Son of a Liberty's Bitch!

About a year ago I had one of those strange, vivid dreams that sticks in my memory and won't go away. In it I traveled through time to speak to Mike Vanderboegh about a matter of great importance. I established my bona fides with him by predicting the precise prices of some volatile stocks over a period of two or three weeks (it's a dream, OK? details from the subconscious can be a bit sketchy). Mr. Vanderboegh then asked me about the future. I told him, "The good news is, your side wins."

"What's the bad news?", he asked me with a grin.

"Your side wins."

Yeah, it's an old joke -- I know that. Still, the recent brouhaha between Vanderboegh and Kerodin reminds me of it. I am honestly beginning to wonder if it really matters any more whether we win this thing or not. Maybe I'll follow the lead of my buddy over on Living in Babylon and stock up on Ganja (do you guys still call it that?) then crawl inside a drug induced haze while the the assholes of the world fart in the general direction of each other.

Maybe tomorrow after the Southern Comfort wears off I'll feel differently.

Another Blood Dancer Speaks

Some one with the mouth filling moniker of Jenna Myers Karvunidis is not keeping up with current events. In a column for Chicago Now entitled Ohio school shooting: Time to ban handguns, guys she comments on the recent GFSZ shooting in Ohio writing,

Think about it. What is the purpose of a gun? Gun proponents will say the bad guys already have them anyway, so we all need to have access to protect ourselves and prevent more crime. Really? Tell me how many of the other students in that classroom today had a gun to protect themselves.

Apparently Ms. Karvunidis is unaware that schools from Kindergarten through the Twelfth grade are legally designated as gun free zones. The students and teachers are disarmed by laws ironically enforced by men with guns. They were not allowed the means to shoot back. This appears to be a good thing from her point of view.

At first I was tempted to be generous and assume this is just ignorance of science and history on her part. It may turn out she really is that uneducated but the tone of her article and her responses to some of the criticisms of her column prompt me to believe she just enjoys the opportunity to get on a soapbox and demand her fellow citizens be more tightly controlled -- doubtlessly by the aforementioned men with guns. This makes it logical that she support the existence and expansion of of Gun Free Zones. Such places are easy pickings for the violent and each new outrage perpetrated against disarmed victims provides more blood for her and her equally sick friends to dance in.

She should stick to spiked heels and white lipstick. They go well with an empty head.

H/T to Mike Vanderboegh over at Sipsey Street Irregulars who has his own take on the subject.

OPERATION #EFAD

I just heard about this:

So here's the plan: on Thursday, March 1, we will engineer a stratospheric spike in the number of free Kindle downloads of Enemies Foreign And Domestic, and continue this operation for up to five days, the max allowable under the terms of the free download program. Then we will sit back and watch the bewildered and alarmed MSM explore this sudden and frightening phenomenon erupting among the unwashed gun nuts and wild-eyed Constitution fanatics. You know, us. Real Americans, out here in fly-over countery[sic].

Sounds like a good idea. The book is already discounted to $0.00 for members of Amazon Prime so it has probably pretty much run its course in sales. Now the author is offering a chance for all Kindle owners to get the book for the same low price and to tweak the beard of the Res Nostrae and its sycophants -- a endeavor ever near and dear to my anarchist heart.

See you all at Amazon on March 1.

Expanded Castle Doctrine in Michigan

William Grigg, in his typically witty fashion, takes the Michigan police to task for opposing a proposed expansion of the castle doctrine in that state. The proposed legislation would expand the "castle" to include the surrounding yard and outbuildings and legally recognize that an innocent person has no "duty to retreat" in the face of criminal aggression. It also adds a "reasonable person" provision similar to the "reasonable officer" test currently used in police shootings. I think the hyperbolic reaction of the police leadership to this perfectly reasonable proposition reveals their true feeling towards the mundanes they allegedly serve.

An expanded castle doctrine and a no duty to retreat law is not a threat to the police unless they act in a way that make them look like criminals. The answer to the riddle of Officer Safety is quite simple: If a police officer does not want to be mistaken for a common criminal then he must not act like one.

Good Cause for a CCW.

A Pennsylvania judge recently ruled it is apparently OK for a Muslim to attack an atheist. Considering the number of Muslims in the United States this callous attitude should be good cause for an atheist to get a concealed weapons permit.

Yeah, I know it probably won't work.

In a civilized world, no one should need a to get permission from any official parasite to carry a weapon -- openly or concealed. OTOH, a civilized people would not tolerate someone being attacked for peaceably making fun of others' beliefs -- no matter how tasteless. The aforementioned decision reveals that at least one judge officially does not want this to be a civilized world. As I've contended for years now, freedom in the statist world is often found at the intersection of dumb and dumber. This decision certainly looks like that address.

H/T toThe Unwanted Blog

Solid Ghouled?

Anyone want to know how much I care about Whitney Houston dying? Not much anymore. At first I considered it a tragic event and a reason to reflect on why so many creative people seem to destroy themselves with booze and drugs. Then Hollywood decided to to turn it into a goddamn sideshow. Now every time I hear the name "Whitney Houston" I cringe.

The title of this brief rant was blatantly ripped off borrowed from this post by the ever snarky Tam.

Things That Make You Say, HMMMM...

A group of animal rights activists calling themselves SHARK, intended to launch a drone to monitor a pigeon shoot at Broxton Bridge Plantation. When the sponsors of the shoot failed to stop the activists the shoot was cancelled. The Sharks launched the drone anyways and it was shot down.

Article here

H/T to Global Guerillas

The Road to Hell.

A recent posting at We The Armed explains some of the benefits of domestic drones from a law enforcement point of view.

There have been times when having an airborne FLIR system would have been very helpful. We can call the highway patrol, but sometimes their aircraft are down. We've chased burglars when it would have been very useful and we've had elderly walk away from their residence, especially in winter time, when that would have helped also.

Nothing but the purest of intentions. Right?

A few people still remember what good intentions are the paving stones for.

I'm sure the US Government had good intentions when it demanded Google build a backdoor to its Gmail accounts. The real world result was Chinese hackers breaking in and using Gmail to gather intelligence. I'm sure the restrictions on Sudafed are done with the purest of intentions, too. The real world results are an estimated $1.5 billion in higher costs to health insurance companies and more demands on the time of primary care physicians who are already in short supply.

So, next time you have to wait an extra hour to to see a doctor or your medical insurance premiums go up again, you can thank the pure as driven snow intentions of the bureaucracy. Don't expect the bureaucrats to care -- in the strange fantasy land that statists inhabit only the good intentions matter. Any bad result is just used as an excuse to lay down even more paving stones.

How will the domestic use of unmanned drones play out? I don't know -- I am an observer, not a prophet. My observation of history and the natural tendency of government power to increase prompts me to believe it will not work out in a manner that increases individual liberty.

Catholic Church and Obama Care

A young girl taking a walk in the winter cold spies a freezing rattlesnake at the side of the road. She takes pity on the poor reptile and takes it home with her so it can warm up. After it recovers, it bites her.

As she is dying she ask the snake, "Why?"

The snake replies, "You knew what I was when you took me in."

In the recent brouhaha over the battle between the Catholic Church and Obamacare remember that Catholic Charities, the Society of St. Vincent DePaul, and the Catholic Health Association all supported the legislation. This letter (PDF) to members of Congress on the letterhead of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops urges passage of the bill and calls health care "a basic human right".

Now that the new law is being implemented, the Catholic Church is upset to discover government money has strings attached. Nevertheless, behind the curtain it is still perfectly happy to have that same government take money from me and transfer it to them. Well, I have news for Papa Ratzi: Being a socialist buttwipe doesn't get you the the moral high ground. If the Catholic Church wants to play whore to the state then it has no complaint when John Bureaucrat wants to stick his dick in.

The current objections sounds more like sour grapes than any principled opposition. They are perfectly happy to have the government force me to support their hospitals but get all self-righteous when that government tells them how they have to spend some of the swag. Here's a thought: Instead of getting all pissy about birth-control and abortion, how about they start by respecting, "Thou shalt not steal."

If the Catholic Church really wants to do something useful then let them oppose the whole concept of tax supported health care. Until then they are just another mouth hanging around the cannibal pot.

Committees of Vigilance in Detroit?

The Daily reports on 911 IS A JOKE.

The people of Detroit are taking no prisoners.

Justifiable homicide in the city shot up 79 percent in 2011 from the previous year, as citizens in the long-suffering city armed themselves and took matters into their own hands. The local rate of self-defense killings now stands 2,200 percent above the national average. Residents, unable to rely on a dwindling police force to keep them safe, are fighting back against the criminal scourge on their own. And they’re offering no apologies.

Read the rest here.

Like it or not, violence is a normal human function intimately linked to survival. Like any such natural behavior, the expression of it can be trained but it cannot eliminated without a substantial cost. Whenever a basic human function is repressed, behavioral distortions result.

Every human being has a natural desire to defend itself. By denying the victims of crime a legitmate outlet to that desire, the state creates behavioral distortions. One of these is to form groups (mobs) and track down a malefactor after the fact. In a civilized society where self defense is recognized and robustly supported we get a few dead offenders. Take away that and the results will be vigilantism. We may be seeing the beginning of that in Detroit.

Thoughts on the Republican Primary

So far it looks like Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee for President. He doesn't seem like a good choice for a party that wants to present a conservative face but that doesn't seem to matter as long as he is "electable." Who is deciding this a priori electablilty is somewhat vague.

OK, it is true that compared to Obama, Romney is a "conservative" but the same can be said of a lot of politicians not normally considered as such. A good example is: Compared to Obama, Hillary Clinton is a "conservative". That would be a good argument to vote for Hillary? Gods! I hope not.

The lesser of the evils argument has never been compelling to me.

One observer said it didn't matter who the Republicans run since Obama was elected because of the anti-Bush vote and the Republican candidate will elected because of the anti-Obama vote. I have to admit that I find it amusing that the best the Republicans can come up with is Not Obama. Ao, after all the apologetics (pun intended) are through, the campaign boils down to this.

My opponent:

1. Has even fewer principles and less integrity than me.
2. Is even more two-faced than me.
3. Is more delusional and narcissistic than me.
4. Will tell even bigger lies than me.
5. Will eat you first.