Category Archives: Crap For Brains

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

Just backward

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How would you deal with someone that got everything exactly backward? When they want the car to stop they step on the accelerator and when they want to go they step on the brake. Instead of washing their hands before meals they soil them in the most foul manner possible. They put water on the campfire that is keeping them warm and they put gasoline on the Christmas tree fire in their living room.


I would have to conclude they are insane. And unless there are some sort of drugs or therapy available for their condition they should be locked up for the protection of themselves and others.


But that’s doesn’t appear to be an option in this case where the political leaders of D.C. are demanding Congress commit an unconstitutional law and object to the a law that brings them in line with the constitution on another matter:



D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) and D.C. Council members disagree with that conclusion. They furiously protested the firearms amendment.


“The District of Columbia leadership is fully united in its opposition to unwarranted amendments that would dramatically damage the District’s carefully revised gun law and expose the District to great harm through the undoing of its laws,” D.C. Council President Vincent C. Gray and Council Member Phil Mendelson, chairman of the council’s public-safety commission, said in a letter to Congress released yesterday.


In a statement after the Senate’s vote, Ilir Zherka, executive director of D.C. Vote, a lobbying group, said the city has passed a “significant hurdle in our fight for full democracy for DC residents.”


But he added of the gun amendment: “If anything, this amendment has strengthened our resolve to continue to fight for the rights of Washingtonians. Congress repeatedly treats the District as a testing ground for flawed, dangerous legislation. This has to stop – and we’ll keep fighting to ensure that the bill signed into law is not tainted by this amendment.”

Abnormal behavior

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Does anyone think it is “abnormal behavior” to read a book in public? How about putting a bumper-sticker on your car in favor of (or opposed to) a candidate for political office? How about requesting a lawyer before being questioned by the police? Or insisting on a warrant before the police search your home?

In all of the above the people of the United States are guaranteed these rights by the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. So why would someone in their right mind say:

In case you haven’t noticed, the pro-gun lobby is working overtime to normalize abnormal behavior. Let us ask you a handful of questions.
Would you be willing to:

  • Sip hot chocolate with your toddler at Starbucks while a fellow patron openly displays a gun at the table next to you?
  • Attend a church service with your entire family knowing that the fellow parishioner sitting next to you has a handgun tucked in his belt?
  • Stand in line at a bank to make a deposit as two men enter with baseball hats on and what appear to be guns in their pockets?
  • Board a crowded bus with your newborn child with upwards of 5 other passengers carrying concealed weapons?

“Abnormal behavior”? Exercising a specific enumerated right in public is “abnormal behavior”? Perhaps in the Peoples Republic of China, Massachusetts, or Chicago. But it is a right. All of the above activities seem perfectly normal to me. I don’t know what his problem is. Is he one of those that didn’t want n***ers in the same restaurant with him too? Maybe he doesn’t want Jews handling his money either. And blacks need to sit at the back of the bus and give up their seats to good white folk too.

The only conclusion I can reach is that the guy isn’t in his right mind. He is the one exhibiting abnormal behavior. He must have mental problems, is a blatant bigot, or both. It’s time we treated these people as the bigots they are and condemn them to the political dustbin of history.

Some Foreign News to Relieve Your Boredom

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From our friend Howard in Israel.  Saturday, Feb. 21;



Friends:

 

Winter wind and rain have returned, but so far not as harsh as predicted.  And, knock-on-wood, no electric power outages.

 

John Kerry is here. He lied about getting a letter from Hamas to deliver to President Obama.  Senator Kerry lied?  Go figure!

 

Under cover of bad weather (fog up north) two Katusha rockets were fired at northern Israel from within southern Lebanon.  One hit an Israeli target and three civilians were wounded.  The UN forces and Lebanese (now spelled Hezbollah) army are at a loss to find the terrorists who launched the attack.  True to form the EU quickly condemned Israel for violating Lebanon’s sovereignty by firing several artillery rounds at the location from which the Katushas were launched.  Hezbollah said, “Katushas?  What Katushas, we no nut-in about no Katushas.”

 

I would tell you that Kassam missiles and mortar bombs continue to fall in the Negev, but saying so would simply be redundant and repeating the obvious.  Last week a Kassam took out three cars by my younger daughter’s (going to college in Sderot) apartment.  Hope she brings me some pieces of the Kassam next time she comes home.

 

Tomorrow Bibi starts trying to really form the next Israeli government.  When you hear that Liberman’s party wants the Ministry of Police and that they also want the present Minister of Justice (an Olmert appointee) to be reappointed and the anti-Lieberman forces say he is trying to gain control over the ministries pursuing the criminal investigations about him remember two things.  Being “under investigation” is about as close to a condition precedent to being an Israeli politician as there is.  Second, the investigations in Lieberman have been ongoing for 10 years…and counting.

 

Enjoy your weekend.

 

Howard

Yup; Katushas flying in from the North, Kassams from the South, politicians playing childish games, and the EU Press denouncing Israel for even the slightest, half-baked attempts at self defense (why is it that only the enemies of the West have what is referred to in the Press as “sovereignty”).  Sorry; I suppose none of this is “news” after all.  Is it?

I knew they were stupid but WOW!

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You have to wonder if they need help figuring out how to breath when you hear of people like this:



Why can’t there be more stringent laws against guns in Salinas?


Salinas police Cmdr. Dino Bardoni was the first official placed in the hot seat tonight as a townhall meeting kicked off at Sherwood Hall on North Main Street.



The initial question was posed by Peter Valdez of Salinas, who wanted to know why gun locks couldn’t be enforced in the city – forcing gang members to lock their guns in order to transport them.




“Gang member are not going to adhere to the law,” said Bardoni, referring to how the criminals use illegal guns. “The problem is the outlaw element that is carrying the guns that we can’t control at this point.”



He is one of six panelists participating in a townhall meeting geared to community members who have concerns about the ongoing gang problems in the city that have so far killed six people in 2009.


The emphasis above is mine.


Unfortunately they probably not only know how to breath but have reproduction and voting figured out too. I figure that is the only explanation we have for the existence of all the people that want to ban guns.

Quote of the day–Henry Hazlitt

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There are men regarded today as brilliant economists, who deprecate saving and recommend squandering on a national scale as the way of economic salvation; and when anyone points to what the consequences of these policies will be in the long run, they reply flippantly, as might the prodigal son of a warning father: “In the long run we are all dead.” And such shallow wisecracks pass as devastating epigrams and the ripest wisdom.


Henry Hazlitt
Economics in One Lesson
Part One: The Lesson
1946
[Yes. That was said in 1946.–Joe]

Multiple Quotes of the Day

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This is entirely separate from Joe’s “Quote of the Day” system, which is so good that I wouldn’t touch it.


One of the great (and therefore feared) minds of our time, Thomas Sowell is prolific in his generation of highly quotable phrases;



Democrats could sell refrigerators to Eskimos before Republicans could sell them blankets.


Ah, but the Republicans are only doing what the super smart people are telling them; trying to sell blankets with built-in cooling systems, to Eskimos, on the notion that both blankets and refrigerators are too extreme in their single-minded, fundamental design goals.  Who needs a blanket that keeps you warm, when you could have an ingenious blanket that does what the Democrats’ refrigerators are doing, but does it more slowly and in a less efficient manner?



I know that there are still voices of sanity around because I have counted them — on one hand.


Take heart, Mr. Sowell.  There are at least a dozen.  Actually I jest.  It’s just that you have to look far from DC, and far from the Old Media, to find them.  There are millions.  Lets not assume that just because the American press wants us to feel isolated and hopeless, that we are isolated and hopeless.



Our economic problems worry me much less than our political solutions, which have a far worse track record.


and;



One of the wonders of our times is how much more attention is paid to the living conditions of a bunch of cut-throats locked up in Guantanamo than to the leading international sponsor of terrorism getting nuclear weapons.


Well, when you put the two together (concern for cutthroats while ignoring Iran’s nuclear ambitions) along with much of the leftist dogma, it’s consistent in its opposition to American principles and its support for the enemies of Liberty worldwide.  It becomes a “wonder” only if you ascribe a shred of patriotism to the American Left.


All quotes from one short piece entitled, “Random Thoughts”.

Quote of the day–Tamara K.

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You’re going to be paying for passing out this Monopoly money for the rest of your lives, even if you were just born today and live to be 100, and in return, they’ll graciously allow you to keep a little bit extra of your own money. The only people to whom this could sound like a good deal probably get outwitted by flatworms on a regular basis.


There are mornings when I just put my head in my hands and think “Screw it, let it burn.” But I don’t have kids, so that’s an easy out for me…


Tamara K.
February 13, 2009
Taking Retards To The Zoo.
[I do have kids and I think the same thing at times. I figure my kids, smart and hard working, will end up on top of the ash heap and will build a better civilization having observed first-hand the stupidity of socialism.–Joe]

Lame

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Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign is whining about the National Park rule change that allows some of us to defend ourselves using firearms in National Parks. They filed the lawsuit and one of the biggest whines is:



On April 3, 2008, the National Park Service’s Chief of Environmental Quality, Jacob Hoogland, warned that the rule “required additional NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] analysis” and that “at minimum an Environmental Assessment should be prepared on the proposed revision to the existing firearms regulation.”


In the same vein, Michael Schwartz, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Chief of Policy and Directives Management, warned on May 14, 2008 that “The rule was published before they did any NEPA analysis.  Last week, I pointed out that this is a procedural flaw.”


Paul, technically that may be true. I’m sorry my former governer Dirk Kempthorne didn’t dot that particular ‘i’. Let me do it for him now, “Environmental Assessment of the rule change: No affect.”


Now stop your whining and grow up.

Our New Castro

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Via Limbaugh’s web site, we have a transcript of a PBS broadcast in which Obama is being compared to Fidel Castro.  It’s a favorable piece.  If you’re a 24/7 subscriber you can get the PBS audio.  I heard it this morning on the radio.



And that is, one, this notion of feeling that now we have a guy named Obama in the White House, we have President Obama now, there are many young people who are as ecstatic and as excited and as enthused about President Obama as you were about your new president, Fidel Castro.


They’re “ecstatic and excited”.  Now they have what they believe is the American version of the Cuban revolution, poised and ready to roll.  I would have thought they’d have been a little less overt about it, but I guess they think they can take off the masks now.

What we have here is a failure to communicate

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First I want to get something out of the way before I make my main points.

 

I’ve been laying it on Catherine pretty thick and she updated her blog post to include some of my comments such as suggesting she look up the definition of “shill”, and commenting on my equating our struggle for gun rights to other civil rights. I will partially concede one point to her. At least one dictionary defines “shill” merely as “to act as a spokesperson or promoter”. The definition I was working from required the person pretended no association with the group or organization being promoted. Except for the Merriam-Webster dictionary cited above all the other on-line definitions I found mention deceit (or similar such as “put under cover”) as a component of the definition:

 

 

 

Hence even though I promote the civil rights agenda of the NRA because I am open about being a (life) member of the NRA, an NRA certified instructor, and communicate with them fairly regularly I am not a shill of the NRA–except if you use Catherine’s and the Merriam Webster definition. Perhaps in our on-line war of words we should just drop the shill issue. We both have adequate justification for our positions and it’s a distraction from the important points.

 

The more important point is that despite being a lawyer and a BA in English magna cum laude she has a reading (and spelling but I don’t hold that against her) problem. For example she stated:

 

Some NRA proud propagandists (they displayed a badge stating “NRA propoganda” [sic] blogger)

 

But the actual badge doesn’t say that. The badge is:

 

Unorganized Militia Propaganda Corps

 

The badge does not say what she claims it says. Furthermore it does NOT have ANYTHING to do with the NRA. Not only doesn’t it say NRA, it is not affiliated with the NRA in any way other than there is a strong correlation between people that have those badges and a NRA membership.

 

Another example. She stated:

 

They only seek to ridicule viewpoints different from theirs in the most base and crude ways.  I will not engage in that.  See my comments.  That is my right.

 

She implies someone was trying to infringe her rights in some way. No. They, and I, tried to point out the flaws in her statements and I asked her Just One Question. She refused to engage on those issues and shut off the comments. Fine, it’s her blog she can do whatever she wants with it (within legal limits such as libel and certain limits on pornography, extortion, blackmail etc. which are not at issue in this case). As near as I can determine she had trouble reading the actual words said and imagined they said something completely different.

 

Because of her refusal to engage people did ridicule her and I did call her a bigot in regards to which had the following to say:

 

I have been referred to as a “bigot” because I have a different opinion. They equate gun ownership with the struggle for civil rights that African Americans had in this country, which is why I am a bigot?  Yet they say my view is narrow?  Such chutzpah to even to equate gun ownership with the struggle for civil rights.  That says a lot about just how extreme and fringe they are.

 

No. Not because she had a different opinion. It was because she without thought, is intolerant of opinions, lifestyles or identities differing from her own. She wants to ban “assault weapons” but refuses to address the facts they are probably protected by the Second Amendment, and restrictions on them have never been shown to improve public safety. Facts, as near as I can determine, are irrelevant to her beliefs and she continues to push her beliefs. That makes her a bigot.

 

In still another example that can be explained by her inability to read we have the issue of the D.C. v. Heller ruling. I gave her a link and quoted from it. This ruling clearly states the Second Amendment is a specific enumerated right that protects the rights of individuals to keep and bear arms. That means gun ownership is, beyond any doubt, a civil right. Either she cannot read what the ruling clearly states or something else is going on. In any case that I can think other than some sort learning disability it is further confirmation she is a bigot.

 

Also of note is that my posts regarding the bigot at hand generated some hate mail. It’s been so long that this really made my day:

 

From: Skujins Andre [mailto:askujins@shaw.ca]
Sent: Saturday, February 07, 2009 2:43 PM
To: blog@joehuffman.org
Subject: Comments on: Shills

Boy your title says it all mouth-breathing knuckle-dragger.  What a  complete asshole.  Hope your dog gets shot by your drunk buddies.

 

First off, I don’t have any dogs (my wife and kids have two small dogs that I occasionally interact with when I go home to Idaho). And two, I almost never drink anything with alcohol nor do I hang around with friends that are drunk. So what is appears what we have here is another person that is willing to apply false stereotypes to someone they don’t know because of their bigoted beliefs.

Shills

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Rustmeister is accused of being a NRA shill. But the accuser quotes the Brady website when she should be quoting the U.S. Supreme Court:

 

It was understood across the political spectrum that the right helped to secure the ideal of a citizen militia, which might be necessary to oppose an oppressive military force if the constitutional order broke down.
…
There are many reasons why the militia was thought to be “necessary to the security of a free state.” See 3 Story §1890. First, of course, it is useful in repelling invasions and suppressing insurrections. Second, it renders large standing armies unnecessary—an argument that Alexander Hamilton made in favor of federal control over the militia. The Federalist No. 29, pp. 226, 227 (B. Wright ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton). Third, when the able-bodied men of a nation are trained in arms and organized, they are better able to resist tyranny.

 

Oh, wait, that would result in a different conclusion. Well, we can excuse her. After all, how is she to know that the U.S. Supreme Court is the final interpreter of the meaning of the Constitution instead of the Brady Campaign? Oh, wait (again), she is a lawyer.

 

I think she needs a lawyer refresher course. Perhaps even including the definition of shill. Rustmeister is pretty open about his association with and supporting the NRA (and in general here). Where is her disclosure about her relationship with the Brady Campaign? I can’t find it.

 

Update (6:40 AM PST): I left the following comment on her blog post:

 

By: Joe Huffman on February 6, 2009
at 9:40 am
Since you are a lawyer I would have thought you would have quoted the U.S. Supreme Court rather than the Brady Campaign regarding the Second Amendment. For example:
“There are many reasons why the militia was thought to be “necessary to the security of a free state.” See 3 Story §1890. First, of course, it is useful in repelling invasions and suppressing insurrections. Second, it renders large standing armies unnecessary—an argument that Alexander Hamilton made in favor of federal control over the militia. The Federalist No. 29, pp. 226, 227 (B. Wright ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton). Third, when the able-bodied men of a nation are trained in arms and organized, they are better able to resist tyranny.”
See also my blog post.
And before advocating more restrictions on a specific enumerated right you should answer Just One Question: “Can you demonstrate one time or place, throughout all history, where the average person was made safer by restricting access to handheld weapons?”

 

Update (8:25 AM PST): Rustmeister points out that she has shut down comments. It was less than an hour after I posted my comment. She did respond however:

 

Reply: This is my personal opinion. I could get very technically legal. I felt it would be much easier to understand, particularly where it was right and the interpretation given by your friends was totally out there. That king of question is interesting. I can quote statistics, but as far as i am concerned, this disscussion is over and has been for about 10 days.

 

“Interesting”? I find it interesting that she denigrates a civil rights organization (the NRA) and those that support a specific enumerated right while quoting the bigots who wish to severely restrict that right. When asked to justify her advocating the restriction of a specific enumerated right she says, “this discussion is over”.

 

Isn’t it odd that the gun bloggers leave their comments open and nearly all of the anti-gun bloggers turn theirs off?

 

Perhaps while she is updating her definintion of “shill” she should look up the definition of the word “bigot“.

 

Update (12:30 PM PST): She has another post on the topic of the “NRA United Propogandists” [sic].

 

Just as an FYI I’m not interested in changing her mind. I’m interested in others seeing her for what she is, a small minded bigot that believes her opinion, in and of itself, is a valid reason to take away other people’s civil rights. We had (and probably still do have) lots of people that believed blacks should never have been given their freedom. They wanted to use the force of law to make them use separate water fountains, not be allowed to live in the same part of town, to sit in the back of the bus, and give up their seats to whites. It’s virtually impossible to get them to change their “opinion”. And so it is with many anti-gun people. If they don’t allow facts into a discussion and continue to insist on holding to their narrow viewpoint I’m just going point out their bigotry for the rest of the world and move on.

The benefits of socialized medicine

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I say “medicine” but it applies to anything socialism touches. It’s just that with medicine we have more vivid and frequent examples to chose from.


Via an email from friend Kris an escapee from Australia here in the U.S., Full hospitals turning patients away in Brisbane:



emergency rooms went into meltdown yesterday as major hospitals turned away patients because they were full.


Six hospitals around the city issued capacity alerts as a flood of high priority patients threatened to overwhelm services stretched to the limits, The Courier-Mail reports.

The chaos left stressed ambulance officers trying to care for people in their vans.


…


“Today is out of control, our departments are in complete meltdown,” the nurse said. “What is scary is that there is no good reason for it – it isn’t a terribly hot day, it isn’t flu season, there is no outbreak of disease, we just don’t have enough resources.”

Ambulance union spokesman Kroy Day said the lack of hospital resources meant it was “only a matter of time before someone dies in a van”.

He warned that having multiple hospitals on capacity alerts meant paramedics could be left caring for patients in their vans for up to four hours.

“If this is what we are seeing on a mild summer’s day, I hate to imagine the trouble we’ll be in when flu season rolls around,” he said.

When asked about the RBWH being on bypass, Health Minister Stephen Robertson blamed a record amount of elective surgery patients.


Kris reports, “Regular occurrence in Perth at certain times of the week, or whenever it gets too hot (it never gets too cold in Perth).”


In Britain this has been a complaint for many years. People wait in the emergency room for many hours before being seen by a doctor. The politicians then required the hospitals to report on how many hours people had to wait.  The hospitals then started refusing to let the ambulances bring the patients into the hospitals until they were ready for them. This improved the numbers because the clock didn’t start ticking until the patient entered the door. The ambulances sometimes wait in the parking lot for hours with the engines running to provide temperature control. This not only threatens the life of the patient waiting for a doctor it also ties up the ambulance such that it can’t transport another patient in need of immediate care.


The basics of the problem is that when the central committee (politicians) allocate resources rather than the free market they do a much poorer job. They are further from the problem that needs to be solved and cannot respond as quickly. In a free market someone realizes they can make a profit whenever the demand starts to exceed the supply and the most successful will meet the demand quickly and for the least total cost.


Via friend Jim, who spent some time in eastern block countries during the mid 80s, I heard reports of lines for bread, shoes, toothpaste, toilet paper,  and almost every common commodity you can think of. Another friend reported to me that light bulbs were rationed out to government offices and critical businesses. Hence people would bring in their burned out bulbs from their homes and swap them with the new ones in public buildings and businesses.


And the above doesn’t even address the frosty stares I get from my physical therapist wife when I bring up more U.S. government involvement in health care. We already have too much government involvement in health care. Don’t let the Obama administration give us ambulances waiting in the parking lot too.

Now that is really funny

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NOT!


Making a call to 911 with a story designed to get the local SWAT team to respond is not safe for anyone. Especially if I survive the call-out to my house and I find the guy who made the call.


From the article:



Doug Bates and his wife, Stacey, were in bed around 10 p.m., their 2-year-old daughters asleep in a nearby room. Suddenly they were shaken awake by the wail of police sirens and the rumble of a helicopter above their suburban Southern California home. A criminal must be on the loose, they thought.


Doug Bates got up to lock the doors and grabbed a knife. A beam from a flashlight hit him. He peeked into the backyard. A swarm of police, assault rifles drawn, ordered him out of the house. Bates emerged, frightened and with the knife in his hand, as his wife frantically dialed 911. They were handcuffed and ordered to the ground while officers stormed the house.


The scene of mayhem and carnage the officers expected was nowhere to be found. Neither the Bateses nor the officers knew that they were pawns in a dangerous game being played 1,200 miles away by a teenager bent on terrifying a random family of strangers.


They were victims of a new kind of telephone fraud that exploits a weakness in the way the 911 system handles calls from Internet-based phone services. The attacks — called “swatting” because armed police SWAT teams usually respond — are virtually unstoppable, and an Associated Press investigation found that budget-strapped 911 centers are essentially defenseless without an overhaul of their computer systems.


I’m thinking it’s time to get rid of my land line.

Quote of the day–Bill Clinton

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Again, I will say this, it’s not that the country has moved way left. That is not what has happened…. It’s not a leftward movement. It’s a forward, communitarian movement. Shared opportunities. Shared responsibilities. Shared values, including the most important of all: “Our differences are really interesting, and they make life in America much more interesting, but our common humanity matters more.”


Bill Clinton
January 2008
Bill Clinton On Pragmatism (And Guns) In The Obama Era
[“Communitarian, shared opportunities, shared responsibilities, shared values” isn’t leftward? I’ll tell you what my values are and let’s see if these people can share them with me. I value individual rights. I value the right to purchase whatever arms I want, whenever I want, and from whoever I want. I value the right to be left alone to do whatever I want as long as I don’t hurt anyone else or I do it with consenting adults. I value the right to privacy in my communication with others which includes all of my financial transactions (which makes a tax on income impossible to enforce). I value the right to chose my own health care providers (including the null set). I value the right to travel freely and anonymously. And that’s just the start.


Now tell me what “shared values” we have. Mr. Clinton and his groupies just don’t get it. Nearly everything they work toward, claiming “shared values” and “shared responsibilities” are diametrically opposed to my values, the principles this country was founded upon, and the constitution which he swore to defend. Why is this impeached, disbarred, lying piece of crap still given any credence in American life?–Joe]

Just so you know

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From our friend in Israel;



Friends:

 

Considering the number of Kassam and Grad rockets and the increasing number of mortar rounds being fired into Israel by Hamas in Gaza, I’ll keep the “Gaza War” group designation for a while longer.  As a practical matter Israel gained nothing but the world’s condemnation for its recent attempt to stop the terrorist fire.

 

The election rhetoric here is twilight-zone material.  The folks in power speechify as if they were the party in opposition.  They cry about how much change there needs to be.  Hell you are the government.  You should have done long ago what you attack (who?) for not having done.  How dumb do you think the voters are?  Obviously you think they are even dumber than I think they are. 

 

GO STEELERS!

 

Israel and the U.S. do have a lot in common.

 

And being as Israel isn’t doing anything about it right now, it isn’t “news”.

 

How hard is it to understand that since you’re going to be condemned either way, you may as well do the right thing?  The Republican Party leadership, for instance, continues to fail in that regard, though we can hope.

 

The War against the German national socialists and Imperial Japanese wasn’t won through decades of “ceasefires” for example.  It was won and they became allies after they were defeated.  Republicans; are you listening?

Quote of the day–Jeffery Rosen

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This summer, I talked to security experts on both sides of the political spectrum, and had several conversations with Chertoff, in an effort to answer the following question: Is DHS achieving its mission of making us safer? My reluctant conclusion is that, although Chertoff has performed impressively in an impossible job, the department is hard to justify with any rational analysis of costs and benefits. On the contrary, it’s arguably one of the most expensive marketing ventures in political history–an enterprise that seeks to make us feel safer instead of actually making us safer. The best argument for DHS is that the illusion of safety may itself provide tangible psychological and economic benefits: If people feel less afraid, they may be more likely to fly on planes. But even if conceived on these terms–as a more-than-$40-billion-dollar-a-year pacifier–the department is hard to defend, since there’s no good evidence that it has, in fact, calmed Americans down rather than making us more nervous.


Jeffery Rosen
December 24, 2008
Man-Made Disaster—Six years on, the Department of Homeland Security is still a catastrophe.
[$40 Billion a year pacifer? Yup. That sounds about right for government work.


H/T to Bruce Schneier.–Joe]

Simple solutions from simple minds

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Someone with more money than they know what to do with is considering how to “solve the gun problem” in Milwaukee. I would have thought he could just take his gun to a good gunsmith or, since he has so much money, just buy a new gun. But that isn’t what he has in mind:

 

His initial plan was to attack the problem at the source. Zilber wanted to target an infamous gun shop in the Milwaukee area with a pretty shocking record of being a place where too many legally purchased handguns eventually ended up in the hands of the bad guys.
So many of its guns fell into wrong hands, the place is more like a public nuisance than a legitimate business.
“I figured that if I bought the place and shut it down, that might eliminate the problem,” said Zilber. But he realized that wasn’t a viable solution; somebody would likely just open up another gun shop to serve the customers.

 

If it took more than a fraction of a second to come to this conclusion the clock speed on his CPU must be running way below 4.77 MHz (the original IBM PC clock rate). That the journalist even bothered to write it down shows his CPU is similarly handicapped. Further confirmation of this was another couple of paragraphs into the article:

 

Zilber chuckled when I mentioned comedian Chris Rock, who once said the key to gun control was making all guns free but charging an exorbitant amount – as high as $5,000 – for a single bullet.
That might make people think twice about firing a gun.
“That’s pretty good,” said Zilber. He didn’t dismiss it out of hand. “You could buy an ammunition company and do it that way.”
Sometimes, it takes bold thinking to pull off the impossible.

 

First off, he got the Chris Rock quote completely wrong. The point of Rock’s comment was that if each bullet cost $5000 then you would be surround by people wanting to steal them. So if you fired the gun there wouldn’t be innocent people that were shot.

 

Second, the buying of an ammunition company and shutting it down doesn’t different from doing the same thing to a gun shop–which he already dismissed as an ineffective idea.

 

I can’t figure these guys out. The only conclusion I can come up with is these people have some sort of mental problems.

Quote of the day–Tommaso Campanella

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THE PEOPLE: The people is a beast of muddy brain that knows not its own strength.


Tommaso Campanella
[This could relate to many things in the present day. I’m thinking of what the people did a couple months ago and of which everyone will soon learn the unintended consequences of their muddied brain actions.–Joe]

Peter vs. Paul– Politics of the Nags

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When it comes to turning off lights around the house, my wife is a nag (not as a member of the National Association of Gals, but one who incessantly nitpicks on her own).  “You’re wasting electricity” she will say, approximately thirty eight thousand times per day (give or take).  Similarly, the political nags (not NAGs) are ordering us to use CF lights instead of the tungsten filament jobs, saying we’re destroying the very planet with our light bulbs.


If we cast aside all arguments about rights and liberty (and if we have a chance to toy with other people as a means of boosting our self esteem, why wouldn’t we?) there is the issue of home heating during the cooler months.  I gathered my family together, and explained this to them in terms anyone can understand;


If you have a 100 Watt light going full time inside a heated living space, that’s 100 fewer Watts, on average, that the home heating system has to put out. You have shifted 100 Watts of your energy use from the heater to the light bulb.  Your total usage is exactly the same.  Same goes if you leave the refrigerator open a little longer, or the television on all night.  If you’re heating that space anyway, it makes no significant difference.


Say I have a 10 KW electric furnace.  I could hook up 100 light bulbs, each rated at 100 Watts, through a relay to my thermostat (assuming I had the proper wiring) thereby taking all the heating load off the furnace and placing it on the light bulbs.  Will my heating bill change?  Maybe, and maybe not.  It would depend on the distribution of the lights within the house, the quality of the insulation on my furnace duct work in the cold space under the house, and a few other minor variables.  Maybe I’d save a few pennies, and maybe I’d loose a few pennies.  If you have a gas furnace the situation is still the same– you’re just trading back and forth between gas and electricity, but your total energy usage is going to be about the same.


The situation is completely different in the summer of course.  The waste heat from your TV, fridge, etc., is of no use to you.  If you’re running an air conditioner, anything else in your house that produces heat is causing the AC to work harder.


In both cases, insulation, windows, door seals, and the structure’s orientation and exposure to the sun will overwhelm the other issues.


So we can stop nitpicking each other.

Quote of the day–William H. Neukom

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Pursuant to Supreme Court Rule 37.3, the American Bar Association (“ABA”), as amicus curiae, respectfully submits that the decision of the divided panel of the D.C. Circuit should be reversed, because the decision improperly rejected the long and consistent line of precedent on which this Nation has built its entire matrix of gun regulation.


William H. Neukom
January 11, 2008
President American Bar Association
Brief of the American Bar Association as amicus curiae supporting petitioners.
[Similar things could have been said about passage of the 13th Amendment or any number of things such as allowing women to vote and laws against using birth control. Hence his justification for rejecting the individual rights viewpoint of the D.C. Circuit carries no weight.


But, assuming his characterization of the nations gun laws is true, then one should reasonable expect the “entire matrix of gun regulation” to collapse under the Heller decision. I wish that were true. I think it’s possible but unlikely. We will have to play our game very, very, well in order to even approximate this.


Based on these two items which Neukum apparently got wrong I must conclude that Neukom doesn’t know what he is talking about and his opinion, in general, should be severely discounted.–Joe]