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—JoanA (@JABarn76)

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Just how little is your penis?

JoanA  (@JABarn76)
Tweeted on March 1, 2022
[It’s not only another Markley’s Law Monday, it is another science denier!

And, not surprisingly, she deleted it.—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:

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Quote of the day—University of Cambridge

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Like some people, AI systems often have a degree of confidence that far exceeds their actual abilities. And like an overconfident person, many AI systems don’t know when they’re making mistakes. Sometimes it’s even more difficult for an AI system to realize when it’s making a mistake than to produce a correct result.

University of Cambridge
March 17, 2022
Mathematical paradoxes demonstrate the limits of AI
[I’ve read a few AI/machine-learning papers, talked to people who design machine learning systems.and tried it a little bit myself. I’m being overly harsh to make the point but, AI/machine-learning designers are more tinkerers than engineers. We are a long way from having AI machines realize we are not particularly useful to them and they stuff us in The Matrix.—Joe]

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]

Quote of the day—Scott Mann MP @scottmann4NC

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Every knife sold in the UK should have a gps tracker fitted in the handle. It’s time we had a national database like we do with guns. If you’re carrying it around you had better have a bloody good explanation, obvious exemptions for fishing etc.

Scott Mann MP @scottmann4NC
Tweeted on March 14, 2019
[There are so many great responses to this. My first response was an English version of:

Une chose qui m’humilie profondément est de voir que le génie humain a des limites, quand la bêtise humaine n’en a pas.

Alex. Dum.

In English:

One thing that humbles me deeply is to see that human genius has its limits while human stupidity does not.

But the best responses I have yet seen came from private Facebook posts*:

I demand you recognize the amazing act of courage he performs every morning when he peeks out from under the covers.

…

Imagine getting the vapors over humanity’s oldest & simplest manufactured tool.

The presence or absence of knives is how we tell where the apes stop and the people start in the earliest pages of our species’ family photo album.

This is not the deluded ranting of someone in a random psych ward. This is the deluded ranting of someone in a very specific psych ward called Parliament.

But, as it turns out, this is almost for certain British humor that didn’t translate that well into the U.S. where we think the U.K. handling of private gun ownership is just as absurd as this suggestion about knives—Joe]

* If given permission (they sometimes read this blog) I will post their name in an update.

No surprise

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Boston social justice activist, hubby scammed at least $185K from donors: feds:

A high-profile social justice activist in Boston and her husband used a nonprofit they founded to scam at least $185,000 from donors who included a Black Lives Matter chapter and the local district attorney’s office, federal authorities allege.

There was so much rioting and looting going on over completely justified shootings that, when at my most charitable, I thought of it as a mass delusion. That there was literal fraudulent use of donations in some chapters does not surprise me.

It does sadden me. Just like Jessie Smollet’s stunt sadden me. Fake crimes makes it increasingly likely that a real crimes will be doubted. And the fraudsters, with a shortage of outrage to fuel their money train, create the market for other types of fraud.

Quote of the day—Larry Correia (@monsterhunter45)

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Poor dipshit with a profile full of virtue signals about solidarity in a war doesn’t seem to understand that the greatest insurgents in history are us “backwoods dumb fucks who like to kill things”.

If the Ukraine had a million Texans, Putin would already be at the taxidermist.

Larry Correia (@monsterhunter45)
Tweeted on March 2, 2022
[Probably not literally true, but close enough to be funny.—Joe]

Quote of the day—James Rickards

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Perhaps Russia’s most aggressive weapon in its war on dollars is gold. The first line of defense is to acquire physical gold, which cannot be frozen out of the international payments system or hacked.

With gold, you can always pay another country just by putting the gold on an airplane and shipping it to the counterparty. This is the 21st-century equivalent of how J.P. Morgan settled payments in gold by ship or railroad in the early 20th century.

James Rickards
March 4, 2022
You Can’t Hack Gold
[This also has relevance to cancel culture.

Prepare appropriately.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ellen Spencer 1 @ellenspencer03

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Many things are a crime, but people still commit those crimes unless appropriate deterrents are in place. These guns are easily purchased by people with a vendetta. And again…there are MANY many ways to ‘prove’ your ‘manhood’ (lol in your case) without an assault rifle.

Ellen Spencer 1 @ellenspencer03
Tweeted on March 4, 2022
[It’s not only another Markley’s Law Monday, it is another science denier!

When they have no data and/or logic they go with the best they have—childish insults.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Charles C. Cooke

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Franks is assuming that you are too stupid to see what she is doing. Summing up her proposal, she contends that Americans should abandon their traditional constitutional setup and “situate individual rights within the framework of ‘domestic tranquility’ and the ‘general welfare.’” This is a fancy way of saying that the natural rights Americans currently enjoy wouldn’t actually be legal rights anymore.

Next time, Franks could just say that—and spare us all the merry dance.

Charles C. Cooke
March 10, 2022
No, Professor, We Shouldn’t Cut Up Our Rights
[Franks, of course, is not going to take Cooke’s advice. She is smart enough to know that deception is required for her plan to succeed.

Last December, I had my thoughts on Franks’ suggestions for the First and Second Amendments. I prefer my approach to Cooke’s suggestion. It’s more direct, let’s her know her deception failed, and makes it clear we not going to acquiesce::

No. Your move Ms. Franks.

Prepare appropriately to back up those words.—Joe]

How Civil Wars Start

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On a recent trip to Idaho I finished listening to How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them by Barbara F. Walter.

Although her observations and interpretation of current events in the U.S. differ significantly from mine her broader perspective of civil wars world wide and the causes resonated as quite plausible to me. I highly recommended reading it and skipping or pushing through the parts where you know she is oblivious to reality. For example, in her mind January 6th 2021 was an attempted coup. The attempted kidnapping of Gov. Whitmer of Michigan was something similar rather than an FBI entrapment operation.* And President Trump and the Republican party was/is authoritarian while Democrats are pro-freedom..

There are times when I just had to pause and try to recover from some of the crazy stuff she would say. Things like (paraphrasing) “California has a minority majority”. What? In a literal reading that is completely nonsensical. Or, (still paraphrasing) as she talks about the need for government to becoming less authoritarian, “Social media must be regulated and not allow extremists a safe haven.”

I finally managed to reconcile the schizophrenia by deciding she was too close an observer to the situation in the U.S. With this I could move on to accept her study of other countries as more objective and could be used as evidence for the claimed principles of civil war detection and prevention.

The following are my takeaways:

  • Governments exist on a scale of –10 (fully autocratic) to +10 (full democracies).
  • Countries at either end of the scale are stable and not subject to civil war.
  • Countries in the middle, anocracies, are at risk of civil war.
  • The US. is at it’s lowest point, +5, since the early 1800 (this doesn’t seem to account for the great unpleasantness of 1861 to 1865) after being a +10 for decades.
  • A political divide along racial and/or religious lines is a critical component of civil wars.
  • Long time abuse and lack of political influence of one group combined with losing hope for an end to their abuse is one of two possible triggers for violence.
  • Or a loss of power and/or status/prestige by a group is the second possible trigger for the use of violence.
  • Social media has played a huge role in the initiation of civil wars world wide. The rise of social media is highly correlated with the exponential increase in violent conflicts.

These principals were explained and supported by examples from conflicts all over the world.

* The trial may reveal things that change my mind on this.

Amazing conclusion to an amazing story

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I read a book (or maybe one story in a collection of survival stories) about the Shackleton expedition. A short version is here. In the long version you have difficultly believing there is an escape path for anyone at nearly every step in their journey. Yet, everyone survived.

And now people have found the ship Shackleton and his crew abandoned. It is four miles south and nearly two miles below where Shackleton reported it abandoned:

The wreckage of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship “Endurance” has been found, a team searching for it said on Wednesday, March 9.

The ship was crushed by Antarctic ice and sank some 10,000 feet to the ocean floor more than a century ago.

The three-masted sailing ship was lost in November 1915 during Shackleton’s failed attempt to make the first land crossing of Antarctica.

The pictures and video of the ship are incredible:

image

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Endurance is right.

Quote of the day—Lee Williams

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Dear Gabby, Shannon and Mike,

The instant the first Russian T-80 crossed the Ukrainian border, the whole world could see the uselessness of everything you’ve ever said and everything you’ve ever done. You’ve been overtaken by events – mooted and muted in one fell swoop, so scram. Leave the field. It is time for you and your gun-ban groups to go.

There’s a madman with nukes on the loose who’s just 50 miles off Alaska’s port bow. No one knows how far he’s willing to go, so you’re out. The adults are taking charge. Your services are no longer required. Please take the Demanding Moms and their creepy husbands with you, open a box of wine and have yourselves a good cry. Ukraine learned nearly too late that the right to keep and bear arms saves lives, while the civilian disarmament pipedream you’ve been peddling for decades costs lives.

Lee Williams
March 2022
An open letter to Gabby Giffords, Shannon Watts and Michael Bloomberg
[There’s more but I found this the best part.—Joe]

EPA approved releasing two billion mosquitos

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Interesting:

Scientists have been playing god with mosquitos for a couple of years now. Back in 2021, British company Oxitech released 750 million lab-modified mosquitos in Florida. Now, the company is gearing up to release another 2 billion genetically modified mosquitos across more of Florida and in California as well.

The new species, codenames OX5034, is made up entirely of male mosquitos. The new species is derived from the Aeses aegypti family of mosquitos. Just like others the company has released, this new 2 billion should produce female larvae that die off before they reach adulthood.

…

Despite its size, the mosquito is the world’s deadliest animal. That’s because this insect can carry multiple deadly and disabling diseases. Oxitech’s derived its new species from one notorious for carrying Zika, yellow fever, and even dengue. Other species can spread Malaria, lymphatic filariasis, and West Nile Virus.

The male larvae do not die off and will continue to produce dead female offspring.

Expect some fragment of this to be incorporated into COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy claims.

See also: What caliber for the most dangerous animal in the world?

Quote of the day—Lauren Boebert @laurenboebert

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Remember.

Ukraine gave up their nukes in exchange for promises of security.

We see how that turned out.

This is why we must NEVER give up our guns to any government.

Lauren Boebert @laurenboebert
Tweeted on March 7, 2022
[This makes perfect sense to me. The principles which apply at a national level make sense when scaled down to an individual level.

But yet some people seem to think it is total nonsense. And they don’t (or can’t) explain why it is nonsense in a way that makes sense to me:

Oh my God, how are you not getting this? Two totally separate things. It’s like comparing apples to a dragon.

—

Does that mean we’re all getting nukes? We can pile them on a bookshelf behind us in Zoom conferences. Pose with them in Christmas photos. Have shirts that say, “Over my radioactive body.”

—

Comparing rifles to nukes is an extreme comparison considering that fact individuals can’t just walk into their local Walmart or bass pro shop and purchase a nuclear weapon.

—

Excellent argument for a 5th grader.

One screen. Two movies. Each think the other is delusional.

Reality is tough. Really, really tough.—Joe]