Guns are Good

Regarding current media trends in the anti-gun (or as I might say, the gun-bigot) camp, I keep hearing the same, worn out things. It irks me. It worries me. And I am tired of repeating myself. So I think I will respond to some of the recurring bullshit here, and save my breath for a while. Maybe just link a QR code back to this page, and have it tattooed on my forehead. (Second thought: maybe just print it on a card.)
 
"Assault weapons like the AR-15 are destructive and should be banned."
Actually, the AR-15 (as with almost every weapon the media refers to as an "assault-weapon") does not actually qualify for the definition.  A true assault weapon is, in general, capable of selectable fully-automatic firing.  That means that the weapon itself is capable of sustaining rapid, repetitious firing, initiated by a single trigger-pull by the operator.  There are variants, such as burst or continuous modes, but the fundamental idea is the same.

A semi-automatic weapon never produces more than one fired shot for each trigger-pull by the operator.  The rate of fire achievable by a semi-automatic weapon is typically much lower than that of a fully-automatic weapon.
In fact, today the the AR15 is specifically a non-military version the venerable M16.  But it looks almost identical, and can share a number of the basic components (stocks, grips, barrels, etc.) - but not the select-fire capability.  That's not trivial circumvent, and it's illegal to do so (and has been for a very long time).
One can argue that porn is destructive, and being delivered by home computers, often to the detriment of children - so then should home computers should be banned?  I'm sure that would stop the "porn problem", too, wouldn't it?
"There's no reason you need to own a gun like ________."
Your rights, your liberties  - are not based on your needs.  There just isn't a logical connection here, yet somehow this phrase keeps coming out of the mouths of politicians.   The fallacy of the "need" argument is endlessly frustrating.  And it is manifest in other areas of our life nowadays, not just in firearms discourse.
You don't know how to feed yourself, so governments have decided to adjust your diet according to their liking ("You don't need trans-fats, or super-sized soft drinks, or so much meat in your diet.  Kids, eat more bean-sprouts and hummus -- even if you think it's gross like horseshit.  Etc.")
You don't know how to choose a vehicle properly for yourself.  ("You don't need a gas-guzzling SUV or truck.  You're killing the planet with carbon-emissions, destroying civilization by way of wrecking the environment.")
 And although politicians in some states have decided that you don't need to carry a weapon for self-defensive purposes, it is universally understood that those very same politicians travel with armed protectors or their own concealed weapons.
Some people are just more-equal than others, I guess.

Here are some other things that, likely, you don't need.

• Contact lenses, Lasik surgery, etc.  (glasses work fine)
• Swimming pools (such a waste of energy and precious water)
• Timely medical care (unless you're bleeding to death, stand in line, bucko)
• Physical stores (hey, shop online now)
• The US postal service (obsolete)
• Extensive knowledge about historical facts (disinformation)
• Offensive music or visual art (incorrect ideas or concepts)
• Excessive supplies of food, water, or other resources (depriving others)
• Telescopes, two-way radios, binoculars (what are you looking at?)
• Anything made by Apple (just get a PC, they work fine)
• A large house or fast car (wastes fuel).
• Adult entertainment (aka porn), in any form
• Recreational travel across the globe (wastes fuel)
• Colorful clothing - or anything except a single style of standard-issue clothing from the state.  Prison clothes, actually.  That would save a lot of trouble.  Yes, everyone should wear only prison clothes.
• Snack-food, silly toys, videogames, alcohol, tobacco, jewelry, boats or aircraft, too much furniture, pets, refrigerators, ultra-soft toilet tissue, over-the-counter medications.
• And the big one - a free market.  Why go through all that trouble, when the government can just coordinate your needs in a more orderly, efficient manner?  It's called central-planning, buddy.

"We need common-sense gun-control - NOW."

 A popular phrase with the anti-gun crowd, but what does "common-sense" actually imply?  That's the magic sauce here.  It can mean anything you like, depending on context - and where on the slippery-slope you are presently.  I'd say we're already way, way beyond "common-sense" with firearm regulations today, and in some places so far beyond "common-sense" that using the term is not just vague and meaningless but downright inapplicable and stupid.
California, for example.  If you're a criminal, California is a great place for you.  Nice weather, good scenery, the ocean, and lots of disarmed, gun-terrified potential-victims for you to choose from. Yes, taxes are ridiculous and housing unaffordable, but since it's virtually impossible for lawful citizens to get any kind of "permit to carry", the average guy on the street should be an easy target.  That is, unless he happens to be another criminal, in which case he could potentially shoot back at you if you go after him.

"Common-sense" to me means:

• It's wrong to kill people for fun or profit, and hey, it's been unlawful to do so - like - forever.
• Everyone has an inherent and natural right of self-preservation.  This right descends not from government's generosity, but is axiomatic and immutable.
• All citizens capable of rational reasoning should be permitted to carry weapons of their choice for protection, without being forced through convoluted bureaucratic machinations a priori.
• You should be able to own whatever gun you want and can afford.

 That's about it.

"Pro-gun advocates, like the NRA, are maleficent lunatics dominated by the gun industry."

So what is implied then, is that only gun-bashing, anti-freedom leftist organizations have valid points to make?  Where have we heard this reasoning before?  Sounds very familiar.  When you don't have a solid case with facts, your best strategy is to discredit your adversary before he can convince a majority of the correctness of his position.  This is the recurring modus operandi of the left; using general ignorance of the facts to their advantage, to advance their own causes rooted in their own ulterior motives.

Ask yourself this:

• Who's working to TAKE liberties/property from you?
• Who's working to PREVENT others from TAKING liberties/property from you?

"Only the police, and military, should possess firearms."
Do you believe the police will be able, or even required, to save you in every crisis situation?  Do you trust your government fully and completely to act in your best interests, forever more?  How are they doing in this vein?  I am always shocked to hear anyone state their desire to be a disarmed and defenseless citizen.

If your daily concerns look like:

• What are my Facebook friends up to?
• Where's the closest Starbucks right now?
• What's happening on Jersey Shore?
• What can I do to help stop global warming?
• Should I buy another pair of shoes today, since they're on sale?
• Should I be recycling more than I am now?
• What's the latest music on iTunes?
• Where are my missing socks?

 Then you probably aren't worrying about:

• In an emergency, could you protect yourself and family?
• How can $16 trillion ever be repaid, to anybody, anywhere?
• Which freedoms are really guaranteed to you?
• What can be taken away from you against your will?
• What are your fellow citizens plotting to do regarding your future?
• What does government have planned for your future?
• Am I condemning subsequent generations to ever greater subjugation at the hands of a merciless governmental monstrosity?
• When I vote in an election, what am I actually voting for?

"Hi-capacity magazines should be banned."
Actually, what's being referred to here, most often, are "standard-capacity" magazines.  The anti-gun crowd merely wishes to "dumb-down" the hardware below the level that it was designed to be;  They've come up with this magical "10-round" figure which holds some special significance for their narrative as a "reasonable" magazine-capacity limit.  Maybe it's because that's how many fingers/toes they have.  Maybe they want 5-rounds per hand, if you're shooting with both hands.
I've personally never understood this thinking at all, since switching mags can be a very fast operation without much practice.  Again, if those advocating such things had the first clue about what operating a weapon is like, with first-hand experience, they might just understand how moronic their claims sound to the rest of us.
It's essentially as ridiculous as mayor Bloomberg's high-capacity (20-oz) soda ban in New York - resulting in much pain-in-the-ass for the public, which now just buys twice as many bottles to get what they desired in the first place.

So in summary, my message to the gun-grabber crowd:  I'll leave you alone, but you must afford the same in return.  Find another hobby.  Go enjoy your marijuana bong and the occasional abortion or whatever you do.  Leave me out of it...

The Fractional Reserve System

If you want to be scared -- really, really scared -- watch the following video.  It excellently, and understandably, explains serious flaws in our system of commerce and finance.  Most chillingly, it explains:

1. That all the debt we have (as a nation) can never be repaid fully, because we must repay debts with interest, and nobody creates the "interest" money - it just drains the money supply over time.
2. Without an ever-increasing spiral of debt, the economy would not be able to function.  How can we have an ever-increasing spiral of debt, where we are now?
3. In the long term, banks must eventually (by the math) hold all "real" money AND property, leaving nothing - money or otherwise - for anyone else.

Olbermann Gets a Proper Tongue-Lashing

I know I haven't written anything for a while now.  I think I've been in "Breitbart-Coma" since he passed - it sure didn't help any.   Anyway, I may be coming out of it now.  So with that, the point of my post:  a pleasant video that I got a nice grin out of today....  Do enjoy. 
Original Link Here

There is no Hope

When a society can no longer diagnose its own ills, and the vast, miseducated and brainwashed masses gleefully seek to amplify the problems which cause their own  discomfort - it's just about game-over.

We now have large swaths of population that have wholly bought-in to the lies they've been shoveled for years by savvy politicians.  They've been told the rich are out to get them.  That we're all at fault for ruining the planet's ecosystem.  And that less is more -- less freedom, that is, means more happiness.

I used to think you could reason with people to gain a higher degree of mutual understanding.  Now, I believe this is a falsehood.  There is a sufficient "critical mass" of people that are totally beholden to illogical, faulty reasoning that society can no longer be expected to "tend toward order" in the long-term.  As demonstrated in Adam's startling (and depressing) video above, seemingly "educated" indivudals are incapable of comprehending the reality that motivates their own protest actions.  The want more of the same.  And they are programmed to disbelieve (or disregard) any potentially conflicting evidence.

That fact ensures their entrapment in the madness.

They use words like "1-percenters" or "corporate masters" or the venerable favorite:  "Haliburton".  But they don't know the meaning of it all.  They think they do, but a simple series of questions, designed to extract a coherent, logical progression -- it causes their ideology to completely collapse.  They cannot explain why.  Hostility increases, and they become defensive.

And never, ever do they let opposing views for critical analysis. The whole, wicked world is out to get them.  The boogeyman in running the bank.  The corporations want to digest your blood for fuel.  And the Tea Partiers are the zombie-henchman of the corporations.  They dare not question any of this, for they are far too long committed to this line of reasoning to ever change.

After all, the Democrats, with which they allied, have told them so.  It must be true. 

At some point, a viral infection threatens your life when the infection has become sufficiently pervasive.  Looks like we're about to collectively succumb to the virus, if you ask me...

Say What?

Okay, who makes signs like this?  I mean, really.  "Freedom go to hell"?  Seriously?  Are these people all completely stupid?  Is this some kind of weird joke?  A photoshop moment, perhaps?
 If this is in any way a real photo, with real people professing their own deep desire not to be free -- how do you deal with that?  

Al Sharpton: Let the Hate Begin

 The following are quotes taken from news media today regarding Glenn Beck's rally in DC...

 "We are not sure what the message of the Beck rally is, since he told them to leave their signs at home. We have to revitalize jobs and schools and reclaim Dr. King's dream." 

-- Ben Jealous, NAACP President

"We will not stand silent as some seek to bamboozle Dr. King's dream." 

-- Marc Morial,  National Urban League President

Those gathered at the Mall with Beck "represent angry white people and hate-mongering.  We will not let them stand in the way of the change we voted for!"
-- Jaime Contreras, SEIU-32BJ President

"Don't let anyone tell you that they have the right to take their country back.  It's our country, too. We will reclaim the dream.  It was ours from the beginning." 

-- Avis Jones DeWeever, Executive Director of the National Council of Negro Women

"Glenn Beck's march will change nothing.  But you can't blame Glenn Beck for his 'March on Washington' envy.  Too bad he doesn't have a message to match the place or that is worthy of the march."

-- Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C.

"Glenn Beck uses the phrase 'wake up, America.'  I noticed this identical phrase has often beem used by the Klan--for year--as code words for "White America". But, could this just be another mere coincidence on poor, innocent Glenn's part? Is he just a misunderstood misfit? Gee, I really don't think so, anymore. This freak seems to be actually pushing for racial violence. And, it's really about time that the Feds stepped in, and shut his sick operation down, before he incites actual racial violence." 

-- comment on MSNBC website

"Glenn Beck is a fear monger and a racist. The people that listen to his line of crap are nothing but mice that follow the Pied Piper." 

-- comment on MSNBC website

"Glenn Beck panders to xenophobes, racists and the intolerant, cynical and judgmental worst in of all of us. He does not stand for America, he stands for conflict which increases ratings."

-- comment on FoxNews website

"Keep drinking the kool-aid. Beck is a self serving, manipulative, Fascist ... It is so sad that he has continues to enflame the far-right extremist fascism and distort/manipulate our Constitution, Founding Fathers, and Christianity ... the anger, lies, obstruction, manipulation, and pure hate spewing from Glenn Beck is not the way to behave in a civilized, Christian nation." 

-- comment on FoxNews website

"Anyone whose 'deep concern about the country's political leadership and direction' should reject the blowhards of the "tea party" movement. They represent the greatest threat to the country's well-being since Soviet Communism with their stubborn ignorance and sly dissembling."
-- comment on Washington Post website

And about that last one -- it's extremely disturbing to think that people who write things like this might actually be voters.  If honor and credibility, freedom and liberty are the greatest threat since communism (threatening to you anyway) -- I suggest you migrate to North Korea where you may find accommodations more fitting.  Sheesh.


There's not much more to add to that now, is there?

Washington Post article
CNN article
FoxNews article

Brain ... Damaged

Oh, it hurts.  It really hurts bad.  I think my brain may finally be dying.  There's only so much strength left to fight the tide of morons beating against my sanity's shoreline.  Let me explain, and through this catharsis, relieve some of my pain...

I was reading a little article on Glenn Beck's 8/28 rally in DC, and when I got to the end, I ran into this paragraph brimming with Al Sharpton's patently mendacious stupidity:

Sharpton argues that Beck's message is counter to King's. "Glenn Beck and others are expected to push for the expansion of states' rights - the exact antithesis of the civil rights movement and Dr. King's legacy," Sharpton said in a news release promoting his march. "The Tea Party and allied conservatives are trying to break that national stance on justice and, in turn, break the crux of what the civil rights movement symbolized and what Dr. King fought and literally died for."

 For the love of Pete, why, why, why?!?   Why do citizens of this country ever act this way?  Well as I sit here, I can think of only these possibilities:

• Sharpton is truly a pathological dunderhead, and cannot understand the simple notion that freedom is good, oppression is bad.  The Tea Party Movement is, fundamentally, at odds with the overreaching control exerted by our federal government (contradicted by the tenth amendment).
• Sharpton does understand this, and wants to prevent others from understanding the truth.  He is therefore evil and deceptive, and when his time comes (eventually) he will go to hell and spend all eternity playing tiddly-winks with Adolf Hitler.

 In case Al Sharpton is reading this blog, I will provide for your educational enlightenment our constitution's tenth amendment:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Since this has nothing to do with civil rights at all, Sharpton's remarks (quoted in the article) are left intolerably detached from reality.  This is either completely lost on him, or he's working to milk the civil rights issue to perpetuate his own livelihood.

In fact, were he alive today, King would probably be attending the Tea Party Movement rallies himself.

Oh Helen...

Old leftist windbags don't die...

They just go down in flames.

SAS Feelings Hurt by Google StreetView

 We like the SAS and all the good they do, of course.  Things like that are very important, we know from past experiences.  However this latest piss over Google's StreetView is extremely silly:

here is the article

Apparently a Google StreetView car drove by an SAS base and photographed it for their online database.


Heavens, no!  They did what?  Picture-taking you say?  The lot of them should be jailed.  What will they be doing next, writing down information in books?  Sharing textual knowledge on the web?  Oh hell, they ARE doing that, and helping search through it, too, to find the really GOOD stuff!  Think of what the terrorists will do.  The harm it will cause us.  Bombs and chemicals and stuff, they'll learn all about it all!  Mr. President, they'll see the big board!


My goodness, biology too - there's so much of that out there in print and pictures!  What if they find out where my pee-pee place is?  Then they might start doing something really nasty!!

So we should eliminate ALL photography, technical and scientific writing and publications, and keep everyone at home so that no one inadvertently sees a government building, written document, or an "important person".  Then we'll be safe.  And life will be great!

Right?  That's what you're saying, isn't it?  Keep everyone in the dark - the really, really dark - for their own safety?  Um, isn't that kind of what we didn't like about the taliban?  The whole "death sentence because you listened to music" or "death sentence because you went to school and you're a girl" stuff?

You mean we want to be just like THEM?

I think the sidewalk in front of the SAS base needs to get removed at once, before somebody walks down it and inadvertently sees the place, don't you?  It would be the responsible thing to do.  Either that, or just amputate everyone's legs (or eyes) so it can't happen in the first place.

By the way, this is what the base looks like:

If you see it, please don't look at it.  Please.

California Saves Us from TV

California appears poised to be first to ban power-guzzling big-screen TVs

The payoff could be big for TV owners, said Ken Rider, a commission staff engineer. Average first-year savings from reduced electricity use would be an estimated $30 per set and $912 million statewide, he said.

So you see, not having a choice to buy an energy-inefficient TV is actually a Good Thing.

You might suggest that the energy-efficiency of a TV is a feature with a particular market value;   Maybe some people would pay a little more for TV up front in order to get a savings in the long-term by reduced power consumption.  But if you think this way, you would be a moron by California's standards.  That's because everyone knows that markets don't function by assigning a monetary value to product features.  The government is supposed to dictate the standards so that no choices are required of consumers, who are all naturally stupid.

By the way, at $30 per set, $912M savings implies 30.4 million new TVs.  Assume there are 30.4 million new TV screens replacing energy-hogging older screens in the first year.   And to get to that figure, you must exclude people who are replacing displays already considered "energy efficient".    The population being somewhere around 37 million people, that's one new TV purchased for 8 out of every 10 Californians (including both adults and children).  Seems a bit of a stretch.  How often do you buy a large screen TV?