Why it Failed

Thursday 18 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

With the tears of liberals across the land flowing freely due to the smackdown so-called “common sense” gun control legislation received yesterday after the insisted upon “national conversation” concerning gun violence in the wake of the Newtown massacre, many, at least those who aren’t knee jerkingly blaming it on political cowardice or the NRA’s iron grip on the DC establishment, are wondering how an emotional appeal to minimizing violence failed so miserably. Senator Mike Lee in USA Today:

The Toomey-Manchin amendment admirably attempted to carve out certain protections for gun owners, but today’s carve-outs are tomorrow’s loopholes. The current “gun show loophole” was itself once considered a legitimate carve-out that protected certain private sales.

The amendment also took an incremental step toward universal background checks, which, as a Justice Department memo written earlier this year suggested, are effective only when coupled with a national registration system. Admittedly, the Toomey-Manchin plan prohibited a national registry. Yet it required a massive expansion of gun ownership data collected by federally licensed dealers to which the government has access.

After all, you cannot track all gun sales without tracking all gun owners. But the government has no business monitoring constitutionally protected activity, like gun ownership, any more than it has any business tracking what books Americans read or how often they attend church.

Gun-control advocates point to polls that show support for expanding background checks. But members of Congress do not get to vote on broad poll questions. They have to vote on specific legislation. If we are trying to minimize the burden on law-abiding gun owners while taking significant steps to prevent the next Sandy Hook, the Toomey-Manchin amendment, and the others that would have limited Second Amendment rights, failed both elements of that test. And that is why they failed to pass the Senate.

Most liberals won’t take any kind of legitimate intellectual explanation on why the bill failed at face value, but when people who agreed with an emotional approach to controlling gun crime it’s hard to expect that any kind of explanation would suffice because one can’t use reason to get someone to abandon an opinion they didn’t arrive at using reason.

Comments Off on Why it Failed  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-04-18  ::  madlibertarianguy

National Conversation

Wednesday 17 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

Now that we have had that “national conversation” about gun control that was demanded by the left in wake of the Newtown shooting, and we have had a vote in Congress that smacked it down handily, can you shut the fuck up now? The Gray Lady:

A wrenching national search for solutions to the violence that left 20 children dead in Newtown, Conn., in December all but ended Wednesday after the Senate defeated several gun-related measures.

In rapid succession, a bipartisan compromise to expand background checks for would-be gun purchasers, a ban on assault weapons and a ban on high-capacity gun magazines all failed to get the 60 votes needed under an agreement both parties had reached to consider the amendments.

We have had the conversation, and the left has lost on the merits. The bills and amendments proposed would have done nothing to prevent Newtown, and it seems that Congress was unwilling to legislate via emotional appeal. Good for Congress.

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Sick

Wednesday 17 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

David Sirota is a sick fuck.

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Bloody Shirts

Wednesday 17 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

But waving the bloody shirts of dead children is the way of the statist. They can only appeal to emotion, because they haven’t an intellectual base on which to stand. It is their way.

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Other Mothers’ Sons

Wednesday 17 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

This type of shit is only supposed to happen to other mothers’ sons. The Wall Street Journal:

I am a feminist. I have marched at the barricades, subscribed to Ms. magazine, and knocked on many a door in support of progressive candidates committed to women’s rights. Until a month ago, I would have expressed unqualified support for Title IX and for the Violence Against Women Act.

But that was before my son, a senior at a small liberal-arts college in New England, was charged—by an ex-girlfriend—with alleged acts of “nonconsensual sex” that supposedly occurred during the course of their relationship a few years earlier.

What followed was a nightmare—a fall through Alice’s looking-glass into a world that I could not possibly have believed existed, least of all behind the ivy-covered walls thought to protect an ostensible dedication to enlightenment and intellectual betterment.

[. . .]

I fear that in the current climate the goal of “women’s rights,” with the compliance of politically motivated government policy and the tacit complicity of college administrators, runs the risk of grounding our most cherished institutions in a veritable snake pit of injustice—not unlike the very injustices the movement itself has for so long sought to correct. Unbridled feminist orthodoxy is no more the answer than are attitudes and policies that victimize the victim.

Never forget, Judith Grossman, that it was you who created this world. Creating law that makes privileged groups does not bring equality under the law any closer.

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The Liberal Media

Tuesday 16 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

The media shows their political biases all of the time. But the most egregious instances of letting the proverbial mask slip are when stories come along which shine a light on their political biases; and when stories that would inevitably force them to question their deepest political beliefs in front of a national audience, they simply cover them up. Glenn Harlan Reynolds at USA Today:

Yes. So why wasn’t [the Gosnell story of murdering live born babies under the guise of abortion] news? Pro-choice writer Megan McArdle of The Daily Beast notes that it’s about fear of where the story would go, and what it would require writers to confront: “Gosnell is accused of grisly crimes that I didn’t want to think about. … I understand why my readers suspect me, and other pro-choice mainstream journalists, of being selective — of not wanting to cover the story because it showcased the ugliest possibilities of abortion rights. The truth is that most of us tend to be less interested in sick-making stories — if the sick-making was done by ‘our side.’ ”

It was fine to dwell at length on the Newtown, Conn., shootings, because those could be blamed on the evil NRA. But writing about these dead innocents might be a political liability instead of a political asset. It might have been awkward for President Obama.

The media has an agenda, and it has nothing to do with being the fourth estate. Willfully ignoring a newsworthy story because it might reflect badly on an institution one believes to be right is not only intellectually dishonest, it’s cowardly. Do your jobs or get the fuck out. What Gosnell has done is horrifying. If, as a journalist, you can’t admit the monstrosity of his crimes and still defend abortion as a practice with intellectual integrity, perhaps you ought to be questioning abortion as a practice, not willfully hiding news in the closet.

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No Way

Tuesday 16 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

There is just no way that people would find a way to circumvent Heir Bloomberg and his larger than 16 oz soda ban in a way such that not only do they get around his ridiculously stupid large soda ban, but in such a way that exacerbates the reason he supposedly instituted such a ban. The Daily Mail:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has more than just a legal fight against his soda ban now because a new study reports that Americans tend to drink even more soda when they are forced to buy smaller sizes.

The thinking behind the proposed ban in New York asserts that by limiting the size of fountain soda cups, people will drink less of the sugary substances, and maintain a healthier lifestyle in doing so.

A new study published by the Public Library of Science refutes that, however, saying that by restrictions on large servings caused consumers to buy more of the smaller options.

I’ve long argued that Bloomberg’s ban on large sodas has nothing to do with the health of the residents and visitors of New York City, but to force people to buy more, smaller sized drinks as a means to extort more tax revenue.

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Only Government

Monday 15 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

People often wonder why I distrust the government. “The government is us” they will say. But I say bullshit. The most horrid atrocities ever committed in the history of humanity have been perpetrated by government. Only government is capable the mass disruption of our natural rights and performing atrocities on a mass scale. And our government is currently engaging in these types of atrocities, and doing so “in my name.”

I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way. As it was thrust in, it made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone.

I am still being force-fed. Two times a day they tie me to a chair in my cell. My arms, legs and head are strapped down. I never know when they will come. Sometimes they come during the night, as late as 11 p.m., when I’m sleeping.

There are so many of us on hunger strike now that there aren’t enough qualified medical staff members to carry out the force-feedings; nothing is happening at regular intervals. They are feeding people around the clock just to keep up.

During one force-feeding the nurse pushed the tube about 18 inches into my stomach, hurting me more than usual, because she was doing things so hastily. I called the interpreter to ask the doctor if the procedure was being done correctly or not.

It was so painful that I begged them to stop feeding me. The nurse refused to stop feeding me. As they were finishing, some of the “food” spilled on my clothes. I asked them to change my clothes, but the guard refused to allow me to hold on to this last shred of my dignity.

When they come to force me into the chair, if I refuse to be tied up, they call the E.R.F. team. So I have a choice. Either I can exercise my right to protest my detention, and be beaten up, or I can submit to painful force-feeding.

And Obama has claimed the power to unlawfully detain people, if not kill them via murder drones, without charge or trial not only those who are, rightly or not, suspected of anything they can justify calling terrorism (which is virtually anything), but also to American citizens. Trusting a government that has claimed such powers is the delusion, not having distrust in an institution that desires and dubiously claims that kind of power over others.

Comments Off on Only Government  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-04-15  ::  madlibertarianguy

Interest

Monday 15 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

Kevin D Williamson concerning the cost of the interest racked up via government debt if Obama’s budget were to pass:

If enacted, Barack Obama’s latest budget would mean that in just ten years, interest payments alone on the national debt would begin pushing the trillion-dollar mark: $763 billion a year by 2023. That may be a rosy estimate: It assumes that interest rates, currently near historic lows, do not rise a great deal over the next ten years as the Treasury continues to pile up new debt. If interest rates do climb a bit higher — not even to their historical average, but higher than they have been of late — then those interest payments easily could be more than $1 trillion a year.

But let’s stay with that $763 billion a year for now. How much money is that? It is more money than the federal government spent on anything in 2011: The largest single spending item in 2011, Social Security, amounted to only $725 billion. Department of Defense spending was only (only!) $700 billion, and all nondefense discretionary spending combined amounted to only $646 billion. If you believe the welfare state is too expensive now, or that we spend too much money on the military, consider that President Obama proposes to spend more than that merely making interest payments on all the debt his budget would help pile up. How much debt? How about $8.5 trillion in new debt over the next decade, for a total of more than $25 trillion in national debt. At 6 percent interest, it would cost us $1.5 trillion a year to service that debt: about the size of President Clinton’s entire proposed budget for 1995.

Houston, we have a problem. I’m sure that my grandchildren who won’t be born for another 2 decades or so will greatly appreciate having vast portions of their paycheck stolen so that Obama can help government employees live fat now. And about Obama’s proposed budget: fuck you, cut spending.

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Economic Catastrophe

Friday 12 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

Great! All the people of the world need to lose weight and avoid the diabeetus is to face economic catastrophe and crippling poverty. Medical Daily:

A country that rides out a gloomy economy together can lose weight together. At least, that’s what a new population-based study in Cuba shows. During the 1990s, Cuba experienced a massive economic crisis, which in turn, suprisingly, fueled massive drops in death associated with diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

I suppose that living in squalor and not being able to afford food would help one to lose weight.

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