Why Do People Support Socialism?

Via Tamera on Gab:

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While not entirely true, there is a lot of truth in this.

Bullet Wordcraft

Quote of the Day

Today the currency is in dollars. Soon it could be in bullets. With the threat being hyper-velocity instead of hyper-inflation.

MTHead
June 1, 2024
Comment to Hyper Inflation May Be Avoided.

It will take more to convince me this is plausible in the near future. But I like the wordcraft.

And I want an underground bunker in Idaho just in case.

Censorship Warning

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It is foolish and naive to believe that censorship will be “temporary” or “restricted.” Once a government succeeds in establishing a Ministry of Truth and dictating what can and cannot be said, it will inevitably use these powers to silence any genuine opposition. When governments arrogate to themselves the power to determine what is true and what is false, they open the door to tyranny. It is a slippery slope that leads inexorably to the suppression of dissent and the erosion of democracy. Until recently, this was a point of consensus among liberals and conservatives alike. It appears that is no longer the case.

Paulo Figueiredo
May 24, 2024
Lula’s Brazil: A Cautionary Tale For Free Speech In The West

Emphasis in the original.

Canada, England, and don’t forget: Joe Biden’s Disinformation Board Likened to Orwell’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ – Newsweek. See also: Quote of the day—Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke | The View From North Central Idaho.

And that doesn’t even count all the private “censorship” by Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, etc.. We are in some dark times.

Prepare appropriately.

Hyper Inflation May Be Avoided

Quote of the Day

This contrarian sees a strong consensus around the notion that hyper-inflation is the inevitable end-game of nation-states / central banks issuing fiat currencies, i.e. currencies that are not restrained by being pegged to tangible assets such as gold reserves. The temptation to issue (via “printing” or borrowing new currency into existence by selling sovereign bonds) more currency becomes irresistible to politicians and central bankers alike. as the means to mollify every constituency, from elites to the military to commoners dependent on state-funded bread and circuses.

This unrestrained creation of new money far in excess of the expansion of goods and services (i.e. the real economy) devalues the currency, as “all the new money chases too few goods and services.” Gresham’s law kicks in–bad money drives good money out of circulation–as precious metals, fine art, gemstones, etc. are hoarded and the depreciating currency is spent as fast as possible before its purchasing power declines even further.

The Cantillon Effect also kicks in: those closest to the spigot of new money get first dibs on converting the depreciating currency into tangible goods, leaving the non-elites to sweep up the “trickle-down” shreds left as the currency loses purchasing power daily.

The consensus holds that there is no way to stop this decay of purchasing power to near-zero, i.e. hyper-inflation, once it starts. As in a Greek tragedy, the fatal flaw of the protagonist–in this case, fiat currency–leads inevitably to its destruction.

In the real world, things having to do with money tend to occur because they benefit powerful interests. This leads us to ask of hyper-inflation: cui bono, to whose benefit? Exactly which powerful interests benefit when a currency’s purchasing power plummets to near-zero?

Charlies Hugh Smith
May 27, 2024
Of Two Minds – Is Hyper-Inflation that Destroys a Currency a “Solution”?

Emphasis in the original.

I found his alternate version of things may turn out intriguing. But as I read his post I became more and more concerned with the question, if things will go a different way because of the “powerful interests” will steer it to something to their advantage, then why has there ever been hyperinflation? Wouldn’t those “powerful interests” have taken those previous (except perhaps the first example of hyperinflation) instances down a different path?

Still, something other than hyperinflation as the reset button is something to consider and prepare for.

California’s New Tax on Gun is Based on Lies

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As a professor who studies the economics of violence and illicit trades at the University of San Diego’s Kroc School of Peace Studies, I think this law could have important ramifications.

That agency, part of the Justice Department, is tasked with making American communities safer.

The ATF focuses on those products because, while legal, they can cause significant harm to society – in the form of drunken driving, for example, or cancer-causing addictions. They also have a common history: All have been associated with criminal organizations seeking to profit from illicit markets.

Alcohol and tobacco products are thus usually subject to state excise taxes. This policy is known as a “Pigouvian tax,” named after 20th-century British economist Arthur Pigou. By making a given product more expensive, such a tax leads people to buy less of it, reducing the harm to society while generating tax revenue that the state can theoretically use to offset those harms that still accrue.

California, for instance, imposes a US$2.87 excise tax on each pack of cigarettes. That tax is higher than the national average but much lower than New York’s $5.35 levy. California also imposed a vaping excise tax of 12.5% in 2021.

Of the three ATF product families, firearms have enjoyed an exemption from California excise taxes. Until now.

Topher L. McDougal
University of San Diego
May 28, 2024
California is about to tax guns more like alcohol and tobacco — and that could make a dent in gun violence (goodgoodgood.co)

Even if you want to ignore the unconstitutional taxing of a protected right, I find the following things very telling:

  • He claims the BATFE has the control of those products because of safety issues. This conveniently ignores the history of starting out under the Department of Treasury because it was all about the taxes on alcohol, tobacco,and NFA firearms.
  • If you read the source article, while tallying all the costs he ignores all the benefits of private firearm ownership.
  • He uses the total number of homicides as a cost while ignoring many of those homicides are justified. Which means each of those justified homicides represent one or more innocent lives saved.
  • He includes all suicides by firearm as a cost, which assumes none of them would have occurred if it had not been for the access to guns. I.E., he is assuming no other means of suicide would have been substituted in any of the cases.

In other words, he is lying by omission.

Of course he lied! You should not be surprised. It is part of their culture.

Good news!

Supreme Court Unanimously Rules for NRA in Free Speech Case | The Epoch Times

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the National Rifle Association plausibly alleged that a former New York state official violated the First Amendment by pressuring insurance companies to cut ties with the gun rights organization.

“A government official can share her views freely and criticize particular beliefs, and she can do so forcefully in the hopes of persuading others to follow her lead,” Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the majority opinion on May 30.

“In doing so, she can rely on the merits and force of her ideas, the strength of her convictions, and her ability to inspire others. What she cannot do, however, is use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression,” she added.

This isn’t the end of the game. This just means it goes back down to the lower court to go through the trial process.

Of Course They Lied

Quote of the Day

I spent an hour putting the data together. If I figured out that guns ownership has an insignificant effect on the murder rate then so did the researchers paid for by anti-gun billionaires. This data means that they knew. It means they lied to please the people who paid them.

Rob Morse
May 26, 2024
See for Yourself if Guns Cause Murder (jpfo.org)

Of course they lied! It is part of their culture.

Revolutionary Honesty is Gone

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I miss the 1970s sometimes. Not just the music. And the sex. And the drugs. I miss the terrorists. The old-school terrorists. Or, OK, maybe not the terrorists, but the revolutionaries who cheered on the terrorists.

I miss the clarity, and the honesty, of that era.

Maybe you’re too young to remember, but, back in the day, you didn’t get all this hemming and hawing about murdering civilians. The terrorists, and the revolutionaries who supported them, were not ashamed of murdering civilians. The Revolution demanded that they murder civilians. Murdering civilians was one of the fundamental strategies of the Revolution.

CJ Hopkins
May 22, 2024
Asymmetric Idiocy – Consent Factory, Inc.

The clarity and honesty has been abandoned because it doesn’t work all that well when you are attempting to sell Communism. They still need to murder lots of innocent people, but saying that up front hurts their sales pitch.

The Stupid Party

Quote of the Day

Never ascribe to a conspiracy that which can be adequately explained by unplanned financial self-interest.

Porn is not a Jewish conspiracy to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids, okay?

It’s a market correction for the gap between the male demand for sexual release, and the female supply of desirable and willing partners. You know, a market correction? That thing that happens in the free market? You remember the free market, right?

It’s that thing conservatives praise occasionally, but immediately turn against every time it points out a gap between their ideals and the reality on the ground.

People are just making money selling porn to horny men. That’s all it is.

But what conservatives are never, never asking themselves is, why are there so many horny men around? Why is there such a demand for porn, when it’s transparently obvious that no man in the world prefers porn to an attractive and enthusiastic female partner (or two)?

No, they never ask themselves that question because it’s easier to scold men than to address issues which would require them to take on someone with actual political power.

Look, when a man hits puberty, he starts getting horny. He can hold off doing anything about that for a little while, because he’s young, easily indoctrinated, and he’s still figuring it all out anyway. But pretty soon, he’s going to be driven to do something about that, and not all the lectures about sin that you can muster are going to stop him.

So why are men turning to pornography?

Because sex with a preferable partner is unavailable to them. Duh.

Conservatives uttered not a peep when boomers fucked the economy so no one could afford to buy a home, or raise children, until their late twenties or early thirties. Conservatives uttered not a peep when women wanted to leave the home and compete in the workforce, delaying marriage to build their careers. Conservatives uttered not a peep when women wanted to stop cooking food, and remained silent when the stores filled with pre-packaged factory slop made from processed corn and soybeans, and packed with sugar, causing an obesity epidemic.

Conservatives actively opposed availability of contraceptives at every opportunity, and refused to compromise at all on abortion.

Conservatives sat idly by while feminists took over the culture and taught women to hold men in contempt.

And on and on it went, until now, we’re reduced to landscape where only the top 5% of women are as attractive as the average woman of 50 years ago, and only the top 5% of men are desired, admired, or respected by women at all, and things have gotten so bad that young men will pay for naked pictures of attractive women because that is the closest they can get to the real thing, and conservatives’ solution is… scold young men some more? Ban porn?

Great.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

Because attacking the supply side worked sooooo well with drugs, didn’t it?

Conservatives are so goddamn dumb that they spent decade after decade fighting a “war on drugs” that they could never win, while ignoring the leftists quietly gutting the economy and fucking up everyone’s quality of life.

Thereby ensuring an ever-increasing supply of people so frustrated and miserable that porn and fentanyl sounded like an improvement over their daily lives.

Conservatives, please have this tattooed on your foreheads, backwards, so you can read it every morning in the mirror:

Demand creates supply. Supply does not create demand.

If you want to get rid of something, you must reduce the demand for it. If you want to get rid of the demand for something unhealthy, you must supply sufficient quantities of a superior alternative which is healthy.

A healthy society must have a healthy and available outlet for all human appetites, or it will cease to be a healthy society.

I swear, if you guys had spent half the energy fighting income taxes, socialism, feminism, government entitlements, and the erosion of the American quality of life that you spent on porn, abortion, and men in dresses pretending to be women, then you would have a lot less to cry about right now.

But you didn’t wanna upset women or boomers, and you didn’t want to cut federal spending, and you certainly didn’t want to confront the crass material appetites of human nature instead of retreating and burying your nose in a bible instead.

So now you are the Stupid Party. Which still makes you superior to the Evil Party, for all the good that does us.

But every two years, I’m still left with the unexciting choice between Stupid Party and Delusional Party, and things aren’t getting any better.

You’re nice guys, you really are. Your hearts are in the right place. I just wish your brains were in the right place, too.

Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_
Posted on X May 23, 2024

Giga Idaho

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The Greater Idaho project is cool and all but have you heard of Giga Idaho?

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Dale Stark @DaleStarkA10
Post May 22, 2024 on X.

I am willing to listen, but I need to be convinced on this.

Via a post by Chuck Petras @Chuck_Petras.

Interesting Perspective

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Right now, this very moment is a very complicated time for gun violence prevention activists because with Biden in the White House, the media does not want to aid us in demanding stronger gun reforms because whatever Joe Biden does is suddenly the right thing to do.

When Donald Trump was the president, calling for an assault weapons ban and saying that the measures that he was putting in place were not nearly enough was a very popular opinion. Now if you’re calling for an assault weapons ban, suddenly you’re just an angry leftist who will never be happy with anything.

Cameron Kasky
May 12, 2024
Parkland activist says achieving gun reform harder under Biden because everyone wanted to ‘stick it to old orange man’ (yahoo.com)

Sometimes it is easy to believe that your political team is disorganized, ineffective, lazy, corrupt, and/or uncaring about your primary political objectives. It is good to know that your political opponents have the same belief about their team.

There is a good chance both set of beliefs are valid.

Sign It and Spread the Word

Do you remember Judge Abena Darkeh? She is the judge who said,

Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom. It doesn’t exist here. So you can’t argue Second Amendment. This is New York.

There is now a Change.org petition to demand her removal from her position. She should be prosecuted and sent to prison, but taking a baby step is better than nothing at all.

Sign it and spread the word.

What About the Bump Stock Ban?

Quote of the Day

If the Biden regime gets four more years, they are coming for your guns,

In my second term, we will roll back every Biden attack on the Second Amendment.

Donald J. Trump
May 18, 2024
Accepting N.R.A. Endorsement, Trump Pledges to Be Gun Owners’ Ardent Ally – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

And what about the Trump attack on the Second Amendment? Is everyone supposed to overlook the bump stock ban under the Trump administration?

I’m not saying a Biden second term would be better than a Trump second term. But casting the contest as voting for the lesser of two evils would have a fair amount of validity.

We Need Reeducation Camps for Gun Lovers

Quote of the Day

After reading about the gun class for people who hate guns, I couldn’t help but think what’s needed even more is a gun-control class for those who love guns.

Jerry Rubin
Santa Monica
May 13, 2024
L.A. Times letter to the editor
Letters to the Editor: Liberals don’t need to get a gun because everyone else has one (msn.com)

Ahhh… yes. A slightly obscure reference to the reeducation camps they are just can’t wait to send us to.

Prepare appropriately.

Any Excuse Will Do

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Parker said that even though the proposed bill would not have prevented the 33-year-old gunman who committed the mass shooting from purchasing a gun, she still thinks it’s a step in the right direction.

James Hartley
May 8, 2024
Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker makes statement in support of proposed gun control measure (yahoo.com)

I find this very telling. They find excuses to implement gun control knowing that the proposed law would make zero difference in the examples they use to get the law passed. Gun control is not about making the general public safer. And they know this as they push for yet more gun control.

It is the same with almost all anti-gun activists and politicians. It has been going on since at least the “Brady Act”, which had that law been in effect before Brady and President Regan were shot would have made zero difference in the perpetrator committing his crime.

How can you tell if an anti-gun activist is lying? Yes, their lips are moving. It is an essential part of their culture.

Prepare and respond appropriately.

Liberals Use Insults

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I’m also a liberal gun owner. You know the difference, right? Liberals don’t need guns to swing around because they are penile deficient.

3 Calls A Day @3callsaday
Posted on X, June 8, 2024

It’s not only another Markley’s Law Monday, it is another science denier!

The difference is liberals attempt to use insults to win arguments.

It is Better to be Nuked

Via Eat, pray, meme @Zippercooler:

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There is more than a little truth in this.

The culture of the people makes a big difference too.

Gun Possession by Non-Violent Felon is Not a Problem

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Duarte is an American citizen, and thus one of “the people” whom the Second Amendment protects. The Second Amendment’s plain text and historically understood meaning therefore presumptively guarantee his individual right to possess a firearm for self-defense. The Government failed to rebut that presumption by demonstrating that permanently depriving Duarte of this fundamental right is otherwise consistent with our Nation’s history. We therefore hold that § 922(g)(1) violates Duarte’s Second Amendment rights and is unconstitutional as applied to him.

REVERSED; CONVICTION VACATED.

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
May 9, 2024
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, v. STEVEN DUARTE, AKA Shorty,

EMPHASIS in the original.

Duarte had been previous convicted of five non-violent felonies and was then caught with a gun.The ninth circuit court of appeals just found his gun possession was protected by the Second Amendment. As this was in a car driving down the street this would imply one does not need a license to carry either.

I expect the prosecution will try to get an en banc hearing to overrule this ruling by just three judges.

They Talk the Talk, But Don’t Walk the Walk

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The ATF has even made it a matter of official policy to shut down gun stores by making perfection the standard in record keeping – a standard the ATF itself could not meet,

Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL)
June 26, 2023
Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene look to defund ATF director using Holman rule – Washington Examiner

So… That was almost 10 months ago. And what was actually accomplished? They did their virtue signally thing and made some people hopeful for a time. But here is the thing, if they actually accomplished most of the things they claim they have tried to do then they would need a new issue to string their voters along. Actually accomplishing their stated “goal” means they risk putting themselves out of a job.

I don’t trust legislators. I have a moderate amount of trust in the courts. I have been advocating for the gun law reform for 30 years years now. The legislators did a decent job on the carry issues. But we have been losing ground on most other fronts. And I think a significant part of that is because the legislators don’t really care to follow through.

Bill to Eliminate Suppressor Regulation

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I oppose any form of regulation or tax on the people’s right to keep and bear arms. No constitutional right should be at risk due to public opinion, or subject to regulatory and tax burdens. These rights certainly extend to the procurement of safety accessories for firearms. My legislation would eliminate the overly complicated and antiquated process for acquiring suppressors and ensure that those purchases are no longer subject to federal regulation.

Bob Good
U.S. Representative from Virginia
May 6, 2024
Bob Good introducing bill to protect gun silencers from federal regulation (msn.com)

It is a nice gesture, but even if it were to pass both houses (unlikely) President Biden would certainly veto it.

But, maybe, next year it could be passed into law and we could go to sleep with the sweet sound of Democrats wailing and the gnashing of their teeth filling the streets.