Category: Uncategorized

More Serious This Time

The Friday Five this week isn’t a fluff piece.

Here we go:

1. What do you most want to be remembered for?

This assumes I place some importance on “being remembered,” which I don’t. I do care about being thought of as a good, honest man, though.

2. What quotation best fits your outlook on life?

“It stands to reason that self-righteous, inflexible, single-minded, authoritarian true believers are politically organized. Open-minded, flexible, complex, ambiguous, anti-authoritarian people would just as soon be left to mind their own fucking business.”

— R.U. Sirius in ‘How To Mutate and Take Over The World’

3. What single achievement are you most proud of in the past year?

Nothing in particular.

4. What about the past ten years?

Convincing the woman I love to be my wife.

5. If you were asked to give a child a single piece of advice to guide them through life, what would you say?

“One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.”

— Thomas Sowell

Be trustworthy. Trust, but verify. And above all else – THINK!

Glenn Reynolds points to this piece concerning the bigotry of the left. A taste:

When somebody makes a prejudicial comment about Republicans in my presence, I play a private game. I replay the sentence in my mind—only I substitute a word like “black” or “lesbian” or “Mexican” in place of the word “Republican.” In performing this verbal sleight-of-hand, it becomes increasingly apparent that the speaker of the sentence may harbor views not generally considered to be tolerant or open-minded.

No, really?

But I loved the climax of the piece:

The bigotry of America’s Left-leaning intelligentsia is based upon cold logic that unfolds in the following predictable, if venal, fashion: I’m very smart. I’m well educated. So are most of my friends. I give generously to liberal causes. I’m a kind and caring human being. I defer to nobody in my exemplary set of values. I care about equality. I believe in a just society. These values are integrated into the core of who I am. I work diligently to teach these values unto my progeny. And these are just the values that, generally speaking, have been represented by the policies and actions of the Democratic Party.

The corollary logic continues: I don’t have much respect for the values of the Republican Party. Oversimplified, Republicans stand for the rich, for the status quo, for selfishness, and for war-mongering. These logical trains of thought are tinged with intellectual arrogance and gross stereotyping. Of course, some liberals who speak ill of Republicans have an ulterior motive. They use the tactic to undermine the credibility of all Republicans, who must be evil, stupid—or both.

Reagan, and his crowd, were a bunch of cowboys. NRA supporters are dumbfucks from Wyoming. The Christian Right is the imbecilic underbelly of the South, led by money-grubbing preachers. George W. may have gone to Yale and the business school, but he’s basically a shallow frat boy and—yikes!—a Christian. Locals who line up with such thinking tend to be knee-jerk right-wingers with low IQs.

In short, the justification for bigoted comments directed at those with whom the educated Left disagrees politically is based on two foundations: 1) We’re a lot smarter than they are; and 2) We’re better people than they are. That logic leads to three inescapable conclusions: We’re right. They’re wrong. QED: All Republicans are assholes.

Yup. That about covers it. It never occurs to them that they might be wrong.

Go read the whole thing.

And leave a comment.

OK, Can Anybody Explain What the Hell They’re Saying?

JoinTogether has this little blurb up:

Assault-Weapons Ban Has Little Effect on Gun Makers

As the debate continues on whether to extend the federal assault-weapons ban, firearms experts say the ban has had only a slight financial impact on gun manufacturers, CNS News reported May 27.

“As an overall industry, the ban didn’t have that much of an effect one way or the other,” said Andrew Molchan, publisher and editor of the American Firearms Industry, which tracks production and sales of firearms.

While some smaller companies may have suffered more of a financial impact, Molchan said large gun manufacturers maintained profitability because they successfully adapted their products to match the law’s requirements.

Bushmaster Firearms of Windham, Maine, for instance, increased its sales by 900 percent since the 1994 ban. However, the company is opposed to the ban’s extension.

Bushmaster makes nothing but “assault weapons” as defined by these morons. And they’ve had a 900% increase in sales! Ooooh! What a great law!

Gun-control advocates argue that allowing the ban to expire would erase the progress made in fighting crime caused by assault weapons.

What progress? The incidence of “assault weapons used in crimes” is so low that you can’t draw a statistical conclusion! And it also depends on how you define assault weapons. In this piece I showed that the Gun Ban Violence Policy Center misidentified 19 firearms as “assault rifles” used in the killings of police officers. I guess it all depends on how you twist the data to meet your agenda.

“We’ll see the manufacture of what are now banned weapons returning to circulation,” said Rob Wilcox, spokesman of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “They obviously have a certain appeal to the criminal element.”

Oh yeah. Criminals really dig those flashhiders and bayonet lugs.

Sheesh.

So, what are they saying? Don’t extend the ban because it didn’t hurt the “assault weapon” manufacturers? Do extend the ban because it helped reduce gun crime? Does anyone else detect a bit of wishy-washyness here?

It was all About Oiiilllllll!

Courtney’s all over this hot story: The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor because we made them do it by cutting off their oiiiiillllll!

I never realized that liberal victimhood had been exported to Japan. No wonder their economy is in the crappper.

Our Collapsing Schools

AlphaPatriot has this post about Memphis’ failing schools which demonstrates in detail that throwing money at the problem isn’t the answer. Go read. There’s nothing that I could add except “Memphis isn’t alone.”

Wait…That Didn’t Come Out Right…

On a lighter note, the Associated Press reports that Kelly Hu, last seen as Lady Deathstrike in X2: X-Men United, is now performing “The Vagina Monologues”. Says Hu:

“I don’t even move off the stool. It’s a totally different thing going on for me – a totally different muscle to exercise…”

Ahem. There goes one fantasy….

I Thought School was OUT for Summer

According to Sitemeter, the last four visitors came from the servers of: Michigan State University, Southern Illinois University, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutes, and Washington State University.

Am I a source of interest to academics for some reason?

Steven Den Beste Weighs in on the Dimensions of Political Belief

In another excellent logical analysis, Den Beste disassembles an essay by Michael Totten that expounds on the “Left/Right” divide, by explaining that Mr. Totten’s linear scale is erroneous. Political beliefs are multidimensional, and in Steven’s piece he tries to analyse just how many degrees-of-freedom (ain’t that an accurate term) describe the space of political belief.

Money quote:

This is where Michael’s argument, based on a single axis, breaks down. The people he refers to as “liberals” aren’t liberal. For lack of a better term, we’ll have to call them “leftists” for the moment. The vocal leftist movement which has been revealed in the last year in the US manifests as being elitist (i.e. not liberal), idealistic (not realistic) and conformist (not tolerant). There’s a lesser dedication to equality (over inequality) but it’s not totally consistent because it is a side effect of a basic choice of groups over individuals and to some extent of socialism over capitalism. And within the US right now, they’re revolutionaries because they strongly disagree with the status quo. It is because they are revolutionaries that we tend to categorize them as being “leftist”; it has nothing to do with liberalism as such (especially since they aren’t liberal).

Excellent piece. Go read.

And You Should Rely On the Government that Disarms You….Why? Followup.

Another nod to Kim du Toit for this link concerning recent shootings in New York City

FEELING LUCKY, PERP?

That’s the choice New York’s mindlessly enforced gun laws force upon otherwise law-abiding people.

Consider:

* Mohammed Dramy, a 40-year-old Gambian immigrant, was shot dead Tuesday during an apparent robbery in Harlem.

The perpetrator is still at large.

* Meanwhile, two bodega employees, Jose Acosta, 69, and Victor Alejandro, 23, are alive following an attempted armed robbery the same day.

And it’s a perp who’s dead.

Sadly, Acosta and Alejandro are now charged with criminal possession of a weapon.

As three armed would-be robbers entered their store waving guns, Acosta pulled out a .22-caliber pistol, fatally shooting one; the others escaped.

Now, Acosta and Alejandro are looking at jail time.

Which is better than being dead.

But is it fair? Of course not.

Should they have sought a gun permit?

Yes, but the complicated application process in New York City dissuades people from applying.

At best, it takes six months to get a so-called “premises” permit for one’s home or business. And now it appears that the city has sharply reduced the number of licenses it approves.

Meanwhile, the bad guys have no trouble whatsoever finding weapons – and they never will, no matter how many gun-control laws are passed.

Acosta and Alejandro face a trial for using an unlicensed weapon to defend their business – indeed, their very lives.

Even so, they’re better off than Mohammed Dramy.

All things being equal, Acosta and Alejandro need to be let off the legal hook.

And New York needs to reform its gun laws.

And this doesn’t even mention the case of Ronald Dixon. The prosecutor in that case made sure that Mr. Dixon wouldn’t get a jury trial by reducing (but not dropping) the charges to a point at which Mr. Dixon is not entitled to a jury trial. I guess he’s still afraid of jury nullification. Mr. Dixon’s story has dropped into oblivion since March. I have no idea what the outcome (if any) was.

Last Entry on the Johns Hopkins Gun Lawsuit “Fact” Sheet

I started this series here, and continued it here. I thought I’d go ahead and finish it. I’m only going to discuss one last “Myth/FACT” from this “striver”:

Myth:The Lawsuits are simply designed to bankrupt the gun industry.

FACT:The lawsuits are actually designed to change the way gun makers design and market their products.

I guess no longer designing or marketing qualifies as “changing the way” it’s done.

In fact, the lawsuit filed by the NAACP doesn’t even ask for money damages, just changes in the way manufacturers do business.

But as I’ve pointed out, it isn’t necessary that the gun control groups win. The gun manufacturing industry isn’t that big. The NAACP lost its lawsuit, but not before the trial ran FIVE WEEKS. How much did the legal fees run? All the case preparation? And that’s one trial.

The gun-control lawyers have deep pockets – yours. Remember, 13 cities sued the gun industry. Your tax dollars at work. Suits brought by individuals and organizations are funded either by lawyers already rich from tobacco settlements or funded by chairitable organizations (according to Overlawyered.com) such as: The George Gund Fund, The Joyce Foundation, Charles Stewart Mott, Richard & Rhoda Goldman Fund, Eugene & Agnes Meyer Foundation, George Soros’s Open Society Institute, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, the YWCA, the Presbyterian Church USA, and the National Urban League. The gun manufacturers don’t have those resources. How would you like it if your business was sued in 13 different jurisdictions? How long do you think you could keep your doors open under that kind of financial stress? Even getting to the point where the cases get thrown out is expensive.

Go ahead, pull my other leg. That hound don’t hunt. But it drops a fine striver.