Tag: politics

Backfire

We may have to rethink who was behind the possible false flag in Denver given the local response:

Colorado gun stores are seeing a big jump in demand for firearms since last Friday’s massacre at a midnight movie showing in Aurora.

Background checks for people wanting to buy guns in Colorado reportedly increased more than 41 percent after last week’s Aurora movie massacre. The Denver Post reports that firearm instructors have also seen increased interest in training needed for a concealed-carry permit.

“It’s been insane,” Jake Meyers, an employee at Rocky Mountain Guns and Ammo in Parker told the newspaper Monday.

Between Friday and Sunday, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation approved background checks for 2,887 people who wanted to purchase a firearm — a 43 percent increase over the previous Friday through Sunday and a 39 percent jump over those same days on the first weekend of July.

So, it wasn’t the Tea Party after all… it was the NRA! The rabbit hole, it runs deep indeed. But here is a serious point. Since Holmes isn’t talking and appears to be in a massively drug-addled state, how can anyone be certain that he was the shooter? No one saw him in the mask except perhaps the policeman who captured him, and it seems to me that drugging up a patsy dressed in SWAT gear, then sticking a smoking gun in his hands as soon as your colleague comes out the door and hops in the squad car would be trivially easy in all the darkness and confusion.

I’m not saying this scenario is likely, merely pointing out that it would be plausible in the absence of a coherent confession or blood matching the DNA of the victims all over Holmes’s clothing. After seeing that video of Holmes at the arraignment, hearing of his unintelligible rambling on his voice message makes me wonder how functional this highly intelligent individual was last weekend. And speaking as one who read the Unabomber’s manifesto because no one at the Pioneer Press could make heads or tales of it as well as a volume of Stalin’s works, I can attest that most intelligent individuals who turn murderous are not only willing to talk, they won’t shut up about their endless justifications for their actions.

Universal suffrage vs democracy

This post by Roissy should help explain why the Founding Fathers limited the vote to about one-fifth of the male population:

If you are apt to align your lifestyle with whatever is the latest fashion, (and ostracize those who don’t), you are probably also apt to blindly obey high status authority figures telling you what is good for you. If true, then we might speculate that women make better cultural foot soldiers for whichever elite authority is most tangible in their lives, owing to women’s greater propensity to accept authority dictums without question.

We may add to this speculation not only personal observation and confirmatory heaps of anecdotes, but in addition scientific evidence that women are, indeed, more obedient to authority than are men. Courtesy of reader uh pointing us to this Milgram experiment replication:

Charles Sheridan and Richard King hypothesized that some of Milgram’s subjects may have suspected that the victim was faking, so they repeated the experiment with a real victim: a “cute, fluffy puppy” who was given real, albeit harmless, electric shocks. They found similar findings to Milgram: half of the male subjects and all of the females obeyed to the end. Many subjects showed high levels of distress during the experiment and some openly wept. In addition, Sheridan and King found that the duration for which the shock button was pressed decreased as the shocks got higher, meaning that for higher shock levels, subjects showed more hesitance towards delivering the shocks.

Always remember: All female participants in the Milgram obedience to authority experiment continued shocking the puppy despite their tears.

Contemplate this: if all women are willing to shock cute little puppies simply because an authority figure told them to do so, what won’t they be willing to do? No doubt the women who participated in the experiment had no desire to harm puppies and would explain their behavior by saying “he made me do it”, but that malleability is the entire point.

Resistance to evil requires the ability to stand up to it and refuse to submit. Jesus was not merely obedient to His Father, he also refused to bow down before the Prince of the World. And note that it’s not only women who lack the ability to resist perceived authority, but half of all men as well. It’s not merely women’s suffrage, but universal suffrage that caused democracies to become dictatorial.

It also underlines the importance of watching women’s actions, not listening to their words. If asked “would you ever subject a puppy to a painful electric shock of no possible benefit to it?”, most of those women would quite vehemently deny the very idea. However, the evidence indicates that if instructed to do so, they would, in fact, do it, even though the action caused them significant personal stress.

Anyhow, I’d be interested to know how many people here, male or female, believe they would shock the puppy at the behest of the men in white coats. I don’t think I would object to giving it a mild shock or three in the interest of science, but if this experiment truly mimicked the Milgram one and I was told that the voltage was high enough to seriously harm or even kill the puppy, there is a non-zero chance I’d punch out the scientist before hooking him up to his device and giving him a shock or two. At the very least, I believe I would deliver a solid “WTF is wrong with you people” rant before kidnapping the puppy.

But then, it is well known that I regard scientists with nearly as much suspicion as male elementary teachers who just love children. So I suppose it wouldn’t be much of a test of authority in my case.

Obama paraphrased

“I should have told better lies.” Joseph Farah on Obama’s illuminating answer to a question about the biggest mistake of his first term:

“The mistake of my first term . . . was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right,” he said. “And that’s important. But the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times.”

What’s so hilarious about this answer is it’s Bart Simpson-like juvenile appeal: Imagine Bart up to his neck in some kind of mischief. He gets caught. The principal of his school asks him if he has any regrets. He responds, “Yeah, I wish I had a better story to tell. I wish I could talk my way out of this.”

I would say the biggest mistake of Obama’s first term wasn’t his failure to present better fairy tales to the American public. That’s not even in the top ten. But number one was failing to endorse Ron Paul’s attempt to audit the Federal Reserve. A close second would be his nomination of Ben Bernanke to continue as Federal Reserve chairman. Concerns about policy and the popularity of the White House policies are considerably less important than having absolutely no idea if the information upon which those policies are based even has any basis in reality.

The danger of a “gun-free zone”

The Denver Batman shootings once more demonstrates that cardboard signs are an inadequate means of disarming mass killers:

Gun advocates say the movie theater where a Colorado gunman opened fire Friday, killing 12 and wounded 58, has a strict policy against firearms on its premises – even for patrons with concealed handgun permits.

Cinemark Holdings Inc. owns 459 theaters and 5,181 screens in the U.S. and Latin America – including the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colo., scene of the mass shooting. The company does not appear to post its firearms policy on its website. WND’s after-hours calls and emails to Cinemark had not been returned at the time of this report.

Dudley Brown, executive director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, told ABC News the Aurora Century 16 movie theater’s policy prohibits firearm carry.

That helps explain why no one shot back. It’s kind of hard to do so when your gun is locked in the trunk. Now, I tend to doubt Holmes targeted the movie theater because he knew of the policy – although he was certainly smart enough to have been aware of it and taken it into account – but this intentional disarming of the theater crowd should give gun advocates the ability to punch back twice as hard when the gun control activists do their usual song-and-dance in the post-mortem of a shooting.

This is why you must carry

The Batman shooting in Denver:

A masked gunman shot dead 14 people and wounded 50 others at a midnight screening of the new Batman movie in Denver. The 6ft tall man, dressed in black and wearing a gas mask opened fire at the showing of The Dark Knight Rises in a mall in Aurora, Colorado and set off a smoke or tear gas bomb.

Witnesses said that the man, thought to be in his early twenties, burst through the emergency exit at the front of the auditorium, wearing body armour, and began firing into the audience with a rifle and two handguns as he made his way up the stairs, picking his victims at random.

It will be interesting to see if Obama is dumb enough to try running on gun control after this. The gas mask bit is certainly unusual and one wonders if the shooter was inspired by Bane or perhaps the local airport.

In defense of mass murder

I find myself contemplating quitting. No, not the blog. And not writing in general. But it is really incredible to see how few people at WND are interested in substantive matters like a conceptual revolution in economics versus other, considerably less significant issues.

There are all of two comments on today’s WND column. That’s less than one-twentieth of how many comment on any given column. And it’s not the WND readership, it wouldn’t be any better if I wrote for Salon, the New York Times, or the Daily Show. I mean, it’s not that I don’t understand MPAI, I coined the acronym after all. But that’s true for varying degrees of “most” and sometimes the percentage is just a little higher than I can fathom. I mean, the world is on the brink of a total economic meltdown, and still no one gives a damn about why? I feel like Jonah staring at the walls of Nineveh, stomping up and down the beach, gesticulating wildly and saying: “Go ahead and do it, Lord, let them have it, you know they deserve it!”

Seriously, I’m not sure I can deal with trying to pretend I don’t think a world where the best-selling novel is Twilight fan fiction deserves to perish in fire and ice. I used to wonder to whom the old Norse pagan religion held any appeal, but now I understand completely. If I read one more idiot Republican bank apologist claiming that the root cause of the financial crisis was Democratic politicians forcing banks to provide home loans to minorities, I may climb the Rainbow Bridge, wrest the horn from Heimdall and blow it myself. Then I’ll sit there and cheer for the frost giants and fire demons.

I’m considering a literary experiment of sorts. I’m wondering how much more interest would be expressed in the dumbest, most lowbrow column I can get past the editors devoted to the simple and straightforward concept of Obama being bad. Bad for the nation. Bad for the world! Bad. So bad. I’m thinking of calling it: Obama is Bad. Subtitled: Obama is really and truly very bad for America.

And if the column hits Drudge and results in an offer from Fox News to host my own cable news show, I’m going to give up op/ed, study genetics, build a lab, and start creating customized killer viruses.

Mostest and importantest again

Joe Farah cracks under The Fear of a Black Second Term:

Do we hold our noses and vote for Mitt Romney? Or do we follow the none-of-the-above prescription?

Based on his long and contradictory political record, I do not have much hope that Romney is going to do a 180 if he wins. I don’t think he will steer the nation on the U-turn course that is absolutely necessary to save us from the brink of disaster.

However, the idea of a second term for Obama genuinely scares me. I don’t believe America could ever recover from such a cataclysm. The country will suffer irreparable harm, if it hasn’t done so already.

While I remain a principled constitutionalist who doesn’t believe in voting for anyone who does not understand and embrace its limitations on federal power, I believe 2012 is one of those rare election years in which freedom-loving Americans will, out of necessity, be forced to vote defensively.

I won’t be voting for Romney because I think he will save America or reverse our dangerous course. But I will likely be voting for him to buy America the time it needs to avoid catastrophe. It’s just that simple – and sad.

Yeah, that’s a new one. Principles are important, except of course when they are trumped by the frightening possibility of someone becoming president who is already president. It’s disappointing to see Farah buying the usual nonsense, which we have heard every four years since 1992, especially since he is throwing a lot of his hard-won credibility out the window.

Is President Goldman Sachs really that much worse than President Bain Capital? Is he actually worse than Satan himself? After all, less than seven months ago, Farah wrote: “I would not vote for Mitt Romney if he were running against Satan himself.”

My prediction: if Farah does vote for Romney and Romney wins, we’ll be reading a self-flagellating column sometime in 2013 where he laments having sacrificed his principles and voting for a man who so badly betrayed all the conservatives and the small-r republicans who voted for him. Doesn’t anyone ever learn from the past? Can’t anyone see how the game is played?

And in tangentially related news, it’s nice to see that conservatives attempting to manipulate others into voting against their principles are still mathematically illiterate.

“Any Christian who does not vote or writes in a name is casting a vote for Romney’s opponent, Barack Hussein Obama – a man who sat in Jeremiah Wright’s church for years, did not hold a public ceremony to mark the National Day of Prayer, and is a liberal who supports the killing of unborn babies and same-sex marriage,” [Brad Pitt’s mother Jane Pitt] continued. “I hope all Christians give their vote prayerful consideration because voting is a sacred privilege and a serious responsibility.”

If you truly do not understand that a non-vote for Romney is absolutely not a vote for Obama, you are an astonishingly stupid individual. 1+0!=2. A vote for Obama is a vote for Obama. Not voting for Obama cannot, in any sense, be considered a vote for Obama. Political applications do not alter mathematics. If you cannot master basic addition, I not only don’t want to hear your opinion about the election, I don’t think you should be permitted to vote. Negative, “pragmatic” voting is an inherently self-defeating concept that only guarantees the very results it is supposed to oppose.

Mailvox: SAVE US CAPTAIN UNDEROOS

RC has a different perspective on the national priority:

You behave as authentic Anti-America. NO ONE, can be as EVIL as OBAMA. Romney may not be your choice. Althought, compare Romney to the EVIL Obama, shows your bias against Mitt Romney and your lack of love for this country. Any one is better than the INCOMPETENT/LIAR/MARXIST MUSLIM/FALSE/PHONY/CORRUPT OBAMA, and all the thugs without any principles, that is destroying this country, very fast.

And so Charlie Brown charged bravely, bravely, for the football. Surely THIS time Lucy won’t pull it away, he assured himself.

WND column

Conservatives and Forced Consumption

It is said that hope springs eternal in the human breast. This is certainly true when it comes to Republicans, as no sooner had Chief Justice Roberts exploded all of the expectations that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would be overturned due to the mandate that requires Americans to make certain purchases or face a financial penalty than various Republican commentators were attempting to manufacture a silver lining from the unadulterated equine ejectus of Roberts’ opinion.

Kicking out the Paulites

Eric Golub recommends kicking Ron Paul’s supporters out of the Republican Convention:

The following words accurately describe the overwhelming majority of Ron Paul supporters.

“I will not vote for anybody other than Ron Paul. Mitt Romney is the same as Barack Obama. No to Obamney. Ron Paul or nobody. Maybe Gary Johnson, but not Mitt Romney under any circumstances.”

Ron Paul supporters have decided to hold a Libertarian lovefest in Tampa, Florida, on the days directly preceding the GOP Convention. They have every right to do this, and Republicans should have zero objections to them expressing themselves in the equivalent of the town square. This is what democracy is all about. If they have the permits in order, let them protest. If the GOP tries to shut this event down, well that would be morally wrong.

However, their event ends on August 26th. The GOP Convention begins on August 27th. The GOP Convention is a Republican Convention. It is a Mitt Romney Convention. It is not a Ron Paul or Libertarian Convention. Therefore, it is perfectly acceptable at this point to ban Ron Paul supporters from the GOP Convention.

That’s right. An outright ban on their presence is the only way to prevent the event from turning into a debacle. There is no legitimate reason at this point for them to be there.

That’s perfectly fine with me. Kick them out, by all means. I’ll just make one request. After putting on your magic underwear and getting down at your Mitt Romney convention, don’t come crying back to those Ron Paul supporters begging for their votes in late October because it is THE MOSTEST IMPORTANTEST ELECTION EVAHHHHH!!!!

I could not possibly care less if Obama wins or if Romney wins. Based on the last three years, I would guess that Obama would actually do less damage since the Republicans in Congress will at least put up the occasional show of resistance to his leftward moves, whereas they will support Romney’s. I have to seriously question the intelligence of any conservative who intends to vote for Romney, as the only argument that made even a remote amount of sense, the Supreme Court Appointment argument, has been permanently destroyed by Chief Justice Roberts.

By all means, the Republicans should kick out the libertarians, the constitutionalists, the nationalists, and the fiscally sane. I think it would be fantastic. It’s long past time they joined a party genuinely devoted to freedom, the principles of the Founding Fathers, and the American national interest anyhow.

But what is it with neocons and their obsession with playing ideological police and kicking people out of organizations, movements, and political parties? Buckley did it, Lowry did it, and here this Golub is calling for it. It is increasingly apparent that permitting people who have ideologically “seen the light” at some point in their lives to assume positions of influence in their new party is a tremendously bad idea. If you were ever a Democrat, or worse, a Trotskyite or Socialist, that’s great if you eventually came to your senses and moved rightward. But you should not be permitted any leadership position or provided a voice in the right-wing media. After all, why on Earth should anyone else on the Right, who was never dumb enough to fall for any left-wing nonsense in the first place, pay your belatedly sane opinion any attention whatsoever?