Category Archives: Politics

Quote of the day—F. A. Hayek

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There can be little doubt that man owes some of his greatest suc­cesses in the past to the fact that he has not been able to control so­cial life. His continued advance may well depend on his deliber­ately refraining from exercising controls which are now in his power. In the past, the spontane­ous forces of growth, however much restricted, could usually still assert themselves against the or­ganized coercion of the state. With the technological means of control now at the disposal of government, it is not certain that such assertion is still possible; at any rate, it may soon become impossible. We are not far from the point where the deliberately organized forces of society may destroy those spon­taneous forces which have made advance possible.

F. A. Hayek
October 1, 1960
The Case for Freedom
[The size and scope of our government has penetrated to depth in our society far beyond what Hayek could have reasonably foreseen in 1960. The banning of certain toilets, shower heads, and light bulbs is just the tip of the iceberg. The use of “eminent domain” to take your property and give it to another, the banning of larger than average soft drinks, and the banning of firearm accessories are just the tip of the same iceberg. The thousands of pages of law and regulations churned out each year are just the tip of the same iceberg.

Our vehicles license plates are scanned by police cars as they drive by, our cell phone positions are tracked, our phone call metadata is stored for use against us, the IRS has been weaponized and is used against political opponents, and drone are ready and able to drop a bomb on your location if the administration believes you to be a threat to national security.

It is easy to argue that “the deliberately organized forces of society” will destroy, or essentially has destroyed, the spontaneous forces of which Hayek speaks. Furthermore it is not farfetched to claim the only viable option at this point is to protect yourself and those close to you as best you can and prepare to rebuild from the ruins of the coming collapse.

I hope we can learn from what I fear is a lesson of staggering magnitude. Then, if the time comes, we must rebuild upon a foundation of solid political and economic philosophical principles. The works of Hayek are almost certainly part of that foundation.—Joe]

Units and measures; the milliHelen

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Fred;
“That amount of beauty necessary to launch one ship”

Check your privilege

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Translation; Check (stop or reduce) your objectivity

The more objective person has great advantages over the less objective person, and those advantages will be seen by the less objective person as threatening, unfair and oppressive. The less objective person thus sees the more objective as aggressors, imposing all manner of suffering upon the less objective.

It has two great benefits to the ego of the less objective. It reduces the comparative advantage of being objective (thus providing “Social Justice”), and it absolves the less objective of responsibility for their foolishness.

Since it requires a great deal more objectivity (which the less objective hate with a burning passion, much as a vampire would hate the sunlight) to convince the less objective to become more objective, the situation is a sort of Catch-22.

The classic definition of such is paranoia, but I see it more as a convenient method of control, by the less objective, of the more objective. A form of bullying from below, if you will.

So long as we entertain the foolishness of the less objective in any way whatsoever, we are being controlled by, and we are thus encouraging and empowering, the foolish. Our entertaining the foolish comes from our unwillingness to become the targets of their naked outrage. It is cowardice. When we know better, and do it anyway, we deserve everything that results (which will of course be horrible).

When satire is indistinguishable from reality

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From Ken White we have a Leaked Northwestern University Email States Rules For Title IX Investigations which includes this among other things:

Classes on the American court system, civil rights and civil liberties, and criminal justice may continue so long as professors emphasize to their students that they are participating an an anthropological study of a profoundly sexist and cisgender-biased system and that no positive normative judgment is intended.

I’m in complete agreement with commenter AddictionMyth who said:

I understand that satire is protected by the First Amendment. But this was insufficiently parodic to avoid being confusing. At least, I didn’t laugh. Not once.

Quote of the day—Paul Barrett

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More than nonlawyers would expect, the justices are fair-weather textualists, demanding strict adherence to congressional language when it suits them and inferring hidden implications when that’s more convenient.

Paul Barrett
June 1, 2015
What the Abercrombie Bias Case Might Mean for Obamacare
[Not only more than what we expect but far more than what we can tolerate.

When they are inconsistent we don’t know what the “law” is at the time you make your life choices. Can you really call it “law” when it depends on the whim of someone in a black robe a thousand miles and years removed from the scene and time of the “crime”? In order for the law to be just it must be knowable at the time you make your choices.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Admiral John Geary

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We always look at it backwards, don’t we?

…

People are always talking about demanding more and better performance from elected officials. But when you get right down to it, shouldn’t a democracy demand more and better performance from the citizen who vote?

Admiral John Geary
The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Leviathan by Jack Campbell.
[He’s got a point.

One would think there being stringent requirements before you were allowed to vote would be the best approach. But that method was abused in times past and probably will not be a viable option for quite some time, if ever. The next best thing would seem to be educating the voters and discouraging uneducated citizens from voting. But then the side that encourages uneducated voters to vote for them wins.

I’m at a loss as to how best to solve the problem.

As a side note, I have really enjoyed Campbell’s Lost Fleet series. I love the space battles which take into account relativistic effects, momentum, and large fleets with sub formations. He does a good job on psychology of different people too.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jody Powell

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As much as I hate to say it, the NRA is effective primarily because it is largely right when it claims that most gun control laws inconvenience and threaten the law-abiding while having little or no impact on violent crime or criminals.

Jody Powell
Former President Carter press aide
January 1994
George Stephanopoulos sought gun control debate in Bill Clinton administration
[H/T David Hardy.

Gun rights advocates have been saying this for at least five decades. The Clinton administration knew this over two decades ago. If you listened carefully to the anti-gun politicians and even most of the leaders of the anti-gun organizations you would find they use evasive wording when they talk about gun control. It was, and still is, very clear they know gun control doesn’t and can’t reduce violent crime. I’m certain the Obama administration knows this as well.

So what is the real reason they advocate for gun control?

Whatever the answer is, it can’t be good.—Joe]

This is true

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I’m unable to determine if this is a true story about someone else or some sort of joke webpage. But as applied to me the conclusions presented are absolutely true:

Presidential bid by Joe Huffman unlikely

Lack of name ID, fundraising hurdles are practically insurmountable for Huffman

The 2016 campaign for President is heating up, but Joe Huffman is likely to spend this race on the sidelines.

Based on the field of would-be Presidential candidates, it appears Huffman is already too far behind to mount a credible campaign, and for that reason would be unlikely to jump into the fray.

“Joe Huffman simply doesn’t have the name identification of Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush or any of the other top-tier candidates. And can Huffman raise a billion dollars of campaign cash in the next 18-months? Frankly, I’m skeptical. I say this all with due respect for Huffman and their family.”

Joe Huffman’s net worth would need to be competitive with that of Clinton or Bush, or they would need to have many wealthy, generous supporters to finance a credible presidential campaign.

Opposition researchers investigate all candidates’ backgrounds, hoping to find negative potential issues like an arrest, divorce, bankruptcy, affairs, girlfriend / boyfriend, mug shot, etc. If there were such issues for any potential candidate, that would be a challenge to overcome. For example, George W. Bush overcame the disclosure of an arrest for driving while intoxicated (DUI or DWI) in 2000 and was elected President.

While some may discount the possibility of Huffman jumping into the 2016 Presidential race, there remains a path Huffman could follow should they decide to run.

I’m sure there are many people who will be quite relieved. Why? We have to keep our priorities straight. I wouldn’t have time for Boomershoot next year if I were seriously campaigning.

Quote of the day—Ronald Reagan

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The starting point must be the Constitution, because, above all, we are a nation of laws and the foundation for our laws, or lack of same, is the Constitution. It is amazing to me how so many people pay lip service to the Constitution, yet set out to twist and distort it when it stands in the way of things they think ought to be done or laws they believe ought to be passed. It is also amazing to me how often our courts do the same thing.

Ronald Reagan
September 1975
Editorial, Guns & Ammo
[From Proclaiming Liberty: What Patriots and Heroes Really Said About the Right to Keep and Bear Arms by Philip Mulivor.

I was struck by how closely what Ted Cruz said a couple years ago matches what Reagan said decades earlier:

For a long time, a whole bunch of Democrats and unfortunately even some Republicans have been passing laws in this body without even asking where the basis is in the Constitution, and I think the Constitution should be the starting point for everything Congress does.

I agree with the sentiment but the cancer has spread so deep into the fabric of our society that rapidly ripping out the tumors would result in massive hemorrhaging. A slow removal almost certainly result in the tumor metastasizing and changing form to embed itself even deeper and perhaps more threating to the “patient”.

I’m nearly certain there is “too fast” and “too slow”. But what is “just right”?—Joe]

Quote of the day—Hillary Clinton

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I will also work to reinstate the assault weapons ban. We had it during the 1990s.

Hillary Clinton
April 16, 2008
Democratic Debate in Philadelphia
[See also some of the other stuff she has said about your rights.

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

Quote of the day—Brad R. Torgersen

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Sarah Hoyt — born in Portugal, naturalized to the U.S. — has seen this kind of thing before. It’s the old Stalinist-Marxist mentality which Sarah got to see up close and personal. It’s the mentality my former boss (who was a refugee from Soviet-era Poland) knew all too well, too. Frankly, any time I talk about the 21st century American fascination with political correctness, refugees from the Marxist countries recognize it instantly: the collective effort to control and dictate what is and is not permissible to say, or to think, or to feel, including who you can and cannot associate with; lest you be hauled before the commissars to be tried for guilt-by-association.

Fear is their weapon.

Brad R. Torgersen
April 12, 2015
Flaming rage nozzles of tolerance
[Solzhenitsyn has written about this too.

This mindset must not be allowed to dominate politics. The body count racked up by this mindset during the 20th century was in the hundreds of millions. We must prevent a repeat performance in the 21st century.

This is why I do Boomershoot.—Joe]

Quote of the day—John Hinderaker

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How can you tell which minorities it is proper to satirize? By whether they are likely to shoot you, apparently. Trudeau spent his career unfairly attacking Republicans, so he never had to worry.

John Hinderaker
April 12, 2015
Punching Down and Shooting Back
[As Glenn Reynolds said, “I keep warning people about this incentive system, and they keep not listening.”—Joe]

Quote of the day—Roberta X

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Don’t kid yourself that you’re in the clear because of your ancestors; it wasn’t just Jews, and the others weren’t all gay or gypsies, either: the politically unpopular got one-way trips, too.  Once a nation starts down that path, each step into evil is easier than the one before.

You don’t have to like politics, but you’ve gotta keep an eye on it.  No matter who you are.

Roberta X
April 15, 2015
Holocaust Remembrance Day
[The German people of the late 1930’s and early 1940’s are best known for their evil behavior but the Russians while Stalin was in power easily eclipsed the German body count. The Chinese killed millions at various times during the 20th Century. The Rwanda genocide wasn’t on the same scale in absolute numbers but may have account for as much as 20% of the population. The examples are incredibly and depressingly numerous.

There is one thing governments, of any type of people, do very well and that is killing people. We have lots of government in this country and it going to require lots of attention until we can get it back down to the originally designed limits. The stakes are incredibly high if it goes totally malignant.

This is Why Boomershoot. It’s next weekend. Be there if you can. You can be part of the solution if things go really bad.—Joe]

Quote of the day—William Kirkland

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Liberals today are wrong to see contemporary issues like gun control and climate change as surfing on an inevitable wave of progress. Rather, these issues are boats piloted by committed activists who steer them forward through a sea of indifference. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, with all its triumphs and tragedies, rested on the shoulders of thousands of activists who fought oppression in the streets, in courtrooms and on public buses. It emerged not from the progress of Reconstruction but from the backwardness of Jim Crow.

William Kirkland
April 20, 2015
Kirkland: The progressive lessons of history
[I find it absolutely fascinating that people can advocate gun control and then two sentences later praise the advancement of civil rights. And in this case a civil rights movement which was dramatically assisted by private citizens with guns. And this is by a person who prides himself on his knowledge of history!

How does someone do that? It has to be something like Peterson Syndrome.—Joe]

Your estimated wait time

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My sales tax quarterly filing for Boomershoot stuff is due today. The Idaho State Tax Commission has a new website for E-filing and paying taxes and when I tried to file on Saturday (yes, I procrastinate, it’s where daughter Xenia gets it from, see also here) it wouldn’t let me file. Barb tried calling and got a message saying their hours were Monday through Friday. I tried again this morning and still couldn’t get the button to file like the instructions said would be there.

Six minutes after they opened I called and pressed ‘0’ to speak with someone. The recorded messages said, “Your estimated wait time is four thousand, seven hundred and 60 minutes.”

This is what you get when dealing with monopolies. I can’t wait, but everyone will, for single payer health care.

As I had to take a shower and get to work sometime before midday Thursday I wrote them a letter with my story of woe*, sales numbers, and a check then mailed it on my way to work after I sent them an email saying the check was in the mail.

* It is possible it is my fault. After I had the letter and check sealed up in the envelope I noticed a tiny field on the online form. It was where I expected to have a label saying “ID number” because my tax ID number was just to the right of it. But it said, “Annual”. It’s possible they switched me to filing annually instead of quarterly without me reading carefully enough some letter they sent a few months ago.

But my guess is that the software vendor accidentally converted all the quarterly filing people to annual filing.

 

Quote of the day—Andrew Kohut

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We are at a moment when most Americans believe crime rates are rising and when most believe gun ownership – not gun control – makes people safer.

…

A 2013 Pew Research survey showed that protection is now the top reason gun owners offer for why they choose to own a gun (in 1999, hunting was the top reason). And among the public at large, the latest Gallup survey finds that 63% of Americans now say having a gun in the home makes it a safer place compared with 30% who say it makes a home more dangerous. Fifteen years ago, more said the presence of a gun made a home more dangerous (51%) than safer (35%).

Andrew Kohut
Despite lower crime rates, support for gun rights increases
April 17, 2015
[Principals are important but public opinion is what wins elections and to a great extent judicial rulings. We are now getting nearly everything going our way. We need to politically exterminate the anti-gun people as quickly as we can and make them as socially distasteful as the KKK.

In addition to reasonably hard data like the surveys referenced above I know my workplace has a lot of people quite friendly to gun ownership. And I know one woman who just recently put her profile on Match.com after being “off the market” for several years. She commented to me just last week that many of the men on the site have pictures of themselves with guns. According to her this wasn’t the case even five years ago.

The anti-gun people are headed to the dustbin of history. Help them get there as quickly as we legally can.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Matt Ridley

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The environmental movement has advanced three arguments in recent years for giving up fossil fuels: (1) that we will soon run out of them anyway; (2) that alternative sources of energy will price them out of the marketplace; and (3) that we cannot afford the climate consequences of burning them.

Matt Ridley
March 13, 2015
Fossil Fuels Will Save the World
[There is some really good stuff in the article. If you don’t have a subscription to the Wall Street Journal you can read the article here as well.

There is stuff like:

More than a billion people on the planet have yet to get access to electricity and to experience the leap in living standards that abundant energy brings. This is not just an inconvenience for them: Indoor air pollution from wood fires kills four million people a year. The next time that somebody at a rally against fossil fuels lectures you about her concern for the fate of her grandchildren, show her a picture of an African child dying today from inhaling the dense muck of a smoky fire.

And this point about plants being CO2 starved and grow better with more CO2 which I bring up with nearly everyone that wants to tell me about man caused global warming:

Although the world has certainly warmed since the 19th century, the rate of warming has been slow and erratic. There has been no increase in the frequency or severity of storms or droughts, no acceleration of sea-level rise. Arctic sea ice has decreased, but Antarctic sea ice has increased. At the same time, scientists are agreed that the extra carbon dioxide in the air has contributed to an improvement in crop yields and a roughly 14% increase in the amount of all types of green vegetation on the planet since 1980.

The more sophisticated global-warming/climate-change people want to talk about the positive feedback loops that will create runaway warming. But they give me a blank look when I ask about the negative feedback from the plants consuming more CO2 and more vegetation resulting from the increased CO2.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Hillary Clinton

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I think a total ban, with no exceptions under any circumstances, might be found by the court not to be.

Hillary Clinton
April 16, 2008
Democratic Debate in Philadelphia
[It would appear that Ms. Clinton is of the opinion that as long as there are one or more exceptions under some circumstances then a near total ban on guns would be Constitutional in her view.

This should not be a surprise to anyone. She has explicitly said that people holding the opinion that the have the constitutional to own guns “terrorizes people” and this should not be allowed. She would be the thought police if she could.

She also thinks more people exercising their rights is something to be concerned about.

See also Hillary Clinton on Guns: Not a Big Fan.

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

Please don’t let her gain the power to nominate new Supreme Court Justices.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Rosa DeLauro

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There is no reason on earth, other than to kill as many people as possible in as short a time as possible, that anyone needs a gun designed for a battlefield.

Rosa DeLauro
U.S. Representative (D-Conn.)
April 6, 2015
Bill would pay gun owners to hand over assault weapons
[Pictures of Rep. DeLauro from The Hill and the Washington Times:

TheHillDeLauroWashingtonTimesDeLauro

You would think they would get tired of rerunning these same tired arguments. Our standard responses are:

  • It’s a Bill of Rights. Not a Bill of Needs.
  • Since the police have them it must be in their job description to “kill as many people as possible in as short a time as possible”.
  • If you really believe this then you are extremely ignorant and/or lack imagination.

Her ignorance and malice is evident in this part of the article in The Hill:

DeLauro is in favor of stronger guns laws that would completely ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, she emphasized this bill would not force gun owners to turn in their firearms.

“High-capacity ammunition”? And of course she makes it clear this is just step toward her real goal of a complete ban. Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.

Sebastian and most of the commenters over there don’t see a problem for gun owners in this proposed law. Say Uncle just says, “No, thanks.” TriggerFinger doesn’t seem much concerned about it either.

But I would worry about this giving the Feds a list of people that are verified previous owners of “assault weapons”. One might imagine, in her mind, these are the people that need to “dealt with”. The administration has already demonstrated they use the IRS as a weapon. So what better way to get a list of your enemies than pay them a little something to identify themselves to your “weapon”, the IRS?

It’s a variation of the Lenin quote, “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”—Joe]

Fail, fail, fail, fail…

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I’m writing this after just getting off the phone with Great Big Gun Accessory Company That Everyone Knows. I’m not pissed, just a little disgusted. I got a 130 dollar tool made by that company, from an Idaho retailer, and the tool is defective.

I called the retailer about it immediately. After some vacillation (first fail) and some obvious back-and-forth amongst the person who took my call and someone else (second fail) they referred me to the manufacturer (third fail).

I then called Great Big Gun Accessory Company That Everyone Knows and got put on hold by a robot. OK; that’s sort of tolerable, as it’s a busy time of day for a busy company in a very busy industry. After only two or three minutes I got a person. I got directly to the point; I had ordered this tool and it has some bad threads.

She actually muttered under her breath at me, as though she’d been robbed few minutes ago and I had just threatened her for her wallet; “Oh, good God…” (fourth fail). She then had to put me on hold (fifth fail) to talk to someone else (sixth fail) after which she went on and on in her Eeyore/Marvin the Paranoid Android tone, (seventh fail) about oh, woe is us; we’re juuust swamped with customer service… (eighth fail) and that she’d take my name and number and someone would call me back, maybe today but probably tomorrow (ninth fail).

There’s a point to all of this, mind you. This isn’t so I can vent my frustration– I’m not frustrated. I got this tool on a lark, because I thought it would be something fun to try. Well, all the fun has been drained right out, but it’s not frustrating in any way because I really have no “need” for this item than can’t be served with tools I already have.

The point is; if you’re in business and you have a customer who has a problem, AND you’re capable of solving said problem, then DO IT, RIGHT NOW. Your customers will absolutely love you for it, and your service will have been so unusually simple and easy that they’ll tell everyone they know about you. That two or three dollars, to fifty or 60 dollars it actually cost you to SOLE THE CUSTOMER’S PROBLEM STRAIGHT AWAY will have been your cheapest and most effective advertizing ever!

The retailer could have solved my problem immediately, without even thinking about it, if they’d simply send me a new part. “No problem, Mister Keeney; we’ll get you another part out to you right now, and you’ll have it tomorrow. Sorry about the inconvenience.”

That is our goal, but we don’t always reach it (for one thing, there is internal disagreement on its merits, if you can believe that). It is an ideal, which will rarely be met in all cases, but it is none the less THE ideal.

This is so very simple, and so very obvious, that practically all businesses fail to consider it. The few who do will rule the retail world. All the rest will have every excuse in the book why they don’t do it, and they’ll all be very reasonable and thoroughly justifiable excuses.

If you HAVE THE ABILITY to solve the customer’s problem RIGHT NOW, that is an OPPORTUNUTY for you and your company. Don’t miss the opportunity.

Meanwhile, after talking to two people, at two companies, each of whom had the ability to solve my problem right then and there, each of whom had to talk to at least one other person who also had the ability to solve my problem right then and there, I’ll be waiting for a phone call (not a replacement part, mind you, not even a promise of a replacement part, but a phone call) that may or may not come in the next 24 hours.

The time it took either one of the two people I spoke with to hum and haw and consult with peers and finally get around to telling me to call somewhere else or to take my name and number for someone else to get back to me, THEY COULD HAVE SOLVED MY PROBLEM RIGHT THEN AND THERE, and so you see, it would be far MORE EFFICIENT just for them, which would free up more customer service representatives to help more customers.

This isn’t rocket surgery.