Category Archives: Politics

Quote of the day—Jeff Knox

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The old adage of never looking a gift horse in the mouth does not apply in civic matters – just ask the Trojans.

Jeff Knox
May 24, 2012
Scandal! Cities pay anti-gun lobbyists
[This is in regards to the Illegal Mayors Against Guns and the Joyce Foundation partially funding city “staff positions for professional lobbyists whose primary function is to drum up support for ant-gun legislation, ordinances and regulations.”

As Jeff points out in his article if this were the NRA getting pro-gun lobbyists on city staff the media and liberals would explode in fury. Bring this point up as needed to eliminate these questionable if not illegal use of tax money.

There are other ways to get the point across as well. What if they were lobbyists for other controversial political positions such as:

  • Pro-Life?
  • Pro-Choice?
  • The KKK?
  • Creationism?

Government is rightly limited to specific enumerated powers. For them to use taxpayer money to advocate the infringement of specific enumerated rights goes way beyond any power they should ever be allowed to have.—Joe]

Your bias is showing

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Google news shows Fidel Castro’s niece endorsed President Obama (last Google entry shown on this page):

 CastroEndorsesObama

Yet when you go to that page the name “Obama” and that quote is not to be found.

Other sources include the quote, “I would vote for President Obama. I think he’s sincere and speaks from the heart.”

Apparently the AP removed that portion of the story. Perhaps because it is because it really shouldn’t be considered news. Communists endorsing communists is even less newsworthy than “dog bits man”.

Quote of the day—Josh Sugarmann

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Assault weapons are increasingly being perceived by legislators, police organizations, handgun restriction advocates, and the press as a public health threat. As these weapons come to be associated with drug traffickers, paramilitary extremists, and survivalists, their television and movie glamour is losing its lustre to a violent reality.

Because of this fact, assault weapons are quickly becoming the leading topic of America’s gun control debate and will most likely remain the leading gun control issue for the near future. Such a shift will not only damage America’s gun lobby, but strengthen the handgun restriction lobby.

Josh Sugarmann
1988
Conclusion to Assault Weapons and Accessories in America
[There are multiple things of interest in this 1988 prediction.

As an almost off the wall observation I find it curious Sugarmann uses the British spelling of “luster”.

More on track is that Sugarmann, in some ways, was brilliant with this study. He correctly identified a political weakness and was instrumental in exploiting it. The 1994 Federal “Assault Weapon Ban” and as well as several previous and subsequent state and local bans can trace their roots to this study.

But Sugarmann failed in his prediction “America’s gun lobby” would be damaged and that the handgun restriction lobby will benefit from the debate and restrictions on “Assault Weapons”.

The NRA membership exploded to record levels with the political debates and actual passing of the Federal “Assault Weapon Ban”. Today they are as strong or stronger than ever before and members of Congress have ranked the NRA as the most powerful lobbying organization in the country several years in a row.

Handgun Control Inc., now known the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, is specifically called out as having 180,000 dues paying members and an annual budget of $4,000,000. They changed to the more stealthy name in 2001 and as of 2010 only had about 28,000 people who had given donations or paid dues in the previous year. (Tamara has the appropriate words).

The National Coalition to Ban Handguns, now known as Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, is also called out. This organization changed their name just one year later, ‘because the group felt that “assault rifles” as well as handguns, should be outlawed.’ These days they are reduced to little more than sparing with gun bloggers on Twitter.

And of course we need to look at Sugarmann’s own Violence Policy Center. Yesterday, which inspired this QOTD, Sebastian posted the answer–VPC: The Most Irrelevant Anti-Gun Group?—Joe]

Quote of the day—State Senator Leland Yee

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It is extremely important that individuals in the state of California do not own assault weapons. I mean that is just so crystal clear, there is no debate, no discussion.

State Senator Leland Yee
May 20, 2012
CBS 5 Story Inspires New Legislation To Ban ‘Bullet Button’
[Let me fix that for you Senator Yee. What you really meant to say is, “It is extremely important that individuals in the state of California have no debate, no discussion. Just so it is crystal clear I respect neither the 1st nor 2nd Amendments.”—Joe]

Quote of the day—David Carson

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Why is supporting the Bill of Rights a good thing?


David Carson
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Comment to The VA Tells the Truth About Guns. The NRA Can’t Handle It.
[It’s nice for our opposition to explicitly say what we already knew about them. They either cannot or will not respect the rights of others. They not only see no need to put limits on government but actively oppose and ignore limits on government.


In answer to Carson’s question, “Just because“.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Gore Vidal

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Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.

Gore Vidal
[I normally would find something of this nature funny but with too much truth in it I, as well as the humor, suffers.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ann Coulter

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… Republicans eventually had to fight a Civil War to get the Democrats to give up slavery.

Alas, they were Democrats, so they cheated.

After the war, Democratic legislatures enacted “Black Codes,” denying black Americans the right of citizenship — such as the rather crucial one of bearing arms — while other Democrats (sometimes the same Democrats) founded the Ku Klux Klan.

For more than a hundred years, Republicans have aggressively supported arming blacks, so they could defend themselves against Democrats.

Ann Coulter
April 23, 2012
Coulter: Gun control and self-defense
[Great article. As is usual for Coulter there is lots of snark.-Joe]

I like it, but…

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…she should be suckling an adult if it’s supposed to depict The Obama Way.  Well, children, adults– everyone.  Maybe there should be a long line behind the kid, all carrying signs and complaining/competing over who gets to suckle next.

Winning

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Via a SAF Tweet.

Liberal Whoopi Goldberg Admits She’s a Member of the NRA:

GOLDBERG: But it is also, is it also, John, because those folks are saying, okay, here’s what I have in my house. I’m letting–the government says — I want you–I’m an NRA member, as you probably know or don’t know.

…

STOSSEL: You packing now?
HASSELBECK: Maybe?
GOLDBERG: You don’t want to find out.

I despise emulation of celebrities but I recognize it probably is hard-wired into the human brain. Therefore this is great news. Not only has she “come out of the closet” as a gun owner and NRA member but she is a black female who comes across as reasonably smart, rational, and likable. This makes it more difficult for the anti-gun people to make their usual claims about gun owners being stupid/ignorant/insurrectionist racist white males.

Quote of the day—Emily Miller

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The District needs to realize that it cannot choose to exempt itself from a fundamental provision of the Bill of Rights.

Emily Miller
March 6, 2012
MILLER: Gun owners win a round: Second Amendment rights advance in District and Maryland
[Unfortunately such a realization seems to require a (figuratively) 2×4 between the eyes. Fortunately we have such a 2×4 with SAF and Alan Gura. It’s tragic it took over 30 years to connect for the first time and so many people had, and still have, their rights infringed upon and no public official has ever gone to jail over it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Philip Van Cleave

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It wasn’t some industrious Virginian smuggling guns to New York City, it’s people coming from New York to Virginia to get guns by some illegal means. It’s really their problem. They need to keep their criminals and drugs in New York. I’m not giving up my rights because New York can’t control its criminals.

Philip Van Cleave
May 7, 2012
Critics say Va.’s gun laws could encourage trafficking
[This, of course, reminds me of something Tam once 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.

Van Cleave puts a more politically correct spin on it but still gets the message across.—Joe]

Benefits of the economic downturn

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Several years ago when the news of the exploding debt and crashing financial markets was making the headlines son James ask what this would mean. I told him I didn’t really know because I had never seen anything like it before and to a large extent we don’t have any real history of this sort of thing before. In the depression of the 1930’s the government debt wasn’t huge to start out with and there was a completely different situation with the banks and lack of insured deposits. This is different.

The one thing I suggested might eventually happen is that governments would have to start laying off people and that many laws and regulations would essentially be ignored because there would not be enough people to enforce them. His response was something along the lines of, “So this is a good thing then.” Of course it isn’t and wasn’t that simple. There can be a lot of bad to go with the good. For example there may not be enough people to enforce the morass of all the millions of regulations but there probably will always be enough thugs to enforce the confiscatory tax rates, nationalization of health care, communications, food, and energy production and distribution.

The worst of the possibilities have not happened yet but a glimmer of the good has started to shine through:

In April the household survey showed that that there were 442,000 fewer people working in government than in March. The household survey has a much smaller sample size than the establishment survey, and so is prone to volatility, but the magnitude of the drop is striking: It marks the largest decline on both an absolute and a percentage basis on record going back to 1948. Moreover, the household survey has consistently showed bigger drops in government employment than the establishment survey has.

But of course it’s but a drop in the bucket. According to the article there are about 20.3 million people in the U.S. engaged in government work. I would be happier if there were 19 million fewer than that with most of those being in the military.

Quote of the day—terryatrae

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I hear that Oklahoma may replace it’s Lethal Injection system (Which is out of drugs) with O’Bama Care as their choice to use in Death Penalty cases.

terryatrae
May 7, 2012
Comment to Anti-gun group downplays ‘Operation Fast and Furious’ death toll
[The amount of truth in this statement is vanishingly small but it’s enough to be very funny.—Joe]

My next book

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I just discovered the next book I’m going to read: Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and the Shameless Cover-Up.

I’m downloading it from Audible.com as I type…

Some people are speculating that Fast and Furious could be the next “Watergate”. But I’m not really convinced it will become that. Sure, it’s almost certain what happened was worse than Watergate because of the people who died and that an attack on a fundamental right was involved. But Watergate only became such a big issue because the media cared about it. The media cared about it because it was a Republican president involved in the scandal. In this case it’s a Democrat and it was about infringing upon the 2nd Amendment which the media thinks is a good idea.

Dennis Prager Demands Violence, Torture

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Last night on his radio program, Dennis Prager said we need to “hold [Republicans’] feet to the fire”.

No doubt he’ll be hearing from the Secret Service any second.

Quote of the day—Will Rogers

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A fool and his money are soon elected.

Will Rogers
[Some things never change.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ian I. Mitroff

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Understanding such forces is crucial in attacking issues such as gun control, which are completely out of control. Even though the vast majority of both NRA and non-NRA gun owners are for tighter gun control laws, fear and shame are still the primary factors driving gun ownership to record highs. But fear and shame cannot be approached directly, for one is generally too ashamed to admit one is ashamed!

If shame is indeed one of the most powerful unconscious forces behind so many of our failed attempts to curb our most pressing social problems, and if it is difficult to approach directly, then how can we confront and combat shame itself?

There are at least four different ways, none of which are sufficient by themself. The first is obviously books such as Gilligan’s, which point out the complex factors and overall patterns responsible for shame. Sadly, because they confront shame too directly and are largely cognitive in nature, they reach only a very small percentage of the population, mainly highly educated liberals, who are already less prone to shame. Nonetheless, they are necessary even if they are not sufficient. Without understanding the factors responsible for shame, it is extremely difficult, if not virtually impossible, to fashion truly effective ways of combating it.

The second way is of course individual therapy. Again, this only reaches a very small percentage of the population, mainly highly educated liberals. And, it does not treat a whole society therapeutically that is suffering from shame.

The third of course is ongoing, sustained programs and efforts in education. The earlier and the younger we intervene with children the better. But imagine the howls of protests from conservatives who are already paranoid about “government stealing the minds of children.”

The fourth is the most effective. It consists of carefully orchestrated public service campaigns that feature prominent, charismatic figures from all walks of life (business, entertainment, sports, politics, etc.) that have successfully faced and overcome shame. Powerful personal stories are the main ingredient. And, of course, celebrities are the story.

Ian I. Mitroff
Adjunct Professor, UC Berkeley
April 25, 2012
Confronting Shame-Based Politics: The Biggest Challenge of All
[I would take issue with his unsubstantiated assertion that gun owners are for tighter gun control laws and that shame is an issue in gun ownership. But I won’t out of fear he would put me on a list such that I would end up in a death camp instead of a reeducation camp or psych hospital should he and his kind ever achieve the power they desire.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ann Coulter

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We don’t know the facts yet, but let’s assume the conclusion MSNBC is leaping to is accurate: George Zimmerman stalked a small black child and murdered him in cold blood, just because he was black.

If that were true, every black person in America should get a gun and join the National Rifle Association, America’s oldest and most august civil rights organization.

Ann Coulter
April 23, 2012
Coulter: Gun control and self-defense
[Great article. As is usual for Coulter there is lots of snark.-Joe]

Right Too Late

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Hat tip; Billy Beck  This can’t get enough exposure;

Some of the people close to me are in effect communists.  No; they don’t attend Party rallies and most of them don’t send money to The Party (though some do through their union dues and they may not even know it) but their underlying assumptions are the same.  That’s all it takes.  You don’t need to be a Firm Believer in the teachings of Brother Marx, carrying around the little red book, or even understand where your beliefs came from.  You only need those underlying assumptions you acquired by default sometime in childhood, and just a little bit of envy, or resentment, or frustration, or anger, and plenty of reinforcement from those with whom you’ve chosen to surround yourself.  The Party and it’s allies will then be free to do the rest, because you won’t notice until it’s too late.  It all sounds fairly reasonable, even good, along the way, because “we all know that something has to be done”.  Right?  And that something is, as always, more government (less freedom).

Suckers.  I can forgive the kids (most haven’t received a proper education) but what about you adults?  Seriously.

It’s interesting.  I was listening this weekend to a man who barely escaped with his life from Cuba.  He said his parents supported Castro.  All Castro wanted was justice after all (there was clearly a lack of justice in Cuba, pre revolution) and to serve the collective good of The People.  His parents supported Castro wholeheartedly.  That is, until the newly empowered communists came and took everything they had– everything his parents had worked for all their lives.  I heard the same basic story directly from a famous musician who had escaped from Cuba by skipping out on his handlers while on tour in the U.S.  You risk your life doing that.  If the catch you, they kill you, or take you back to make an example out of you.  The man I was listening to this weekend was in tears, trying to warn us that the same thing is happening here in the U.S., in this land of his Last Great Hope.  They’re using same promises and the same rationale, using the same underlying assumptions, with the same goals right here and right now.  If it succeeds it will have the same outcome.  It always does.  Only this time it’s global.

It has been said that being right is ok (sometimes) but being right too soon makes you a radical extremist.

What about being right too late?  What does that make you?  I ask you Progressives.  You’ve grown up with the warning signs all around you, and now the warning signs have reached ear-splitting decibel levels.  What does it make you if you’re right too late?  Or does your anger or fear, or hatred, or disgust with the human race, prevent you from caring about the consequences?  I know there are those who believe there are too many people on the planet already.  Some people know what we’re headed for and they secretly long for it.  For other Progressives– those who just want to live a good life and want what’s “best” for everyone; What does it make you when you’re right too late?

When Government Is Out Of Control…

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…the truth is shockingly radical to some people.  How DARE he say that!  Well it isn’t truth’s fault that truth is sometimes shocking, is it?  Well is it?

Allen West does a pretty good job of standing his ground and staying focused;

Did you catch the fact that the Vice Chairman of the National Communist Party thinks that being called a communist is insulting?  I found myself hoping that West would bring it up.  Could you imagine a high ranking NRA executive thinking it an insult to be called an NRA member?

Communists (Progressives) have to slink around in the dark as a way of life and they know it.  Turn on the lights!

“Well I don’t care what he says.”  I love it.  CNN goes to the actual, openly named Communist Party (they’re probably on a first name basis) for their reaction to someone calling someone else a communist.  Oh, the layers of irony and stupidity.  See; this how these things make the major headlines.

It’s all because Allen West had the gall, the nerve, the cheek, the chutzpah, to describe what was right in front of his face and for all to see.  The loonies go apoplectic, try to beat West over the head with his own comments, and now a lot more people have heard that the communists had to re-brand themselves, that they have a caucus in Washington, the self described Communist Party comes out saying it’s insulting to call people communists, and West gets a boost. This is how it works, people. We win every time we stick to basic truth.

Now if West had gone all Republican (getting scared, going marshmallow, saying he didn’t really mean it, and sorry to be so reckless with my words, please forgive me, mea maxima culpa) he’d have lost.  And we’d lose with him. As it is, the loonies actually look like loonies, making loonies of themselves, calling out more loonies to join the loony-fest, and the truth gets a boost.

Hat tip; Glen Beck, and I credit him also for bringing some of our history (the parts that don’t get taught in the coercive, i.e. government, schools) into the public spotlight over the years.