libertarianism is respecting property rights and owning more guns than you say you do on paper
it’s also appearing to be extremely terrible at driving boats
MJ @morganisawizard
Tweeted on November 23 and November 24 2019
[The grammar and punctuation is, at best, strained. But the concepts expressed have significant merit.—Joe]
Growing up in north central Idaho an oasis was something I only saw in cartoons and perhaps on some television show. I have driven across the deserts of central Washington, southeastern Oregon, and Nevada many times but never came across anything similar to an oasis I would recognize from the cartoons of my childhood. They remained somewhat of a mythical place.
That changed last January when Barb and I visited the Palm Springs California area. We visited several oases in the area but by far the most interesting and pleasant were the West Fork Falls and Palm Canyon trails.
Since it has essentially the same trail head as Palm Canyon Trail and is only 0.1 miles long if you go to the Palm Canyon Trail area you must check out the West Fork Falls Trail. Barb and I were wandering around and I noticed something odd. I then began taking a bunch of pictures of the trees. Barb thought I was acting a little more strange than usual with the sudden interest in taking so many pictures of the trees. I had to explain. Check out the pictures below:
Racists are a problem.
White people are not.
Homophobes are a problem.
Straight people are not.
Sexists are a problem.
Men are not.
White supremacists are a problem.
Trump supporters are not.
Violence is a problem.
Guns are not.
Kathy Zhu @PoliticalKathy
Tweeted on August 7, 2019
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
Via email from Chet:
CNN: Trump Is Leader Of “Destructive Cult”; Using “Mind Control” On Americans
Stelter and guest say Trump supporters need ‘deprogramming’
The pair then remarkably suggested that Trump supporters need to be ‘deprogrammed’ by breaking them out of their ‘bubbles’.
Could there be a better example of the pot calling the kettle black?
The real cult is happening at CNN, where for four years talking heads and presenters have completely obsessed themselves with opposing anything Trump says or does, as well as a plethora of things he doesn’t say or do.
63 million Americans are definitely not part of a mind controlled cult. However, a few thousand CNN viewers certainly seem to be.
You knew there had to a reason why they don’t want you to have firearms. It makes it more difficult to herd you into the reeducation camps.
There are far better ways to protect your family than a gun. Get a life insurance policy.
Gabrielle Blair @designmom
Tweeted on November 24, 2019
[If true, that also means there are far better ways to protect family from mass shooters and home invasions than gun control. Just get a life insurance policy.
This is what they think of you. You are nothing more than a source of income to your family.
I think she has crap for brains.—Joe]
Entries for Boomershoot 2020 have been significantly delayed due to technical difficulties. Some involved the hosting provider and some involved a false positive phishing claim on the entire Boomershoot.org domain by Google Chrome.
I have moved to a new hosting provider and will be abandoning Boomershoot.org. The new domain is Boomershoot.com which I probably should have been using all along. I’ve made good progress recently and am certain the remaining issues are “just work” rather than difficult problems.Boomershoot.com is now functional but has a few issues regarding bad links.
Last Monday the ATF came for a routine visit and the only issue of any significance is that I need to remove a branch from a tree that is about to grow into the side of the shed which houses the storage magazine. I had been planning to do this anyway and will take care of it before we store any explosive materials.
As a side note, the inspector will be retiring before her next scheduled visit. She told me that after she retires she will probably have something she would like to bring to Boomershoot and blow up. Clean up isn’t an issue with this item so it sounds good to me.
There were technical problems with the Internet connection for the shooting line web cam and the weather station itself. The Internet was working well when I left Idaho last Monday but is still flakey sometimes. The weather station is working most of the time. I suspect it has faulty hardware.
The weather station has a wireless connection to the “indoor” observer unit which does the actual upload to Weather Underground. When I’m on the local network I can connect to the observer and see that it has problems connecting to the exterior sensors. It had worked fine for many months but then it got flakey. Then it wouldn’t work at all. It is supposed to work at a distance of up to 300 feet and with my sensor only about 100 feet it should work. But I suspected the tall grass, particularly when wet, between the observer and the sensor was blocking the connection. I moved the sensor to within 10 feet of the observer unit (see the picture below) and it works much better but it still has problems sometimes. I need to contact the manufacturer and perhaps get a replacement.
AR15 are the symptom of small penises.
Geraldo Rivera @GeraldoRivera
Tweeted on September 3, 2019
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
Via email from Chet.
And when someone uses childish insults in an attempt to subvert a specific enumerated right we call that a symptom of a small mind.—Joe]
Via email from Rolf.
Good question.
An increasing number of societal “privileges” related to transportation, accommodations, communications, and the rates we pay for services (like insurance) are either controlled by technology companies or affected by how we use technology services. And Silicon Valley’s rules for being allowed to use their services are getting stricter.
If current trends hold, it’s possible that in the future a majority of misdemeanors and even some felonies will be punished not by Washington, D.C., but by Silicon Valley. It’s a slippery slope away from democracy and toward corporatocracy.
In other words, in the future, law enforcement may be determined less by the Constitution and legal code, and more by end-user license agreements.
Mike Elgan
August 6, 2019
Uh-oh: Silicon Valley is building a Chinese-style social credit system
[Via email from Chet.
I had a incident with the Boomershoot website and Google that lasted weeks (they claimed it was a phishing website) before I finally got them to stop showing a red screen when people visited using Chrome. The security certificate (https) is still suspended because of this and I need to get that fixed soon. It cost them virtually nothing to do that and it cost me many hours and who knows how much loss of traffic and reputation.
As further evidence of this line of thinking, people have made suggestions that banks should cut off credit card processing and other financial services from stores that sell certain types (as a prelude to all types) of firearms:
…assault weapons would be eliminated from virtually every firearms store in America because otherwise the sellers would be cut off from the credit card system.
Of course PayPal, Square, Stripe and Apple Pay already completely ban the sale of firearms via their services.
I’m not sure what the proper response to this sort of thing is. In principle, I’m against government telling how to run their businesses. Let the free market decide. But sometimes the outcome doesn’t seem just. Restaurants, apartment owners, and hotels refusing to do business with people with black skin is one such example. The free market response seemed inadequate to remedy the problem.
I’m in the process of moving to a different credit card processor for Boomershoot even though PayPal was much easier and cheaper. But even with many people reducing or ceasing their use of PayPal because of their anti-gun policies it doesn’t appear to be suffering any.
It’s wasn’t exactly a legal restrictions so it’s tempting to say this type of thing is an appropriate response:
Top Louisiana officials have blocked two large bank corporations from participating in a road financing plan due to their gun control regulations.
Perhaps. But it hasn’t seemed to been effective, it is a form of government telling a business how they should operate, and the banks could probably easily retaliate with greater effect against those states.
What would seem to me to be the best approach is for the corporate officers to be prosecuted via 18 UCS 241. It’s not telling them how to do business. It’s prosecution for attempting to deny people their specific enumerated rights. Yes, it’s walking a very narrow, perhaps imaginary, line. It wouldn’t take very long for banks to revise their business practices if a few banks lost all of their upper management to life sentences in prison.
That’s not going to happen in the next few years so what should be done in the mean time? Is there anything more we can do than attempt boycotts and document their crimes?—Joe]
In order to obtain the maximum results from psychological operations in guerilla warfare, each combatant must be highly motivated to engage in propaganda face to face, to the same degree that he is motivated to fight.
Tayacan
1984
Sanitized Copy of CIA’s Psychological Operations in Guerilla Warfare
[Confrontation is what the political left does. If we are to win we must do the same.—Joe]
At its heart, liberalism is a gnostic religion, and the essence of that religion is the believer’s faith that he possesses the means of changing the world for the better. The belief that the world must be changed requires there to be a mass of individuals whose lives are in need of change. Following this logic, it is the liberal, not those deplorables in need of change, who knows what must be changed. For liberals, there must be a mass of people in need of this knowledge for life to make sense.
Jeffrey Folks
February 24, 2018
Leftists versus the People
[Substitute “leftist” for “liberal” and “socialism/communism” for “liberalism” of course.
It’s a reasonable hypothesis that would appear, in the general case, to fit the available data. If true, we must conclude they despise the very concept of individual rights and respond appropriately.—Joe]
The police of a state should never be stronger or better armed than the citizenry. An armed citizenry, willing to fight, is the foundation of civil freedom.
Robert A Heinlein
1942
Beyond this Horizon
[This is the same character in the same book which made this famous quote.
Also, from here:
This should be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer of the 20th Century. But somehow many people have not done much observing and/or have no interest in civil freedom.—Joe]
If you are a registered Washington State voter please sign the petition for I-1094. Do it soon! The last day to sign in December 28th, 2019.
If passed I-1094 would repeal I-1639. Here is the website for the good guys.
Here is the list of addresses where you can find copies of the petition to sign. Here is a map of the locations where you can find copies of the petition to sign:
If you’ve taken away that person’s ability to protect themselves, then it’s incumbent on you to protect them.
W.Va. Del. Brandon Steele, (R) 29th
October 14, 2019
W.Va. delegate seeks to hold ‘no-gun zones’ legally liable for shooting injuries
[H/T Glenn Reynolds.
The best defense is a good offense. This would appear to be a good offensive play against the anti-gun people.—Joe]
The constantly shifting Orwellian language codes are important, because the insider-lingo allows leftists to feel a sense of smug superiority to their fellow man. Or as Jeffrey Folks wrote at the American Thinker last year, “For liberals, the distinction between the ‘dumb masses’ and their enlightened selves renders life meaningful. Disdain for ordinary folks is not just an ancillary trait of liberalism. It is fundamental to the its nature.”
Ed Driscoll
November 10, 2019
TESTING THE LIMITS OF THE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARY
[This reminds me of the attitude of the Nazis toward the “inferior races”. See also what I wrote about the Communist Manifesto. The most important part in this context is:
The Communist Manifesto tells its readers that supporters of Communism are the intelligent people. They deserve, are destined to, and the good of all human kind depends on them, being in charge. That they “understand” the benefits of Communism to the bafflement of others is probably proof to them that they are the intellectual superiors of those that think Communism is, at best, prone to abuse.
The political left enables people to feel superior to others. They are told they are more “enlightened”, more “tolerant”, and just better people. If their “inferiors” adapt beliefs and behaviors which close the gap the left must find a new basis to feel superior. It is fundamental to their nature.
Like a spoiled child we must set firm limits and enforce them. The alternative is to climb aboard the crazy train on its way to a special version of hell.—Joe]
Hunting is the sport of the diminutive penis.
Sarah Silverman @SarahKSilverman
Tweeted on September 3, 2019
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
It is my hypothesis that Ms. Silverman does not have a statistically significant representation of hunter penises in her data set of penis sizes. Furthermore, it is my conjecture, she is exhibiting a classic case of “sour grapes”.—Joe]
Anytime someone talks about taking away your ability to defend yourself you’re in danger.
Chad Prather
November 11, 2019
Chad Prather: ‘Anytime someone talks about taking away your ability to defend yourself, you are in danger.’
[And, as frequently pointed out by pkoning:
Never forget, even for an instant, that the one and only reason anyone has for taking your gun away is to make you weaker than he is, so he can do something to you that you wouldn’t let him do if you were equipped to prevent it. This goes for burglars, muggers, and rapists, and even more so for policemen, bureaucrats, and politicians.
Alexander Hope
In the novel “Hope” by Neil Smith and Aaron Zelman.
And there are a lot of people talking about taking away our ability, and even right, to defend ourselves.
Respond appropriately.—Joe]
It is beyond comprehension—ambitious candidates of an entire party—are campaigning on things the Constitution bans, and getting cheering support.
I certainly don’t advocate violence. On the other hand, like my armed countrymen, I vigorously support self defense and am prepared to act if desperate immediate proximate criminal trouble were to arise, God forbid. I’ve been through intensive training, classes, reading, for decades. I’ve written ten books on the subject—so far.
What I haven’t done is consider the dire threat politicians present to the nation, when they stoke the flames of revolution by doing precisely what the British did that got us there those many years ago. They have announced they’re coming for our guns. It is not subtle. It is not limited. It is not allowed.
Alan Korwin
November 10, 2019
THEY’VE GONE TOO FAR
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
San Francisco recently passed Proposition H, which bans the ownership of guns in homes and businesses.
I for one am comforted by the fact that San Francisco has taken this safety measure. Now when some big dude meets you along a dark street, you’ll know that it’s not a gun in his pocket. The downside of course is that he’s really happy to see you.
Right Wing Duck
November 11, 2019
IMAO Time Machine: Proposition H – A fun look at gun control
[Note the phrase “Time Machine” in the title. Proposition H was passed 14 years ago on November 8, 2005.
While this quote has a high humor value it has a lot of truth in it.—Joe]
