Category Archives: Politics

Quote of the day—Patrick J. Buchanan

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… the media have played right into Trump’s hand.

They constantly denounce him as grossly insensitive for what he has said about women, Mexicans, Muslims, McCain and a reporter with a disability. Such crimes against decency, says the press, disqualify Trump as a candidate for president.

Yet, when they demand he apologize, Trump doubles down. And when they demand that Republicans repudiate him, the GOP base replies:

“Who are you to tell us whom we may nominate? You are not friends. You are not going to vote for us. And the names you call Trump — bigot, racist, xenophobe, sexist — are the names you call us, nothing but cuss words that a corrupt establishment uses on those it most detests.”

What the Trump campaign reveals is that, to populists and Republicans, the political establishment and its media arm are looked upon the way the commons and peasantry of 1789 looked upon the ancient regime and the king’s courtiers at Versailles.

Patrick J. Buchanan
December 3, 2015
Why Liberal Media Hate Trump
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ken White

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Republicans! Don’t get me started. You can’t sneer at constitutional rights for a decade and a half and then expect them to be a credible shield when you abruptly decide they matter again. With few exceptions, Republicans arguing about Second Amendment rights resemble a kid becoming a sudden rules-lawyer halfway through a game of Calvinball.

Ken White
December 7, 2015
Talking Productively About Guns
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Sympathy in this case is difficult

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The French have been working hard for years to show the Muslims that they mean them no harm. THAT, we are told, is how you get along in peace with people of other cultures, and if other people hate you then there must be a good reason; you need to look at yourself and see what you can do to make them stop hating you.

The French have also adopted the idea of massive violations of the right of honest citizens to keep and bear arms. Criminals will have whatever they want, but the honest must be disarmed.

Predictably then, we get this quote after last night’s coordinated jihad attacks in and around Paris. This was from someone at a rock concert;

“We lied down on the floor not to get hurt. It was a huge panic. The terrorists shot at us for 10 to 15 minutes. It was a bloodbath.” (That’s from CNN if you want to look. I’m not linking to them)

If all you can do is lie down and hope, while people around you are being shot, for 10 to 15 minutes, then your tactics suck. Dozens of people died on that scene, like the helpless sheep they worked so hard to become.

They’ve brought this upon themselves, I’m very sorry to say, and it’s difficult to have much sympathy for them. We’ve tried for years to warn them.

The left in the U.S. sees all this and says to themselves; “We totally need more multiculturalism and more gun control.” That attitude, that insanity, is the enemy as much as any jihadist, for it is that attitude that has emboldened the jihadists. They must be laughing their asses off at our stupidity.

We are at war

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Via a link on Facebook by Greg Hamilton we have pictures of the (fake) car bomb (see also here) the Islamic wannabe terrorist tried to detonate and murder 25,000 people in Portland Oregon in 2010:

PortlandBomber-FBI-1PortlandBomber-FBI-2
PortlandBomber-FBI-3PortlandBomber-FBI-4
PortlandBomber-FBI-5PortlandBomber-FBI-6
PortlandBomber-FBI-7PortlandBomber-FBI-8

To me, one of the more interesting parts of the story is this:

The evidence admitted at trial provided the public a rare glimpse at FBI techniques used in terrorism sting investigations. Most terrorism cases don’t go to trial; they often end in a guilty plea instead.

This is consistent with what Greg said on Facebook and what I have heard hints of before:

Dozens of these have been prevented. Some so early they never became a story.

Carry your gun. It almost for certain won’t help with a real car bomb but it could be very useful in a mass shooting incident.

War has been repeatedly declared on us by these people. We are at war whether you want to believe it or not.

Quote of the day—Lyle

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It’s just a labor camp, and work sets you free, so really they just want to set you free…

Lyle
December 2, 2015
Comment to Quote of the day—Comrade Enver Hoxha‏@ComradeEnver
[That is so twisted that it’s essentially true.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Geoff Garin

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Opposing common-sense gun safety laws either means that someone is too extreme or too much in the pocket of the gun lobby.

Geoff Garin
A pollster for Clinton’s 2008 campaign now with her super PAC, Priorities USA Action
November 6, 2015
Why Hillary Clinton Thinks Gun Control Can Win in 2016
[Via an email from Miles (a frequent commenter here).

As he also said in the email:

Yep, this is what they think of us. And if they’re this delusional, I hope thy keep thinking it.

While it’s clear the Democrats don’t have very strong presidential candidates and they are choosing their issues poorly I currently don’t see a lot of strength in their opposition. So I suspect it will be another one of those elections where many people will vote for the candidate who they think is the least evil.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Shabtai Shavit

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With this enemy, we have to push aside arguments on law, morality and comparisons of security and the rights of the individual. That means to do what they did in World War II to Dresden. They wiped it off the map. That is what has to be done to all the territorial enclaves that ISIS is holding.

Shabtai Shavit
Former chief of Mossad
November 15, 2015
Experts Explain How Global Powers Can Smash ISIS
[Opinions vary. Read the article for other views.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Sean Davis

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Democrats aren’t doing this because they think it’s the only possible way to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons. We know this because we’ve established that the attorney general already has all the power she needs to indict, arrest, convict, and sentence known, dangerous terrorists. Democrats are doing this because they think it will benefit them politically. In the wake of a massive terrorist attack on free, innocent people in Paris, Washington Democrats have decided that their real enemy isn’t ISIS. Just like Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton declared in a recent debate, their real enemies are Republicans.

And they’ll do whatever they can to defeat these dangerous electoral terrorists…even if it requires the wholesale elimination of the constitutional right to due process.

Sean Davis
Co-founder of The Federalist
November 23, 2015
Sorry Democrats, But There Is No ‘Loophole’ That Allows Terrorists To Legally Buy Guns
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

A religio-political tangent

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As much as there ever was a primary thread.

I’m working on another book. Well, three or four of them, nominally in parallel. Because one at a time would be to simple 8-0… Anyway, I’m not much of a biblical scholar, but there are a series of related topics that are not “easy look-up” sorts of subjects on Catholic church teachings, monastic order traditions, and canon that I need to know so I don’t make too many , er, “fundamental” errors on the faith and teachings. If you know something about the Bible, and perhaps are a regular church-goer who would like to see that a SF books gets the basic correct and would like to weigh in a few thoughts, head on over to Not A Biblical Scholar and add your two cents worth.

Quote of the day—Lisa Subeck

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Our nation has watched as community after community has had to confront the tragedies that occur when weapons designed to kill large numbers of people quickly get into the hands of a dangerous person. No Wisconsin community should ever have to face such a tragedy at the hands of someone armed with a semiautomatic assault weapon.

I can conceive of no legitimate reason that any citizen should need to own or use a semiautomatic assault weapon.

Lisa Subeck
State Representative, Democrat Wisconsin
Media release November 4, 2015.
[H/T to Barron for the email pointer.

I can think of many reasons why citizens should own and use the type of firearms she wishes to ban. And like a fish who doesn’t know what water is Ms. Subeck doesn’t have the imagination to recognized the most obvious reason. That is, the number one reason for owning and becoming skilled in the use of these type of firearms is to defend ourselves against people like her who are contemptuous of basic human rights.

In addition to the general stupidity of her media release her bill demonstrates she is clueless in many dimensions. Here, for example, is her description of the pistols to be banned from the proposed bill:

3.  A semiautomatic pistol that has the capacity to accept a detachable magazine and that has any of the following:
a.  A folding, telescoping, or thumbhole stock.
b.  A 2nd handgrip or protruding grip that can be held by the nontrigger hand.
c.  The capacity to accept an ammunition magazine that attaches to the pistol outside of the pistol grip.
d.  A threaded barrel capable of accepting a barrel extender, flash suppressor, forward handgrip, or silencer.
e.  A shroud that is attached to, or partially or completely encircles, the barrel, and that permits the user to hold the firearm with the nontrigger hand without being
burned.
f.  A manufactured weight of at least 50 ounces when the pistol is unloaded.

She has crap for brains and should be treated as such.

But the real lesson to remember from this is:

Under the bill, whoever transports, purchases, possesses, or transfers a semiautomatic assault weapon is guilty of a felony and may be fined up to $10,000, sentenced to a term of imprisonment of up to six years, or both.

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

Quote of the day—Vladimir Putin

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We should not apply any time limits. We should know them all by name. We will search for them everywhere, where ever they are hiding. We will find them in any spot on the planet and punish them.

Vladimir Putin
November 17, 2015
Putin vows payback after confirmation of Egypt plane bomb
[His definition of “punish” will have significant differences from that of our current president. It may well involve removing their entire family line from the gene pool.

The French and the Russians are probably in good agreement on the task at hand. France is asking “European allies” to join them. I expect Israel probably is interesting in cooperating as well. If ISIS follows through on their threat, The American Blood Is Best, and We Will Taste It Soon, then there may be sufficient motivation for our country to “achieve consensus” and put aside our differences with other nations and ally with them to achieve a more “lasting peace” with Islam.

We have the technology to do a much “better” job than we did in the past few hundred years we have been at war with them. If the political will to use it comes about things things will get very ugly.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Tom Trinko

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In the end, liberal identification with criminals leads to the police knowing that the politicians don’t have their backs and to a reduction in effective crime control. It’s not an accident that liberals disagree with Giuliani’s “Broken Window” policing philosophy, since liberals don’t seem to care about the victims of “petty” crimes.

We need to tell the American people, our friends and neighbors, the truth that liberals aren’t like honest folk instead liberals identify with criminals and therefore support laws that favor criminals over victims and society.

Tom Trinko
October 31, 2015
Why Liberals Identify with Criminals
[H/T to Ed Driscoll.

There is far more to this than Trinko elaborated on in his post. In The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 2: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, 1918-1956 by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn there is extensive reporting of how the criminal class was the natural ally of the communists because the criminals would steal from and murder those with property. I.E. those who bettered themselves above the “common person”. Also political heresy, ideas contrary to communist thought, was considered more dangerous than thieves and murders to the communists and were treated as such.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Matt Irwin

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Any politician who wants gun control should not only never make office, but should be banned from politics for life.

Matt Irwin
November 6, 2015
Comment to McAuliffe Attempts To Claim Virginia Loss Wasn’t Because Of Gun Control
[Of course. It’s no different than they wanted to implement speech, religion, or book control.—Joe]

Quote of the day—M-1

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On September 13, 1994 the Democrats passed the most restrictive federal gun control law in US history. On November 8, 1994, the Democrats suffered their second biggest defeat ever. As a result of a 54-seat swing in membership from Democrats to Republicans, the Republican Party gained a majority of seats in the United States House of Representatives for the first time since 1952 and a majority of votes for the first time since 1946. It was also the largest seat gain for the Republican Party since 1946.

In January 2014, Obama and the Democrats led the charge in further restricting our Civil Rights as numerated in the Bill of Rights by trying to pass an even more oppressive gun-control law than in 1994. On November 4, 2014, the elections resulted in the largest Republican majority in the entire country in nearly a century, with 54 seats in the Senate, 247 (56.78%) in the House, 31 governorships (62%), and 68 state legislative chambers. Moreover, Republicans gained their largest majority in the House since 1928, the largest majority in Congress overall since 1928, and the largest majority of state legislatures since 1928.

I pray the Democrats are so stupid to try it again!!!!!!!! Then you will only be able to see the Party named Democrats in the history books.

M-1
November 6, 2015
Comment to Democratic pollsters: Don’t blame gun control for Virginia loss
[There is more than a little exaggeration in the conclusion but I suspect a fair amount of truth too.—Joe]

Evolution is interesting

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From Why Hillary Clinton Thinks Gun Control Can Win in 2016:

Seven years ago, when Hillary Clinton was fighting a grueling Democratic primary battle against then-Sen. Barack Obama, she boasted of duck hunting and championed the Second Amendment. Clinton’s campaign in Indiana sent around negative mailers pasted with rifles, accusing Obama of being weak on gun rights. She talked of learning to shoot a gun as a child.

 

“You know, my dad took me out behind the cottage that my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton and taught me how to shoot when I was a little girl,” Clinton said in April 2008. “It’s part of culture. It’s part of a way of life. People enjoy hunting and shooting because it’s an important part of who they are.”

Now she says:

Today, Clinton’s calculus has changed. She has come out this campaign in favor of gun control measures with a vigor that surprised even some Democrats, targeting minorities and urban voters.

…

 

Clinton is helping shape the national debate about firearms, calling for a “national movement” to “stand up to the NRA” and lambasting Republicans for voting against gun control legislation.

I guess this must be “evolution” in action. I can’t imagine it is because she sees the potential for campaign money in taking a different position.

Random thought of the day

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I was listening to the audible version of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples: The Birth of Britain today and it was implied that the power of church of early Britain was restricted by enforcing vows of poverty. That might be a misunderstanding of mine because I was driving in heavy traffic at the time and wasn’t giving the book my full attention. But anyway, that suggested something to me.

I wonder if requirements of poverty and perhaps chastity for politicians would improve the character of those who seek public office. They currently take an oath of office to uphold the U.S. constitution. But that is ignored by 99+% of them. In part because what the constitution “really means” is subject to interpretation and opinion. It can’t really be measured with numbers all that easily. Income can be measured much less subjectively. The indirect bribes of “stock tips”, “loans”, and “donations to the foundation” would be more easily detected by the lifestyle they live if they were required to live a life of poverty after gaining public office.

Of course the downside would be that very capable people would be self deselected from the potential candidates. But if one is to claim that politicians are self serving and government is too large and powerful. Such a requirement would change the character of the politicians in many that is in the generally correct direction.

Quote of the day—Richard Beary

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Talking about firearms now is like talking about race. These are difficult conversations, and people get very polarized on each side of it.

Richard Beary
Chief of police for the University of Central Florida
President of the International Association of Chiefs of Police
October 9, 2015
Gun Debate Divides Nation’s Police Officers, Too
[Also of interest from the same article:

Jennifer Carlson, an American sociologist at the University of Toronto who studies police attitudes toward gun laws, says this divide has grown since the 1990s. A generation ago, she says, police chiefs made a common cause of legislation such as the Assault Weapons Ban and the Brady bill.

“And now you’ve really seen police not taking as much as a unified stance, at least publicly,” she says. “That’s been a major shift.”

She thinks this may have something to do with the expansion of concealed handgun permits, which gun rights groups pushed for especially hard starting in the late 1990s. Police chiefs initially resisted the expansion of the gun permits, but Carlson says many of them changed their minds when they saw that increased permits didn’t cause a big increase in shootings.

Back in the 90s there were discussions about whether the concealed carry permits were something we should push for or not. The argument boiled down to “The 2nd Amendment is my carry permit”. If we concede that we have to ask permission to carry a gun they can, at some later time, deny us that permission. The only principled thing to do is to push for “Vermont carry”.

Had we gone the “principled” versus practical route my guess is we would be in a much worse situation than now. Now we have concealed carry in all states and are making progress toward constitutional carry in a significant number of states. We made progress because we were able to change the culture. We were able to change the culture at the national level because we were able to show we could be trusted with guns in public in states that were gun friendly.

I despise politics because principals and rules (such as the constitution) simply don’t matter. But politics is how laws are changed and politics are the art of the practical and the possible. And that is the path to victory. You do whatever works to get closer to your goal. You get acceptance from the culture. Then you do it again to get another step closer to your goal.—Joe]

Quote of the day—David Hardy

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It’s just a ploy to pick up the pro-gun vote, with a promise that she’d support repeal of GCA 68 and enactment of 50-State constitutional carry, plus a $10,000 gift to each gun owner, so long as we self-verify that we have no plans to commit a crime.

David Hardy
October 9, 2015
Hillary compares dealing with NRA to negotiating with Iran
[I LOL’d.

But the reality is that Hillary is saying she regards the NRA and gun owners as terrorists and if she acquires the power she will treat us as such.—Joe]

Civil disobedience

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The American People elected a handy Republican majority in Congress, in part to repeal Obama Care. Republicans ran, and were elected, based on that promise. Then they turned tail as soon as they were sworn in. They lied. As a Party, they lied.

We are now faced with the a representation system, as a means of redress of grievances, as a means of carrying out the will of the People with regard to upholding and protecting human liberty, which has failed. With Boehner’s recent stunt of shutting down an election for a new Speaker, the Republican Party is clearly maintaining its practice of running interference for the Progressives (incremental communists), and so there is no apparent correction in sight for this situation.

That leaves us with one option left before we get out our guns; civil disobedience. Refuse to take part in ObamaCare. Don’t even acknowledge it. There are ways of dealing with this, which your accountant/tax preparer, if he’s any good at all, can discuss with you.

Some Americans, as I type this, are in the Middle East in harm’s way, taking smallarms fire, in their attempts to save some of the Christians who are under attack and being killed for no reason other than their faith. They are risking, and some will lose, their lives in standing up for what’s right. I think we can risk getting a few letters in the mail, don’t you? I’m looking forward to it.

Quote of the day—Winston Churchill

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Here was another trading centre, to which high civic rank had been accorded. A like total slaughter and obliteration was inflicted. “No less”, according to Tacitus, “than seventy thousand citizens and allies were slain” in these three cities. “For the barbarians would have no capturing, no selling, nor any kind of traffic usual in war; they would have nothing but killing, by sword, cross, gibbet, or fire.” These grim words show us an inexpiable war like that waged between Carthage and her revolted mercenaries two centuries before. Some high modern authorities think these numbers are exaggerated; but there is no reason why London should not have contained thirty or forty thousand inhabitants, and Cochester and St Albans between them about an equal number. If the butcheries in the countryside are added the estimate of Tacitus may well stand. This is probably the most horrible episode which our Island has known. We see the crude and corrupt beginnings of a higher civilisation blotted out by the ferocious uprising of the native tribes. Still, it is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land the live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders’ hearth.

Winston Churchill
1956
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples: The Birth of Britain
[People like to believe the human race has been “civilized” for some time and mass killings and incredible cruelty are an aberration or an artifact of a particular race or religion. I don’t see it that way. I see “civilization” as a thin veneer which barely contains the true nature of people. I’ve heard people claim the atrocities of the 20th century with many tens of millions of murdered by their government will not happen again because “we have learned better”. I call B.S. on that.

Here we have Winston Churchill claiming, “It is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders’ hearth.”

This should serve as a stern warning to those who would invade a land and the natives who would aid the invaders. I’m not sure where I read it, it might have been The Good Earth, but it went something to the effect of “If you kill a man’s father he will hate you. If you take his land he will kill you.”

Invaders from whatever distant land, be it another continent or the out of touch politicians in Washington D.C. who view the property of others as plunder should study history. They should not count upon the permanence of the good nature of a society when they plunder their property. There is a threshold beyond which the thin veneer of “civilization” is removed and a terrible, bloodthirsty, barbarian emerges.—Joe]