The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
From the comments at Tam’s post, Argumentum ad fabricatum: You’re just making stuff up:
“Police-grade” firearms are far, far more dangerous to the user than average-Joe firearms; as a “police grade” Glock is the one that shoots you in the leg when you are the only one qualified enough to carry it
Proven on video, nonetheless.
Ancient Woodsman
Yup.
From Adaptive Curmudgeon:
A Federation of 50 states has an inherent range of options. It allows people to move from places they hate (see: gun buffs in California) to places they favor (see: gun buffs in Texas). It allows each individual to seek their own habitat (see: hippies in California) and leave places where they’re unhappy (see: hippies in Texas). It’s bad to lock people in a place from which there is no escape (see: most nations in most of history).
That part’s serious. The rest of the post is pretty humorous. Because it, too is true.
This, from Lissa:
I look forward to pulling the lever for Not Obama in November, but until then, I’m going to sit back in disgust and rail at the skies for giving me such unpalatable candidates.
A pox on all their houses, say I . . .
From (who else) Tam:
I do share a birthday with Hadrianus Augustus, Frederick the Great, Edith Wharton, Ernst Heinkel, Generalfeldmarschall Model, Oral Roberts, Warren Zevon, John Belushi, and Natassja Kinski. (Oral Bob and Bluto Blutarsky on the same day? That should tell you everything you need to know about the predictive power of astrology.)
D’OH! Forgot to add: Happy Birthday, Tam!!
For years, cellphone makers had avoided using glass because it required precision in cutting and grinding that was extremely difficult to achieve. Apple had already selected an American company, Corning Inc., to manufacture large panes of strengthened glass. But figuring out how to cut those panes into millions of iPhone screens required finding an empty cutting plant, hundreds of pieces of glass to use in experiments and an army of midlevel engineers. It would cost a fortune simply to prepare.
Then a bid for the work arrived from a Chinese factory.When an Apple team visited, the Chinese plant’s owners were already constructing a new wing. “This is in case you give us the contract,” the manager said, according to a former Apple executive. The Chinese government had agreed to underwrite costs for numerous industries, and those subsidies had trickled down to the glass-cutting factory. It had a warehouse filled with glass samples available to Apple, free of charge. The owners made engineers available at almost no cost. They had built on-site dormitories so employees would be available 24 hours a day.The Chinese plant got the job.“The entire supply chain is in China now,” said another former high-ranking Apple executive.“You need a thousand rubber gaskets? That’s the factory next door. You need a million screws? That factory is a block away. You need that screw made a little bit different? It will take three hours.”An eight-hour drive from that glass factory is a complex, known informally as Foxconn City, where the iPhone is assembled. To Apple executives, Foxconn City was further evidence that China could deliver workers — and diligence — that outpaced their American counterparts.That’s because nothing like Foxconn City exists in the United States.The facility has 230,000 employees, many working six days a week, often spending up to 12 hours a day at the plant. Over a quarter of Foxconn’s work force lives in company barracks and many workers earn less than $17 a day. When one Apple executive arrived during a shift change, his car was stuck in a river of employees streaming past. “The scale is unimaginable,” he said.
That’s not QotD, though I strongly recommend you RTWT. I quoted that so I could quote you this, from an AR15.com thread, “What’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard a professor say?”:
Yesterday, I had a professor who was born and raised in China try to give a lecture about how offshoring hurts China. Yeah, you read that right, American offshoring hurts China.
He went through a power point presentation showing environmental problems (dead fish in streams, sand storms, etc.), and I just sat there. He held up a dry-erasable marker and said “Chinese workers only make 100-200 dollars per month making things like these.” He kept emphasizing how little they made and how hard they worked.
I couldn’t take it any longer. I respectfully raised my hand and asked “how much were these workers making before offshoring was prominent?”
You want your iPhone, iPad, Macbook AirJordans and $7 quilted winter coats? Offshoring is the cost.
Discuss.
In the fine TSM tradition of using Other People’s Words when they say it better than I can, I quote Larry Correia quoting co-author Mike Kupari on the recent legislative setback of the SOPA bill by an uprising of netizens:
You didn’t care when the government decided it could spy on you without a warrant. You didn’t care when they started telling you what you could eat. You didn’t care when your kids’ education was turned into indoctrination. You didn’t care when they were more worried about military veterans than Islamic terrorists. You didn’t care when they spent so much money that our entire economic system may collapse. You didn’t care when they gave billions of your money to unions and corporations that were their political contributors. You didn’t care when inert cosmetic features on guns were felonies. You didn’t care when they made it a fucking crime to not have government approved health insurance.
All of these things were done in your name. On your behalf. To help you, protect you, take care of you. Each time you gave them more power and gave away more of your freedom. Each time you believed them when they said they were protecting you, or helping the less fortunate, or sticking it to “the rich” who “aren’t paying their fair share”.
Each time you applauded their efforts. Mocked those that were concerned. Called them uncaring or racist or alarmist or stupid. Each time you asked for more. You begged them to take care of you, protect you, right wrongs, enforce equality.
But now that your Internet porn and bit torrents are threatened, NOW you care?
It’s too late for all that, kids. Turning off Wikipedia for a couple days isn’t going to win back the freedoms we’ve pissed away. It isn’t going to undo decades of expanding government power. They’ve already decided there’s nothing they can’t do, no law they can’t pass.
We watched it happen. We let it happen. We have the country we deserve.
So go ahead, post a rant about SOPA on your blog. Link to Ron Paul’s web page. Pretend you’re doing something. It’ll make you feel better. Then you will go back to business as usual and so will they.
Democracy in action. Isn’t it beautiful?
Can I get an “AMEN!”?
Edited to add this found at Tam’s:
So let me get this right. The Canadian Oil is supposedly worse for the environment, so stopping this pipeline will help the planet.
So instead of moving the oil in a safe way and be processed in US refineries operating under EPA regulations, the oil will now be transported across the Canadian Rockies where it will be loaded onto giant tankers and shipped across the Pacific where it will be refined in Chinese operations that have far fewer, if any, regulations in place.
Please let me know how the Chinese alternative is better for the Earth. Because no matter what, this Canadian oil is going to be sold.
I like to watch the Bravo series Inside the Actor’s Studio. Near the end of each show, host James Lipton asks his guests a list of 10 questions, the last of which is always “If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?”
Sean Sorrentino just gave me the perfect answer:
When I reach the Pearly Gates, I want the first thing I will hear to be “Unload and show clear.”
…I went and signed up for gun training. After the training I felt I would be qualified to get a gun. I would get it because it was my right to get it. I would get it because I could. I would get it because Washington, no matter how deeply mired in denial and dementia Seattle may become, Washington itself is still a “must issue” state. And how long that would last in the demented rush to disarm and make all citizens effective wards of the state for their “protection” was anybody’s guess.Tracking the killings of over 30 unarmed, effectively disarmed and therefore helpless students, at Virginia Tech [in 2007] confirmed me in my decision. It took many bullets for this tragedy to unfold. It would have taken just one going the other way to stop it. That and the training to know what the situation was and how to react.Unless you are morally, spiritually, and politically blind to human reality, you know that this is the truth. — American Digest, The Gun School
As the saying goes, RTWT™. It’s from 2007, but still fresh as a daisy!
Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. – Thomas Sowell