Those we pay to preach to us

I won’t call it “irony”, exactly, for that would be unfair. AHA speaker has heart attack.

Heart disease is real. People die from it. I get it. It’s just that I’m remembering a lifetime of being preached to, agitated, made to fuss over our food, told we shouldn’t eat salt, we shouldn’t eat fat, then told that, never mind, fat and salt are necessary, then we’re told this, told that, do this, don’t do that, or OMG! we’re going drop dead any second! “Be afraid! Be very, very afraid!!!

“Are you having a heart attack right now? Are you sure? Maybe you are having a heart attack! Do you know the signs? We think you’re having a heart attack right now…” I’ve heard the radio ads to that effect, from those rat bastards.

I believe that worry, fear, obsession over your food (or anything else) is more likely to cause health problems than any of the foods (or most any actual dangers) themselves. Trouble is, the fear, agitation and obsession have been the main product, packaged and promoted by the media and the AHA.

So if all you heart experts are so knowledgeable that you could presume to tell the rest of us how to live, would you be having heart attacks yourselves? What is the rate, or incidence, of heart problems among heart specialists, compared to the population at large? Is there any difference? That’s a question. I don’t know.

And if you’re having heart attacks yourselves, maybe go ahead and study the phenomenon but stop with the preaching? When you have proven answers, then come out and calmly declare them. I just don’t want to hear another ad, sponsored by the Ad Counsel, subsidized with my tax dollars, telling me how I should live, assuming that I have the maturity, experience and intellect of a three-year-old.

Just stop with the nanny-nag, nanny state shenanigans. Then I might could take you seriously. Maybe.

I know people who can’t get through half a day without worrying about their food, or their environment, killing them, and that right there is a potentially deadly psychological disease, promoted and spread by the nanny state “experts”.

In any case, if I’m going to die of a heart attack this very day, at least I will have spent some time living without fear, and living without fear is a good thing.

Quote of the day—Ramesh Ponnuru

What motivates the passionate gun-controllers? If saving lives is the goal, then directing more police resources to high-crime areas might have a bigger impact than any push for gun control, as Robert VerBruggen discusses elsewhere in this issue. So might public attention to suicide among the elderly, as statistician Leah Libresco recently concluded in the Washington Post after reviewing the literature on gun policies.

Liberals pride themselves these days on their empiricism, yet policies such as these do not seem to excite their interest as much as a campaign against guns.

Ramesh Ponnuru
Senior Editor of National Review
November 6, 2017
Why Gun Control Loses
[So… what’s the real reason?

As I have rhetorically asked many times before:

It’s not about guns or safety. It’s about control.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Kurt Schlichter

Liberals so desperately want us disarmed because they hate that we hold a veto over their Venezuelan dreams. But they also want us disarmed because they hate us, and they yearn to break us and humiliate us and make us give in. When you own a weapon and can defend yourself and your rights, you are a citizen. When you do not, you are a subject. Your dignity gnaws at them.

They want to convince you to submit, but that only happens if you allow it. Their tool is the narrative, but a proud American with courage and a rifle just shot their narrative dead. And that’s the real reason the gun grabbers are grieving.

Kurt Schlichter
November 9, 2017
Thoughts and Prayers for Anti-Gun Freaks Grieving Over Death of The Narrative
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Vets for Child Rescue

After much thought, I’ve chosen to remove my post from last Halloween, which discussed modern-day slavery/satanic ritual abuse.

Though I wasn’t able to answer all comments/questions related to the post, I sincerely thank everyone for the hearty discussion.

If you’d like to learn more about the topic, a starting point might be Vets for Child Rescue; website and Facebook. Here’s the founder, Retired Navy SEAL Craig Sawyer:

Thanks again.

Random thought of the day

The gun culture celebrates achievements and those who triumph over those who prey on innocent victims.

The anti-gun culture celebrates victimhood and those who triumph over those whos only “crime” is the desire to be left alone.

Quote of the day—Wendell Phillips

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few. The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten. The living sap of today outgrows the dead rind of yesterday. The hand entrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continued oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot; only by unintermitted agitation can a people be sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.

Wendell Phillips
January 28, 1852
Speech to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society
[The link about his speech has some interesting history about the frequent misattribution of the “eternal vigilance…” quote.

Also note they had the same problem with democrats then as we do today.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Robert J. Avrech

If only the government and its various agencies possess weapons than the Right to Free Speech becomes an empty promise.

We then live in Orwell’s 1984.

That’s why both Hitler and Stalin passed laws that forbade the private ownership of gun.

Robert J. Avrech
October 25, 2017
Jews With and Without Guns
[I once watched a movie where only the police and the military had guns. It was called Schindler’s List (I forget where I stole this line from).

Also, via Nomen Nescio, “As the old Soviet joke went, everybody in the USSR had freedom of speech, but the law never guaranteed freedom after speech.”

And finally, from Joseph Stalin, “Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don’t let our people have guns. Why should we let them have ideas?—Joe]

Quote of the day—Helen Thomas

If a person buys guns legally it doesn’t matter how many they have. If the police come to my house to see how many guns I have and I ask what organizations I belong to I’m telling them to go to hell.

Helen Thomas
October 10, 2017
Comment to Tucker vs. Lawyer on Gun Purchases: ‘How Many Should Trigger a Police Visit?’
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Scott Adams

The way private gun ownership protects citizens is by being a credible threat against all the civilians who might be in any way associated with a hypothetical tyrannical leader who uses the military against citizens. Citizens probably can’t get close to the leaders in such a scenario, but it would take about an hour to round up their families, and the families of supporters.

That would do it.

America is unconquerable.

Scott Adams
October 6, 2017
The Worst Gun Control Arguments
[About an hour? He must be thinking the lists with addresses are already compiled.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Peter Gillespie

Get back to the basics. Scrap the outdated constitution. Just a document writted by politicians and the cause of many of the problems in the US.

Peter Gillespie
October 15, 2017
Comment to Tucker vs. Lawyer on Gun Purchases: ‘How Many Should Trigger a Police Visit?’
[How refreshing! A brief flash of honesty and an admission of guilt about his intended goals.

I look forward to his trial.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Bruce Schneier

The market can’t fix this. Markets work because buyers choose between sellers, and sellers compete for buyers. In case you didn’t notice, you’re not Equifax’s customer. You’re its product.

Bruce Schneier
September 13, 2017
On the Equifax Data Breach
[I agree with his astute observation but not his conclusion (government legislation is required).

If someone is harmed by the carelessness of another the careless person can, and rightly so, be sued for damages. How is this any different?—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ryan Born

When conservatives appeal to “free speech,” it is actually a calculated political move, designed to open up avenues of political discourse while shaming others from moving in active political opposition. I argue that when conservatives resort to this move, they can be safely ignored, as they are appealing to a right that does not exist. In my belief, when conservative ideas are opposed, there is no right that is being infringed.

Ryan Born
September 25, 2017
Speech is free
[At first I though Born was setting up a straw man with “it is actually a calculated political move….”. But that hypothesis was blow away in the following sentence.

Born needs to retake a junior high class on U.S. government and receive a passing grade before attempting to have a conversation with adults. In the mean time don’t ever forget this is what many people on the political left think of specific enumerated rights.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Leonard Pitts

A 2014 Pew Research Center study found that the percentage of Democrats and Republicans holding extremely negative views of the opposite party has more than doubled since 1994; Pew also found that, while 64 percent of Republicans in ’94 held opinions that were to the right of the average Democrat, these days 92 percent do. And 94 percent of Democrats are now to the left of the GOP median.

So the right is moving further right, the left, further left and the center, as the poet Yeats observed, “cannot hold.”

What other option, then, do Democrats have but to move left, exploiting the anger, energy and enthusiasm to be found there?

Leonard Pitts
October 16, 2017
Democrats need to move left
[Yes. That should work nicely. Advocating for the policies of Venezuela and Cuba will play so well in the GOP advertisements.

I find it very telling that the option of liberty and adherence to the constitutional limits of government doesn’t even cross his mind. Laws and principles are for suckers. The only thing of importance is restoring power to “his people”.—Joe]

What is AgitProp?

It’s short for “agitation propaganda”, sure, but what does that mean?

For a good definition, this should be in textbooks.

All such assertions (in this case the assertion is “We’re jittery and dysfunctional, so we need more gun restrictions”) depend on one false premise, which says, in effect;

Human rights are subject to revision based on circumstance.

If that premise is true, then we should yield to the moment, we appease and give in. “There there, you can have what you want if you’ll only STOP CRYING…”

If the premise is false then we STAND for what we know is right, not for the moment but for all time. We prevent the emotion-driven from making mistakes harmful to themselves and others. We do them the favor of correcting them. It’s what adults do when confronted with irrational behavior.

You all know, even you leftists know, that the premise is a false one. Human rights are not altered by circumstance, statistics, emotions of the moment, nor by the way, are right affected by weather.

Rather than argue circumstances then, we must learn to reject the premise that rights are subject to circumstances, bring some very needed reason into play, assert rights, name their origin and stand up, faithfully and consistently to defend rights for all time. Do it for the children (to play on an authoritarian mind trick*).

Do it for future generations. Otherwise we fall down that rat hole wherein someone’s implanted, overwhelming emotions have the power, all by themselves, to force you to relinquish your rights and appease the sleaze. (Hey, that’s a slogan; “Relinquish Your Rights and Appease the Sleaze….”)

That’s the end game for the Dark Side, and it almost always works.

Will it work this time? How many of you, within a matter of hours or days, started, in your minds, bargaining away bump stocks, for example? Then one after another, like robots…”Bargain away bump stocks, bargain away bump stocks…” It was like a plague that spread via the airwaves, from coast to coast, in a matter of hours.

Who really needs a bump stock, after all, right? Not me, but that’s not the point.

At all.

Don’t participate in the insanity of the appeasement of the insane. That’s how they get you, and you even end up thinking yourself smarter for it. How deliciously evil is that? You’re smarter than those confounded “extremists”;
“Why, if it weren’t for them, this thing could be handled delicately and properly, and we could deal, and everyone would win…”
You’ve heard it all before. Eventually you’ll be saying it more and more.

Here’s an idea; the crazy people, no matter how frightened or offended they on the left act, no matter how they kick and scream and hold their collective breath until they turn blue, and no matter how they threaten or accuse, they aren’t your masters. They’re just sad, angry, confused people with nothing else to offer but more sadness, anger and confusion. Don’t feed the trolls.

Offer reason to the irrational. It’s the only possible way to help them. Don’t be that parent at the supermarket who’s giving in to the three-year-old just to make him SHUT UP. You idiots.

Who’s in control, the parent or the three-year-old? It can go either way, and you’ve all seen it.

Don’t pretend like their crazy assertions (“I’m so scared…we need a gun law to make me feel better– You bastards!”) have any validity, or guess what? You just put the crazy people in control, and you’d have to be crazy to do that. But you do it anyway, then you bitch and carry on about how the inmates are running the asylum. Well no shit Sherlock; you put them in charge.

It happens in your personal life. That’s where it starts. You start out walking on eggshells at home, or at school, and you end up walking on eggshells politically, then before you know it you’re trying to make other people walk on eggshells. Same causes, same effects. The Progressives know when they’ve got to you, just like a shark smells the chum-of-appeasement you’re throwing in the water, just like a dog knows when he has you upset.

AgitProp. That’s what it means. That which arouses emotion in you owns you.

*“Nothing is too good for the children”, we are told. Like most everything the left touches however, the definition of that phrase, when uttered by a leftist, is its own opposite. It means;

“Nothing is too bad for the children.”

For the left, rights deprivation isn’t too bad for the children. Abortion isn’t too bad for the children (except in the sense, “Too bad, children!”), nor is grabbing power from the People, nor graft, nor violating the constitution, nor are coercion and wholesale confiscation too bad for the children. None of the horrible things done by communist regimes, past or present, have been too bad for the children, and if that’s the case (and the left has always had love affairs with communist regimes), then truly, nothing is too bad for the children.

I thought you should know that. Carry on.

Quote of the day—Derek Hunter

Imagine there has been a horrible case of child abuse in your neighborhood. A large family with 10 children had parents who brutally beat their kids, and two died. In reacting to that horrendous news, there’s a knock at your door. It’s your mayor and police chief.

“I understand you have two children in this house. Is that correct?” the mayor asks.

“Yes, that’s true. Why?” you reply.

“We’re going to need to see them, to inspect them to make sure they haven’t been subjected to abuse by you,” the chief says.

“Wait, what? You’re not going to inspect my children,” you respond.

“We are going to. And we’re going to monitor your kids from here on out, stopping by periodically to check on them, inspect their bodies for bruises and have them talk to a psychologist to make sure they aren’t being emotionally abused either,” the chief shoots back.

“What the hell gives you the right to do that?” you ask.

“After the horrible abuse that took place a few blocks away, we decided that we had to insert ourselves into the lives of all parents to prevent that from happening ever again,” the mayor says. “So we’ve passed a new law that says we can curtail parental rights for the greater good. Now go get your children.”

Derek Hunter
October 5, 2017
After Las Vegas, Democrats Send In The Clowns
[The sad/scary part of this is this that public education is a significant step in this direction and there are policies which show we are on this path.—Joe]

Comic Revival

I remember reading comics when I was a kid. In high school a friend of mine was very into the X-Men, and some other similar comics. I enjoyed them. Decent stories, cool graphics, etc. Most of the modern super hero movies are based on those old properties, and are pretty watchable. The most recent ones, though, are not. All the good stuff has been used up and wrung out, or dismissed by the leadership as “problematic”*. Continue reading

Quote of the day—Kurt Schlichter

In recent years we’ve seen a remarkable antipathy for the fact that normal Americans even have rights among those on the left. We should have this conversation to clear the air before leftists push too far and the air gets filled with smoke. But we really don’t need to have a conversation about our rights to keep and bear arms. They’re rights. There’s nothing to talk about.

Kurt Schlichter
October 5, 2017
Nothing Makes Liberals Angrier Than Us Normals Insisting On Our Rights
[This should be enough “conversation” but Schlichter extends the conversation with examples and more saying “No.”—Joe]

Quote of the day—EricNM

The country is awash in 300 million guns. Until that number actually reduces, rather than grows as the NRA wishes, our nation’s gun death rate will always be the highest of any developed nation. The only way to accomplish that is with some sort of gun buy-back and destruction program.

EricNM
October 2, 2017
Comment to Preventing Future Mass Shootings Like Las Vegas
[Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.

EricNM is delusional. It addition to “buy-backs” presuming facts not in evident (the government can’t “buy-back” some they never owned to begin with), there may be as many as 660 million guns in the hands of private citizens, voluntary “buy-backs” have been found to be ineffectual in our country every time they have been tried, and even if it were politically possible legislate mandatory confiscation the most likely result would be for the police and military to, at best, ignore such laws to infringe upon the inalienable right of the people to keep and bear arms.

There would also be a significant chance the surviving politicians would find themselves arrested, convicted, and sent to prison. But don’t expect delusional people break out of their alternate reality no matter what the evidence.—Joe]

That didn’t take long

Early this morning The New York Times posted an editorial by Nicholas Kristof titled “Preventing Future Mass Shootings Like Las Vegas” and described infringements upon the right to keep and bear arms which would have done absolutely nothing to have prevented the mass shooting:

After the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas, the impulse of politicians will be to lower flags, offer moments of silence, and lead a national mourning. Yet what we need most of all isn’t mourning, but action to lower the toll of guns in America.

Here is what this liar said, “that would, collectively, make a difference”:

  1. Impose universal background checks for anyone buying a gun.
  2. Impose a minimum age limit of 21 on gun purchases.
  3. Enforce a ban on possession of guns by anyone subject to a domestic violence protection order.
  4. Limit gun purchases by any one person to no more than, say, two a month
  5. Tighten rules on straw purchasers who buy for criminals.
  6. Make serial numbers harder to remove.
  7. Adopt microstamping of cartridges so that they can be traced to the gun that fired them, useful for solving gun crimes.
  8. Invest in “smart gun” purchases by police departments or the U.S. military, to promote their use.
  9. Require safe storage, to reduce theft, suicide and accidents by children.
  10. Invest in research to see what interventions will be more effective in reducing gun deaths.

The intentional deception continues with comparison to regulations on ladders in the workplace and automobile accidents. This deception conflates accidental deaths with intentional deaths. If he were being honest here he would have compared accidental deaths by falls off of ladders or automobile accidents to firearm accidental deaths. Or the use of automobiles in violent crime such as bank robberies, kidnapping, and terrorist attacks. That would be fair. But it’s obvious Kristof is not interested in fair or honest.

Lets do an “apples to apples” type comparison with accidental firearm deaths and see how gun ownership stacks up. I’ve reported the accidental death by firearm numbers before, but here is it again with slight editing to make it consistent with this blog post.

Here is the data I downloaded from the CDC on accidental firearm deaths.

From 1985 to 2015 the total number deaths dropped from 1649 to 489. A decrease of over 70%. And if we look at the death rate instead of total deaths it went from 0.69 to 0.15 per 100,000. That’s a drop of over 78%. And that’s without a government program.

I can’t say that it is cause and effect but the NRA Eddie Eagle program (gun safety for children of any age from pre-school through third grade) was developed in 1988. And there was a big push for more NRA firearms instructors in the mid 1990s.

AccidentalDeathByFirearm1981-2015

AccidentalDeathRateByFirearm1981-2015

But don’t expect Kristof or any other anti-gun person to talk about the successes of the private sector or gun organizations. It’s not about safety. It’s about government control.

Quote of the day—Dana Milbank

Consider Title XV of the sportsmen’s bill, also known as the “Hearing Protection Act,” which makes it easier for gun owners to buy silencers for their weapons. The uninformed might suspect that silencers are used by people who want to fire weapons without being caught by cops or observed by witnesses. But more and more hunters are finding that conventional earplugs and muffs are not adequate for today’s weapons — for example, quail hunting with an M777 howitzer or grouse hunting with an FIM-92 Stinger missile launcher.

Dana Milbank
September 11, 2017
The NRA’s idea of recreation: Assault rifles, armor-piercing bullets and silencers
[One might guess Milbank is so out of touch with reality that he believes the right to keep and bear arms is about recreation. And one also has to wonder what part of “shall not be infringed” he doesn’t understand.

But, just as likely is that Milbank does have at least a passing grasp of reality and knows he can’t put up a valid argument so he just goes straight to mocking.

We can make most of the stuff Milbank is “concerned” about in our garages with cheap metal working equipment and a trip to the local hardware store. These changes in the law are a mere recognition of reality. The existing law did nothing to improve public safety and made life more hazardous for good and gentle people who just want to be left alone. But to be left alone is asking too much from authoritarians like Milbank. So, I won’t be asking. I’m telling.

Molṑn labé, Dana.—Joe]