Socialized healthcare is affordable – it’s called soylent green.
Anthony S.
July 31, 2014
From the gun email list at work.
[If this doesn’t make any sense to you then watch the movie
Category Archives: Freedom
What limits?
From Computerworld:
In a decision that could have broad privacy implications, a federal court in New York Thursday ordered Microsoft to comply with a U.S. government demand for a customer’s emails stored on a company server in Dublin, Ireland. The decision upholds an earlier magistrate court decision.
In an oral ruling, District Court Judge Loretta Preska rejected Microsoft’s argument that a U.S search warrant does not extend beyond the country’s borders.
“The production of that information is not an intrusion on the foreign sovereign,” Courthouse News reported Judge Preska as saying. “It is incidental at best,” Preska noted, adding that the magistrate court order was not an extra territorial application of U.S. law.
I liked this response in the comments:
So does this ruling mean that the Syrian government, for example, could force U.S. companies to turn over the email records of human rights activists in the United States, even if their messages are stored on servers located in the U.S.?
What about the Chinese government forcing Google to turn over the records of U.S. companies, even if these records are located on servers within the United States?
This ruling, if allowed to stand, opens a Pandora’s box of allowing foreign governments access to U.S. business’ and individual’s records, even if this data is stored in the U.S. After all, what is good for the goose is good for the gander.
Another thing I wonder about is what about the case of a company that doesn’t have a physical presence in the U.S. Suppose it was a U.K. company with a Hotmail type service and a U.S. customer. Would the U.S. government claim it had jurisdiction to force the U.K. company to turn over the email? The U.S. government has “twisted arms” such that Switzerland and other countries with strong banking privacy polices have submitted to U.S. demands for the banking records of U.S. citizens. I suspect the U.S. will or is doing similar things in the case of email.
Our government is way out of control.
I’m glad Microsoft is the one fighting this rather than some small business that can’t afford to spend millions on lawyers to fight it.
Gun cartoon of the day
When has the NRA or even an NRA member caused harm to anyone in our schools? Sure there probably has been someone, somewhere, who abused his or her spouse or kids, but the correlation of the NRA with violence of any type anywhere is almost for certain to be near zero or even negative. Get me a citation and then we can talk about it. But violence in the schools? Only in their dreams. Such a correlation would be their favorite wet-dream come true.
What if they had drawn the 2nd Amendment or the Bill of Rights at the door trying to get in? That would have been more accurate portrayal of their true concerns but their ill intent would have been more obvious.
These people are the enemies of freedom and want to knock down all barriers to unlimited government power. Private ownership of firearms is one of those barriers.
Atlas Shrugged 3: Who is John Galt? Trailer 2
I posted the first one a while back. Here is a second one:
Interesting Mideast development
From CNN:
“Israel’s ongoing battle against Hamas is part of a wider regional war on the Muslim Brotherhood,” says the Soufan Group, which tracks global security. “Most Arab states share Israel’s determination to finish the movement off once and for all, but they are unlikely to be successful.”
“From the perspective of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE and some other Arab states, what the Israeli Prime Minister is doing is fighting this war against Hamas on their behalf so they can finish the last stronghold of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Younes says.
“Arab governments and official Arab media have all but adopted the Israeli view of who is a terrorist and who is not. Egyptian and Saudi-owned media are liberal in labeling the Muslim Brotherhood as ‘terrorists’ and describing Hamas as a ‘terrorist organization.’ It’s a complete turnabout from the past, when Arab states fought Israel and the U.S. in the international organizations on the definition of terrorism, and who is a terrorist or a ‘freedom fighter.'”
So most Arabs states would regard the people I took pictures of the other day as on the same side as terrorists? That gives me some comfort. Or at least not as much discomfort.
Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood are threats to nearly all peaceful societies. I’m all for Israeli finishing the job this time and if the other Arab states contribute to the extermination of their culture of terror then more power to them.
Quote of the day—Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Owning a pistol meant an obligatory conviction for terrorism.
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (Volume One) Page 196.
[Does this sound familiar to those of you who read what the anti-gun people have written occasionally?—Joe]
I cannot comprehend these people
Here is some of what I saw at Westlake Park in downtown Seattle today:
What are these people thinking? Where were they for the last several years as the Hamas fired hundreds, if not thousands, of rockets into Israel?
How could they not get the message that Israel has been trying to resolve this as humanely as possible and the Hamas continues to attack?
This is not an attempt by Israel to commit genocide. This is an attempt by Israel to defend against genocide. I find it hard to believe these people are that ignorant and that stupid or even that evil. What can they possible be thinking? They are incomprehensible to me.
This really, really irritates me. I have my gripes about Israel but on this issue I just want them to finish the job with Hamas. Show us how it’s done because it won’t be that much longer before we will have to do something similar to defend against scum like this.
Quote of the day—Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
In the Criminal Code of 1926 there was a most stupid Article 139 – “on the limits of necessary self-defense” —according to which you had the right to unsheath your knife only after the criminal’s knife was hovering over you. And you could stab him only after he had stabbed you. And otherwise you would be the one put on trial. (And there was no article in our legislation saying that the greater criminal was the one who attacked someone weaker than himself.) This fear of exceeding the measure of necessary self-defense lead to total spinelessness as a national characteristic. A hoodlum once began to beat up the Red Army man Aleksandr Zakharov outside a club. Zakharov took out a folding penknife and killed the hoodlum. And for this he got….ten years for plain murder! “And what was I supposed to do?” he asked, astonished. Prosecutor Artsishevsky replied: “You should have fled!” So tell me, who creates hoodlums?
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 2: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, 1918-1956.
[This is just one of many similarities of Solzhenitsyn’s USSR to present day in the U.S. that sends chills up my spine.
The USSR created hoodlums just as the UK is creating them now and our political opponents in the U.S. appear to want to create. What is even more chilling is that in the USSR the political leaders openly wrote about how the thieves “were allies in the building of communism”. This was because they were the enemy of those who owned property.
I’ll have another QOTD on this topic another time but for now ponder whether our enemies of freedom came to the same conclusion as the communists of the USSR independently, through influence from them, or are only dimly stumbling into the same situation.—Joe]
Gun cartoon of the day
This is one of those things that makes me think our opponents have mental health issues. They think in terms of “messages” being sent rather than in facts and logic. While I recognize there is value in “messages” the problem is they find whatever they want to find rather than the obvious direct messages. In the case of having armed people protecting our children the obvious messages are that we are willing and able to deliver predators a copper jacketed hollow-point message of “Don’t hurt our children!” This sends a message to the children of, “We can and will protect you.”
I dealt with someone for decades that would, in extreme cases, repeatedly insist there were hidden messages in email that communicated something completely different from what was actually written. Verbal exchanges were frequently like walking into psych ward. I would ask a question and they would respond with something that was only tenuously connected to what I asked. Repeating the question would get something again only tenuously related to my question and unrelated to their previous answer. Asking them to repeat my question back to verify they heard the question would result in them insisting they heard and understood my question but they would not be able to repeat it or even summarize it. They didn’t need to be able to do that because, “I know how you think.” They literally insisted they knew what I was thinking and my words and actions were not necessary for them to act upon “what you really mean”.
The people that relate to the cartoon above are like that person. They live in a world that only intersects with ours enough that we can catch a glimpse of their alternate reality.
These people want to control us because their world is chaotic and they desperately want stability. Having a higher authority exercising control over others brings the sense of the stability they seek. For us to say, “No! We will not be unconstitutional controlled by you or anyone else.” increases their anxiety and insistence that we need to be controlled.
I don’t know how this can end well.
Halbig vs Burwell
The DC Court of Appeals handed down it’s decision in Halbig vs Burwell, an ObamaCare challenge. The crux of the challenge is that the law, as written, says that people on exchanges established by a state can get the subsidies, people using the Federal exchange established by Uncle Sam cannot. This was done (they said at the time) as an incentive to encourage states to set up their own exchanges, and it was estimated that only a small number of knuckledragging states would fail to do so (so screw them)… (OK, so the last part was my words for their actions).
But when 34 states failed to set up their own exchange, it caused a problem. Millions of people don’t want to have their promised subsidies “taken away.” So, the HHS said “well, it really means any exchange, including the Federal one.” The DC Court of Appeals just said “No, state means state.” And, as an added bonus, just a few days ago the HHS itself said that in the ACA, “State” means “State,” not “state and/or territories.” A bit more than a week ago, Obama’s law professor said it would likely turn out this way.
This is potentially a nuclear bomb in the heart of the law. Next stop, en banc review on the (packed?) court, or the Supreme Court. Only downside is finding out how the Rs will manage to shoot themselves in the foot with this news (with the media’s willing help, of course.)
UPDATE: the 4th Circuit just ruled the other way on the same thing. Wow, that was timely.
Another one from Forbes. If upheld, it would cancel the subsidies, AND the tax for not buying insurance (i.e., kill the mandate).
Electronic Marques
Interesting idea. The US Constitution authorizes operations against pirates. Article 1,Section 8, Clause 10 “To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;”
It also covers issuing letters of Marque and Reprisal, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 “To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;”
Why not do the suddenly obvious and issue Letters of Marque and Reprisal to private corporations to go after international electronic pirates, foreign agents who are attacking our corporations and infrastructure electronically? Makes sense to me.
IF by Rudyard Kipling
No wonder we were not introduced to Kipling in school.
Sadly perfect gun case?
In order to advance gun law in the right direction, it is often (sadly) necessary for bad things to happen to good people in order to create the “correct” circumstances for a compelling court case that can overturn stupid laws. There may be one in New Jersey now. Short version: a Pennsylvania nurse with a concealed carry permit drove into NJ, got busted during a traffic stop, charged with second degree handgun possession, faces three to ten years if convicted. She has no criminal history, a good job, and two kids, and prosecutors are passing up every opportunity to lighten the charges or penalty. If the facts of the case are as presented in this article, this would be a case to take to the supreme court to strike down such idiot laws. For her sake, I hope the Governor steps in and slaps some sense into the prosecutor and she gets off with a warning- but it shouldn’t have to need that. Anti-gun people like to compare concealed carry permits to driver’s licenses. Well, here’s their chance to see how well that works.
Random thought of the day
If putting serial numbers on bullets is a good idea to help solve crimes involving guns wouldn’t it also be a good idea to put them on prescription pills to track down whoever is supplying those who abuse those drugs? Or how about serial numbers on cigarettes to help prevent cigarettes from getting into the hands of underage smokers? Or tracking the serial numbers on paper money to combat the recreational drug trade?
The answer is no to all these ideas. Anyone that suggests serial numbers on bullets is as stupid and/or ignorant as someone who suggests serial numbers be tracked on the other items.
Rights+ vs Rights-
There are two main views on “rights”: positive rights, and negative rights.
Negative rights are those rights that say you (or the government) can’t do something to me. For example, you CAN’T take my guns. You CAN’T throw me in jail forever without charging me. They impose a restriction on someone else’s actions.
Positive rights are those that say you (or the government) must do something for me. For example, you MUST provide me with health care. You MUST keep me safe.
It is very rare that conflicts arise between competing negative rights. But problems arise often and in nasty ways with positive rights, because your positive right imposes an obligation on other people, that is, it requires active coercion on other people to secure those items and services and provide them to you, but there is no reciprocal duties placed upon you. But that, obviously, sets up a whole chain of conflicts.
The demands and costs of negative rights are, by definition, limited. They require little more than restraint, doing nothing.
Positives rights are an illusion, they cannot stand, they are not compatible with freedom, they are synonymous with slavery, abuse, stagnation, and lawlessness, because the demands (coercion required) of positive rights are without limit, and therefore destructive to the public weal.
Quote of the day—Eric Krupin
“The Gulag Archipelago” is not beach reading. (Although Solzhenitsyn’s searingly sarcastic style makes it anything but a dry collection of facts.) The evil that it obsessively documents is so dark that even reading about it is often difficult to bear. But anyone with pretentions of understanding the world we live in needs to go through it from first page to last.
But if you aren’t willing to make the effort, here’s the lesson boiled down for you: Totalitarianism doesn’t begin with a Stalin or a Hitler. It begins with *you*, on the day that you let a government become more powerful than the people it governs. Remember that or someday it might not be the Russians or the Jews or the Serbs that the men with guns come for. It just might be you…
Eric Krupin
June 13, 2001
Comment to Amazon’s listing of The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (Volume One).
[For many years I put off even considering these books because they were so massive. I couldn’t imagine the topic could be interesting enough to keep me going. I imagined it to be an exhaustingly long, dry, and difficult slog.
I was wrong. I was very wrong.
I’m not sure how Solzhenitsyn did it. I’m not sure I see it as “searingly sarcastic” although there is some of that. Maybe it’s that he didn’t do a chronological telling of his eight years in prison from his arrest, through interrogation, transport to the various prisons and labor camps and the conditions there. You get that in bits and pieces but you also get those same aspects from the perspective of numerous other survivors who were in different interrogation centers, on trains, and in different camps and prisons.
You learn about the economics of the slave labor. You learn how the edicts of production “norms” resulted in the falsification of records at the slave labor camp where raw materials were harvested (trees, clay for bricks, ore for metal, etc.), continuing through the transportation, storage and distribution facilities, and then finally having the nonexistent finished product “stolen” or “destroyed by weather”. At each stage the people responsible had strong incentives to continue the fraud and did.
The lies told for public relations were amazing. The canal built with hand labor in 30 months “without a single fatality”. There were 100,000 people who started on the project and there were 100,000 when they finished the project. Never mind the 250,000 replacements brought in during the course of the project.
Stalin wanted the canal built in 30 months and no one dared to fail in completing it on time. As in software on a tight schedule features were removed during the course of the project until they did meet the schedule. The canal was only 14 feet deep in places. Only the smallest of ships could traverse it and traffic was near zero when it was finished.
It is an amazing set of books and I agree with Krupin. Read them. And stop that from happening here.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Glenn Reynolds
When police trespass on your property to stop you videoing them, you should be allowed to kill them, put their heads on pikes as a warning to others, sell their organs to Chinese organleggers, and use the money to buy billboards mocking their superiors for lawlessness.
It’s a modest proposal, but it would probably reduce misconduct.
Glenn Reynolds
July 10, 2014
MY LAW REFORM PROPOSAL
[I was a little surprised to see this from a law professor but I can see a case to be made for the proposal.
I suspect we would only have to have a national discussion about the merits of such a reform to effect a change in police attitude.—Joe]
A dystopian advocate
Amazing: Let’s nationalize Amazon and Google: Publicly funded technology built Big Tech
It’s mind boggling to read this crap. One of the arguments is that they are spying on people, which he doesn’t like. So putting them under government control is a good idea? Hasn’t this idiot heard of the NSA in the last few months?
It should come as no surprise he wants to destroy the “pioneer fantasy” of gun ownership.
Either he thinks of The Gulag Archipelago as a utopia instead of a dystopia or he is so naïve and/or stupid that he doesn’t realize what he advocates would create those conditions.
Quote of the day—smileycreek
Food, water, shelter, and basic medical care are all basic human requirements that should never be withheld in a civilized society.
smileycreek
July 2, 2014
Comment to Income Inequality: A Desperate Situation With Real Solutions
[In smileycreek’s universe a “civilized society” is one where the government takes from each according to his ability, and gives to each according to his need.
I’m reading about just such a place in The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (Volume One) and The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 2: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, 1918-1956. Tens of millions of people were murdered in an attempt to create such a society and it failed. And that is just one of many attempts that all ended in deaths of hundreds of thousands and in the case of the USSR tens of millions.
Even just this one sentence in smileycreek’s comment reveals the distortion required to believe lie of communism. The lie of communism is that people with no incentive to produce all they are able to will do so anyway. Who would willingly become a provider of “food, water, shelter, or basic medical care” if they could be forced to give it up without compensation by anyone?
The big distortion here is that is if I refuse to give my food, shelter, or (if I were a medical provider) my services to another unless I am compensated is considered “withholding”. That’s a warped definition. Yet that is also the basis of the current uproar about the SCOTUS ruling in the Hobby Lobby case. Nothing has been withheld. But the sound bite is better if it is phrased that way.
Communists like smileycreek can only win by lying. And they have lots of practice at it. It’s how government murder millions of innocent people.
Today people that openly support the beliefs of the Nazis are rightly hounded into silence and oblivion. Yet support for the beliefs of Communists is considered by nearly half of our country’s population to be the mark of decency, righteous, and “civilized society”. But the Communists of the 20th Century proved the Nazis were pikers in the game of governments murdering innocent people.
Perhaps that is the key to understanding those who advocate Communism and yet hate Nazism. To them the Nazis weren’t ruthless enough.–Joe]
Random thought of the day
Political heresy is more of a threat to the collective than is a thief or murderer. The common criminal only affects a few people. A heretic can affect all of society.
This insight is almost directly from Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn’s book The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 2: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, 1918-1956. This is why the political prisoners were treated worse and had longer sentences than thieves and murderers.
It also might explain why the political left in this country are so violent toward their political opponents. They, at some level, have reached the same conclusion as their political brethren of the former USSR. And that is that independent thought is a threat to the entire power structure and the very foundation of their existence.