Category Archives: Politics

Quote of the day—TriggerFinger

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Democrats do it and Republicans do it. But they do it differently.

Democrats lie to hide their unpopular positions, like gun control (and more gun control). They lie to the people and then vote more towards their base once elected.

Republicans, on the other hand, lie in the opposite direction. They lie to their base, and then when elected, vote more like Democrats.

This tells us that the true “center” of political opinion lies to the right of how elected officials of both parties vote. They lie in the same direction.

TriggerFinger
October 19, 2018
Lying to get elected…
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Never give up your guns

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Deserae Morin, a Vermont state house candidate, received the letter shown below:

RapeYouForDays

It says:

Cunt,

We are hunting you.

My comrades will kill you and the Constitution.

First, we will rape you for days.

You will scream and know that agonizing horror.

No equal rights for republicans.

Socialism is here.

Open season for Republican death in Vermont.

Fear our revolution.

AA. It’s time

See also here and related stuff here.

In preparation for the election I would like to suggest people have their concealed weapon license, have a good holster for concealed carry, long guns in good working order for home defense, and go to the range and practice.

And, never, never, give up your guns.

The Second Amendment is about protecting us from liberals (see also here).

Deception is the only way

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I found this very interesting:

Gun control was supposed to be the issue of 2018.

Yet it has receded so far into the background of the midterm congressional elections that Everytown for Gun Safety, a major player in gun control, is spending its money on ads covering abortion, health care and the Republican tax bill — but nary a mention of assault rifles or bump stocks.

Apparently Everytown for Gun Safety recognizes that advocating for gun control is a losing strategy. So their response is to achieve their goals indirectly by helping politicians who hide their position on guns but will vote against gun owners when they get a chance.

When the only way people can get their way is through deception you know their intentions are evil.

I almost support the Brady Campaign

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From ABC news:

…the families sought to hold the FBI accountable for its failed background check on Dylann Roof, which allowed Roof to legally buy the handgun used in the Emanuel shooting.

In Tuesday’s filing, the Brady Campaign says U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel incorrectly interpreted federal gun law when he dismissed the Emanuel families’ lawsuit in June 2018.

I’m firmly opposed to mandatory background checks so I am not in agreement with the basic premise of their position but I am fully in support of the Brady Campaign suing the FBI. This diverts both Brady and FBI resources from attacking gun owners.

If Brady wins it means the FBI will increase expenditures on NICS to decrease the likelihood of being successfully sued in the future. Increasing the costs of NICS checks means the value of these checks will be more likely to be examined. Does our society “get it’s money’s worth” from this expenditure or would those resources be better spent elsewhere. For example, should that money be spent on keeping violent criminals in prison rather than in a futile attempt to prevent them from acquiring guns in a free society? Or, should that money be spent in police efforts to put into finding and convicting criminals quickly before they can commit multiple crimes?

Thank you Brady Campaign.

Quote of the day—Rob Mills

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She’s worked out stuff with Mom’s Demand Action to make sure that she can support their goals without supporting the organization openly.

Rob Mills
Deputy Regional Field Director, Claire McCaskill Campaign
[H/T to David Hardy.

Claire McCaskill is a U.S. Senator for Missouri.

Project Veritas bring us the video which conclusively shows this Democrat and her staff are being deliberately deceptive in an attempt to violate the rights of hundreds of millions of people.—Joe]

Huffman’s rule of social interaction

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A civil society is dependent upon not having runaway hostile emotions. You might get angry with your spouse, a co-worker, a neighbor, a political party or, on a global scale, another nation. In most cases these are bursts of anger that, when put into the larger perspective its not worth severing the relationship or escalating the hostilities. Everyone is going to have a better life if the parties can freely interact to the mutual benefit of everyone. If there is no mutually beneficial interaction at the current time that doesn’t mean that there won’t be such need in the future.

For example, suppose your neighbor’s dog sometimes poops in your yard. If you escalate the situation and you end up not being on speaking terms it going to be tough to help each other when you need to cover your windows with plywood to protect against a hurricane.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t put a stop to the neighbor’s kid torturing your cat or you finding a new job and telling your boss he is a jerk when you leave. There are times when you must take action to protect yourself.

I would like to express this philosophy more succinctly and refer to it in the future as Huffman’s rule of social interaction:

Never burn bridges.

Wait until your enemy is crossing it and then use explosives.

Conservatives are winning the media war

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Via email from Chet:

Interesting. He presents data indicating conservative media sources are totally dominating the viewership and engagement numbers.

He, at least partially, attributes this to the hostility of the political left to even minor disagreement while the political right recruits people who engage with them. The political left is driving people out to increase their purity and the right is accepting them. I can see that being a supportable hypothesis.

My fear is a recollection is of another famous leftist organization which raised to power then started to fade. They went violent in a big way. They destroyed shops, buildings, murdered people in riots. They even burned the assembly location of their legislature.

Our political left is currently repeatedly demonstrating their willingness to go violent when they don’t get their way and the election next month could be the spark that ignites them.

Agreed

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I don’t get it either. And I can’t understand why people don’t get their fill of horror from watching politics.

Quote of the day—Sean D Sorrentino

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Rape is a big fucking deal in Conservative land. It is literally “the most horrific and obscene act imaginable.”

I’d rather you thought me a murderer than believed me a rapist. Ordinary people can imagine circumstances where they’d kill someone, and might have some sympathy for me if they thought I murdered someone.

…

There are literally zero circumstances where raping someone is a good idea. There’s just no justification for it. Even attempted rape puts you outside the tribe. It makes you a non-person. It makes you fair game for anyone to kill on sight.

“Why’d you shoot that guy 27 times in the face and pelvis?”

“Because he raped my sister and that was all the ammo I brought.”

“Oh, ok.”

That’s how rapists are viewed in Conservative land.

So when the Left starts shooting their mouths off about “Rape Culture,” we get bent out shape. When they conflate ordinary boorish behavior with rape, we lose our minds. Because branding a man a rapist is literally telling the rest of the world that he needs killing.

Yet they feel totally ok about deploying the “he’s a rapist!” charge with nothing in the way of evidence, and can’t understand why a decent man, who is married to a woman, who has daughters, who coaches a girls basketball team, might find it incredibly upsetting. They painted a target on his back. They told the world there is no crime he wouldn’t stoop to. They invited the world to kill him. They encouraged him to kill himself.

Sean D Sorrentino
Posted on Facebook October 3, 2018
[This directly relates to what Luke O’Neil thinks is “a good joke”.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Luke O’Neil

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On Sunday morning Ariel Dumas, a writer for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, apologized for a good joke. Writing on Twitter, she explained that the experience of the Kavanaugh nomination had been hard for the country and for her personally.

…

It is uncertain if Dumas was forced to make a statement by her employers at CBS, or if she volunteered the apology on her own, but one thing that is 100 percent crystal clear is that she never should have found herself in the position in the first place. The joke she posted on Saturday—”Whatever happens, I’m just glad we ruined Brett Kavanaugh’s life.”—was the latest target of the bad faith destruction machine of the right.

…

It’s another cruel irony that would no doubt also be lost on the humorless scolds on the right that it’s Dumas whose life they are now attempting to ruin. Soon after the joke was published, the wheels of the vexation and spite apparatus on the right who maintain constant vigilance for such alleged missteps from the “liberal media” went to work, broadcasting it far and wide as evidence of the sickness of the left.

Luke O’Neil
October 8, 2018
‘Late Show’ Writer Ariel Dumas Under Fire for Obvious ‘Joke’ About Brett Kavanaugh
[This is from someone of the same political party which just a month ago went ballistic when a political opponent used the phrase “monkey up”.

To think that it was “a good joke” that someone with a previously excellent personal reputation was publicly and repeatedly accused heinous crimes, which could not be supported, is evil.

Of course he also thinks Kathy Griffin holding up a realistic severed head of President Trump was good joke.

Hence it should come at no surprise he says this about people who exercise their right to keep and bear arms:

Almost anyone of any stature in media who dabbles in political humor has found themselves in this scenario by now. I’ve had a number of phony campaigns attempted against me at outlets I’ve written for over the years after comments I’ve made about gamers and gun fetishists were amplified in bad faith.

In addition to being evil, as Mike Cernovich tweeted, he is also lacking in self awareness.—Joe[

Quote of the day—Elizabeth Weitz‏ @ebethisawesome

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Serious question, if I punched McConnell in the face with, let’s say a huge dildo, until his face broke open and the fucking sentient turd working him from inside spilled out, how much prison time am I looking at? I’m willing to go up to 100 years.

Elizabeth Weitz‏ @ebethisawesome
Tweeted on October 6, 2018
[Upon reading this my first thought was, “That will come up at your trial.”

Why are progressives so violent? Oh, now I remember. See also here.—Joe]

Justice Kavanaugh

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While there are civil rights rulings Judge Brett Kavanaugh made which are concerning, from the Second Amendment standpoint it would have been difficult to find someone better.

Two years ago I was not hopeful for a future which included the free exercise of our right to keep and bear arms. The 2016 presidential election gave me a glimmer of hope. The Trump administration has not been nearly as good on this issue as some people hoped. One could even make the case from a legislative and regulatory view point it has been rather dismal. President Hillary Clinton would have been a catastrophe so by comparison so there is that. Our rights under Trump were being sous-vide. Under Clinton they would have been put in the crematorium.

Now Justice Kavanaugh is in a position to help say the final words on this vital issue. I hope those words will make a violent response to the infringement of our rights avoidable.

Via Davidwhitewolf:

“Kavanaugh” (a parody of Van Halen’s “Panama”) from r/The_Donald

Not helping

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From MSN:

A man in Florida has been arrested after he threatened to shoot senators who don’t support Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court, authorities said.

The narrative against the political left which seems to be most effective in getting people to put distance between them is that they are crazy and violent. There is a lot of evidence to support than.

I want Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court because I believe he is much more likely to support the rule of law than a justice appointed by someone from the left. An advocate for Kavanaugh who advocates murder is counterproductive.

Update: Here is someone from the political left to illustrate my point:

Dr. Carol Christine Fair, an associate professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown said white GOP Senators deserve to die miserable deaths “while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps.”

This wasn’t enough for Dr. Fair, she said once the white Republican Senators die miserable deaths, their corpses should be castrated and fed to pigs.

Quote of the day—Randy Barnett

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Because I think the meaning of the text of the Constitution should remain the same until it is properly changed by amendment, and that judges have a constitutional duty to invalidate laws that conflict with that meaning, I believe the President’s choice of Brett Kavanaugh—who is otherwise highly qualified—should be confirmed. If Democrats disagree they should specify the approach they think is better.

If their “judicial philosophy” is that a judge should simply reach all the outcomes that a progressive Democrat would like the Supreme Court to reach, they should candidly say so. If they believe that the precedents they like—like Roe v. Wade—are sacrosanct, but those they detest—like Citizens United—are to be discarded, they should identify how we know which precedents are binding and which are not.

Failing that, they too should vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh.

Randy Barnett
The Case for Kavanaugh
October 1, 2018
[I agree.

H/T to David Hardy.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ashe Schow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quote of the day—Cyberzen‏ @JDBonnar

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

Me in 2018 watching Democrats operate…”Oh.”

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

Quote of the day—Jane C. Hu

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Staunch conservatives who reported feeling highly anxious after the Pulse shooting were more likely than less anxious conservatives to favor gun laws by around 40 percentage points. Highly anxious conservatives were 20 percentage points more likely than low-anxiety conservatives to think the government can prevent shootings. Liberals, on the other hand, were already likely to support gun control and to believe that the government could be effective in preventing shootings, so anxiety was less likely to change their beliefs.

Overall, the University of Kansas researchers conclude, anxiety leads to “a marked decline in ideological division.” In other words: post-shooting anxiety seemed to close the gap between liberal and conservative beliefs on gun regulation.

It’s not clear how long this effect would last after the initial shooting, but it suggests that the days immediately following a shooting might be the time people feel most compelled to act on gun legislation.

Jane C. Hu
September 21, 2018
The best time to talk about gun control is right after a shooting
[The study paper is here.

I find this very telling.

Hu regards achieving a particular end is more important than means. She is advocating people take advantage of people in a highly emotional state rather than let cooler heads and time arrive at a more reasoned plan.

This is evil and it should be treated as such.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Matt Walsh‏ @MattWalshBlog

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Republicans didn’t want Merrick Garland confirmed, so they just didn’t vote. Democrats don’t want Brett Kavanaugh confirmed, so they accuse him of serial gang rape. And that is the difference between Republicans and Democrats.

Matt Walsh‏  @MattWalshBlog
Tweeted on September 28, 2018
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Basedgreaser

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Cancer does tend to spread if untreated. Growing into every nook in our society to impose their world view because their success in politics falls short of their over ambitious and impatient expectations. What’s the treatment for people like that?

Two can’t play their game as doing so would not align with many of our principles

Seeing the state of many states gun laws in the US, our “game” isn’t working either.

Basedgreaser
Comment posted in Northwest Firearms on the topic Gun Control: An Issue for Policymakers or Investors?
September 27, 2018
[I don’t have any good answers beyond voting for the best candidates, contacting your political representatives, and taking new shooters to the range.

My best hope lies with an originalist majority on SCOTUS. And I’m only moderately hopeful of that working.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jennifer Granholm

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Right. And that actually corroborates Ford’s story.

Jennifer Granholm
September 23, 2018
CNN’s Jennifer Granholm Claims No Corroboration Actually Proves Claims Against Kavanaugh — Tucker Isn’t Buying It
[Context is important:

“Kavanaugh, Judge, Smith and her friend, Leland Keyser, have all said they don’t remember anything like this ever happening. And Leland Keyser, who says she believes Ford, said she doesn’t even remember being at a party where Kavanaugh was present,”  CNN’s Jake Tapper said in the video.

“Right, and that actually corroborates Ford’s story which is that she was so horrified by this that she kind of snuck out or slunk out of this apartment in a way that no one would know what happened because she was so utterly mortified,” Granholm followed up.

Tucker Carlson commented, “Are you following this at home? See if you can track the reasoning here. When you are corroborating witnesses can’t corroborate your story, the one you say they can corroborate, your story has still been corroborated — maybe even more so so.”

So… In response to finding out that all of those who are claimed to be witness to an event report no recollection of the event this mental giant, Granholm, insists this supports the claim the event actually happened. The question I would have asked her is, “So, if all four people reported the event did happen would this mean the event did not happen?”

Of course, we know the answer. Logical thought processes are not something they care about. It may even be they are incapable of them. It may be they have a mental disorder. It may be that they are so used to a supportive media they know it doesn’t matter what they say as long as it supports the narrative. It may be that because it was someone from her “tribe” making the, almost certainly, false claim that there was no way she could comfortably side against the false claim.

Monday evening daughter Jaime and I were discussing the Kavanaugh situation and I arrived at the conclusion that the political left has realized their political future is over if Kavanaugh’s appointment to SCOTUS is confirmed. With that a near certainty, the risk of losing support via crazy, and even illegal, behavior is the better option. From the chaos generated they may be able to avoid near certain political extinction.

Tribal loyalties, even when they didn’t always match reality, were evolutionarily advantageous. That doesn’t meant they were useful in determining truth from falsity. Determination of truth, and even reality, is an extremely tough problem. Our brains only have approximations of knowing reality. It has only been since the dark ages that we have succeeded in formalizing processes, with extreme difficulty, and proteolyzing these processes which usually work. Most people do not follow these processes and in many cases actively reject them. It is relatively easy to support the claim that reason is just a thin veneer over the human brain.

I suspect her mind worked back from the conclusion she had reached and this was the best way of rationalizing the conclusion from the available evidence. I have found there is no guarantee smart people will think logically. Smart people are frequently just more creative in their rationalizations.

When in positions of power these people are extremely dangerous. These are the type of people who can and will find a rationalization to commit genocide.—Joe]