Quote of the day—Luke Chitwood

Whether or not Barack Obama actually has plans to personally invade the homes of America’s 100 million gun owners and forcibly remove their firearms is irrelevant. The NRA has achieved great success in making this event seem possible to the Americans who fear it the most. The NRA has perfected the use of slippery-slope arguments and doomsday predictions to activate a passionate, idealistic, and focused base.

Luke Chitwood
October 8, 2013
Here’s How the NRA is So Freakishly Effective in the Gun Control Debate
[Chitwood has a problem with the truth. This is just one of many examples in the article. Obama would never personally do this and the NRA would never suggest he might. And as usual, if someone starts out with false data and assumptions whatever follows is almost certain to be in error.

What Chitwood apparently doesn’t understand is that NRA members drive the NRA rather than the NRA driving it’s members. People join the NRA to, among other things, encourage them to protect gun owner rights. I know a few people that have quit or refused to join the NRA but all of them did this because the NRA compromised or were to soft of supporters of gun owner rights. Not that they were too “extreme”.

The NRA is a grassroots organization. Our opponents cannot seem to understand that. Their model appears to be that the NRA recruits members and turns them into some sort of mindless minion that does the bidding of the evil NRA overlord. As is usual, anytime an anti-gun person says something you can be fairly certain it’s crazy talk.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Conor Higgins

The only way to go is complete, national disarmament. That way there is no chance that criminals could raid government storehouses, or that military weapons could make it to the hands of violent gangs. There would be no chance of corrupt government officials selling firearms to cartels or other organized crime groups. If we do not push complete disarmament by removing guns entirely from the situation and not just from the hands of civilians, then we are simply promoting the disarmament of the American people who would be left without means to defend themselves, while doing nothing about the very people that the 2nd Amendment afford them the right from which to protect themselves.

The only way to ensure that no guns fall into the hands of criminals, and to ensure the safety of Americas civilians, is to make sure that all guns are removed from the equation.

Because if disarmament does not take place on a national, state, and civilian level, and no one has guns, it is not “gun-control” it is “civilian control.” 

Conor Higgins
October 3, 2013
A modest proposal: On gun control
[I read the entire article thinking there was a good chance this guy was serious. Only the last sentence gave me hope he was sane.

In this article he advocates complete disarmament. This includes the police and the military with naïve, half-baked, plans to collect all the guns and rationale for why neither the military nor law enforcement require firearms. I actually had to go looking for other stuff he has written to convince myself this was satire.

There are people out there that naïve and half-baked but Higgins isn’t one of them.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Matthew May

I will not submit to a cabal who read George Orwell’s 1984 not as a terrifying warning, but as an instruction manual. Nor will I submit to the dictates of those who attempt to trample the right of free speech of others in the halls of government who are warning us about the looming tyranny. I refer to those sons of liberty who, as Camus wrote, “are not all legitimate or to be admired. Those who applaud it only when it justifies their privileges and shout nothing but censorship when it threatens them are not on our side.”

Matthew May
September 30, 2013
I Will Not Comply
[H/T Tyler Durden.

With the NSA listening to and recording every phone conversation, reading and storing every email message, the post office taking pictures of every envelope, and the government mandating the details of relationships (with insurance companies), police officers told to not wear their uniform and gun onto school campuses (H/T Ry), and people seriously advocating absolutely crazy stuff, how can we not think we are in a Orwellian dystopian universe? The Jews in 1939 Germany couldn’t really believe it was happening. It was crazy to believe people would do the things they were doing. It just couldn’t be real. But it was real. And it’s real now. Believe it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Paul Barrett

The Times did not help matters by illustrating its article with a large photo of a grieving mother accompanied by a prominently displayed quote: “There are no accidents. There are simply irresponsible, stubborn, cowardly adults unwilling to stand up against the gun lobby and those who support it.” In my view, this woman’s pain gives her a pass to say pretty much whatever she wants. Making her anger a central message of such a sizable journalistic undertaking, though, raises questions about whether gun-control backers are just as prone to invective and conspiracy talk as their least responsible foes. Dispassionate analysis would serve everyone better.

Paul Barrett
September 30, 2013
Guns, Children and Accidents: Four Blunt Points
[Yes. Dispassionate analysis would serve everyone better. But that would have near zero chance of resulting in more gun control. And the people at the New York Times almost certainly realize this. Therefore, it’s not going to happen anytime soon. They are so committed to more gun control it is an extremely difficult psychological burden to reverse course. They would rather tens of thousands would die and the rights of millions of people be infringed than risk having to admit they were wrong.

Draw your own conclusions about their moral character and capability for rational thought.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Barack Obama

As long as there are those who fight to make it as easy as possible for dangerous people to get their hands on guns, then we’ve got to work as hard as possible for the sake of our children … to do more work to make it harder.

Barack Obama
President of the United States
September 21, 2013
Citing shootings, Obama says must ‘go back at’ gun-control push
[One of the criminals that supposedly prompted this renewed push to make the exercise of a specific enumerated right more difficult via enhanced background checked had a military security clearance. How much more thorough of a background check does this guy think one should have before they can exercise their rights?

The only conclusions I can come up with are that he, and others like him who advocate for more rigorous background checks in response to the Washington Navy Yard shooting, are either totally irrational and/or evil. Regardless of the conclusion there is no point in “conversation”, “compromise”, or “debate” with people who are insane and/or evil. There is nothing to be gained from talking with crazy and/or evil people. I’ve been there and done that. It will only drive you crazy. Your only option is to get them out of your lives.—Joe]

Say WHAT?

They just keep coming.

I’m still wondering about Fast and Furious, and we’re what, a couple dozen scandals removed from that now, each one taking the former one off the main headlines? You couldn’t make this stuff up– It would be taken as way too far beyond believability.

Random thought of the day

Barb and I frequent have talks about “crazy people”. This morning was one of those times. I don’t remember exactly what she said but something she said gave me a new insight and I told her my new hypothesis.

We get frustrated, grumpy, and angry from dealing with people that aren’t entirely in touch with reality. I’ll bet they feel the same way when their world view doesn’t match reality and they try to deal with us.

Then this afternoon Lyle left the following comment on a blog post:

when you take an irrational position and hold that it is rational, when you look at sane people and consider them insane, when you look at justice and consider it injustice, when you take on the victim mentality and blame the self sufficient, then slowly but surely, reason and sanity themselves become your enemies, and insanity your friend, for reality makes you face your faults and insanity protects you from facing them.

There is more. It’s as if he read my mind and extrapolated.

Words mean things

I think that’s a Rush Limbaugh quote, to give credit where I believe credit is due, but maybe he got it somewhere else.

The shipyard shooting was described on the news tonight as having taken place in a “heavily secured” area. Has the term “heavily secured” been redefined while I wasn’t looking, or is that a blatantly moronic description?

Yet another mass shooting in what amounts to a gun free zone, in a long line of mass shooting in gun free zones, but in this case it can be said that this was a “heavily secured gun free zone”. In other words, the shooting took place inside a real live, physical, three-dimensional contradiction in terms. Which of course is the problem.

Last time this happened I had military vets tell me that trusting kids on the military bases with guns is not practical, which is either coming from a mental position of pre-conditioned, certain defeat, or it means we don’t have a military, which is certain defeat. Sorry guys; that’s insane. You may believe it with every fiber of your militarily experienced being, but it’s insane.

One would think we should have learned this lesson, that military bases can and do come under attack, in, say, December of 1941, but then people do forget. Fort Hood on the other hand, was in the news just within the last few weeks due to the trial. Is anyone in the military feeling a clue coming on yet, or are we simply going to ramp up the stupid, as I predict?

If we had sanity in our military, every low level grunt, every secretary, every truck driver, etc., would be a rifleman first and a whatever else, a floor polisher or cook, second. Militaries are for killing people and breaking things, and so if you don’t have the ability to kill people and break things on short notice, on any base or any boring flower planting assignment in some peaceful corner of the world, you’re not military material. (By the way there are no peaceful corners of the world. There are only places wherein the violence is taking a break and readying itself for the next push)

Which, practically, means we need the CMP back in full force and effect, jr high and high school shooting teams should be reinstated, and of course the NRA needs to be doing more of what it was born to do. If our government and military are tying their own hands, we’ll have to do it on our own.

It is being reported that the DC metro police were called in……….to protect a military installation against a single attacker (or maybe two we don’t know for sure yet). A civilian force had to go in and help save a United States military installation from one or two dumbshits.

Let that sink in for bit. We’re now telegraphing to the world, AGAIN, that a single trained squad, or two, could likely dominate an entire base inside the U.S. Could it get any worse, Mr. commander in Chief? How f-ing lame is that, you generals?

And their response appears to be that we need more restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms, i.e. more of the kind of poison that made this latest act possible. They want restrictions on the provision in the constitution that was designed to foster the security of a free state.

You know the saying; once is happenstance, twice is coincidence… Well the Fort Hood shooting was enemy action or worse. This last one (maintaining the conditions that made the Fort Hood shooting possible) borders on treason, or it leaps over that border. Conspiracy theories abound in regard to the lack of preparedness in Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. This is at least as bad, considering that Ft Hood was in the lime light just this summer.

More on voter suppression

Heh!

We’re being asked (told?) to believe that the voters who wanted Progressives in office “couldn’t get to the polls” (Where are they? I don’t know. What IS a poll anyway? Where am I? Who am I? Who are you? What planet is this? Vote for Who? Why? What’s happening and is there any way of stopping it?) while those who wanted freedom didn’t have any trouble at all finding those pesky, shifty, sneaky, evasive polls, even after the Progressives massively out-spend those who prefer freedom.

Well there you have it. When Progressives win it’s grass-roots democracy in action– a beautiful expression of The American Way and what could ever be better or more wonderful than that. When Progressives lose it’s big money corporate-funded voter suppression by mean people who suck and are probably terrorists.

Quote of the day—Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America

From the outset, this recall was designed as a tool of intimidation funded by the gun lobby. What a ridiculous temper tantrum by a bunch of bullies – moms know them when we see them.

Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America
September 10, 2013

OFFICIAL STATEMENT: MOMS DEMAND ACTION FOR GUN SENSE IN AMERICA RESPONDS TO COLORADO RECALL ELECTION RESULTS
[It’s called psychological projection.

“Moms” were the bullies (by proxy) in this political battle. They supported anti-freedom laws that drove many millions of dollars worth of business out of the state, made criminals out of innocent people, violated the specific enumerated rights of millions of people, and cost million of people countless hours and dollars in their battle to remove some of the law makers who implemented the illegal laws. Those are the actions of bullies. Not the innocent people who just want to be left alone.

In addition to the recall elections being successful we now have the opportunity to give Mayor Bloomberg some investment advice. If you want to get a return on your money in politics invest in the NRA. MAIG got nothing in return for the hundreds of thousands they spent.

It’s all good news but as I saw in one Tweet, I’m a little sad that we’re not following through with the traditional tar and feathers.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Brian Mann

New York adopted one of the toughest gun control laws in the U.S. — banning the sale of assault rifles and banana clips. Many of the state’s county sheriffs hate the law and some say they won’t enforce it. The fight over gun rights and gun safety has become a hot issue in sheriff races, as local law enforcement officials seek re-election in rural counties.

Brian Mann
September 10, 2013
New York’s Gun Control Law Gets Even More Controversial
[“Assault rifles?” “Banana clips?” Gun rights versus “gun safety?”

The ignorance is strong with this one.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Stuart Leavenworth

[Stuart Leavenworth writes opinion pieces for the Sacramento Bee. His Tweet was in response to this Tweet:

It’s good to know what Leavenworth thinks of gun owners. I wonder what his boss would say if Leavenworth said something similar to a gay/Jewish/black rights group.

Leavenworth is a ignorant, prejudiced, bigot. He just doesn’t know it. Yet.—Joe]

Entitlement attitude

From the Seattle Police Department:

Around 1 pm Thursday, two teens were sitting on the steps of Franklin High School when a woman climbed out of a blue Audi parked on the street, approached the teens, and asked to use one of the teens’ cell phones.

One of the teens reluctantly handed her iPhone over to the woman, who walked off with the victim’s phone, climbed into the Audi and sped away.

The victim immediately went inside the school and called 911.

Patrol officers spotted the Audi near Rainier Avenue and S. Othello Street, pulled the car over and contacted the two 18-year-old women inside.

One of the women in the car then pulled the victim’s iPhone out of her purse, handed it back to officers., and said [s]he had taken it because her phone had died and she needed a new one.

Officers booked both women into the King County Jail, where they’re undoubtedly enjoying the jail’s excellent cell coverage.

Interesting response. Did the thief actually believe she was entitled to replace her phone in this manner? I think a case can be made that people have been getting “free” stuff from via government theft for so long that some believe they are improving the system by removing the middle-man.

Random thought of the day

Natural is better than artificial. Right? Man-made is bad. Right? So what could be more artificial than the way we use electricity?

The next time someone tells me how much better something is because it’s “natural” I’m going to tell them I’m sure they would be much happier and healthier if they replaced all the electric lights in their home with all natural whale oil lamps. It’s a renewal energy resource. Right?

Quote of the day—William Pascrell

This bill represents a major investment in the protection of our children and our communities, and reflects the long-term societal costs of gun and ammunition purchases in our country.

William Pascrell
U.S Representative, Democrat, New Jersey
August 26, 2013
Dem bill would trigger huge new taxes on guns, ammo
[He’s got it totally backward. If you really want to interfere with the free market in an attempt to improve society in regards to firearms there should be subsidies for guns, ammo, accessories, and training. There should be outreach programs for those most at risk from criminal violence and social workers should help them get the proper equipment and training to both help them get out of potentially violent environments and defend themselves and other innocent life as necessary.

But since Pascrell and other are so ignorant and bigoted they can’t or won’t comprehend the data that shows guns do more good than harm. Let alone that the right to keep and bear arms is a specific enumerated right that can no more be taxed than speech, religion, and freemen (the 13th Amendment). Hence they will just continue the way of the KKK into the dustbin of history.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb

So-called “gun free zones” have never been known to prevent a single violent crime and even the CeaseFire president has acknowledged that “this won’t stop someone determined to cause violence but we hope that standing together and giving businesses a tool to say no to guns will change the conversation around gun violence.”

That is dangerously self-delusional and it is one more exercise of symbolism over substance that makes neighborhoods less safe by creating risk-free environments for robbers, rapists and other criminals.

Alan Gottlieb
August 19, 2013
SEATTLE’S ‘GUN FREE ZONES’ IDEA IS ALL FLASH, NO SUBSTANCE, SAYS CCRKBA
[Self-delusional, symbolism, and dangerous. Yup. That about sums it up.

And don’t forget that we had the “conversation” for the last 40+ years. It’s time these guys got over the fact that they lost every argument.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Kurt Geissel

It sends a message that it’s not cool to just walk around with a gun all the time because bad things happen.

Kurt Geissel
August 18, 2013
McGinn asking Seattle businesses to go ‘gun-free’
[It “sends a message” alright. But it’s not the messages they think they are sending.

The message they are sending is that they don’t want the business of this nations 80 million gun owners. Would they consider putting up signs saying “No colored people allowed”? There are only about 42 million people that identify as “black” or “African American” in this country. There are approximately twice as many gun owners.

The message they are sending is that the people that visit and work at their business are unarmed potential victims. If a criminal is looking for soft targets then these people are self identifying. They are like a deer with a limp with a pack of wolves looking for dinner.

The message they are sending is they are more interested in sending messages of narrow minded bigotry than in the principles of this country or the state of Washington.

And most importantly the message they are sending is they are the type of people who have crap for brains and that think “sending messages” accomplishes something useful.—Joe]

Quote of the day—BruceVoigt

When some one say’s your a ball of fire, well you really are!

As all cells have a nucleus, we are unable to get to the center of our planet but we can study a water cell. To do this first understand that the nucleus of any cell is made up of orbiting nuclei so small as to not interact with matter as we know it.

You will find at the nucleus what will be to you as air pockets or bubbles and if studing the universe instead of this ice cube you would call these black holes.

Now your really going to want to call these black holes oxygen and hydrogen but when you know the secret way of causing a reaction that has these many particals running into each other then you to can discover the fire in your ice cube.

BruceVoigt
November 21, 2012
Comment to To Make Steam Without Boiling Water, Just Add Sunlight And Nanoparticles
[I stopped reading about half way through, waited a few minutes for my brain to recover, then finished reading it.

The “thought” process reminds me of some anti-gun people.—Joe]

The vim and vigor of youth

Tea party favorite, Marco Rubio has become a tragic figure. Now we must do what the Progressives want, or Obama will do worse by executive order. It’s one or the other, Marco says. No way out. No hope.

It happens to the best of us. We were all warned about this in the 1970s. Remember it. You may be all full of piss and vinegar now, in the comfort of home, with the deli just a hop and a skip away, but you WILL be afraid.

Then again, there is something we all need to ponder daily. We get frustrated at this or that Republican for his “having no courage” or for being “stupid”, etc., BUT in order to “fold” due to your cowardice or your stupidity, you must actually have had principles in the first place rather than acting like you had them so you could win an election.

The point is; there may be cowards and there may be idiots, but just as often there are schmucks who just play us for votes because they like playing the game. It helps them feel better than you.

If three percent of Americans were actually behind the American Revolution, I’d say there are far less than that number of principled members of Congress today. That comes to maybe five people.

In other words; there is no political solution, so you’d best be looking elsewhere. Politics is a distraction for the most part.

Another Quote of the Day – USAA Insurance claim representative

“We don’t make decisions based on common sense” – USAA Insurance claims representative, total loss department. That was pretty obvious by the time he said it. I told him it was going to be a quote of the day.

In June an old man pulled right in front of us in his pickup, from a cross road on our right, while we were at speed in our pickup on highway 26 in central Washington State. WHAM! My 15 year old daughter was driving on her learner’s permit. She could not have done anything to prevent a hard hit, but I think she saved that old man’s life.

You never really know what you’ll do in a situation like that, but I tell myself not to swerve for deer or anything else unless there is a real need to. Hit the damn deer and stay on the road, or hit that car in front of you and avoid a head-on, if it’s a choice between the two. I’ve seen it go very badly when people swerve. She swerved. If she hadn’t, if she’d gone in a straight line, that old man would have been squashed like a melon, I think. As it was we hit corner to corner instead of hitting him in his driver’s door.

I was telling the claims rep that since I had the trans rebuilt and replaced the engine, the hubs, the breaks, etc., that 309K odo reading meant very little, that the newer and shinier pickup I replaced it with actually has “Less useful life left in it, it cost me more than twice what I’m being offered for the totaled truck, and that I shouldn’t have to remind anyone that the injured party (I) should be made whole, within reason, to the fullest extend possible, and we’re not even talking about our ruined vacation.”
“Where did you get that verbiage?” He asked in reply.
“What do you mean?”
“Where did you get that verbiage?” He repeated. Well how do you answer that question? He seems to think that I’m reading from some book, or repeating someone else’s words, which I wasn’t. So rather than argue about that;
“It’s common sense” I told him. That’s when he came out with the money quote.

Yeah, so I’m out thousands of dollars after I take their settlement. Insurance markets, and the whole set of industries surrounding them, like the towing business and the body repair business, medical care, et al, are completely distorted. In a proper world it would be between me and the offending party, and if things fell apart there it would be in the courts, and the insurance company’s role would be to write a check afterwards (or up to the value of the policy). But this is the messed up world of scammers, politicians (but I repeat myself) and Progressives (and again I repeat myself) and so the party writing the check is the same one determining the value of the loss.

I guess that what we were supposed to do, rather than tell the EMTs at the scene that we were all OK and happy to be alive, if a little bruised, and go against their advice to take a ride in and get checked out by doctors, was instead to complain about pain, act all messed up an carry on and so forth, get some prescriptions and braces and all that, like most people, and scam the insurance company for all that pain and suffereing, woe-is-me-I-have-to-take-three-weeks-off-work-and-I-might-have-to-file-for-disability crap. But we didn’t, and won’t.