Quote of the day—NYPD Officer

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

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

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

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

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.

Quote of the day—Ry Jones

Vultures gotta eat, too.

Ry Jones
October 18, 2012
Comment to Engaging in capitalism warrants death
[While this is true the situations where I advocate increasing their food supply are rare.—Joe]

Social and Political Pandering

…or “Chum in the Water”


Most of us are familiar with the dangers of pandering to dictators bent on world domination, of the Legacy of Neville Chamberlain, and so on.  It’s very simple.  Show the enemy that you’re a chump, that it can control you, and you get pounced.


I think that Mitt Romney is probably a very nice guy, trying to do the right things.  Doing the right things, and getting people to like you, are however very different, often contradictory, goals.


When he decided he needed to hire him some womens (you know, so people couldn’t accuse him of not hiring enough women, because hiring based on a person’s potential value to the company without regard to sex or race, would be….stupid?  Unfair?  It wouldn’t please the communists?) he apparently failed to understand that he was throwing chum in the water.  Condition white.  Sharks cannot resist a little chum.  When the feeding frenzy erupted last week then, no one has any excuse for not having predicted it.  Sharks have a habit of acting like sharks.


HE HAS BINDERS FULL OF WOMEN!!!!  HE HAS BINDERS FULL OF WOMEN!!!!  (“What kind of pervert is this guy!?” they don’t say).  I wonder if he has (GASP) BINDERS FULL OF BLACK PEOPLE TOO!  Oh, the horror– someone trying to hire black people.  RACIST!!!  He wants to put y’all in BINDERS!


No, Grasshopper; don’t pander to insanity.  That way insanity will have nothing on you.  You pander to it and it gets encouraged.  Evil will try to nudge you into doing stupid things.  You’ll want to do them to make it happy, to get along, to take some weight off your shoulders, but it’s always a trick.


So I’m making fun of the evil-crazy, right back, but the important thing is to be able to see it and watch it.  It can’t stand the light of day.

Quote of the day—Hobbes_Wayne

Utopian ideals always lead to dystopian reality.

Hobbes_Wayne
October 17, 2012
Comment to MILLER: Gun owners’ election–Ex-justice urges next Congress and president to restrict the Second Amendment
[I have a problem with absolute statements but I will agree there is a very high correlation between Utopian ideals and dystopian reality. This is particularly true when the use of force is required to implement the Utopian ideals. In these cases the correlation coefficient appears to be asymptotically close to 1.0.—Joe]

American Insurgency?

First, read the original post and the comments over at Oleg’s place.


There are some interesting comments, well worth reading, but they fail to see the bigger picture, I think.  It took me a while to think of it, though it shouldn’t have done.  I now see it as obvious.


Any widespread insurgency in America is really the kick-starter to global chaos, and for some of our enemies that is actually the plan – take advantage of a weakened and distracted America.  Collapse the system into a new system.  Twelfth Imam and all that rot.


So no.


We had best get our own houses in order, and look at our Progressive (incremental communist) neighbors as part of our country, which absolutely MUST hold together.  “Last great hope for liberty” and “with malice toward none” come to mind.  I hope you have your beliefs and your communication skills well-honed.  You’ll need both, and by the way the latter doesn’t exist without the former – you know it.


Compromise with evil will get us nowhere and open warfare amongst us will get us all destroyed.  That leaves us a very narrow, delicate path then, doesn’t it?  Our enemies know it too.  Interestingly, that applies to your personal life as well as your public life and the global situation.

Engaging in capitalism warrants death

The first time, probably about 1970, I read Atlas Shrugged I was fascinated by it. Awesome book. But it was just a piece of fiction to me. In my mind at that time it could not possibly represent anything past, present, and probably not the future as being close to reality.

As I grew less naive, and particularly with the easy access to differing viewpoints via the Internet I realized there really are people out there that hate the economic/political system that enabled the greatest advances in human prosperity, human rights, and living conditions in history. And they don’t just want to “tweak” it a little in some false hope of making it better. They want to kill those that participate in the system. And furthermore they use the fruits of that system to advocate their hate:

@NancyWonderful @Our4thEstate Hanging profiteers should restore confidence, not the other way. Ah, what do I know?

I can’t even make sense of this. Whose confidence could possibly be restored by hanging those that make a profit? The confidence of communists? Don’t they understand that if the rule of law breaks down and “hanging profiteers” has no legal repercussions the “hanging of communists” will almost for certain also be without legal repercussions?

We don’t want to go there. The end result will be very grim.

Redesign not required

Professor Antony Davis says a complete redesign of government is required and that the redesign must begin with determining the proper role of government:

I agree with nearly everything he says except for the claim that a redesign is required.

The original design of 1787 would solve this problem just fine. It also has no chance of being seriously considered in the foreseeable future.

H/T to Tyler Durden.

I want a wheat farm on the moon

It may be that we can mine the moon for hydrogen and oxygen. And to make it even more interesting is that it appears it is a renewable source. The sun creates the water on the moon:

The moon’s top layer of crushed rock and soil may hold far more water than previously estimated, according to a new study.

Most of that water can trace its origin to protons streaming from the sun, the researchers show, confirming in samples of lunar soil a mechanism for making lunar water that until now largely had been the province of theoretical models.

Getting water could be useful. Getting rocket fuel would be awesome!

The moon has an abundance of solar energy to break the water and/or hydroxyl down into H + O which is a great rocket fuel. The moon could be more than just a staging area for exploring and/or mining the asteroids and/or other planets. It could be a source of supplies.

The next question I want answered, “Is there a plentiful source of nitrogen and carbon available?” These are needed for an earth like atmosphere and as plant nutrients.

If N and C (and a bunch of other nutrients in smaller quantities) are readily available then crops can be grown for food. Once we have wheat farms on the moon we are snuggling distance from The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.

Quote of the day—Mitt Romney

I believe the next president could indeed have the opportunity to shape the Court for decades to come, and that’s a key reason why the tens of millions of Americans who support the NRA should support my candidacy. My view of the Constitution is straightforward: Its words have meaning. The founders adopted a written constitution for a reason. They intended to limit the powers of government. The job of a judge is to enforce the Constitution’s restraints on government and, where the Constitution does not speak, to leave the governance of the nation to its elected representatives. I believe in the rule of law, and I will appoint wise, experienced and restrained judges who take seriously their oath to discharge their duties impartially in accordance with our Constitution and our laws—not their personal policy preferences.

Mitt Romney
September 11, 2012
NRA’s Chris Cox Goes One On One With Governor Mitt Romney
[If you can ever really be reassured by something a politician says what Romney says in this interview is about as reassuring to gun owners as you can get.—Joe]

Quote of the day—George MacDonald Fraser

When my views were first published in book form in 2002, I was not surprised that almost all the reviewers were unfavourable. I had expected that my old-fashioned views would get a fairly hostile reception, but the bitterness did astonish me.

I had not realised how offensive the plain truth can be to the politically correct, how enraged they can be by its mere expression, and how deeply they detest the values and standards respected 50 years ago and which dinosaurs like me still believe in, God help us.

George MacDonald Fraser
January 5, 2008
The last testament of Flashman’s creator: How Britain has destroyed itself
H/T Tamara.
[Fraser discovered the same thing pro-rights people have. Liberals appear to be violent by nature.—Joe]

It’s a Model City alright

Detroit, that is.  I’ve been thinking of a Model Cities post for a while, but PJMedia already has a nice one;


 



Hat Tip; Kevin.


It’s a Model City alright, for exactly the same reasons that North Korea and Cuba are Model Countries.  That video should be part of every right/left debate from now until all leftist ideas are shunned from polite society forever.

Friends or tools?

I’m sure you have all heard the old saw “the enemy of my
enemy is my friend.” Well… No. I think a better version is “the enemy of my
enemy is a useful tool.” And I think
that is what we are seeing evidence of unfolding before us right now.

Obama & Co announce a record $ 181 million in donations
in Sept, largely in small amounts from “first time” donors, too small to require tracking. At the same time, a
breaking story is about extremely lax verification of donor credit card legitimacy (i.e., essentially none) ,
and a LOT of hits to Obama’s “contribute” page (something like 2/3) come from
overseas, and there is not much in the way of addressing matching with the card payment. I would be VERY unsurprised if a lot of OverSeas America Haters made
donations, in violation of US law and with complicit looking-the-other-way by
the Obama fundraisers, because they know that while Obama may not be their
friend, he is an easily manipulated fool who isn’t very fond of America and is
working to destroy it. Not because he really wants to per se, but because he is too stupid and narcissistic to realize
what real effect his actions have. The folks surrounding him want to hang on to
power because it’s shiny and what ALL the cool kids want, but they really are NOT
very good at wielding it (or even understanding it), and REALLY don’t
understand dealing with those that only understand the power of tribe, bribe,
and force, for whom our western values are antithetical to their fundamental
values.  These people (the power players
in China, Saudi Arabia / MENA, Russia, drug cartels, radical Islam, etc) would REALLY like to
see Obama pull out a win, because America’s weakness is their gain.

News is also coming out that there was a LOT of warning
about security problems in Benghazi, and a SEAL team was pulled out only a
month before, displaying massive incompetence on behalf of the administration.
His foreign policy in general is now being widely
seen
as increasingly ineffective, and his biggest supporters are those that
would gain from our weakness.

It is widely acknowledged that the first debate was a
disaster for Obama. Even the New Yorker magazine cover showed Romney Eastwooding
at the debate. I think there is also
a very real potential that the second debate, on foreign policy, will be as bad
or worse (if for different reasons), in part because of the above facts. I’m
not saying that the fat lady is singing her final notes, but I do get the strong
feeling that she’s starting to warm up for a really rock’n finale.

Then, of course, we’ll have to hear about the election being
stolen, voters being too stupid to know what’s good for them, etc., for the
next half-dozen or more election cycles, but that’s a price I’m willing to
accept.

Economics 99 (Remedial)

About this “(multi) trillion dollar tax cut” thingy; First, tax cuts don’t cost anything.  Taxes cost us, but cutting taxes saves us money.


That’s not the main point though.  The main point is that cutting taxes lightens the ball-and-chain that’s around our ankles, allowing us to invest and produce more, resulting in more income, which in turn increases revenues.  Taxing any behaivor reduces the behaivor while incentivising an underground economy (black market) in that behavior.


You might think that taxing something less dynamic, like property values, might be different– that you could actually add up the property values in your district, multiply that by the amount of change in the tax rate, and know exactly the difference in revenue that will result.  Simple huh?  Well you’d be totally wrong for several reasons.  Here in North Idaho we have a whole population of refugees from other states who fled high tax rates in their states, increasing our property values and presumably reducing the values in the areas they fled.


I could barely afford to get new siding on my house and resurface my huge deck, but since it would increase the assessment value, resulting in a higher tax bill, uh, maybe it’s not so important.  Not this year.  And there is why we have a lot of what I call “Tyvek Houses”.  A Tyvek house is one that remains in un-finished condition for decades at a time.  They are ugly, and unattractive to buyers, but if you plan to live in your house you don’t care about buyers.  You care about the assessed value, because you don’t want to pay out huge sums in taxes year after year, so you don’t want it looking too nice.


You lower the tax rate, and because the punished activity (punished by taxation) becomes more affordable it becomes more common.  The result is more tax revenue.  M’kay?  Reducing rates beyond some extremely low level that we haven’t seen in over 100 years will at some point start to reduce revenues, but in that case we will not only have no use whatsoever for 95+% of what government does today, we’ll have no time nor patience for it.


I needed the first paragraph because there is a plan that could be called a multi-trillion-dollar tax cut.  Dramatically slash the income tax rate, and you get trillions more dollars flooding into the treasury.  You get trillions more dollars flooding into the country from everywhere too, essentially, because investments in the U.S. (as opposed to investments in other countries) become that much more attractive.  Capital, along with the people who own it, moves to where it can be safe and free.  Better put it’s; “free and therefore safe”.


The “expert” economists on the left understand all of this perfectly of course, as any kid who ever ran a lemonade stand would.  That proves to us that their intentions are not good.  If they know that lower taxes will result in a better economy, and that ultra low low taxes will result in a super good economy, and they oppose all tax cuts, well, you figure it out. (hint; they think that America is too big and important already)  They want you out in the streets shouting “Eat the rich” while promising to pay for everything in your life through tax revenues.  Do you see the blatant contradiction there or has your mind been taken over?


Meanwhile, the Republicans can’t quite bring themselves to explain it, because they’re afraid.  That or they have brain damage, but I don’t think it’s brain damage per se.


I say that the American people deserve to have the case made, straight up, what it is that we face, verses what it is that America was meant to be.  If the Republicans can’t bring themselves to make the case, we’ll have to take over their stupidshitty, Progressive party and fundamentally transform it from the inside.

Quote of the day—Mostly Cajun

Retire? I will probably get killed in the early battles of the coming revolution.

Mostly Cajun
January 27, 2012
Potpourri
[Via Kevin who posts about the violence in parts of Europe over the economic collapse in progress.

I can relate to this. Although I would like to think things will collapse slowly enough that I can retreat to a “bug out place” and avoid most of the bloodshed or worst case, as someone told me a few years ago, “You and I won’t have to worry about getting into an armed conflict with the government because they will pick up us on the first pass.” I would then hope I get released after the fighting, if any, is over with.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ronald Reagan

Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.

Ronald Reagan
[I’m always perplexed when people insist rights are something granted by the government. I don’t know if I’m just coming across it more or if it really is that I hear this more frequently in the last year or so. In any case it concerns me greatly.—Joe]

Random thought of the day

I heard Romney did exceptionally well in the debate last night. I wasn’t interested in watching. I couldn’t see any advantage to watching in real time as opposed to hearing a recap on the radio talk shows and blogs as I got ready for work and rode the bus to work this morning. So I spent the evening at dinner with friends and didn’t get home until midnight.

Some pundits are claiming Obama made such a poor showing that he may lose the election. But I think those people are overlooking something.

Obama has the critical communist dictators endorsements of Hugo Chavez, Raul Castro, and Vladimir Putin while Romney has the kiss of death NRA endorsement. When the choice is between the tranquility of servitude and the animating contest of freedom how is there even any question of who should or will win? Who would want to compete when you can have tranquility?

Of course some people see things differently than I do. There are those that believe the clear winner of all three presidential debates will be Obama.