Category Archives: Politics

Deception and trickery

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From Firearms Policy Coalition in California:

Earlier this morning, Senate and Assembly Democrats “gutted and amended” 4 bills that were stalled and changed them into 4 brand new, ANTI-GUN measures.

“Gutting and amending” is the controversial practice of stripping out a measure’s contents and replacing it with entirely new language, for a new issue, well into the legislative process.

Here is a list of the new bills and what they will do:

  • AB 156: Formerly dealt with global warming, but now places restrictions on ammunition and will be authored by Asm. Kevin McCarty and Sen. Kevin deLeón.
  • AB 857: Formerly addressed greenhouse gasses, but now restricts curios, relics, and home-built firearms. It will be authored my Asm. Jim Cooper and Sen. Kevin de Leon.
  • AB 1135: Formerly centered around creating the Kings River East Groundwater Sustainability Agency, but is now a broad gun ban. This will now be authored by Assemblymembers Marc Levine and Phil Ting.
  • AB 1511: Formerly dealt with energy conservation, but now criminalizes loaning firearms. It is now authored by Asm. Miguel Santiago.

In doing this, they have totally skirted the legislative process. It is shameful that elitist politicians would invoke such secretive procedures in an effort to shove even more gun control down our throats.

But it is not surprising.

Correct. This sort of thing is what we have come to expect. I watched with shock and incredible anger as the Speaker of the House keep the voting open for an extra 10 or 15 minutes past the vote expiration time to get enough votes for the Federal “Assault Weapon” ban in 1994. The Hughes Amendment, banning new sales of machine guns, was “passed” on a voice vote in the early morning hours despite requests for a recorded vote. The anti-gun people have a long and sordid history lies and deception. It is just how they do business.

I can overlook the ignorance of the average “person on the street” who is anti-gun. But I know the politician and anti-gun groups continuously engage in deception and trickery to get their way. I do not forgive them. They should be prosecuted.

Quote of the day—Sebastian

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I’m becoming more convinced that free people need a frontier, because without one, eventually, the meddlers, swindlers, and sycophants of the world catch-up to us.

Sebastian
April 25, 2016
Science Nerd Post: Reactionless Drive
[I’m in general agreement but things will have to get a lot worse here before living on a distant rock under a dome with a huge portion of your economic output consumed just to stay alive. And without an industrial base to produce medicine, electronics, vehicles, buildings, I can’t see it being able to be independent and have anything approaching the quality of life we have here.

If there were a terraformed planet with a population of a million or more with incredibly accessible natural resources I could see it being plausible. But it becomes a chicken and egg problem. Terraforming and industry building robots might be the answer. I remain a skeptic for now and believe the better, at least short-term, option is to fix things on our existing rock.—Joe]

The political currency of the left

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As everyone expects May 1st is a day of violence in Seattle:

Hurling rocks, bricks and even Molotov cocktails, anti-capitalist protesters clashed with police in downtown Seattle Sunday, as May Day mayhem erupted again following a peaceful march.

By 10:30 p.m., at least five officers had been injured and at least nine people had been arrested, Seattle police reported. One injured officer suffered a gash to his head when he was struck by a rock.

Police said Monday that all five officers were at home recovering from their injuries.

The city unleashed a massive deployment of police officers in riot gear — on foot, on bicycles, on horseback and in vehicles — to control the crowd of dozens of masked-protesters who began massing in Westlake Park for the unpermitted march shortly after 5 p.m.

This is across the street from where I used to work. I’m glad I don’t work there anymore.

As soon as they started lighting up the Molotov cocktails I would have given the green light to the snipers. But this is Seattle and they like communists.

Notice they call them “anti-capitalists”? They want to avoid associating lawless, violent, behavior with their political leanings.

These people can’t win a debate with ideas. The can’t demonstrate a better way of life in the places their ideas have been implemented. What do they have left? Violence. It’s the political currency of the left. And it’s why we need our guns.

Quote of the day—Jay Caruso

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Harriet Tubman was an American hero. A gun-toting, no nonsense, devout Christian spy who fought during her retirement to obtain better treatment for African-American soldiers. She was a remarkable woman and totally deserves a place on our currency.

Jay Caruso
April 22, 2016
What You Might Not Know About Harriet Tubman, Gun-Toting Slave Liberator
[I’m good with Tubman replacing Jackson on the $20. I would have rather it been Ayn Rand and dumping Hamilton, but Rand isn’t going to get serious consideration anytime soon. And I’m not a huge fan of Jackson either.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Emmett Rensin

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The wages of smug is Trump.

Nothing is more confounding to the smug style than the fact that the average Republican is better educated and has a higher IQ than the average Democrat. That for every overpowered study finding superior liberal open-mindedness and intellect and knowledge, there is one to suggest that Republicans have the better of these qualities.

Most damning, perhaps, to the fancy liberal self-conception: Republicans score higher in susceptibility to persuasion. They are willing to change their minds more often.

The Republican coalition tends toward the center: educated enough, smart enough, informed enough.

Emmett Rensin
Deputy First Person editor at Vox
April 21, 2016
The smug style in American liberalism
[This is from Vox!

H/T Kevin Baker.

We live in interesting times.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Glenn Reynolds

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Fracking: Helping Middle America at the expense of dictators. No wonder lefties hate it.

Glenn Reynolds
January 15, 2016
FRACKING: IMPOVERISHING THE SAUDIS AND RUSSIANS AND IRANIANS WHILE PUTTING MONEY IN AMERICAN POCKETS.
[I could add more reasons but I can see this being a significant component. Of course they wouldn’t put it in terms of “expense of dictators”. <sarcasm> The dictators are really representatives of the people in an utopian seeking country and U.S. capitalists are harming “the people” to satisfy corporate greed. </sarcasm>—Joe]

Quote of the day—Tyler Durden

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King Obama sees political trends he doesn’t like, knows that Congress can’t do anything about it because the public doesn’t want it to, so he does it by himself by executive decree.

Tyler Durden
January 9, 2016
Americans’ Positive Perception Of NRA Soars As Obama Escalates Gun-Control Agenda
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Lily Tang Williams

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If you believe more gun control by your government is going to save lives, you are being naïve. The champion of all the mass killings in this world is always a tyrannical government.

Where I came from, China had killed thousands of the students by its own government during the massacre of Tian An Men square in 1989. I surely wish my fellow Chinese citizens back then had guns like this one I am holding in the picture.

I am a Chinese immigrant and an American citizen by choice. I once was a slave before and I will never be one again.

I will always stand with my AR, no matter what my President signs with his pen.

LilyTangWilliams20160105

Lily Tang Williams
Facebook post on January 5, 2016

Quote of the day—Thomas Jefferson

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I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions indeed generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.

Thomas Jefferson
James Madison, Paris
January 30, 1787
From Monticello.org A little rebellion
[Yeah. Like that is going to happen. President Lincoln and his close followers were reasonably mild in their punishment of the rebellion of the southern states. But he was a Republican and an unusual one at that.

We do not currently have a government in “sound health”. These days I imagine a rebellion would most likely occur under a President Hillary Clinton. I would expect the rebellion would either succeed or the rebels genetic material would be wiped from the planet, their property turned to ash, and their lands salted so heavily plants could not grow for a 100 years.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Grimaldi and Ballhaus

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All told, the Clinton Foundation and its affiliates have collected donations and pledges from all sources of more than $1.6 billion, according to their tax returns.

James V. Grimaldi and Rebecca Ballhaus
February 19, 2016
Hillary Clinton’s Complex Corporate Ties
[Via President Killary and Hillary Clinton Exposed Part 1 – How She Aggressively Lobbied for Mega Corporations as Secretary of State.

$21.6 million in “speaking fees” from from Goldman-Sachs, and other Wall Street firms and special interest groups during 2013-2015. As well as over a billion and a half dollars in corporate donations to her foundation. That explains how she “reflects common people’s concerns and problems” and yet I’ve been told I can’t possibly relate to other people because I’m a privileged white male.

I’m glad I finally have that figured out.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Noah Rothman

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Owen took his vision to Indiana where he pursued a radical new experiment in social organization. In 1824, he purchased an existing settlement and founded the town of New Harmony. This was a truly socialistic society in which private property itself was done away with. The fate that befell New Harmony is a familiar one. The idealists who were attracted to this communal society were intellectuals and experts, and not the workers whose lots he had so hoped to better. Productivity collapsed. Industries that had once thrived under Johann Georg Rapp – a German philosopher and leader of a religious sect called Harmonists who initially founded the settlement – withered or collapsed entirely. Within two years, and following a substantial amount of instability and tumult, the experiment failed. To account for this disaster, Owen did what all revolutionary socialists have done ever since in order to exculpate themselves for failure: he blamed the ignoble character of the participants in his great experiment.

Noah Rothman
April 14, 2016
The Character of a Socialist
[And as we have seen in dozens of other places like Cambodia, USSR, and Communist China when the intellectuals try to remake the character of man or eliminate the “limiters”, all in the name of doing good, to make progress, the death toll rises into the tens of millions.—Joe]

Quote of the day—M.E.

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Perhaps this is almost too obvious/tautological/stupid to say, but although widespread change must eventually reach the majority, it does not often start there. Writer Rebecca Solnit put it this way:

Ideas at first considered outrageous or ridiculous or extreme gradually become what people think they’ve always believed. How the transformation happened is rarely remembered, in part because it’s compromising: it recalls the mainstream when the mainstream was, say, rabidly homophobic or racist in a way it no longer is; and it recalls that power comes from the shadows and the margins, that our hope is in the dark around the edges, not the limelight of center stage. Our hope and often our power.

I understand this, but thing that has always bothered the sociopath in me is the collective amnesia that everyone experiences. No one admits, I used to be homophobic but then I realized I was wrong. Instead there is rampant hypocrisy. There is no humility. There is no healthy skepticism of their feelings of moral certainty. The moral certainty just shifts beliefs, from anti to pro or vice versa.

M.E.
April 1, 2016
Changing our minds
[I read M.E. because of the insights she has into the population at large and to a certain extent her self analysis. She, in essence, has no empathy for other people and tries to make rational sense of their actions. Because of her somewhat unique viewpoint she sees the nonsensical behavior and can generalize more quickly than I do. I find it fascinating to catch a glimpse of the world through her eyes.

The shifting of moral certainty applies to so many things. Gun ownership, religion, freedom of speech, due process, enumerated powers of the government, recreational drug use, equal rights for women, global cooling/warming/climate-change etc. People, in general, do not know and/or care to distinguish truth from falsity or right from wrong. They “just know”.

Politicians take advantage of this and claim political positions which they believe will yield the most votes. Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Chavez, and many others in all countries were extremely popular in the beginning and in hindsight extraordinarily disastrous. It shouldn’t have taken hindsight. And with so many examples in history it shouldn’t take hindsight to see the errors being made today. But yet it appears to be the case.

Why is this? I think there are only three relatively easy to discern conditions necessary to predict the worst of, but of course not all, disasters.

  1. Many political options can be eliminated as “a bad idea” with very little analysis. But they are not eliminated because they are the same political options that are among the most powerful vote getters in a population that is unable to distinguish truth from falsity.
  2. A government which has essentially no limits on power.
  3. High social and/or economic stress.

When such a government is directed by people who either have no interest and/or ability to distinguish truth from falsity then disaster is nearly inevitable. It can easily become a powerful monster with an agenda of destruction with absolute moral certainty.

Welcome to the current political world of the United States.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Carry Sword in France

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Because-as society evolves, governments can no longer deal effectively with violence ever-present in our streets. Because-all citizens should have the right to defend itself, to ensure its security when the forces of order are absent or impotent. We French of all backgrounds, faiths and political tendencies united in this petition are asking the legitimate right to carry a firearm.

Carry Sword in France.
We ask the government to order the establishment of a decree authorizing all citizens to be entitled to carry a firearm in France
[I’m not sure about the organization, the date, and the translation in general, but the sentiment is fairly clear.

As Paul Koning said, “If that petition succeeds, the French will have a concealed carry system about as friendly as that of California. I suppose it’s a start.”

H/T to Andrew Benghazi.—Joe]

1990 interview of Donald Trump

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I found this 1990 interview of Donald Trump fascinating. He wasn’t trying to get votes at the time and perhaps it gives us better insight into his, if he has any, basic principles.

Quote of the day—Alan Korwin

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The left can’t pass any common-sense gun legislation because they aren’t proposing any.

Alan Korwin
March 21, 2016
KORWIN: Moderate Judges, Armed Teachers And Guns Are Germs – Three Myths We Just Busted
[Korwin has a way with words that dramatically clarifies the issue.—Joe]

Suicide and guns

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Washington State just passed a law regarding suicide by gun. As I started read the first article on the topic I was highly skeptical:

My husband died by suicide. Here’s what happened during my awkward call with the NRA.

It wasn’t the hardest phone call I’ve ever made, but it was certainly awkward. I was cold-calling the National Rifle Association. Because the NRA is well-known for offering gun safety training, I wanted to know whether the organization had ideas on how to reduce the number of firearm suicides.

…

But I learned a couple of surprising things from that call and the many follow-up meetings with a local NRA lobbyist and the executive director of the Second Amendment Foundation.

First, they were not just willing to talk but also willing to listen.

The details of the law are here. The voting is telling:

Passed by the House March 8, 2016  Yeas 94  Nays 2

Passed by the Senate March 1, 2016  Yeas 47  Nays 0

Basically the law requires a task force, in part, to:

(a) Develop and prepare to disseminate online trainings on suicide awareness and prevention for firearms dealers and their employees and firearm range owners and their employees;
(b) In consultation with the department of fish and wildlife, review the firearm safety pamphlet produced by the department of fish and wildlife under RCW 9.41.310 and, by January 1, 2017, recommend changes to the pamphlet to incorporate information on suicide awareness and prevention;
(c) Develop suicide awareness and prevention messages for posters and brochures that are tailored to be effective for firearms owners for distribution to firearms dealers and firearm ranges;
(d) Develop suicide awareness and prevention messages for posters and brochures for distribution to pharmacies;
(e) In consultation with the department of fish and wildlife, develop strategies for creating and disseminating suicide awareness and prevention information for hunting safety classes, including messages to parents that can be shared during online registration, in either follow up electronic mail communications, or in writing, or both;

Yes. It addresses pharmacies as well as firearms owners, dealers, and ranges. It looks like it has the potential to be a good program that truly tries to address the problem of suicide in a fair handed manner and not just something to demonize gun ownership. Others think so as well:

A couple of years ago, Stuber began reaching out to firearms retailers and asking them if they worried about the possibility of selling a gun to someone who might be suicidal. Virtually every employee she spoke with, she said, answered yes. With some trepidation, Stuber called the National Rifle Association and Gottlieb’s group to enlist their help in reducing firearm suicides. To her surprise, they were willing to talk, and also listen.

“There’s real hurt,” she said. “Everybody showed up at the table willing to share their pain. This is an issue that impacts all of us.”

Forefront, the NRA and the Second Amendment Foundation met with groups including the Seattle Police Department and the Department of Fish and Wildlife over about six months to draft the language for the initiative. Rep. Tina Orwall, D-Des Moines, the bill’s main sponsor, was instrumental in getting the legislation passed, Stuber said.

About 20 other states have taken steps to bring together suicide prevention advocates and gun owners, Stuber said, but none of those efforts are as broad as the Washington bill. Gottlieb thinks the initiative could become a successful model that can be replicated in other states.

“Lots of us in the firearms rights community have been concerned that a significant percentage of suicides involve lethal force,” he said. “If there’s a way to lower those numbers, it’s in gun owners’ interest to do that. To me, this is a no-brainer, but it took someone like Jenn to put it together.”

Quote of the day—Sean Barney

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We will ban military-style assault weapons and large capacity ammunition clips.

Sean Barney
Delaware candidate for U.S. Congress (D)
April 7, 2016
Barney hopes to make gun control an issue
See his complete position on ADDRESSING GUN VIOLENCE.
[He also wants to eliminate the default proceed if the FBI doesn’t complete the NICS check within three days. This would enable people in Washington D.C. to halt all gun sales in the entire country by simply sending NICS employees home. Imagine a government shutdown for a few days or weeks. Imagine budget cutting. Imagine “technical problems” in doing the background checks.

And don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Richard Feldman

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Someone ought to present both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton with the joint “Salesmen Award of the Decade.”

They have collectively achieved what advertisers could only dream about. Their ill-informed, uninformed and intentionally misinformed, anti-gun rhetoric is a caustic shot directly across our bow. If it’s political jihad that they want to wage on this, the most quintessential of all American domestic issues, then it’s political jihad they shall receive.

Richard Feldman
March 23, 2016
Richard Feldman: Obama’s Gun Issue Misfires on Hillary
[In related news:

Political jihad over guns in November? Only if Hillary isn’t in shackles by then.—Joe]

Hypotheses to test

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It’s not a scientific study by any means, but this article from the New York Times could be used to generate a good hypothesis worthy of being tested:

“Our cities are facing a huge problem, maybe the largest since World War II,” Mr. Goldstein said. “How is it that people who were born here in Brussels, in Paris, can call heroes the people who commit violence and terror? That is the real question we’re facing.”

Friends who teach the equivalent of high school seniors in the predominantly Muslim districts of Molenbeek and Schaerbeek told him that “90 percent of their students, 17, 18 years old, called them heroes,” he said.

Mr. Goldstein, 38, grew up in Schaerbeek, the child of Jewish refugees from Nazism. Now a councilman from Schaerbeek, he is also chief of staff for the minister-president of the Brussels Capital Region.

I could see the hypothesis worthy of test being something like:

  • Most Muslims in Europe are peaceful and tolerant
  • Those who commit terrorism and violence do not represent Islam in Europe

I could also see the politically correct crowd insisting that it is racist and Islamophobic to even test such a hypothesis while simultaneously insisting the quote above is proof Jews are racists.

My take on things is that there is a huge problem in Europe that to a greater or lesser degree extends over the entire globe and there are no good solutions. There are only painful remedies and pragmatic tradeoffs which will challenge our principles to their core.

Quote of the day—Hillary Clinton

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That he would place gun manufacturers’ rights and immunity from liability against the parents of the children killed at Sandy Hook is just unimaginable to me.

Hillary Clinton
April 6, 2016
Clinton Hits Sanders on Gun Control, Sharpens Attacks
[Why not the car manufacturer that the killer drove to the school? Or the clothing manufacturer? And I’m shocked she didn’t mention the ammunition manufacturer.

It’s unimaginable to me how someone could believe that the manufacturer of a product should be liable for its deliberate, criminal, misuse. But then I suspect real issue is that Clinton “thinks” in terms of politics rather than factual or logical terms. She knows that her claim will gain her favor with certain voters and that is all that matters to her.

It’s easy for us to think she is talking crazy talk and has crap for brains. But she is a practiced, deceptive, predator who has lived a lifetime benefiting from saying things that are unsupported by facts or logic. She will continue her path of deception and destruction until she is stopped. I prefer she ends up in shackles before she is nominated but I’ll settle for an defeat at the polls in November.—Joe]