Quote of the day—Jeffery D. Sachs

The new progressive era will need a fresh and gutsy generation of candidates to seek election victories not through wealthy campaign financiers but through free social media. A new generation of politicians will prove that they can win on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and blog sites, rather than with corporate-financed TV ads. By lowering the cost of political campaigning, the free social media can liberate Washington from the current state of endemic corruption.

…

Those who think that the cold weather will end the protests should think again. A new generation of leaders is just getting started. The new progressive age has begun.

Jeffery D. Sachs
Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University
November 13, 2011
The New Progressive Movement
[As SebastianSH said, “This is a lot of crap.” First off, our current economic situation is not due to insufficient “progressive politics” (actually Marxism is very old and hence regressive, Libertarianism would better be called “progressive” and/or “liberal” but left-speak requires that words be redefined to suit their purposes). It is the result of progressive politics.

Second, “social media” and the Internet in general tends shine the light of truth and the progressive rats and sidewalk scum wither in that light.

Third, the corruption in Washington is because Washington has the power to pick winners and losers. As long as the power exists there will be people and companies who find it necessary to see that power is exercised in their favor or at least not used against them. It will only be by the elimination of that power, as the Constitution was intended and written, that the corruption will fade.

What Jeffery D. Sachs advocates will only make the problems worse. Just read New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America to get a clue. But even if given motivation with a clue-by-four Sachs will probably always remain clueless.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Andrew Rosenthal

I want to be clear: the New York Times editorial board does not oppose gun ownership. We believe the Second Amendment confers a communal right on Americans to own guns – not an individual one. But that’s actually a smaller point than you might think. All we really want are sensible restrictions based on public safety and common sense. I wrote about our position in April, 2009 on our website. You can read it there, but I’ll summarize it here.

Go ahead, buy a gun. Use it to hunt, for target practice, in a collection, or in case you need to defend your home. Just register it and submit to a background check. If you live in a city, then your political leaders have the right to restrict ownership of handguns. In cities, they tend to be used to kill people.

Andrew Rosenthal
November 8, 2011
The Gun Lobby and Military Suicides
[This is so full fail that I could write thousands of words about it. But I don’t have the time and the people in the comments did a pretty fair job and raking him over the coals.

I’ll just give an overview.

Since all nine U.S. Supreme Court Justices disagree with the individual right issue what Rosenthal and the NYT editorial board thinks only has political implications and very few legal implications.

The very words he uses demonstrates he is essentially living in a different universe. We don’t have “political leaders”. We have public servants. Our servants do not have “rights” to regulate anything. They have delegated powers given to them by the people via the U.S., and state constitutions. When our servants start demanding we give up firearms and beg permission from them to own what is a specific enumerated right it is quite clear to me they have either forgotten they are servants or that they intend to change the relationship.

Yes. Handguns are sometimes used to kill people. Sometimes deadly force needs to be legally exercised and sometimes people get killed. Get over it.—Joe]

In Honor of Veterans

Today I’m reminded of this quote from David Crockett;

Mr. Speaker–I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has not the power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the government was in arrears to him. Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week’s pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks.

Representative David Crockett (TN)

Those are the words of a real man.  I don’t know specifically who it was he was referencing.  That’s not the point.  If you want to help a veteran, by all means help a veteran.  That’s your job.  Personally.  Don’t try to make a federal case out of it.  Our military exists, ostensibly, to defend liberty, see.  If we set up system of coercive redistribution to “honor” veterans, we’ve just insulted the hell out of them by contradicting everything they supposedly fought for.  Hmm?  So what side are we really on?

Quote of the day—Richard Feldman

This book is dedicated to Harlon B. Carter, the man responsible for saving the Second Amendment freedoms for generations of Americans during a time in our country when gun ownership was on the road to extermination as a cherished and fundamental right. Equally important are the tens of thousands of local activists who make the “gun lobby” the true grassroots dynamo that it is. Money doesn’t vote, people vote, or as we said in the sixties, “Power to the people” and, I should add, “away from the elites, wherever they dwell.” I think Thomas Jefferson would have approved.

Richard Feldman
2008
Dedication to Ricochet: Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist
[This is a very nice start to the book.

Think about the “Power to the people” phrase. And remember what Chairman Mao said, “Every Communist must grasp the truth: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Private ownership of firearms is the ultimate power in the hands of the people. Yet nearly all communists and socialists who advocate “power to the people” in the U.S. today are opposed to private gun ownership. Why is that?

Could it be they don’t really want power in the hands of “the people”? I think what they really want is power in the hands of their people and want to remove power from those that oppose them.

Communism and socialism is not about “power to the people”. Those political systems are about government having a huge power advantage over the individual. “Power to the people”? No. Not at all. That isn’t what they really want. But no one has ever accused the political left of being consistent.

Thank you Richard for sending me an autographed copy. More later when I finish it. Not all of my review is going to be positive though. I’ve already got notes that are “not happy thoughts”.—Joe]

Because That Would Make Him a ‘Gay’ Basher

That’s the answer to Billy Beck’s question.

I’ve criticized your religion, certainly your politics, and the inconsistency behind the idea of women’s equality.  Why not criticize your thoughts on homosexuality?

We’re not supposed to talk about it, right?  It’s a taboo subject.  For one thing we’re supposed to shut up out of fear– fear of being ostracized as a ‘gay’ basher or a homophobe.  So when a man sees another man raping a boy, he clams up.  If he’d beat the shit out the rapist as he should have done, he’d be the one charged with a crime and no one would say anything in his defense for fear of being labeled a ‘gay’ basher.  Same as when a black, homosexual, Democrat man in Congress (probably the most protected class of humans, unless you’re talking of a black, lesbian Muslim extremist) running a homosexual prostitution ring in his basement.  What?  I suppose you’re a racist homophobe with a political agenda.  Shut up.  You Suck if you criticize this hard-working American who cares about kids, the poor, race relations, union workers and the environment, you racist homophobe.  Neanderthal!

Sure; the witness should have done the right thing and kicked the rapist’s ass, even if he knew full well that he’d be the one prosecuted.  But our cultural insanity makes doing the right thing just that much more difficult.  And that, I submit, was the whole purpose of what I will call the insanity movement the first place– what’s good is bad and what’s bad is good.  What’s wrong is right and what’s right is wrong.

How else do you get 300 to 400 million people to tolerate being treated like sheep?

I put the word “gay” in scare quotes because it doesn’t mean what most people today think it means.  I try to use the language properly, so using “gay” to mean homosexual requires the quotation marks.  He’s a bit “queer” is of course a euphemism.  Lots of things are queer, but we’ve lost track of the word’s meaning.  “Gay” is the same sort of euphemism, as is “fag”, as applied to a homosexual.  If we’re going to use the terms in their true meanings, or understand them when we encounter them in classic literature, we have to be aware of this, and talk about it.  So there you have it.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to suck on one of the nice faggots I usually keep with me right now.  And by the way; I suppose I could sue you if you criticize me for smoking.  If it’s an addiction, or a disease, you’d be harassing or “bashing” a person with a disability.  Shut up.  You have no right to talk about it unless you give me lots of money.  Oh, and stop taxing me because of my disease.  Would you propose a tax on “gays” who get AIDS?  Shut up.  Now I’m thinking of closing comments because no one is supposed to talk about any of this stuff.  Shut up.

Women’s ‘Equality’ and the Offendedness Movement

We’re not even supposed to talk about this, I guess, because it proves we’re sexist.  Too bad.

When the Flappers painted the town red in the 1920s, we were told women had achieved equality.  When women hit the factories during World War Two, we were told women had achieved equality (see the trend yet?).  When women burned their bras in the 1960s, we were told women had achieved equality.  When the pill came out, we were told that women had finally achieved equality.  Women’s suffrage happened somewhere back there too.

A hundred years of non-stop achievement of equality later, we’re being told how sexual harassment is a problem in the workplace, and it’s 99.999% men doing the harassing and women, still, are the victims.  Because they haven’t achieved equality I guess.  What’s the message to men with ambitions?  If you’re going to be running for high office ten or twenty years later, you better keep women out of your workplace so they can’t come back when the time is right and destroy your campaign.  Don’t hire women.  Don’t work with women, because all it takes for a women to destroy you is for her to point a finger at you.

If men and women were equal, there’d be roughly the same number of men complaining about harassment by women as the other way ’round, or at least it wouldn’t be so overwhelmingly one-sided.  A high school aged male I knew was getting rather steamy text message from a far older, married woman employer.  It was fairly apparent that sex was happening between them.  An experienced  lawyer said that maybe he should count himself the luckiest kid in school.

That’s the double standard and it’s everywhere.  At the same time we’re being told that women are strong, that they can not only take care of themselves they’re capable of doing anything a man can do at least as well as he can do it, we are simultaneously asked to believe that the slightest gesture can turn a strong, capable, professional woman into a quivering blob of dysfunctional, sobbing, frightened, victimized jelly that only huge sums of money, or certain political outcomes, or both, can cure.

When I was interviewing a college-age woman for a bookkeeping position at my small business, she asked if there was enough work there to actually keep her busy full time.  Fair question.  In addition to telling her that although the business was small, it was complex, and that furthermore, being small, there were a lot of other things she could do besides keep books.  What I meant, and I expected it to be as obvious as the rather prominent nose on my face (she was a business major after all) was that total specialization is something a small business cannot afford, therefore we all have to pitch in with cleaning, stocking shelves, receiving shipments, answering phones, and hundreds of other tasks that are involved in keeping a business running properly that don’t warrant separate employees.  Her response caught me off guard.  I was accustomed to working in the real world, unaware of just how bat-shit insane the world of leftist political academia had become.  Condition white;

“WELL…just what’s THAT supposed to mean…?!!”  Gawd.  She’d apparently been to one of those “How-to-know-when-you’re-being-sexually-harassed” classes they offer to women on college campi these days as part of the “Women’s Studies” curriculum.  Interview over.  Don’t call us, we’ll (not) call you.  We have enough problems without having to deal with stupid shit like this.

Which is it, then, ladies?  Are you capable of standing up for yourselves, strong, and proud to play a vital and dynamic role in all the action, or are you perpetual victims, bent on being perpetual victims for social, financial and political gain?  Do you want to be taken seriously or do you want to be a poor little victim, ’cause it sure as hell can’t be both.  This bi-polar premise is running rather thin and I for one quit falling for it sometime back in the 1970s.

Where Has This Newt Been All Our Lives?

I’d commented just this morning that I’d seen more than enough of Newt.  Then this was sent to me by a relative of a relative;

Not too shabby for a Republican.  The problem for Newt though is that we know Newt.  He has a history.  I can only assume that this was a trial balloon for him– to see how this sort of thing sells in the marketplace (in the minds of people like him) in which the industry of political rhetoric sells its wares.  He’s a craftsman in the art.  I still think the world is better off with Newt as a history teacher.

“Isolate and crush the secular socialist left” he says.  The only reference to liberty he makes is to religious liberty.  OK, what about the religious socialist left?  Why bring in the “secular” bit when you could just say “crush the socialists”?  He still talks about “running” the country too.  That bugs me– Raise your hand if you want to be run by someone in Washington.  See?  Didn’t think so.

Random thought of the day

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence is concerned about states’ rights:

“National concealed carry reciprocity legislation is a terrible idea for public safety and a huge affront to states’ rights,” said CSGV Executive Director Josh Horwitz.

I guess that means we can count on their support for The Firearms Freedom Act, states that wish to ban abortion, and even the reinstituting of slavery should some state desire it.

What these people don’t understand (or more likely just don’t want to acknowledge) is that states’ rights/powers only extend as far as the people rights. There are certain individual rights that are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution that no state, county, or city may infringe upon. The right to keep and bear arms is one of those rights.

Quote of the day—Chief Justice Warren E. Burger

A sense of confidence in the courts is essential to maintain the fabric of ordered liberty for a free people and three things could destroy that confidence and do incalculable damage to society: that people come to believe that inefficiency and delay will drain even a just judgment of its value; that people who have long been exploited in the smaller transactions of daily life come to believe that courts cannot vindicate their legal rights from fraud and over-reaching; that people come to believe the law – in the larger sense – cannot fulfill its primary function to protect them and their families in their homes, at their work, and on the public streets.

Chief Justice Warren E. Burger
Courts: The Chief Justice Speaks Out
U.S. News & World Report (vol. 69, No. 8, Aug. 24, 1970) 68, 71
Address to ABA meeting, Aug. 10, 1970.
[I am of the opinion that the first two conditions have already been met.—Joe]

I just don’t get it

There are some things that are just completely incomprehensible to me. Maybe someone else can put it this into words I can understand:

The National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) unequivocally opposes and condemns all invocations of the Holocaust in political discourse.

Does this sort of prohibition also apply to invocations of the Soviet, Chinese, and Cambodian genocides as well? Or is there something special about the Nazi regime that means it is special? If so, then why? And how does one determine this “specialness” in advance rather than just memorizing some rules someone made up?

Further along that same line I have had numerous people tell me my “Jews in the Attic Test” is “brilliant”, “genius”, “one of the best things you have ever written” and it got me a “Thinking Blogger Award”. But one Jew I pointed it out to told me, “I agree with everything you say here but you must change the name. You don’t realize how offensive that is to Jews.”

What?

I. Just. Don’t. Get. It.

‘Universes’ Isn’t a Word

I don’t know.  I like watching The Universe series on The History Channel (once I get past the stupid graphics and the talking-down-to they give us) but this guy, a frequent contributor to The Universe, seems a little too full of himself for someone who apparently doesn’t understand the words he’s using.

Just as there are many solar systems in our galaxy, and many other galaxies in the universe, there may be, we find, other somethings (he uses “soap bubbles”) in the universe.  “Universe” has it right there in the word– Uni.  There can be only one.  What all it may include is a subject for further study and discovery, but there is only one.  Please.

Maybe this bugs me more than it should, but I don’t think so.  When it comes to cross-culture or cross-generational communication it is critically important.  Simple things like the meaning of “the People” and of “…shall not be infringed” have been under assault for example.  If we’re not constantly on our guard we lose our history.  When we lose our history we lose our culture and our freedom.

For the Sesame Street audience, “soap bubble” works OK, but surely there’s a better choice.  I’ll take it over “multiple universes” any day though, as the latter is a direct contradiction of terms, hanging right out there in your face.

Encarta offers this definition of the universe; “the totality of all matter and energy that exists in the vastness of space, whether known to human beings or not.”  Well there you have it, see?  You might want to alert the theoretical physicists and the astronomers you know.  That last clause is even better than I’d hoped.  I’d figured on something more like “everything that exists everywhere, period. No, really– everything. Seriously. Dude” but that definition has a bit of a problem built into it.  Ten points if you can describe it.

Quote of the day—Cliff Schecter

If you are looking for the literal embodiment of dysfunction in US political culture and the institutions that serve it, look no further than the National Rifle Association (NRA), and the deadly and divisive role it plays in shaping the political agenda. Specifically, the radically and reliably dishonest, dangerous and deranged legislation they foist upon the American people day in and day out through their purchase of most Republican and many Blue-Dog Democratic officeholders.

…

We’re talking here about people who shouldn’t be allowed to make their own beds, much less public policy.

Cliff Schecter
October 29, 2011
They have the right to remain silent
[I find it appropriate that someone who says this sort of thing about a civil rights group protecting a specific enumerated right used Al Jazeera as his vehicle for hate. And that he is a weekly columnist for them is no surprise.—Joe]

A masters degree in WHAT?

The Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas brags they are, “The first school in the nation to offer a Master of Public Service (MPS) degree.”

I wonder which side of, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” they are training people for.

Or is this is a school for interns who desire to service public officials?

Quote of the day—Ken Lewenza

The introduction of Bill C-19 today in the House of Commons, and its possible coming into force, will set Canada’s gun control efforts back decades.

Ken Lewenza
Canadian Auto Workers National President
October 25, 2011
Harper’s Gun Bill Sets Canada Back Decades, CAW says
[I find that hard to believe since the act being repealed was passed in 1995. But it does set them back a good bit. Now if they can just be pushed into extinction.

And why is the Canadian Auto Workers getting into a debate about gun control?

Which cars sold in the U.S. are made in Canada? I want to make sure I don’t buy any.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Mark Alger

It’s like I always say, the Tragedy of the Commons is a tragedy of commons. No commons, no tragedy. How much simpler could it get?

Mark Alger
October 24, 2011
Comment to Quote of the day—Ted Turner.
[There are some commons that probably have to stay common. For the example the atmosphere, the oceans, and to a certain extent the electromagnetic spectrum. But it is an idea worth giving considerable consideration.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ted Turner

I don’t like what we’re doing to the national forests, cutting trees down at taxpayers’ expense and destroying the forest, just so we can have a few jobs. That is like saying, Adolf Hitler trying to justify the Nazi concentration camps — it provided employment for people. Bulls–t! I’m fanatical. A part of me is so angry that I want to take out a gun and do something about it . . . Even though in my heart I do get angry and frustrated, I have never done anything . . . and I want to go down and burn lumber mills in the middle of the night and spike trees, I don’t do it. I just dream about it occasionally. I work within the system.

Ten Turner
Sometime before 1993.
[Apparently Turner is a typical liberal with a propensity for falsehood (it’s not at taxpayer expense, lumber companies PAY for the trees and have to replant afterward) and violence. Trees are a great renewable resource and apparently Turner doesn’t comprehend that.

I would like to suggest Mr. Turner try living for a month or so without wood products. Of course I suppose he could use one of his silk shirts to wipe his ass when he runs out of toilet paper. Then someone should complain about the exploited silkworms.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Seattle Anti-Imperialist Committee

Corporate greed, racial discrimination and oppression, and police brutality and murders are among the many guaranteed products of the capitalist system of production. But exploitation, injustice and oppression inevitably give rise to resistance struggles, with each of these struggles needing to be patiently built in its own right around its particular demands. Yet these seeming separate struggles are greatly strengthened when they fire each other up in united actions against the common class enemy. This is what will happen this Saturday at Westlake, and it will be another small step toward building a revolutionary movement that can win everything.

Seattle Anti-Imperialist Committee
October 19, 2011
Join the October 22 march against police brutality!
[I stopped by work today and was handed a piece of paper by the Occupy Seattle crowd. It appears to be word for word the web page linked above.

You might ask, just what is it that they want to win? From the same web page, “We demand everything!” So they want a revolution to win everything? I see…

Since I walk by the Occupy Seattle crowd every day to and from work I have taken a few pictures. This should give you an idea what it is like, minus the chanting:

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October 10, 2011. Lots of tents.

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October 7th, 2011.

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October 7, 2011

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Cropped version of the picture above.

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October 10, 2011

WP_000318Cropped
Cropped version of the picture above.

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October 13, 2011

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Cropped version of the picture above.

Yeah. They aren’t exactly coherent.

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October 14, 2011

I think they are going to need a lot more people supporting them to have a successful revolution. It probably also requires a group of people capable of accomplishing something more than creating and carrying poorly made signs and pitching tents on the sidewalk.—Joe]

Random thought of the day

Is it just me or do people who use the force of government to take money from me and spend it on things I don’t think it should be spent on (nearly everything but Obama Care is one of the better examples) also want me to be happy and grateful for what they have done?

Do robbers who stick a gun or knife in your face and take your money also expect your gratitude?

Quote of the day—Glen Utzman

Only tax the poor, not the wealthy. This would motivate the poor to work harder and not be poor anymore.  [Paraphrased]

Glen Utzman
Fall Semester 2011
[Via daughter Kimberly who is taking a class from Professor Utzman.

While this does make a great deal of sense I somehow doubt the idea would receive widespread support.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jack Minor

Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress that a lack of gun control was to blame for the government selling guns to Mexican drug cartels.

Jack Minor
AG: Gun control would have stopped Fast and Furious
October 15, 2011
[I think what he meant to say was, “The NRA Devil made me do it!”—Joe]