Category Archives: Politics

Quote of the day—Jonathan Rauch

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How can I let the introvert in my life know that I support him and respect his choice? First, recognize that it’s not a choice. It’s not a lifestyle. It’s an orientation.

Second, when you see an introvert lost in thought, don’t say “What’s the matter?” or “Are you all right?”

Third, don’t say anything else, either.

Jonathan Rauch
March 2003
Caring for Your Introvert—The habits and needs of a little-understood group
[This entire article really resonated with me. In addition to the “Caring for your introvert” aspects there are some profound political considerations addressed. The first thought I had was “Too bad it would be unconstitional to ban extroverts from seeking public office.”

Hi. My name is Joe and I am an introvert.—Joe]

Update: Applicable images from a reader who says the first one “… is especially for Lyle”:

 

IntrovertImage02IntrovertAnonIntrovertImage01

Quote of the day—Wallace Carroll

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Can’t we Americans here at home do something to lift the gun terror from our schools, playgrounds, parking lots, malls, post offices, housing projects, highways and the grim reaches of our cities where the police must risk their lives to uphold the law?

Of course we can. What we have to do now is to free ourselves from one of the great hoaxes of the 20th century.

This mighty country stands paralyzed in the face of an ever-spreading plague of guns. This national calamity we owe to the leaders of the National Rifle Association in Washington. With a tenacity and ferocity worthy of a better cause, they have fought every proposal, however moderate, to bring the menace under control.

In this endeavor, their principal weapon has been the Second Amendment to the Constitution — or, rather, their version of the Second Amendment.

That amendment, they have insisted, gives everyone an absolute constitutional right to have every kind of firearm. Brandishing that “right,” spending millions in lobbying and legal maneuvers and threatening doom to politicians who would oppose them, they have killed or stalled gun control initiatives in Congress, state legislatures and city governments.

At last, however, the nation is on the move.

…

Now the great Second Amendment hoax can be nailed once and for all if the rank-and-file of the NRA and other responsible citizens will master one simple truth: The Second Amendment means what the courts say it means. It does not mean what the NRA leaders have been telling the nation all these years.

Wallace Carroll
July 4, 1993
To End the Gun Terror, End the Second Amendment Hoax
[Those were the dark days of gun rights activism. That was the attitude nearly everywhere in the media and many of the politicians. Guns were a terror, a plague, a menace, and a national calamity. The standard view of the Second Amendment was a hoax, a lie, and a fraud.

I agree with one thing he said. The Second Amendment means what the courts say it means.

The problem for Mr. Carroll is that he was, probably deliberately, misreading the Miller decision and ignoring the Cruikshank decision. The Heller decision made things much more difficult for people like Carroll to distort. The question is now that the courts have agreed with the NRA on the meaning of the Second Amendment does Carroll still insist that the meaning of the Second Amendment is what the courts say it is? Or does he now insist that the Supreme Court has perpetuated a fraud on the American people as well?

Or does Carroll now admit it was he that was the hoaxer or at least the one that fell for a fraud?—Joe]

Tell me if you already heard this one

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Numerous individuals, known as straw buyers, were recruited to buy AK-47 like semi-automatic firearms. These firearms were then sent to Mexico for use by a drug cartel.

One of the firearms in the hands of the cartel was used in a shooting which resulted in the death of a U.S. law enforcement official.

Sound familiar?

Okay. Well this is probably something you haven’t heard. The perpetrator, Manuel Gomez Barba, of Baytown, Texas, has been sentenced to 100 months for the exportation of the 44 firearms.

The ATF illegally exported something on the order of 2000 firearms to Mexican drug cartels. Does that mean those criminals will receive 2000/44 x 100 months (~380 years) in prison for their crimes?

I don’t think so. Tar and feathers might also be considered appropriate but also have a near zero chance of coming to pass.

I claim retirement at full pay with bonuses will be the most likely outcome.

Quote of the day—Jim Geraghty

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The administration that took military action in Libya without any authorization from force from Congress, that appointed czars with policymaking authority without Congressional confirmation, and that made ‘recess’ appointments while Congress was not in recess is invoking executive privilege to cover how the Department of Justice reacted when Congress began asking about a gun-trafficking operation that got U.S. law enforcement officers murdered by Mexican drug cartels.

All from a president who railed against a runaway imperial presidency when George W. Bush sat in the office he currently occupies.

Jim Geraghty
February 2, 2012
Eric Holder Should Become a Campaign Issue Today
[H/T to Say Uncle.

I’ve had admitted Marxist’s tell me, “We just need to have the right people in charge.” The problem is that power always attracts the people that can least be trusted with that power.

The only option is to not give anyone that much power. I don’t understand why this lesson has to be taught again and again. People have understood this since at least 1776.—Joe]

Shame on NSSF and Glock

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I received an email from author Paul Barrett (my review of Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun is here) this afternoon with a link to this article. The most interesting thing I found was the following:

Apparently, the executives at Glock Inc., the Smyrna, Ga., subsidiary of Glock GmbH are worried about the book’s look behind the scenes at the company. So Glock Inc. forced the National Shooting Sports Foundation to rescind my press credentials for the 2012 SHOT Show expo floor. Talk about disrespect for First Amendment free speech rights!

What?

Okay, so the First Amendment doesn’t always apply to non-government actors attempting to silence or restrict your access information. But even if it isn’t actually a First Amendment issue there are some principles involved here.

I can understand Glock being miffed at the revealing of some unsavory insider details in the book. But this is shutting the barn window after the horse has left, found a mare or three, and established a herd on the open plains.

I could see Glock employees refusing to talk to Barrett and maybe even asking him to leave their booth. But putting pressure on NSSF to rescind his press credentials? That’s way out of line. It was also stupid. Can you say, “Streisand Effect“?

And NSSF went along with this?

Shame on both of them.

Blind faith

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I’ve met and talked to a lot of anti-gun activists. With perhaps one exception I always got the impression they were generally nice people. Misguided, sometimes ignorant, and frequently not very bright but they were nice and I wouldn’t have minded having one of them as a neighbor or socializing with them if the topic of guns didn’t come up.

That said we sometimes ascribe evil intent to the anti-gun people. In the case of certain politicians such as Chuck Schumer, the Clintons, and President Obama (none of which I have ever met or talked to) this may be true. But generally there is something else going on. The people just aren’t the “evil type”.

But of course just because someone is a “nice” person doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t inadvertently advocate for and enable something terribly evil all the while believing they were doing good. Like I said, a lot of these people aren’t that bright.

Lorne Gunter said something on this topic that struck me as highly likely (emphasis added):

There are around 340,000 violent crimes reported to police in Canada each year. Just over 2% of those (around 8,000) involve firearms. (There’s another reason to question the initial wisdom of the gun registry: Why was Ottawa expending so much time, effort and taxpayer money on such a tiny percentage of violent crimes, while doing comparatively little to prevent the 98% of murders, robberies, kidnappings, rapes and beatings not committed with a gun?)

Typically, gun crime is committed by street criminals using stolen or contraband weapons. The gun registry never had any effect on this class of thug. Some of the 8,000 violent gun crimes no doubt were committed by licensed owners using registered guns — people who might be tracked or even deterred using a registry system. But since no one in Ottawa ever had any idea how many people are in this latter group, they had no way of determining the usefulness of the registry.

A cynic might say that not knowing was the point all along. Backers of the registry knew it would produce very little impact, so they deliberately didn’t bother collecting data that would confirm the database’s uselessness.

I think the truth is less conspiratorial (and far more arrogant): Backers were so sure the registry would produce tangible benefits, they never thought they might need to show proof. After all, they were experts and they had thought it up, so how could it not work?

…

It was purely on blind faith that supporters of the registry — police chiefs, victims’ rights groups, women’s shelter operators and grandstanding politicians — assumed that making Canadians register their guns would magically cut down on violent crime.

Faith, in this context, means believing in something without, or even in spite of, evidence. It was, and is, blind faith motivating these people to continue advocating for gun control. As I have pointed out before and some of them have even agreed, they do not know, or care, how to determine truth from falsity.

As an engineer this is abhorrent to me. When I design a filter using an op-amp, a couple capacitors, and resisters I can predict the frequency response within a fraction of a decibel. But I still test it because it’s possible I made a mistake someplace or a part doesn’t meet the vendor’s specification that I used for the design.

When I design an algorithm for estimating the location of a phone based on the presence of visible Wi-Fi access points and cell towers I know pretty darned close what the accuracy is and how long it will take to do the calculations. But I still test it and there is a test team doing their best to shoot my design and implementation down.

I recognize that human behavior is far more complex and less predictable than electronics and software algorithms. But that just screams that tests have to be done on social experiments. Yet, these people are so stupid (or, granted, in some cases malicious) they not only don’t even bother trying to predict the results or think to do tests but cannot imagine why tests would be needed.

These people deserve all the “respect” of a cargo cult or Heaven’s Gate followers.

Unfortunately this faith is not confined to just gun control. It is my hypothesis that this same blind faith template would match most U.S. government program of the last 100 years.

Quote of the day—Roberta X

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Both of the big parties — matched set of jackboots that they are — assume they own women’s bodies. They just have differing plans for them.

Roberta X
January 14, 2012
They Both Think They Own Me
[I was just listening to Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One by Thomas Sowell. One of the things he pointed out that it’s the wrong question to ask, “Where did slavery come from?” As near as we can determine slavery has been around (and continues to exist) since before writing was invented. The real question is, “Where did freedom come from?”

With this background it seems likely that the desire to “own” other human is hardwired into some primitive part of most peoples brains. This manifests itself in many different ways.

Some people are more aware of these urges than others and outright claim, “I was born to regulate.” Others have claimed a divine right from the god(s) to rule other people. Even many of those who do not claim ownership or the right to rule others for their personal benefit will insist there be a ruler to take ownership of both them and their neighbors.

It may be that brief twinkle of freedom in history was an aberration and those reaping the benefits of freedom grew too fatigued to support it (see Thomas Paine). I know that at times I feel the fatigue and yearn to have the burden lifted even as I see our freedoms rapidly disappearing.—Joe]

Quote of the day—President Barack Obama

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We expect to have a full — a fully — or a comprehensive approach to dealing with these issues of border security that will involve supporting Calderón and his efforts in a partnership; also making sure that we are dealing with the flow of drug money and the guns south, because it’s really a two-way situation there. The drugs are coming north; we’re sending funds and guns south — and as a consequence, these cartels have gained extraordinary power.

President Barack Obama
March 11, 2010
The President and the Drug War: Part I
[I find it fascinating how his words, “we’re sending funds and guns south”, can be interpreted completely differently in present day than most people would have interpreted them at the time he said them.—Joe]

The Quintessential Republican

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Sure; they know what you want to hear, at least for the most part, though they’re playing the Bible-thumper card a bit too heavy.  They know pretty well how to push your buttons, getting the applause at the rallies and so on.  As they see it, they know how to win over us stupid bumpkin Elmer Fudds in fly-over country (just throw ’em some red meat and watch them bark like dogs).

Here’s an example of what they really think, gleaned from a rare moment of partial honesty.  Newt calls himself a “Realpolitik Wilsonian.”  Yeah; that Wilson.  Be sure to watch both videos on the page.  I don’t care what you think of Glen Beck.  Screw that.  Listen to the words.  The “Four Freedoms”.

That’s the Republican Party today.  You can’t mix the liberty talk with the Four Freedoms.  That’s a lie, and yet it represents everything the Party stands for.

Make no mistake.  We’re being offered what amounts to a plea deal.  Either we take the deal (vote Republican) or we’re sentenced to another four years with a Democrat in office.  Bleed slowly or bleed quickly.  It’s a threat you see– take a Progressive dirt bag (Republican) or else.  That’s how this works, and I’m not playing that game.  I’ll get interested in an election when liberty is on the ballot, but don’t expect that to happen any time soon.

Quote of the day—Amos

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It’s about feelings and self-identity for Progressives. They’re like monkeys. They’ve got enough primate brain to form tribes, but they just don’t use the higher faculties. So it’s no surprise that flinging crap is their modus operadi.

Amos
January 4, 2012
Comment to Well, your legislature asked for it
[The tribes thing stuck with me. They do have thing about about groups don’t they? The individual and individualism is denigrated. They say things such as “The good of society is more important than the individual.” And “It takes a village.” They put a lot of effort into masses of people into the streets without any clear rational message.

Yet it was individualism that created the tremendous advances in Western Civilization which other societies were forced to adopt (or attempt to destroy) lest they be left far, far behind.—Joe]

Quote of the day–Mao Tse-tung

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Every Communist must grasp the truth, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party. Yet, having guns, we can create Party organizations, as witness the powerful Party organizations which the Eighth Route Army has created in northern China. We can also create cadres, create schools, create culture, create mass movements. Everything in Yenan has been created by having guns. All things grow out of the barrel of a gun. According to the Marxist theory of the state, the army is the chief component of state power. Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must have a strong army. Some people ridicule us as advocates of the “omnipotence of war”. Yes, we are advocates of the omnipotence of revolutionary war; that is good, not bad, it is Marxist. The guns of the Russian Communist Party created socialism. We shall create a democratic republic. Experience in the class struggle in the era of imperialism teaches us that it is only by the power of the gun that the working class and the labouring masses can defeat the armed bourgeoisie and landlords; in this sense we may say that only with guns can the whole world be transformed.

Mao Tse-tung
November 6, 1938
PROBLEMS OF WAR AND STRATEGY
[I have used part of this quote before but never the full context. I think this adds a great deal. It’s about the requirement that Marxists control the guns to obtain and keep political power.

While it is true that not all gun-grabbers are Marxist every communist must grasp the truth… And it is for this reason that every gun-grabber must be suspected and carefully examined for communist intentions.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Howard Nemerov

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For 2012, the most important criteria in determining a candidate’s legitimacy: how comfortable is the candidate with the concept of armed citizens?

Howard Nemerov
December 30, 2011
A Tough Year for Gun Control’s Brady Campaign: Gun rights advanced across the country, and Brady’s own statistics undermined their cause.
[As has been pointed out by many others the attitude a candidate has about the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms is a strong indicator of how they regard other freedoms. If they are opposed to the people keeping an bearing arms then one must seriously suspect they want to change the relationship.

As a single political metric for freedom It’s far from perfect (numerous counter examples could be given) but if only one measure is used it probably is the best. And in a worst case scenario the RKBA can be utilized to recover the other freedoms. It is not so with any other single measure. This is why the NRA calls the RKBA America’s First Freedom.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alan M. Gottlieb

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It is an insult to United States sovereignty that the U.N. would be entertaining such measures while enjoying this country’s hospitality at its headquarters in New York City. It is the greatest irony, and perhaps the pinnacle of hypocrisy, for the United Nations to be discussing any treaty that might threaten our Second Amendment, because it has been the United States, with its citizen soldiers and our constitutional right to keep and bear arms that has come to the world’s rescue not once, but twice in global conflicts.

Alan M. Gottlieb
CCRKBA Chairman
December 7, 2011
CCRKBA APPLAUDS WALSH LEGISLATION TO WITHHOLD UNITED NATIONS FUNDING
[A lot of people think concern over the U.N. Small Arms Treaty is paranoia and/or a fund raising ruse. I probably should do more research on the topic before taking a really firm stand but my initial take is that it would require registration of firearms in the U.S.. That is totally unacceptable and more than sufficient grounds to vigorously oppose it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Sebastian

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My message to our opponents is to give up. Gun control as as fantastical now as unicorns. Technology will just no longer allow it to work.

Sebastian
December 12, 2011
CNC Milled AR-15, The Test Firing
[Legally, politically, culturally, and now technologically, it’s game over for the anti-gun guys.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jane Fonda

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I would think that if you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would someday become communist.

Jane Fonda
August 2002
[In the 20th Century about 100 million people were killed, mostly by their own governments, trying to implement communism. So, tell me Ms. Fonda, are you volunteering your body to be thrown on the pile in the 21 Century?—Joe]

Do as I say

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If, as I have heard, pointing out hypocrisy is one of the most potent political weapons then this gun grabber just exposed himself big time. Via Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms:

BELLEVUE, WA – Mobile, Alabama Mayor Sam Jones has some explaining to do in the wake of a highly-publicized incident this week during which he held a burglary suspect at gunpoint, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

Jones, a Democrat, is a member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, an organization that has campaigned for stricter gun control laws that affect average private citizens.

But Jones is no average private citizen. According to published reports, Jones was returning home from an errand, driving his private vehicle. “His bodyguard, who drives the mayor’s city vehicle, was not on duty,” the Press-Register newspaper reported. And now there are questions about whether the mayor has an Alabama carry permit.

“Here is a municipal mayor who has a bodyguard, and believes it is okay for him to carry a gun, but he belongs to an organization that consistently works to keep everyone else from carrying,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “If the mayor is legally licensed, why does he belong to a group that has fought to prevent law-abiding citizens from exercising their self-defense right?

“If Mayor Jones doesn’t have a permit,” he continued, “then he is a poster child for the double standards that elites like Mayor Michael Bloomberg believe separates them from the citizens they serve. Either way, Mayor Jones owes it to his constituents to show them his carry permit, and to oppose any further attempts by Mayors Against Illegal Guns to prevent private citizens from exercising their constitutionally-protected right to keep and bear arms.

“It is no surprise that average American citizens are fed up with government officials at all levels,” Gottlieb observed. “We’re glad that Mayor Jones had the means and the willingness to protect his property, but we are stunned and disappointed that he belongs to an organization whose very essence is to make it virtually impossible for average citizens to do likewise.”

I have to wonder if Bloomberg will kick him out of the organization or if he will find nothing wrong with one of the anointed defending life and property with their own firearm.

Can Someone Please Explain

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…in short, sweet, straight-forward detail, the “conservative” position on immigration?  I’ve heard vitriolic disagreement and angry attacks toward any policy proposal that even remotely smacks of “amnesty” and I’ve heard demands for building a wall around the country (like that ever works) but I’ve never heard what the attacker actually wants, exactly.

For the record (and I know this is off-subject as it doesn’t answer the question, because I have no idea as to the answer, which is the point of the post after all); In principle, I believe it should be easy to get into this country, and to become a citizen.  The problem as I see it is the socialism – the goodies – people coming here for a share of the loot.  Turn off that loot spigot and the problem, such as it is, evaporates overnight.  “Heal the World – Outlaw Socialism” would be my bumper sticker if I ever got ’round to putting one on my vehicle, which I probably won’t.

Outlawing socialism would include doing away with labor laws, minimum wage being a big one at play here.  The other loot spigot in play was also manufactured by our government– the “War On Drugs” and we all know for certain that Prohibition failed the first time due to human nature, and that human nature dictates that it will fail just as catastrophically every time, which is what we’re seeing every day.  But we can’t separate it from imigration policy.  Because we’re sniveling cowards.

“They’re takin’ Our Jobs!” (Der Derkin’ Er Jerrrbs!”) is an idiotic assertion.  So forget it.  When the Europeans first started coming here in the late 1400s and early 1500s, they took all the jobs from the “Indians” very quickly, so there haven’t been any jobs here since then anyway, right?  I mean, if you figure that the “Der Derkin’ Er Jerrrbs!” argument has any validity whatsoever.  IF people coming here from other places “takes jobs away” then the peak in the number of available jobs in North America would have taken place before Columbus’ voyage (or much earlier – before the migration out of Siberia during the last Ice Age) and as the Euros et al started coming in, the number of jobs available would have been shrinking constantly ever since.  QED.  So there.

Anyhow;  What, exactly, is the “conservative” policy on immigration – the one that won’t get the pundits, the self appointed Representatives of Modern American Conservatism (the RMACs) all pissed off?  I maintain that there is no such thing, which is why I brought it up.

I figure Newt has a four thousand page preliminary proposal, submitted by his Provisional Committee on Immigration Policy Proposal Research Exploratory Studies, complete with thousands of cross-references and cross-cross-references to the cross-references, which means he doesn’t have a clue and is desperate to avoid clues as it would mean standing for something meaningful and concrete which is to be avoided at all cost.

My explanation for the absurdity is that the Republicans believe in the all the negative stereotypes that the Democrats have created for conservatives– racist, sexist, bigoted homophobes….ad infinitum, thumpin’ a Bible and cryin’ ’bout Jeezus! and so the Republicans are trying, like frightened little kids faced with putting out a house fire, to pander to the Saturday Night Live stereotype “conservative”.  They have no idea how to please us stereotype bigot buffoons without getting into trouble.  They’re scared and frustrated, but they know they have to at least pretend to try, because that’s on the list of things to do to get elected.  So it’s a contest to see who can come up with the most plauseablely meaningless proposal that will offend the least people and will never get enforced anyway.  It makes for good theater all ’round I suppose.

We know for certain that outlawing socialism would be among the most frightening prospects ever presented to a Republican.  Right?  The planet being wiped out by an asteroid would be bad, but at least it wouldn’t leave them blinking in the lights in front of a camera babbling like idiots, knowing they’d have to face the criticism for it the next day– they could die right along with the rest of us and that would be much more comfortable as it wouldn’t require any acts of courage or any application of principles.  It would let them entirely off the hook.

Quote of the day—Conservative4Ever

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I had to go talk to my guns just now to let them know If I let them walk that they will be responsible for the violence they cause.

Liberals kill me by their complete lack of logic and reasoning abilities. They are like children.

Hence my talking to guns like they were children.

Conservative4Ever
December 9, 2011
Comment to Gunwalker goes “legal” … again
[He is insulting children. By the age of four my children had better reasoning abilities that some of the anti-gun people I’ve dealt with.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jeff Cooper

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Rumor has it that Sarah Brady is being put forward by the Shooting Industry Magazine as “saleswoman of the decade.” It is quite obvious that Sarah has done more to boost the sale of personal arms than any person in recent memory, and she should be appropriately honored.

Jeff Cooper
From Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries
Vol. 2, No. 4
22 March 1994
[This is in response to Ken in the comments here who suggested Clinton popularity and success meant people didn’t buy guns for fear they would be taken away shortly. And that the surge in sales at about the same time as Obama was elected were due to the Heller decision and not the threat of Obama.

But it that were true then why was there a big surge in sales during the first part of the Clinton presidency? I was there at the time. I was one of the people buying my first guns. Nearly everyone I talked to about guns were buying things they were afraid would soon be outlawed.

If you read the book Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun you will find a similar thing happened with Glock pistols. Politicians and anti-gun people started talking about it being a “terrorist gun”, “invisible to X-Rays”, and they should be banned with the result the factory couldn’t manufacture them fast enough to keep up with the demand.—Joe]

Is it still paranoia?

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Fear of big government is near an all-time high (via a Tweet from Michelle Malkin):

A near-record level of Americans, 64 percent, say that “big government” is a bigger threat to the country than “big business” or “big labor,” according to a new poll.

While nearly two-thirds say big government is the major threat, 26 percent name big business, according to the Gallup survey conducted November 28 – December 1. Just 8 percent name big labor.

Since Gallup starting asking the question in 1965, Americans have typically named big government as the biggest threat; an all-time high of 65 percent named it as the biggest threat in 1999 and 2000.

If a large majority of the population think they really are out to get us can it still be considered paranoia?