Sometimes, Misinformation Is Worse Than No Information

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Some things I have learned to simply accept, if not with good humor, then at least without comment. As an attorney, I often receive (unsolicited) the glossy “brag books” in which a bunch of Seattle and Bellevue attorneys call themselves “Super Lawyers”, or publications like this one, intended to create confidence that if you have the negligence/personal injury/product liability case in which you don’t have confidence to properly handle yourself, referral to their firm would be a great thing for your client.

These things usually clutter up my mailbox, and I confess to rarely giving them a second look, but in this case, I did…for obvious reasons. And I found myself very angry because of it.

For better or worse, members of my tribe are viewed as authorities on the subjects we speak on. It’s one of the reasons I try to make damn sure I know what I’m talking about before I attempt to “speak with authority” on any matter. In the case of this article, I’m not sure if it was a lapse in judgement, someone else wrote the piece, or if the author was just careless, but the assertion that all of the recent mass shootings all involved automatic weapons is false, largely because of existing infringements that make it very difficult, expensive, and time-consuming for law-abiding citizens to obtain automatic weapons.  (As we all know, criminals don’t care.)

It only took me 15 minutes with a search engine to confirm what I already knew: NONE of the named shootings were perpetrated with automatic weapons. All involved semi-automatic weapons, and some also included other firearms, such as a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver, and a Remington shotgun. (links to news stories below)

Cafe Racer

Sikh Temple

Tucson

Aurora

Newtown

Forza Coffee… (In fact, the shootings at Forza Coffee were done with a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver.  The shooter didn’t have even a semi-automatic until he stole one of his victims’ Glock 17, according to this article)

Advocating to restrict, infringe, or eliminate a right is a serious business. This is more serious when that right is Constitutionally protected, as that protection is in the form of a guarantee of a right, because that guarantee is a recognition of the fact that the right exists independent of any action of government. Explained differently, this means that the right is not a privilege, which government may curtail, limit, or eliminate at its pleasure.

Advocating to infringe or restrict that right becomes all the more egregious when the text of the guarantee contains a prohibition on any infringement by government. This offense is compounded when incorrect “facts” are relied upon in the argument that suggests that “something must be done”.

Also conveniently omitted from the piece is the fact that gun control laws would have done little, if anything, to prevent these shootings.  And considering the relatively low number of deaths due to firearms in this country when compared to other causes, the burden for making the case becomes harder, not easier, when you talk about increasing government’s infringement on the right to keep and bear arms.  Frankly, the only way any such discussion should be entertained is through the only process by which such measures can be legitimately obtained: AMENDMENT.  And if such a proposal should be seriously made, I would welcome the discussion about the distinction between rights and privileges, and would no doubt be entertained and annoyed at the inevitable suggestion that man’s rights should be subject to the approval of government, as I, and others like me would labor ceaselessly to ensure that all who are paying attention are brought face-to-face with the stark realization of what such an idea means to the relationship between government and citizens, and the abandonment of the fundamental ideas that are the basis of this nation and its organic law.

If it was a mistake, it should be admitted as such.  If it was deliberate, then it is dishonest, and not worthy of the man who made the statement or the profession the author and I both share.

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On President “Present”‘s Dead Baby Fetish

I was going to write about this too, but my friend Sam Janney, one of the brilliant PolitiChicks, already took him to task.

I don’t know why so many American women want to be Julia, and don’t see Klanned Murderhood for the intersection of Government and Medical malfeasance that it is.

Go now, and read it.

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The Secret Sits…

“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.” —Albert Einstein

“The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.” —Winston Churchill

“What you perceive, your observations, feelings, interpretations, are all your truth.  Your truth is important.  Yet it is not The Truth.” —Linda Elinor

“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of the truth.” —Albert Einstein.

The events of the last two weeks have again allowed a harsh and difficult to believe truth to come into cuttingly sharp focus for anyone willing to see it: Our government isn’t serious about defeating terrorism.

I can hear you, gentle reader, stammering a “B-b-b-but it felt pretty serious when the TSA was fondling my undercarriage before the flight to Albuquerque last week!” or “They shut down an entire city in a search for one man last week!”  Both are true, but both show the distinction that goes unnoticed most of the time.  The government will combat terrorism, it just isn’t serious about defeating it.  It has no problem creating a brand new agency (and then allowing it to unionize), in part to probe the willingness of Americans to endure indignities, and warrantless searches of their person in the name of safety, but in truth, the execution of this plan has been to take a finely tuned supercar, and giving it to a little old lady who has no idea how to use a clutch.   It isn’t the little old lady’s fault; the person buying the car did it deliberately, knowing that if the American public saw that supercar parked out in front, they would buy into the idea that they were getting the best.

With the revelations that the FBI was made to remove Islam from its training materials, and the longstanding knowledge people of a certain religious persuasion aren’t searched in the same manner as the rest of the flying public, coupled with the leaking of memos showing that the DHS is perfectly ok with profiling Americans who rightfully mistrust government, while refusing to profile those who have the same common trait as those who commit acts of terrorism all over the world, the “secret” that seems to evade so many points to itself.

While our press struggles, trying to determine the motivation for Speedbump and Flashbang, and other acts of terrorism (government dare not speak its name),  while our government spins and tries to find the “right” explanation for not acting on the warnings it received, and the warning signs that it no longer permits itself to see, the credibility of both is in flames.

Until the government and the media are ready to see Islam as the same caliber of threat that both deeply desire the Tea Party and other “right-wing fanatics” to be, this madness will continue.  American children will continue to die because of political correctness, and freedom for law-abiding Americans will be reduced…atrophied so that the largest threat can thrive, unmolested by a scrutiny that has been purposely misdirected in the service of those who dislike freedom and distrust liberty.

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If Our Legislators Were Consistent…

…and applied their two favorite standards for abrogation of Consitutional Guarantees (“…if it saves just one life” and “for the chilllllldren!”) then we could expect “Islam Control” Bills to be popping up like daisies in both the House and the Senate by the end of next week.

I won’t be holding my breath.  I think they are going to be desperately attempting to save their immigration “reform” measures.

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A Time To Weep, And A Time To Mourn

So I just made the effort to watch the President’s speech at Boston Cathedral today.  I made it just shy of 13 minutes before disgust and impatience got the best of me and I switched to a transcript.

He spoke a lot of words, but I couldn’t find any emotion.  There was the pale assertion that we all claim Boston, the sadly predictable section about himself, Michelle, and himself, a litany of shout outs, the scripture mcnuggets, and glittering empty rhetoric about the spirit of Boston and America, with some brief mentions in the middle for each of the dead, and the collectively wounded, but there was no emotion.  If anything, his petulant rage he displayed yesterday would have been preferable, and given his “they picked the wrong city” talk, it at least wouldn’t have been as out-of-place as the mechanical delivery that he gave instead.

I think of one of the most notable speeches given in remembrance of the dead, The Gettysburg Address, and the brevity of it.  Or the powerful and brief letter penned by Lincoln to Mrs. Bixby. I searched and watched Reagan’s Challenger Speech, and Bush’s speech on the evening of 9-11.  Both a little over 4 minutes.  Neither one contained a shout out.  Neither one injected themselves.  Bush’s was a bit more defiant, but that can be understood under the circumstances.  But the most startling contrast, other than a measure of sympathy that Obama couldn’t imitate, was the fact that HE spoke in a church, when Reagan and Bush spoke from the Oval Office.  Why was this startling?  Because even Jesus could find real emotion, and the shortest verse in the Bible (Jesus wept.) when he came to the graveside of his friend, Lazarus.

Even when he came into God’s house, Obama couldn’t follow the example of his son.

Transcript here, for those who tire of a wooden delivery, and insufferable cadence.

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Hysteria and the Mythic Safety of Legal Bubble Wrap

With the news stories starting to filter out about the bombs used in Boston on Monday, specifically bombs made from pressure cookers filled with nails and ball bearings, it seems like a good time to call attention to a particularly salient point:  The government’s ability to make you “safe” is limited.  

Most conservatives know this, if only because they more readily understand that there are consequences in life, and they have never bought into the idea that yet another law being passed in the wake of a horrific, already illegal act will somehow be the magic solution, like a government-issued coat of bubble wrap to prevent you from suffering any harm.  After all, the idea that making something that is already illegal more illegal is absurd on its face.  And yet we have a whole class of people who decide whenever a shooter goes into a psychopath’s hunting preserve gun-free zone, where they know they will meet no immediate resistance and kills people, that the answer is to criminalize lawful activity, i.e. pass another law, in the vain hope that the crazy person/deliberate murderer who sets out to do mayhem will somehow be dissuaded by the fact that government has determined that owning or possessing a firearm should be illegal.  The mere fact that these events occur in psychopath’s hunting preserves gun-free zones should serve as blatant testimony to that flawed logic.

Yesterday’s tragic bombing proves that:

(1)  The police cannot keep you safe, and surrendering your right to a firearm, unless you are a law enforcement officer will not make you safer; and

(2)  If someone is determined to kill and maim, it can be done effectively with any number of items that are not guns.

With regard to the first, we have news stories that have noted a sizable police presence at the finish line, including bomb sniffing dogs.  While Steny Hoyer,(D)imwit would like to pretend that the carnage was a direct result a very small cut in the rate of growth of government spending of money it doesn’t have, and Bwarney Fwanks would argue that this is why we peasants have render even more unto Caesar, the truth is that at some point, it becomes a zero sum game.  Security can be tightened even more, until the words “freedom” and “liberty” become just a cruel joke, and the people who would do these things win, just like they did when we were blessed with the TSA farce for domestic air travel.  And in many cases, “security” is achieved through greater surveillance.  Cameras don’t do much to prevent such acts; they are merely the 21st Century equivalent of law enforcement standing over your cooling body, writing their report.  With regard to the second, a lot more people were made casualties yesterday than in any recent mass shooting, and yet I don’t hear Diane Feinstein or Joe Biden talking into the nearest open mic about background checks to buy pressure cookers, or state politicians talking about registering them.  I don’t hear the hand-wringing entreaties to limit the number of ball bearings or nails that can be purchased at any given time, or having to justify the “NEED” for purchasing any of these things.

“Well, of course not.  Your example is ridiculous.” I can hear you saying.  But is it?  No matter how much the Brady campaign winces when I say it, gun ownership isn’t just legal, it is Constitutionally protected.  I can’t say the same for owning a pressure cooker, nails, or ball bearings.  If the government chose to, it simply doesn’t have the same burden to overcome if it chooses to regulate these things.  And considering how many people were hospitalized yesterday, the argument cannot be made that you are safer banning guns than you are banning pressure cookers, ball bearings, and nails. 

Some perils simply cannot be avoided.  There just isn’t enough bubble wrap in the world for nanny government to make you safe.  Some can be avoided, or mitigated, but government isn’t aways going to be able to make that happen.  And neither are you if you buy into the myth that more laws and fewer freedoms will make you safer.

*****UPDATED*****NOW WITH EVEN MORE MEDIA MALPRACTICE!****

CNN is reporting that pressure cooker bombs are a “right-wing signature”, doesn’t give any substantiation for their slanderous claim.

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How Do You Top FAIL! Level: EPIC? If You’re Melissa Harris-Perry, You Double-Down.

“This isn’t about me wanting to take your kids, and this isn’t even about whether children are property,” she said. “This is about whether we as a society, expressing our collective will through our public institutions, including our government, have a right to impinge on individual freedoms in order to advance a common good. And that is exactly the fight that we have been having for a couple hundred years.”

A couple hundred years? I didn’t think that the Communist Manifesto was quite that old. Still it does have a great deal of staying power for a failed ideal that continues to fail every time it is tried. I think the real “fight we’ve been having” is between enlightened self-interest and the perpetual nature of humanity’s hubris in believing that “we are the ones we have waited for” to finally make an imposed mediocrity and equally miserable outcome create a successful and vibrant society, when no one else has managed to.

“We’ve always had kind of a private notion of children. Your kid is yours, and your responsibility,” she says in the ad. “We haven’t had a very collective notion of ‘These are our children.’ So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that ‘kids belong to their parents’ or ‘kids belong to their families,’ and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”

Given that these words tumbled from the same lips that supported abortion because of the “expense of having children”, I can only see it as more of the “What is mine is mine, and what is yours is also mine, because I want it” mindset that leftists cannot dispossess themselves of.

Let me make this starkly clear, “Professor”:

Your “collective rights” do not trump my RIGHTS. My RIGHTS are not government’s to grant, or withdraw. Government can only guarantee them, or jealously covet them.

As for my children belonging to your “community”?

Good luck with that.

We didn’t abort our children, and would have never considered that, even if we had known about the Asperger’s/Autism because we have always correctly regarded them as people and gifts from God. Your short-sightedness does not make my children a commodity to be shared “for the good of the tribe”.

Just because your precious collective cannot help themselves and continues to kill your own off at a genocidal pace does not give you the right to indoctrinate MY children with your anti-life agenda.

Enjoy extinction, you silly cow. You sowed it. Now reap it.

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After-Action Report: Skyfall

***SPOILER ALERT*** DO NOT READ IF YOU WANT THE ENTIRE MOVIE TO BE A SURPRISE***

Daniel Craig has been a controversial James Bond.  Some of that controversy focuses on the physical. “He’s the only blond Bond.”  Some of it focuses on the trivial.  “He isn’t as suave or comical as his predecessors.”  And some are turned off by his brutality, which is unmistakably part and parcel of this latest incarnation.  Regardless of whether you love him or hate him, one fact is unescapable: He isn’t your father’s James Bond.  And that’s ok, because none of us live in our father’s world.

The earlier James Bond movies were like cartoons for adults, which we could accept on some level because the world of the Cold War was a world with rules and with clearly delineated players.  Being suave and sophisticated, being the essence of British gentility while in the middle of maintaining that uneasy peace, and bringing to heel those who would overthrow it for chaos was believable to us in the audience because, whether we wanted to believe it or not, the idea of mutually assured destruction that was the backbone that kept the Cold War from turning hot had become a part of our collective subconscious.

Even after the end of the Cold War, it was a front that this guardian of the West could maintain on the silver screen, even if by the time of Pierce Brosnan’s last outing as Bond, we allowed him to wink at us and himself through the entire movie solely because he made it fun.  But with the opening of Casino Royale, the uncertain realities of our world today came into the world of James Bond.  This new dawn brought a harsh new reality to us in a venue where we had previously gone to escape it, and reintroduced us to the concept that has often been attributed to George Orwell “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”  With Casino Royale, the Bond franchise reminded us that a rougher world required a rougher man, albeit one who could still bring the charm and sophistication when the occasion allowed.

Skyfall opens with a frantic effort by Bond and another field agent to retrieve a list of NATO agents that are embedded in terrorist organizations around the world.  It is a list that should not even exist, and M is desperate to have it back.  Desperate because it threatens the lives of the brave men of our world who try to keep chaos at bay for the benefit of civilization, and because the reputation of her agency is at stake.  With everything on the line, Bond suffers a workplace accident, and the list is lost.

In the wake of this intelligence catastrophe, M is instructed to assist in the transition of her agency to whomever the bureaucratic gods would replace her with, and she is told that it will be a retirement with honor, befitting someone of her status and achievement.  On the way back from this meeting, she is forced to witness as an unknown tormentor admonishes her to “Think On Your Sins” before very visibly and cruelly blowing her office up, killing several agents and sending several more to the hospital in the process.  Bond, who was enjoying his “retirement”, witnesses the aftermath on a television in a bar on a beach, and realizes that it is time to go back because his country and M both need him.

When he finally comes face-to-face with the villain, he sees what he could have become himself: a former operative, left for dead for the good of the service, who became stateless, and an agent of the chaos that he was employed to keep at bay.  Had the villain, superbly played by Javier Bardem, confined himself to chaos and not focused on revenge against M, he wouldn’t have been anywhere near as interesting, or as threatening, because despite his belief in his superiority to Bond, he never would have seen Bond coming.

I found the movie fascinating because of the truths it tells.  “Think On Your Sins” to an old spymaster isn’t much of an admonition.  Spymasters, and the spies they run, do not have the luxury of believing in sin.  For them there is only cold calculus, the trade in human lives that they and their pawns make in order to achieve their objectives, or those of their masters.  But some pawns understand better than others what rough men must do, and why they are expendable, and they are the same ones who will do it.  Not because they believe it glamorous.  Not because they have an ego to stroke.  Not for fortune or fame, but because they’ve walked too long in the alternative, and would willingly die to keep that from taking over everything.  And it is that alternative that M brings into sharp focus for her civilian overseers at a public hearing to which she had been summoned to take her lumps.

Today I’ve repeatedly heard how irrelevant my department has become. “Why do we need agents, the Double-0 section? Isn’t it all antiquated?” Well, I suppose I see a different world than you do, and the truth is that what I see frightens me. I’m frightened because our enemies are no longer known to us. They do not exist on a map. They’re not nations, they’re individuals. And look around you. Who do you fear? Can you see a face, a uniform, a flag? No! Our world is not more transparent now, it’s more opaque! It’s in the shadows. That’s where we must do battle. So before you declare us irrelevant, ask yourselves, how safe do you feel? Just one more thing to say, my late husband was a great lover of poetry, and… I suppose some of it sunk in, despite my best intentions. And here today, I remember this, I believe, from Tennyson: “We are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are. One equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will. To strive, to seek, to find, AND NOT TO YIELD.”

This movie is the best of the three Daniel Craig Bond movies because of the incredible insights it reveals plainly and starkly.  Bond will never love M, a fact made plain during a psych evaluation in the film, but he knows that she is a hard woman because she has had a hard task her entire career, and he is fiercely loyal to her because he know the things they do are worth doing, even if those they protect do not understand and question what they do, and the manner in which they do it.   It is why even though endings come, the institutions endure.  It is why Bond could grow up, and still tell a story worth seeing…a story that edifies while entertaining.

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The New Math

Conscious efforts to reduce the native population (through systematic abortion for convenience + hubristic junk science creating the impression that the hoi poli are killing the planet)

+

“gun control” that won’t do a thing to stop bad actors but WILL make it difficult or next to impossible for the average citizen to be legally armed

= new aristocracy with a population just big enough to serve but never big enough to be a threat.

Helen Keller could see this, and yet apparently we have rocket surgeons in the US Senate who can’t…or can they?

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Friday Night Sleep Tight Thoughts: Sticky Fingers Edition

What do you get for the kleptocratic statist who has everything?

Your children.

MSNBC host and whackjob (BIRM) Melissa Harris-Perry wants you to know that we don’t spend enough on education because we just don’t realize that our children belong to everyone.

http://www.mrctv.org/videos/shorter-melissa-harris-perry-all-your-kids-are-belong-us

Of course, when you are aligned with a mindset that thinks it acceptable to kill your own children, it was probably inevitable to look upon other people’s kids as a resource for redistribution.  Afterall, it’s hard work maintaining a culture of filth, stupidity, and subservience when those most in favor of it have fewer children than those who oppose it.  And the idea that we need to pay even more to a system that already is failing and giving us dumb kids is precious.  But than, government is the only place where incompetence, illogical, and failure is rewarded.  The saddest part of this is that the majority of the people on the receiving end of this pitch are the product of …public schools, and will likely accept the opinions of the “experts” on this matter.  All it typically takes is saying that “IT’S FOR THE CHHHHIIIIIIIILLDREN!!!111!!!”

Next, who can forget that classic Obama knee-slapper “I do think that at a certain point, you’ve made enough money.”?

Well, it was probably only a matter of time before our great father Obama would let us know that “At some point, you’ve saved enough money.” too.  And thankfully, under his watch, government is right there to tell us when that is.

From The Hill:

President Obama’s budget, to be released next week, will limit how much wealthy individuals – like Mitt Romney – can keep in IRAs and other retirement accounts.

And remember, comrade, the government has NEVER arbitrarily changed the definition of “wealthy” when there was money to be confiscated taxed.  Like when the 16th Amendment was passed to tax only “the wealthy”.

The proposal would save around $9 billion over a decade, a senior administration official said, while also bringing more fairness to the tax code.

The magic of government accounting…that fantastic world where taking someone else’s earnings, levying a not-insignificant handling charge, then distributing it to some one who didn’t earn it, or spending it on such profound endeavors as alcoholism rates among Chinese hookers, and federally funded sex-education classes for Kindergarteners is “bringing fairness to the tax code”. It should go without saying that what is being “saved” is the government’s ability to buy votes with someone else’s money.

The senior administration official said that wealthy taxpayers can currently “accumulate many millions of dollars in these accounts, substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving.”

Ahh, yes. That new benchmark of “fairness”, an arbitrary determination of the OWNER’S “needs”, decided entirely by a government that refuses to live within our means…meaning that it is really talking about ITS needs. (Those lavish vacations and hookers and blow for the Secret Service don’t come cheap, doncha know) While this same mantra has met with limited success among people who refuse take responsibility for their own safety, and don’t want YOU to either, I think it’s safe to say that government’s determination of “need” in this matter will meet with even less success than the drumbeat about not “needing” a Sig or a Glock or an AR for hunting.

Under the plan, a taxpayer’s tax-preferred retirement account, like an IRA, could not finance more than $205,000 per year of retirement – or right around $3 million this year.

I can remember when $250,000 a year was the government’s benchmark for “rich”. Can you?

Romney, Obama’s 2012 opponent, had an IRA several to many times that amount, leading to questions about how the former Massachusetts governor was able to squirrel away so much money in that sort of retirement account.

The problem is not everyone donates money to the President like the heads of Solyndra, Sun Power, and other “green energy” graft schemes. Sometimes, they actually earn it through hard work. And this is why this Administration is clueless about finances. Because it NEVER occurs to them that while you might be limited in annual contributions to IRAs, not all IRAs are simply glorified bank accounts. Some are managed investments, that take risks with the money in order to get increased returns. But again, unless you made your fortune from government or your association with it, all these people see is money that they want.

And for your last thought…

I was eating lunch today and reading about another gun manufacturer that made the decision to leave one of the states that has gone full retard after Sandy Hook and passed blatantly unconstitutional gun “control” laws.  As this had been going on for a few weeks now, I have had a certain measure of amusement in watching this, but then I thought “If I were totalitarian narcissist with delusions of adequacy who chaffed at the restraints that the Constitution necessarily placed on me, and I might want to resort to a desperate ultra vires act against an industry that could be a threat to me realizing my aspirations of power, would I want to have to “seize” facilities scattered across states in all regions of the country, or would I want to only have to concentrate on one region?

Suddenly, it was less amusing than it had been a few minutes before.

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