Quote of the day—Adam Kraut

Rule by executive fiat was rejected by the Thirteen American Colonies, including Pennsylvania, when they declared independence from England, and we reject such lawlessness today. The Attorney General’s revisionist legal opinion adds an entire class of inanimate objects to the definition of ‘firearm’ under Pennsylvania law that the General Assembly never considered, nor intended. As such, we are requesting the Commonwealth Court to enjoin Commissioner Evanchick and his Pennsylvania State Police from implementing and enforcing any policy or practice that would follow the Attorney General’s misguided definitional structure.

Adam Kraut
Director of Legal Policy
The Firearm Policy Coalition
December 20, 2019
BREAKING: Emergency Injunction Sought Against Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Evanchick Following ‘Lawless’ Gun Ban Mandate, “Legal Opinion” by Attorney General Josh Shapiro
[See also: GUN-RIGHTS GROUP SUES PENNSYLVANIA OVER NEW ‘GHOST GUNS’ RULE

I donate money every month (matched by my employer) to the FPC.

It’s amazing what these politicians want to get away with. It’s almost as if they believe they are rulers instead of public servants.

The courts need to slap them down hard and soon!—Joe]

YES

Via email from Matthew Faulks.

The NRA Foundation has a national Yes Education Summit (YES) program. The state of Idaho recognizes this:

Idaho sophomores and juniors are invited to apply to participate in the Idaho State Youth Education Summit (Y.E.S.), part of a larger national program through the NRA Foundation – a non-profit, non-political charitable affiliate of the National Rifle Association.  This innovative civics program brings participating students to the Idaho Capitol from March 12 to 15 to gain first-hand knowledge about our branches of government and to meet state elected officials. Students also engage in public speaking, problem-solving, participate in firearms training at a local gun range administered by certified firearms instructors and visit government agencies and historical venues. Meals, lodging, and materials are provided to participating students at no cost.

The selection of students for the program is competitive. One student participants will be chosen at the end of the Idaho program to attend the national Y.E.S. program in Washington D.C. on July 13-19, 2020. Up to $50,000 total in scholarships will be awarded among successful participants at this national Y.E.S. program.

For more information about applying contact Matthew Faulks via email or visit https://yes.nra.org/state-summits/.

You can learn more and share via the Idaho YES flyer Faulks sent me. The deadline for application is coming up fast (January 8th, 2020). So, get those High School sophomores and juniors to download the application and get it submitted soon.

Quote of the day—Michael Z. Williamson

Keep calm. Spread the word.  Agitate against such outrages. Buy more guns.  Buy them legally. Buy them privately if you can.  Buy more, more, and yet more. There’s always the risk we’ll reach the point where America tips over. But that’s a chance we’ll have to take.

Because if it’s impossible for the government to seize 300 million weapons (the lowball estimate), it’s way more than four times as impossible for them to seize 1.2 billion.

Michael Z. Williamson
December 15, 2019
The Virginia Debacle, Summarized (And Why You Should Buy More Guns)
[There is more than a little truth to this. But a gun properly buried in the woods and practically impossible to confiscate might as well be in government hands or destroyed. Just one gun, and enough ammunition, in the hands of someone skilled, able, and willing to use it will be of far more use that a thousand guns hidden and unused.

Attend Boomershoot 2020 (sign up here). Learn what your gun can do at a distance, increase your skill, have the confidence to use it if you really need to, and have a whole lot of fun doing it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Christopher Knight

“Resist!” is screamed by media personalities and celebrities and politicians who in a sane world would never win a race for city lieutenant sanitation commissioner.  They betray ignorance of what real dictatorship is, as they dare ascribe the gravitas of 1989’s righteous rebellions upon their own crusade.

When I consider Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, and Jerry Nadler maneuvering for impeachment of President Donald Trump, it is with some dark bewilderment.  They have no idea what disaster they are courting for themselves and their allies.  It will not end well for them.


Out of desperation Ceausescu promised higher salaries and student aid.  But Ceausescu had woefully mis-gauged the frustrations of the people amassed before him in Bucharest.  The moment his decades of control evaporated was chronicled on worldwide television.  Nicolai and Elena Ceausescu promptly fled the palace by helicopter and were soon captured.

December 25, 1989 was not a Merry Christmas for the Ceausescus. Found guilty by a drumhead trial of crimes against the Romanian people, Nicolai and Elena were immediately thrown against the wall – literally – and shot dead.  Images of their shattered bodies were broadcast around the globe.

So far as analogies go, the comforts and careers of the petty tyrants in Washington may soon be just as crumbled.  Our own would-be overlords would do well to be mindful of that.

Christopher Knight
December 10, 2019
The Fall of the Deep State and 1989’s Fall of Communism
[It’s easy to draw parallels to present day. And after Knight is done it’s simpler than painting by numbers.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., M.D.

The radical liberal mind is trapped in his bitter cynicism because he suffered certain kinds of neglect, deprivation and abuse at an early age and has had as a consequence to deny, as if they don’t exist, whole realms of human experience, because awareness of those realms is emotionally painful beyond his tolerance. He has not had as an infant and toddler the deeply formative benefits of engagement, love, tenderness, protection and empathy that would allow him to understand and participate happily in the human benevolence that is everywhere available to him as an adult.

To the radical liberal who is blind to an entire realm of interpersonal experience, and who distorts the realities of spontaneous cooperation in every community where freedom prevails, America and Trump are devils that must be stopped from destroying the world. The radical liberal and the Trump-deranged individual see only the projections onto others of their own inner badness, greed, predation, exclusion, prejudice, bigotry, envy, jealousy and exploitative impulses. They don’t see, beyond Trump’s personality faults, his goodwill for America, his generosity toward veterans and other Americans, his grandiose but effective identification with the greatness of America. The dysfunctional families which radical liberals and Trump-deranged sufferers come from are the source of their projections of badness onto our country. What they see in present-day America are transference versions of their own early traumas.

Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., M.D.
September 30, 2019
Psychiatrist: Trump Derangement Syndrome is real – and serious
[As stated in SJWs Always Lie, They lie, they double down, and they project. This psychiatrist claims he know why they do this:

Perhaps. But I would like to see the raw data he used to arrive at his conclusions.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Libby Emmons and Barrett Wilson

This is what being unhinged looks like—being so sure of your correctness that you demand affirmation. The use of violence to revolt against lawful elections is only done by people who don’t care about free and fair elections. Britain is not a rogue state where sham elections are held. It’s a cornerstone democratic nation.

Libby Emmons and Barrett Wilson
December 13, 2019
Democracy Is Alive And Well Despite The Media’s Best Efforts
[The political left only consider the democratic process as valid as long as it is making progress in their direction. When “progress” slows or reverses they bring out the violence.

Respond appropriately.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jeffrey Folks

The problem for the liberal is that most people do not want to be transformed.  They want life to be better but not qualitatively different.  It is only the liberal, or the “progressive,” as he prefers to be called today, who welcomes revolution and relishes the violent tactics necessary to bring it about.  For the progressive, it is an article of faith that the masses will resist change and must be forced to swallow it.

This is a crucial difficulty, and it gives rise to all sorts of persuasion, nudging, compulsion, and outright violence.  If the masses don’t know what’s good for them, they must be made to change.

Jeffrey Folks
February 24, 2018
Leftists versus the People
[As we are seeing both here and most recently and vividly in London. Voting is what they advocate for when they think they will win. Violence is always there as plan B.

Respond appropriately.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Fritz Edmunds

If plastic water bottles are okay, but plastic bags are banned, — you might live in a nation (state) that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots WE DO LIVE IN SUCH A DUMB COUNTRY!!

If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for entering and remaining in the country illegally — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If you have to get your parents’ permission to go on a field trip or to take an aspirin in school, but not to get an abortion — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If you MUST show your identification to board an airplane, cash a check, buy liquor, or check out a library book and rent a video, but not to vote for who runs the government — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If the government wants to prevent stable, law-abiding citizens from owning gun magazines that hold more than ten rounds, but gives twenty F-16 fighter jets to the crazy new leaders in Egypt — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If, in the nation’s largest city, you can buy two 16-ounce sodas, but not one 24-ounce soda, because 24-ounces of a sugary drink might make you fat — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If an 80-year-old woman who is confined to a wheelchair or a three-year-old girl can be strip-searched by the TSA at the airport, but a woman in a burka or a hijab is only subject to having her neck and head searched — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If your government believes that the best way to eradicate trillions of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If a seven-year-old boy can be thrown out of school for saying his teacher is “cute” but hosting a sexual exploration or diversity class in grade school is perfectly acceptable — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If hard work and success are met with higher taxes and more government regulation and intrusion while not working is rewarded with Food Stamps, WIC checks, Medicaid benefits, subsidized housing, and free cell phones — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If you pay your mortgage faithfully, denying yourself the newest big-screen TV, while your neighbor buys iPhones, time shares, a wall-sized do-it-all plasma screen TV and new cars, and the government forgives his debt when he defaults on his mortgage — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If being stripped of your Constitutional right to defend yourself makes you more “safe” according to the government — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

THINK BEFORE YOU VOTE IN ALL UPCOMING ELECTIONS. MOST OF THE IDIOTS RUNNING THIS COUNTRY SAY ONE THING AND DO THE OPPOSITE KNOWING THAT THE PEOPLE WHO VOTED THEM IN DO NOT PAY ATTENTION

Fritz Edmunds
February 3, 2013
Channeling Jeff Foxworthy In a Country Founded by Geniuses and Run By Idiots (the link is dead as of December 12, 2019)
[This has been attributed to Jeff Foxworthy but that is probably incorrect.

It would appear this is just as true now as it was almost seven years ago.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Dean Weingarten

Preventing a murder or suicide committed with a particular method is *not* a compelling governmental interest, because it is not clear if prohibiting one method will do anything to lower murders or suicides generally. It is arguable that prohibiting one method will lead to the rise of other methods. If preventing one method does not lower the overall rate, resources have been wasted and liberties narrowed to no effect. Thus, singling out one method becomes a matter of choice and preference.

Using the Orwellian phrases of Progressives is one of the easiest ways to lose an argument with them. If you cede to them the ability to define the words and terms of the language used, they win, mostly by default.

Dean Weingarten
December 8, 2019
”Preventing Gun Violence” is not a Compelling Governmental Interest
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—James Howard Kunstler

What is the Democratic Party today? Well, it’s the cheerleading squad for “seventeen” government agencies that add up to the craftily-labeled “intel community,” a warm-and-fuzzy coalition of snoops, false witnesses, rogue lawfare cadres, seditionists, and bad-faith artists working sedulously to hide their previous misdeeds with ever-fresh ones. They’re the party against free speech, the party against due process of law, the party determined to provoke war with Russia. They’re the party of sexual confusion, sexual hysteria, and sexual conflict, the party of kangaroo courts, cancel culture, erasing boundaries (including national borders), and of making up rules for all that as they go along — like the Nazis and Soviets used to do. The ideas and policies they advocate are so comprehensively crazy that their old support of slavery looks quaintly straightforward in comparison.

James Howard Kunstler
December 6, 2019
A Fraught Moment
[Harsh! But fair.

Via email from Chet.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Brad Smith

The pressure to put data centers in more countries is giving rise to what is rapidly becoming one of the world’s most important human rights issues. With everyone’s personal information stored in the cloud, an authoritarian regime bent on broad surveillances can unleash draconian demands to monitor not only what people are communicating, but even what they are reading and watching online. And armed with this knowledge, governments can prosecute, persecute, or even execute those individuals they consider threats.

This is a fundamental fact of life that everyone in works in the tech sector needs to remember every day.

Brad Smith
President and chief legal officer of Microsoft
September 2019
Page 45 in Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age


[One of Barb’s brother-in-laws recommended this book to me a few days ago as we were having a discussion about privacy and security.

I’m only about 20% of the way through the book but I’m really enjoying it. What I’m hearing matches the general tone of the culture when I worked at Microsoft. They take customer privacy seriously.

They have a team of about 50 people that work full time to respond to government requests and push back if the request is out of line with the law. They have promised to go to court rather than comply with requests that don’t have the warrants and documentation all in order. And they have gone to court numerous times. Smith claims they win in court 90% of the time.

I don’t know the details of the level of cooperation my current employer and the government have but I know that on the security side of things we take things very seriously. I also know that, IIRC, we have about 100 full time people who deal with government requests for information. I’ve talked with some of them and they too seem to believe it’s critical to keep the government on the straight and narrow.

I only see the criminal side of things but if we know or suspect customer personal information has been compromised, by either insider or outsiders, we put a stop to it as quickly as possible. And in the past year or two I’ve been seeing names of the people we chased end up in the news as being arrested, prosecuted, and convicted. None of them have been government officials, but that’s probably a little too much to expect.—Joe]

Quote of the day—dennis @pourteaux

Hong Kong is making me rethink my position on gun rights. Perhaps it’s best for common people to have access to firearms to counterbalance an over-reaching government. Gun violence is terrible, but systemic state violence also must be deterred.

dennis @pourteaux
Tweeted on November 20, 2019
[Duh!—Joe]

Are reeducation camps next?

Via email from Chet:

CNN: Trump Is Leader Of “Destructive Cult”; Using “Mind Control” On Americans

Stelter and guest say Trump supporters need ‘deprogramming’

The pair then remarkably suggested that Trump supporters need to be ‘deprogrammed’ by breaking them out of their ‘bubbles’.

Could there be a better example of the pot calling the kettle black?

The real cult is happening at CNN, where for four years talking heads and presenters have completely obsessed themselves with opposing anything Trump says or does, as well as a plethora of things he doesn’t say or do.

63 million Americans are definitely not part of a mind controlled cult. However, a few thousand CNN viewers certainly seem to be.

You knew there had to a reason why they don’t want you to have firearms. It makes it more difficult to herd you into the reeducation camps.

Quote of the day—Tayacan

In order to obtain the maximum results from psychological operations in guerilla warfare, each combatant must be highly motivated to engage in propaganda face to face, to the same degree that he is motivated to fight.

Tayacan
1984
Sanitized Copy of CIA’s Psychological Operations in Guerilla Warfare
[Confrontation is what the political left does. If we are to win we must do the same.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ed Driscoll

The constantly shifting Orwellian language codes are important, because the insider-lingo allows leftists to feel a sense of smug superiority to their fellow man. Or as Jeffrey Folks wrote at the American Thinker last year, “For liberals, the distinction between the ‘dumb masses’ and their enlightened selves renders life meaningful.  Disdain for ordinary folks is not just an ancillary trait of liberalism.  It is fundamental to the its nature.”

Ed Driscoll
November 10, 2019
TESTING THE LIMITS OF THE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARY
[This reminds me of the attitude of the Nazis toward the “inferior races”. See also what I wrote about the Communist Manifesto. The most important part in this context is:

The Communist Manifesto tells its readers that supporters of Communism are the intelligent people. They deserve, are destined to, and the good of all human kind depends on them, being in charge. That they “understand” the benefits of Communism to the bafflement of others is probably proof to them that they are the intellectual superiors of those that think Communism is, at best, prone to abuse.

The political left enables people to feel superior to others. They are told they are more “enlightened”, more “tolerant”, and just better people. If their “inferiors” adapt beliefs and behaviors which close the gap the left must find a new basis to feel superior. It is fundamental to their nature.

Like a spoiled child we must set firm limits and enforce them. The alternative is to climb aboard the crazy train on its way to a special version of hell.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Kathy Zhu @PoliticalKathy

The only reason why the government would want to disarm you after 243 years is because they intend to do something that you would shoot them for.

Kathy Zhu @PoliticalKathy
Tweeted on November 7, 2019
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—johnd

Most gun owners are responsible and law abiding, until, one day, they aren’t.

johnd
November 2, 2019
Comment to Most “black market” guns in America are purchased legally across state lines
[So, what’s your point johnd? Is your claim that all guns should be banned because some gun owners are not responsible and law abiding? Careful what paths you enable.

If you successfully convince the public that only the government should have guns, completely eliminating a constitutional protected right, there are almost no barriers to what the government can do.

All car owners are responsible and law abiding, until, one day, they aren’t and drive drunk, fall asleep at the wheel, or send text messages and drive into someone else.

All women are responsible and law abiding, until, one day, they aren’t and kill their kids, embezzle money, sell illegal drugs, or become a prostitute.

All homeowners are responsible and law abiding, until, one day, they aren’t and don’t pay their mortgage, burn the house down for the insurance money, or use it to cook meth.

All people are responsible and law abiding, until, one day, they aren’t and you should lock them up or send them to the camps before they aren’t on whatever whim you can think of.

No thanks. I’ll keep my guns. I draw the line here.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Steven B. Gerrard

A semester’s worth of readings, from John Stuart Mill to selected Facebook posts, as well as speakers representing a multitude of perspectives, and serious and civil class discussion. My students came to see that free speech protects everyone, especially the oppressed, and includes those who share their leftist views.

So it was with all this in mind that I went into a faculty meeting to present the free-expression “pledge” with the idea that we would have a productive discussion. Then reality hit.

As I stepped up to the lectern in one of the college’s elegant Federal-style halls, students marched into the room, bearing a letter naming me an “Enemy of the People.”

In the spirit of liberal openness, I read their letter aloud. This is what it said: “‘Free Speech,’ as a term, has been co-opted by right-wing and liberal parties as a discursive cover for racism, xenophobia, sexism, anti-semitism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and classism.” The letter reserved special scorn for liberalism: “Liberal ideology asserts that morality is logical — that dehumanizing ideas can be fixed with logic and therefore need to be debated.” But, it added, “dehumanization cannot be discussed away.”

Steven B. Gerrard
September 9, 2019
The Rise of the Comfort College: At American universities, personal grievances are what everyone’s talking about.
[Via email from Chet.

There is more good stuff in the opinion piece. I especially “liked” (emphasis added):

In response, students sent a letter to the trustees declaring that “We hold the truth of discursive and institutional violence to be self-evident.”

Self-evident. Refusing to consider evidence goes against the tenor of all three previous colleges. (Even the Christian college studied arguments for the existence of God.) We might at first dismiss this as (literal) sophomoric bravado. However, in a meeting for faculty of color called by the dean of the faculty, one professor asked for evidence of “violent practices.” Another professor responded that “to ask for evidence of violent practices is itself a violent practice.

This reminds me of something Ann Landers once said. These people must be confronted. They are crazy. Allowing this to stand is to invite the destruction of rational thought and civilization.—Joe]

Quote of the day—David Harsanyi @davidharsanyi

Corruption, murder and starvation aren’t incompatible with socialism–most often they’re a requirement.

David Harsanyi @davidharsanyi
Tweeted on October 11, 2019
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Shannon Watts @shannonrwatts

“Come and take it” is also a death threat. Given our gun violence crisis, law enforcement must stop giving pundits and politicians who say these things a pass.

Shannon Watts @shannonrwatts
ShannonWatts
Tweeted on October 11, 2019
[Watts doesn’t just want to ban guns. She is also opposed to freedom of speech.

No one should give her a pass on this. I hope she enjoys her trial.—Joe]