Category Archives: Politics

Quote of the day–Albert Einstein

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As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.

Albert Einstein
[With all due respect to Einstein’s insight into physics I must point out his insight into human nature and politics was lacking. We are currently at war not a sovereign nation but a group of religious fanatics that barely recognize national boundaries and have essentially zero in the way of “great power” as defined by modern military metrics. And war has existed, and still does, when the “nations” are nothing more than large tribes equipped with spears, bows, and arrows.

The lesson to be learned from this is that however brilliant someone is in one field of endeavor that is no indication of their ability to contribute in another area. One’s reputation in any given area must be earned.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Winston Churchill

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In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable.

Winston Churchill
Speaking of Montgomery.
[Barb and I got the History Channel series on Churchill on DVD via NetFlix and are in the middle of watching the part about WWII. Churchill did have a way with words. Not a lot of energy when he spoke but he certainly used his words well.–Joe]

Dancing with gun laws

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Robert Novak tells us of the tap dance Obama is doing with gun rights. I learned a couple things. I didn’t know that he taught constitutional law for 10 years. And I didn’t know this:

Obama’s dance on gun rights is part of his evolution from a radical young state legislator a few years ago. He was recorded in a 1996 questionnaire as advocating a ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns (a position since disavowed). He was on the board of the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation, which takes an aggressive gun control position, and in 2000 considered becoming its full-time president. In 2006, he voted with an 84 to 16 majority (and against Clinton) to prohibit confiscation of firearms during an emergency, but that is his only pro-gun vote in Springfield or Washington.

He was on the board of the Joyce Foundation and considered becoming its full-time president? And now he wants to be the President of the United States?

That’s far worse than the fox guarding the hen house, giving an alcoholic the keys to the liquor store, or giving teenagers whiskey and the keys to a sports car. It is every bit as bad as giving a Democrat politician taxpayer money and power.

Liberalism’s Tragic Soul

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I’d never heard of Jim Pontillo.  I found him through a link on Jewish World Review.  Liberalism’s Tragic Soul is a long post, but there are a lot of very quotable statements in it:

…you are victim to the liberal propaganda which suggests CEOs are big all controlling evil despots who can set policy and control the population at their whim. CEOs in a truly capitalist society are the biggest slaves of the planet. They are enslaved to the whims of the market—to you and me.

That one reminds me of a good friend, who opened a retail store in a small village that had a two-store monopoly.  The two stores had been price-fixing for years.  My friend saw this monopoly, correctly, as an opportunity.  He did his homework and found out he could provide goods at vastly lower prices and still make a good profit.  So long as his property rights were protected against coercion and other forms of force, he could do a nice business and in the process he’d be giving every resident of this little village a raise, in effect, by lowering the prices on all the goods they needed.  He did just that, and has done very well for many years.  That’s the value of a free market right there, in microcosm.  There can be no lasting, anti-consumer monopoly in a free market, since anyone taking undue advantage of the consumer is merely creating an opportunity for their competitors.  That is, unless government steps in and screws it all up.

The next time you get into an argument about freedom with a liberal, the freedom they profess to defend, the freedom that conservatives venture to usurp with their fascist beliefs, ask them what freedom they are talking about.  Is it the freedom to possess firearms to protect ourselves if government fails to, or the freedom to keep most of the money we earn, or the freedom to speak candidly about religion, or the freedom to provide the best for our families; or is it the freedom to hand our lives over to some elected official where he will decide what is best for us…

Quote of the day–Ronald Reagan

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The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.

Ronald Reagan
[“Best” doesn’t necessarily mean brightest. It can also mean ethical. Now think about how much time the current presidential candidates have spent in government versus private business.

Reagan was right.–Joe]

Class III firearms in Kansas

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Via a tip from the Apex of the Triangle of Death I discovered Kansas is considering allowing private citizens to possess suppressors, machine guns, and short barreled shotguns again. Here are some articles on it:

Here is the existing law. Here is the House bill that quietly repeals it. Here is the Senate Bill with which it must be reconciled.

The Kansas House approved this bill by a vote of 105-18!

And speaking of pack animals and conforming with the herd, this is from another news story on the Kansas class III issue:

The House gave final approval to a bill allowing dealers, manufacturers and private citizens to own machine guns, which would bring Kansas in line with all but a handful of states.

“I don’t pass judgment on why people want to own anything — Mercedeses, mink coats, diamond rings, fully automatic weapons,” said Rep. Candy Ruff, D-Leavenworth, a sponsor of the measure.

The emphasis is mine.

Quote of the day–Martin Duberman

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Americans have a very low tolerance for differentness, whether it’s racial, ethnic, or sexual.  Despite our rhetoric about individualism, we are a desperately conforming people.

Martin Duberman
[My QOTD from yesterday was on this same topic. As I was laying in bed last night I had a lot more thoughts on the topic and decided to make a post on the subject. When looking for a QOTD for today this one jumped out at me. I’ll try to get the post out sometime this morning.–Joe]

I blame global warming

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Seattle and surrounding areas in the Puget Sound are now getting heavy snow. Visibility is only a few blocks as I look out the window of our building here in Redmond.

I’m fairly certain Al Gore would agree with me, and I know Phil does. It’s all because of man caused global warming climate change.

Update: The storm forecast for the Boomershoot site:

OROFINO/GRANGEVILLE REGION-LOWER HELLS CANYON/SALMON RIVER REGION-

132 PM PDT FRI MAR 28 2008

…SNOW ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 5 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO 5 AM PDT SATURDAY…

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN MISSOULA HAS ISSUED A SNOW ADVISORY…WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 5 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO 5 AM PDT SATURDAY.

2 TO 5 INCHES OF SNOW ARE EXPECTED FROM LATE THIS AFTERNOON THROUGH SATURDAY MORNING AS A COLD FRONT PASSES THROUGH THE AREA TONIGHT. QUICK BURSTS OF MODERATE TO HEAVY SNOWFALL WILL BE ASSOCIATED WITH THE FRONTAL PASSAGE.

Quote of the day–Jenny Block

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The problem, it seems to me, is this. People are pack animals and they want — need — approval from the herd. So, forcing this one-size-fits-not-nearly-everyone way of life down everyone’s throat is detrimental to everyone. Living a life that doesn’t fit is miserable and that misery plays out in unhappy ways in people’s lives.

Jenny Block
March 27, 2008
Open Relationships: What the World Already Has
[The pack animal observation applies to so many things that bug me about people. It is a huge component of the attacks on freedom. From gay rights and gun control to religious intolerance you will find this urge to conform and to enforce conformity playing a big part.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Wendell Phillips

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To hear some men talk of the government, you would suppose that Congress was the law of gravitation, and kept the planets in their places.

Wendell Phillips
[I was reminded of this one by BillH’s Hillary Is Delusional post.–Joe]

Who is Fascist?

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I’ve written about this several times over the years, but it takes a true scholar to do a superior job of it.  A while back, Jonah Goldberg did just that, and Thomas Sowell did a review on Goldgerg’s book:

Fascism, initially recognized as a kindred ideology of the left, has since come down to us defined as being on “the right” — indeed, as representing the farthest right, supposedly further extensions of conservatism.

The next time you hear Leftists throwing the word “Fascist” about like a general epithet, and then hanging it around the necks of capitalists or Jeffersonian liberals, you can correct their rather silly (and I have to think willfully ignorant) error.

Quote of the day–Richard Lamm

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Christmas is the time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell government what they want and their kids pay for it.

Richard Lamm
[This quote reminds me of a book I just finished listening to: The Coming Economic Collapse: How You Can Thrive When Oil Costs $200 a Barrel by Stephen Leeb and Glen Strathy. It has some interesting stuff in it. He claims we are headed for some very bad times, “Unless government does something.” Of course this annoys me a great deal unless he means that government should stop meddling in the free market. Published in 2006 he correctly predicted $100/barrel oil when it was $60 and the DOE was predicting it would return to the $35 to $45 range. He said gold would skyrocket. He is saying that we could even see the collapse of civilization because of the shortage of energy and our large debt.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Milton Friedman

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If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.

Milton Friedman

The machine gun issue

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Throughout the Heller case I think most hard core gun rights activists have been thinking “Will this help or hurt machine guns? Even if the Supreme Court slaps D.C. down on handguns, rifles, and shotguns will they create a rule or test that slams the door on machine guns becoming commonly available?”

I’ve been, behind the scenes, asking people not to even talk about machine guns in the context of Heller. My thought was that if machine guns are ignored in the Heller decision, then if we do things right after a Heller win we can get some machine gun relief eventually. Obviously it came up in a big way during the oral arguments. Some people have been critical of Gura for “throwing machine guns under the bus” during the oral arguments. I am not one of them. I viewed it as unfortunate collateral damage. We needed to bomb the crap out of D.C. and they were holding machine guns as hostages. It was more important to destroy D.C. now than to try and figure out a way to get the machine guns to safety. We might still be able to resurrect machine guns, they aren’t really dead, just on life support.

Now, via Uncle, I find Gura responds. I agree with him.

Working hard for dead last

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We don’t have the best Brady score yet, but we are working on it.

Many, many thanks to Mike Brown at Idaho Sport Shooters Alliance who wrote this bill and pushed it through.

Contributions by everyone

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The day before yesterday I wrote about others contributing to and being a part of history in the Heller case. Certainly the participants in that battle did some really heavy lifting and deserve credit for it. I’m also hearing some of them say encouraging words to the effect that they couldn’t have done it alone. That all the decades of activism on the part of the grass roots and enabled them attempt lopping off the head of the beast yesterday.

Listen to what Dave Kopel says.

Ashley Varner at NRA-ILA sent me this in an email after I told her to tend to important things and not to worry about answering my email right away:

I must kindly take issue with your last email. Don’t say you are unimportant — if I were to believe the Brady Campaign claims, we are all a part of the Triangle of Death and each of our different roles are important to the cause of pissing off anti-gunners, educating the mass of gun owners, inspiring others to join the fight and above all, preserving liberty for our future generations. 🙂

I have two “take aways” (Is that in common usage? Or is that just a Microsoft thing?) from this:

  1. The big hitters in our political game (a game of life and death!) are gracious.
  2. A contribution even at the very lowest levels make a difference so don’t think you can’t or don’t help by getting involved.

I MUST get a copy of this book

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Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism is at the top of my must read list. Unfortunately the audio version isn’t out yet and I have a very large stack of paper books that I haven’t read beside my bed already.

My latest urge to get this book was fueled by Initial Thoughts… from Musings of The GeekWithA.45. Uncle and Kevin are also impressed with his post.

Last night while watching Farscape with son James I told him he must read the Geek’s post. It’s just wow!

Political actors?

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I think there is a little bit of projection going on here:

Politics also factors heavily into D.C. v. Heller, according to Henigan.

He said some state attorneys general — who are elected in 43 states — likely sided with Heller as a way to show constituents they support an individual-rights reading of the Second Amendment, even as they seek to preserve their own state statutes regulating guns.

“These are political actors. They don’t want to appear to be endorsing a handgun ban,” Henigan said.

Quote of the day–Chairman Mao Ts-Tung

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Our state is a people’s democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the worker-peasant alliance. What is this dictatorship for? Its first function is to suppress the reactionary classes and elements and those exploiters in our country who resist the socialist revolution, to suppress those who try to wreck our socialist construction, or in other words, to resolve the internal contradictions between ourselves and the enemy. For instance, to arrest, try and sentence certain counterrevolutionaries, and to deprive landlords and bureaucrat-capitalists of their right to vote and their freedom of speech for a specified period of time – all this comes within the scope of our dictatorship. To maintain public order and safeguard the interests of the people, it is likewise necessary to exercise dictatorship over embezzlers, swindlers, arsonists, murderers, criminal gangs and other scoundrels who seriously disrupt public order. The second function of this dictatorship is to protect our country from subversion and possible aggression by external enemies. In that event, it is the task of this dictatorship to resolve the external contradiction between ourselves and the enemy. The aim of this dictatorship is to protect all our people so that they can devote themselves to peaceful labour and build China into a socialist country with a modern industry, agriculture, science and culture.

Chairman Mao Ts-Tung
Little Red Book
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
(February 27, 1957), 1st pocket ed., pp. 6-7.
[Yeah, I’m a day late with this one. Does anyone even know how many people were murdered by this government whose aim was to “protect all our people” in the next 30 years after this proclamation was made? All dictators claim they are going to be benevolent and they will only crack down on the criminals. Of course then Ayn Rand’s line from Atlas Shrugged immediately comes to mind. Which is precisely the situation we have with gun laws today and under an Obama regime things will only get worse. And all in the pursuit of an Utopian vision of a discredited philosopher with very little real world experience on the subjects he wrote about and who died over 100 years ago.–Joe]

Park carry minutia

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Uncle pointed out the video testimony in the house on National Park carry. I find it interesting that a letter written over a year ago by a bigot at the Department of Interior was brought up and challenged.

That letter has been a topic of mine before (and here).

I hope she is feeling the heat. Bigots opposed to fundamental rights guaranteed by our constitution have no place in our government.