Quote of the day—KrisAnne Hall

The entire argument for gun control is built upon a false premise. The second amendment is not about self-defense from criminals.

As unpleasant as it may be for this modern society to say out loud, historically and constitutionally speaking, the right of the people to keep and bear arms has always been a right to protect yourself from those in power who want to enslave you. If America wants to engage in a real factual debate on the right to keep and bear arms, then it must be approached from the proper perspective.

A proper debate on one’s right to keep and bear arms is NOT one that is framed in the terms of whether you can feel safe from wicked and depraved people, full of hate and malice, who want to hurt you. You will NEVER feel safe from those people and those people will not cease to exist just because YOU are not allowed to legally own a gun. Why? Because those people do not care about laws and they will always find a way to hurt and destroy, with or without gun laws.

If society is honest and historically accurate, the only question that has any relevance to the gun control debate is,

“Do you trust those in government, now and forever in the future, to not take your life, liberty, or property through the force of government?”

If the answer to that question is “no,” the gun control debate is over.

KrisAnne Hall
Facebook post, October 2, 2017
DoYouTrustGovernment
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Norbert Michel

For those unfamiliar, Choke Point consisted of bureaucrats in several independent federal agencies taking it upon themselves to shut legal businesses – such as payday lenders and firearms dealers – out of the banking system. Given the nature of the U.S. regulatory framework, this operation was easy to pull off.

Officials at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), for instance, simply had to inform the banks they were overseeing that the government considered certain types of their customers “high risk.” The mere implication of a threat was enough to pressure banks into closing accounts, because no U.S. bank wants anything to do with extra audits or investigations from their regulator, much less additional operating restrictions or civil and criminal charges.

It is now clear that these unelected government officials set out to harm law-abiding citizens. Yet many of the government officials named in these documents are still employed by the same government agency. Most of these folks work at the FDIC, and one has even moved up from a regional director position to FDIC Ombudsman.

Norbert Michel
November 5, 2018
Newly Unsealed Documents Show Top FDIC Officials Running Operation Choke Point
[That these people aren’t currently in prison making little rocks out of big rocks shows you “the swamp” still needs to be drained.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jeffrey Guterman @JeffreyGuterman

Anyone who is paranoid that their guns will be taken away should have their guns taken away.

Jeffrey Guterman @JeffreyGuterman
Tweeted on November 8, 2018
[Implementing a Catch-22 scenario. Nice try.

Apply this to other specific enumerated rights such as the right to trial by jury, right to representation by a lawyer, free speech, free association, freedom of religion, and in Mr. Guterman’s case I would like the local National Guard unit to knock on his door every day and his Third Amendment rights treated in such a manner.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jordan B. Peterson

No political experiment has ever been tried so widely, with so many disparate people, in so many different countries (with such different histories) and failed so absolutely and so catastrophically. Is it mere ignorance (albeit of the most inexcusable kind) that allows today’s Marxists to flaunt their continued allegiance—to present it as compassion and care? Or is it, instead, envy of the successful, in near-infinite proportions? Or something akin to hatred for mankind itself? How much proof do we need? Why do we still avert our eyes from the truth?

Jordan B. Peterson
November 1, 2018
The Gulag Archipelago: A New Foreword by Jordan B. Peterson
[Via a text message from daughter Jaime.—Joe]

Democrats then and now

Via email from Chet:

DemocratsKkkAntifa

Found here.

It’s not just guns they hate

Gab is essentially a Twitter clone without shadow bans and account suspension of non-liberal viewpoints. It prides itself on free speech but does have terms of service which say that users are not allowed to advocate violence. This resulted in their phone apps being refused by Apple and Google.

That was until yesterday.

The murderer in Pittsburg had an account on Gab.com. As soon as they were notified the murderer was one of their users they took action. I can’t find the exact tweet right now but as I recall it they said:

  • They immediately suspended the account
  • They archived the content
  • They contacted the FBI.

Here is a tweet that says essentially that:

This is your big question? lol okay.

1. We suspended the account after backing up the data to give to the FBI and DOJ
2. When we did this, the username became availible for a short time.
3. Someone created a new account and got the username.
4. We then locked down the username

Here is what you see if you go to gab.com or gab.ai now:

Gab.com is under attack. We have been systematically no-platformed by App Stores, multiple hosting providers, and several payment processors. We have been smeared by the mainstream media for defending free expression and individual liberty for all people and for working with law enforcement to ensure that justice is served for the horrible atrocity committed in Pittsburgh. Gab will continue to fight for the fundamental human right to speak freely.
As we transition to a new hosting provider Gab will be inaccessible for a period of time. We are working around the clock to get Gab.com back online. Thank you and remember to speak freely.

They made a public statement published on medium.com. That page no longer exists.

From here:

BREAKING: http://Gab.com is now banned from Paypal “just because.”

PayPalToGab

From here:

Breaking: @joyent, Gab’s new hosting provider, has just pulled our hosting service. They have given us until 9am on Monday to find a solution. Gab will likely be down for weeks because of this. Working on solutions. We will never give up on defending free speech for all people.

JoyentToGab

From here:

BREAKING: @stripe is likely going to ban us. We gave them plenty of documented and detailed evidence. The no-platforming continues.

StripeToGab

From here:

BREAKING: @GoDaddy is threatening to suspend our domain (which is worth six figures) if we do not transfer to a new provider by tomorrow. This is madness. @realDonaldTrump @parscale I hope you are paying attention.

GoDaddyToGab

It’s not just guns the political left hates. It is free speech. It is you.

They want you disarmed. They want you silenced. They what you dead.

Next week, vote their representatives out of power.

Professional agitators

I work in security. Part of my job is to see the world a little different from most people. I review a lot of material with a different view that most people and some of it is not available to the general public (unless you want to spend a lot of money).

The following is an alternate, and I believe more accurate, view on the state of politics in our country:

Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova is alleged in the indictment to have participated in a conspiracy to “sow discord in the U.S. political system and to undermine faith in our democratic institutions.

The government says that the conspiracy is also part of a 2016 influence operation that dates back to at least May 2014.

Forty-four-year-old Khusyaynova, of St. Petersburg, was the chief accountant of “Project Lakhta,” an effort funded by Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin and two companies he controls, Concord Management and Consulting LLC, and Concord Catering, the indictment says. Prigozhin is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and is often referred to as “Putin’s chef.”

Khusyaynova is accused of overseeing a $35 million budget from 2014 to 2018 that covered spending on activists, social media advertising, and promoting news postings on social networks. The Justice Department says that the proposed operating budget for 2018 alone was over $10 million.

Those involved in the conspiracy made extensive efforts to appear to be American political activists, and hide the fact that they were Russian. According to the indictment, the conspiracy “inflamed passions” on topics including immigration, gun control and the Second Amendment, the Confederate flag, race relations, LGBT issues, the Women’s March, and the NFL national anthem controversy.

The conspiracy advised social media writers on how to write for U.S. audiences, suggesting in one instance that people of color who are LGBT are “less sophisticated” than those who are white. “Colored LGBT are less sophisticated than white; therefore, complicated phrases and messages do not work,” the guidance said, according to the indictment. It went on to suggest that infographics “work well among LGBT and their liberal allies,” but not so well with conservatives.

Earlier in the day, in a rare joint statement, the nation’s top law enforcement and intelligence agencies issued a warning against what they described as “ongoing campaigns by Russia, China and other foreign actors, including Iran, to undermine confidence in democratic institutions and influence public sentiment and government policies.”

The old adage, “consider the source”, is good advice. But what if it is extremely difficult to know the source?

A lot of the political tension in our country is not due to citizen advocates of actual extremist positions. It is due to well funded outside agitators.

Quote of the day—Tirno

Why exactly would gun control implemented by progressives in this country not look like gun control implemented by progressives in Cambodia, USSR, China, etc? You don’t get to different destinations using the same beaten-up “treasure” map.

Tirno
October 19, 2018
Comment to Quote of the day—Ann
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Trust your government

From Electronic Frontier Foundation Newly Released Surveillance Orders Show That Even with Individualized Court Oversight, Spying Powers Are Misused:

Rather than notifying the court that it had destroyed the communications it obtained without authorization, the NSA made an absurd argument in a bid to retain the communications: because the surveillance was unauthorized, the agency’s internal procedures that require officials to delete non-relevant communications should not apply. Essentially, because the surveillance was unlawful, the law shouldn’t apply and the NSA should get to keep what it had obtained.

And these are the people we supposedly should trust with our freedom?

Maybe someone else has some perspective on this…

TurnInYourGuns

Quote of the day—Ashe Schow

There is absolutely nothing an accused person can present that would actually be considered exculpatory. Meanwhile, any and all evidence just reinforces the accuser’s trauma and truthfulness.

Ashe Schow
5 Signs You’re In The Midst Of A Moral Panic
[Salem “witches”, the satanic panic of the 1980’s and 90’s, and others are discussed in the article.

It’s not a scholarly article but it’s good enough that you can see some common patterns that would have a low chance of false positives when broadly applied.

When Prophecy Fails also applies in many ways. Read my short synopsis of the book to get the gist of it.

The political left had a firmly believed prophecy that Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 election. When that failed they made a series of new prophecies involving the evils of a President Trump administration and prophesized all the more fervently. One of the more memorable was the prediction by Nobel Economics Prize winning economist Paul Krugman on election night:

It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover?

Frankly, I find it hard to care much, even though this is my specialty. The disaster for America and the world has so many aspects that the economic ramifications are way down my list of things to fear.

Still, I guess people want an answer: If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.

All the predictions about the various investigations of President Trump and his advisors will result in his impeachment have repeatedly been proven false. But evidence cannot convince them. These people are in a state of hysteria.

As long as the Five Conditions are met they will continue to remain in their irrational state and increase the passion with every prediction that is proved false:

  1. There must be conviction.
  2. There must be commitment to this conviction.
  3. The conviction must be amenable to unequivocal disconfirmation.
  4. Such unequivocal disconfirmation must occur.
  5. Social support must be available subsequent to the disconfirmation.

Their numbers are growing smaller and while a good sign for the long term the short term consequences of the increased passion means there is also increased potential for violence.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Cyberzen‏ @JDBonnar

Young me reading history…”How did evil, tyrannical regimes exist like this within the last 100 years?”

Me in 2018 watching Democrats operate…”Oh.”

Cyberzen‏ @JDBonnar
Tweeted on September 30, 2018
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Tom Gresham

It is my firm belief that Fast and Furious was created to advance the gun-ban agenda of the Obama administration. Those in charge of it created a government-funded program to deliver thousands of guns to murderers with the sole goal of using the resulting crimes as leverage to reduce gun rights. Part of the plan was to guarantee that people were killed, and if that had to be law enforcement officers, “you have to break some eggs.” Individuals and companies would be destroyed as an integral part of the plan. 

Remember the story. Share this frightening tale of government agencies being used to advance political agendas. Consider that many of the same people are still in power, operating on their own to effect elections or push agendas. 

Imagine what the “It’s impossible to fire a federal employee” activists inside government will do under a Democratic-party controlled Congress or White House. Actually, there’s no need to imagine.  We’ve seen the depths of depravity they sink to.

Tom Gresham
September 20, 2018
TRIGGERED!
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Michael Z. Williamson

And this is why we should still talk about killing Communists. Because human lives are more important than Communist lives.

Michael Z. Williamson
September 20, 2018
Why We Should Still Be Talking About Killing Communists
[Some people might argue this is overstated and oversimplified.

A more persuasive argument for me is there is a place for dramatic effect.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Bill de Blasio

What’s been hardest is the way our legal system is structured to favor private property. I think people all over this city, of every background, would like to have the city government be able to determine which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it, what the rent will be. I think there’s a socialistic impulse, which I hear every day, in every kind of community, that they would like things to be planned in accordance to their needs. And I would, too. Unfortunately, what stands in the way of that is hundreds of years of history that have elevated property rights and wealth to the point that that’s the reality that calls the tune on a lot of development.

Bill de Blasio
New York City Mayor
August 2017
[That explains a lot. He has more in common with Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin than John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.

Expect similar differences in outcomes as well.—Joe]

Quote of the day—F.A. Hayek

Most of the advantages of social life, especially in it’s more advanced forms which we call “civilization”, rest on the fact that the individual benefits from more knowledge than he is aware of. It might be said that civilization begins when the individual in pursuit of his ends can make use of more knowledge than he himself has acquired and when he can transcend the boundaries of his ignorance by profiting from knowledge he does not himself possess.

F. A. Hayek
The Constitution Of Liberty, Chp. 2, pg 73
[Via email from nvguyusa who goes on to say:

So basically, civilization rests on the sum of the experiences and knowledge of all persons. Some of that knowledge can be articulated (he goes on to make a point of scientific knowledge in particular), but some of it, such as the sum of customs, traditions, beliefs, various faiths, “community standards”, if you will, cannot be known by all – the knowledge is too fragmented and diffused among the population at large, The problem with “central planning”, “big government”, whatever you want to call it is that it relies on the assumption that everything can be know in and accounted for in advance. The stunning failure of usurious tax rates (and the behavioral changes undertaken to avoid same) puts the lie to this. The planners cannot even get basic revenue projections right because they cannot account for altered behavior in the face a of a (relatively) minor change; how the [string of vulgar Anglo-Saxonisms involving one’s maternal lineage] do they expect to plan the perfect society at large?

Only the naïve and willfully ignorance believe they can plan the perfect society at large. The rest are in it for the power and money.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Michael Graham

Democrats are caught on the horns of their own dilemma. They can either propose useless laws that would have virtually no impact on potential mass shooters; or gun confiscation which has very little support among the electorate and would be a massive turnout magnet for Republican voters.

Michael Graham
May 21, 2018
Commentary: The problem with “common-sense” gun laws
[And many Democrats know this. Yet the Democrat platform for the election this year is heavy with gun control.

There is a reason for this. It’s not their intent to reduce violent crime. Most of them know better than that. Increases in violent crime serve their purposes better. When society around people has a high percentage of violent predators a common instinct is to demand more government intervention of private life. This gives more power and money to those in government. It’s a rare and principled person who would advocate against their own personal interest even when it is to the benefit of society as a whole. Those sort of people are seldom drawn to political life.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb

A state cannot legislate political correctness at the expense of a fundamental, constitutionally-delineated civil right.

Alan Gottlieb
Second Amendment Foundation founder and Executive Vice President
September 11, 2018
FED. COURT ENJOINS PART OF CALIFORNIA PENAL CODE IN SAF-SUPPORTED CASE
[Additional context:

A federal district court has ruled that a section of the California Penal Code is unconstitutional and has issued an injunction against enforcement of a prohibition on the display of handguns or handgun placards that may be seen from the outside of a store in a case supported by the Second Amendment Foundation and two California gun rights groups.

The state of California is expected to appeal the decision. They don’t want us to be able to exercise our First Amendment rights either. The state of California mindset appears to be the same as that of Stalin.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Bob Menendez

If Brett Kavanaugh joins the Supreme Court, the gun industry will have new ammunition in their war to overturn common sense gun safety laws aimed at protecting our children, keeping our streets safe, and stopping deadly firearms from falling into the wrong hands.

Bob Menendez
U.S. Senator from New Jersey
September 3, 2018
Senator Bob Menendez Speaks in Paterson Against Appointment of Supreme Court Nominee Based on ‘Dangerous Views on the Second Amendment’
[All freedoms are “dangerous”. And that is why some of the most important ones are specific enumerated rights.

And you notice, as frequently is the case, this anti-gun person speaks in terms of “the gun industry” being the driving force rather than there being a market for common sense defensive tools. They pretend to believe that only evil capitalists and criminals could possible want or need to own guns. The truth is that only political tyrants and criminals could possibly want or need to restrict gun ownership.

I would like to suggest Senator Menendez and his ilk get on the winning side soon or risk prosecution in the future.—Joe]

Progressives don’t want you to read this

I haven’t read this yet. It sounds interesting:

An elementary mathematical theory based on “selectivity” is proposed to address a question raised
by Charles Darwin, namely, how one gender of a sexually dimorphic species might tend to evolve with
greater variability than the other gender. Briefly, the theory says that if one sex is relatively selective
then from one generation to the next, more variable subpopulations of the opposite sex will tend to
prevail over those with lesser variability; and conversely, if a sex is relatively non-selective, then less
variable subpopulations of the opposite sex will tend to prevail over those with greater variability. This
theory makes no assumptions about differences in means between the sexes, nor does it presume that
one sex is selective and the other non-selective. Two mathematical models are presented: a discrete-time
one-step statistical model using normally distributed fitness values; and a continuous-time deterministic
model using exponentially distributed fitness levels.

If I had seen this without much other context I probably would have read the abstract and moved on. Interesting, but not worth much more time. However…

The context in which I ran across this was Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole, an peer reviewed paper, approved and published, was removed from online archives:

Colleagues I spoke to were appalled. None of them had ever heard of a paper in any field being disappeared after formal publication. Rejected prior to publication? Of course. Retracted? Yes, but only after an investigation, the results of which would then be made public by way of explanation. But simply disappeared? Never. If a formally refereed and published paper can later be erased from the scientific record and replaced by a completely different article, without any discussion with the author or any announcement in the journal, what will this mean for the future of electronic journals?

I save banned CAD files for 3D printing. I buy banned books. And I publish banned academic papers.

This could never be abused

Five-Eyes nations to force encryption backdoors

The governments of Australia, United States, United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand have made the strongest statement yet that they intend to force technology providers to provide lawful access to users’ encrypted communications.

As part of that, the countries that share intelligence with each other under the Five-Eyes umbrella agreement, intend to “encourage information and communications technology service providers to voluntarily establish lawful access solutions to their products and services.”

While the statement says the five countries “are committed to an open, safe and secure internet”, it also calls for the tech industry to develop solutions that prevent illegal and illicit content from ever being uploaded.

Where there has been a failure to prevent uploads of undesirable material, tech vendors should develop capabilities to execute urgent and immediate takedowns of such content.

Human and automated systems should be developed to seek out and remove legacy content, the Five-Eyes nations said.

Capabilities to counter foreign interference and disinformation are also to be developed.

Great timing. Government repression of how to build legal products are a sensitive topic right now.

And about the “disinformation” topic. One can be fairly certain this is not aimed at, or be enforced against, those lying anti-gun people. Who does history tell us these tools will be used against? Minorities and those who are out of political power.

If they go down this path it will not end well for anyone. Regarding my encryption keys… molṑn labé.