For those that thought it couldn’t happen, we’ll see. Obama is looking to stop insider leaks. Specifically by ordering federal workers to spy on each other, and it includes making failure to report a crime, a crime. East Germany, full speed ahead.
Can you saw “witch hunt?” Can you say “ideological purification?” can you say “regulatory capture?” I knew you could, boys and girls.
It’s not just the Chicago gun ban that was defeated by the Constitution. The ban on public carry was defeated as well.
Stuff it Handgun Control Inc. (now calling themselves The Brady Campaign in public while retaining HCI for more private discussions).
It is time for Illinois residents to join citizens in every other state. If Gov. Quinn and other gun prohibitionists need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century, where all civil rights – including the right to bear arms – are recognized, that’s their fault. They tried to transpose the Second Amendment from a fundamental civil right to a heavily-regulated privilege, and that is not what the court ruling allowed him to do.
We welcome Illinois to the United States of America.
Alan Gottlieb
July 9, 2013
SAF APPLAUDS ILLINOIS LAWMAKERS FOR OVERRIDE VOTE, COURT COMPLIANCE
[I’m not sure it’s really valid to say they have entered the U.S. It’s more like they are in quarantine. They still need to rid themselves of their gun control infections but they are making progress and I do welcome that.—Joe]
He probably complied too much, and should have stood his ground on the “Am I being detained” part. I don’t know what I will do when my time comes, but I have been through a similar incident before and it left a bad taste in my mouth. In that case I was in fact in violation, by having studded tires after the deadline for removing them. If I were totally innocent, who knows what would happen? I’ve seen the dog trick before too. It’s bullshit. I do know for sure that I will be asking the criminal posing as a cop to get out a pad and pencil and jot down “18 USC 241” and “18 USC 242” and informing him that he is putting himself at risk for prosecution.
A dashcam would be a good investment about now, to document the crimes committed by corrupt police, if for no other reason than posterity, so future generations can see how and when our republic fell into the shithole.
Via Weerd.
As Weerd points out this is a straw man argument.
I also wonder if there is some “Freudian slip” in regards to almost all the triggers looking more like fishhooks than a real trigger. The overweight gun owners is an almost universal stereotype (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and of course the original classic first gun cartoon I clipped from a newspaper, and wrote the editor about, from the mid-1990’s).
It’s true that guns are successful conflict resolution tools. But the nature of the conflict for which they are appropriate and advertised for would be more along the lines of, “Home Invasion Deterrent”, “Personal Protection on the Street”, “Grizzly Bear Repellent”, and “Rodent Population Control”. Nothing on the entire set of NRA web sites or in any of their literature would even hint at any of the things this cartoons explicitly claims.
Our enemies cannot succeed on the basis of facts and things we claim. As one anti-gunner finally admitted, “You … are too strong for me. By that I mean a great compliment. Your knowledge of the subject is too great for me to compete with.” They must, by necessity, live in an alternate reality where they think we say things that we do not and then gleefully shoot down their imaginary foes.
Everything centralized, from the Federal Reserve to the Too Big To Fail Banks to Medicare to the National Security State depends on the Federal government being a Savior State that must ceaselessly expand its share of the national income and its raw power lest it implode. All Savior States have one, and only one trajectory– they must ceaselessly expand and concentrate wealth and power or they will fail.
They are like the shark, which dies once it stops moving forward: the Savior State must push forward on its trajectory of expansion or it expires.
Stasis is not possible, nor is contraction; the promises made to the citizenry cannot be withdrawn without political instability, but the promises cannot be kept without fatally disrupting the neofeudal financialized debtocracy.
charles hugh smith
July 4, 2013
The Next American Revolution (Emphasis in the original)
[His main point is that the next revolution will be much different than any in the past. It will be one where the existing bureaucracy is bypassed and ignored rather than being forcibly removed from power. It will be, he claims, a place where, “wages are no longer an adequate model for distributing the surplus generated by the economy.”
I agree with his characterization that the government is on a path where it must constantly expand or implode. I can believe his is right that the next revolution will be different than any ever seen before. But I am far from convinced that he has it right on the nature of the next revolution.
It seems to me that the nature of the majority of people is that they want/desire/require a central leader or authority. Either they either want to be ruled or they want to be a ruler. The concept of just leaving people alone to freely associate with others is inconceivable to most people. Even in a relatively free state they think in terms of freedom being forced upon them by some authority.
It is my expectation that from the ashes of our current government there will rise some new form of claimed authority to rule over the people and the vast majority of people will have not learned the lessons of history and will welcome it.—Joe]
@acallipo @barronbarnett @smrzle @toddkincannon “It looked so long and hard, but then he emptied his clip soooo fast…..*sigh*… oh well.
Background N015e (@backgroundN015e)
Tweeted February 6, 2013
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
H/T to Barron.—Joe]
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
Plato
From here.
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
There is a New Cold War but it is not like the old one. It is not country against country. It is the shadow state in every nation against its own people, with the collusion of an inner core within the regular State.
Golem XIV
July 3, 2013
NSA/GCHQ – The New Praetorians and the New Cold War
[He makes some good points.
I just wish someone had some solutions.—Joe]
Inspired by:
Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it’s not an individual right or that it’s too much of safety hazard don’t see the danger of the big picture. They’re courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don’t like.
Alan Dershowitz
Quoted in Dan Gifford
The Conceptual Foundations of Anglo-American Jurisprudence in Religion and Reason
62 TENN. L. REV. 759 (1995)
We can elaborate by saying:
Foolish people who legislate, make a case in public opinion, or create case law for the restriction or extermination of any of specific enumerated right enable the extermination of not just the Bill of Rights but the entire constitutional principle of government.
The 3rd Amendment is a rarely seen topic in US case law. But we now have a real 3rd Amendment case hitting the courts. For those that forget, it reads:
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
Short version of the case: The police demanded a homeowner vacate his own home, so the police could use it as a lookout point in a domestic violence case. When the homeowner refused, they forced him out, and took his house over. When he tried to literally walk away, down the street, they detained him, and booked them for “obstructing justice,” though they were not formally charged.
Long form details at Courthouse News Service.
A day to celebrate freedom by going across state or county lines to buy fireworks because they’re illegal where you live.
Say Uncle
July 4, 2013
Happy Independence Day
[You shouldn’t really have to say more than that convince people that we are no longer free. You shouldn’t have to tell them the size of soft drinks in NYC is restricted. You shouldn’t have to explain Obama Care. You shouldn’t have to tell them about the New York SAFE act. You shouldn’t have to tell them our government is collecting data about every phone call and every letter mailed. You shouldn’t have to tell them that if you carry a cell phone the government can obtain your location with a few clicks on a website.You shouldn’t have to tell them the government says it has the legal authority and resolve to use unmanned drones to kill U.S. citizens on U.S. soil without trial or warning.
The scary thing is even if you tell people all of that they will do little more than shrug and turn back to finish watching the latest episode of American Idol, take another swig of beer, or another toke on their joint. They should be getting signatures for the recall petitions, spoofing encrypted email from government officials to overseas terrorists, and getting small arms training.—Joe]
Cut to
INT – DAY – Bridge of the HMS Hussein
The spacious bridge is crowded with people at stations and standing or moving about. The Watch Commander stands next to the command chair. The side door opens, and the captain walks out, adjusting his medal-bedecked uniform, swagger-stick under one arm. Continue reading
…some of you will already be mulling over your misinterpretations of the first half of the sentence and you’ll thus miss the point entirely. This, after you’ve asked me a question, pretending to want an answer.
In groups, you’ll sometimes actually be discussing your misinterpretations amongst one another before the sentence is finished. Technically, the preparatory clause is mistaken and you run with that, missing the main clause. Hey; it’s just like the left with the second amendment.
In other words you’re not interested so much in communication, i.e. the exchange of information for the purpose of coming to a better understanding of something, as you are interested in judgement, looking for weaknesses to exploit, in manipulation, determining a hierarchy of some kind, or just watching my mouth flap at your behest and hearing noises coming out. I think probably half or more of the population fits that description.
I’m tempted to be very annoyed by it, but then I realize that you don’t know what you’re doing, really. Of course there’s a will and an intelligence of sorts behind it, but you can’t help it. It’s reflexive.
I just don’t know how to help you, and THAT’S the main point (if you’ve stuck around long enough to read it).
Not Friday, but close enough, so I couldn’t pass it up. Happy 4th, folks!
A classic that would never be made today.
Fade in
EXT – DAY – Space, a hundred thousand kilometers from the planet
Tajemnica and Borealis drift apart, the glow around Borealis intensifies and it starts veering away, leaving just Tajemnica alone, heading in for the planet. The glow around the Tajemnica is weak. Continue reading
All you Bambi killers out there that want to tote around your rifles in your truck gun racks should grow up. Guns are for killing and killing for sport is immoral. If you have to hunt to eat fine buy a gun but if you aren’t native or Inuit or live in outer nowheresville stick to paying darts or bingo. Guns and the people that love them are dangerously stupid.
Bill
1:54 PM, June 27, 2013
Comment to Quebec court decision moves Ottawa closer to fully scrapping long-gun registry
[Every sentence of this rant could be the target of a blog post explaining in great detail why the commenter is either willfully ignorant or stupid himself. I don’t have the time or the interest to do that so I’ll just point out that it is good to know what he thinks of gun owners. He wants to control people and confine us to “playing darts or bingo” and he must dehumanize us to do that. He believes he is a “superior moral authority” and that should give him the authority to do with us as he commands with the government doing the dirty work of implementing his policies.
Mr. Bill should attempt to do his own dirty work.—Joe]
Via a Tweet from Ry we have still more info on the security issues with Android (emphasis in the original):
The Bluebox Security research team – Bluebox Labs – recently discovered a vulnerability in Android’s security model that allows a hacker to modify APK code without breaking an application’s cryptographic signature, to turn any legitimate application into a malicious Trojan, completely unnoticed by the app store, the phone, or the end user. The implications are huge! This vulnerability, around at least since the release of Android 1.6 (codename: “Donut” ), could affect any Android phone released in the last 4 years1 – or nearly 900 million devices2– and depending on the type of application, a hacker can exploit the vulnerability for anything from data theft to creation of a mobile botnet.
While the risk to the individual and the enterprise is great (a malicious app can access individual data, or gain entry into an enterprise), this risk is compounded when you consider applications developed by the device manufacturers (e.g. HTC, Samsung, Motorola, LG) or third-parties that work in cooperation with the device manufacturer (e.g. Cisco with AnyConnect VPN) – that are granted special elevated privileges within Android – specifically System UID access.
Installation of a Trojan application from the device manufacturer can grant the application full access to Android system and all applications (and their data) currently installed. The application then not only has the ability to read arbitrary application data on the device (email, SMS messages, documents, etc.), retrieve all stored account & service passwords, it can essentially take over the normal functioning of the phone and control any function thereof (make arbitrary phone calls, send arbitrary SMS messages, turn on the camera, and record calls). Finally, and most unsettling, is the potential for a hacker to take advantage of the always-on, always-connected, and always-moving (therefore hard-to-detect) nature of these “zombie” mobile devices to create a botnet.
I’ve known there were lots of security issues with Android but this is much bigger than I imagined. If you were concerned about various three letter agencies sucking up data about you (or even your snail mail) then you should be even more concerned that just about anyone that is technologically competent can take complete control of your Android phone.
A little over two years ago I purchased a Android phone with thought of developing apps for it. I never got around to it and after releasing Field Ballistics for Windows Phone I gave it further consideration. I decided not do pursue Android as an alternate platform. I’m glad I made that decision. Would you want everyone and their brother looking at the map on your phone showing your location and the location of your next target? At Boomershoot that would be an invitation to have “your” target poached.
Today’s post for The Stars Came Back was delayed by power problems. Specifically, this (click to embiggenate):
What’s wrong here, boys and girls? It seems that Novelty Hill Road was shut down for about 12 hours, starting at 4:55 PM 02July2013, because some wood failed. If you look closely at the right-side ends of the pair of 6″x6″ wooden beams hanging on to a couple bits of angle iron, you can see that the bolt that used to hold them to the power pole pulled through the end. You can also see the bolt that used to hold them on the pole, not holding anything. (You can also see a pair of wood-pecker holes lower down, but that may be the subject of a future post). When the beams fell out of place, a wire going across the road pulled free, crossed the three lower / outside 7200 volt wires, shorting them, causing them to arc, melt, and fall (still live) to the ground, right along / across Novelty Hill road (second picture; it’s a fairly major commuter road). A fire was started at the base of the wooden pole (creosote-covered wood burns pretty well) from sparks and arcing that went down something on the side of the pole. A nearby house got hit with a surge/spike, and the owner said “everything just hummed for a moment” then every fuse, circuit-breaker, GFI, power-strip fuse, fluorescent light, and a some electronics that were plugged in blew, big time. Blew as in totally defunct, needs replacement, black marks. Apparently, one or more of the falling 7200 volt wires fell across the line to his house. No one seems to have been hurt, though a person from another nearby house apparently had some of the falling / flying molten metal weld / melt itself into the windshield of her car, and some of the hood / roof panels got weld/melt/burn spots as she was sitting at the intersection right underneath the spot where it happened. I just heard a huge pair of BWAAAAAAANT! sounds, then the computer UPS started beeping and the lights went out. Fun times. Got the generator out for a while to make sure the frozen stuff stayed frozen, etc. Finally got power back around 5:30 AM.
[sorry for the delayed post. Had a minor power problem, details later]
Fade in
EXT – NIGHT – Space, not far from a large, angry, dimly lit orange gas giant.
In the far distance, the sun of the New Medina system glows, shedding what little light reaches out to this far distant orbit. In the near distance, space glows and Tajemnica pops into existence. The hull is covered with the same tanks, turrets, and missile pods as before. From an internal magazine, a launch tube pops up and a missile is launched, glowing slightly rather than using conventional rocket motor. It heads for the massive failed star in the distance, rapidly disappearing into the distance. Continue reading