Category Archives: Freedom

Reflections on assumptions, principles, and world-view after a painful loss

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It is easy to argue with others and say that they must be
stupid or insane or whatever to vote a certain way. But, when you lose, you
have to confront the fact that you were out-voted, and therefore, in a
minority. Introspection to see whether you
made a mistake, or if they were
mistaken, or if there are other forces at work, must be done or you will keep
losing. We all have our assumptions and principles, and these form our basic
world-view, and it may be time to check out or investigate theirs, as well as
my own. Assumptions and principles are different, and should be evaluated for
clarity and reasonableness.

All of Euclidian Geometry follows from a very small handful
of postulates, common notions, and definitions. People are more complex, but
that doesn’t mean that our assumptions HAVE to be far more complicated or
vastly more numerous.

Some people have a very simplistic “if it feels good do it”
sort of worldview, because that sums up their principles, and their sole
assumption / value is “feeling good right now is what matters most.” If you don’t
agree with that basic assertion, then you see them as shallow, hedonistic, short-sighted,
etc. But you can’t get them to change their view, or see YOUR view, until you get them to formally recognize
and question those underlying ideas, and acknowledge yours. Similarly,
you can’t understand why they do what
they do until you recognize and understand what their fundamental principles and values are. Same facts, utterly divergent
views.

Simplistic example: Men generally value freedom more than
security, and women vice-versa. Men generally earn more than women. A
politician offering much freedom and low taxes, at the cost of limited
safety-net and therefore personal uncertainty, will attract more men than
women. Another politician offering an image of dependability and security (such
as free healthcare) at a cost of high taxes and regulation, will attract a lot more
women than men. Men see the cost in taxes and on their freedom, women see
benefits of not having to worry about it. Same fact, different values, different
votes. Looked at short-term, before the cost of the free health-care bankrupts the
nation, the female vote is perfectly
rational, and if she votes against it she’ll be accused of voting against her
own self-interests. OTOH, a man voting against it will be accused of being
selfish or uncaring. Looked at long-term, as the burden of it destroys many
other things and increases uncertainty, it’s
very self-destructive to vote for
the health-care pol. But one just calling the other stupid or callous doesn’t
help find common ground or resolve the dispute and decide the best course for
both short AND long term concerns.

My basic assumptions about the people of the world are:
A) People tend to change their behavior when their perceived incentives change (see “O” below).
B) People will work much harder for themselves (to make more money or improve
their situation) than for anyone else, i.e., they will work in their own best
interests (as they see them).
C) Most people are basically good, and want to do good, BUT
D) people tend to be lazy, and can be envious, spiteful, cowardly, have other
anti-virtues, AND
E) some folks just are not wired right (psychopaths, narcissists, psychotics, sociopaths,
OCD, idiots, etc)
F) People are people – any assumptions you make about the “common man” or
business leaders, you must ALSO make about people with a badge, or in elected
office, or any other government employee. (Corollary: If you don’t trust folks
to take care of themselves or run business, you can’t expect them give them a
monopoly on government force and expect them to act like angels.)
G) Risk can never be eliminated, and trying to do so creates other, much more
subtle and dangerous, risks (Corollary: you CAN’T save everyone. NON-corollary:
it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to save anyone).


My assumptions about economics are:
H) The world is not a zero-sum game.
I) TANSTAAFL- ALL choices are trade-offs, and better choices can be made if
consequences are clear, direct, and known to the chooser at the time of the
choice being made. (Related: Costs should align with benefits, preferably in an
obvious-to-the-beneficiary way at the
time of benefit)
 J) People tend to change their behavior
when the incentives change (yup, same as above – it’s important)
K) Things not earned are not valued properly or understood well. (Corollary:
giving people stuff, either “free stuff” or power, corrupts the spirit and
distorts values and other incentives).
L) Because people have different values, aiming for equality of outcomes is unwise.
M) There will always be relative winners and losers in ANY system, and changing
the rules simply changes who wins or loses most. (Related: the more rules there
are, the more people will attempt to game the system to personal advantage, and
the worse the side-effects)
N)  When incentives of self-interest are
aligned with desirable outcomes, there is little resistance to “good” action (corollary:
when they conflict, coercion will be required).
O) Failure is not a bug, it’s a necessary
feature, a feed-back mechanism. It’s not only an option, it MUST be a VISIBLE and
PAINFUL option, if people are to evaluate risk and reward to choose wisely.
P) What works best is usually what aligns self-interest with desired outcomes.
Q) Marginal costs can tell you a LOT about how well thought-out a plan is.
R) That which cannot be sustained, won’t be.


My principles and values are: more freedom is better than
less; private property is private, and that includes your body, your time, and
the product of your labor; I really don’t care that much about what you say about
the intended result of your actions –
I care much more about the actual
real-world results, effects, and side-effects; dependency is bad; coercion is
bad; coercion and charity are incompatible; clarity and accuracy are more important
than hurt feelings; things of value are best earned or given freely; a person
should do all that they promise to do; a person should not harm another, or
their property, without just cause (such as self defense); all people should be
treated equally under the law, BUT not all people are of equal worth; honesty
is good, even if it is uncomfortable.

Questions, challenges, any missing / contradictory /
redundant items? If I can get it concise – simple, clear, short, and complete
enough – whenever I get in an argument that I think can be broken down to
fundamentals, I can ask which ones they disagree with. If they DON’T disagree
with any of them, and don’t have any others, I could build up, like a Euclidian
proof, why my position makes more sense than theirs (or at least, why their
position doesn’t make sense to me), and if they DO disagree or have other
additional items, I can get a much better handle on why/how/if I can approach
the disagreement to find common ground.

Random thought of the day

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I was inspired by comments on a Facebook page (Annette Wachter’s) about considering moving to another state such as Idaho, Wyoming, or South Dakota and I added my random thought:

I’m thinking I would like to move a little further away. The moon sounds nice. Or maybe Mars. I wouldn’t need any wind doping skills on the moon but I think I want a little more gravity so my bones don’t weaken to the point I couldn’t return to earth if I really wanted to sort through the wreckage in a decade or so.

I had a rough day today. Not nearly enough sleep last night then some lawyer/divorce stuff to deal with on top of the election results. It’s time to go to bed and pull the covers over my head for a few hours. I’ll feel better in the morning.

Time for a serious conversation

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I received a text message this morning:

Are you free sometime this weekend? I feel the need for a long, serious conversation.

My first thought was, “OH NO! What did I do this time?”

Then I realized there was the potential for another reason. I responded with:

Topic? Politics? Personal?

I guessed right. It was the election:

Politics/survival

We will have our conversation. We’ll increase our odds and probably do okay. The rest of the world? I’m skeptical. As Thomas Sowell has said via Twitter recently:

Our economic problems worry me much less than our political solutions, which have a far worse track record.

The road to despotism is paved with “fairness.”

No society ever thrived because it had a large and growing class of parasites living off those who produce.

Or as Say Uncle said:

Moochers gonna mooch.

And as I have said many times, the looters are soon going to run out of places to loot. And I don’t plan on hanging around when that happens. I just hope I can get most of my possessions and all of those I care about out of harms way.

I didn’t vote on that one

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Washington state had a ballot initiative to “legalize” pot.  Problem is had a whole new bureaucracy attached to it.  It isn’t so much to take pot out of the hands of criminal gangs, as to have the state take over as chief criminal gang, taxing the stuff 25% at each stage (production, wholesale and retail).  It ignores the federal law, and provides no means of keeping feds off one’s back, so getting a license to produce, distribute, or retail pot is tantamount to self incrimination on a federal crime.  Oh goody.


So no– either a “yes” or a “no” vote is insane.  I left that one blank, thank you.  I will not actively participate in that level of stupid.  Though it will be somewhat entertaining if it passes being as it will put the state at odds with the feds, it will still stink as bad as the current mishmash of morbid, deeply pathological and unconstitutional stupidity that is the War on Drugs.  And 25%?  Three times?  That’ll guarantee a continued black market with all the attendant problems, even if the federal law were repealed or the Washington State Millita could keep the feds at bay.  Don’t make me come over there to set you straight, damn you.


ETA: 11/06/12; The law takes up several pages in fine print, which alone is grounds for rejection.  It’s near half the size of the U.S. constitution.  All it would take is one sentence– “All state alcohol and drug laws, and rules and regulations related thereto, are hereby repealed.”  Get that on the ballot and I’m with you.

Quote of the day—Lyle @ UltiMAK

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There are only two forces. Liberty and coercion.

Lyle
November 4, 2012
Comment to Quote of the day—Rivrdog.
[With the proper viewpoint politics can be very simple.

But as we vote today, for all intents and purposes, we only have a choice between coercion and a lot of coercion.—Joe]

Psychology is interesting

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I took a bunch of psychology classes in college. They were easy and fun for me. In one class I got extra credit for participating in grad student psych experiments. One such experiment required I take some sort of standard psychological test. I tested as pretty normal except for two characteristics. One was something like “logical versus emotional”. I was way out of the normal range in the direction of “logical”. The other characteristic was “psychological mindedness” or some such thing. On that “axis” I again scored way out of the normal range in direction of being very “psychologically minded”. The grad student that went over my test results with me said the logical was consistent with being an engineering major. But the level of psychological mindedness was usually only found in psych grad students or professional psychologists. I guess that explained why I enjoyed the classes and did well.

With that in mind I find some parts of political campaigns extremely interesting and at the same time disturbing.

The disturbing part has nothing to do with the actual policies of the candidates or that they are exploiting, probably intentionally, certain psychological characteristics that have nothing to do with sound policy. And in fact have been exploited by leaders throughout history to lead their people to disaster and massive genocide against innocent people. Of course those same psychological tools have been used for good as well as evil.

In the following two videos one of the more interesting irrational characteristics is being exploited:

 

That characteristics is that people tend to go along with the crowd. If large numbers of other people are doing something then there is a strong tendency for others to follow along. People attend political events, sporting events, rock concerts, and many religious events and talk about “the energy” of the crowd. Most people crave this mass excitement and want to be a part of it. In politics the words and the intonation of the speeches are specifically designed (intentionally or not) to stimulate this excitement, to encourage you to participate, and for you to “belong”.

If you remember the 2008 election the media made a big deal about the large number of Obama supporters at the Obama political events. I haven’t noticed that this year. And because I donated some money to the Romney campaign this year I get frequent emails from them. Many of them include pictures of large crowds in support of his campaign. The videos above were just a sample.

I find political events boring. I can sense the “energy” people talk about but the “bandwidth” of the communication is so low that I’m bored. I’d much rather read the politicians policy statements than hear vague words expressed with great excitement interrupted by yelling and applause every few seconds. The “energy” is a source of irritation to me. I get excited by seeing things that work rather than things that excite other people.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t “exploit” this psychological characteristic as well. Besides my personal love of explosives and long range shooting Boomershoot is a means of generating excitement to encourage gun ownership and long range rifle skills. When in front of the camera for Boomershoot I try to emote the enthusiasm that will encourage more participants. I’m not interested in the Boomershoot dinner with a crowd of people but I make it happen, attend, talk to people, and usually say a few things to the crowd because that socialization is extremely important to some people.

This psychological characteristic is just one more reason why we need strict limits on governmental powers. It is not the politician with the best policies that necessarily get chosen. There is some component of policy into the final vote tally but to a large extent it is the politician with the best team of psychologists (whether they realize they are psychologists or not) that can exploit weakness in the human mind for votes, money, and volunteers that will win. And there is a high correlation between those with natural ability in this area and the people who should be kept the greatest distance from political power. Limited government is a means of minimizing the damage done by these people. Both because it reduces the ability of them to do damage and because limited power is less attractive to them in the first place.

Quote of the day—Margaret Thatcher

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And what a policy!

Yes! He would rather have the poor be poorer provided the rich were less rich. That is the liberal policy!

Yes it came out! He didn’t intend it to but it did.

Margaret Thatcher
November 22, 1990
From 1:15 in this video:

[H/T to Phssthpok from this comment.

As pointed out at the end of the video as soon as someone talks about “the gap” between the rich and the poor they have revealed themselves and their true nature.

It was over 20 years a friend of mine, Susan K., told me essentially the same thing as part of a pitch about her love of Ayn Rand’s work. I read Atlas Shrugged years earlier when I was in my late teens. I really liked it but I hadn’t really followed up with her other works. Susan got me started again. Susan’s explanation of the preference of the left for poorer people as long as the gap was less was effective on me but it wasn’t as simple and as forceful as the way Ms. Thatcher expressed it.

For a different and more rigorous approach read Thomas Sowell’s book Black Rednecks and White Liberals or one of his many of his other works. The gist is that a critical item overlooked by those that complain about “the gap” is that different people are in the category of “poor” and “rich” over time. Of course someone in their first job is going to be earning far less than someone who has been working and learning about their area of expertise for 40 years. And over larger time spans it is pointed out there used to be complaints about the “railroad barons” and the super rich oil tycoons and others in steel and automobile industries. Those have been replaced by people in new industries and many of those older industries are essentially dead in this country. And even within an industry those with a seemingly invincible grip in one decade can be struggling or gone the next.

Economics is about the optimal allocation of scarce recourses. Optimal allocation obviously increases the total wealth of society. But what the statists don’t realize, or perhaps don’t want you to know so they can obtain personal power or wealth, is that something much closer to optimal allocation occurs when markets and minds are free rather than when dictated by the central committee with their decisions backed up by guns.

Don’t ever be at a loss for words when someone whines about the rich getting richer. Don’t try to explain that it doesn’t or shouldn’t matter if some people get rich or that it means there is opportunity for others to get rich. Handle it as Ms. Thatcher did. Follow it up by forcefully making the case that if the gap between the rich and the poor is a valid cause for government and/or social action then they will never be satisfied until full equality is achieved. And there are those that admit what they demand is full equality in just those words. But what they cannot seem to comprehend is that full equality can only be approximated by everyone being in extreme poverty. Full equality comes with death. And it should come as no surprise the political left is well acquainted with death on a very large scale.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Rivrdog

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What happened since the 1960s is that capitalism morphed towards socialism by accepting all those rules on enterprise which the gov’t wrote, and socialist governments got used to the capitalist bribes, and learned to relax the rules at the right times to promote “welfare capitalism”.

A third political force, libertarianism, sprang up to replace pure capitalism with it’s property rights-driven theory, and a fourth force, Marxism, arose to inject pure collectivism back into what used to be socialism.

The entire process is like watching clouds form and dissipate over the mountains.

Rivrdog
November 2, 2012
Comment to Capitalism v. Socialism
[I really like the metaphor.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Mark Alger

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I wish we In the Right could/would stop using the term “capitalism”. It’s a Marxian canard, founded in the notion that what we’re about is a system of belief, rather than free markets, and free commerce, which are the natural, self-organizing systems that arise spontaneously when individuals are left in liberty, each to pursue his own enlightened self interest.


Nor is “socialism” the only evil of the Left. Together, the lot of them all bear a single earmark: they are collectivist in nature and deny the sovereignty of the individual. The rest is just persiflage, allowing leftists to pettifog minor distinctions of no matter or moment, rather than getting to the basic point.


Mark Alger
November 2, 2012
Comment to Capitalism v. Socialism
[A very good point. The problem is, of course, that “free markets and free commerce” is not as succinct. And “Liberty” and “Freedom” are too vague. On the other side I think “collectivist”, “collectivism”, and probably even “statist” and “statism” work adequately.


See also his blog post on this same topic here where he says, “Joe is brilliant”. He forgot to mention that I admire myself for my modesty as well.—Joe]

Capitalism v. Socialism

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There are at least two ways to interpret Americans Aged 18-29 Have A More Favorable Response To Socialism Than To Capitalism. One is that the young are inclined toward socialism and as they age they will become more capitalist. The other is that capitalism is on it’s way out and as the current capitalist age out socialism is inevitable.

I’m inclined to believe the first hypothesis is more likely to be true than the latter. One of the reasons is that young socialists have been predicting the imminent collapse of capitalism for decades if not longer. Here is one example:

In the last week of May 1968, a rallying call to the working class to take political power into their hands would have tolled the death knell of capitalism on a world scale.

In rural Idaho at the time, and a bit too young, I was too far removed from ground zero of the socialist movements of the 1960s. But I know people who were near the center of those times and places. They too believed within a few decades capitalism would be dead and buried.

I won’t deny that capitalism is weaker and is more likely to be crushed now than at any other time in the last 50 years, but it is far stronger than its detractors of the 1960s thought it would be at this time. Many of those sympathetic to socialism at that time became more capitalist as they grew older.

Perhaps socialism will temporarily bury capitalism in the next few years or perhaps decades. But I believe the young will continue to mature and become more capitalist as they age. Socialism will succeed only because we grant them power based on their stated intention rather than based on the fruit they bring. And results versus stated intentions are becoming more and more clear with each victory the socialists make.

It is those stated intentions that are so seductive we can almost taste the sweetness of the candy. The candy that is laced, by it’s very socialist nature, with carcinogens. What the socialists don’t really understand, and why I say any burial of capitalism is temporary, is that as the cancer takes hold and destroys a society it destroys the great mass of the socialist advocates at a faster rate than it does the capitalists. The capitalists will move to protect their “capital” whether it is their tangible wealth or the intellectual and physical skills that made them more productive than the socialists to begin with. As the socialists rot from the cancer of their own making the capitalists will be the ones to recover and rise from the ashes of the civilization the socialists destroyed.

I don’t know the time scale. There are just too many variables. The elections next week, as important as they are, are probably a minor player in the big picture. The economic collapse of Western Europe and perhaps Japan and China will play a major role. Add in the price and availability of oil and the possibility of glass pockmarks replacing the cities of Iran and/or Israel and you have such huge variables that making such predictions is impossible.

But I believe that even if  it has to be resurrected from the ashes capitalism, particularly the right to property and all that derives from that, will rise because it is a natural law recognized and defended by nearly all animals and even our very young. I’ve talked to avowed Marxists and others who looked me directly in the eyes and said, “What’s wrong with socialism?” Their logic is non-existent, their data is cherry-picked, and their arguments are both fragile and brittle.

They can only succeed through deception and force. And at some level they know that too. This is why they have such violent tendencies. This is why they are genocidal. They can only succeed if they can kill off their intellectual competition. But as they run out of places to loot there is a “little problem” waiting for them. Their final, intended, victims are armed.

It is only as we humans go through the process of maturing in the teenage years that our brains turn to mush and advocate for socialism. Most recover but some do not. It is my belief that socialism is now making it’s final push to kill capitalism and although those with mush for brains might actually succeed in the end mush for brains will always lose to superior firepower.

Contrast

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This is the doormat of the nearest neighbor to my clock tower home in the Seattle area:

WP_000355

This is the doormat to my clock tower:

WP_000340

I was a little concerned the first time Barb L. saw it but without any prompting from me she has twice mentioned how much she likes it.

Son James and his wife Kelsey gave it to me for my birthday. Thanks again James and Kelsey.

Protest Songs

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Advertising is expensive, and people are good at tuning it
out. Memes catch on because the are pithy and may be hitting at a core truth.
Music can carry a message, tell a story, or just get into someone ear and buzz
there for a while. To get a message across, to teach, you can use massive repetition, or strike an emotional chord
in someone’s brain to trigger a this is
important signal, or massive repetition. Political advertising goes for the
massive repetition, from both sides. But protest songs are almost almost exclusively
a tool of the left. I think it’s because artists tend to be on that side of the
spectrum. What we (the conservative / right) need are some good protest songs to reach the young and the undecided’s in the middle.
The thought came to me that

“Four dead in Benghazi” sounds an awful lot like “Four dead
in Ohio”

A person could either make the song to Neil Young’s tune,
and change the words appropriately, something like:

Two soldiers and no-one’s coming
We’re abandon, on our own
This winter I’ll hear the piper
Four dead in Benghazi

Gotta get to the annex
Terrorists cut ambassador down
We warned higher ups long ago
If you knew him
And found him dead on the ground
How could you tell us to stand down?

SEALS and marines are ready to go
Jets are fueled on the strip
Targets are all lit up
AC130 overhead being called
On for help
Need some rounds on the ground

Two soldiers and no-one’s coming
We’re abandon, on our own
The winter I hear the piper
Four dead in Benghazi

Or they could make a mocking, sarcastic, satire, something
sung to the tune of “Hero of Canton” from firefly, which was (in the show) a
serious folk song, but to us (the audience) is was hysterical because it
misrepresented the facts and Jayne so badly. For that, something that mocks and ridicules
the entire Obama presidency would be best. Something like:

O, the man they call O! / He robbed from the children / and
he gave to the old! / Stood up to the kings / Then he bowed to the floor!

It could reference many of the different doings, from
fund-raising scandals, “green energy, deficits, no budget, Benghazi, etc.

 Know any bored song-smiths?

Moral Issue

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Posit; Your kid is suspected of having knowledge of other kids smoking pot.  Your kid’s school wants your kid to talk to some lying, immoral cops who lie every day as a matter of course and brag about it.  Your wife says No– that we aren’t going to talk to cops like that.  What about talking to some other cop from another jurisdiction?


I say that it is none of any cop’s business whatsoever.  If we’re going to talk morals, a teenager trying pot is no business of anyone on Earth except for the kid and the parents.  Further; the fact that pot was made illegal is in and of itself immoral, and unconstitutional.  The cops’ only possible interest in “talking” with said teenager is so they can harm other people  besides.  There is no victim  except for the “perpetrator” himself, and hence there is no moral obligation whatsoever to talk to cops and possibly thereby to allow them to harm other people.  All the parents in town already know.


Now say that the school threatens to suspend said teenager if said teenager does not talk to some cop or other.  What then?  I say that doing the right thing isn’t always the easy thing.  I say to hell with all of them– let them suspend said teenager.


We had a kid in our community kill himself a while back over this exact sort of thing, and with this recent case there is talk of it again.  There is talk of other kids beating the crap out of one of the kids for “snitching”, and talk of him committing suicide.  All because you nasty, sick, evil, broken, twisted sacks of shit maintaining our drug laws, enabling and enriching violent criminal trafficking networks and torturing innocent kids for being curious, and you in the public schools playing right along with it, going straight to the cops at the drop of a hat.  Shame on you all.


You cops out there; you had better think long and hard about the damage and destruction you’re perpetuating.  Make the right choice– knock it off or get out.  I have no sympathy for you, as you knew you’d have to hurt innocent people as a regular part of the job.  You were set up just as all of us have been set up, but you KNOW IT.  So FIX IT!  You’re as guilty as any drug gang kingpin unless you knock it off right now (they couldn’t exist without you).  The law doesn’t make you right and you know it.  Plus you swore an Oath, remember?  I’ll hold you to it you stupid bastards.  Don’t give me the crap about the thin blue line either– YOU are making the trouble here.  You want to be treated like a damned hero?  Fuck You, then act like one.  Stand up for what’s right even if you pay a price for it.  THAT’S a hero.  Turds.  You really are dispicable.


We’ve already had the talk in our home about how evil laws result in people suspecting each other, fearing each other, hating each other, in violence, in ruined lives, the militarizaion of our law enforcement and all the rest.


Washington state a measure on the ballot.  Best you look into and right now.  I deleted the stuff I wrote about shooting cops in the face.  For now.  Anyway; shooting cops in the face is probably not the best way to get people to understand.  For now.  And so I will speak out against it unless there becomes a time wherein there is no other choice.


ETA, 11-01-12;  The cops, through a round about set of circumstances, including a parent telling the school principle that there’s no way their kid is talking to the cops, have stood down.  They’re leaving the matter in the hands of the school admin.  So I have to hand it to them– for whatever reason, they’ve done the right thing.  For now.

Modern parables regarding self reliance

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My brother Doug sent me an email with a link. This gives you a hint of what it is about.

Professional trappers don’t catch fast-breeding and destructive feral pigs using hunting dogs and guns, or in little traps one or two at a time. The wily pigs quickly learn to evade humans after such fleeting contacts. So how do the pros trap entire feral pig herds, eliminating them all, from granddads to piglets, in one go?

They feed them, most generously. They kill them with kindness.

…

The moral of the story: If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Don’t go inside the “free corn” pen, not even when all the doors are open. Free food is as dangerous as the sirens’ song to ancient mariners. It is all too easy to get used to being fed, and then to miss the exits closing one at a time.

I read the entire post and all the comments. Most will stop after the first parable which is probably enough to get the point across. Just to make sure read the second one also.

Pumpkins for Peterson

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As per request from my previous post on this topic we now have video of the pumpkins we blew up for Joan Peterson, board member of the Brady Campaign:

Joan Peterson, and the entire Brady Campaign organization, should just get used to the idea that they cannot win this fight. We outnumber them by hundreds to one. We make people happy. They wallow in the pain, misery, and suffering of victims. We will spend hundreds of dollars, and countless hours mocking her and her kind.

You are on the wrong side of history Joan, give it up.

Quote of the day—NYPD Officer

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When I came into this police force I wanted to help people, but the civilian population, they’re being hunted. Instead of being protected by us they’re being hunted and we’re being hated.

NYPD Officer
On the Department’s Feudal “Stop and Frisk” Policy.
From 11:28 in the following video:

[H/T Tyler Durden and Michael Krieger.

Also of interest is, from 2:11, “I had this captain who walked into the precinct and gave a speech about harassing the public. His words were, ‘We’re going to go out there and were going to violate some rights’.”

The police should realize this will not be tolerated for long. If legal recourse fails to get them in compliance then they should expect ‘game on.’ With no rules.—Joe]

About voting fraud

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Since the left is convinced that you cannot be trusted with a gun, cannot be trusted to educate your own kids, feed your own kids, feed yourself, deal directly with your medical care providers, chose the vehicle you want, run your own business without being told how to do it, hire the right people, chose your own light bulbs, chose the energy sources you want, or keep your own money, et al, why on Earth would it trust you to vote?  Why should it?


If the very future of the planet itself is in jeopardy, as is claimed, well then; the left would be “out of its mind” so to speak, to allow any election to go the wrong way if there were anything that could be done, by any means necessary, to fix it.


If we want to go further with this line of thought, we could make the same case.  If we’re headed for the cliff due to socialist creep, and there is very little time to make a correction, and since the constitution is no longer a functional barrier to socialist creep, since we’re now a de facto pure democracy seemingly bent on self destruction, then what are OUR options?


No; we don’t need election fraud.  The left needs it.  All we need is the truth, the light of day, and to find a way to begin restoring and enforcing the constitution.  We know that the Republican Party as constituted today will not do that, so we’ve refined the context of the question, but not answered it.  What are our options?


As little help as it may be, I can answer that in the negative; One option that we do NOT have is that of trying to make everyone like us.  We’ll have to tell it like it is, with malice toward none (and that’s a challenge, isn’t it?) and let the chips fall where they may.  Pandering and beating around the bush, being afraid of the bare truth, is what got us in this mess, and it is what defines the Republican Party today.

Quote of the day—Charles Woods

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I want to honor my son, Ty Woods, who responded to the cries for help and voluntarily sacrificed his life to protect the lives of other Americans. In the last few days it has become public knowledge that within minutes of the first bullet being fired the White House knew these heroes would be slaughtered if immediate air support was denied. Apparently, C-130s were ready to respond immediately. In less than an hour, the perimeters could have been secured and American lives could have been saved. After seven hours fighting numerically superior forces, my son’s life was sacrificed because of the White House’s decision. This has nothing to do with politics, this has to do with integrity and honor. My son was a true American hero. We need more heroes today. My son showed moral courage. This is an opportunity for the person or persons who made the decision to sacrifice my son’s life to stand up.

Charles Woods
Father of Tyrone Woods one of the former Navy SEALs killed in the terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.
October 25, 2012
Joe Biden to Father of Former Navy SEAL Killed in Benghazi: ‘Did Your Son Always Have Balls the Size of Cue Balls?’
[The entire attitude of this administration toward the family of the dead is extremely troubling.

That doesn’t even address what Hillary Clinton said. She said they would “make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.” Yet we now know the Whitehouse had a live video feed of the attack and could not have seriously believed it was a riot rather than a planned attacked with mortars. The wounds that killed the SEALs were from mortar shrapnel!

I’m reminded of a book I recently finished, How Do You Kill 11 Million People?: Why the Truth Matters More Than You Think.

Take your blood pressure medication then read the whole thing.—Joe]

Atlas Shrugged II

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Barb L. and I saw the movie Atlas Shrugged II Tuesday night. There were only a few people in the theater. And after the movie I ended up spending a few minutes explaining bits of it to Barb and the three guys who sat behind us. None of them had read the book.

I liked the casting better than what they did for part 1. I liked that many scenes were essentially directly from the book. But I can see that it fails to get across the points essential to appreciating Rand’s message. And reading the book just doesn’t work for many people. I know several people that just couldn’t “get into it”. Whereas son James and I were spellbound by the book. It resonated with us like few books ever have.

Because the movie doesn’t resonate as well as I wish it did I almost think the movie would be better described as a documentary of our future with the script published in 1957. Judged from that standpoint it does amazingly well.

This is sad considering (from here) “Atlas Shrugged is the ‘second most influential book for Americans today’ after the Bible, according to a joint survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club.”

The importance of judges

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Sebastian reported a new gun blog and I poked around some. The author, Nicholas J. Johnson, is a Professor of Law specializing in firearm regulation. I found this post of his fascinating.

The following, in particular, caught my attention:

Both the majority and the dissent acknowledge that the AR-15 is a gun in common use. How they proceed from there is illuminating. The dissent treats common use as a solid liberty-protecting standard. Guns in common use cannot be banned.

For the majority, acknowledging the AR-15 as a gun in common use is just a rhetorical lead-in to the burgeoning two stage standard of review. The court found that the D.C. law did in fact burden a core Second Amendment concern. But at stage two it determined that the ban does not “substantially burden” the right to self-defense (people could still have handguns and many other long guns).

This reasoning is not derived from Heller and it is interesting to speculate what else would pass muster under this approach. Pushed hard, it would seem to allow very broad gun bans as long as some core self-defense guns remained legal.

In Heller it was said that guns “in common use” are protected from prohibition by the 2nd Amendment. But some judges are ignoring that. This is essentially a repeat of what happened in Miller where it was said that to be protected by the 2nd Amendment a gun had to “has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” Yet many courts ignored that statement and instead substituted a twisted version of the actual wording of the Miller decision and said the individual wanting to own or bear a firearm had to be in a militia.

Mike B., a lawyer friend of mine, once told me engineers make poor lawyers because they believe the law means what the law says and it doesn’t. The law actually means whatever the judges want it to mean. This is another data point supporting that claim. And this is another reason why getting people who follow the law as written as our judges is vital to the preservation of our rights.

Or perhaps expressed better is the comment to the post by Brett Bellmore (Oct 06, 2012 @ 09:13:19):

In the end, there’s no substitute for staffing the judiciary with people who aren’t hostile to this liberty. They have too many ways to destroy liberties they don’t like, to afford enemies there.

Keep that in mind each and every time you vote.