Month: February 2009

This One Sees Too Clearly . . .

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This One Sees Too Clearly . . .

Mike will be one of the first in line for “re-education.”

And an update:

There are a lot of people who know just how big a monstrosity this thing is, yet when they went to the polls last November, there was no ballot choice for them. Neither major party candidate offered any indication they were possessed the political will to go against the tide of populist entitlement. And no, this is not some “We are all responsible for the genocide in Rwanda” collective guilt trip. It is just a simple statement of fact if you are among the hundred million or so voters who cast a ballot for a major party candidate last election, you, and I for that matter, voted for the raping of the American economy, and with it American liberty.

The dismal failure of political will on the part of the elected, is matched by an equal failure of civic will on the part of the voters. We, and the fact of the existence of the two nonentities we accepted as candidates on the most recent ballot stands as proof, are now as convinced that the government is a cause rather than a result of good, as any medieval serf was of his king. We have allowed ourselves to become a democracy rather than a republic. And if you have to ask what is so bad about that, there’s no help for you.

(*sigh*)

Guilty as charged.

EXACTLY!

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Today’s Quote of the Day:

Interesting, but it reminded me a little of Ayn Rand (remind me to tell you guys about the Ayn Rand fan and the Iraqi microloan guy some day when I’m whining about having nothing to write about) in that after 50 pages, you’ve got the point and the rest is just…remediation. – Abby at Bad Dogs and Such

And I really want to hear that story about the Rand fan and the microloan guy.

Reasoned Discourse and The Other Side

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Reasoned Discourse© and The Other Side™

There’s been some discussion around the gunblogosphere recently about the typical Reasoned Discourse we experience with the gun-control side of the argument, but Xavier has found a video of someone who truly put her beliefs to the test. (In associated news, Morgan Spurlock is not, apparently, a complete wanker.) As Xavier put it:

Got 42 minutes and 32 seconds?

It’s worth your time if you’re any kind of activist at all.

My favorite part? Seeing the difference between the activist’s first shot (with a shotgun) and her later emotions when she was learning to fire a handgun.

A Modest Proposal . . .

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A Modest Proposal . . .

Van Der Leun proposes a solution to our economic crisis. Excerpt:

As we all know, the Social Security Administration (SSa) essentially bet, many years ago, that a lot of people who paid into this Mother of All Ponzi Schemes would simply not live to collect their benefits in any significant degree. It was a “You pay but don’t play” sort of deal. As long as the dead suckers outnumbered the living suckers, all was copacetic.

Now that, through the wonders of Medicare, our elderly can suck down benefits for one, two, or even three decades after 65, the Reverse-Ponzi kicks in and people actually get more out than they ever put in. Looking to “get more out than you put in” is, arguably, the attitude that got us into this mess in the first place.

But even now, this cost is still controllable. It merely requires the will.

Read. It. All.

THIS is Why . . .

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. . . an armed insurrection in America will not lead to a restoration of the Constitution and a return to Republican (as in “Republic” not the party misusing the name) ideals:

The Survivors Of US Airways Flight 1549 Make Me Hate People
Just to review, although I’m sure you all know what happened: Ninety seconds after takeoff from New York City’s LaGuardia Airport, some Canada geese were sucked into the plane’s jets, resulting in the immediate loss of thrust in both engines. Unable to reach any airfield from that altitude in unpowered flight, the pilot and crew masterfully set the plane down intact three and a half minutes later in the Hudson River between midtown Manhattan and NJ. All 150 passengers and 5 aircrew on board survived.

First of all, let’s just reflect on how astounding that is. The plane was low over NYC, the pilot maneuvered it less than 900 feet over the George Washington Bridge, and set it down gently in the river. Everyone lived. See, that’s the problem—everyone lived. If a a couple dozen of the passengers died, maybe the survivors would be grateful and I wouldn’t have to hear them whining about how much free shit they’re not getting from the airline.

The opening of a short but EXCELLENT rant by ThrowingstarDNA – read it all. (h/t: SayUncle)

Ladies and Gentlemen, we’re not worthy. Not enough of us, anyway. One hundred years of indoctrination has made us this way. Tytler’s Progression seems more and more inevitable every day:

From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage.
I put the country at late-stage apathy, early stage dependence. The depression recession and the “bailout” will put us into full-scale dependence.

We should’ve ignored Claire Wolfe and started shooting a long time ago when it would have done some good. It’s too damned late, now.

“Made as China, Norinco”

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I’ve blogged about handmade weapons before, but this not-quite eight minute video (h/t: Dave Hardy) is quite enlightening. It’s about the gun manufacturing done in the remote reaches of Pakistan, where people with, essentially, hand tools make perfectly functional copies of antique and modern firearms.

Cheap.

The title of this post comes from the markings on the slide of this pistol:


It looks like a CZ copy. Nine millimeter, $50. And people wonder why the British handgun ban didn’t work.

But hey, if we can put those eeeeevil gun manufacturers out of business, we can end gun violence!

Horseshit. Guns are not a particularly difficult technology, and there are literally hundreds of millions of them already in circulation. Watch the video where young boys are reloading cartridges on the street and packaging them for sale.

But bear in mind, always, The Other Side believes that “too many guns” defines the problem, and therefore the answer must be to REDUCE THE NUMBER.

But they don’t want to ban anything. Just ask ’em.

Thomas Sowell, Illustrated

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“A recently reprinted memoir by Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) has footnotes explaining what words like ‘arraigned,’ ‘curried’ and ‘exculpate’ meant, and explaining who Job was. In other words, this man who was born a slave and never went to school educated himself to the point where his words now have to be explained to today’s expensively under-educated generation.

“There is really nothing very mysterious about why our public schools are failures. When you select the poorest quality college students to be public school teachers, give them iron-clad tenure, a captive audience, and pay them according to seniority rather than performance, why should the results be surprising?

“Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.

“In a democracy, we have always had to worry about the ignorance of the uneducated. Today we have to worry about the ignorance of people with college degrees.”


Touché.

“Make ’em Mad” Dept.

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“Make ’em Mad” Dept.

Via Dave Hardy:

I blogged about his case a few days ago — Mr. Dominguez is a law-abiding construction company owner, who owned a registered “assault rifle,” which in California he could legally take from his house to a shooting range. He was going shooting with a friend who was arriving by plane, and was arrested at the airport on the apparently claim that by stopping at the airport in the middle of that drive he broke the law.

The update notes that they followed with a SWAT raid on his house and seizure of all his (legal) firearms, and those of his family.

Fortunately, he’s got some first rate firearm attorneys.

RTWT, including the message from Mr. Dominguez.