Category Archives: Crap For Brains

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

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]

Quote of the day–Edward Abbey

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One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain’t nothin’ can beat teamwork.


Edward Abbey
[I would present some specific examples but I think the generics of “government” and “central committee” should be sufficient inspiration for you to generate your own lists.–Joe]

More Leftspeak Terms Exposed

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To help increase the general level of understanding in the world;


Two more entries:  “Hate” and “Poor”.


Doesn’t the language of the Left make just a little more sense now?


Update;  “Proof”.

Growing the Party by Making it Smaller

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I normally enjoy listening to the Michael Medved radio show.  A couple of months ago, he was arguing with a conservative  caller.  The caller was tired of the Republicans “compromising” and “reaching across the aisle”, rather than  standing up for the basic principles of this country.  The caller suggested (rightly in my opinion) that it’s time to get the  RINO bums out of the party.


Medved was incredulous; “How do you grow the party by making it smaller?”  He was absolutely convinced that getting rid of the left-wing Republicans was a sure path to defeat.


Hence the problem.


Hence the defeat in the last election.


I say you can in fact grow the party by making it smaller.  If the Republican leadership would grow a pair, define what it means to be a Republican (and what it doesn’t mean) millions of Americans would have a real alternative to the Democrats.  We’d finally have a reason to vote.


I say you could get rid of nearly every Republican in Congress tomorrow, thereby “making the party smaller” by a couple hundred, and in so doing grow the party by millions of new, enthusiastic voters if there were some real Americans to take their place in the Republican Party.


Two landslides, Mr. Medved.  It can’t be repeated enough.  Reagan won two landslides.  Two landslides, and the people (Reagan Democrats included) were chanting, “Four more years!”  He didn’t do it by showing how Leftist he could be.  He did it by simply explaining the American principles and by sticking to them.  He didn’t do it by appeasing the media pundits.  He did it by laughing at them, and correcting them.  He did it by taking a stand on real principles as a leader.  He wasn’t born into it– he learned his way into it.  There is a lot of learning to do today.


I have not heard one Republican talk like Reagan (for more than a sentence or two) since Reagan.  I’m not talking about Reagan’s style– it was his understanding and love of this country’s founding principles.  Apparently some people want us to think it was his slick style.  I never though he was that slick.  I just think he was one of very few people who understood, and that it was his understanding of the basic principles that gave him the ability to articulate them.  That cannot be faked.  We’ll know.  Republicans try to fake it all the time.  Look at Schwarzenegger talk out of both sides of his mouth- and he doesn’t even know he’s doing it.  It’s just a shtick for him.  Fake.  This fakery has come to define the Republican Party.  The Democrats at least are consistent in their adherence to socialist theories and their willingness to fight to get them implemented.  Republicans have no such consistency. 


Fakes.


I submit that the American voters are starving for someone, even just one man or one woman, who can demonstrate an understanding of the basic principles and a willingness to fight for them.


Fighting for this country’s principles means defeating the Left (leftist Democrats and leftist Republicans) not “reaching out” to them.  Let them reach out to us.  Let the lefties prove their willingness to cut programs, to reduce others, to meaningfully cut taxes and lift restrictions on industry and trade.  Let that be the new measure of “bipartisanship”, of “compromise”, of “pragmatism” and all that rot.  Let the Democrats run a conservative candidate as “the one who can win” because he/she “reaches across the aisle”.


Until I see this new Republican leader, I’m not donating and I am not voting Republican.  Fool me once, fool me twice, fool me thrice.  At some point back there I got bored.  We tried that with the two Bushes, and they, predictably, tried to outdo FDR on socialist spending.  We tried it on Dole and we tried it again with McLame.  Time and again we’ve been told that the “perfect candidate just isn’t here” with us, and that we should bite the bullet and vote for this or that confused, deer-in-the-headlights, apologetic, stumbling, fumbling, frightened, self-contradictory mush-mouth– the one who proclaims the virtues of a free market in the first half of a sentence, and declares a new entitlement program in the second half of the same sentence.  That sort of garbage is giving conservatism a very, very bad name.  If that’s the best we have to offer, we’ve already lost.  I’m done with these RINOs.


They’ve made the party smaller (by my one vote at least).  They can continue doing what they’re doing (trying to co-opt Democrat, i.e. socialist, policies) or they can get rid of the poison-pills, the dead-weight RINOs, and adopt the warrior spirit, once and for all declare war on socialism, laugh at the journalists (Reagan was quite good at that) uphold the virtues of capitalism (and mean it for once) and grow the party by millions.


And I can hear it all right now; “Lyle, don’t you understand how much we have to lose?  Don’t you understand what you’re saying?  We can’t just hand it all over to the Democrats!”


We’re ceding ground to the Left no matter who’s in office.  Lately it’s been a choice between more socialism, faster, and more socialism, slower.  It’s a choice between two arsonists– one who will burn down your house a little at a time, and another who will burn it all down at once.  Do I really care?  Maybe in the latter scenario I’ll be quicker to call the fire department.  Frog-in-the-pot theory says faster is better, given those two choices alone.


We may continue blaming the third party voters, keep voting for those “lesser of two evil” Republicans, never again hold the Republicans accountable for their astonishingly lame actions, and things will never change– we’ll get more of the sad sack of crap we’ve been getting.  Or we can demand some real principles and some real fight from the Republican leadership.  Those are our two choices.


Update Jan 08/09;  Regarding comments, I find this article quite relevant to the issue.

New Leftspeak Entries

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We now have a comprehensive explanation of the use of “Fascist” in Leftspeak, and we can’t forget “Selfishness”.


I know I’m missing a lot of commonly mangled terms, but I’ll add more as I think of them.  Ah yes– “Hate”!  I’ll have to get “Hate” in there soon.


(All entries are subject to change without notice.  Void where prohibited.  No purchase necessary.  Opinions expressed on this or any other site do in some way reflect someone’s opinions, thoughts, views, or perceptions, though we’re not willing to own up to anything we say.  The State of California has determined that certain views and expressions may cause cancer in laboratory rats.  Consult your doctor.  Keep out of reach of children.  Choking hazard.  For external use only.  To avoid electrical shock, it is best not to use this product.  Consult your operator’s manual.  Always wear eye and hearing protection.  Vapor harmful.  Not for use by pregnant women or women who may become pregnant.  Hide your head in the sand.  Fear your neighbors.  NOT approved by Underwriter’s Laboratories.  Avoid sharp objects.  Stay in bed.  Not for use when consuming alcohol.  Do not operate heavy machinery.  Ever.  Don’t sue us.  Caution; hot beverages, when poured in the lap, may cause pain.  Guaranteed for the life of the product.  Call the Ad Counsel for more information.)

Brady Campaign sues over National Park carry

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As predicted here the Brady Campaign is suing to stop the implementation of the new rule on carrying in National Parks. Unfortunately we won’t have (vice) President Palin in office next month to direct the Justice Department to arrest and prosecute the offenders.



The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence sued the Bush administration Tuesday in hopes of stopping a new policy that would allow people to carry concealed, loaded guns in most national parks and wildlife refuges.


…


The lawsuit said members of the Brady Campaign will no longer visit national parks and refuges “out of fear for their personal safety from those who will now be permitted to carry loaded and concealed weapons in such areas.”


If they were consistent they would stay out of states (and even countries) where concealed carry were allowed. I’d would be much happier if they did.


But if they were consistent that might mean they had the capacity to use logic and data for the basis of their actions. And we all know that would be the end of their organization and they would have to get real jobs rather than being professional bigots.

Quote of the day–W. Somerset Maugham

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It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.


W. Somerset Maugham
[While I agree it appears to me that most people don’t have the philosophical background and/or brain power to make decisions on their own. Sometimes I wish we could just let Darwin settle the issues.–Joe]

Yammering to ban air guns now–yawn

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In the U.K. they have banned handguns, some long guns, have heavy restrictions on all long guns, and restrictions on knives. There should be no surprise there are now calls for the banning of air guns:




A POLICE chief has backed stricter controls on selling BB guns after a teenager was shot in the eye at close range with one of the replica firearms.


Angry mum Lynn Colley called for a ban on the weapons after her daughter Paige, 14, was left temporarily blind by a ball bearing fired at her face.

Quote of the day–John Kenneth Galbraith

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Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under Communism, it’s just the opposite.


John Kenneth Galbraith
[While true this overlooks the net result of the people living under the two different systems. Under capitalism there exists a wider disparity between the richest and the poorest. But the poorest of the poor is no worse off than if they were living under a communist regime. And the average person is far, far better off living in a capitalist system. But many people don’t make it this far in the logic chain. Their is a strong tendency to stop after reaching the point about there being a wide disparity between the richest and poorest. As near as I can determine their is a belief that this is “not fair”. Pointing out to them that “life is not fair” does not remedy the situation. Apparently there is some deep seated belief that things can be made to be “fair”. I think the problem must be attacked at a lower level–that is the definition of “fair”. It is not “fair” that the government should take (at the point of a gun) the property and/or services of one and give it to another. That “unfairness” can only be reduced by reducing the size of government and the taxes paid.


I’m reminded of this quote by Phil who posted about Arianna Huffington saying Capitalism should be as dead as Communism. I’m tempted to say something comparing the status the brains of both Huffington and Marx but most people should be able to draw the obvious conclusion without me leading them there.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Bruce Schneier

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Why be rational, when you can stoke fear instead?


Bruce Schneier
December 16, 2008
Buying Fake Nintendo Consoles Helps Terrorists
[This applies to so many things.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Bruce Schneier

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Of course the terrorists used Google Earth. They also used boats, and ate at restaurants. Don’t even get me started about the fact that they breathed air and drank water.


Bruce Schneier
December 8, 2008
Mumbai Terrorists Used Google Earth, Boats, Food
[Apparently some people are making sounds about how bad it is that Google Earth exists. Essentially, because something can be used for evil purposes the “government should do something”. It’s the same mindset that has lead them to restricting knives (for all the good it has done) and banning fire extinguishers in the UK. It’s not guns, knives, or Google Earth that are the problem yet some people continue to push forward with their brain set to “11” on the insanity scale. As near as I can tell there are few explanations:



  1. The people “in charge” are unwilling to use rational thought when addressing the situation.
  2. The people “in charge” are unable to use rational thought when addressing the situation.
  3. The people “in charge” have ulterior motives for increasing government control of society.
  4. Some combination of the above.

Regardless of the pathology these people have no business receiving a government paycheck let alone making decisions that adversely affect the lives of millions of people.-Joe]