Category Archives: Politics

Quote of the day—Kurt Vonnegut

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THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law.
They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking
than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the
211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the
United States Handicapper General.

Kurt Vonnegut
October 1961
Harrison Bergeron
[I had read this short story sometime long ago but I can’t really say when. A private post on Facebook caused me to go looking for it.

While the story has elements of truth in the trajectory predicted I don’t think this is in our future. I expect before things go much further something more like a USSR dystopia or a forceful reset to something resembling a meritocracy is far more likely. And I expect to see the outcome long before 2081.

But still, it puts into words the unarticulated fears many of us have.—Joe]

Quote of the day—James Rickards

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The Federal Reserve does not understand that money creation can be an irreversible process. At a certain point, confidence in money can be lost, and there is no way to reconstitute it; an entirely new system must rise in its place. A new international monetary system will rise from the ashes of the old dollar system, just as the dollar system rose from the ashes of the British Commonwealth at Bretton Woods in 1944, even before the flames of the Second World War had been extinguished.

…

When the inevitable crash came, the losses were not apportioned to those responsible—the banks and bondholders—but were passed on to the public through federal finance. From 2009 to 2012, the U.S. Treasury ran a $5 trillion cumulative deficit, and the Federal Reserve printed $1.2 trillion of new money. Similar deficit and money-printing programs were launched around the world, as derivatives creation by banks continued unabated. Only a portion of the private debt defaults were written off.
The bankers’ jobs and bonuses were preserved, but nothing was achieved for the benefit of citizens. A private debt problem had been replaced with public debt larger than the private debt had ever been. These debts are unpayable in real terms, and defaults will soon follow. The defaults by smaller nations like Greece, Cyprus, and Argentina will be through nonpayment of bonds and losses for bank depositors. Defaults for larger nations such as the United States will come from across-the-board inflation that will steal from savers, depositors, and bondholders alike.

James Rickards
2014
The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System
[I mentioned this book a month ago and said, after consuming about 25% of it, that it is a good book. I have finished the book and I stand by that assertion.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Rob Skjonsberg

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Liberals being offended, by pretty much everything these days, is predictable.

Rob Skjonsberg
Chief of Staff to South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds.
March 25, 2021
Rounds’ response to Biden’s proposed assault weapon ban gets national attention
[It’s interesting how people buy into this “offended” crap.

At work they are going through all software and documentation to remove references to “White Lists” and “Black Lists”. And the code revision control systems are going to have references to “master” branch changed to “main” branch. I’m glad my boss didn’t ask me to do it and instead asked the intern.

A week or two ago I had a more or less mandatory meeting, involving some large number of people, to go over the changes and why they were important. I politely listened and didn’t say anything.

What really struck me* was they said when they finish with this effort they won’t be done. They will just be getting started. The next item on the agenda will be to remove “grandfathered” from, well, everything I guess. Apparently that is offensive ageism or something. They reported after that they will be hunting for reasons to be offended on behalf of the LGBTQ community.

If the USSR and other communist examples are any clue the purity tests will only level out when the death and Gulag incarceration rates get to the point where society is collapsing.

I need to retreat to an underground bunker (I wish!) in Idaho before I get caught and found guilty of wrong think.—Joe]

* Another thing I found very telling was the presentation was of marginal “quality”. The slides had typos and grammar errors. The presentation itself was substandard too. There were lots of hesitation and restarts in the speech patterns. I kept wondering if the person couldn’t do a real job so they were given this task.

Quote of the day—Egon von Greyerz

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In the coming bear market for currencies and bull market for precious metals, gold and silver will not just maintain purchasing power but massively outperform and become the must have investment.

But above all, do not buy gold and silver for speculative purposes. Gold and silver is your insurance against the coming end of a monetary era when all currencies and bubble assets will implode.

Egon von Greyerz
March 24, 2021
WHY BUY GOLD WHEN THERE IS BITCOIN & TESLA
[I’ve been hearing hints of the coming collapse for 20 years now. And “it has to happen soon” since 2008.

And, of course, if you dig just the tiniest bit most people, including this guy, advocating precious metals just so happen to have some precious metals they would love to sell to you.

They may still be right. But I’m very skeptical of those who have some direct gain from people taking their advice.

And everyone who claims gold will “preserve your wealth” seem to gloss over, at best, that Roosevelt banned the private ownership of gold by executive order and got away with it. So, what’s the path to wealth preservation when your wealth is tied up in contraband?—Joe]

Quote of the day—Sebastian

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I feel like most of the politicians are pretty well polarized into one camp or another at this point, just like everybody else, and there’s not a whole lot we’re going to do other than keep some of the more soft pro-2A folks in line. Does arguing with people on social media work? Probably not. I’ve come to the conclusion social media is useful for sharing cat pictures and pictures of your rugrats for the grandparents, and that’s about it. People who spew politics all day on social media are boors, and who wants to be a boor?

Sebastian
March 24, 2021
What Activism Matters Anymore?
[I think this is a valid point.

I think that the best way to be an “activist” these days is to take new shooters to the range and keep them going back. The culture needs to change and the politics will follow.

Boomershoot is coming up in just one month. That is a great exposure to free America. Show them one or all of these videos:

Even if you and your guests just watch you will have a unforgettable experience. Do your part to restore freedom to our nation.—Joe]

Orofino Idaho is 2nd Amendment Sanctuary

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Via Facebook on March 25, 2021:

Orofino is Idaho’s latest 2nd Amendment Sanctuary City, the City Council voted unanimously Tuesday evening in favor of Resolution no. 21-500 declaring it.

2ndAmendmentSanctuary

This is the closest city to Boomershoot (if you want to call a place with only about 3,100 people a city). This is also where I went to high school.

Quote of the day—Sean D Sorrentino

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Someone needs to make a cartoon showing a couple dead sheep and wolves moving off in the distance. Perhaps a farmer shouting “We must do something about the wolf threat.” In the next frame a Government Man stands at the door of a suburban house with a pair of pliers explaining that since wolves are dangerous to sheep, he’s going to pull the teeth out of their family Golden Retriever.

Sean D Sorrentino
Posted on Facebook on March 25, 2021
[While accurate and applicable I doubt the majority of people that need to get it would not actually understand. Those anti-gun people that do understand would not care. This is because they know gun control is not about protecting the sheep from wolves. It’s about protecting the Government Man from the farmer and his dog.—Joe]

An open letter to “The Squad”

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Via Alan Korwin:

March 19, 2021

An Open Letter to “The Squad”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Rep. Ayanna Pressley
Rep. Cori Bush
Rep. Ilhan Omar
Rep. Jamaal Bowman
Rep. Rashida Talib

We have been in touch with Arizona’s Republican delegation to the House of Representatives, and they agree it would be commendable if members of the congressional “Squad” took daring action and joined JPFO in denouncing genocide, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 8, 2021.

More than one million Muslims are currently experiencing physical and cultural genocide at the hands of the Chinese communist government.

As always, it is consciously played down by mass media to the public, a true statement. This is also not the only atrocity happening right now on the planet. Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, a 30-year-old civil-rights group, is uniquely aware of this abomination people perpetrate. Our advocacy of individual civil liberties recognizes that the main perpetrator of genocide is government.

It’s the truth.

Your voices are louder and heard more clearly than others in Congress. This is also true. Reach across the aisle, ignore the political and religious walls.

Join us in publicly renouncing any form of and all calls for annihilating people en masse for any reason. We eagerly await your reply.

Sincerely,

Alan Gottlieb, Chairman & CEO, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership
Alan Korwin, Editor, The JPFO Bill of Rights Sentinel
Richard Busch, JPFO Ambassador
J.D. “Duke” Schechter, JPFO Ambassador

It made me smile even if no one in “The Squad” will read it or care.

Quote of the day—Kevin Baker

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Progressive Leftism is a religion, with all the attendant characteristics: Dogma, the treatment of heathens, heretics, and apostates, indulgences, all of it. Government is God, legislators are the angels (remember, Satan and his demons were once angels), the “news” media are the clergy, and we proles are the laypeople, the heathens, the apostates and the heretics. And they will drag us, kicking and screaming if necessary, into their promised Utopia.

Or kill us, if they deem us too deplorable to save.

Kevin Baker
February 27, 2021
Immanentize the Eschaton!
[This is entirely consistent with the rise of other leftist states like the USSR, Cambodia, Venezuela, etc..

I hope we can take a less bloody path back to a government respecting the rights of the individual to worship, or not, whatever religion they so chose. But my assessment of the situation is rather grim.—Joe]

It’s not gun nuts buying all the guns and ammo

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From Kevin Baker on Facebook:

NotGunNutsBuyingGuns

Quote of the day—Take All The Guns @GunzTake

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Yes. I am the one honest voice in the gun control community.

We are coming for your guns. First the assault weapons, then the saturday night specials (pistols), then the high powered sniper rifles and street sweepers (bolt guns and shotguns).

We are coming, we are legion.

Take All The Guns @GunzTake
Tweeted on March 16, 2021
[Via a private post on Facebook by Jonathan S.

I can believe everything except the last sentence. He is not going to be taking guns from anyone and they don’t have a legion of people willing to do the taking.

I do appreciate the majority of his tweet was honest and accurate though. That is rare among anti-gun people. Which, of course, makes me suspicious that they aren’t really an anti-gun person. Or, if they are, they are just a troll.

See also here.

Do not ever let anyone get away with telling you, “No one wants to take your guns.”—Joe]

Quote of the day—Rob Natelson

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Sen. Donovan’s effort to turn back the clock 327 years reminds us that so-called “progressives” are deeply regressive. Constitutional government that protects human freedom is a fairly modern phenomenon. The unlimited government most “progressives” seek is as old as the pharaohs. Scratch the typical “progressive” and you find a hidden totalitarian.

Rob Natelson
March 24, 2021
Leading Colorado Democrat Introduces Bill to Censor Internet Communication
[I don’t see that to do any scratching to discover that. They aren’t bothering to hide these days.—Joe]

The wheels of justice are slow

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From the Washington Times:

A federal appeals court Thursday ruled that a federal regulation barring bump stocks is likely illegal and was incorrect in claiming that the devices make a weapon a machine gun.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the accessories are not subject to a 2018 ban imposed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) at the order of then-President Donald Trump.

…

But, the 6th Circuit ruled in a 2-1 decision, the 2018 finding by BATF that bump stocks were machine guns, which reversed a 2010 finding on the same subject, was in error and the lower-court was wrong to refuse to issue an injunction against the regulation.

In the 2-1 decision, Judges Alice Batchelder and Eric Murphy ruled that the regulation alters criminal law and thus has to be done by Congress.

“it is not the role of the executive – particularly the unelected administrative state – to dictate to the public what is right and what is wrong,” they wrote.

Finally! Some good news from the courts on the gun rights front.

But why does this take nearly three years to decide?

And in another case, from Hawaii, which we lost

An appeals court ruled on March 24 that states may restrict people from openly carrying firearms in public—upholding a Hawaii regulation that severely limits open carry permits.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 7–4 that restrictions on carrying guns in public except for hunting don’t violate the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms.

This case started in 2012. That was nearly nine years ago!

At least the case can now be appealed to SCOTUS.

I suspect the reason for the extreme delays, another violation of the Bill of Rights, is because the “progressives” want more time to “fix” the courts.

Quote of the day—Colion Noir

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You know, I find it ironic that in one breath you say no one needs an “assault weapon” as if that’s the most powerful gun in the world. But then in another breath you say people need more than an “assault weapon” to fight against a tyrannical government. Hell! Sounds like we need more than an assault weapon. Considering the whole point of the Second Amendment was to put the people in the best position to check their government.

Colion Noir
August 7, 2019
Joe Biden Admits He Wants to Confiscate Guns “BINGO”
[It’s interesting listening to Biden. He contradicts himself from sentence to sentence.

One could claim he is senile and does not recognize what he is saying is nonsensical. I suspect it’s something far less benign.

I suspect it is that he lies so frequently, and gets away with it so often, that his brain does not bother to check for consistency. Truth telling is all about being consistent with oneself and reality. Biden appears to be incapable of either.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Sam Jacobs

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Today’s colleges are little more than indoctrination factories for the foot soldiers of a cadre of militants intensely hostile toward Western civilization and the American way of life. We should be mindful about salvaging whatever we can from them while aggressively kneecapping their ability to brainwash our children and attack our freedoms.

Sam Jacobs
American Education: Child Indoctrination, Struggle Sessions and Debt Slavery
[This article resonated rather strongly with me. Last Saturday daughter Jaime told of the indoctrination being done on my 2nd grader grandson. It’s close to horrifying and short of home schooling there doesn’t seem to be a solution. She has complained up through the ranks as far as the school board where it appears they are simply ignoring her.

I would be incline to retreat to my underground bunker (I wish!) in Idaho with my children and their kids and wait out the collapse of civilization. But the communists always hunt you down and take your possessions, if not your life, in the name of equality/fairness/whatever-excuse. So the options are becoming more limited with each passing month.—Joe]

Quote of the day—MTHead

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The real problem I see is. Were in the middle of the, Might is Right phase. But our side hasn’t figured that out yet.

Law is a crap pile the communist rooster climbed upon to crow. Law is for civilization. And those that understand it’s purpose in upholding civilization.

And communist don’t get it. Their never going to understand it. It matters not why.
Talking law to a communist is like explaining quantum physics to a cerebral monster. We should stop, lest we prove own insanity.

Whatever happens is going to be lawful. Why? Because the WINNER is going to write the story. Period.

MTHead
March 11, 2021
Comment to Bypassing all Federal gun laws
[There is more than a little truth in this.

I’m reminded of:

  • The unification of the Hawaiian Islands where the aggressors of one island massacred the rulers and troops of the other island. Today, the natives celebrate the day of the massacre.
  • The U.S. Civil war where many of the people of the southern states thought of it, and many still think of it, as the war of northern aggression. The people of the northern states think of it as the preservation of the Union and the freeing of the slaves.
  • Today WWII in Europe is almost always described as the liberation of nations from German domination. At the time many of the German people thought of it as the unification of Europe to bring peace and, to a much lessor extent, “The Final Solution to the Jewish problem”.
  • The USSR promised a classless society and equality for all. For nearly 70 years they insisted that the utopia was only a few years away. The clearly desirable goal was to everyone according to their need and from everyone according to their ability. The west sees the USSR as dictatorship which murdered 10s of millions of their own citizens and oppressor of the neighboring nations.

A generation from now what will the narrative in the U.S. be? The nation was cleansed of the racist, sexist, gun worshiping, bigoted Republicans? Or, the U.S. Constitution, liberty, and the rule of law was restored?—Joe]

Quote of the day—Mike Thompson

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This bill is a critical step toward preventing gun violence and saving lives.

Mike Thompson
U.S. Representative (D-California)
March 11, 2021
House Approves Measures to Expand Firearm Background Checks
[I’m tempted to say this is an outright lie and the Thompson knows better. Surely he knows the history of his own state and background checks which were found to have no effect on death by gunshot.

But it’s also possible to parse his words carefully and claim he is only being deceptive rather than a bald-face liar.

He could be aware and planning to take advantage of the only “accomplishment” of universal background checks for the transfer of firearms, gun registration, followed by confiscation. Then with far fewer guns in the general population there will probably be fewer people suffering gunshot wounds.

This wouldn’t mean the general population would be safer. It just means the mechanism by which they are injured by common criminals would change. Instead of bullet wounds it would be knives, blunt instruments, fists, and feet which dominate the injuries.

The total number of dead would likely would increase as well, but the lives saved would be those of the criminal class. And this criminal class would include the genocidal politicians as well as the common street thugs.

So, Representative Thompson, which is it? Are you a bald-faced liar, or you on the side of the criminals?

My vote is for both and I hope he has the opportunity to enjoy his trial.—Joe]

Good point

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From a private post on Facebook:

Name ONE time in human history when the group fighting to ban books and censor speech were the good guys.

I’ll wait…

Update: I found the original post here.

Bypassing all Federal gun laws

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Last Friday I spent a few hours on the phone with lawyer friend Mike B.

Among our usual discussions for the sorry political state we are in he told me of an idea of his. “People think I’m crazy, but I think it would work.”, he said.

The idea is for the states to declare every state resident who can pass a background check to be a member of the state reserve militia and may keep and bear arms, as per U.S. v. Miller (1939) which:

…has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia…

Zing!

Full auto, AP/incendiary/explosive/etc. ammo, suppressors, grenades, artillery, tanks, everything. Done!

That would appear to work. Assuming we could get it passed, do you see any problems with this approach? Other than, “Yeah, right. Do you think the feds care about little things like the constitution and SCOTUS decisions?”

Quote of the day—Chuck Schumer

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Let me tell you, I think it’s good when somebody is trying to influence government for their purposes, directly with ads and everything else, it’s good to have a deterrent effect.

Chuck Schumer
US Senator
July 23, 2014
[See also:

Spoken like a true tyrant.—Joe]