Category Archives: Politics

Quote of the day—Brooke Anderson

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The measure would repeal Chicago’s assault weapons ban and put public safety at risk.

Brooke Anderson
Spokesman for Illinois Governor Pat Quinn.
May 23, 2013
Quinn skeptical of Ill. House concealed-carry plan
[So tell me where is the murder rate higher? Is it in cities that don’t have a “assault weapons” ban like Seattle, Dallas, or Miami? Or is in Chicago?

I suppose it does depend upon your definition of “public”. My guess is that Anderson and Quinn are concerned with the safety of their primary constituents—the criminal elements of Chicago. And that includes those holding government office.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Robert J. Avrech

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It’s obvious that classic American liberalism is dead. It has morphed into a radical leftism which has found its standard bearer in Barack Hussein Obama, a rigid, cold-blooded leftist whose end-game is the complete dominance of American politics by a single political party. This is to be achieved using classic Socialist* tactics: making a majority of citizens dependent upon the state, either through jobs (shuffling paper, torturing fellow citizens with endless rules and regulations) or through welfare (redefined as a human right).

The revelations of political repression by the IRS against Conservatives should send chills up the spines of every American. For this is how tyrannies gain traction.

And under Obamacare, the IRS will have even more power.

…

*Socialist: noun \ˈsō-sh(ə-)list\— a Communist who has not yet picked up an AK47.

Robert J. Avrech
May 13, 2013
It Can’t Happen Here
[Not only can it happen here. It is happening here. People who have lived in “those other places” are experiencing déjà vu and we need to undo the damage done.—Joe]

Quote of the day—sandbagger

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The President and his advisors are behind calculated and concerted efforts to use the power of the Executive Branch to intimidate and silence their political opponents. Or the Federal Government is populated with rogue civil servants who abuse their authority coincidentally in support of the President and his Party’s agenda and the President and his advisors are powerless to stop them.

sandbagger
May 16, 2013
Comment to Words That Should Not Be Strung Together In America, “IRS Building Largest Government Database”
[I suppose there is at least one third option; the Executive Branch quietly rewards those that do it’s dirty work while maintaining plausible deniability.

In any case I can’t think of any options that are very flattering to the integrity of the Obama administration.

There are more than one way to deal with this as someone opposed to the current administration. One is to let them remain in power and exploit their weakness like what Sebastian is saying. Another would be to try and remove them from power. I’m not sure which would be best. “President Biden” does not have a pleasant ring to it but having Obama impeached would be satisfying. I’m just not sure the rewards are worth the effort. A “radioactive” Obama may be better long term than “cleaning house” when you can’t purge the site of the entire toxic waste pit until 2016 anyway.—Joe]

It’s the whole point

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There seems to be some surprise and indignation at the idea that the IRS would be used as a weapon against political opponents. I don’t understand.

First; what did you expect from a communist administration? Really. Can you say, “DUUUH!”? Second; the entire tax code is a weapon of political power. Always has been. It is designed to nudge you into behaviors you’d not be engaged in if you were left to your own devices, and to nudge you out of other behaviors. The very concept of a progressive tax is a political weapon, designed to substantially reduce wealth creation and accumulation. Raising revenue is far down the list, or it is only an ancillary function of the tax code and the IRS. I could on and on, but you should have gotten the point by the time you received your very first paycheck.

The specific targeting of individuals and groups is nothing new at all either. The Clintons were famous for it. Rush Limbaugh has been getting audited every year for many years. The list is longer than this whole blog since its beginning.

A “Gosh, we’re sorry” will change nothing. The only solution, assuming anyone wants one, is to abolish the tax code, abolish the IRS and go to a single digit flat tax. Otherwise quit your bitching– this is exactly what you’ve been asking for. Begging for, actually. Don’t bother pretending to be surprised– it makes you look even more stupid.

Quote of the day—Sandra Cunningham

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We needed a bill that was going to confiscate, confiscate, confiscate.

Sandra Cunningham
New Jersey State Senator
May 9, 2013

[H/T Sebastian who said,

You know what would help prevent gun owners from always being paranoid that gun control activists and politicians were after their guns? Not actually being after our guns.

There is a reason why I have conditions whereby I might be persuaded to visit New Jersey.—Joe]

Quote of the day—My Lawyer

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After looking at the letters you pointed to I would recommend that you take down any files you have posted and let the commodity jurisdiction request process take its course.

My Lawyer (who wishes to remain anonymous)
May 9, 2013
In regards to the files linked to in this post.
[It’s an interesting state of affairs when lawyers don’t want it to be known they are involved.—Joe]

Faceless bureaucrats, not blue helmeted elk

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I spent some time investigating ITAR in regards to the files for 3-D printing of weapons. It’s interesting stuff. The implications are huge.

I am not a lawyer although one or more of my sources for this post are. But none claim expertise in this area because it is such a specialized field. One source did claim “I know something about this”. The following may be a too broad interpretation of the law and the legal experts in the field will have to give us a more factual read.

The U.S. Department of State Directorate of Defense Trade Controls is the agency we have concerns about. Their mission is stated as:

The U.S. Government views the sale, export, and re-transfer of defense articles and defense services as an integral part of safeguarding U.S. national security and furthering U.S. foreign policy objectives. The Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC), in accordance with 22 U.S.C. 2778-2780 of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) (22 CFR Parts 120-130), is charged with controlling the export and temporary import of defense articles and defense services covered by the United States Munitions List (USML).

The documents of particular interest in figuring out the implications appear to be these two:

  1. SUBCHAPTER M—INTERNATIONAL TRAFFIC IN ARMS REGULATIONS: PART 120—PURPOSE AND DEFINITIONS
  2. Title 22: Foreign Relations: PART 121—THE UNITED STATES MUNITIONS LIST

One of my sources ran up against ITAR due to being an NRA Firearms instructor. The NRA recently sent out a notice to instructors telling them not to provide training to foreign students. This is because, according to the first document above:

§ 120.9 Defense service.
(a) Defense service means:
(1) The furnishing of assistance (including
training) to foreign persons,
whether in the United States or abroad
in the design, development, engineering,
manufacture, production, assembly,
testing, repair, maintenance,
modification, operation, demilitarization,
destruction, processing or use of
defense articles;
(2) The furnishing to foreign persons
of any technical data controlled under
this subchapter (see § 120.10), whether
in the United States or abroad; or
(3) Military training of foreign units
and forces, regular and irregular, including
formal or informal instruction
of foreign persons in the United States
or abroad or by correspondence
courses, technical, educational, or information
publications and media of
all kinds, training aid, orientation,
training exercise, and military advice.
(See also § 124.1.)

In the last few months the Department of State is taking a much broader interpretation of this and other sections of U.S. code and applying it to gun owners, manufacturers, and instructors. There are two hypotheses for the change. One is that John Kerry is driving the change. The other is that is part of what Obama was talking about when he said he was working on gun control “under the radar”. The failure to get any gun control through Congress could have inflamed him enough that he sent out the word to find ways to punish us for our success in blocking him.

The law was intended to apply to people selling and providing real militarily useful products and training to our Cold War enemies. Things like night vision equipment and training on tank warfare or repairing high performance jet engines were valid things to be concerned about. And even though rifles that were particularly well suited for winning NRA High Power competition and training for doing better at USPSA matches could have military application the people at the Department of State ignored that. They were concerned with the nation states of the world that declared us their enemies rather than the “right-wing NRA domestic terrorists” who taught Home Firearm Safety classes a few times a year.

The law was written before the Internet and personal computers existed and some of the concepts that made sense then are absurd now. In the mid ‘90s we had the battle over encryption technology being declared an export restricted munitions. This was ultimately decided in favor of freedom under the First Amendment (the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the Bernstein case and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in the Junger case). I don’t see why the present issue wouldn’t fall under the same protection and it might. But being right and being able to fight it to the end in court are two different things.

My sources seem to think the biggest concern is that all firearms instructors, “Mom and Pop” FFLs, and of course libertarian college students with a mischievous streak (borrowing and mangling a phrase from Paul Barrett) will be required to pay the $2000+/year license fees to register with the Department of State. This would be even though there was no technology, products, or training being exported. Just that you’re “in the business” could make you subject to the restrictions and require that you register with the Department of State and pay the annual fee. The government wouldn’t have to directly “stop the signal” in it’s entirety. There a million different signals and they only have to make examples of a few people and most others would want to avoid the hassle and “would lead more compliant lifestyles”. There is very little profit to be made in being a martyr for the cause. The 3-D printer issue could just be noise and a distraction to a much bigger concern.

Ultimately the courts and Congress can probably get most of this straightened out on the side of freedom. If they don’t freedom will be lost to faceless bureaucrats not “blue helmeted elk” that you can shoot at as they go door-to-door confiscating your guns.

In the mean time an enraged narcissist who didn’t get his way with the legislature could conceivably apply the regulations to people posting YouTube videos on how to grip your pistol.

My alternate quote of the day – Me

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In comments here;

“The bottom line is; we have authoritarians and anti-authoritarians living in the same society. Each is attempting to foster its separate, incompatible doctrine. Neither can afford to tolerate the other.”

It’s more like we’re living as separate societies in the same country, and that we have incompatible world views rather than “doctrines”. Neither world view can tolerate the other, because one example is often capable of poisoning, or infecting, a whole lot of people.

The authoritarian’s fantasy of a glorious regime can be highly threatened by one “upstart” who simply will not be intimidated or fall in line. The ideal of liberty in the minds of anti-authoritarians can be poisoned by the emergence of gangs as they infiltrate the political and media infrastructures.

So far in this post I’ve treated authoritarians and anti-authoritarians as separate but equal, but there is of course a major difference– The anti-authoritarian (libertarian) can best further his goals by being straight forward and honest, while the authoritarian must use deception, fear, anger and doubt.

One is honest and motivated by love while the other is a lying sack of shit motivated by hate trying to appear good and reasonable only as a means of getting its greedy way. One is honest with himself to the greatest extent possible while the other must avoid reality or be exposed and discredited. One builds and provides while the other is a deadly parasite, and yet one can be seen as mocking the other for its selfish goals.

Which are you? Most people are confused on the matter, believing themselves to be one when they are the other. Further; you can at times actually be doing the right things for the wrong reasons. Feints within feints within feints. What a tangled web we weave.

You can dress the conflict up in millions of words, appealing to various motivations and emotions, but it is still that simple, age-old conflict between love and hate, or liberty and tyranny.

Each sees itself as a liberator, too, and again it is because the mere existence of the other is a threat to its own existence. One is poison to the other and so it longs to be free of that poison.

How many ways can we say the same things? Millions and millions and millions. We fool ourselves into playing the same deadly game over and over.

Quote of the day—Sen. Richard Blumenthal

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There is nothing celebratory about the fact that two brothers suspected of planting bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon a few weeks ago were able to get a gun without a proper permit. This gun was used to kill a police officer.

Despite these morbid realities, the NRA is still celebrating this weekend in the Lone Star State, slowly but surely consigning itself to irrelevance as Americans continue to pressure Congress to do something about gun violence weeks after the Senate’s failure to pass the gun violence prevention bill.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal
May 3, 2013
There’s Nothing To Celebrate: NRA’s Celebratory Atmosphere At National Conference Is Disgusting
[Proper permit? Perhaps legislation should be passed that requires “a proper permit” before high school students can purchase recreation drugs like beer and cigarettes. Blumenthal is a blooming idiot if he does not understand the realities of economics and black markets in a quasi-free society. Or alternatively he is desirous of implementing a tyrannical police state. I can see no other alternatives. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and declare him an idiot.

Would it be disgusting if the NAACP and ADL celebrated defeating legislation that would required background checks before their members could get permits to be on public streets after dark? Surely it’s just “common sense” that we don’t want people like that “on the streets” unless they have permission from the government. Right?

Wrong. We are talking about specific enumerated rights. Requiring government permission to exercise a right is to deny that it is a right. And the thing that is disgusting is that we had to even have a debate, let alone a fight, about recognizing that right.

It’s Senator Blumenthal and the anti-freedom people he supports that are consigning themselves to irrelevance. Over 86,000 people showed up at the NRA annual meeting and the NRA has a membership of over 5,000,000. How many show up at the gun control annual meetings? About 50 to 100 for the nations largest anti-gun group. The entire email list of the Brady Campaign is only about 50,000. The Brady Campaign doesn’t even have “members” in the sense that the NRA does.

No matter how you look at what Blumenthal has to say it’s clear he is unfit to hold public office. Instead he should be on the street corner handing out free copies of CPUSA newsletters. It would be more philosophically in alignment with his politics than being a member of the U.S. Senate.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Forrest Sargente

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I say we meet the democrats halfway on gun control by simply banning all democrats from owning guns. This way we also solve the problem of the mentally unstable and incompetent having access to firearms.

Forrest Sargente
April 30, 2013
Comment to Dems love guns. No, really. Stop laughing.
[H/T to Say Uncle.

I find it funny but I wouldn’t seriously advocate for the infringement of anyone’s specific enumerated rights. Even communists, socialists, or (I repeat myself) democrats.

Although the case could be made that people who self-identify as such are mentally unstable and/or incompetent that is the same argument used by the Soviet Union to send political dissidents to mental institutions. Hence, I think it’s history lesson we don’t need to repeat.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Harry Binswanger

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Statistics about how often gun-related crimes occur in the population is no evidence against you. That’s collectivist thinking. The choices made by others are irrelevant to the choices that you will make.

People understand the wrongness of collectivist thinking in other cases. They would indignantly reject the idea that a member of a given racial group is under suspicion because 10 percent of those with his skin color commit crimes. But the individualist approach also applies to gun ownership and concealed carrying of guns: group ratios offer no evidence about what a given individual will do.

Harry Binswanger
January 1, 2013
With Gun Control, Cost Benefit Analysis Is Amoral
[Or as Tam said:

Where the hell do you get off thinking you can tell me I can’t own a gun? I don’t care if every other gun owner on the planet went out and murdered somebody last night. I didn’t. So piss off.

A significant and unique component of western civilization is the concept of the individual apart from the tribe/village/collective. This gave us the greatest increase in our standard of living, wealth, and life expectancy in the shortest time the world has ever known. Yet many people want to revert back to a form of society more appropriate for stone age tribes that frequently, when applied to modern conditions, has resulted in brutal dictators, mass starvation, and death camps.

Even more interesting is that in the last 100 years the brutal dictators, mass starvation, and death camps only occurred in societies with gun control (see also Innocents Betrayed). So when the collectivists both insist we join their collective and that we give up our guns I think there are only two questions of, mostly incidental, interest in asking:

  1. Are they evil?
  2. Or are they “only” enablers of evil?

Regardless of whether you bother to ask the questions your response should be congruent with Tam’s.—Joe]

International Worker’s Day violence

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It must be in their nature to be violent:

 

Great. Just great. I work at what is essentially “ground zero” in Seattle. These communist and socialist scum don’t help their cause with me any by doing this.

Quote of the day—RJHJ

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Nothing is more insulting then being talked down too by someone who is ignorant about guns and dishonest about what they want to do with them.

RJHJ
April 24, 2013
Comment to Dear Gun Control Democrats: 6 Ways to Make a Better Argument
[I’m not sure “insulting” is the word I would use. “Infuriating” is probably how I would describe it. A lawmaker who describes barrel shrouds as “the shoulder thing that goes up” or thinks that a magazine is consumed once the ammo in it has been fired has no business writing gun laws.

I take that back. They have no business writing laws of any type.

Would people tolerate a lawmaker who cannot distinguish a jacket cover from an index writing laws that ban books that use a “high-capacity font”?

Would people tolerate a lawmaker who cannot distinguish a reel from a lure writing laws banning “high-capacity fishing line”?

That is the equivalent of what we have had for decades in the case of our gun laws and it shows.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Lyle

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The answer is pretty simple. It can be found in the basic tenet (which is a lie) of communism; “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

You get more stuff by asserting your need. You assert your need by asserting your status as victim. Victims need perpetrators from which the goodies are coerced. And so it’s very simple; if you’re in the business of looting, you go where there is the most wealth to be looted. That’s the U.S.

Lyle
April 29, 2013
Comment to Quote of the day—Bill Maher
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Bill Maher

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I’m so sorry, but this is the problem with the gun debate — it is that it’s a constant center-right debate. There’s no left in this debate. Everyone on the left is so afraid to say what should be said, which is the Second Amendment is bullshit. Why doesn’t anyone go at the core of it?

Bill Maher
April 2013
Starting at 2:20 in this video:

[No Bill. The left is bullshit.

And the core of “it” is Molon Labe.

H/T Tyler Durden in Guest Post: The Goal Is To Destroy All Constitutional Culture.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Phil

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The hatred of folks who vote for civil rights will continue until “full progress” is reached. In other news, water is wet.

Phil
April 23, 2013
Here It Comes
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Adam Winkler

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Focusing on assault weapons played right into the hands of the NRA, which has for years been saying that Obama wanted to ban guns. Gun control advocates ridiculed that idea—then proposed to ban the most popular rifle in America.

Adam Winkler
Professor of Law
UCLA School of Law
April 17, 2013
Who Killed Gun Control? The gun-control bill is dead. Why?
[No one has ever accused the gun control people of being too logical, smart, or internally consistent.

Even in Winkler’s own article there is some inconsistency. You would think that as a law professor he would know that the Heller decision says that weapons in common use are protected. Therefore when in the context of the “assault weapon ban” he says, “The courts have … approved of restrictions on assault rifles” you have to wonder if his brain is working right, because he also says the ban covered “the most popular rifle in America”.

[Shrug]

As near as I can tell “gun controller” is synonymous with “crap for brains” so what should I expect?

H/T to Thirdpower for the email.—Joe]

Another joke comes to life

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Today’s sarcastic jokes are often tomorrow’s real life. And here we are once again. No doubt, many gun owners said after the event at the Boston Marathon, or thought to themselves sarcastically; “I guess we’ll have to ban pressure cookers then. That’ll stop future bombings.” Well, it turns out that a company halted sales of pressure cookers after the Boston bombing.

Sure; it’s not an actual ban imposed by out-of-control law makers. They halted sales of pressure cookers voluntarily for a while “out of respect”. You may think; “What’s the big deal, Lyle? Jeeze.” and to that I say that this is quite insane, and that this sort of insanity is rampant. It is promoted.

It’s a cooking implement, for Pete’s sake! Put out some flowers if you want to show respect, or, you know, actually reach out and offer help to the victims and their families? Ever thought of that? Hmm?

What if someone used a pair of crutches to commit a crime? You going to halt the sale of crutches “out of respect”? Idiots. Hmm…you know it would be entirely possible to make a bomb using a fire extinguisher as the containment vessel. Let’s ban those then. Same goes for guns – we restrict the tools of self protection in response to crime. What a bunch of blithering idiots we’re becoming.

This is yet another in a very long line of cases of punishing the innocent for the actions of the guilty. They punished the whole city of Boston too, with that lock-down. I’m disgusted that there wasn’t a city-wide defiance of that order. Such cowards as we are, such zombies, maybe we deserve to be slaves.

Quote of the day—Dan

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Bad people in power WILL NOT STOP. They will continue to do bad things to us until we stop them…. and stopping them will require the use of force. All other discussion on the matter is window dressing.

Dan
April 21, 2013
Comment to Quote of the day—Senator Charles Schumer
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Ain’t it so

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This does sort of put it into perspective.