Category Archives: Politics

Mascot Politics

Posted on by

Thomas Sowell hits another one out of the park.  I’d heard about his recent article from R. Limbaugh. Here’s a snippet:

For people on the left, however, blacks are trophies or mascots, and must therefore be put on display. Nowhere is that more true than in politics. Nor do conservatives who were in the civil rights marches in the South, back when that was dangerous, make that a big deal.

The problem with being a mascot is that you are a symbol of someone else’s significance or virtue. The actual well-being of a mascot is not the point.

Read the whole piece here.

Quote of the day–Wayne LaPierre

Posted on by

Senator McCain is the only one in the race that has a pro-gun record of any kind. I think the mouthing of a pro-Second Amendment stance by Senators Clinton and Obama and pandering to gun owners is an embarrassment and I don’t believe it will work.

Wayne LaPierre
May 13, 2008
Q & A with the NRA’s executive vice president–Gun-rights lobby to meet in Louisville this week
[The problem is that it doesn’t have to work with all gun owners. It just has to work with enough gun owners to win the election.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Thomas Jefferson

Posted on by

I sincerely believe . . . that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

Thomas Jefferson
Letter May 28, 1816 to senator John Taylor
[I haven’t investigated enough to say for certain but I suspect the “spending money to paid by posterity” is a significant part of why the politicians don’t do anything about illegal immigration. A rapidly expanding tax base (via both individual and corporate taxes enabled by cheap labor) is one way they can avoid a financial collapse. Hence Jefferson’s observation may be true in the general case but avoidable in some cases if the government is “creative” in the financing. But it may be that the dangers of massive illegal immigration are just as harmful as a standing army or a large debt.–Joe]

She is thinking about it

Posted on by

I’ve been quietly telling people that I wouldn’t be surprised if Hillary arranges for Obama to be “physically unable to accept the nomination”. Everything I have read about her indicates she is that evil.

I therefore am not at all surprised she said this:

“My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it,” she said.

Update: I was listening to some talk radio station and a caller suggested instead of the Bobby Kennedy assassination example she should have used the example of Vince Foster being found dead in a park. For some of you that might not “get it” the predominate conspiracy theory surrounding Foster’s death is that Hillary arranged his “suicide”.

It has also been suggested that Hillary said what she said as a message to her more fanatical supporters of something they could do to ensure she gets the nomination.

CCRKBA News Release

Posted on by

I can’t find an online version to link to so I’m just posting the email version I received from the Citizens Committe for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. The short version is what Uncle said, “Ald. Richard Mell…like you and me only better.”

CCRKBA SAYS CHICAGO ALDERMAN SHOULD SUFFER LIKE OTHER GUN OWNERS

BELLEVUE, WA – Chicago Alderman Richard Mell ought to be prosecuted like any other negligent gun owner for failing to re-register his firearms under an ordinance he helped pass, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

“I don’t care if anti-gun Mayor Richard Daley supports giving Mell a break, and it doesn’t matter that Mell is the father-in-law of Gov. Rod Blagojevich,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “For years, the draconian ordinance supported by Mell and enforced by Daley has terrorized Chicago gun owners. It’s time for Mell to face his own music, and it’s time for Daley to just shut up.”

Mell has proposed an amendment to the existing law that would allow gun registration to re-open for a month, giving him amnesty. Mell and Daley are claiming that this is for other gun owners in the city as well who may have let their registrations lapse.

“For years, the Daley Administration has engaged in goon squad demagoguery against gun owners,” Gottlieb observed, “but now all of a sudden, just because Alderman Mell finds himself on the wrong side of a law he supported, he and Daley want to do Chicago gun owners a favor. This magnanimity is a flimsy sham, and law-abiding firearm owners all over Illinois should be outraged.

“It is equally outrageous that Mell is blaming this lapse on an aide,” he added. “How stupid is that? Mell knows that gun owners are personally responsible for re-registering their firearms, and over the years, the city has shown no mercy for others who have failed to comply with the law. This guy shouldn’t be on the city council, he ought to be in an unemployment line, and even more than that, he ought to be facing charges in court for possession of unregistered guns inside the city.

“The sad fact is,” Gottlieb concluded, “that this proposed amnesty amendment would never be on the table if it weren’t designed specifically to help Alderman Mell. That anyone else might benefit is an accident, and both Mell and Daley know it. Other gun owners should be allowed to re-register, but Mell should lose on this sweetheart deal. Perhaps then he will fully understand just how insidious Chicago’s gun laws really are, and he will lead the fight to abolish them.”

GRPC registration is open

Posted on by

Today I received notice from the Second Amendment Foundation that registration is now open for the Gun Rights Policy Conference September 26, 27, and 28th.

I have attended GRPC twice before and was very impressed. If you are into the political/academic side of the 2nd Amendment then you will benefit a great deal from attending.

Quote of the day–Glenn Beck

Posted on by

Before I pay over $10 for a gallon of gas I will drill through a polar bears head. — I would feel bad. But I would do it.

Glenn Beck
NRA Annual Convention
Keynote speech
May 17, 2008
[He also pointed out that polar bears have been dramatically increasing in numbers recently. I think he should have said “hugger” instead of “head”, but that’s just me.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Glenn Beck

Posted on by

We like lawyers, crooks, and crack dealers better than Washington!

Glenn Beck
NRA Annual Convention
Keynote speech
May 17, 2008
[After pointing out the President and Congress have approval ratings that are some of the lowest ever.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Glenn Beck

Posted on by

It comes down to Larry, Curly, and Moe?

Glenn Beck
NRA Annual Convention
Keynote speech
May 17, 2008
[He was referring to the remaining three viable candidates for president in 2008.

He showed us his cummerbund decorated with a skull and crossbones, said he was going plunder, rape, and pillage this evening. He did not disappoint.

After McCain had given a speech here the previous day with lots of favorable things said by the NRA. The Three Stooges reference above was just one of many negatives toward the Republican candidate. Across the table from me Bitter Bitch covered her mouth with her hands and her eyes bugged out as Beck ragged on McCain as well as the Democrats who “sold their soul to Karl Marx”.

I have more great quotes from Beck (and some pictures) but right now I have to get ready for dinner and then prepare for a 7:00 AM flight tomorrow.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Kevin Baker

Posted on by

And now we’re at a point, politically, where there are three candidates running who have a realistic shot at the Presidency, and I wouldn’t urinate on any of them if their hair was on fire.

Where the hell is the space colony they promised me when I was a child, watching men leave bootprints and tire tracks in the lunar dust? Where is my new frontier, my place to go to so that I may live free?

Kevin Baker
That’s 35 in Dog Years
[That’s me on a “down” day.–Joe]

What Gun Laws Would You Accept?

Posted on by

This is a post I made on thehighroad.org in response to the same question:

No victim, no crime.

The tool does not matter. For those who think the tool does matter, please read on:

My sister and her three year old daughter were stabbed and strangled to death back in 1977 in their own home.

The weapons were a kitchen knife and a shoestring.

Are you seriously going to argue that since no gun was used, this was somehow less of a crime than it would have been if a gun had been used?

Upon reading of this crime, how many of you thought, “Oh, thank goodness he didn’t use a gun. That would have been really bad.”?

I’m guessing no one would think that. Ever.

And how many of you thought, “What if she’d been able to defend herself?”

I’ve asked myself that a thousand times.

I submit that the only reason we’re even talking about this is because of the nuttiness we’ve been subjected to all our lives. For some reason it is hard to resist when we’ve grown up with it and so many people around us, people we respect even, have embraced the the false premise that says gun control equals crime control.

It’s time to say, “Enough already. We do not accept the premises of gun laws. We can see for ourselves that, no matter how ‘reasonable’ they may sound when promoted by politicians, their effects have run counter to their stated purposes.”

As for making it illegal for criminals to have guns; How’s it been working? Uh, criminals don’t obey the laws, remember? Gun laws do not apply to them.

“Gun control” is about one thing– controlling the law abiding. The Framers knew it. Why aren’t we teaching it?

And so it comes down to education.

As for the “under aged”: Parenting, anyone? And the same thing applies here as to criminals– the good kids will obey their parents and the laws. The bad ones will have guns, just as easily as they have drugs and alcohol.

A gun law is nothing more than a government enforced monopoly, reserving guns for criminal use only.

When are we actually going to enforce the Constitution, and protect it against all enemies, foreign and domestic? That’s my question.

As Oleg put it, regarding politicians: What do they have in mind, that they would prefer us unable to resist aggression?

What, indeed.

A time machine and scoped rifle

Posted on by

What would you do if you were given a time machine and a scoped rifle? Or would you want a scoped rifle to go with the time machine?

In the science fiction short story The Return of William Proxmire Proxmire doesn’t want a scoped rifle–he wants a syringe full of antibiotics and he is “gunning” for Robert Heinlein. I loved this story. It articulates the fantasy of changing history via what Niven claims, perhaps rightly so, the common fantasy assassinating some horrendously evil person before they had a chance to do their evil. It put the twist on that fantasy that perhaps you could change history in remarkably good ways by doing some small act of good as well.

Barb and I have been watching The Nazis: A Warning from History. This presentation casts doubts on my fantasy of going back in time to assassinate Hitler. And it makes me a little more sympathetic to all the people I read about in Plotting Hitler’s Death: The Story of German Resistance who had the opportunity but then failed to follow through because they didn’t have all their plans in order about what to do after Hitler was dead. Some of them spent months debating what type of government (a parliament? A representative democracy? Or perhaps even install a King?) would they put in place after they had successfully killed Hitler. My frustration with them boiled down to “just kill the SOB and worry about the details later”. But perhaps it wasn’t so simple.

In the The Nazis they claim Hitler wasn’t the dictator with a finely detailed plan we, or at least I, thought he was. Hitler had the broad goals of expanding the geographical territory and economic power of the “Germanic people”. Yes, many people blamed the Jews for the poor outcome of Germany in WWI and Jews as a scapegoat were a useful tool to motivate people. But in many ways Hitler was very lazy and let his subordinates do pretty much whatever they wanted. He had obtained great power through his gift of rhetoric and ambitious people sought access to that power. These power seekers put great effort into trying to please him. Hitler didn’t command them to commit all the great atrocities. They devised and implemented them in an attempt to please him and obtain still more wealth and power. If they furthered the broad goals of more territory and power for the Germans then Hitler did not interfere and they obtained the resources to further their work.

The above is background for the questions posed in the first two sentences of this post. If you could change history with a little nudge (what is one bullet into the brain of Gefreiter Hitler during the middle of WWI in the big scheme of things?) what would that nudge be?

Books such as Because They Hate, Hatred’s Kingdom, Preachers of Hate, The Truth About Muhammad, and Infidel put Muhammad on my list. And because Barb and I just finished Genghis Khan he would get some “special attention”. Both of these butchers could perhaps be better “nudged” with something other than “a scoped rifle”.

The introduction of the principles of scientific inquire and a little schooling might have changed Muhammad into something much more compatible with civilized society. And certainly the Arabs had the talent and even a strong tendency for pursuing science instead of superstition. Could the education of the illiterate Mohammad have made the desired difference?

And what of Genghis Khan? Was the poisoning of his father by a neighboring tribe, the resulting dissolution his tribe and him being hunted and marked for death as the eldest son of the dead tribal leader the motivation for his climb to power? Could his father have been warned about the poison and the results in the following decades been much different?

But the books Free to Choose, Freedomnomics, The Big Three in Economics and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal have influenced me the most. I am inclined to go with the “scoped rifle” approach for dealing with Rousseau, Marx, Hegel, and Engels. These were brilliant men of ideas and persuasion that influenced and enabled Hitler, Stalin, and scores of other brutal dictators to kill hundreds of millions of people and enslave billions more right up through the present day. Perhaps this graphic from Kevin will make it more clear as to why these people are at the top of my list:

Quote of the day–Lazarus Long

Posted on by

Political tags–such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, conservative, and so forth–are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.

Lazarus Long
A character in Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein
From Page 47 in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
[This correct division of political philosophy explains why so many people are dissatisfied with the current set of political candidates for U.S. President. In essence all the candidates are on the same side of the aisle.

My reason for using this quote today will become more apparent after reading my next post.–Joe]

Quote of the day–H.L. Mencken

Posted on by

Why should democracy rise against bribery?  It is itself a form of wholesale bribery.  In place of a government with a fixed purpose and a visible goal, it sets up a government that is a mere function of the mob’s vagaries.  Its security depends wholly upon providing satisfactory bribes for the prehensile minorities that constitute the mob . . . the very head of the state, having no title to his office save that which lies in the popular will, is forced to haggle and bargain like the lowliest office seeker.

H.L. Mencken
[Think about it; Elections are bribery in both directions. The people who seek and win elections are those willing to engage in bribery and are best at it. Do not expect politicians to be honest. The system discriminates against honest politicians. This is just one more reason why our government is (theoretically) and should be limited by strictly enumerated powers.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Clarence Darrow

Posted on by

When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I’m beginning to believe it.

Clarence Darrow
[With the pond scum we have available for choices this November Darrow could have been speaking about 2008 instead of sometime 60 or 70 years ago.–Joe]

The Era of Reagan is Over

Posted on by

So says the Newtster, pretty well verifying what I’ve suspected for a long time– that Gingrich either never really got it, or he’s just tired of the fight and wants the DC culture to be nice to him once in a while.

Others have tried to get this across, so it’s old news, but I’ll give it another go:  As one who upholds the founding principles of the U.S., I could not give a rat’s behind if someone running for office is a black, white, Asian, Hispanic, one-armed female homosexual midget named Butch Hussein Ahmadinejad.  If that person has a track record of strenuously upholding and defending the founding principles of this country, she has my vote.  I do not care about personality (except she has to be a confident fighter or nothing’s going to improve).  I do not care about looks, I don’t care about slick marketing or any of that BS.  She’s got my vote.  This is why Reagan won two landslides- he tried to uphold the founding principles of this country.  He understood and embraced those principles and (and this is key) he was therefore capable of articulating them.  He was far from perfect, but he did it better than any president in my lifetime, even with a solid Democrat majority in both Houses, and that’s why he was popular.  It’s also why he was, and is, so hated and maligned by the Left (clue: You cannot embrace America’s founding principles and expect to get along with the Left.  They will never, ever tolerate you, so if you’re going to do it, expect to be attacked ruthlessly.  Ruthless attacks, however, can go both ways).

If you think it is a matter of hero worship, or cult of personality, etc., you are not capable of understanding Reagan’s success.

Therefore, to say that the era of Reagan is over is to say that the era of upholding America’s founding principles is over– that we are to abandon our principles in favor of “getting along” with those who would further undermine them.  No, Little Grasshopper– let them feel they must strive to “get along” with us in order to stay in the game.  It’s a choice.

Now we have three conservative-hating, anti-Constitution leftists remaining in the presidential race– two calling themselves Democrats and one calling himself a Republican, so this election no longer interests me.

To anyone else who wants my vote; it’s really easy– Just show the track record stated above.   For now, I will vote on state and local issues. (Yeah, I know– I could vote for Paul, but…)

Quote of the day–Sue McFadden

Posted on by

Our neighbours are so snobby – they call us the ‘Shameless’ family and say that we ought to go out to work. But how can we work when we have all these children to look after?

Sue McFadden
March 2008
Grandmother in a family where not one member has worked in three generations.
Raised on welfare, the ‘Why Bother?’ generation that doesn’t want to work
[H/T to Ben Cunningham and Say Uncle. My answer to her question would be that no one would eat if they didn’t work and the problem of “all these children” would be solved. Either they would never have been born or they would be adopted by someone who was able to feed them.

My personal experience with welfare recipients is congruent with the article. Most people accepting handouts do so because of the choices they made and continue to make. They become experts in the field of public assistance.–Joe]

They knew and they did it anyway

Posted on by

Xenia’s boyfriend, John, pointed out to me the MP3s of debate on the recent New York gun bans. I mentioned the .50 caliber ban in my QOTD the other day.

From reading the bill one would assume they were totally ignorant of guns. But as I listened to the debate I found they carefully and accurately informed the sponser and others that rifled shotguns would be covered by this poorly written bill. The sponsor said it wouldn’t. When pushed on this the sponsor changed the subject. When asked “How many crimes were committed with .50 caliber rifles?” And again she repeatedly changed the subject. The truth does not matter to these bigots.

Listen for yourself.

Quote of the day–Milton Friedman

Posted on by

Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government.

Milton Friedman
[I’m tempted to claim that the statement would be more accurate if “mismanagement of” were removed from the above statement. However, my respect for Mr. Friedman is such that I am hesitant to make that claim without his concurrence.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Chris Rock

Posted on by

The messed up thing about taxes is you don’t ‘pay’ taxes. The government TAKES them. You get your check and money is GONE! It was not an option! That ain’t a payment, that’s a JACK! I been TAX JACKED!…[The] worst part about it, we pay taxes for [stuff] we don’t even use….Why are black people paying Social Security? I won’t get the money till I’m 65….Meanwhile, the average black man dies at 54. Hypertension, high blood pressure, police….I used to work at McDonald’s making minimum wage….I would get $200 a week and they would take out $50 in taxes. That’s a lot of money if you only making $200….What do you get with that $50? All the free street light in the world. As far as I am concerned, give everybody a candle. Just give me back my $50.

Chris Rock
Via Tempus Fugit
[Even after having my employer take out an extra $600 a month for all of last year we found out yesterday we need to pay several thousand more today. Our accountant said, “Please don’t shoot the messenger.” Barb is pissed at the government. And I’m thinking, “Just wait until they pay off everyone else’s mortgages and our health care is free.”–Joe]