It’s a good thing we don’t get all the government we pay for.
Will Rogers
Category Archives: Politics
Quote of the day–Plato
Access to power must be confined to those who are not in love with it.
Plato
[This concept, more fully expressed in the U.S. Constitution, has been around for a very long time. It’s sad this fundamental truth is ignored by the majority of people.–Joe]
Quote of the day–Alan Korwin
Popularity isn’t the basis for war. The struggle for human freedom is. War is ugly by design, and instigated by tyrants, oppressors, fascists, religious fanatics bent on world domination, and other enemies of freedom.
Alan Korwin
April 2, 2007
Genocidal Peace Supporters
Republican Machinegun Shoot/Fundraiser
Now here are some people who know how to have fun.
Tired of the usual chicken dinners, the Manchester Republican Committee is planning to arm supporters next month with Uzis, M-16 rifles and other automatic weapons for a day of target practice at a Pelham firing range.
“The thought just struck me one day: a machine gun shoot. What the heck?” said Jerry Thibodeau, the committee chairman.
We can expect the usual hysterics from the anti-freedom crowd, which of course adds to the fun. They’re actually talking about firing sub guns and assault rifles at the fund raiser, but the term “machine gun” sounds more interesting I guess. For myself, I’d like to fire a nice M2 at some old trucks and a few of Joe’s boomers. Ma Duce is big, well-made, heavy, powerful, and loud as hell. What’s not to like?
I find it encouraging that politicians on both sides of the turd feel the need to appeal to American gun owners. We’ll see whose appeals are honest (or should I say the least disingenuous).
Quote of the day–Charles Edward Montague
War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
Charles Edward Montague
[Sounds like Cindy whats-her-name and most of the Democratic party doesn’t it?–Joe]
Quote of the day–Elbert Hubbard
The only foes that threaten America are the enemies at home; and these are ignorance, superstition, and incompetence.
Elbert Hubbard
June 19, 1856 – May 7, 1915
[Add in “malice” and that statement is as true now as it was then. One only need look at what political left is currently trying to do in regards to the war.–Joe]
Like It Or Not, You’re A Conservative
It’s been said before: We tend to live our lives as conservatives, regardless of our political affiliations. I’ve heard R. Limbaugh say it several times. We don’t take our paycheck, decide we’re living on “more than we need” and give half of it away each payday. We don’t confront our neighbors, telling them they must cut back on their consumption or we’re going to do something really bad to them. You don’t believe that you, personally, have far too much freedom, then demand that someone take your freedom away from you. Chances are you don’t feel you have the right to steal from someone on the basis that he has more than you.
Not exactly. But we do often advocate such coercion against our fellow countrymen on a regular basis, through government.
If we define an American “conservative” as one who embraces the principles upon which this country was founded (Liberty, property rights, minimum to non interference by government)(and I do) then it is a fact that most people live as conservatives in their personal lives. Its just that some of us are screaming hypocrites, like this Texas politician who fought against self-defense rights and ended up shooting a thief (the thief was, after all, merely practicing his own form of “Economic Justice” as the term is used by the Left).
Thanks to M. Malkin and K. du Toit.
Quote of the day–Eric Hoffer
What greater reassurance can the weak have than that they are like anyone else?
Eric Hoffer
(1902-83), U.S. philosopher.
The Passionate State of Mind, (1955).
[Perhaps reassurance isn’t what is in the best interest of weak, the strong, or those in between. But then those who reassure the weak are unlikely to have the best interests of anyone but themselves in mind anyway.–Joe]
Quote of the day–Alan Korwin
The AP’s apparent love, and frequent use of the word “czar,” is an affront to the entire American public.
A czar is a merciless dictator, not subject to the will of the people, operating ruthlessly in pre-Communist Russia.
The suggestion by the AP and their hopelessly anti-freedom unthinking lapdog followers in the lamestream media, that the U.S. has a drug “czar,” and education “czar,” a fiscal policy “czar,” and numerous other czars has gotten the public and officials to accept the word, without realizing just how brainwashed they have become.
Even if some twisted politician somewhere was the first to apply the word in some unknown circumstance, a proper reporter would say, in effect, “Although politician X called the new bureaucrat a ‘czar,’ the salaried government worker is actually only a mere employee, subject to reprimand, dismissal and the rule of law.”
Alan Korwin
May 18, 2007
Czars Overrunning America
[I recall a time when they were called “public servants“. It perplexes me that somehow they became Czar’s. Was there a servant rebellion that someone forgot to tell me about?–Joe]
Enabler of death and evil
My previous post, Quote of the Day–The Gun Guys, about anti-gun bigots demanding people use emotion to win arguments and their agenda in legislatures, deserves more attention. His email was inspired by Despite Large Majorities, Democrats Are Chicken on Gun Control by Drew Westen.
Weston claims people are at their most basic and inescapable level not logical. I’ll grant that he is not but nearly everything he says just does not compute with me. I associate him and his viewpoints with death and evil. I associate great emotion with the great evils of the world. Every genocide, the burning of “witches”, the war against us by Islamic extremists, racism, domestic abuse–the list is almost endless. Strong emotions and the exclusion of facts and logic have played a huge role in the killings of millions of innocent people. To endorse emotion as a means of “finding your moral compass” as Weston apparently endorses is flat out wrong.
Reading this article was about as pleasant as shoveling fresh cow manure out of a unventilated barn on a hot day (I’ve actually done this–it’s not for people with weak stomachs). Weston has the gall to claim facts are unimportant. Emotion is what is important and he claims this as a fact. There is no hypocrisy in his world view is there?
I was going to just ignore Weston’s factual errors in regards to gun laws but I can’t. Weston’s tries to convince us with facts and logic that facts and logic aren’t important. But he is so careless with facts that even if we were to overlook his hypocritical argument we just can’t trust him. Each time he erroneously states a “fact” it’s like he just broke out another window on his airplane. His argument is so drafty that no reasonable person could tolerate the ride even if his plane could get off the ground.
Here is a sample of the factual errors:
- The Brady Act restricted the sale of “assault weapons” — Wrong. It was the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act passed in 1994.
- The Brady Act caused 100,000 felons to loose their right to bear arms — Wrong. Convicted felons had that right infringed in 1968 with GCA68.
- Hunters have a right to own firearms — The right to own firearms has nothing to do with hunting.
- The National Rifle Association supports semiautomatics for felons — Wrong.
- The National Rifle Association supports unrestricted access to automatic weapons — Wrong.
- There exists some set of firearms “designed for no other purpose than to take another person’s life” — I suppose it’s possible but I’ve never seen or heard of such a gun.
I will grant Weston has a point in that emotion is a “card” politicians can and do play with great effect regardless of the facts and logic of reality. But this is not the way it should be. Emotions should be used by politicians to gain support for that which is true and logical. The “dispassionate mind”, which Weston apparently despises, should be the beginnings of any endeavor which has the luxury of at least a small amount of time devoted to planning. From the basis of what is true and good one can build up a web of logic and reach conclusions that will resonate and create passion. One should not start and end with conclusions and passion. To do that is to invite error into our thinking and that is why I see Weston and his ilk as enablers of death and evil.
Quote of the day–The Gun Guys
Emotion is what wins arguments, and there is a tremendous amount of emotion among those fighting to reduce gun violence — there always is when someone gets hurt or must go through the tragedies that we experience in this country as a result of gun violence.
…
That is important emotion, and it will do more for the argument for stronger gun laws than any facts or figures ever will.
…
We have to show legislators the human side of this issue, too, and force them to base their own decisions and policies off of that emotion…
The Gun Guys (actually the paid anti-gun, anti-freedom, activist Gonzo)
Email from June 26, 2007
[There you have it. Just what we have been saying for years. The facts don’t really matter. What matters is emotion. They know the facts don’t support their agenda. The number of innocents dead, wounded, raped, and robbed is irrelevant as long as someone feels good about removing the tools of self defense from those victims. And they need to force legislators to base their decisions off of that same sick mindset.–Joe]
Quote of the day–Cam Edwards
If you want to try and impose the Fairness Doctrine, then just admit you’re not a big believer in capitalism and the free marketplace of ideas.
Cam Edwards
June 27, 2007
The Nanny Doctrine
[The advocates for the McCain-Feingold Act should admit the same thing.–Joe]
Academia and other nonsense
Phil has a post up about the recent Supreme Court ruling on using race as a criteria for determining which school a child is to attend. The commies in the Seattle media and schools are going nuts and Phil takes them to task:
Leave the social work to the social workers. Schools are a place where instruction is supposed to happen. The only real lessons that the Seattle School District seem to favor are those of “If you’re not white or Asian you will need the government’s help or you will never succeed” and “If you are white or Asian, you’re only succeeding because of privilege” being taught in all twelve grades.
Disgusting.
This reminds me of when my son James took an honors level sociology class as a freshman in college. The first assignment was to write an essay on how the luck of his birth (white, male, upper middle class) enabled him to get into this “special” class. He wrote that it wasn’t luck. He had worked hard and gotten A’s in every class since the fourth grade. He got a “D” on that assignment. We counseled him he had four options. 1) Drop the class; 2) Suck it up and take the grade even though he knew he was right; 3) Make a big stink about it with her, and if necessary, the administration; 4) Give her what she wanted even when he knew it was flat out wrong. It was his choice to make but we would support whichever route he choose. He choose 4) and got an “A” in the class and to this day we refer to that class as the “socialism class”.
Choosing to give the instructor what she wanted was probably his mother’s influence. I had numerous similar things happen when I was in grade school but usually in science and math classes. I always went with 2) or 3). I always got very high scores on standardized tests and occasionally the results were literally “off the chart” but my grades were only a little above average. Sometimes you pay a price for being right.
Quote of the day–Otto von Bismark
Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable… the art of the next best…
Otto von Bismark
[This is probably more true than I like to acknowledge. It also applies to engineering, as in this quip, “There comes a time to shoot the engineers and ship the product.” As freedom activists we want perfection but that is seldom possible. If we want any action in our favor we probably must accept far less than our ideal. When fighting a restriction on our freedom we are sometimes better off working to make the proposed legislation less onerous than we are to fight a losing battle against a greater infringement. That is achieving what is attainable rather than what should be.–Joe]
Quote of the day–Ambrose Bierce
Peace: In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
Ambrose Bierce
The Devil’s Dictionary
[I don’t know if it’s wisdom or just cynicism, but as I get older I’m more and more inclined to believe that fighting is the normal state of affairs in the interaction between large groups of people.–Joe]
Quote of the day–G. B. Shaw
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
G. B. Shaw
Freedom or Coercion, Which Do You Choose?
It’s kind of bizarre to think that we have a “choice between coercion and choice” which is an oxymoron, but technically we do have it:
In a just world, we would never need to waste a minute discussing this, except with our young children, or in elementary school history classes, but see if you can guess which will outperform; a Soviet-style, government-run monopoly or a free market (our current public school system or school choice)?
Walter E. Williams of course nails it as usual. The video, done by Stossel and 20/20, is excellent also. I especially liked the “rubber room” concept they have in New York, as it upholds everything I’ve ever said about our socialist education system (I do have to hand it to them as I’ve often said we’d be better off paying certain public workers to stay away from the job, and here we find that they’re doing exactly that).
Our current system really is anti-American, anti-choice, and anti-success, and it needs to be scrapped as soon as possible. The best teachers and administrators will form their own, better schools virtually overnight. The worst ones? They can always pick fruit for a living.
I don’t like the sound of this
Democrats, NRA make deal on new gun rules:
WASHINGTON — Senior Democrats have reached agreement with the National Rifle Association on what could be the first federal gun-control legislation since 1994, a measure to significantly strengthen the national system that checks the backgrounds of gun buyers.
The sensitive talks began in April, days after a mentally ill student killed 32 people at Virginia Tech University. The shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, had been judicially ordered to submit to a psychiatric evaluation, which should have disqualified him from buying handguns. But the state of Virginia never forwarded that information to the federal National Instant Check System, and the massacre exposed a loophole in the 13-year-old background-check program.
Under the agreement, participating states would be given monetary enticements for the first time to keep the federal background database up to date, as well as penalties for failing to comply.
To sign on to the deal, the powerful gun lobby won significant concessions from Democratic negotiators. Individuals with minor infractions in their pasts could petition their states to have their names removed from the federal database, and about 83,000 military veterans, put into the system by the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2000 for alleged mental health reasons, would have a chance to clean their records.
The federal government would be permanently barred from charging gun buyers or sellers a fee for their background checks. In addition, faulty records such as duplicative names or expunged convictions would have to be scrubbed from the database.
“The NRA worked diligently with the concerns of gun owners and law enforcement in mind to make a … system that’s better for gun owners and better for law enforcement,” said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., who led the talks.
First: If someone is so dangerous they can’t be trusted with a gun then I don’t think they can be trusted with a can of gasoline and a book of matches either. Either they can be trusted in public or they should be locked up.
Second: Making the least agreeable portions of the infringement on our rights more palatable just means it will be more difficult to justify getting rid of it entirely later on.
Third: The longer this infringement stays in place the more accepting of it people are. The ban on new machine gun sales is so well accepted that most people believe they are banned entirely. Today it would be really tough to repeal the ban on machine guns and day by day it’s getting more difficult for people to even consider repealing the Brady Act.
Fourth: The Brady/FBI database and reporting system is so close to a database of all gun owners and their guns that it is a hazard to the health of our freedom. Which has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peal anyway.
All that said, borrowing from a great book I just listened to recently, Survival of the Sickest, “Why would you take a pill that will kill you 40 years from now?” The answer is, “Because it will keep me from dying tomorrow.” And so it is with this agreement.
Irony at the CDC
Some “progressive” activist is complaining that the CDC has becoming politicized:
In 1995 there was a vibrant public health effort in the area of gun injuries. Then the newly elected Republican Congress applied the pressure of the gun lobby. Suddenly the half dozen or so states funded by CDC to do fire arm injury surveillance were defunded. Zeroed out. Shortly thereafter all CDC funded prevention and injury programs had to agree that there would be no activities, direct or indirect, related to gun control. Health department people we have spoken to reported that a profound chill settled over injury programs regarding gun injuries, like homicides from guns. Intense pressure was applied to the head of the CDC injury control program and he and some of his experts on the public health aspects of firearm injury were threatened with investigations over possible entanglement with gun control advocates. Now extreme care is taken in how data is reported or recommendations made in the area of gun injuries.
Never mind that those “studies” were some of the most egregious examples of sloppy science I have ever seen. The “studies” were implemented to generate political justification for infringing our constitutionally guaranteed rights. Those studies were just as repugnant as a “public health effort” in the area of gays/blacks/Jews with entanglements with the KKK. Taxpayer (my) money was being spent to justify taking my guns away from me. And this bigot gets bent out of shape because they have to be more careful in their science?
The CDC was engaged in highly political activities, they are told to stop, and this person whines, “…politics has become an increasingly important part of CDC world.”
Where, in the Constitution, is the Federal Government granted the power to create the CDC to begin with? The CDC in it’s entirety, is a political creation of the socialist scum of this country. For this “progressive” to be whining about the defunding of a small portion of the CDC engaged in an illegal conspiracy (see 18 USC 241 and 242) is beyond ironic. It’s effrontery.
Wow!
Via Say Uncle who viewed it at The Bitch Girls.
Question: Handgun ownership; A right or a privilege? Answer: Privilege.
But he considers a college education, access to the internet, and health care as rights. How did he manage to get through law school?