I swear to god some people’s brains are wired with only two settings, mandatory and forbidden
David Burge (@iowahawkblog)
Tweeted on April 19, 2022
[This is not news. This has been known for quite some time.
While being wired this way does relieve the stress of decision making it also means they can, and probably should, be replaced by a simple robot.-Joe]
I can cook well enough to keep myself from going hungry. So it should come as no surprise I was only able to recognize the last item:
Via a tweet from Tanya Tay Posobiec @realTanyaTay. This has more impact when you discover Tanya was born in the USSR.
If there is excess demand for something the market will supply shoddy goods. Apparently the FBI was in the market for domestic terrorists and couldn’t find enough to meet their needs so they made some of their own. They did such a poor job of it they couldn’t get convictions.
One has to wonder, how many times that happens and (mostly) innocent people are convicted. In particular, it casts a huge shadow over the arrests and prosecution of people on January 6th, 2020. Doubly so with this news:
At least 20 FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives “assets” were embedded around the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a defense attorney wrote in a court filing on April 12.
The disclosure was made in a motion seeking to dismiss seditious conspiracy and obstruction charges against 10 Oath Keepers defendants in one of the most prominent Jan. 6 criminal cases.
Who watches, and when appropriate, arrests and prosecutes the watchers? I am of the opinion there are probably many thousands of government employees and elected officials who should be prosecuted.
We have a saying in my office. Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Henrik Impola
FBI Special Agent
As told to a confidential informant after the kidnapping suspects were arrested in 2020
FBI’s tactics doomed case against men charged in kidnapping plot of Michigan governor
[It looks to me as if the facts should be used at Henrik’s, and others in that office, trials It would make a good story. And with convictions it would even have a happy ending.—Joe]
COVID enabled authoritarians to expand their power:
An appeals court sided with the governor and found the emergency act gave him vast authority—including the “police power” to create new law. The California Supreme Court let the appeals court decision stand, meaning that in any declared emergency the governor can do whatever he deems appropriate without serious checks or balances.
Last month, Newsom mercifully lifted the vast majority of edicts and orders—but the precedent has been set for future emergencies. There are no real limits on executive power.
There really needs to be consequences for these expansions of government powers. I’m just not sure what the solution is. When the elections can’t be trusted, the “news” is cheering the authoritarians, and individuals who speak out are canceled, what are people to do when they find the restrictions intolerable?
The Left are suspicious of the government on defence and law & order.
The Right are suspicious of the government on welfare and education.
Both are correct.
Alice Smith @TheAliceSmith
Tweeted on March 22, 2022
[I agree and go further. I am suspicious of government on all things.
The profile of Ms. Smith on Twitter may be of interest to some:
Who is Alice Smith? The great-great-great-granddaughter of Adam Smith. Follow me on my adventures down the capitalist rabbit hole! 2+2=4
I presume this is the Adam Smith who wrote The Wealth of Nations. This book had a big influence on me.—Joe]
Perhaps Russia’s most aggressive weapon in its war on dollars is gold. The first line of defense is to acquire physical gold, which cannot be frozen out of the international payments system or hacked.
With gold, you can always pay another country just by putting the gold on an airplane and shipping it to the counterparty. This is the 21st-century equivalent of how J.P. Morgan settled payments in gold by ship or railroad in the early 20th century.
James Rickards
March 4, 2022
You Can’t Hack Gold
[This also has relevance to cancel culture.
Prepare appropriately.—Joe]
Franks is assuming that you are too stupid to see what she is doing. Summing up her proposal, she contends that Americans should abandon their traditional constitutional setup and “situate individual rights within the framework of ‘domestic tranquility’ and the ‘general welfare.’” This is a fancy way of saying that the natural rights Americans currently enjoy wouldn’t actually be legal rights anymore.
Next time, Franks could just say that—and spare us all the merry dance.
Charles C. Cooke
March 10, 2022
No, Professor, We Shouldn’t Cut Up Our Rights
[Franks, of course, is not going to take Cooke’s advice. She is smart enough to know that deception is required for her plan to succeed.
Last December, I had my thoughts on Franks’ suggestions for the First and Second Amendments. I prefer my approach to Cooke’s suggestion. It’s more direct, let’s her know her deception failed, and makes it clear we not going to acquiesce::
No. Your move Ms. Franks.
Prepare appropriately to back up those words.—Joe]
On a recent trip to Idaho I finished listening to How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them by Barbara F. Walter.
Although her observations and interpretation of current events in the U.S. differ significantly from mine her broader perspective of civil wars world wide and the causes resonated as quite plausible to me. I highly recommended reading it and skipping or pushing through the parts where you know she is oblivious to reality. For example, in her mind January 6th 2021 was an attempted coup. The attempted kidnapping of Gov. Whitmer of Michigan was something similar rather than an FBI entrapment operation.* And President Trump and the Republican party was/is authoritarian while Democrats are pro-freedom..
There are times when I just had to pause and try to recover from some of the crazy stuff she would say. Things like (paraphrasing) “California has a minority majority”. What? In a literal reading that is completely nonsensical. Or, (still paraphrasing) as she talks about the need for government to becoming less authoritarian, “Social media must be regulated and not allow extremists a safe haven.”
I finally managed to reconcile the schizophrenia by deciding she was too close an observer to the situation in the U.S. With this I could move on to accept her study of other countries as more objective and could be used as evidence for the claimed principles of civil war detection and prevention.
The following are my takeaways:
These principals were explained and supported by examples from conflicts all over the world.
* The trial may reveal things that change my mind on this.
Amid the technological chaos and Western culture wars of the 21st century, thinkpiece writers sporadically debate which of these novels more accurately foresaw our present predicament. Modern China most clearly embodies Orwell’s vision, and elements of both novels can be found in contemporary Western societies. However, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 offered perhaps a more accurate warning than either. Published in 1953, Bradbury’s novel is as gloomy and prescient as either Orwell’s or Huxley’s, but its explanation of how a dystopia is created comes closer to providing an understanding of our new reality.
David S. Willis
February 12, 2022
“A Pleasure to Burn”: We Are Closer to Bradbury’s Dystopia Than Orwell’s or Huxley’s
[I think he is right. Orwell’s vision could be on the horizon though.—Joe]
Nineteen Eighty-Four was a dystopian novel. It was not a how-to manual.
Evil has become incredibly brazen.
Prepare appropriately.
This governmental freefall has been overseen by a tragically bewildered, petulant, and incompetent president. In his confusion, an increasingly unpopular Biden seems to believe that his divisive chaos is working, belittling his political opponents as racist Confederate rebels.
As we head into the 2022 midterm elections, who will stop our descent into collective poverty, division, and self-inflicted madness?
Victor Davis Hanson
January 19, 2022
Is America Heading for a Systems Collapse
[I’m nearly certain that is the wrong question to ask. It is my understanding that in chaotic times people give their support to “strong” (authoritarian) people who claim they can fix the broken system. Mussolini and Hitler come to mind…
Hence, I think the better questions are:
Prepare appropriately.—Joe]
In his book, Antifragile Nicholas Nassim Taleb describes his concept as something which gains from disorder or resistance. Having no word to accurately describe something that is the opposite of fragile, he argues that the term robust does not go far enough, and is neutral at best. Antifragility is a trait, whether it be in markets, military strategies, or bone mass, that grows off of the volatility of their environments.
…
The phenomenon that is American Gun Culture has responded to censorship in an antifragile way. This can be seen in the sudden spike in firearms purchasing whenever politicians push for banning certain firearms, as well as by continuing to grow despite political and cultural opposition. While social media platforms normalize censoring firearms-related content, the culture revolving around firearms shows that it doesn’t need their approval to continue thriving.
Forrest Cooper
February 7, 2022
Censorship and Antifragility: Aero Precision
[Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder is a good book. It is a novel, (but obvious in hindsight) way of looking at things. As an engineer it helped me think about the design of reliable systems. It can help the gun rights community think about better responses to attempts at infringements too.
Gab is a good example. They were deplatformed on multiple axis simultaneously and came back stronger than before.
One might also say Boomershoot was an antifragile response to a law introduced by Diane Feinstein. The word did not exist at the time, but it certainly fits the facts.—Joe]
You can cling to all the Big Tech platforms as long as you like. It’s foolish, because they WILL deplatform you. And you can jump to all the “new” gatekeeping platforms run by the same people who run the Big Tech platforms all you like, but you’re not going to find what you’re looking for there either.
Consider this: there is a reason the media, the ADL, and all the other organizations that hate you have been deplatforming and discrediting people like me, Torba, Milo, Owen, Stefan, and Razor for the last 7 years.
And maybe it’s not because we are pure and unmitigated evil haters who hate. Maybe it’s because we actually stand for the Good, the Beautiful, and the True.
Vox Day@voxday
Gabbed on February 4, 2022
[Read that carefully. He didn’t say they were the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. He said maybe they actually stood for that.
I think that is the more likely hypothesis than they are all “pure and unmitigated evil haters who hate”.
There may be some other hypothesis that fits the available evidence better than either but doesn’t matter much. What matters is those Big Tech companies deplatforming people are clearly evil haters who hate.—Joe]
This was in the package with a recent purchase I made:
One might be inclined to give someone a pass on this if it were a label on something like a household cleaner with a pleasant smell. Or maybe even your gun oil. But I don’t think you would arrive at the actual produce even with a game of twenty questions.
It is a cell phone holster:
How many trees will be cut down, how much electricity will be used in the creation of those paper inserts, how much landfill space will be used, to save zero people from consuming the cell phone holster and causing a birth defect or have other reproductive harm? Anyone stupid enough to eat that piece of plastic is going to be too stupid to read and remember what the warning was about.
Of course it is California. It is not about saving lives. It is about exerting control and demoralizing the populace.
When I read stuff like this it is like I’m reading something written by an eight grader:
It’s Time for a Guaranteed Basic Income in Washington State
With basic incomes, more people are able to afford food and housing, pay off debt, get full-time jobs, save for emergencies, and get the physical and mental health support they need. Cash payments dramatically improve the lives of our neighbors and communities. That’s a source of hope. Unfortunately, the very need for GBI also reveals just how many of us are close to losing everything; even people working multiple jobs that offer little security for workers.
There is no hint of appreciation for the glaring problems of costs, fraud, and demotivation. I was reminded of what I posted about The Communist Manifesto:
Assumptions critical to the reasoning which followed were unsupported and, at least to my present day perspective, either blatantly wrong or highly suspect. Even conceding the authors their assumptions without contest the conclusions reached with such confidence were as unstable as any house of cards.
And yet, these people, with such simplistic thinking, are making progress.
Via email from Gerald F.:
It seems that the U.S. is not currently equipped to cooperatively lower the risk confronting us. Many are instead pinning their hopes on the rapid development and distribution of an enhancement to the immune system – a vaccine.
But I believe society may be better off, both in the short term as well as the long, by boosting not the body’s ability to fight off disease but the brain’s ability to cooperate with others. What if researchers developed and delivered a moral enhancer rather than an immunity enhancer?
Moral enhancement is the use of substances to make you more moral. The psychoactive substances act on your ability to reason about what the right thing to do is, or your ability to be empathetic or altruistic or cooperative.
And what is the morality of forcing others to adhere to a version of morality different than their firmly held belief?
And of course some (most?) would refuse which the author suggests isn’t that big of an obstacle (apparently oblivious to the practical problems of dosage, secrecy, and costs with this sort of scale):
And if you follow the link you will discover the “moral reasoning” of the author is somewhat twisted (highlighting added):
My argument for this is that if moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory, then its administration is a matter of public health, and for this reason should be governed by public health ethics. I argue that the covert administration of a compulsory moral bioenhancement program better conforms to public health ethics than does an overt compulsory program. In particular, a covert compulsory program promotes values such as liberty, utility, equality, and autonomy better than an overt program does. Thus, a covert compulsory moral bioenhancement program is morally preferable to an overt moral bioenhancement program.
I find it very telling the author values “utility” and “equality”. And dares to suggest a covert program of forced “bioenhancement” is consistent with “liberty” and “autonomy”.
No thank you.
I want an underground bunker in Idaho.
The only real difference between Communism and Naziism is that when you point out the millions who were killed by the Nazis, no one ever says “Well, real Naziism has never been tried”.
dittybopper
January 29, 2022
Comment to Quote of the day—The Socialist Party @OfficialSPGB
[There are many other differences of interest to historians, sociologists, and psychologists. But in terms of what you need to know to make appropriate decisions in response to them this is correct.—Joe]
There have been no “failures”. To fail it must first exist. Which country’s population has managed to free themselves and create a class-free society where the PEOPLE collectively owned the natural resources, industries etc? Most people don’t know what socialism / communism is.
The Socialist Party @OfficialSPGB
Tweeted on January 21, 2022
[If it has never existed then all the millions of people who died in the failed attempts surely must be considered “a clue”. But that they persist tells us one, or both, of two things:
Therefore, if they persist, we should just say, “No!” until we run out of ammo, then affix bayonets and continue with hand-to-hand.—Joe]
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but there is no such thing as freedom with strict oversight.
Stilettos & Shotguns (@thereal_SnS)
Tweeted on January 21, 2022
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]