

And how many crimes were committed with those firearms? She doesn’t tell us of any in the state of Massachusetts. She mentions just four in the entire country over the span of several years. Commenter Doverham (07/20/16 10:28 AM) tells us:

How many people a year are killed with “assault weapons” in MA – isn’t that a relevant number to know before deciding whether this is actually worthwhile or meaningful? I will give you a hint – that number was 2 in 2013, 1/17th the number killed with handguns, 1/30th the number killed by distracted drivers.

Yet she thinks this is justification for banning all of them. What other specific enumerated right, exercised by 100K+ people in your state, could someone justify the infringement of by four crimes committed in other states and two in your own? If that is all someone has to have for justification for infringement then who knows what she will demand be banned next? If that sort of rational passes logical and constitutional muster then she, or the next attorney general, can easily justify the banning of Islam, Democrats, or people with dark skin.

She also said:

On Wednesday, we are sending a directive to all gun manufacturers and dealers that makes clear that the sale of these copycat assault weapons is illegal in Massachusetts. With this directive, we will ensure we get the full protection intended when lawmakers enacted our assault weapons ban, not the watered-down version of those protections offered by gun manufacturers.

The directive specifically outlines two tests to determine what constitutes a “copy” or “duplicate” of a prohibited weapon. If a gun’s operating system is essentially the same as that of a banned weapon, or if the gun has components that are interchangeable with those of a banned weapon, it’s a “copy” or “duplicate,” and it is illegal. Assault weapons prohibited under our laws cannot be altered in any way to make their sale or possession legal in Massachusetts.

Ahhh… there we have it. She knows she can’t get the law changed through legislative channels so she just dictates her desires. And if a gun “has components that are interchangeable with those of a banned weapon” it will be prohibited. That will be “fun” to determine and enforce. I would if she considers ammunition a “component”. And what about a scope, flashlight, rail, spring, peep sight, or bipod?

Also note that she thinks guns have “operating systems”. Dictators don’t have to know what they are talking about. They just have to have people with guns willing to follow orders.

Update: See also what Sebastian has to say about it.

Update 2: See also John Richardson and Say Uncle.

Update 3: See also Thirdpower.

Quote of the day—David Hardy

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Some sorta academic clown suggests he and some buddies might storm NRA headquarters.

It’d be like “The Keystone Cops Storm Okinawa.” Amusing, but rather messy for the cleanup crews. Of course an anti gunner sees nothing wrong with homicide, that’s not really the issue….

David Hardy
July 6, 2016
It is possible he and his friends might make it to the elevators
[Delusions are often functional.

In this case my hypothesis is the academic clown is able to imagine some sort of control over his hated enemy in his delusional universe and this gives him comfort that he is lacking in the real world.—Joe]

Lesson learned

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We often hear from anti-gun people things like:

It’s an argument that’s often echoed by gun nuts – as though their fully-loaded AR-15 with 100-bullet drum will keep them safe from Predator drones and cruise missiles.

Or this:

If you’re someone who honestly believes that you can stage an armed rebellion to overthrow the United States government, you’re too mentally unstable to own guns.

Is it asking too much for these people to learn something from the number of police being shot up in Dallas? ONE guy murdered five armed police officers and wounded several others in the span of a few minutes. He didn’t make it out alive, but still there are some things that could be learned here.

How many “gun nuts” would it take to overthrow, or at least completely remove the majority of those in control of, a small city government they thought was corrupt? Or a large city government? Or a state government?

Think about the resources tied up for a month when the two D.C. snipers were active. Think about the time and number of police it took to find, surround, and finish off the one rogue police officer in Los Angles a few years ago.

Multiple that by, picking a number, 3% of the number of gun owners in the U.S. (about 100 million). For those anti-gun people who may be arithmetic challenged that is 3,000,000. And 3,000,000 is much, much, larger than one or two. And there is a synergy with larger numbers that cause a systemic failure such that it would far worse than just 3,000,000 times the effect of one or two acting on their own. Nearly all of those 3% would do virtually nothing more than show up, look around, shrug, and talk among themselves about the replacement government to put in place.

Or looking at it another way, think about what might happen if ISIS, with a few thousand fanatics, decided to put together an ongoing, diversified, guerilla attack against us with a dozen or so people per team.* The evidence supplied in Dallas demonstrates our police would not do well. The military doesn’t have enough people to protect every local government or vulnerable target. It would require some percentage, maybe 3%, of U.S. gun owners to help defend our homeland—to protect “the security of a free state”.

See also my previous post on the topic, Boots on the ground.

But don’t expect anti-gun people to change their story. They believe what they want to believe. Facts are apparently not something within their domain of expertise. They work more with insults.

* I’ve seen some of the training tapes our military found in the caves of Afghanistan. One of those was about ambushing and killing police officers.

Useful idiot, or just idiot?

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Oh, the irony. “A professor at the Southern State Community College (SSCC) in Ohio is currently under investigation for threatening to shoot up the NRA headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia and Washington lobbyists in order to increase support for anti-gun legislation.”

His FB post read, in part :

“Look, there’s only one solution. A bunch of us anti-gun types are going to have to arm ourselves, storm the NRA headquarters in Fairfax, VA, and make sure there are no survivors.

This action might also require coordinated hits at remote sites, like Washington lobbyists.

Then and only then will we see some legislative action on assault weapons.”

Not sure how someone with this tenuous a grasp of reality manages to become an adjunct prof, but there you have it. And while I’m sure that if he did do that, he might see some action on weapons, but I’m not so sure it would be legislative.

Don’t ever let them tell you nobody wants to take your guns.

Quote of the day—Paul Joslin

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Members of the NRA, other gun owners, including myself, and other non-gun-owning citizens all agree that a human should not use an assault rifle or other automatic weapons to hunt down and kill a deer or other game. We also all agree that a human should not use such weapons to hunt down and kill another human.

Since there is nothing else to kill, can’t we all now agree that we can do without such weapons without contravening the Second Amendment?

Paul Joslin
July 1, 2016
We can do without assault weapons
[Since Mr. Joslin is under the delusion that he has read the minds of all citizens in this country and simultaneously doesn’t not understand the purpose of the Second Amendment I’ll let Federal Judge Kozinski spell it out for those who aren’t quite as delusional.

The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed — where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

Fortunately, the Framers were wise enough to entrench the right of the people to keep and bear arms within our constitutional structure. The purpose and importance of that right was still fresh in their minds, and they spelled it out clearly so it would not be forgotten.

Hence, under a doomsday situation we could, should, and would use assault rifles and fully automatic weapons to hunt down and kill those humans who would enslave us. And therefore such weapons are not only protected by the Second Amendment, the use of those weapons under those circumstances are the primarily purpose of the Second Amendment.—Joe]

It may not be a shoulder-thingy…

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… but at least it goes up!

AssaultJack

Continue reading →

Quote of the day—windowlickers

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If our politicians had half a brain, combined, they’d STOP going after guns . . .

. . . and start going after munition. Regulating the amount and tracking of ammunition sold, across the country, would be a neat little step. Heck, perscritions get only so many pills. Why not cap Ammo? And if we force all shell casings to be stamped, even the home brew folks (which even the NRA said accounts for a small percentage) would be accountable. Get ranges and back yard nuts to police their brass and turn in casings to get new ones, voila, environmentally responsible AND a built in tracking.

windowlickers
June 27, 2016
Comment to Gun control a high priority for N.J. lawmakers today
[Simple solutions from simple minds. And total crap for brains or else a troll.

“…force all shell casings to be stamped…”? With what? And then what? And people ignore you? And then what? And what about the billions of “unstamped rounds” already in private possession?

This person has to be a troll, right?—Joe]

Journalist education 99; Assault Rifle

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Words continue to mean things, even though 99% of journalists fail to use them correctly. This post is for journalists, or for those who take them seriously. For everyone else who already knows this stuff; thank you for your patience while we dabble in some remedial education for the less fortunate.

There’s now a trend among conservatives in talk radio to declare that there is no such thing as an “assault rifle”. They’ll say it proudly, as though they’re among an elite few who know the truth about something. This is the sort of thing you “know” because some guy you know knows a guy who’s cousin’s step-father’s uncle knows a thing or two because he once knew a guy who knew a cop, and the story trickled down through several get-togethers and backyard BBQs. In other words it’s not something you know at all. Apparently they mean well in this case, but they are attempting to make a point that, at best, they didn’t quite get the first few times it was explained to them. We’ll try again.

Yes, there are assault rifles. The Germans seem to have cemented the design concept back in the 1940s. In short, an assault rifle (Sturmgewehr) is a smallish rifle firing a cartridge of intermediate size and power (in-between a pistol and a rifle), feeding from a detachable, box magazine, capable of full-automatic fire. The original had a pistol grip stock, but the latter feature is not critical to its purpose or function. Assault rifles really, really do exist. They’re a sort of halfway rifle, between the submachine gun (which fires pistol ammo) and the automatic rifle (which uses full power rifle ammo) and practically all militaries of the world now use an assault rifle of some kind as standard issue to regular infantry. They’re also found occasionally among law enforcement and private collectors.

Assault rifles were essentially banned in the U.S. (before they were even invented) by the National Firearms Act of 1934, as modified by the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act of 1986.

The thing that does NOT exist is any firearm design known as an “assault weapon”. Notice the difference there; “rifle” verses “weapon”. Sure; a rifle can be used as a weapon, but a weapon is not necessarily a rifle. A “weapon” could be a rock, for example, or a stick, or a fist, et al.

When we’re talking about classifications within the firearm industry, words really, really do mean things. There is no such thing as the firearm classification, “assault weapon”, and therefore no one can define it. When you think about it just a little bit, it makes sense that no one can define it, being that it does not exist.

Just as a politician talking about banning “assault weapons” is only showing his ignorance and therefore disqualifying himself from the discussion, those of you who say there’s no such thing as an “assault rifle” are just as ignorant, or more so. The assault rifle is a significant part of 20th century military and political history, and you seem to have missed the entire story. Please stay out of the conservation until you’ve got it right.

To summarize then;
Assault rifles DO exist. See right here.
Assault weapons (as a firearm design) do NOT exist.

Thank you.

GUNCOG

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This is, of course, from Stephanie. Inspired by Terilyn:

GunCog

It even looks sort of like Terilyn.

Good job Stephanie.

Don’t believe everything you hear or read

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I received an email tip about this and it sounded just a little too bad to be true. The incident supposedly happened June 2, so I went looking for more recent information and found this:

A story that’s circulating on social media and anti-Muslim and conspiracy-oriented websites is falsely claiming that three young Syrian refugees raped a young girl at knifepoint at an apartment complex in Twin Falls that supposedly is the site where about 50 Syrian refugees had been resettled – when in fact, no Syrian refugees have been resettled to Twin Falls. The story also charges that police failed to respond to the alleged incident in a timely fashion, which local authorities also say is false.

“There was no gang rape, there was no Syrian involvement, there were no Syrian refugees involved, there was no knife used, there was no inactivity by the police,” said Twin Falls County Prosecutor Grant Loebs. “I’m looking at the Drudge Report headline: ‘Syrian Refugees Rape Little Girl at Knifepoint in Idaho’ – all false.”

I’ve fallen for this sort of thing before too. It was some outrageous gun related thing.

If something is an extremely close match to your belief system or worst fears you should examine it very carefully. Your mind “wants” to believe it and will easily ignore the warning signs that it is fabricated or exaggerated.

Sometime or another everyone will find, for a short time, they had crap for brains. Clean it out, learn from the experience, and don’t get fooled the next time.

Irony meter, meet peg

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A journalist tries to buy a gun. Gets denied. Hilarity ensues.

Short version: He’s doing a story of how easy it is to buy guns (complete with overwrought hyperbole), but he’s got a history of alcohol abuse and a domestic violence charge. Then he’s got the cluelessness to say “didn’t see that coming.”

D’oh! (h/t to Vox)

A Glock with a lot of clips in it

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Someone had to do it;

Danger; a lot of clips!!!

Glock with a lot of clips

Some people want to live in a prison

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Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.

Tweeted yesterday:

I don’t want to ignore the shooter’s motivation. But I want to deny him–and every civilian–the means to kill 49 innocent people on a whim.

I suppose we could get along fairly well without pressure cookers but no gasoline or matches would be a huge step backward. Let alone the hundreds of other things that could be used. The only place where that would even be plausible would be a prison.

I’m going to say molṑn labé to that.

Quote of the day—Tam

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In case you were wondering what the dot at the top of the pyramid of Maslow’s Heirarchy was, now you know. You’ve pretty much gotta have the cave bears wiped out and a good handle on what next year’s crop is going to look like before you can start life-flighting frogs.

Tam
June 9, 2016
Froggy Life Flight
[What happened to concern about your carbon footprint? They put more CO2 in the air with the airlifting of the frog than if they had just burned it.—Joe]

What were they thinking?

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The Clinton email scandal continues to deteriorate. Most people following the issue will be aware of the review by the inspector general which was released yesterday. In part it said:

Two staff in S/ES-IRM reported to the OIG that, in late 2010, they each discussed their concerns about Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email account in separate meetings with the then-Director of S/ES-IRM. In one meeting, one staff member raised concerns that information sent and received on Secretary Clinton’s account could contain Federal records that needed to be preserved in order to satisfy Federal recordkeeping requirements. According to the staff member, the Director stated that the Secretary’s personal system had been reviewed and approved by Department legal staff and that the matter was not to be discussed any further. As previously noted, OIG found no evidence that staff in the Office of the Legal Adviser reviewed or approved Secretary Clinton’s personal system. According to the other S/ES-IRM staff member who raised concerns abut the server, the Director stated that the mission of S/ES-IRM is to support the Secretary and instructed the staff never to speak of the Secretary’s personal email system again.

Emphasis added.

Ms.Clinton has also publically stated it was reviewed and approved. There are lots of other damning items in the review. And we haven’t even seen the results of the FBI investigation yet. Interesting time are ahead for “Crooked Clinton”.

But unless you “have your finger on the pulse” of some other sources you wouldn’t know that some really mindboggling stupid computer security practices were in place at the Clinton residence:

According to historic Internet address maps stored by San Mateo, Calif. based Farsight Security, among the handful of Internet addresses historically assigned to the domain “clintonemail.com” was the numeric address 24.187.234.188. The subdomain attached to that Internet address was….wait for it…. “printer.clintonemail.com“.

…

Ronald Guilmette, a private security researcher in California who prompted me to look up this information, said printing things to an Internet-based printer set up this way might have made the printer data vulnerable to eavesdropping.

“Whoever set up their home network like that was a security idiot, and it’s a dumb thing to do,” Guilmette said. “Not just because any idiot on the Internet can just waste all your toner. Some of these printers have simple vulnerabilities that leave them easy to be hacked into.”

More importantly, any emails or other documents that the Clintons decided to print would be sent out over the Internet — however briefly — before going back to the printer. And that data may have been sniffable by other customers of the same ISP, Guilmette said.

“People are getting all upset saying hackers could have broken into her server, but what I’m saying is that people could have gotten confidential documents easily without breaking into anything,” Guilmette said. “So Mrs. Clinton is sitting there, tap-tap-tapping on her computer and decides to print something out. A clever Chinese hacker could have figured out, ‘Hey, I should get my own Internet address on the same block as the Clinton’s server and just sniff the local network traffic for printer files.’”

I repeat, “Whoever set up their home network like that was a security idiot…”. It’s stupid to route your printer traffic via an outside network unless you are only printing the most vanilla of materials and need for people in the outside world to use your printer. Clinton had material on her email server that was highly classified. If she used the printer in this way it’s difficult to imagine that her printer traffic was not intercepted by unauthorized people. This is, in part, because whoever created the amazingly insecure system, essentially, advertised it to the public with the public subdomain records.

People need to go to jail over this.

Our country is in the best of hands.

Quote of the day—Anonymous Conservative

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I see it in terms of political liberals, who respond to simple niceness with ever increasing demands for total capitulation and subservience under their brutal and capricious rule, and who respond to the cruelty and threat of groups like Islam with ever increasing groveling and ass-kissing. Morals, principle, it all means nothing.

Say you have no problem with men dressing as women and suddenly they demand you let those men be naked with your six year old daughter in a gym locker room. Say your religion requires those transgender men be thrown from buildings and murdered, and they will seek to import you into the country, provide you with free welfare, and give you victim status to get special privileges over real Americans. It is not logical.

Anonymous Conservative
May 25, 2016
On Violence, Amygdala, And Shifting Toward K
[While his claim about the transgender goals are less than accurate his point has a lot of truth to it. The liberal/progressives are all about tolerance and acceptance and want to politically suppress people who display a Confederate flag, deface bumper stickers of NRA members, and riot at assembles of their political opponents. All these people are, almost without exception, peaceful and law-abiding.

The progressives of the world are insistent that Muslims not be discriminated against, that refugees, consisting of a disproportionate number of warrior aged men with a demonstrated propensity for sexual violence, be allowed into their societies. Most terrorists events in the world are the work of Muslims. Nearly all armed conflicts in the world today involve Muslims on one or both sides. And drawing blasphemous cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed will get you murdered.

So what gives? Anonymous Conservative proposed hypothesis is that these people have mental issues. I have to conclude either this or that, as frequently proposed by Lyle, these people recognize Muslims as the enemy of their political opponents and hence, after a fashion, they are their short term allies.

In any case it is not logical nor does it bode well for freedom.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Josh Barro ‏@jbarro

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The NRA is backing Trump because it’s not a gun rights group, it’s a group for people who are insecure about their penises.

Josh Barro ‏@jbarro
Senior Editor at Business Insider. MSNBC contributor. Host of KCRW’s Left, Right & Center. Host of @hardpasspodcast.
Tweeted on May 20, 2016
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

We have SCOTUS decisions. The best a “senior editor” can come up with is childish insults.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Asbury Park Press

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Typically, as with any debate over gun rights, rational viewpoints are hard to find. Sen. Loretta Weinberg, D-Bergen, said the new standards could lead to “every cabdriver, every pizza delivery driver, and anyone else living or working in a high-crime neighborhood to qualify for a firearms permit.”

That sounds a little extreme, but is that any more hysterical than the gun-rights activists sounding alarms about government conspiracies and widespread gun confiscation every time government wants to ban an assault rifle or expand background checks?

In general terms, however, Weinberg’s warning should be heeded. The gun-rights crowd is trying to exploit the death of Carol Bowne, a Berlin Township woman allegedly stabbed to death by an ex-boyfriend while she was awaiting a permit to carry a gun for protection. Would Bowne’s life have been saved by an easier permitting process? We’ll never know. But as tragic as her death was, we can’t allow politicians to use the anger and grief over that death to advance an unnecessary and dangerous relaxation in the state’s gun controls.

Asbury Park Press
May 13, 2016
EDITORIAL: Don’t loosen grip on gun control
[This is almost material that could have come from The Onion.

The thought of people living or working in a high-crime area being allowed to defend themselves is considered “extreme” and “hysterical”? Wow!

They say, “We can’t allow politicians to use the anger and grief over that death…” Interesting. We should remember that the next time some activist wants to use anger and grief over the tragic death of someone murdered by a criminal with a gun. But of course that’s not how it works with these people. They have zero problem with their own hypocrisy.

Of course it may not be hypocrisy. It could be the sky is a different color in their universe.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Anonymous Conservative

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Liberalism is a totally different thought process. Inherent to it is a drive to ignore reality and shift mental focus toward metrics that are, to any sane individual, totally irrelevant to the questions at hand.

Anonymous Conservative
October 11, 2015
Liberals are Socially Focused on Group Dynamics
[This reminds me of a conversation I had with an admitted Marxist after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He said the U.S. shouldn’t have invaded because we didn’t have the support of “our friends” France and Germany. I was confused. Why should this matter? And it was known at the time that France and Germany had been selling Iraq supplies for building WMDs which the U.N. was trying to find and being stymied by Iraq. As far as I was concern France and Germany were aiding an enemy and even if they weren’t, since when does the determination of right and wrong depend on whether your “friends” agree with you or not? He insisted it did but could not explain further than “it just does”.

The “progressive” mind is an example of mental defect.—Joe]