Quote of the day—Frank Miniter

Even Biden likely doesn’t know what he meant by saying he got “the number of clips in a gun banned.” And he likely also doesn’t know what he meant by saying only a person’s “biometric measure” should “pull that trigger.” We can, however, safely guess what he meant by calling gun manufacturers the “enemy,”

Frank Miniter
February 25, 2021
Editor in Chief, America’s 1st Freedom, NRA
All the President’s Anti-Gun Officials
[Agreed.

Imagine if a sitting president were to call the press “the enemy” or something similar.

Oh, we don’t need to imagine that. When President Trump took on fake news for lying they called it, “A threat to democracy.”

I think we should start calling attacks on the right to keep and bear arms, “A threat to democracy.” After all if you are unable to defend yourself should you be attacked for your beliefs, such as you believing your store shouldn’t be looted or burned and you advocate for politicians who would protect your life and property from such thugs, isn’t the right to keep and bear arms supporting democracy?—Joe]

Quote of the day—Max Morton

We are facing a new post-justice, post-truth society. We won’t be able to debate our way out of it, vote our way out of it, or tweet our way out of it. No one is coming to save us. If traditional America wants to be free, it will have to stop living in the past, get up off the couch, and take action.

Max Morton
February 23, 2021
The Last Stop Before Thermopylae
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—James Ketler

It may appear that the state holds power over the people, but in reality the converse is true; it is the people en bloc who—by choosing to obey or not obey—hold ultimate power over the state. The only way a state can enforce its laws at all is if the people overall acquiesce to it. If sufficiently widespread, political resistance would disrupt the status quo to such a degree as to render its function completely ineffectual. In the final analysis, it is the people who hold the power.

James Ketler
February 25, 2021
Why the Capitol Riot Terrified the Elite
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—James Rickards

Once the cattle (that’s us) have been herded into the digital slaughterhouse, we will be told to “use it or lose it” when it comes to our own money. In other words, either we spend the money, or the government will take it away.

Of course, the spending can be channeled into politically correct causes by excluding unpopular vendors such as gun dealers or conservative social media platforms from the payment system. This represents total domination of human behavior through world money + digital currencies + confiscation.

This is not speculation anymore; it’s happening in front of our eyes. The Great Reset is coming fast. The future is here.

The only solution is to use a non-digital, non-bank store of wealth that cannot be traced or manipulated. Given the planned dollar devaluation, it’s one more reason to own physical gold and silver.

Get it while you still can.

James Rickards
February 22, 2021
The Great Reset Is Here
[While I can see his claim is more than plausible, I’m not certain it’s as dire and certain as Rickards says it is. But, he’s far more qualified than I am to make that judgement.

I’m currently listening to his book The New Great Depression: Winners and Losers in a Post-Pandemic World which was published January 12th of this year. I suspect he will make his case for the QOTD conclusions in the latter portions of the book which I have not yet reached.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Brandon Smith

If you are afraid to lose something, then that something can be used to control you. Carano was not afraid to lose and so she could not be controlled, and I commend her for that. The example she has set for others is far more valuable than any work that she might have done by submitting to the Hollywood Cheka. If only the majority of people would do the same, our civilization could change for the better overnight.
All tyranny is an illusion predicated on fear within the minds of the enslaved. So, do not fear.

Brandon Smith
February 24, 2021
How Societies Are Imprisoned: The Whole World Will One Day Be Like Hollywood?
[See also this example.—Joe]

Quote of the day—J.D. Tuccille

Anybody who wants to participate in a protest unmonitored, engage in clandestine meetings, or travel untracked has to, at a minimum, leave behind all cell phones and other modern electronic devices connected to their names and identities. A burner phone purchased with cash and free of social media accounts is probably fine, but that’s as far as it goes. The conveniences of the connected modern world come with a steep price: our anonymity.

J.D. Tuccille
February 26, 2021
So Long as You Carry a Cellphone, the Government Can Track You
[No! It is not fine!

In addition that phone or other networked device should never be turned on near your home or any other place you don’t want snoopy people to find out about. Just having your “burner phone” associated with the location of your place of work and your child’s school is going to make the Venn Diagram dramatically smaller.

And don’t forget there are a ton of license plate scanners out there. All the traffic cameras and many police cars automatically scan the license plates and put the data in a database that is kept for long, long time.

Of course, you could also deliberately create deceptive data on the phone if you were extremely careful. As in have a friend turn it on in another state while you were known to be at meeting at work. Of course your friend needs to keep his license plate from being scanned while in the vicinity of where the phone drops its breadcrumbs. Bicycles may be useful.

My first order advice is that the less information you provide the better. The burner phone only gets turned on if you really need it while at the event. Then as soon as the event is over you destroy and dispose of it.

Think of it this way… How much would you pay to get out of bad legal situation? It’s more than the cost of a burner phone, right? So pay that price up front to the phone retailers rather than on the back end to the lawyers.

Also you should leave your normal phone turned on at home or another place far away from the protest you are attending.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Rick Moran

Small-minded, even ignorant people see salvation in controlling the minds and lives of others. Is it a mass delusion that they believe they are actually “fighting racism,” that they’re doing this for white people’s own good? Or are these the same efforts at control that have been around since humans created civilizations?

Rick Moran
February 20, 2021
‘Critical Race Theory’ Costs a Brave Smith College Whistleblower Her Job
[There are alphas in most social animals so I expect the answer is that control of others has extremely deep genetic roots which go well beyond the first human civilizations.

And of course “racism” is just the current tool of choice in our country. In other times and places the tool was chosen to match a vulnerable target. Classic example from early in the 20th Century are Hitler with the Jewish (and other) people while Stalin had Trotsky, counter revolutionaries, capitalists, etc.

In the U.S., in addition to “racism”, some of the tools of control are “climate change”, “equality”, “social justice”, etc. And those tools are used against the political right. Don’t believe for a second it is actual racism they believe they are fighting. If that were the case you wouldn’t have people talking about multiracial Whiteness. Or claiming that asking students to show their work in class is “white supremacy”. These two examples are just the beginning of what is to come.

History is full of examples to provide hints as to how this may turn out. If the people who would be masters get their way, as they did in the USSR, the bar to pass the purity tests will continually raise. Even now things like the “master” branch in software version control, and “whitelists” and “blacklists” have come under attack. And non-trivial amounts of resources are being expended to satisfy the ever increasing demands of the power hungry.

Each victory for these people increases their thirst for more. They get a thrill from it. Even a “high”. They absolutely love it and in more candid moments admit this. Such people need to be stood up to because the end game is far worse then standing up to them now.

Here is one brave woman standing up:

If she can do it so can you.—Joe]

Quote of the day—1776 United

With HR127 being brought forward in early February of 2021, somebody tipped me off to a very small page where the phrase of the Second Amendment was being censored.  So we tried to replicate what we saw with an experiment. On Monday the 15th of February, First I posted a screenshot of the censored post, and it was fact-checked and censored behind the fact-check wall. Then I took a screenshot of the actual Second Amendment on Google and the same thing happened.

They were trying to tie it back to some misquoting of George Washington. They were saying the Second Amendment was fact-checked as not true.

1776 United
February 18, 2021
1776 United: Censoring the Second Amendment
[Emphasis added.

Perhaps, in their reality, it doesn’t actually exist. I’m okay with that. But their friends and relatives really should see that they get the help they need rather than letting them let them cause others harm when they are experiencing such delusions.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Western States Sheriffs’ Association

  • The 2nd amendment to our nation’s constitution guarantees the individual right to keep and bear arms.
  • WSSA members have taken a firm stance on protecting this right and ensuring that no person, legally entitled to possess a firearm, realizes any pressure from laws inconsistent with the Constitution.
  • We continue to monitor this issue, both regionally and nationally and join to defeat any legislation that seeks to impair our 2nd amendment right including Amicus Briefs in support of second amendment rights in lawsuits in California, Maryland, and Colorado.

Western States Sheriffs’ Association
2018
Western States Sheriffs’ Association web site page About
[I’ve heard details via private channels which are even more reassuring.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Selmer Bringsjord et al.

We propose to build directly upon our longstanding, prior r&d in AI/machine ethics in order to attempt to make real the bluesky idea of AI that can thwart mass shootings, by bringing to bear its ethical reasoning. The r&d in question is overtly and avowedly logicist in form, and since we are hardly the only ones who have established a firm foundation in the attempt to imbue AI’s with their own ethical sensibility, the pursuit of our proposal by those in different methodological camps should, we believe, be considered as well. We seek herein to make our vision at least somewhat concrete by anchoring our exposition to two simulations, one in which the AI saves the lives of innocents by locking out a malevolent human’s gun, and a second in which this malevolent agent is allowed by the AI to be neutralized by law enforcement. Along the way, some objections are anticipated, and rebutted.

Selmer Bringsjord
Naveen Sundar Govindarajulu
Michael Giancola
February 5, 2021
AI Can Stop Mass Shootings, and More
[See also this glowing review of the paper.

“…some objections are anticipated, and rebutted.” Uhhh… No.

Here are the objections they anticipated, paraphrasing:

  1. Why not legally correct AIs instead of ethically correct?
  2. What about “outlaw’ manufactures that make firearms without the AI?
  3. What about hackers bypassing the AI?

Their responses, paraphrasing in some cases:

  1. “There is no hard-and-fast breakage between legal obligations/prohibitions and moral ones; the underlying logic is seamless across the two spheres. Hence, any and all of our formalisms and technology can be used directly in a ‘law-only’ manner.”
  2. Even if the perpetrator(s) had “illegal firearms” in transit other AIs in a sensor rich environment “would have any number of actions available to it by which a violent future can be avoided in favor of life.”
  3. “This is an objection that we have long anticipated in our work devoted to installing ethical controls in such things as robots, and we see no reason why our approach there, which is to bring machine ethics down to an immutable hardware level cannot be pursued for weapons as well.”

The first objection and rebuttal doesn’t really require any response. It just doesn’t matter to me. Sure, whatever.

They dismiss the second objection with a presumption of unknowable knowledge. People smuggle massive quantities of drugs in vehicles even though the vehicles are searched by any number of sensors, dogs, and dedicated humans. What makes them think a single firearm can be possibly be detected by semi-passive or even active sensors?

More fundamentally they are avoiding the objection and providing their critics with the response of “If there are any other number of actions available” without an AI controlling access to the firearm then you don’t need the AI in the gun to begin with.

The third objection puts on full display their ignorance of firearms and perhaps mechanical devices in general. To demonstrate the absurdity of their claim imagine someone saying they were going to put an ethical AI, at an “immutable hardware level”, on a knife so it could not be used to harm innocent life.

Such people should, and would be, laughed off the stage into obscurity. It should also happen to those who seriously suggest it is possible to do this for firearms.—Joe]

Quote of the day—An0maly @LegendaryEnergy

Fake beef. Fake crowd noises at sports games. Fake fans. Fake news. Fake health orders that make real human interaction illegal.

At what point do people realize this is every Sci-Fi nightmare movie ever?

An0maly @LegendaryEnergy
Tweeted on February 18, 2021
[Good question.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Philip Giraldi

Many schools in the United States have ceased issuing grades that have any meaning, or they have dropped grading altogether, which means there is no way to judge progress or achievement. National test scores for evaluating possible college entry are on the way out almost everywhere as they are increasingly being condemned as “racist” in terms of how they assess learning based solely on the fact that blacks do less well on them than Asians and whites. This has all been part of an agenda that is being pushed that will search for and eliminate any taint of racism in the public space. It has also meant the destruction or removal of numerous historic monuments and an avoidance of any honest discussion of American history. San Francisco schools are, for example, notoriously spending more than $1 million to change the names of 44 schools that honor individuals who have been examined under the “racism and oppression” microscope and found wanting. They include George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Paul Revere.

Philip Giraldi
February 18, 2021
The Decline of the West: American Education Surrenders to ‘Equity’
[It is easy to conclude our technological progress is being impeded by these people. There might even be sufficient evidence to support the hypothesis we are about to enter, or at least are at risk of entering, a new dark age. This could even be an existential threat to technological human society.

One of the ways I see this problem is that some people, perhaps with malice aforethought, confuse and/or conflate equality of outcome with equality of opportunity. And furthermore the “equality of opportunity” is, again perhaps with malice aforethought, confused and/or conflated with “equality under the law”.

I think at least part of the solution to this problem is to push back HARD when someone plays this confusion/conflation con game.

Just because there exists a difference in earnings and/or life expectance, and/or criminal convictions, and/or representation in some professions, etc. does not necessarily mean there was discrimination and/or racism. People of Asian decent account for only 5.9% of the U.S. population. While Black or African American people account for 13.4% of the U.S. population. Yet as of 2019 in the U.S.:

  • All households combined had a median income of $65,712/year.
  • Asians had a median income of $93,759/year.
  • Blacks had a median income of $43,862/year.
  • Whites had a median income of $69,823/year.

So, if someone claims racism against minorities is to blame for income inequality demand they explain how Asians, with less than half the representation in the U.S population of blacks have over twice the household income.

Furthermore demand they explain, if they claim the differences in outcomes are racist, why the differences begin to show up at the start of school rather than in graduation rates, college admittance, or starting wages.

The next point which I think needs addressing is that the whole concept of “inequality is bad” must be struck down. I’ve adequately addressed that issue before.

Put as succinctly as I know how, we must celebrate success and extraordinary achievement instead of rewarding victimhood.

One last thing. I do not claim to know the reason why people with different skin colors have different success rates in our society. I only know that it is extremely unlikely it is because of white supremacy and or racism.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Lauren Boebert @laurenboebert

Biden wants gun manufacturers held liable for shootings.

Watch out Oneida, they’re coming after you and your kitchen knives next.

Lauren Boebert @laurenboebert
Tweeted on February 14, 2021
[If you think this is ridiculous, or even exaggerated then you haven’t been paying attention to the U.K.

—Joe]

Quote of the day—Sam Levy

[Privately assembled firearms are] a way for prohibited persons to access firearms they could not buy legally by passing a background check, a way to stymie law enforcement investigations for those who want to use those guns to commit crimes because they are untraceable.

Sam Levy
Everytown for Gun Safety
Baltimore police report a 400% increase in untraceable ‘ghost guns,’ mirroring a state trend
[Levy thinks the so called “Ghost Guns” are a problem for their side? Wow. That’s only going to get worse as the 3-D printed guns start approaching the quality of existing mass produced guns.

And then, I have my popcorn and easy-chair ready for when Levy and gang hear SCOTUS has handed down a ruling that could blast a hole in registration, including the “soft registration” via 4473’s, and other infringements for years. If you remember, there have been lower court rulings saying, according to U.S. law and ATF regulations, the AR-15 lower and perhaps as many of 90% of the firearms in the U.S. aren’t legally firearms.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Zaid Jilani @ZaidJilani

Some schools in Oregon are being informed that asking students in math class to “show their work” is “white supremacy.” What exactly would happen if this faction got its way and all American classrooms are like this?

ShowYourWork

Zaid Jilani @ZaidJilani
Tweeted on February 14, 2021
[What if thousands of parents demanded the people who wrote, approved, or distributed this be fired and their names and pictures be published?—Joe]

Quote of the day—Bill Blair

What we’ve done in the legislation is really create the set of circumstances and conditions that will facilitate the buy-back.

We are eliminating all legal use of these prohibited firearms. They can’t be legally discharged. You can’t fire them. You can’t take them hunting or to a range. They can’t sell them or transport them. They can’t bequeath them or trade them in any way. They will be required to store them in a very secure safe or vault.

I think the vast majority of people who bought these guns to use as firearms, now that there is no legal way to do that, they’ll be highly incentivized to surrender them for destruction, and then we’ll have a fair compensation program available to them.

Bill Blair
Canada Public Safety Minister
February 16, 2021
Bill Blair says new gun bill will help keep handguns off the streets without a federal ban
[It would seem to me that some incentives, and a fair compensation program, need to be given to Blair and company to respect the rights of the people.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Thomas Jefferson

God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive.

If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. … What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?

Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Thomas Jefferson
November 13, 1787
Letter to William Stephens Smith
[This provides more context to the one I usually see.—Joe]

Quote of the day—James Rickards

Global markets today seem irresistible to central bankers with plans for better times. Planning is the central bankers’ baleful vanity, since, for them, markets are a test tube in which to try out their interventionist theories.

Central bankers control the price of money and therefore indirectly influence every market in the world. Given this immense power, the ideal central banker would be humble, cautious, and deferential to market signals. Instead, modern central bankers are both bold and arrogant in their efforts to bend markets to their will. Top-down central planning, dictating resource allocation and industrial output based on supposedly superior knowledge of needs and wants, is an impulse that has infected political players throughout history. It is both ironic and tragic that Western central banks have embraced central planning with gusto in the early twenty-first century, not long after the Soviet Union and Communist China abandoned it in the late twentieth. The Soviet Union and Communist China engaged in extreme central planning over the world’s two largest countries and one-third of the earth’s population for more than one hundred years combined. The result was a conspicuous and dismal failure. Today’s central planners, especially the Federal Reserve, will encounter the same failure in time. The open issues are, when and at what cost to society?

The impulse toward central planning often springs from the perceived need to solve a problem with a top-down solution. For Russian Communists in 1917, it was the problem of the czar and a feudal society. For Chinese Communists in 1949, it was local corruption and foreign imperialism. For the central planners at central banks today, the problem is deflation and low nominal growth. The problems are real, but the top-down solutions are illusory, the product of hubris and false ideologies.

James Rickards
2014
The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System
[See also Book Review: ‘The Death of Money’ by James Rickards which concludes with:

Rickards book is packed with cutting edge analysis and rational perspectives on pretty much every topic the world citizen has to know about. As of this moment, there is no other book offering explanations and solutions to the most pressing problems the world is facing, making “The Death of Money” an absolute must read.

I’m only about 25% into the book and find it fascinating. I found the market intelligence and financial war sections particularly interesting. Rickards and others worked with the CIA to design and implement a system which could have predicted the 9/11 attack a few days before it happened based on the shorting of airline stocks by people in the social networks of the hijackers. It also has other uses related to insider trading.

“An absolute must read”? I probably wouldn’t go that far, at least not based on what I have read so far. But it’s highly recommended.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Glenn Reynolds

Dominion’s suing Rudy Giuliani, but not these Democrats. But an “unbiased” voting machine company that only sues Republicans has kind of blown its credibility already.

Glenn Reynolds
February 13, 2021
WELL, YES. THE DEMOCRATS’ AND MEDIA’S — BUT I REPEAT MYSELF — EFFORT TO MAKE ELECTION FRAUD CLAIM…
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—John Rubino

If you’re over 40 you’ve lived through at least three epic financial bubbles: junk bonds in the 1980s, tech stocks in the 1990s, and housing in the 2000s. Each was spectacular in its own way, and each threatened to take down the whole financial system when it burst.

But they pale next to what’s happening today. Where those past bubbles were sector-specific, which is to say the mania and resulting carnage occurred mostly within one asset class, today’s bubble is spread across, well, pretty much everything – hence the term “everything bubble.”

When this one pops there won’t be a lot of hiding places.

John Rubino
February 8, 2021
Is This The Biggest Financial Bubble Ever? Hell Yes It Is
[I wrote about complex systems and emergent behavior last night. Our financial markets are another example of emergent behavior. The rule sets are large and complex but behavior still emerges that some may claim can only be explained by a conspiracy. But, again, no conspiracy need exist.

There is a financial bubble about to pop. Simultaneously there is a growing mass delusion about the existence of millions of “extremists” who must be “canceled” or even killed. And there is a pandemic (real or imagined, it doesn’t matter much in the context here) that are all contributing to epic shear forces in our society.

Prepare accordingly. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.—Joe]