Is the reason conservatives are in love with guns they are a phallic symbol?
Repeal the 2nd Amendment
July 21, 2012
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]
Category Archives: Politics
Quote of the day–Jennifer Agiesta and Jack Gillum
Gun control advocates sputter at their own impotence. The National Rifle Association is politically ascendant. And Barack Obama’s White House pledges to safeguard the Second Amendment in its first official response to the deaths of at least 12 people in a mass shooting at a new Batman movie screening in suburban Denver.
Jennifer Agiesta and Jack Gillum
July 21, 2012
Calls for gun control stir little support
[This is good but we need to keep pushing while the enemies of freedom are on the defensive.
Why do you need a gun in the mall, the restaurant, or the movie theater? Because the mentally ill and others with evil intent know no boundaries.—Joe]
How stupid do they think we are?
The Obama campaign is running a video ad that claims Romney of misquoting President Obama. The problem is that even in Obama’s ad, a few seconds later, Obama is shown saying exactly what Romney quoted him as saying.
Do they think we are incapable of remembering things that happened 30 seconds ago? Or do they think we are that mind boggling stupid?
I suspect the real answer is that they are suffering from cognitive distortion (CD). I’ve had occasion to read up on CD and some other mental health issues in the last few months and I think a good case can be made, in a more scientific manner than expressed by Michael Savage, that Liberalism is a Mental Disorder. In fact it is a fairly well known and understood disorder. It just, to the best of my knowledge, hasn’t been explicitly connected to liberalism.
The problem is there appears to be no cure. It’s not a chemical imbalance. It’s not something that can be treated with counseling or therapy. If you can’t completely avoid contact with them the best you can do is give them firm boundaries, deal with their outbursts of anger and irrational behavior, and try to keep them from hurting themselves or others.
Some day when I have lots of time I’m going to write up a post on the topic.
Go shooting with the sheriff
I just might attend this. I have a life membership at the gun range and it’s only a few miles away:
As Seattle and the state weigh tighter gun control measures the King County Sheriff is locked and loaded. He’s ready to take the gun control debate to the firing range.
It’s an upcoming campaign event called, “Shootin’ With the Sheriff,” and some say the timing couldn’t be worse.
…
Strachan’s “Shootin With the Sheriff” campaign fundraiser happens July 27 from 6-8pm at Wade’s Gun Shop in Bellevue.
And that the anti-gun people are wringing their hands and whining makes it all the more attractive to me.
Quote of the day—Simon Black
Today, it’s nice to know that human beings are a lot more enlightened. We know that the dimensions of someone’s skull or nose don’t matter much in the way of intelligence or integrity.
And we can wonder with absolute incredulity how anyone could have passed off such nonsense as science.
Here’s the irony, though. In the future, they’ll wonder the same thing about us. The difference is that our faux-science is economics.
In the future, they’ll wonder with utter incredulity how these ridiculous assertions about conjuring money out of thin air and borrowing your way out of debt could possibly pass as science.
They’ll be mystified at how political leaders listen to these modern day soothsayers, directing national policy and robbing wealth from hundreds of millions of people based on this faux-science.
And they’ll be completely floored when they see that we actually award our most esteemed prizes to these men who tell us that we can spend our way out of recession and tax our way into prosperity.
To give you an example, I’ve just finished Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz’s new book The Price of Inequality in which he writes something that may be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard from an economist:
“[T]he success of [Apple and Google], and indeed the viability of our entire economy, depends heavily on a well-performing public sector. There are creative entrepreneurs all over the world. What makes a difference. . . is the government.”
Simon Black
July 17, 2012
Guest Post: Quite Possibly The Dumbest Thing I’ve Heard An Economist Say
[I’ll grant that government makes a difference. A government that enforces contracts, protects the rights of individuals to own property, and to exchange in free trade is what makes for a thriving economy. Government involvement to a greater or lesser amount may reap short term benefits for some people but the long term result is a less successful economy and society.
Or as Presidential candidate Mitt Romney said, it’s both startling and revealing (H/T to son James) that the President of the United States also adheres to that philosophy:
President Obama either demonstrated profound ignorance and/or ill-intent and deserves all the ridicule he gets. He does not deserve to be president of anything in our country.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Ted Nugent
The United Nations is flea-infested, hygiene challenged hellhole of soulless despots, tyrants, anti-freedom, human-rights violating global gangbangers who wish to shore up their power by having the United Nations put forth a treaty that would restrict the access to guns by their people, thereby ensuring the tyrants can continue to kill, control, rape and plunder innocents with impunity.
Let’s get one thing straight: more access to guns leads to more freedom. Limiting access to guns leads to more innocent death, destruction and tyranny.
Once again, the United Nations is on the wrong side of freedom. This isn’t surprising since the United Nations has a statue of a handgun with a barrel tied in a knot in front of their rat-infested New York building. We should melt that statue and turn it into bullets for free Americans.
Ted Nugent
July 17, 2012
More guns equal less goons
[I suspect Nugent may be exaggerating. I’m not convinced the UN is flea-infested.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Cliff Schecter
They distinguished themselves by being the first group of ruffians to hold a sitting Attorney General in criminal contempt over the so-called Fast and Furious “scandal”. Let me translate: They pandered to the ageing-fat-white guy demographic that makes up their base and the Board of the National Rifle Association (NRA), by attacking the black Attorney General who happens to work for the black President.
Cliff Schecter
July 15, 2012
Fraudulent and fictitious
Congress’ latest vote is another example of political nihilism – this time with Democrat support.
[Let me translate: Argumentum ad hominem is the best he can do. And, no surprise, he has a history of this when it comes to the NRA.
But what do you expect from a bigot? 300+ dead Mexicans, as planned by this administration (H/T Kevin and Robb), just don’t matter to them or Schecter.—Joe]
Quote of the day—James Q. Wilson
Government, in my humble opinion, should be formed to secure and to enlarge the exercise of the natural rights of its members; and every government, which as not this in view, as its principal object, is not a government of the legitimate kind.
James Q. Wilson
[It is clear that our present government and that of governments world-wide have either abandoned this viewpoint or never even considered such a viewpoint.
I need a new frontier.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb
How many times must Bloomberg be told to keep his own house in order before he runs around complaining about the rest of the country?
Alan Gottlieb
CCRKBA Chairman
July 13, 2012
BLOOMBERG NEEDS TO PLUG POLICE LOCKER ROOM LOOPHOLE, SAYS CCRKBA
[I understand Gottlieb was asking a rhetorical question but I’m going to treat it as if it were serious.
Alan, your question presumes facts not in evidence. There is no evidence that Bloomberg responds to being told anything. This is true no matter how many times he has been told.
The more appropriate questions are:
- Why does Bloomberg believe he has the the authority to ignore the Bill of Rights? (H/T to Sebastian)
- Why does Bloomberg have crap for brains?
—Joe]
Communication
I was weeding my garden the other day. A neighbor sees me out there and remarks; “Nice looking garden you have there.”
“Thanks” I reply, “Other than some deer nipping the tops off a few of my beets, it’s doing pretty well. I have some nice
radishes coming in right now. Would you like some radishes?”
“Rabbit stew!” he replies, with enthusiasm.
(I paused a moment) “No; radishes. Would you like some radishes?”
Without another word, he turned around and walked away.
That one was quick in getting to the point where both parties realized that they were engaging in a conversation which had
nothing to do with what the other was saying. I’ve had this sort of thing go on for a long time before I realized that the
conversation I was having bore little or no resemblance to the conversation the other person thought he was having, even when
the individual words were all intelligible.
A recurring theme in such instances relates to the difference between principles and group identification, or “group think”.
There is a saying floating around lately, which says “When the government has its boot on your throat, it makes no difference
whether it’s a left boot or a right boot.” It makes sense, I suppose, if your world centers around group, or political party,
identity, but it’s a blitheringly stupid statement if you care about principles. I stated, over at Kevin’s, that if there’s a
government boot on your neck (and you don’t deserve it) then by definition it is a left boot. QED– those who uphold the
principles of liberty do not abuse people as a matter of policy.
The response?
“I find your lack of insight disturbing. As a libertarian, I see just as much interference in my life coming from the so-called
right as from the so-called left.”
Fair enough– the operative term being “so-called”. But that was my whole point after all, see.
“Maybe because I have friends from each of those camps, I can somewhat understand how each only sees the abuses of the other,
but not their own.”
I’m sorry; my own abuses?
“The ‘giveaway’ in your case is the ‘deserve’ line: who are you, or anyone else, to be the sole arbiter of whether someone
“deserves” abuse? Please don’t go on about breaking the law, that is not what the poster is referring to, as I would suspect you
know. And having a boot on one’s neck is not an appropriate response to law-breaking; arrest and trial would be (if the crime is
real and not a consensual activity of which you disapprove).”
What if they resist arrest? Yeah, I’m going with the boot, thank you.
“No arbitrary political group is either all good or all bad; the same goes for people in general, unless you want to bring up
mass murderers or serial child molesters. So to attribute all evil intent to your political opponents is not only facile and
simplistic, but often leads down the path to violence, pogroms, and war.”
Umm….yes; I do attribute all (political) evil to my political opponents. The moment someone commits an evil, I oppose them,
see. Individually. Not the whole group, unless the whole group embraces the evil act in which case the whole group is leftist and I oppose it.
I was talking about principles and he was talking about political parties (group think– tribal association). Two different
subjects. Lets break this down further.
If some members of the Catholic Church are found to be sex abusers, are all those who try to follow the teachings of Jesus then
to be held accountable for the abuse? More important; are the teachings of Jesus thereby rendered invalid and useless, or even
evil? If some who claim to be Christians are practicing serial child abuse, then Christ himself was an evil man, and
anything he said should be dismissed out of hand? That would have to be the conclusion of the tribalist, and of course it would
be insane.
If I’d left out the “and you don’t deserve it” bit, someone would have said, “Oh yeah? What if you just murdered someone? Does
that mean that anyone who comes after you for it is a leftist?!!!” Since I put it in, I got criticized with “…who are you,
or anyone else, to be the sole arbiter of whether someone ‘deserves’ abuse?” Either way it’s a change of subject– a diversion
from the point. I’m talking about principles and he’s talking about something else– anything but the point. It’s a
sophisticated version of “Oh yeah? Well your mother wears Army boots!” after which I suppose I am to argue about my mother’s
fashion sense instead of the fact that leftists are all authoritarians and all authoritarians are leftists whereas those on the
right are for liberty. That someone may falsely claim to be on the right, or that someone on the right might commit a crime of
some kind, is not my fault, and it certainly does not say anything whatsoever about the validity of my principles.
What that self-described libertarian is actually saying (probably without thinking about it) is that the principles of liberty
are invalid because, for generations, leftists have been posing as Republicans. Therefore, if I espouse the principles of liberty, I’m a hypocrite.
It was Racist from the Beginning
Hat tip; Uncle
This is the first I’ve heard about it. I can’t say I’d be surprised. Federal gun restriction has always had racial motivations, among others. One of the “problems” of recognizing black people’s citizenship rights was stated openly– that such would allow them to go about armed anywhere they went. We could fix this gigantic mess by simply repealing the NFA of 1934 and the GCA of ’68. This country got along just fine without them. As it is, we’re still festering in FDR’s aftermath.
Meanwhile, the Republicans are busy trying to figure out what it is they should pretend to believe during the upcoming election.
Quote of the day—Motor-T
I always thought it was odd to describe capitalism as a system. Nobody arranged capitalism, or put it into place. Capitalism is the name for what happens (economically) when people are left alone.
Motor-T
July 6, 2012
Comment to Quote of the day—John Aziz
[It gets even weirder when people start whining about the government “forcing freedom” and the CIA “forcing free trade” on people. I have to conclude there is some sort of cognitive distortion going on. Either that or these people have more than few pages in their dictionaries filled in by two-year olds with crayons.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Thomas Sowell
Fallacies abound in economic policies affecting everything from housing to international trade. Where the unintended consequences of these policies take years to unfold, the effects may not be traced back to their causes by many people. Even when the bad consequences follow closely after a given policy, many people may not connect the dots, and advocates of policies that backfire often attribute these bad consequences to something else. Sometimes they claim that the bad situation would have been even worse if it had not been for the wonderful policies they advocated.
There are many reasons why fallacies have staying power, even in the face of hard evidence against them. Elected officials, for example, cannot readily admit that some policy or program that they advocated, perhaps with great fanfare, has turned out badly, without risking their whole careers. Similarly for leaders of various causes and movements. Even intellectuals or academics with tenure stand to lose prestige and suffer embarrassment when their notions turn out to be counterproductive. Others who think of themselves as supporters of things that will help the less fortunate would find it painful to confront evidence that they have in fact made the less fortunate worse off than before. In other words, evidence is too dangerous— politically, financially and psychologically— for some people to allow it to become a threat to their interests or to their own sense of themselves.
Thomas Sowell
Economic Facts and Fallacies: Second Edition Economic Facts and Fallacies: Second Edition page 2.
[See also When Prophecy Fails or my website by the same name for a quick overview.
I expect that most of those that read my blog will see the applicability of the above to our current political situation.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Steven Den Beste
Way back in the depths of time, Greek philosophers ended up with two basic and incompatible ways of looking at the universe. One way was materialism, which says that there is a material universe which behaves in a consistent way, and if you study it you can learn the way it works.
That’s the world view of engineers and scientists — and businessmen, for that matter. It’s the world view of people who understand and use mathematics, and statistics. It is a place where cause leads to effect. It’s the place that game theory studies. It isn’t necessarily inherently atheistic; a lot of religious people live in the materialist world.
But there are people who don’t. A different epistemological view is teleology, which says that the universe is an ideal place. More or less, it exists so that we humans can live in it. And human thought is a fundamental force in the universe. Teleology says that if a mental model is esthetically pleasing then it must be true. Teleology implies that if you truly believe in something, it’ll happen.
Steven Den Beste
December 6, 2009
Government by Wishful Thinking
[H/T to wfgodbold in the comment to A process failure.
As I have said before (and here, here, and here) our opponents have a “currency” which is emotionally based. I find the dealings in this currency perplexing and frequently repugnant. But what is scary to me is the number of people that advocate this currency, deal in this currency, and hold great political power.—Joe]
Quote of the day—John Aziz
The chief problem that Marxists face is their misidentification of the present economic system as free market capitalism. How can we meaningfully call a system where the price of money is controlled by the state a free market? How can we meaningfully call a system where financial institutions are routinely bailed out a free market? How can we meaningfully call a system where upwards of 40% of GDP is spent by the state a free market? How can we call a system where the market trades the possibility of state intervention rather than underlying fundamentals a free market?
…
I’m not sure that Marxists have ever understood capitalism; Das Kapital is a mammoth work concentrating on many facets of 19th Century industrial and economic development, but it tends to focus in on obscure minutiae without ever really considering the coherent whole. If Marxists had ever come close to grasping the broader mechanisms of capitalism — and if they truly cared about democracy — they would have been far less likely to promulgate a system based on dictatorial central planning.
John Aziz
July 5, 2012
Guest Post: Is Marxism Coming Back?
[As I said after reading the Communist Manifesto, “The typical two year old child or even the family dog wouldn’t accept the conclusions unless they were forced into compliance.”
Marxists are either profoundly ignorant or profoundly evil. In either case I believe it is intentional. I suspect most fall into the ignorant category (also known as “useful idiots”) but the those in the latter category have a high probability of obtaining all the power.—Joe]
CCRKBA video on Fast and Furious
From the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms:
They are asking for donations so this video can be run on television.
Contempt of Congress options
The House sends out its Sergeant-at-Arms to arrest the defendant, he is tried on the spot, and the House decides whether to convict.
It is a little bit of a surprise to me but the Capital has a dungeon just for such purposes. And I find it interesting and very pleasing that:
…presidential pardons appear not to apply to civil contempt procedures such as inherent contempt because it is not an “offense against the United States” or an offense against “the dignity of public authority.”
I realize spending really needs to be cut but couldn’t we find enough money to enlarge the dungeon enough to hold a few more people? You would think that after spending a few days chained to the wall they would become more cooperative with Congressional investigations.
Good question
Katie Pavlich, “If Operation Fast and Furious wasn’t about pushing for more gun control, then why is the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a group with strong oppositions to the Second Amendment, coming to Attorney General Eric Holder’s defense?”
That’s a very good question.
And in case you don’t recognize the name Ms. Pavlich literally wrote the book on Fast and Furious. It’s a good book. Both Ry and I liked it.
Quote of the day—NRA-ILA
Concurrently, the nation’s total violent crime rate has dropped 18 of the last 20 years, to about a 41-year low. The nation’s murder rate has dropped to about a 48-year low. Polls show that support for gun control has fallen, support for the Second Amendment has risen, and gun ownership is higher now than any time since 1993. The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the Second Amendment in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010).
The Brady Campaign’s response? Go even further off the deep end.
…
We’ve all heard the popular 19th century axiom, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” It’s good advice in some circumstances, but the Brady Campaign would have been better off with the advice of W. C. Fields: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.”
NRA-ILA
June 29, 2012
Learning Pains at the Brady Campaign? Pain, Yes. Learning, No
[This ties in with something Sebastian and I have commented on before. The anti-gun people are being “damn fools”. If the anti-gun people weren’t out there pushing their agenda we would spend more time on safety training instead of politics. If they wanted to reduce accidental injuries and deaths due to poor gun handling then they should become NRA certified firearms instructors and make classes available at affordable prices. If they wanted to reduce violent crime they should teach personal protection classes.
The world would be a better much place if they joined us instead of fighting us.—Joe]
That didn’t work for G. Gordon Liddy
Perhaps there is something subtle going on here that I don’t understand but this seems to be a settled issue:
Obviously Holder’s been under pressure for more than a year, but I think there will be an argument by the Justice Department that anytime a president authorizes something, that whomever follows the president’s orders cannot be prosecuted.
If I recall correctly G. Gordon Liddy claimed the same thing at his trial and he got a 40 year sentence for supervising a burglary.
People at the Department of Justice and/or the ATF deliberately sent guns to Mexican drug cartels in the hopes they could recover them later at “crime scenes”. Of course in this instance “crime scenes” is an euphemism for locations where innocent people were murdered. In other words people, perhaps acting under the orders of the POTUS, deliberately engaged in activities they believed would be directly related to the deaths of innocent people. They were successful and at least 300 people died as per their plan.
Liddy was sentenced to 40 years for supervising one burglary. What does that sentence extrapolate into for supervising 300 murders?