I have to give Barack Obama credit — he’s done a lot more to keep guns and ammo off of store shelves than any president in history.
Sebastian
July 21, 2013
Inflation
[I wonder if he is proud of that accomplishment. I’m sure that was his goal coming into the presidency. But the anti-gun people don’t seem to be any more happy with him that the pro-gun people.
It’s odd how that works out. Isn’t it?—Joe]
It is time for Illinois residents to join citizens in every other state. If Gov. Quinn and other gun prohibitionists need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century, where all civil rights – including the right to bear arms – are recognized, that’s their fault. They tried to transpose the Second Amendment from a fundamental civil right to a heavily-regulated privilege, and that is not what the court ruling allowed him to do.
We welcome Illinois to the United States of America.
Alan Gottlieb
July 9, 2013
SAF APPLAUDS ILLINOIS LAWMAKERS FOR OVERRIDE VOTE, COURT COMPLIANCE
[I’m not sure it’s really valid to say they have entered the U.S. It’s more like they are in quarantine. They still need to rid themselves of their gun control infections but they are making progress and I do welcome that.—Joe]
Everything centralized, from the Federal Reserve to the Too Big To Fail Banks to Medicare to the National Security State depends on the Federal government being a Savior State that must ceaselessly expand its share of the national income and its raw power lest it implode. All Savior States have one, and only one trajectory– they must ceaselessly expand and concentrate wealth and power or they will fail.
They are like the shark, which dies once it stops moving forward: the Savior State must push forward on its trajectory of expansion or it expires.
Stasis is not possible, nor is contraction; the promises made to the citizenry cannot be withdrawn without political instability, but the promises cannot be kept without fatally disrupting the neofeudal financialized debtocracy.
charles hugh smith
July 4, 2013
The Next American Revolution (Emphasis in the original)
[His main point is that the next revolution will be much different than any in the past. It will be one where the existing bureaucracy is bypassed and ignored rather than being forcibly removed from power. It will be, he claims, a place where, “wages are no longer an adequate model for distributing the surplus generated by the economy.”
I agree with his characterization that the government is on a path where it must constantly expand or implode. I can believe his is right that the next revolution will be different than any ever seen before. But I am far from convinced that he has it right on the nature of the next revolution.
It seems to me that the nature of the majority of people is that they want/desire/require a central leader or authority. Either they either want to be ruled or they want to be a ruler. The concept of just leaving people alone to freely associate with others is inconceivable to most people. Even in a relatively free state they think in terms of freedom being forced upon them by some authority.
It is my expectation that from the ashes of our current government there will rise some new form of claimed authority to rule over the people and the vast majority of people will have not learned the lessons of history and will welcome it.—Joe]
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
Plato
From here.
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
A day to celebrate freedom by going across state or county lines to buy fireworks because they’re illegal where you live.
Say Uncle
July 4, 2013
Happy Independence Day
[You shouldn’t really have to say more than that convince people that we are no longer free. You shouldn’t have to tell them the size of soft drinks in NYC is restricted. You shouldn’t have to explain Obama Care. You shouldn’t have to tell them about the New York SAFE act. You shouldn’t have to tell them our government is collecting data about every phone call and every letter mailed. You shouldn’t have to tell them that if you carry a cell phone the government can obtain your location with a few clicks on a website.You shouldn’t have to tell them the government says it has the legal authority and resolve to use unmanned drones to kill U.S. citizens on U.S. soil without trial or warning.
The scary thing is even if you tell people all of that they will do little more than shrug and turn back to finish watching the latest episode of American Idol, take another swig of beer, or another toke on their joint. They should be getting signatures for the recall petitions, spoofing encrypted email from government officials to overseas terrorists, and getting small arms training.—Joe]
What convictions? Guy’s a politician, but he hasn’t been convicted of anything. Yet. And that’s the only kind of conviction you can expect from a politician.
WeaponsMan
June 29, 2013
Beretta: Not expanding in MD, or to WV or RI
[I hadn’t thought of this before but one could say politicians attempt to avoid convictions but if they stay in the business long enough sometimes the law catches up with them.—Joe]
Next time someone says they are OK with the NSA spying because they are “keeping us safe” and “if you do nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear” or some such fantasy, here’s something to consider. According to this, the most commonly crime prosecuted in the former East Germany in the five years before the unification was failure to report a crime you knew about. When the state knows everything, then NOT being a rat becomes more dangerous than being a criminal giving the police a cut of the action for protection, because you have no leverage. That thought should terrify folks when they realize what it really means.
(BTW – I think the Judge likely believes what he says when he reports that, but I do not have an independent verification of his reported fact- anyone know for sure the stats on that? Even if it’s not the number one “crime,” if it’s anywhere in the top hundred it is bad.)
(Later Edit: How big a step is it from “see something, say something” to “see something, you are required to say something” with some sort of nebulous protections that may, or may not, protect you if you do say something?)
Liberty is too messy, too chaotic for the forces of the Democrat party. They yearn for conformity, for a uniform sameness that gives the illusion of a serenely content society. That’s why they want to get rid of cars and shove us all into railroad cars. Socialists just love cattle cars; they just relabel them high-speed rail.
That’s why Democrats want to get rid of the Second Amendment. An armed citizenry can resist an unjust government.
Robert J. Avrech
June 24, 2013
Climate Change = People Control
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
The anti-rights movement frequently complains about the NRA’s political clout, such as it is. I think they over-state it, but the point is; those who complain about it are the ones who created it, as I so elequently put it over at Oleg’s place;
“You know that [firearms handling safety and marksmanship training for regular citizens] is exactly the reason why the NRA was founded, right? We tend to think of them as a civil rights advocacy group, but their original charter is all about firearms training and shooting matches…
“It wasn’t until the second amendment came under fire from the Marxists that the NRA was forced into political advocacy, and so for those who complain about their considerable political clout; Fuck you. It’s your fault. You anti libertarians started it. We didn’t ask for this shit. As soon as you quit it, and quit it for sure and for good, the NRA can get out of politics and go back to being purely a training and shooting match sponsoring organization.”
So next time you hear anyone complain about the NRA’s influence in politics, hit ’em with the truth– The leftists and their ilk started it, not us. Same goes for any pro liberty advocacy anyone doesn’t like– If liberty weren’t under attack we wouldn’t have to organize and defend it. See? We could just mind our business. It’s very simple. Stop your evil ways and we won’t be forced to get up in your face advocating for good.
If this report is true then I was right (emphasis in the original):
They went after–and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things–they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the–and judicial. But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of–heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House–their own people.
If this is what passes for winning in Washington these days, I have no idea what losing looks like anymore.
irish189
June 18, 2013
Comment to White House Officials Say They Are Winning Gun Control Debate, Will Again Push For New Laws
[I love that picture of V.P. Biden. Pouting like a three year-old characterizes the situation quite well.—Joe]
I don’t want to face being driven from my home by the likes of Mike Bloomberg, Joe Biden and Barack Obama. No more two Americas. This has to end. We need to stop these people and ruthlessly crush them.
Sebastian
June 18, 2013
40 Round PMAGs
[This is what is required and, at least on the gun issue, there is a reasonable chance of success (for some values of “success”).
The bigger problem is that repression is much more than just guns. Currently it includes soft drinks, light bulbs, collecting rain water, how many gallons flushing your toilet requires. In another year it could include restrictions on owning gold and/or silver, TSA groping at train stations, and rationing of health care.
Although I’m a pretty optimistic person I’m essentially convinced (the Obama Care ruling on health care was the last straw) we are getting out of this without tremendous pain. The question is how to optimize the chances for my immediate family in the various scenarios.
I have have ancestors that go back to pre-revolutionary war (Barb L. even has Mayflower ancestors) and most steadily moved west in as the country opened up. They escaped the big cities with the corruption and repression associated with them. There isn’t much further we can move. Maybe Alaska could offer some respite but Alaska has to import a lot of goods which means they can’t really be self-supporting in many cases.
I fear collapse with the associated risk of a rise of a dictator is possible. Or would such a collapse follow the USSR model where the individual states regain power as the Feds go broke? Or would the Feds confiscate the wealth in such a way that it destroys the infrastructure as it goes down?
There are far too many “columns on the spreadsheet” to predict. I think what needs to be done is write up the plausible scenarios and plans for dealing with them. Prepping with food storage, “bug out locations”, and low level medical training until the economy recovers? Learn blacksmithing and soap making, acquire draft horses and horse powered farm implements and prepare for a return to technological world similar to 1900? What’s common to most scenarios? What’s likely and what is implausible?
The looters are destroying the country and, really, the world. The only question I see is how much will be left when they are stopped. The answer hinges on whether it is because they ran out of things and places to loot or is it because the producers finally stood up to them and said, “No. Stop. No further. Looters will be shot.”—Joe]
To all you fellow racists redneck Tea-partiers and haters, who only opposes the Obama-sariat because you are racists haters (yes, there might be a tad-bit of sarcasm there), I give you a guy who gets it. Nothing new, just well-presented.
I’d sure vote for him over any of the candidates I’ve seen run in my district in the last twenty years. I’d prefer a straight-up libertarian, but he’d be a vast improvement over the statist we have now.
#ICouldHaveBeenARepublicanBut – but not trying to compensate for my tiny penis by starting wars or having a big gun
jimmy streich (@streicher187)
Tweeted on February 5, 2013
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]
This has been passed around for a while now, and it’s fascinating.
A certain cyber spook who shall remain nameless at this juncture told me about this sort of data analysis many years ago. It was just one or two little sentences along the lines of, “You would be AMAZED at the sort of things “they” can find out about you.” As I say; that was many years ago, and orders of magnitude in increased capability have been achieved since. As a merchant having done installment sales for more than a decade at that time, I had a database of my own, consisting of thousands of accounts, and immediately could see the power of what on the surface would seem like rather mundane and mostly useless points of information.
BUT, when you ask the right questions, and can sort by multiple data fields, WOW! We used it to make buying decisions, which were extremely important and had to done months in advance of peak selling seasons, and so it involved recent history and long term trends. It was also extremely useful in predicting patterns and indicators of contract violations. If I told you half of that stuff I’d be branded a scumbag, a bigot and a general son of a bitch. Its one and only purpose though was to avoid going bankrupt– You make the wrong decisions and you’re stuck with major inventory you can’t pay for, or you get it out the door and don’t get paid for it, and so you can’t pay for it.
So yes; we profiled in a very big way, you could say. At one time the default rate was so bad that we required a credit check of every prospective customer, but with analysis of a large enough database were able to do far better by asking for only a few simple bits of information.
Learning important things doesn’t need to come from positive data either. That is to say, what isn’t there can be as useful as what is there, when forming the kinds of association tables in the link, or plotting behavior patterns. For example; knowing those times when someone is unaccounted for (enter the Smart Grid, to know when someone is not at home), when compared to certain events, over time, can tell you a whole lot.
So I now wonder what a look at the metadata in the time and place of Jesus (arguably one of the most influential people in human civilization) would show. How about Bedford Falls of “It’s a Wonderful Life” (thoughbeit a fictional town)? In that story, you could say that Clarence showed George Bailey where he fit in the metadata analysis.
The Soviets, using infiltrators, both of the overt and the covert kind, were able to come up with their various arrest and kill lists in much the same manner.
That brings us to another issue, that being the concept of the inception i.e. a planted idea– The tiny seed of an idea that can germinate in the minds of people, multiply and grow into something large. The looks into associations in the link are all very interesting, but being able to predict or pinpoint inception sources is also very interesting.
Reading about the various groups and group associations in the link got me to thinking about the modern version of the 1700s pub. You’re looking at it. Sort of, but it’s much more open to the world.
I was also struck by the modern lack of such clubs and associations. We’re a much more fragmented society. We don’t meet with our neighbors much at all anymore, whereas it used to be common. We often don’t know anything about them.
But your government sure as hell can find out.
And I submit that this is by design. It’s either by the design of mere mindsets, which will reflexively respond in predictable ways, or by some mastermind scheme. I say it’s a combination of both, each nourished by the other.
Call it a leap into Crazyland if you like (I’ll be quick to say I told you so, later) but looking at the data points over my lifetime, things make a lot more sense if one assumes that our government is in a full-on war against the ideals and principles, the foundation of the U.S. and has been for decades. When other people are saying “W. T. F.!???” and getting all exasperated and confused, I’m saying, “Well sure. It fits perfectly don’t you know.”
Try it. Ask yourself what institutions, traditions and associations would be under attack or already under control if our own government were at war against the American founding principles and the American economy. What groups would be funded worldwide, which ones given a pass, and what groups would be targeted for degradation, intimidation or destruction. What industries would be targeted for nationalization? Yup. Gotcha. On all counts.
So accept it. Then you won’t be surprised or confused anymore. The specific organization of this war isn’t so important, not so much as that you realize it’s a war. And we’re losing, mainly because we’ve not been willing to face up to it’s full import. It’s too crazy. Too horrible. We can’t go there. We’re cowards. Look and listen to the pundits. Any of them, no matter how great you think they are. They’re giving you data points that they themselves are unwilling to connect. We’re all afraid and so we’re very easy to distract. Oh look! Gays!
This interview took place in 1984. He explains his relationships as a KGB officer with the Useful Idiots, and how those Useful Idiots were often “squashed like a cockroach” after their usefulness had played out. Once the shock hit them, at the time of revolution, of what they’d done they could very well become the most staunch anti-communists, and so they were snuffed out before that could happen. “When the military boot hits their flabby butt..” the shock of seeing what they’ve helped create can turn them against the glorious idology of “Social Justice”. In other words, they’re targeted for destruction before they have a chance to wake up and smell the coffee. It’s typical, small scale gang behavior brought to the wholesale level.
But not, 29 years later, it’s much worse. There likely won’t be a military boot in the Useful idiots’ flabby butts, because we’re in such a state of degradation that we’re asking for “normalization” (of communism). We’re not fighting back.
This is about an hour and a half. Grab a cup of coffee or what have you, and listen to the whole thing .
This is a companion to Joe’s QOTD post here.
For further study, here is a domonstration of how it’s done. There is religious language in this one, but if you want to go straight to the mind control part, start at around 8 minutes.
In short, if someone knows how, they can tell you up front exactly what they’re going to do to you, they can then do it right then and there, openly, and some people will still be totally controlled by it, AND they’ll defend the utterly insane things they do as a result of being controlled. THEY are the more aware and YOU are “just too stubborn” to see what is clearly reality.
This demonstrates the biggest problem with Liberals isn’t KNOWING what the evidence shows. Instead, the problem is that their vested interest in a false vision compels Liberals to discount each and every fact that would destroy that vision.
Brian Cates
June 4, 2013
Why Evidence Doesn’t Matter to Liberals Enchanted by a Vision
[I’ve run into this sort of thing with numerous people. Many people simply cannot be reached with evidence.
I’ve literally had people tell me, “I don’t believe your facts.” That the facts were from the FBI UCR and there was no contrary evidence did not matter. He did not even have an interest is supplying “his facts”. He was just right and I was wrong. This was a college professor. That he was an admitted Marxist teaching in the school of business made me realize we did not have a common basis for communication. I’m pretty sure we don’t even share the same reality.
Some people have unshakable faith in things that are demonstrably false. When these type of people are encountered as individuals it can be a source of amusement, frustration, or make your job miserable. When these people are in positions of governmental power they burden you with stupid regulations, destroy economies, and commit genocide.
The Second Amendment was designed and put in place to protect us from Liberals enchanted by a vision.—Joe]
With the IRS being used as a political tool and the FBI and NSA having access to all phone records and who knows how much other private data I have to wonder how many legislative votes, court decisions, and even executive branch actions were influenced. We know that J. Edgar Hoover used the FBI for political purposes for decades. Why should we think it stopped when he died? Why should we think it was only him that wielded such power?
If nearly every government officials has been subject to blackmail for decades could that be part of the explanation for the abandonment of Constitutional principles?
Power corrupts. It corrupts those that have the power and it corrupts those who are subject to that power.
Right now I think everyone should just calm down and understand that this isn’t brand new. It’s been going on for some seven years.
Harry Reid
U.S. Senate Majority Leader
June 6, 2013
Reid on reaction to furor over phone records: ‘Just calm down’
[If this was your spouse telling you to “calm down, this isn’t brand new…” that they had been fooling around with someone else for seven years would that make it okay?
Maybe that is an extreme example. Let’s try some others:
Hmm… I’m thinking Senator Reid has a severe case of rectal cranium inversion. Too bad it not so debilitating that it necessitates immediate retirement and exile.
I also think it is very telling that in Paul Barrett Business Week article he restructured the quote in such a way that it changes the meaning. Barrett rephrases it as:
“Everybody should just calm down,” the Nevada Democrat said at a press conference in Washington. “It’s a program that’s worked to prevent not all terrorism, but certainly a vast majority of it.”
If that is the measure of success and such success is sufficient justification then one should not be surprised to soon see some “common sense” restrictions on the First Amendment. I expect Senator Reid and Mr. Barrett can surely agree our government needs to pass legislation for the following:
They should then give enforcement powers to the ATF and rename the organization Firearms, Alcohol, Religion, and Tobacco (FART).
It’s just common sense, for the children, to prevent terrorism.—Joe]
Found on Drudge. And “this is just the beginning” they say. Of what? I ask.
For some reason I’m reminded of the “Hunter-Seekers” (or were they “Hunter-Killers”? It’s been several decades since I read the series) of Frank Herbert’s Dune. They were tiny, silent, flying assassination drones that could get into your house or pretty much anywhere else. I wonder if the IRS is looking into drone technology, but then; who isn’t?