Category Archives: Politics

Runnin’ With the Devil

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[Mostly this is a rant because I’m pissed. I don’t particularly blame the NRA-ILA or any other pro-gun group. Political reality is significantly different from gut response. The following is 95% emotion and its to just get it out of my system.]

The instant Bush signed the NICS Improvement Bill into law we get this crap:

President George W. Bush signed the nation’s first new gun-control legislation in 14 years Tuesday to help keep guns out of the hands of the dangerously mentally ill, and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy immediately announced she would take her crusade to the next step.

This time, she and others want to close the so-called “gun show loophole” that allows some dealers to sell firearms without background checks.

[…]

Schumer agreed that the next item on the gun-control agenda would be to require background checks in every gun sale, but predicted that would be harder to get passed because of opposition by the National Rifle Association. The law signed Tuesday, in contrast, had NRA support.

And this from Paul Helmke:

Many of us in the gun violence prevention movement are excited about the year ahead.

America is turning a corner on the gun issue, because the people are finally being heard.

Today, President Bush signed into law the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007 – what some have called “the first major new gun control bill in more than a decade.”

[…]

Brady background checks have stopped an estimated 1.4 million people from legally buying guns since 1994, but background checks are only as good as the records in the system.

[…]

Law-abiding Americans have nothing to fear from common-sense gun laws that will reduce the toll of 30,000 gun deaths every year in this country.

  • Law-abiding Americans have nothing to fear from preventing suspected terrorists from walking out of a gun store or a gun show fully armed.
  • Law-abiding Americans have nothing to fear from getting a background check for every single gun purchase they make, including at gun shows (this is closing the gun show loophole).
  • Law-abiding Americans have nothing to fear from strengthening Brady background checks to make sure that “prohibited purchasers” like felons, the dangerously mentally ill, and domestic abusers are denied guns at the point of sale.
  • Law-abiding Americans have nothing to fear from reporting lost or stolen guns to the police in a timely manner.
  • Law-abiding Americans (who aren’t in the legal gun business) have nothing to fear from being prevented from buying guns in bulk purchases.
  • Law-abiding Americans have nothing to fear from keeping military-style assault weapons out of most civilian hands, reserving them for military and law enforcement use only.

If you “compromise” with the Devil don’t be surprised if you get burned.

Sean’s words need to be repeated here:

What typically gets lost, and lost deliberately, is the meaning of the word ‘compromise’. In a compromise, both sides gain or lose bargaining points in a mutually acceptable, if not optimal fashion.  In the gun control debate, the meaning of compromise is twisted to, “Okay, we’ll only take half your guns, this time.” The pro-RKBA folks are never even offered anything in return. This is a variation of the slippery slope that I call “Zeno’s Paradox of Lost Rights”. As with the paradox of motion, the remaining scope of the Second Amendment is progressively halved, and halved again. The illusion is that we never lose the right, because there is always the remaining half. The Theory of Limits suggests otherwise.

Sean Flynn
6/15/98

If McCarthy, Schumer, and their ilk were asking me to compromise my initial position would be that they get the death penalty under 18 USC 242. The only people that aren’t allowed to own weapons are those that are locked up or are unable feed themselves. If they are safe enough to be allowed on the streets with a 2000 pound car, a full tank of gasoline and a book of matches then they are safe enough to be allowed a M60, a M60 Patton, or, with suitable storage facilities, TNWs. And finally the 2nd Amendment guarantees the RKBA and since a right someone can’t afford to exercise, just like a right to an attorney, isn’t really worth anything the Federal Government should subsidize arms for those that want them but cannot afford them.

We start our negotiations there.

And now that I’m got that out of the way let’s talk about those words from Helmke:

So, 1.4 million people were stopped from legally purchasing firearms. Since there are about 200 million adults in the country and only about 40% own firearms that must mean that about one out of every 60 people that tried to by a firearm were legally prohibited. And that’s not good enough for him. When will it be good enough? One out of 20? One out of 10? No. We know what the real number he is looking for, one out one.

Those “30,000 gun deaths” include justified, even praiseworthy, shootings by police and private citizens. Either Helmke is deliberately misleading or he thinks the life of a thug who put an innocent life in immediate jeopardy of death or permanent injury is just as valuable as the innocent life. In either case he is not to be trusted.

If suspected terrorists are to be prevented from owning guns, the list of suspected terrorists is created without due process as currently is the case, then President Hillary could declare all NRA members, or all even private citizens, suspected terrorists and we all are screwed. Helmke is an enemy of the U.S. Constitution if he supports the disemboweling of both the 2nd and the 4th Amendments.

As for the other bullet items, except for the last item, those can only be implemented if you have a gun registration in place. And we all know that registration always leads to confiscation within at most a few decades.

As for the last bullet item, Helmke has demonstrated he can’t be trusted, so Μολὼν λαβέ.

And because this is what I was listening to while writing this and I think it fits Schumer, McCarthy, and Helmke well; Runnin’ With the Devil by Van Halen:

I live my life like there’s no tomorrow
And all I’ve got I had to steal
Least I don’t need to beg or borrow
Yes I’m living at a pace that kills
Runnin’ with the devil
Runnin’ with the devil
I found the simple life ain’t so simple
When I jumped out on that road
I got no love, no love you’d call real
Ain’t got nobody waiting at home
Runnin’ with the devil
Runnin’ with the devil

Quote of the day–Dwight Eisenhower

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Every step we take towards making the State our Caretaker of our lives, by that much we move toward making the State our Master.

Dwight Eisenhower
[My guess is that this year there are only about two or maybe three presidential candidates, none of which are likely to win, that even have a glimmer of this fundamental truth.–Joe]

Socialized medicine review

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Ignore for the moment that the Federal Government does not have Constitutional permission to engage in socialized medicine. Look only at results where it has been tried. Kevin tells us about how it’s working out in the U.K.

There are lots of other examples but the first implementation appears to have come from Germany and was a failure as well.

One of the basic problems with socialized medicine is who is spending who’s money. As pointed out by Milton and Rose Friedman in Free to Choose there are four different possibilities (from memory):

  1. One spends ones own money on themselves.
  2. One spends ones own money on someone else.
  3. One spends someone else’s money on themselves.
  4. One spends someone else’s money on someone else.

On average, the first case is going to result in the best return on any given dollar spent. The person will optimize the result for the available money.

On average, the last case is going to result in the worst return on any given dollar spent. The person has little incentive to limit the amount of money spent and to get a good result for the money spent.

Socialized medicine most closely matches the last case and results in the least efficient spending of money.

Tell all the Democrat candidates for President to shove their illegal plans where the sun doesn’t shine then save on their own health care by getting their colonoscopy for removal of the reams of paper done without sedation.

Quote of the day–Thomas Jefferson

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A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt…If the game runs sometime against us at home, we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.

Thomas Jefferson
[The results in Iowa reminded me of this.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Woodrow Wilson

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Sometimes people call me an idealist.  Well, that is the way I know I am an American.  America is the only idealistic nation in the world.

Woodrow Wilson
[It’s interesting to contrast the ideals of this Democrat to the Democrat, and most Republican, politicians of today.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Benjamin Franklin

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The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.

Benjamin Franklin
[I wish everyone could keep this thought close for the entirety of this year and all that follow. Especially when they vote this November.–Joe]

Deja vu

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For some reason reading this made me think of present day Bush Derangement Syndrome:

Sara Jane Moore, who took a shot at President Ford in a bizarre assassination attempt just 17 days after a disciple of Charles Manson tried to kill Ford, was paroled Monday after 32 years behind bars.

Moore, 77, was released from the federal prison in Dublin, east of San Francisco, where she had been serving a life sentence, the Bureau of Prisons said.

[…]

In recent interviews, Moore said she regretted her actions, saying she was blinded by her radical political views and convinced that the government had declared war on the left.

“I was functioning, I think, purely on adrenaline and not thinking clearly. I have often said that I had put blinders on and I was only listening to what I wanted to hear,” she said a year ago in an interview with KGO-TV.

[…]

Moore was born Sara Jane Kahn in Charleston, W.Va. She acted in high school plays and dreamed of being a film actress.

In the 1970s, Moore began working for People in Need, a free food program established by millionaire Randolph Hearst in exchange for the return for his daughter Patty, who was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974.

Moore soon became involved with radical leftists, ex-convicts and other members of San Francisco’s counterculture.

[…]

“I was going to go down anyway,” she said in a 1982 interview with the San Jose Mercury News. “If the government was going to kill me, I was going to make some kind of statement.”

Scary stuff

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Via Cam we have this video from Hillary. There have been times I have thought a Hillary presidency would be tolerable. That thought has now been purged.

Quote of the day–Napoleon Bonaparte

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There are only two forces that unite men – fear and interest.

Napoleon Bonaparte
[I was reminded of this when reading Kevin’s excellent post Why We Fight.

Bonaparte’s insight can also be applied to both sides of the gun issue. The anti-gun people use fear a little more than we do but our leaders use it too. We have a much stronger basis in the “interest” part of the equation which is why I think we are winning now. It gives us more staying power. The fear angle fades after a while when the blood doesn’t run in the streets like the anti-gun bigots predicted.–Joe]

It’s been a long time coming

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The regulation that prohibits firearms in National Parks has long been a point of irritation for me. Barb and I really enjoy visiting the National Parks and have contemplated trying to visit all of them. But we aren’t supposed to bring a self-defense firearm to places where grizzly bears snack on the tourists? What’s up with that?

I received my marching orders from the apex of the triangle of death along with another wheelbarrow full of cash yesterday informing me they have been working on this for the last five years and finally have made some significant progress. Idaho Senator Mike Crapo sent a letter, signed by 46 other senators, to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne requesting the regulation change.

What they didn’t mention on the website or in the note on the wheelbarrow was that not only was it an Idaho Senator that played a big role in writing this letter but that Interior Secretary Kempthorne is a former U.S. Senator and more recently governor of Idaho and has a strong pro-gun rights record. He did veto a bill that would have allowed concealed carry on school grounds by teachers and parents but he had a lot of pressure by the media and even national attention that caused him to cave on that one. When I called his office to encourage him to sign it I was told the phone calls, letters, faxes, etc. were running something like 50:1 against the bill.

Furthermore, Kempthorne graduated from the University of Idaho in 1975 and his wife Patricia also graduated from the University of Idaho. Barb and I graduated from there in 1977. Our son James graduated from there, our daughter Xenia is currently attending, and our daughter Kim has applied there. The University of Idaho is walking distance from our home in Moscow. In fact Xenia, since she (procrastinator extraordinaire) still doesn’t have a drivers license uses her feet as her primary transportation to and from class from our home.

If it’s up to Kempthorne I expect we will, at long last, get rid of this oppressive and dangerous restriction on our ability to defend ourselves in national parks.

If that happens I’ll be a lot more enthusiastic about visiting the parks and less grumpy when I’m hiking through the woods without the constant reminder of that empty feeling of no gun on my hip in country with large predators.

What follows are some more pictures of our recent trip to Glacier National Park (and here):

Thank yous go to NRA-ILA, Idaho Senators Crapo and Craig, who both signed the letters and Ashley for the email (and also said she liked my earlier pictures of Glacier).

Shame on you to the senators that didn’t sign the letter such as the Senators of Washington State where I currently reside. Please note that Presidential hopefuls Senators Clinton and Obama did not sign the letter. McCain did.

Quote of the day–2008 Presidential Candidates

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As a private citizen, as a prosecutor, as a Mayoral candidate and as Mayor, I have advocated for more regulated and more uniform gun licensing regulations, similar to those for a drivers license.

Rudy Giuliani

We do have tough gun laws in Massachusetts. I support them. I won’t chip away at them. I believe they protect us and provide for our safety.

Mitt Romney

A few years ago, Congress passed a law to make sure people undergo a simple background check before buying a gun… Problem is, there’s a dangerous loophole because right now the law doesn’t cover most of America’s gun shows.

John McCain

The real effect of these gun-control measures is to place onerous restrictions on law-abiding citizens who use firearms for such legal activities as self-defense, sport-shooting, hunting, and collecting.

Fred Thompson

The Founding Fathers weren’t worried about our being able to bag a duck or a deer, they were worried about our keeping our fundamental freedoms.

Mike Huckabee

I share our Founders’ belief that in a free society each citizen must have the right to keep and bear arms. They ratified the Second Amendment knowing that this right is the guardian of every other right, and they all would be horrified by the proliferation of unconstitutional legislation that prevents law-abiding Americans from exercising this right.

Ron Paul

Via Jeff Knox Candidates on Rights
[There is a fair amount of further information in Knox’s post.–Joe]

A Letter From Israel

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This is from a friend who lives there.  He’s been a long-time marksmanship and sniper instructor for the IDF, and he does seminars in Israel and the U.S. on counterterrorism.

You just can’t make up this stuff:

Friends:

 

Over 20 Kassam rockets rained down on the northern Negev.  We get only partial information.  If we received all the facts and figures, like Kassams landing around Askelon almost every single day, the government would be forced to defend the country or resign.

 

Have a good weekend.

The response from the U.S. has been to supply arms, ammunition, and training to the Palestinian government in Gaza, which ostensibly are for keeping the terrorists in check, but in fact are being promptly used against Israelis.

 

In summary; the situation in Israel is normal.

Indignation Education verses Real Situation

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Thomas Sowell is one of my heroes, but I’ve never known him to comment on guns or shooting until now.

Even within a range of 6 feet or less, the police miss more often than they hit — 57 percent of the shots at that distance miss and 43 percent hit.

As you might expect, there are even fewer hits at longer distances. At 75 feet — which is less than the distance from first base to second base — only 7 percent of the shots hit.

Moreover, just because a shot has hit does not mean that it is now safe to stop shooting.

Sowell wastes not a single word while offering more perspective than an entire flock of regular journalists.

Word Games

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If it hasn’t been said that complexity is the tool of the corrupt politician, I’ll say it here for the record.  This post is a rewrite of a comment I made here.  I thought it deserved its own post.

“…the ATF sent out it’s ATF State Laws and Published Ordinances. Ride Fast notes some numbers:

California, 67 pages, about 120,600 words of regulation.
Massachusetts, 18.5 pages, about 32,400 words.
Nevada, 6.5 pages, about 11,700 words.
Vermont, 1.05 pages, about 1890 words.”

(To those who have so far never cared about the issue enough to look into it; Vermont has historically had a right-to-arms policy close the original intent of the Second Amendment. For example, one may legally carry a concealed pistol without getting government permission.  It is also worth noting that their violent crime rate is lower than those of surrounding states.)

Here are some contrasting numbers:

The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: One sentence, 27 words.

The Congressional Oath of Office: One paragraph, 73 words.

I assume you’ve all looked it up and saved it, being concerned citizens and all, but to save you the trouble of going to your desktop and clicking on it, here it is again:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

Human rights, honesty and reason are relatively simple.  Obfuscation is complex.

Woopie Goldberg – A Voice Made For Television

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We hear it said of an ugly guy, “He has a face made for radio”.

Woopie Goldberg has performed brilliantly as an actor in television and in movies.  Her personal commentary however, has been nothing you couldn’t hear at the espresso and chi tea bar in any local natural foods store any day of the week.  Hence it is no surprise that her radio show is being axed.  I believe she still has a future in acting.  Therein she has talent.

There remains a significant part of society that can’t seem to understand how radio is a business (the business of selling advertising) and that in business you must have something to offer that people, you know, want.

Malkin covers it too.

Hint:  If you have no respect for those who made it big in the business, you just might be on the wrong path.  “I’m gonna be just the opposite of that really, ultra successful guy” might not be the best business plan.  Success, one would think, is the best teacher.

And here’s a hint just especially for those on the Left:  We’ve all heard your message every day for our whole lives, as long as we can remember.  You’ve gotten your message out, and that is your problem.  A lot of people are sick of hearing it because most of it has something to do with how wrong, greedy, stupid, evil, and endangered we are– the air we breathe is killing us, the food we eat is killing us, oil is killing us, a shortage of oil is killing us, farming is killing us, starvation is killing us, fat is killing us, dieting is killing us, carbs are killing us, disease is killing us, antibiotics, vaccines, and the drug companies are killing us, freedom and prosperity are especially killing us, poverty is killing us, the good economy is killing us but really the economy sucks, terrorists are killing us (but it’s our fault) and the war against terrorists is killing us, and everything, absolutely everything, is killing women and children, the elderly and the minorities the hardest– and how some form of socialism (government-enforced coercion) is the answer to absolutely every problem, real or imagined.

Does that about sum it up?  Who needs to tune into a radio show to hear that when we hear it everywhere else every day?

More-of-the-same day in and day out nagging and finger pointing and blaming America and our Liberty for the world’s problems isn’t something a lot of people are going to pay money to have broadcast in their name.  But you don’t, and won’t, get it anyway.

That must really hurt

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The Gun Guys are whining about all the “pandering to the gun extremists” in the CNN YouTube debate last night.

The only whining I would do over it would be that I don’t trust Giuliani and Romneny when they say they support an individual RKBA.

But then it occurred to me that I don’t know of a single presidental candidate that is even giving the bigots like the Gun Guys and the Brady Bunch a little bit of lip service. That has to be a extremely painful change from ten or twelve years ago.

School Wars – Public Education and Bitter partisan politics

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Once again, Walter E. Williams finds a way to articulate an idea with roughly ten thousand times the clarity I or most anyone else could muster.  I’m sure most of you read Walter’s column regularly (what red-blooded, thinking American doesn’t?) but this one deserves special attention.

Government allocation of resources enhances the potential for human conflict, while market allocation reduces it.

True of course, but he explains the how and why of it.  It should be a primer course in every elementary school, but then, it’s a piece favoring a free market in education:

For a public school system, teaching free market principles would be suicide, wouldn’t it?

There’s talk of impeachment

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Moscow is reputed to be the most liberal city in the entire state of Idaho. Half the town population are students attending the University of Idaho. Add in the socialist professors who think they are the anointed and you end up with some very liberal politics. For the most part it isn’t a problem because there isn’t all that much damage the city government can do when the state politics are so conservative. However Mayor Nancy Chaney feels she needs to do something about all those guns:

MOSCOW (AP) – Moscow Mayor Nancy Chaney wants all cities in Idaho to be able to restrict guns in city facilities.

She has asked Representative Shirley Ringo, a Democrat from Moscow, to introduce legislation that will give Idaho cities the ability to ban guns in their facilities.

Chaney has been looking at ways to restrict guns in Moscow facilities since a May shooting rampage in the city left four dead and three wounded. Among the dead was Moscow police officer Lee Newbill. He was the first Moscow police officer killed in the line of duty.

Chaney says some area residents and city employees are concerned about their safety during public meetings. She says she’s not looking for a citywide gun ban, but for the city to be able to restrict weapons in such places as city hall.

The attorney general last September told Moscow officials that cities in Idaho don’t have legal authority to enforce gun bans in their facilities.

We feel we need to do something too. What I have heard so far is tough to report on a family friendly blog but after you filter out all the obscenities you are left with the word “impeach”.

Quote of the day–Marko

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I believe that forced charity is no charity at all, and forced virtue cannot claim credit for itself anymore than a eunuch can claim credit for chastity.

Marko
this i believe.
November 21, 2007
[Via Tam. It’s a great post and covers numerous important topics. I think son James will appreciate it greatly.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Hillary Rodham Clinton

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There are big differences between me and Sen. Obama on healthcare. I have a healthcare plan that covers every single American. He does not. I have a healthcare plan that will leave no American out. He, by his own admission, leaves at least 15 million people out.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton
November 25, 2007
Clinton, Obama dial up the healthcare heat
[And there is a big difference between both of their plans and what the U.S. Constitution says. The Constitution does not give the Federal Government the authority to engage in this kind of activity. That both senators are advocating unconstitutional action is proof neither of them are fit to be on the public payroll in any capacity. That includes dog catcher and “sanitation worker”. But the reality is that Henry Kissinger wasn’t just speaking about the administration he was working for. It applies to nearly all politicians.–Joe]