A "surly curmudgeon[], suspicious and lacking in altruism." (Robert A. Heinlein)
Kurt Schlichter is on fire.
Hillary is not even a competent liar
You know, the Hillary Body Double theory is pretty hilarious, but admit it – who would actually be surprised if it turns out she has a body double? Secretly, even the liberals are thinking to themselves, “You know, I can totally see that.”
Read, as they say, the whole thing.
Yesterday, a fucking idiot claiming to be a journalist posted this on Twitter:
He has since deleted it, because he was getting clobbered by people who know better. This will stay here as a reminder of his idiocy.
I’ve had the same work email address for over 22 years.
This morning’s mailbag included 11 items of actual legitimate communication, and 67 items of spam/malware. By the end of the day, there will be tens of good emails and hundreds of spam and malware emails.
The people who write SpamAssassin should be hanged for false advertising. So should the people who write anti-virus software.
God, I wish I could retire. It gets so old spending half my time tossing all this crap.
Cato the Elder would approve.
There cannot possibly be a person out there who truly believes that a simple declaration of a space as a gun free zone prevents people from bringing guns into it. If you do, you are living in a dream world. If you do and you are a politician, you need to be directed to the nearest political exit and never be allowed to hold public office again.
We have yet to see a situation in which an armed citizen, armed only for his or her defense, has suddenly gone mad and started mowing people down. Indeed, we’ve seen plenty of cases where armed citizens have stopped a criminal act cold. Sadly, local media rarely cover the latter, or downplay the armed citizen’s involvement, because “white-hat” armed citizens don’t fit their progressive narrative.
But we’ve seen plenty of cases where lone gunmen — typically, initially blamed on the right wing (usually the NRA), but almost invariably turning out to be somehow associated with the left, or the radical Islamic terror network (but I repeat myself) — have opened fire in gun-free zones where no law-abiding citizen was able to carry a weapon.
This madness must stop. The 2nd Amendment exists for a reason. But the gun-grabbers of the world do not want American citizens (or any citizens, for that matter) to be able to protect ourselves, because they are a wholly-owned subsidiary of those who believe that we must submit to the dubious protection of our government. “Government knows best and will protect you from these bad people,” is their cry.
Yet, government cannot tie its own shoes, button its own pants, or balance its own budget, or get much of anything else right. Indeed, sometimes it even acts maliciously for its own purposes (Animas River, anyone?) It doesn’t even seem to have the will to protect our interests in the world outside our borders (let alone inside them). And it clearly cannot prevent San Bernardinos or Orlandos even when it’s aware of damning facts about the eventual shooters. Why, then, should we subject our personal safety and that of our families to it? The Founders and the Framers did not believe that we should. Nothing that has happened in the past 200+ years suggests they were wrong.
I call on governments everywhere, local, state, and national, to outlaw gun-free zones. It is the Constitutional right of every American to carry a weapon for his or her personal defense, and this right has been upheld countless times by the courts, regardless of what politicians believe makes good law. (Or for that matter, what the Ninth Circus, always an outlier and the most overturned circuit in the nation, has to say.)
Want to stop the madness? Stop disarming citizens. After September 11, 2001, as soon as terrorists realized that Americans would fight back on airplanes, attempted hijackings and attempted bombings of American airliners stopped, regardless of what TSA wants you to think or anything they claim to have done. The same could be true of our self-inflicted free-fire zones, otherwise known as “gun-free” zones.
This came out of musings regarding a FB post bemoaning the use of the construction “If you don’t like my attitude about this, feel free to unfriend me” — something I’ve used a couple of times recently myself. (I lost exactly one friend over that, according to FB Purity.) This got me to thinking about the difference between real friends and Facebook (or social media in general) friends.
One of my best meatspace friends is a Bernie supporter. I can’t help it if he’s an idiot about that. We’ve been friends for four decades. We have much more in common than we do otherwise. So we get along and don’t talk politics. Much 🙂
My wife is a lifelong Democrat (but despises Hillary). I knew she was a Democrat (so are her parents) when I married her. But again, we don’t discuss politics…much. (On the other hand, it helps that she’s more of a Scoop Jackson Democrat, not a wild-eyed radical dirty hippie like so many on the left are anymore. She thought Occupy was stupid, too)
One of my fraternity brothers is not only a Democrat, he’s a union negotiator for the UAW. But again, we have more in common than we do otherwise. He holds political views that I disagree with…but we don’t discuss politics. Much 🙂
Note the common denominator — I know these people well. They are long-time friends and associates in real life. I would no more “unfriend” them in real life than I would cut off my trigger finger.
On the other hand, I associate on social media with any number of people I barely know, and have either never met in meatspace or with whom I have only extremely limited associations.* Some of those hold political views I find abhorrent. I’m sure they think the same of my political views. And the links with those people are often so tenuous that I honestly don’t care if they unfriend me for political reasons, or not.
Social media has been the catalyst for a lower and lower standard of social and political discourse over the past couple of election cycles. As I touched on, below, in Democracy usually fails, the real-time ability to comment on other people’s opinions has turned the mill run of us into a community of mean, sarcastic assholes when it comes to those opinions. The great Facebook Democracy of the Unwashed is driving our political conversation today, as it has for at least the last two elections. What is sad is that the monolithic move to social media has led to the retirement (or near retirement) of a number of sane, thoughtful bloggers — because nobody reads blogs anymore. That takes too long, when it’s easier to read pithy crap typed by your “friends” or view picture memes as if we had suddenly been reduced to a basic reading level where informed, thoughtful, and logical commentary is seemingly Sanskrit to the masses. (In fairness, most millenials are already at that level, thanks to our crap schools.)
So when someone says, “If you don’t like my opinions, unfriend me,” maybe we should take them at their word. It might make people spend a little more time thinking about what they say and write. And that could only be for the good.
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* Many of them “handshake” Masons that I’ve met in real life maybe once, and en passant, or may not have ever met at all. I’m the international secretary-treasurer for a fair-sized Masonic organization with members all over the globe, so I get a lot of friend requests from people I know only because they send in a check once a year. But I also have a lot of “friends” for whom I can’t really find a connection. Naturally, if one of them starts spouting political crap that I’m diametrically opposed to, the likelihood is that I’m going to dump them.
Gun bloggers and Baen SF writers, in my view, are generally exempted from the “social media” category. I’ve drunk good beer with some of them (well, not the SF writers — yet). We get along.
Pure democracy, anyway. Our Founding Fathers knew it; that’s why they created a Republic for us. Little did they know we’d only take two centuries to fuck that up.
Anyway. After reading comments on an article regarding the dustup between CBS/Paramount and the fans who are producing the “Axanar” spin-off Star Trek movie, I really do wonder if the Internet has done us any favors. What would have been, pre-1994, a simple article in something like Variety (it used to be printed exclusively on newsprint, for those not old enough to remember) that might have been discussed a few days later on a Usenet newsgroup that practically nobody actually read, has in 2016 become an instant forum in which readers may projectile-vomit their undistilled raw thoughts about the article anonymously and without regard for what anyone else thinks.* (Indeed, such microcephalic idiots generally operate without filters between ears, brain, and mouth even in real life conversations and other interactions. Sometimes even those of us who do normally operate with those filters engaged nevertheless find ourselves issuing that kind of internet comment, too. So sadly, it’s not just those with tiny brains** who succumb, suggesting that the problem is really the siren call of the medium beckoning one to yield to that blinking cursor, not simply the individual’s solipsistic need to assert that the universe does, in fact, revolve around himself and that his opinion actually has any worth to anyone but himself.***)
The thing I don’t understand is why it’s anyone’s business except that of the parties involved. Why did this article need instant comments at all? It’s a simple report of news. You want to respond to it, write an email to the editor like we used to do back in the day (although generally we typed or hand-wrote it on paper, stuck it in an envelope with a stamp (remember those?) and threw it in the mailbox to be delivered sometime in the next couple of days). If the editors liked it, they might even print it in the next issue, and might even respond to you, thanking you for your well- or not so well-reasoned arguments, and in the latter case, gently explaining why you were a fucking idiot who needed to be spoon-fed the Truth as handed down by your Betters.
Oh, and — if you wanted to be taken seriously, you wrote politely. Even if you were pissed off. Such was the Republic of News; it was serious, it was considered, it was grave, and it was polite, even when it excoriated local or national politicians for real or imagined sins. And it had its gatekeepers. If they didn’t like your tone, your letter went into the round file with that of other barbarians and kooks.
Today we have the great Democracy of the Unwashed who simply react reflexively rather than respond thoughtfully. And that’s why the comments section of that article about Axanar — and the comments section of so many other articles — is something you read only if you have no care for your sanity.
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* And often, without regard for correct grammar or orthography, either.
** Or small phalluses, but that’s really kind of beyond the pale, even for me.
*** Women also have this problem, but I’ll be damned if I’ll yield to political correctness and fuck up the flow of this post.
Shrillery keeps talking up the failed Australian gun grab as a model for the US. Where gun grabbery fails every time it’s tried — for example, New York and Connecticut.
And all the Trumpettes start freaking out and hitting the gun stores, and buying up all the damn ammo. Fuck. I’m not in a position to buy 10K rounds of 9 right now, damn it.
But let’s face it. There aren’t enough policemen or soldiers in the country to take away the 300 million guns we have scattered around — not without a fight, and they don’t want one (particularly not the soldiers; they’re not interested in shooting their own, they want to shoot American’s enemies. Plus, all that posse comitatus shit). And most of them would look the other way under an Australian-type gun confiscation. This is not Australia — thank goodness. Most of our cops can make the distinction between a legal gun owner protecting his property and his family, and a gang-banger out trying to make trouble with a firearm.
Plus, I keep reading articles where commentators keep making the point: If Obama had thought he could actually take our guns, he would have taken them in the first two years of his first term, when the Dems had total control. That he didn’t indicates that he recognizes the total impossibility of that happening. Instead, he’s been content to snipe around the edges and try to make gun ownership harder for good actors, by ignoring the fact that the vast, vast, VAST majority of gun crime is committed by…er…criminals.
Either Shrillery is completely bugnuts and really thinks she can do it, or this is just nothing but politics as usual from the gun-hating Democrats. Either way, I’m pretty sure confiscation ain’t happening — just like it didn’t happen in Australia (where the law was ignored to the extent that only about 20% of the weapons it covered were actually turned in), and didn’t happen in New York or Connecticut (where it’s estimated that even fewer gun owners complied). Analysis: The American people will, by and large, ignore a stupid and unConstitutional law if passed, and nothing will happen to them.
I’m told that the Trump folks who hang out in gun shops are livid about this, but I discount that because they still don’t seem to recognize that Trump is a Democrat in Republican clothing. If they’d have gotten behind Cruz, they might have had a candidate who would actually protect their rights. But what the hell do I know.
that Drumpf and Shrillery won their respective primaries in NY State last night.
Both of them are Favorite Assholes in a state well known for same.
Look, seriously: Please stop this shit.
Posted on Facebook last night by a friend who ought to know better. Go Google “US Army Sgt. Gregory Hayes”. There is no such person* and, so far as I can tell, no such crime being tried in the courts.
I rail every day about memes like this that are promulgated by the loony left, but it just absolutely enrages me when I see the isolationist far right doing the same thing. You people are better than this. Because, if you’re not, you need to be put down like the rabid dogs you are.
I am no fan of opening the borders to unvetted Syrian refugees — or any others. I want illegal aliens to go home and not come back. But I refuse to be a party to rabble-rousing by ANY group of people. STOP LYING, YOU FUCKS. AND DO YOUR GODDAMN RESEARCH BEFORE YOU BLINDLY PASS A MEME YOU LIKED BECAUSE YOUR FUCKING KNEE JERKED AND YOU GOT A HARD-ON WHEN YOU SAW IT.
Fuck.
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* At least not according to Google; if your name is Gregory Hayes and you’re a retired Army Sergeant, I apologize, but I doubt you’re sitting in jail waiting to be tried for murder…and no retired Army Sergeant would be sitting in a bar wearing a hipster beardlet, anyway. I hope. Because if you are, either grow that fuzz out proper, or get a fucking shave, sarge.
The following was shared on Facebook by a left-leaning friend.
This argument is invalid. I have (do not carry) a Social Security card only because the government forces me to have a Social Security account. Kinda hard to get a (legal) job, or generally exist, without one. As Obamacare advocates would point out, I didn’t build that, and it’s the law.
Because historically, Socialists always have to force their programs down the throats of free men.
The original post was by an exceedingly giddy young (I assume) woman, who accompanied it with the observation, “Just found this today:-) gonna love sharing it with anyone who calls Bernie a Socialist like is a disease??”
Well, Bernie is a socialist. Bernie is about the free stuff. The problem is that this giddy young (I assume) woman doesn’t understand that, historically, in order to provide the free stuff, socialists take over the means of production and dictate who gets what, who lives where, who gets to attend college and become more than just a drone, and who labors as the drones to produce the free stuff for the elites. That would probably surprise this giddy young (I assume) woman, who on her Facebook profile indicates that she is the “owner” of an Etsy shop that sells jewelry. Silly woman. Under a Sanders administration, nobody will own anything — not even their body.
Well, OK, maybe that’s extreme. But it would not be outside the realm of socialist thought.
More to the point, she has not a clue about why and how Social Security came into existence, nor what it and the deluge of social programs that followed it have done to the very fabric of our nation. Before FDR and the New Deal, these social concerns were taken care of locally, by families, extended families, religious institutions, and in some cases, the local government (think “county poor farm”). In some of these instances, the solution wasn’t particularly nice (think “county poor farm”). But where there was life, there was hope, and depending on the community you lived in, it wouldn’t be long till you were back on your feet, even if you were working a job at manual labor for a dollar a day — because the community didn’t have any use for layabouts and shirkers.
Because the 1929 Great Depression had so much more impact on the nation than previous downturns — or at least was perceived to have more impact, probably due to a combination of better news reporting and fumbling attempts (or non-attempts) by the government of the day to do anything to contain it — FDR was able to run and win in ’32 on an essentially socialistic platform which was parlayed into the New Deal. Of course, FDR had no actual answers either, and the Great Depression got even worse before it got better, mostly due to his administration’s incompetent meddling with the levers of government. (The man would literally wake up in the morning and set the day’s price for gold on a whim. Don’t believe me, read some history. Here’s a good place to start.) As a result, the economy, which actually appeared to be recovering by the time the ’32 election rolled around (even though 1932 was the “worst” year of the Great Depression in terms of joblessness), went back into the dumper and hit a nadir in 1937 which was only alleviated by FDR backing off some of the more socialistic New Deal “reforms” he’d put into place. And of course, most honest historians will acknowledge that the Great Depression didn’t end until the economy transformed from consumer-driven to war-driven with the onset of the Second World War.
But look what it took to implement FDR-style statism/socialism.
1) A historically-epic economic downturn in 1929. But we’d had bank panics and downturns many times before in our history. Here’s a list as long as your arm. Somehow we always seemed to get out of them without handing over our lives, fortunes and sacred honor to the gummint.
2) An unwillingness to accept that, by the end of 1932, the country was in fact working its way out of the downturn.
3) The election of a rich bastard asshole one-percenter Democrat (but I may be repeating myself) from the Northeast.
4) A nascent national news media (via radio) that aided and abetted socialistic reforms by giving the President of the United States a true nationwide bully pulpit.
5) The packing and corruption of the Supreme Court with the tacit collusion of the Democrat-majority Senate.
6) A reading of the Constitution’s “general welfare” clause that was out of keeping with historical interpretation of the document.
7) A flatly unConstitutional requirement that workers in most industries must sign up for the new Social Security program. (Railroad workers, among others, had sufficient power to avoid that until the 1960’s, when my grandfather, among others, got screwed when his railroad pension was converted over to Social Security. He lived in penury the rest of his life as a result.)
And finally, 8) A populace that was gulled into a false sense of security by its federal servants, who became their masters without anyone really thinking about it.
To this day, with the later additions of LBJ’s Great Society and the general disaster known as the Obama Administration, little has been done to stem the tide of statism masquerading as socialism. That old fascist Woodrow Wilson, creator of the federal income tax and nationalizer of railroads, would be pleased to see government firmly in charge of the people, with its grasp on their throats tightening more and more every year.
Which leads us back to the original point of this post. The giddy young (I assume) woman who thinks it’s funny that we’re all card-carrying socialists because we’re forced to have SSI accounts proves that she has no idea of what came before. Admittedly, I do only because I have studied history (I’se gots a degree innit, right?) and because my parents lived through the Great Depression and the War that ended it. But I know more about why we have those cards than she does, or probably most average Americans do. If you look through the list I provided above, you’ll see clear parallels between the Great Depression of the 1930’s and the Great Recession we’re currently still in the midst of.
Social Security is one of the best examples of a failed socialist program I can think of. It is funded not by a trust fund, as the people were led to believe when it was created, but by current revenues even over and above what the FICA tax takes in. The “trust fund” was shown to be nothing but a wad of IOU’s from the Treasury some years back. All of us working stiffs are paying into FICA not for our own retirement, but for that of our parents’. (Who, pray tell, will pay for ours? I’m not sanguine about the prospects.) The associated programs Medicare and Medicaid are rife with fraud, and the less said about the abuse and fraud associated with Social Security disability programs, the better for my blood pressure.
We have walked, eyes wide shut, into a fiscal disaster that has been the better part of a century in the making, all due to politicians trying to make us into socialists. And now, the Democrat front-runner wants to impose even more socialism on us, if he’s elected. (So does the Republican front-runner, but he’s being a bit more sly about it.) Both parties are culpable and guilty of aiding and abetting this long, slow slide into state control of our lives. People in Congress like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner (who thankfully is gone, only because — unlike McConnell and John McCain and others of their ilk — he recognized his time was at an end) should have been shown the door years ago, because they do not represent the people — they represent themselves, and the special interests that funded their rise.
And legislators seem honestly hurt by the fact that Congress polls at a rate lower than ever before.
So yeah, Ms. Denny Love, sure, yuk it up that we’re all Socialists now. Laugh while you can. In a few years, your sense of humor may be all you have. But you’ll have to live with the fruits of your folly a lot longer than I will. Thank goodness for small favors.