For a long while the book, A Nation of Cowards was out of print. That has changed.
I just bought three copies so I can give them away to people that might benefit. This is an awesome book.
A progressive getting a clue
Michelle Tandler starts out with this:
Here is what confuses me about San Francisco.
We have the most liberal, left-wing government & population in the country.
We have a $13B budget.
And we have 8,000 people sleeping in the rain this week.
Can someone please explain this to me?
Continues here:
I’ve been a registered democrat for 18 years.
I grew up in a Progressive family and went to a Progressive school, and have mostly Progressive friends.
Yet what I see in SF – if this what Progressive stands for – I want the opposite.
And here:
+ Why, after decades of Progressive rule in SF are 8,000 people in the streets?
+ Why do we have the highest overdose rate in the nation?
+ Why do we have the highest property crime rate?
+ Why do we have fewest children per capita?
And here:
Why have I never learned about the case for gun rights?
Or about the values of Islam?
What are the arguments against abortion?
Why do so many people not want to take the vaccine?
Why am I not allowed to ask these questions without being accused of “doing harm”?
There more. A lot more. The entire thread is interesting. But the bottom line is that reality has intruded into her progressive bubble and she finally noticed. It appears to have cause a crisis of faith.
I have hope for the future.
Keep this in mind for tax season
From the IRS website here in the section about “Other Income”:
Publication 17 (2021), Your Federal Income Tax
For IndividualsFor use in preparing 2021 Returns
…
Illegal activities.
Income from illegal activities, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on Schedule 1 (Form 1040), line 8z, or on Schedule C (Form 1040) if from your self-employment activity.
…
Stolen property.
If you steal property, you must report its fair market value in your income in the year you steal it unless you return it to its rightful owner in the same year.
Gee, and all this time I was under the impression that stealing $100K/year was worth a lot more than earning $100K/year because of the tax benefits. Hence, in essence, the IRS was giving tax breaks to thieves, robbers, and drug dealers. Now I find out they have to pay taxes just like all the rest of us*.
Via Tamera @tacsgc.
* Yes, I know about Al Capone going to prison for not paying income taxes. But you don’t hear about it regarding small time criminals.
Common sense
Quote of the day—Mark Donner @MarkDonner13
The Constitution meant a militia with muskets 100 years ago, not idiots carrying bang bang toys to compensate for a small dick. America is chock full of idiots, gun toys for oversized drooling heads with three brain cells. An ant has more brain cells than them and is worth more.
Mark Donner @MarkDonner13
Tweeted on December 23, 2021
[It’s not only another Markley’s Law Monday it’s another science denier!
He also is approaching peak irony by throwing junior high level insults instead of presenting a rational argument.
It’s amazing how completely these people can discredit themselves with just two sentences.
Via a Tweet from In Chains @InChainsInJail.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Scott Adams @ScottAdamsSays
They studied people who claim UFO encounters and also mostly work for the government and discovered they often have brain damage.
Then they conclude the correlation is the UFOs, not the working for the government part.
I’m leaning the other way.
Scott Adams @ScottAdamsSays
Tweeted on December 12, 2021
[Adams is referring to this article.in the New York Post which is actually from the The U.S. Sun.
If only belief in the universal utility of government were as rare as the belief in UFOs the world would be a much better place. Sadly, that is not the case.
And getting more serious for a bit… Correlation does not mean causation. The working for the government correlation is almost for certain a sample bias. The scans from government workers were available for study rather than the scans of people’s brains who had UFO encounters turned out to mostly work for the government.—Joe]
Good point
We could also tell the story of a 14 year old boy and his mother shot and killed with the father and an adult friend of the family seriously wounded. This was because an ATF paid informant convinced the father to shorten a shotgun barrel such that it was 1/8” too short to be in compliance with the law.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of stories which, while most are not as tragic, are still grave injustices.
Quote of the day—Chauncey DeVega
Thomas Massie and Lauren Boebert, two of the most blatantly fascistic Republican members of Congress, are dreaming of a White Christmas — with the emphasis on “White.”
In the spirit of holiday cheer, Massie and Boebert recently shared family Christmas photos on social media — in which every family member is brandishing a gun. There’s nothing unique about them. Such a “tradition” is fairly common among a particular subculture of American gun fetishists and “ammosexuals.” This is but another symptom of America’s unhealthy infatuation with gun violence.
Chauncey DeVega
December 24, 2021
White supremacist Christmas: Those Boebert and Massie “gun photos” are a direct threat
[Reading the article was like reading about the trial in Darkness at Noon, propaganda from Nazi Germany, or the twisted reality described by the mentally ill. It is an elaborate tale constructed upon the flimsiest of scaffolding for evil purposes or from a delusional mind.
Even the pictures supplied were distorted.
These are the pictures supplied for the article:
The pictures supplied by Boebert and Massie:
It is my belief normal people are catching on to the disconnect from reality. The political left cannot bear to slow “progress” and push their delusions all the harder. Furthering the rife between reality and their “progress”.
This will not end well. Prepare appropriately.—Joe]
COVID-19 treated by Amorphous Calcium Carbonate
It’s a small sample size but the results are looking extremely good:
All 18 COVID-19 patients hospitalized with moderate or severe symptoms who received the drug Amor-18 developed by Israeli biotech company Amorphical recovered and were discharged in a few days, the company announced on Wednesday. Of the 19 individuals who were given a placebo, six had to be transferred to intensive care, and two died.
As part of compassionate care, two other patients in a very serious condition were given the drug. Both recovered and were discharged.
“Since the patients treated with the drug recovered within a few days and were released to their home, this was 100% successful,” said Dr. Nashat Abu Saleh, co-director of the coronavirus department at Ziv Medical Center in Safed, where the phase II clinical trial was conducted.
…
Amor-18, which uses Amorphous Calcium Carbonate (ACC) as the main ingredient, was administered orally or by inhalation. As explained by the company, ACC has the ability to modulate acidic pH changes around each cell. These changes affect the capability of COVID-19 to penetrate the cells and replicate. This allows the drug to prevent the virus from spreading and thus the patients from deteriorating.
It looks as if it is available as a dietary supplement. It is more expensive than I had expected but it is available now and without a prescription
If all the above is true this is going to be some serious competition to the big pharma drugs.
Quote of the day—spectacles_gaze
Use firearms to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat, and then disarm the populace. Keep a standing military to prevent foreign meddling.
spectacles_gaze
December 19, 2021
Reddit comment in r/socialism Thoughts on gun control.
[I think that says almost all you need to know about their views. It’s also consistent with other socialist/communist governments.
Prepare appropriately.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Kimberly Skipper @kdskipper
We have too many high powered weapon. It’s not that hard. All guns are a potential problem in this country, but there’s too many out there to recall them now. However, high powered guns can be a start for tying to get a handle on the gun violence problem affecting America.
Kimberly Skipper @kdskipper
Tweeted on December 19, 2021
[If ignorance really is bliss then Ms. Skipper must be in a state of ecstasy.
If not, then instead of ignorance, perhaps it’s deliberate lies.—Joe]
Deliberate destruction
California and San Francisco are spending $86.5 million for a 160 room building for the homeless. Another $8.5 million will be spend on operating expenses. That’s a purchase price of over $540K per room and over $50K per room in operating costs. The city has over 8,000 people currently homeless.
What could possibly go wrong?
If you subsidize something the demand will go up. A $500K condo and $50K towards living costs? I’d bet they will get “homeless” people from all over the country, if not the world.
This has to be a deliberate destruction of wealth. No one can be that stupid and/or naïve.
Just a cost of reaching utopia
This should be a clue:
US congresswoman carjacked at gunpoint in daylight
Philadelphia has seen a massive rise rise in car theft this year, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Police reported 225 carjackings in 2019, 409 in 2020 and 720 so far this year, according to CBS News.
The figures amount to an 80% increase in carjackings in 2021.
Gunpoint robberies are up 27% over 2020.
Philadelphia has also seen a record 544 homicides this year, up from 347 in all of 2019, according to the Wall Street Journal.
It is hard to believe this was unforeseen by anyone capable of rational thought. But, then, it could be this is the desired outcome. Criminals are the natural enemy of capitalists and hence allies of socialists. This might be considered part of the price paid to reach their socialist utopia.
I wish I had copied the entire text of the post when I first saw it. An earlier version mentioned she co-sponsored a bill to defund the police and redirect the funds to mental health problems.
Quote of the day—Victor Davis Hanson
If Biden were polling at 70 percent approval, and his policies at 60 percent, the current doomsayers would be reassuring us of the “health of the system.”
They are fearful and angry not because democracy doesn’t work, but because it does, despite their own media and political efforts to warp it.
When a party is hijacked by radicals and uses almost any means necessary to gain and use power for agendas that few Americans support, then average voters express their disapproval.
That reality apparently terrifies an elite. It then claims any system that allows the people to vote against the left is not “people power” at all.
Victor Davis Hanson
December 16, 2021
Why Is the Left Suddenly Worried About the End of Democracy?
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Mary Anne Franks
The Second Amendment’s idiosyncratic and anachronistic focus on militias and “arms” degrades the concept of self-defense. The right to safeguard one’s life should not be conflated with or reduced to the right to use a weapon, especially a weapon that is so much more likely to inflict injury and death than to avoid it. Far better would be an amendment that guarantees a meaningful right to bodily autonomy and obligates the government to implement reasonable measures to protect public health and safety:
All people have the right to bodily autonomy consistent with the right of other people to the same, including the right to defend themselves against unlawful force and the right of self-determination in reproductive matters. The government shall take reasonable measures to protect the health and safety of the public as a whole.
Mary Anne Franks
December 2021
REDO THE FIRST TWO AMENDMENTS
[This law professor simply has no concept of governments being the greatest threat and the primary reason for the 2nd Amendment as written.
Collectivists must collectivize.
The answer is, “No. Your move Ms. Franks.”—Joe]
Quote of the day—Edge-
The gun was beyond unnecessary and the correct course of action would have been for the micropenis guy #1 to walk back inside, phone the local police to report trespassing, and wait for the cops to show up and do their jobs.
There is no situation where the other guy gets control of the gun if the gun is never brought out. This is purely based off the actions of one insecure beta-male who needs his Penis Enhancer(TM) to feel masculine in the face of a verbal confrontation.
I cannot insult micropenis murderer guy enough.
Edge-
November 30, 2021
MMO Champion Gun Control Threat
[It’s not only another Markley’s Law Monday it’s another science denier!
Insults are so convincing!—Joe]
Quote of the day—Kat Schuster
Drawing inspiration from a controversial approach to outlawing most abortions in Texas, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday pledged to make it easier for private citizens to sue manufacturers or other citizens who sell assault rifles or parts for ghost guns in the Golden State.
His plan mirrors the authority enacted by lawmakers in Texas to ban most abortions.
Kat Schuster
December 12, 2021
Newsom Vows To Ban Assault Guns Using Texas Abortion Ban Tactics
[We knew it would happen.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Michael Shellenberger
There’s just a lot of progressive buyer’s remorse right now.
Michael Shellenberger
December 16, 2021
Urban liberals rethink guns and policing amid crime spike on their doorstep
[But will this result in ‘progressive’ politicians being introduced to tar, feathers, and one-way tickets out of town on wooden rails? I’m inclined to go with public trials. But with the current administration in Washington that will not be happening so unless the supply chain for tar, feathers, and rails is broken the tar and feathers route is the most likely, while still extremely improbable.
Noting short of something of similar magnitude will allow us to recover the free exercise of our rights via a legislative path. I’m still betting on the courts.—Joe]
Zero click exploit for iPhone
This is amazing (emphasis added):
Project Zero said the exploit effectively created “a weapon against which there is no defense,” noting that zero-click exploits work silently in the background and does not even require the target to click on a link or surf to a malicious website. “Short of not using a device, there is no way to prevent exploitation by a zero-click exploit,” the research team said.
The researchers confirmed the initial entry point for Pegasus was Apple’s proprietary iMessage that ships by default on iPhones, iPads and macOS devices. By targeting iMessage, the NSO Group hackers needed only a phone number of an AppleID username to take aim and fire eavesdropping implants.
…
Within Apple’s CoreGraphics PDF parser, the NSO exploit writers abused Apple’s implementation of the open-source JBIG2, a domain specific image codec designed to compress images where pixels can only be black or white.
Describing the exploit as “pretty terrifying,” Google said the NSO Group hackers effectively booby-trapped a PDF file, masquerading as a GIF image, with an encoded virtual CPU to start and run the exploit.
“JBIG2 doesn’t have scripting capabilities, but when combined with a vulnerability, it does have the ability to emulate circuits of arbitrary logic gates operating on arbitrary memory. So why not just use that to build your own computer architecture and script that!? That’s exactly what this exploit does,” the researchers explained.
“Using over 70,000 segment commands defining logical bit operations, [NSO’s hackers] define a small computer architecture with features such as registers and a full 64-bit adder and comparator which they use to search memory and perform arithmetic operations. It’s not as fast as Javascript, but it’s fundamentally computationally equivalent.”
“The bootstrapping operations for the sandbox escape exploit are written to run on this logic circuit and the whole thing runs in this weird, emulated environment created out of a single decompression pass through a JBIG2 stream. It’s pretty incredible, and at the same time, pretty terrifying,” the Google researchers added.
I wonder how many other zero click exploits are active in the wild right now.
We live in interesting times.
Quote of the day—Debbie Mizrahie
I’ve always been anti-gun. But I am right now in the process of getting myself shooting lessons because I now understand that there may be a need for me to know how to defend myself and my family. We’re living in fear.
Debbie Mizrahie
Beverly Hills
December 9, 2021
Beverly Hills residents arming themselves with guns in wake of violence
[Ms. Mizrahie, welcome to the right side of history!—Joe]