Category Archives: Politics

Quote of the day—Capitalist Eric

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To begin with, the shitty, corrupt system that’s been in place since 1913, which is the ultimate Ponzi scheme- is finished.

In 2015 I listed several scenarios which could torpedo the dollar:

–China announces the yuan will be a gold-backed currency

–China announces they will no longer accept dollars for international commerce

–Saudi Arabia (now heavily backed by China) announces they will no longer accept dollars for oil

–China and Russia announce they’re dumping all US debt instruments

I was wrong; our leaders created a situation where bullets 2-4 have happened, or will soon.  And ironically enough, Russia just backed the ruble with gold, so bullet one is somewhat covered.

In short order, our phony leaders have basically forced China, Russia, India and even Pakistan to join up, and permanently yank the carpet from under the fiat-money banking system that the globalists base their power on.

No bullshit, that’s just the truth.

Capitalist Eric
March 31, 2022
Crash Positions
[Via Rolf on Gab.

Very grim. I wish I could refute his conclusions. Perhaps some economists could do that but the list of economists I don’t trust is much larger than the list I do trust.

Prepare appropriately.—Joe]

Projection/Evil/False-Flag

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Via Firearms Policy Coalition @gunpolicy:image

image

The indictment:

image

There are at several ways to interpret this:

  1. The anti-gun people want you disarmed so they can more easily kill you (evil).
  2. The anti-gun people think you are just as murderous as they are (projection).
  3. The anti-gun people want more “gun violence” to justify their agenda (false-flag).
  4. Two or more of the above.

Prepare and respond appropriately.

Quote of the day—Gina Bontempo @FlorioGina

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Living in the third world country of San Francisco was actually my first red pill. The veil was pulled back even more when I started working in a digital media newsroom. Then the avalanche really started when I watched one of Trump’s speeches unedited—I knew I was being lied to.

Gina Bontempo @FlorioGina
Tweeted on April 6, 2022
[The legacy media is a bunch of liars.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Tom Gresham @Guntalk

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Gun banner thinking. “All criminals were once law abiding.  Therefore, all law abiders must be treated as criminals.”

Tom Gresham @Guntalk
Tweeted on April 4, 2022
[That is a reasonable hypothesis and almost certainly true for some gun banners. Others are just evil liars and will say things like this because they know their simple minded followers will latch onto the stupidity of the statement as if it were a revelation.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ryan Sabalow and Dale Kasler

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They’ve banned high-capacity magazines and cracked down on assault weapons. They’ve made it so Californians have to pass a background check to purchase a gun and ammunition. They’ve prohibited buyers from having ammo or “ghost” gun parts shipped directly to their homes.

When it comes to gun laws, California’s legislators have passed some of the most stringent regulations in the country, checking off nearly every box on national gun control advocates’ wishlist.

A mass shooting early Sunday that left six dead and 12 wounded just a block from the Capitol — the very building where these laws were enacted — immediately prompted new calls for legislation to curb gun violence, from California elected officials and gun-control advocates across the nation.

Ryan Sabalow and Dale Kasler
April 3, 2022
California has toughest U.S. gun laws. After Sacramento shooting, what else can lawmakers do?
[“What else can lawmakers do?” Surrender to law enforcement then write and sign their confessions.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Brandon Smith

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I think it’s important that people within the liberty movement and outside of the liberty movement start thinking about the scale of the crisis we are facing. It’s not just about economic disaster and adapting to the loss of supply chains and stable currencies; it’s not just about survival. It’s also about fighting back against the inevitable government response to the crisis. They will try to take advantage of people’s pain, and use it to lure those people into slavery. This cannot be allowed to happen.

Brandon Smith
March 17, 2022
The Stagflation Trap Will Lead To Universal Basic Income And Food Rationing
[Prepare appropriately.—Joe]

Quote of the day—admin

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There was an enormous analysis effort going again many years to find out whether or not gun management measures work. A 2020 evaluation by the RAND Company, a nonprofit analysis group, parsed the outcomes of 27,900 analysis publications on the effectiveness of gun management legal guidelines. From this huge physique of labor, the RAND authors discovered solely 123 research, or 0.four %, that examined the results rigorously. Among the different 27,777 research could have been helpful for non-empirical discussions, however many others have been deeply flawed.

We took a have a look at the importance of the 123 rigorous empirical research and what they really say in regards to the efficacy of gun management legal guidelines.

The reply: nothing. The 123 research that met RAND’s standards could have been one of the best of the 27,900 that have been analyzed, however they nonetheless had critical statistical defects, similar to a scarcity of controls, too many parameters or hypotheses for the information, undisclosed knowledge, faulty knowledge, misspecified fashions, and different issues.

admin
April 1, 2022
Do Studies Show Gun Control Works? No.
[The content is interesting but it is like the text was automatically translated to another language then back to English. For example, “Gun management” in the article really means “gun control”.

Related to this is the FBI Uniform Crime Reports has become, for all intents and purposes, useless:

Nearly 16,000 agencies in the U.S. (15,897) reported crimes to the FBI in 2020. 

Updated numbers the FBI released to us Thursday, show only 11,920 police agencies remain for 2021.

That’s nearly 4,000 police agencies dropping out.

Prosecutors are quitting because they are overwhelmed by backlog of cases, the police aren’t reporting information to the FBI. The prisons released people because of the pandemic, it’s almost like government is falling apart, or else deliberately signaling to the criminal class that it’s open season on ordinary people.

Prepare appropriately.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Molly Crane-Newman

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Underpaid prosecutors overwhelmed by a mammoth backlog of cases are quitting in droves when their work is needed more than ever, the city’s district attorneys told the City Council on Friday.

“Former staffers cited the responsibilities of discovery, managing the backlog of cases, and increased night and weekend shifts among the reasons why they leave,” Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark told the council’s Public Safety Committee at a virtual budget hearing.

“People are in tears when they leave because they love the work they do for the Bronx community, but the job is now overwhelming.”

Clark said 104 attorneys and 90 professional staff had quit her office by the end of February, surpassing the 96 attorneys and 51 professional staff who left in all of 2021.

Clark said the departures come as the Bronx DA faces 1,270 open gun cases.

Molly Crane-Newman
March 18, 2022
Overwhelmed prosecutors quitting ‘in tears’ amid staffing crisis, NYC district attorneys say
[The answer is right in front of them and they refuse to see it. Stop prosecuting people for having open guns! Or is it that nearly 1,300 people have shown the Bronx DA their open gun cases and the DA is paralyzed with fright?

Regardless, this is an indicator of things to come and the opportunities opening up. If the anti-gun laws are not quickly struck down or repealed people will ignore them and start normalizing gun ownership in self defense.

We live in interesting times. Prepare appropriately.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Walrus @ThrowawayGaming

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If nobody is armed, nobody will be oppressed. I’m sorry, but the state needs to come down hard on dissenters, which is Republican gun owners.

Walrus @ThrowawayGaming
Tweeted on March 28, 2022
[For several minutes I looked at his posts to see if I could confirm this is a parody account. Nope, insufficient evidence.

I didn’t know stupid was available in this dense of packaging. Two sentences, one impossible proposition, two falsehoods, one proposed unconstitutional act, and the second sentence contradicts the first.

I couldn’t pack that much nonsense into two sentences if I worked on it for an hour. And all without long practice with a parody account. That takes extraordinary talent in the crap for brains department.—Joe]

All electric cars in Washington state

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As an electrical engineer I find this “interesting”:

Washington state plans to ban most non-electric vehicles by 2030, according to a newly signed bill by Gov. Jay Inslee.

The bill says that all vehicles of the model year 2030 or later that are sold, purchased, or registered in the state must be electric.

As the next year’s model come out in the fall the target for their mandate will be in a little over seven years. I don’t think the electrical infrastructure can be upgraded to handle the new load in time. This will be especially true if the leftist politicians pushing to remove many of the hydroelectric dams are successful.

It is my belief they hope to bring wind and solar online. But those sources are intermittent. Those cars are going to be lower in the priority que than heating and lighting homes and offices. If you pull into the charging station during peak usage in early January with little wind and almost no solar for a few days you could be told you won’t be able to recharge until the wind blows from the south again so the heating load isn’t so high. Perhaps in a week or two. Or maybe you can find a black market diesel generator if you know who to ask and have the cash to pay for it.

My guess is that one of two things will happen.

  1. The politicians who voted for things like this mandate, the anti-business regulations, the schools teaching math is racist, and the oppressive gun laws will be unable to maintain the required margin of fraud in future elections and the oppressive laws will be repealed.
  2. The productive and freedom loving residents will leave the state and the state will spiral down into an economic abyss resembling downtown Seattle and Detroit. I.e., an Atlas Shrugged like scenario.

I often wonder if the economic destruction authoritarians create is due to obliviousness, maliciousness, or a deliberate gamble that things will somehow recover from their reign of power.

We live in interesting times. Prepare appropriately.

Quote of the day—Lee Williams

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During her Senate confirmation hearings, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked, “Do you believe the individual right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right?”

Judge Jackson’s response is telling: “Senator, the Supreme Court has established that the individual right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right.”

She did not say the right to keep and bear arms was enshrined in the Constitution. Nor did she say it’s part of our God-given right to self-defense. Instead, she believes the RKBA was “established” by the Supreme Court. That, friends, is a judicial philosophy taken straight from the pages of Gun Banning 101.

Lee Williams
March 28, 2022
Come on, man. Of course, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is anti-gun
[I also was struck by the odd wording when Chuck Petras @Chuck_Petras tweeted Judge Jackson’s response to me. And, I’m nearly certain, she wasn’t referring to this SCOTUS declaration:

This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed; but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress.

That said, I’m not sure any Senators are going to expend the political capital to make a big deal out of opposing her nomination. Those in tight elections might well see opponents shriek, “Senator Racist voted against confirming the first black woman to the Supreme Court!”. It is probably better that they save their ammo for legislative votes with less baggage and more immediate and direct consequences.—Joe]

Never let a crisis go to waste

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COVID enabled authoritarians to expand their power:

An appeals court sided with the governor and found the emergency act gave him vast authority—including the “police power” to create new law. The California Supreme Court let the appeals court decision stand, meaning that in any declared emergency the governor can do whatever he deems appropriate without serious checks or balances.

Last month, Newsom mercifully lifted the vast majority of edicts and orders—but the precedent has been set for future emergencies. There are no real limits on executive power.

There really needs to be consequences for these expansions of government powers. I’m just not sure what the solution is. When the elections can’t be trusted, the “news” is cheering the authoritarians, and individuals who speak out are canceled, what are people to do when they find the restrictions intolerable?

Quote of the day—Brad Raffensperger

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We need to get a subpoena for the fella who this John Doe is. Was he paid? How much was he paid? And then who paid him. And we’re going to follow the money, and we’re going get to the bottom of it. And we’re going to prosecute this, if we find that there’s substance to it.

Brad Raffensperger
Georgia Secretary of State
March 20, 2022
Georgia ballot harvesting probe advances as state elections board approves subpoena
[I wish them well, but I suspect they will not make much progress.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Michael Boldin

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Rights are not gifts from government.

They don’t come from documents, or courts, or legislation – or anything of the like.

Thomas Paine called them “imprescriptible rights.” Richard Henry Lee said they came from the “law of nature.”

And as John Dickinson put it in 1776, “Our liberties do not come from charters, for these are only the declaration of pre-existing rights.”

Paine agreed when he wrote that “it is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights.”

But this essential principle is increasingly lost on a general public more concerned with the political soap opera of the day rather than the fact that both major parties have aggressively attacked the Constitution and liberty for decades.

And what they’ve left behind, they treat as government-granted privileges – not rights.

Michael Boldin
November 26, 2021
Rights are Not Gifts from Government
[Something lost on nearly all anti-gun people is that amending the 2nd Amendment out of existence, if they could accomplish that, would still leave the matter of the SCOTUS decision in U S v Cruikshank:

The right there specified is that of ‘bearing arms for a lawful purpose.’ This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.

When those people tell you there was no individual right to keep and bear arms before DC v Heller, or that they will amend the constitution to eliminate the right, you have something to tell them. Tell them they are wrong. Tell them SCOTUS settled those claims nearly 150 years ago. And the people have the legal authority, moral authority, and the power to back up that decision.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alice Smith @TheAliceSmith

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The Left are suspicious of the government on defence and law & order.

The Right are suspicious of the government on welfare and education.

Both are correct.

Alice Smith @TheAliceSmith
Tweeted on March 22, 2022
[I agree and go further. I am suspicious of government on all things.

The profile of Ms. Smith on Twitter may be of interest to some:

Who is Alice Smith? The great-great-great-granddaughter of Adam Smith. Follow me on my adventures down the capitalist rabbit hole! 2+2=4

I presume this is the Adam Smith who wrote The Wealth of Nations. This book had a big influence on me.—Joe]

Quote of the day—NRA @NRA

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24 NRA CONSTITUTIONAL CARRY STATES DOWN, 26 TO GO! #winning

NRA @NRA
Tweeted on March 21, 2022
[I remember when it was called Vermont carry. And many people held those pushing for shall issue carry in contempt. The thought was that granting the opposition the toehold that the state had the authority to license what should be an unrestricted right was a dead end. It was, they claimed, Vermont carry or nothing. No compromise. Once the state was licensing our rights it was a slippery slope to no right to carry.

I was torn. I didn’t see a direct path to unlicensed concealed carry from many anti-gun leaning states. But there might be a path to licensed concealed carry. Wasn’t the possibility of progress better than the faint hope of utopia?

Even now people claim, “Liberty isn’t on the ballot. I don’t see the point of voting.” But the progress of constitutional carry shows that you don’t need to reach perfection with your next step. You just need to make progress or even just hold the ground you currently have until the next time you take a step.—Joe]

Quote of the day—BlueCollarPew @BlueCollarPew

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You’re just completely redefining “gun control” to pretend your ideology isnt completely incoherent.

The reality of “gun control” is dark money orgs run by wine moms, distributing $ to ghoul pols, who then have the cops kick down ur door, shoot ur doggo, & throw u in a cage.

BlueCollarPew @BlueCollarPew
Tweeted on March 8, 2022
[While not complete, it is certainly not wrong.—Joe]

They don’t have an accurate model, or…

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Comments from a recent blog post matched the skepticism I expressed about the crime situation in downtown Seattle.

An article in Thursday’s Seattle Times indicates the skepticism was justified:

In a panel at the event, City Attorney Ann Davison, citywide Councilmember Sara Nelson and King County Regional Homelessness Authority CEO Marc Dones discussed how to manage public safety and offer mental health, addiction and housing services to those in need downtown.

Davison, who took office in January and has committed to cracking down on crime, and Dones, whose commitment is to providing services to those experiencing homelessness, agreed that the missing component in solving the city’s crime and homelessness crises is collaboration among partners.

“I believe fundamentally that how we interrupt cycles of violence and crime are by addressing material needs that drive crime cycles,” Dones said. “People steal bread because they’re hungry, not because they’re mad at other people.”

The article I linked to the other day tells us:

Officials said most of the charges in cases referred to the City Attorney’s Office involving High Utilizers were theft (1,019 charges), trespassing (589 charges), assault (409 charges), or weapons violations (101 charges).

Another related article tells us even more about why businesses are leaving:

Amazon moved into the 312,000-square-foot location in 2017, taking over the top six floors of the old Macy’s building. The office at 300 Pine St. is about a half-mile from the company’s headquarters on Seventh Avenue.

Since Feb. 21, there have been at least three shootings, two stabbings and one carjacking in the area, according to the Seattle Police Department.

…

Olga Sagan, owner of Piroshky Piroshky, decided in February to close the bakery’s Third and Pike Street location, citing high crime in the area and fears about employee and customer safety.

These aren’t people “stealing bread because they are hungry” or even “mad at each other”. There are food banks (I’ve donated hundreds of pounds of lentils to them, Barb has donated money, food, and her time) which give food to the needy. The people with the responsibility to reduce crime cannot possibly arrive at the proper solution if they don’t have an accurate model describing the problem. Or, just as likely, they do have an accurate model and they don’t view the crime as a problem. They view it as a way to destroy capitalism. In which case, changing course is not on their agenda.

In either case, don’t expect conditions in downtown Seattle to improve anytime soon.

Prepare appropriately.

Before I had a blog

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Back in the dark ages, before I had a blog, I attempted mass communication using a word processor to put words on material made from dead trees. I then used an envelope and stamp to send my missives to the local newspaper in hopes they might indulge me by sharing my words with their readers.

I didn’t realize it, but my parent saved at least some of those published Letters to the Editor.

Although my parents died in 2012 and 2014, my brothers are still cleaning the attic of their house. Stuff related to me has ended up on my desk. These two clippings arrived recently and are from over 20 years ago:

image

image

Quote of the day—Tammy Mutasa

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Less than 120 people have caused more than 2,400 criminal cases throughout Seattle in five years.

These prolific offenders have been identified through the High Utilizer Initiative (HUI).

City Attorney Ann Davison announced the HUI launch Tuesday morning, a program made to identify those who repeatedly cause criminal activity throughout Seattle.

The program will then ensure these people will have the actual help they need, and their cases will be prioritized.

Tammy Mutasa
March 15, 2022
New initiative identifies hundreds who have caused thousands of crimes in Seattle
[These criminals were selected on this basis:

The people each has 12 or more referrals from SPD to the City Attorney’s office in the same time and at least one case in the last eight months.

That is an average of four crimes per year per person where the police did sufficient investigation to conclude there was a good chance of conviction. One has to wonder how many criminal acts were actually committed. What is the ratio? 2:1? 10:1?

That last sentence is a bit odd: “people will have the actual help they need”. I would have thought what they really need are “three hots and a cot”. But I guess they are going to try something else.

I remember in the 1960s and 1970s there was a lot of talk about “reform” rather than incarceration. My understanding is they tried a lot of things but there didn’t seem to be any real value. “Three strikes and you’re out” was the response to those failures. “Three strikes” has it’s own problems but there were indicators it was more effective at reducing crime than the previous decades of trying to reform the criminals.

While I would like to think the criminals can be reformed I’m skeptical the reform community of today has something new that wasn’t tried decades ago found to be nearly useless. I just hope whatever they do they make sure those known habitual offenders do not continue their criminal ways.

In the mean time, prepare appropriately if you visit Seattle.—Joe]