The Shot Heard 'Round the World

The gun control fanatics have a very explicit goal: ban all firearms and have everyone turn them in.

They don't say so out loud very often, but they have explicitly stated this goal a number of times.

I don't think that they have much of a chance of getting this passed as a law anytime soon.   Depsite incredibly biased new coverage and an intense propaganda campaign against guns, almost 70% of Americans oppose a ban on firearms.

But let's speculate on what would happen if public opinion turned against guns, the Constitution was amended or the Heller decision affirming the Right to Keep and Bear Arms was overturned, and the Congress passed a law banning guns. 

I would assume that we would have 90% compliance with such a mandate.  After all, we are assuming that guns are so unpopular that this ban was passed in the first place.

So what happens to the remaining 10% that won't turn in their now-illegal fireams voluntarily?

10% of the gun owning population in this country is still a pretty big number.  It is estimated that 70-80 million people own over 300 million guns in the United States.   90% compliance leaves 30 million guns in the hands of 7 or 8 million defiant gun owners.

Too low a compliance rate, you say?  Ok, 99% compliance still leaves 3 million firearms in the hands of three quarters of a million gun nuts. 

How will the government forcibly disarm nearly a million people? 

A million pitched battles on ranches, in the suburbs, or in the crowded city streets?  The Revolutionary war started because the government was attempting to confiscate some guns.  The resulting battle and ultimately the war was touched off by the 'shot heard round the world' fired by one of a few hundred militia men.

Using the above assumptions there will be over 1,500 people per congressonial district and 15,000 per state that refuse to turn in their guns.  The new 'shot heard round the world' will be heard in every corner of the country.

This cold hard reality is why the gun banners always shy away from the question of confiscation, and all of their proposals grandfather in all of the existing guns.  They know that they will spark an outright civil war if they attempt to confiscate guns.

If they don't confiscate guns, then what is the point of having bans in the first place? 

The answer is control. 

Gun Control is not about guns. 

Gun Control is about control.

To Protect (themselves) and Serve (their political masters)

The police are one of the essential ingredients in a civil society.  They exist to keep the peace and enforce the law.

They are supposed to serve and protect the public.  Many Americans believe the police will protect them in the event that they are attacked or robbed.  We also believe that the police will go to great lengths to avoid harming the innocent or arresting the innocent.  We also view the police as a line of defense against unconstitutional laws.  We like to believe that the police will never enforce unconstitutional edicts or shoot down citizens for no reason.

More and more recently, none of this appears to be true.

During hurricane Katrina the police went door-to-door searching for weapons at the order of the government.  More correctly, they kicked in doors and confiscated weapons from innocent civilians.   This is grossly unconstitutional, and none of the confiscated weapons were ever returned to the rightful owners. 

The Governor of Massachusetts issues a state wide travel ban during a 'snow emergency', forcing citizens to remain in their homes during the storm.  The police were enforcing a totalitarian-esque  bans on travel without permission, formerly a feature of life only found in communist states.

Police in California are being attacked by a lone gunman that has a grudge.  The police have reacted as you might expect, launching a massive manhunt as they take precautions to safeguard themselves and their families.  They are also arming themselves to the teeth and gunning down innocent women merely because they were driving a car that resembled that of the suspects. 

There are hundreds of incidents each year in which the police raid the wrong house or are acting on bad information and kill innocent civilians who have done nothing wrong.

I am not deriding the police here -- they have an extremely dangerous and difficult job.

I am merely pointing out that those of you who are hoping that the police will 'be on our side' during protests or resistance against a tyrannical government are in for a big disappointment.  Oh, sure, there might be a Sheriff or two that refuses to enforce a federal law.  But the vast majority of the police will do exactly what they are told to do including shooting you in the face if they think you are a threat to their safety. 

There are many people in this country that fantasize about how things will be when Obama finally tries to confiscate guns.  They imagine that the police will refuse to act, or that the citizenry will form militia groups to resist gun confiscation.

Think about this: a lone gunman is hunting the police and they react by indiscriminately blasting any vehicle that happens to look like the one they are seeking.  Imagine what will happen if they have groups of citizens acting against them.   They will be leveling entire city blocks without regard for casualties.

Where will they get the firepower to do such a thing?  No problem. Almost every hamlet in America now has a SWAT team that is armed like an infantry platoon.  Almost every Federal agency, inlcuding the Department of Education and The Social Security Administration now have fully armed SWAT teams. The deparment of Homeland Security recently purchased 1.2 billion rounds of hollow point ammunition.  Since it is illegal to use hollow point ammo in a war against invaders, we can only assume that these rounds are intended for more domestic targets.

Human history is replete with examples of the police and the army subjugating the citizenry.  Don't think it can't happen here. 

In many ways, it already is happening here.

Your Papers Please!

Travel restrictions are one of the hallmarks of a fascist or communist state.  Internal visas and the constant checking of your papers for internal travel were regular features of life behind the Iron Curtain.  It is no coincidence that the phrase "Your Papers, Please" somehow sounds more correct in a slight Germanic accent.   This is such a widely accepted feature of life in a totalitarian state that in in Casablanca the entire plot revolved around travel restrictions imposed by a tyrannical occupying government. 

Americans have never had travel restrictions.  We have always been free to travel about the country as we please without interference from the government.

Not any longer. 

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts banned travel during the recent 'weather emergency'.  Citizens were subject to arrest and fines if they left their homes during winter storm 'Nemo'.

Let me restate that: Governor of a state forcibly subjected every citizen to house arrest if they ventured out into the snow without the permission of the state.

A friend of mine had to travel during the storm in order to rescue his elderly parents from the cold.  He called the police to get permission to drive 3 miles to their home.   Permission was denied.  He was told that they could not give him permission to travel, but they advised him to do it anyway and hope that he did not get caught. 

In America.  He had to ask the government for permission to save his parents lives in America.

This is outrageous.  It is an affront to liberty and the Constitution.

It is also a sign of just how far the nanny state has progressed.   The government tells you how much soda to drink and when you can go out to playing the snow and when you are grounded and must stay in the house.

Are the people of Massachusetts so daft that they don't know when to come in from the cold?  Do they really need to be protected from their own stupidity by being locked in their rooms until the storm is over?

It is a sad day when the police are arresting people for no other reason than traveling without authorization.

Fascism has come to America in the form of the Nanny state.

Every American should be marching in the streets right now in protest over this event.  

Just don't forget your papers when you leave the house.

We Have Got To Do Something If It Saves One Life!

President Obama today opined on the subject of gun control in the wake of the Newtown shootings:

“We don’t have to agree on everything to agree it’s time to do something,”

"something"??

This is utter nonsense.

He keeps demanding that we 'do something' while refusing to make a detailed proposal of his own or explain how any of the laws that his fellow democrats are proposing would have any effect on crime or have prevented the Newtown shooting.

What does he mean when he says "do something"?  No doubt he is echoing the mantra of the media who demand daily that something 'be done' about guns.

But what?  Everyone of the proposals put forward to date are either unconstitutional, ineffective, unrelated to the problem, or all of the above.

"But if it saves just one life" they bleat in response to the argument that what they proposing is not going to help solve the problem.  Since when is 'save one life' the standard we use when evaluating safety?

We don't use that standard when evaluating other aspects of modern life:

• We could save 30,000 lives if we banned cars, but no one is proposing that, except, perhaps, for the Global Warming wackos.
• We could save hundred or thousands of children is we banned bicycles, swimming pools, 5 gallon buckets, and electricity.  But we are not proposing to impose the 'one life' standard for those items
• We could save several hundred lives a year by banning antibiotics. Hundred die each year, particularly children, due to allergic reactions to antibiotics.  Where is the call to ban them to 'save one life'?

We don't apply the 'one life' standard in these areas because it is an asinine standard.  It is a ridiculous standard for many reasons, but primary among them is that it does not consider relative risks or substitution.

If we banned antibiotics to save the few that die from allergic reactions, we would condemn millions to death by infection.  You have to consider more than one simplistic angle when making these safety decisions.  Using antibiotics is not absolutely safe but it is relatively safe, when compared to not having them at all.   So we consciously decide that despite the risks, we will use antibiotics.

It is tragic when people are murdered, particularly children.  But the absence of legal guns does not guarantee that you wont be murdered by one. Statistics indicate that the absence of legal guns actually increases the danger from guns.  The risks associated with non-gun ownership include increasing violent crime rates, including rape and assault.

Overall, gun ownership is a net positive to safety, particularly when you factor in the risks of totalitarian governments and the predation that has resulted in millions of deaths over the past century. 

Gun Control in the wake of Newtown

There has been a great deal of press recently about the tragic shootings at the Newtown elementary school.

This is a horrendous event that we all wish had never happened, and we all hope will never happen again.

There has been a chorus of people calling for gun control in an effort to prevent such an event from happening again in the future.  The problem is that none of the measures that have been proposed will have any effect on crime.

As we have noted previously, there is no room for gun control.  

All of the small gun control measures will fail. Even the most well thought out proposals will not work.

Here is a sample of one of the more cogent arguments:
http://www.ghostsandempties.net/2012/12/an-open-letter-to-vice-president-biden/

I demand you press for legislation that closes the gun show loophole completely, once and for all.

There is no such thing as the gun 'show loophole'.  Private citizens are allowed to sell and buy guns from each other.  This is not a loophole, but an express provision of the current gun laws.  There is no evidence that 'gun show' guns are used in crime more than any other source of guns.   Most crime guns are stolen guns, with less than 1% being procured at a gun show.

I demand that ammunition designed to inflict massive tissue damage or pierce armor be completely banned except for the military and police.
His first reference is probably referring to hollow point ammo.  This ammo is used for hunting expressly because it is more lethal.  And almost any rifle ammunition will pierce armor -- they are simply too powerful to be stopped by body armor.  But by banning hollow point AND full metal jacket ammo, he is calling for a ban on all ammo.   It would be helpful if the people trying to regulate these things had at least some idea what they are talking about. Unless, of course, that is what he intends all along.


I demand that the sale and possession of all ammunition be regulated at least as stringently as Sudafed and other drugs, including strict monthly and annual purchase limits. Individuals found in possession of more than their allotment should be fined and jailed just like drug dealers.
Just like drug dealers? Since the war on drugs has been so effective?  The massive burden of administering such a program would cost billions with no real effect.  How many rounds is he envisioning for a limit?  A small limit would be impractical, making guns completely useless.   A large limit would not stop 99% of crimes.

Incidentally,  linking his ideas to the War on Drugs, he exposes the fallacy in the entire gun control argument.  Bans on drug have not worked.  Bans on drug components have not worked.  Bans on drug paraphernalia have not worked.  What makes the author think that a ban on ammo will work?


I demand you lead a call to ban and confiscate any weapon capable of holding more than 6 rounds of ammunition, being reloaded by a pre-loaded ammunition clip or otherwise capable of firing more than 6 rounds without pause for manually reloading each bullet or shell. Hunters and sportsmen can still own rifles and shotguns that meet these criteria. Handguns that hold 6 or fewer bullets would also be permissible.

This is a call for the elimination of virtually all firearms.  The only legal guns would be revolvers, some bolt action rifles, and some shotguns.   Everything else would be eliminated.  This is not only unconstitutional, but completely impractical and counter productive.  Never mind that if you were magically able to make all these gun disappear, it would be a matter of minutes before a steady stream of guns was smuggled over the border and into the hands of criminals.  How hard would it be to strap an AK-47 to each bale of illegal drugs?

A gun confiscation would be a disaster, likely leading to civil war and millions of dead.  With 20 million 'assault rifles' in circulation even a 99% peaceful confiscation would still leave 200,000 rifles to be seized from the cold dead hands of the owners.  Does the author really think that the death of 20 children justifies 200,000 dead and open civil war?



I have read the Constitution and nowhere do I find the words ‘stand your ground’, a complete perversion of the ‘duty to retreat’ common-law principle understood at the time the Constitution was ratified, or the concept of ‘concealed carry’. We must repeal laws that allow these dangerous and unnecessary practices.

The reason that these words are not in the Constitution is that there was no such thing as concealed carry in 1776 because everyone that carried a gun carried it openly.  There is no common law principle that says you have to retreat.  You are allowed to defend yourself.   The 'stand your ground' laws were passed as a reaction to insane court rulings where people were charged with crimes for shooting intruders in their own homes.  Americans believe that you have the right to defend yourself and do not subscribe to the insane notion that the outlaw has more right to be in your home than you do.  Furthermore, there is no evidence that these laws contribute to the overall crime rate. Most gun deaths are gang related or crimes of passion committed by people who live in the home already.  These laws are simply not a factor in crime rates.

I urge you to direct the Justice Department to prepare a brief detailing how gun manufacturers might be subjected to the same legal approach used against tobacco companies.

If we can sue GM and Ford for cars with exploding gas tanks, ban lawn darts, and restrict over-the-counter medication deemed to have potential criminal uses (e.g., Sudafed), surely weapons designed for no other purpose than mass killing can be sued out of existence as well.

This is a call for legal extortion.  Guns are designed to kill.  His complaint is that they are too good at that for which they were designed.  His proposal is not to subject the gun companies to the normal laws (warranty of merchantability, negligence, etc). After all, his complaint is not that the guns don't work, his complaint is that they DO work.   He is seeking the ability to sue a company because he doesn't like what they make.

This is a gross violation of the rule of law.

I urge you not to be diverted or bogged down by the efforts to enlarge the scope of problem to the point it becomes intractable and unsolvable:

• A lack of religion in schools is not the problem.
• A lack of men in schools is not the problem.
• Mental illness is not the problem.
• Video games are not the problem.
• Quentin Tarantino is not the problem.
• More guns are not the answer.

The unfettered and ineffectively regulated access to guns is the problem, plain and simple.

This is completely counter factual.  In simple terms, it is a lie.  Guns are more plentiful than ever, yer murder and crime rates are at all-time lows.  There is no evidence that access to guns is the problem, and there is ample evidence that gun control laws are the problem.  Look at the crime rates in places like Chicago and Washington DC and explain me how gun control is working.

I don't have a simple answer for the causes of crime, but I do know there is no evidence that guns are causing it.


The right of some to possess guns should never supersede the right of children to safely attend kindergarten without an armed guard at the door.

This get to the crux of his flawed argument: the right to safety.  There is no such thing.   
We do not have a right to safety, and we certainly do not have a right to safety 'without an armed guard at the door'.    There is risk in everything that we do.  Children are in far greater danger on the school bus than they are of being shot in the classroom.   If there is a 'right to safety' then why are police not legally required to protect you? 

This argument is fatuous.  Obama's children are protected by armed guards at school everyday.  Is this protection a violation of their rights?

Armed guards (or other armed adults) are the most effective and proven way to stop armed attackers.  To argue that children have a non-existent right to safety and a right not to be protected by the most effective means possible is the argument of a non-serious person.


These 20 children and 6 courageous adults of Newtown must not be allowed to die in vain. Their legacy must be that they were the last to be ignored in this endlessly escalating cycle of violence and death.

Again, the author is wrong.  The 'cycle of violence' is declining, not increasing.  49 states have passed concealed carry laws, gun ownership is at a all time high, and yet violence and murder are at all time lows.



In summary, not a single argument in favor of control stands up to the facts or logic.

How to Over Throw a Republic

There is a great deal of speculation about the future of the American Republic. 

One thing seems pretty clear: we are screwed.

We are running a $1,600 Billion deficit this year, just like we did last year.  The current Fiscal Cliff debate is centered on a 10% spending cut.

They are looking to cut $110 Billion from the budget and acting as though it is the end of the world.   The Paul Ryan budget still ran us trillions of dollars more into the red, and we have no chance of even getting close to that.

In other words, if we go over the cliff and make these cuts, we will still run a deficit of $1,500 billion.

There is obviously no serious consideration being given to actually balancing the budget.   We will be running permanent trillion dollar deficits, forever.  Well, not forever.  Just until the world runs our of money to lend us.  This will happen within the next few years.

At that point, we will need to cut spending by 50%.  If we are calling 10% cuts the 'fiscal cliff', what will we call 50% cuts?

It will be the end of the world.

Social Security and Medicaid will be more than 50% of the budget by then.  We will have to eliminate the entire military, all government programs, everything.  And we still won't have the cash to pay those two programs alone.   This will plunge us in to depression, subject us to attacks from our enemies, cause riots in the streets, and the end of the dollar as a viable currency. 

What happens when 75 million people are unemployed and not getting the food stamps or housing assistance they depend upon is not hard to figure out.

Our entire nation will collapse.  Not because we need big government, but because we have so many people that are totally dependent on the government.  When that gravy train ends, they will be compelled to do something else in order to live.  That 'thing' will most likely take the form of riots and looting.  Just look at Greece.

This is obvious and well documented, yet we continue full speed ahead towards our doom.

So what can the end game be?  How can people who love this country engage in behavior that will surely ruin us?

The answer is simple:  They want us to collapse.  They want see the end of America as a global power.  They want to see our current system of government replaced with a socialistic totalitarian state.

There really is no other conclusion that you can reasonably reach.

Wrong as Wrong Could Be

I posted a bunch of reasons why Romney should have won the election in a blowout yesterday.

They were thoughtful, well reasoned, pithy, and carefully crafted.

And completely wrong.

I had assumed that the coalition of the dependent was not quite at 50%, and that the overwhelmingly bad economic, social, and international results of this administration would prevent the re-election of Obama.

Well, I was wrong.

We have officially reached the tipping point. We are now a socialist country.

We now have more people in this country that will vote for more free stuff no matter what, than people that produce and want to be left alone.

This moment was predicted 200 years ago, and it has finally come to pass.

There has been a war for the hearts and minds of the American people for the past 80 years, and conservatives has lost on three fronts: Socially, demographically, and philosophically.

The philosophical battle was lost in the early part of the last century.  When the socialists saw that Americans would not revolt during the Great Depression, they knew they could never overthrow a country of educated, independent, free men.  So they decided to 'reform' education and create an army of young socialists.  They implemented a number of reforms over the past 100 years that have taught our younger generations to be good little communists.  When you think of grade school you think of the Dewey decimal system in the library, right?  Who was the communist candidate that failed in his presidential bid?  John Dewey.  'Nuff said.

The social battle was lost in the sixties when the hippies took over the culture.  The Left changed what we saw on TV, what we saw in movies, and the vocabulary of the conversation in every aspect of the culture.  We no longer made movies about the hero.  John Wayne was viewed as an anachronism.  The anti-hero became the new norm.  The enemy and the evil guys became businessmen and the church.   The regular American male was relentlessly mocked in Archie Bunker while the anti American socialists are the smart, funny, caring people.  The heroes are the socialists, the whistle blowers, the poor.    The police went from the Sheriff riding into to save the day, to the Bad Lieutenant, hooked on drugs and molesting teenagers. Perversions have been mainstreamed.  As Daniel Patrick Moynihan nailed it when he spoke of 'defining deviancy down'.  Traditional values are overthrown by mocking them.


The Demographic battle is being lost as we speak.  The Left has convinced the fastest growing segments of the population that the Republican party is evil.  Minorities have been brainwashed to believe that they must vote democratic or they are a traitor to their race.  People like Sowell, Dash, Rubio, and Thomas are pilloried as 'Uncle Tom's', assailed with death threats, and ridiculed in every way.  The door for illegal immigration has been flung wide open, with illegal status being normalized, and the illegal immigration being directed towards Third World countries.

Since 1965 we have been importing the dependent unskilled classes from the rest of the world, while barring the scientists, the ambitious, and the educated. 

This election is the result. 

We have allowed our country to be fundamentally transformed right before our eyes without any resistance.  

When you allow the socialists to teach your children and blare their philosophy on the airwaves 24x7, and let them import legions of loyal socialist supporters, you get a socialist country.

Romney in a Blowout

After all of my doom and gloom prognostication, I want to be the first to commend Mitt Romney for winning the Presidency in a massive blowout.

The Media has it's thumb on the scale as usual, but all the signs indicate that Mitt will win in a romp tomorrow:

• All of the polls are massively over sampled with Democrats and Independents.  The latest poll has Obama and Romney tied at 49%, but the poll has 11% more Democrats in the sample.  This is supposed to compensate for the fact that Democrats turned out at +8 in the last election, and therefore a 50-50 sample would not be correct. There is no way that Democrats have +11 turnout, which would be 50% higher than when Obama-mania was at it's peak.  Romney is really leading by 5% if the samples were accurate.
• Democrat voter identification is down from 2008.
• Likely voters for Democrats are down from 2008.
• Enthusiasm levels for Democrats are down from 2008.
• Traditionally solid Democrat states are at risk in this election.  Both candidates are campaigning in PA, which tells you they both think Romney can win there.
• MI is in play -- it is dead even in the last poll.
• WI(!) is in play.  The latest polls from the state that sent us Russ Feingold show Romney withing the margin of error.
• The Bradley Effect (where people are reluctant to tell pollsters that they are voting against the black guy) may reappear.  This has resulted in black candidates polling 3-5% better than the actually do  in the election.
• The larger the sample size in the poll, the better Mitt Romney shows.  The large polls all have Mitt in the lead.  The small sample size polls are the only ones that show a lead for Obama.  When we do the largest possible poll on election day, Romney will prevail.
• Last minute bungling on Benghazi and Sandy means Obama missed his last chance to appear Presidential before the election.  He got no bounce, and in fact has lost ground since these events.
• Early voting is down 57% in Chicago.  This is a sign of waning enthusiasm in the Obama base.  If Chicago won't turn out, then no one is going to turn out.  And if Chicago does not turn out, Illinois is in play to fall into the Romney column.  If Obama's 'home' state won't vote for him, he has zero chance of getting re-elected.
• Deep Blue Massachusetts has the Senate race tied between Brown and Warren.  If MA is electing Republicans (even RINO Republicans) then all is lost nationally for the Democrats.
• Minnesota is showing Obama with a 1 point lead that is within the margin of error.  Minnesota elected Al Franken to the Senate, and now Obama is in a tie??
• Rallies for Romney are attended in massive numbers, with stadiums overflowing and crowds spilling out of parks and theaters.  Crowds for Obama are anemic -- 200 people show up for Obama and Stevie Wonder, 8 people for Sandra Fluke, etc.  The Media sees the gap and is trying to inflate the Obama numbers.   They recently reported a crowd of 20,000 for an event held in an arena with a capacity of 12,000.  The the gap is so big that exaggeration no longer helps, they have to just make stuff up, even the mathematically impossible.
• Team Obama can't stay on message.  'Vote for Revenge' is just the latest gaffe that dilutes the message and weakens Obama.
• America has seen what the Democrat party is really like.  We saw them boo God and Israel three times before the platform was changed at the convention.  We see what happens when you put Democrats in charge of national security: the Mideast is in flames and our Ambassador is dead.  We see who his friends are: Putin, Chavez,
• The economy is in a shambles.  Despite the rosy reporting from the media, people know that things are not right.  People vote their pocket books.
• Obama and Biden are running to the right of Mitt Romney.  The latest speech from Biden could have been delivered by Ronald Reagan.  It was all about free markets and strong defense.  If they are that far to the right, you know the left wing crap is not selling this year.
• The Left is threatening violence if Obama does not win.  Twitter is swamped with death threats and calls for rioting, and big name Obama supporters like Bill Maher are saying "Black people will come after you" if you vote for Romney.  This is an attempt to scare people that racial unrest will ensue if they don't vote Obama, and this is a sign of desperation.
• Left wing religious people are less likely to vote for Obama.  Obama held a Catholics for Obama rally in CO.  45 people showed up.   Obama's tepid support for Israel has eroded his strong support among Jews.  These groups are a key constituency of the Left, and without them, Obama is sunk.
• Support among black people has eroded in the wake of Obama coming out in favor of gay marriage.  There are a large number of Black pastors who are not supporting Obama, and gay marriage is very unpopular among blacks.  While this might not get people to vote for Romney, it will likely lower turnout from 2008 levels.

The signs are everywhere and they are unmistakable. 

Romney will over come the huge advantage of Media bias.  He will prevail over rampant cheating and ballot stuffing by Democrats.  He will prevail over 20,000 union thugs assigned to intimidate voters are polling places.  He will prevail over Black Panthers, threats of riots, and warnings of racial strife. 

Romney will win, and he will win in a massive blow out.

Red Blue Divide

There was a question posted on Yahoo along the line of "What would happen if the country divided along the lines of Red and Blue?".  In other words, what if the Republicans and Democrats simply parted ways based on counties that voted Red and Blue.

Some named Tmess2 posted the following:

You would have no government regulations of banks to assure that your deposits were safe.
You would have no funding for education so within a generation your industries R and D would be non-existent.
You would have no regulation over investments so no outsiders would want to invest in your country's industries.
You would spend twice as much on the military as the rest of the world, meaning that you could not live within your means (currently 80% of non-social security taxes goes to military spending in the US)
Your workers (90% of the population) would barely earn living wages causing your economy to crash into a massive recession (though the handful of people running companies that manufactured for exports would be living high on the hog).
Women would be trapped in an abusive marriage.
Roads and bridges would crumble (none of that pesky reliance on government to keep things working).
Sounds like a good country. Last I heard, it was called the Russian Federation. 

This is a very interesting and revealing summary of what presumably Lefty-Democrat type thinks would happen in a Republican nation.

Mostly this reveals that they assume that government is the only mechanism by which rules are enforced and people can live together. 

Let's take a look at these assumptions:

You would have no government regulations of banks to assure that your deposits were safe.  Government regulations do not make banks safe.  Sound banking practices and the profit motive is what keeps your deposits safe.  All the regulations in the world cannot protect you from stupid lending policies like giving mortgages to people that cannot pay them back, even if that lending was required by the regulators.  In fact, government regulations create additional risk by creating a moral hazard for the bankers. In an unregulated bank, the bankers lose everything if the bank fails.  In our current markets, banks simply get bailed out.  Our current system is a mess because of regulations, not due to the lack of them.

You would have no funding for education so within a generation your industries R and D would be non-existent.
So apparently no one learned anything and there was no R&D prior to the creation of the Department of Education?   This is nonsense.  Of course there would be money for education. People spend it now in the form of taxes, but the money is laundered through layers of government and inefficiency before it gets to the schools.  The current bloated bureaucracies that pass for education systems in this country do a terrible job of educating our children.  The value we get for our education dollars is near zero.  Funding in the Republican zone would be much more direct.  People pay for their own schools, with vouchers to subsidize the truly needy.   The Chicago schools cannot fire teachers until they show up drunk five times, or get caught selling drugs three times(!).  You tell me, whose educational system is going to suck?

You would have no regulation over investments so no outsiders would want to invest in your country's industries.
Investors do not make investments based on the regulatory environment.  They invest where they thing that they can make the most money. Republicans are not anarchists, there would be some laws regarding fraud, etc.  But the vast majority of the rules and regulations would be swept away in favor of a system where the markets regulated themselves.  This would create a much more dynamic market with some spectacular crashes and frauds like Lehman Brothers, Bernie Madoff, and Enron.  Oh, wait, we have those now!  Regulations do not prevent these events.  Regulations simply create opportunities for politicians to shake down companies for campaign contributions.

You would spend twice as much on the military as the rest of the world, meaning that you could not live within your means (currently 80% of non-social security taxes goes to military spending in the US)  The defense of the country is one of the duties of the government, so, yes, we would spend money on this.  Interestingly, we would also have most of the trained soldiers and military installations.  Presumably the Democrat republic would spend less on defense.  It would not take long before the costs of not defending yourself would become apparent.

Your workers (90% of the population) would barely earn living wages causing your economy to crash into a massive recession (though the handful of people running companies that manufactured for exports would be living high on the hog).
This is a completely unsupported assertion. The Republican zone would include virtually all the farmland in the US, plus a fair amount of the modern manufacturing plants in the south. The Red zone would also be energy independent and have very low levels of social pathology such as the inner city slums. The Democrat zone would have to import food and energy, it would have high union wages that would make its products uncompetitive, and it would be saddled with millions of people in the dependent classes that have never worked or learned a skill.  It is the Democrat economy that would come to a crashing halt, not the Republican one.

Women would be trapped in an abusive marriage.
What??  This is pure drivel with no factual basis.  I am not even sure how you come to this conclusion, but let's look at some indicators for where the abuse might actually lie.  In every dimension of life (charity donations in time and money, coaching, scouting, volunteering, happiness) Republican score higher than Democrats.  This is fact.  I think it is a stretch to assume that the happy, charitable, community oriented side is the one trapping people in abusive marriages.

Roads and bridges would crumble (none of that pesky reliance on government to keep things working).
Again, it sounds like you have the Republicans confused with the anarchists. We do not believe in no roads and bridges.  We do believe in making them efficiently and linking the costs of them to the use of them through tolls, etc.   I think it is very safe to assume that the opposite would be the case.  Look at the condition of the infrastructure in the Democrat controlled cities and tell me that is the Republican side that would lack for roads and bridges.

I think is it pretty clear which group of people needs the other.  Democrats and their dependent looter-moocher supporters would no be able to exist without the productive power of the people with jobs and the protection afforded by the military. 

Look at the cities that have been ruled by the Democratic party for a long time. Detroit, Philadelphia, Washington DC.   They are all economic and social basket cases.  Asserting the idea that Republicans would be the ones to suffer in a separation deal is absurd.

A separation would not last long.  Within the short time the Democrat side would come crawling back, demanding that we start paying for everything again.




 

Goodbye Rule of Law, Hello Rule of Man

This nation was founded on ideas.  A set of guiding principles that gave us the courage and the moral framework to carve a nation out of the wilderness.  Among these principles is the Rule of Law.

The Rule of Law is the only framework in which men can exist together peaceably.  If there are no rights and no certainty then all of economic society collapses.  This has happened before, most notably in France. 

The King ruled over all of France and nothing happened without his approval.  He was the law.  This resulted in a crony and influence peddling based economy that collapsed in short order.  France fell from its perch as a global power and revolution swept the nation as the people revolted against the rule of man.

Britain took a different course when the people forced the King to sign the Magna Carta.  That document limited the power of the King and elevated the Rule of Law to the most powerful position in the country.  Britain rapidly rose to be the world’s largest economic and military empire as it spread the Rule of Law throughout the world.

Thanks to the British influence, the idea is enshrined in the Constitution and, as  John Adams phrased it,  created as ‘a nation of laws, not of men’.  Every elected official in the Federal Government swears to uphold the Constitution, and by inference, the Rule of Law.

This adherence to the Rule of Law has served us well.  We have displaced the British as the world’s leading economic and military superpower.  Our respect for these guiding principles has laid the intellectual and moral ground work for the most productive and wealthy society known to man.

We seem to have lost our way over the past few years.  We have lost our adherence to the rule of law and become a nation under the rule of man.  We can see this everywhere around us:

·       The Supreme Court interprets Obamacare to be the exact opposite of what the words of the law say in order to uphold it.
 

·       When the Democrats want to replace their Senate candidate in New Jersey a few weeks before the election because he is clearly going to be defeated, they simple get a judge to rule that the six weeks in advance deadline required by state law does not really mean six week, but four weeks.

·       When former Democratic Senator John Corzine is brought to trial for looting a company of over $700 million, the judge simply rules that stealing his client’s money did not constitute fraud per se, and that the lies that were told under oath were so blatant that the jury should have seen for the lies that they were, and therefore Corzine could not be charged with a crime

·      When Muslims around world start protesting because of some stupis YouTube video, the President of the United States calls for the suspension of the First Amendment and then has the filmmaker arrested.  We now live in a country where you can be put in jail for violating no laws and doing nothing wrong; you can be dragged out of your home in the middle of the night by the police.

·      General Motors is about to go bankrupt, so the government intervenes. Clearly illegal, but it gets worse.  When the government restructures the company it violates the rules and give preference to the unions, shafting the bondholders for millions of dollars.  When some of the bond holders protested, they were visited by certain government officials who threatened them.  They dropped their objections.

 

 

These are the things that happen in a banana republic, not the United States of America. We no longer have the rule of law.

We are dangerously close to the end of the Republic.

 

De-evolution

I hate the crass stupidity of the tone and level of public discourse in this country.  No one seems to be able to carry on a debate without personal attacks or base language.

Even the debates we see waged on bumper stickers tends toward the stupid over time.

For example, there has been a great debate between the Jesus people and the Darwin people over the past 20 years and part of it was fought on the back of motor vehicles. 

The first salvo was The Fish.  The Christians went back to the earliest and simplest symbol for Christ and the early Church and started putting fish on the back of their cars.  Simple. Elegant. It tell the whole story.  "I am a follower of Christ". Well stated.



In a brilliant counter play, the Darwinists fought back.  They put little feet on the fish, thus creating an beautiful riposte to the fish.  An evolved fish.  Take that, Christians!   Well played, Darwin, people, well played.



Then things started to to go awry. The Christians began putting the word 'Jesus' inside the fish.  What??  The fish already means 'Jesus'.  You don't have to put the word Jesus inside the symbol for Jesus.  This is the equivalent of putting the word AMERICA on a US Flag.   Ya, we got it the first time.  This symbol is intended for the profoundly stupid who are unaware they are being redundant.

Then the Darwin people countered with a fish with feet and the word 'Darwin' or "Evolve' written on the inside.  Nooo!!!!  We go the joke the first time.  It was simple, clever, and to the point. Now you go and explain the joke??  When you have to explain the joke, it is no longer funny.

Why couldn't we leave it alone?  The first salvo was interesting and clever.  But we have to lower the debate to the lowest common denominator -- the people the need the word Jesus inside the fish.

One Way or Another

We are three and a half years into what is arguably the worst Presidency in history.

And yet Obama is ahead in the polls.

How is this possible?

Well, there are two possibilities.  One is that the polls are accurate, the other is that the polls are being skewed by the pollsters.  Let's examine the implications of both.

The Polls are Accurate
This is stunning and incredible to me.  On every level this Presidency has been an unmitigate disaster. The economy is in tatters, the debt about to sink us, foreign policy is a disaster with Ambassadors who are raped and murdered are dismissed as 'bumps in the road'.

And yet the President is ahead in the polls.  How is this possible?  One possibility is that we have already reached the tipping point and that there are more people that are willing to vote for more dependency than there are willng to vote for freedom. 

If this is the case, then the Republic is already lost.  We will see four more years of the same -- record deficits as far as the eye can see, weakness in our foreign policy,

Each passing year we add more people to the dependent class that will vote for big government at all costs.  We are on the path to following Greece down the drain.

We are doomed as nation if Obama wins re-election.

The Polls are Fixed

This is understandable. The media (and the candidates) benefit from the perception that there is a competitive race.  People donate more.  They watch television more.  This is all big business.

So there is a strong temptation to fudge the numbers to make it a horse race. 

But there is a more indisious side to this sort of deception.

When the polls on election eve have the President in the lead, and then he gets blown out on election day, it will raise cries of foul from the Left.  It will leave Obama's base, particualarly blacks, feeling as though the election was stolen from them and that they got cheated. 

I can even forsee a scenario where Obama wins the popular vote but loses big in the Electoral College.  This could happen because the Democratic machine will massively cheat in areas that it controls like New York, Chicago, and California.  This will give Obama huge numbers in these poulous states.  But they wont be able to cheat enough to overcome the negatives in the swing states, and he will get wiped out.

This will set the stage for potential civil unrest as Obama refuses to concede the election and challenges the results in court. 

It will also set race relations back another 50 years when the blacks perceive that they were screwed out of getting more Obama money.

Where's the Damn Fiddle?

When the American Embassy in Libya was attacked, we were unable to stop the mobs from ransacking the place and killing our ambassador.  Aside from the fact that this is an act of war, this is an incredible emabarrassment to the US.  Where are the Marines?  Were they, as some reports suggest, not allowed to carry ammunition?

Is this the most incompetent admistration in history?

Libya now says we were warned 3 days in advance of impending attacks, but did nothing.

When the consulate was attacked our embassy in Libya issued a statement apologizing for a movie that has been out for four months and that the US goverment had nothing to do wit

Mitt Romney issues a statement correctly saying that the apology was disgraceful

Even the White House backs away from the apology by claiming it was not reviewed before it went out.

Then Ambassador is killed by a raging mob.

At this point, Obama does the most important thing on his priority list: he flies to Vegas for a fundraising event while the press  attacks Mitt Romney.  Romney is condemned more aggressively in the press than the people that actually committed the murder.  

Hillary Clinton then announces yet another apology, and Obama chimes in with we are 'heartbroken'.

It turns out that while Valerie Jarrett is protected by a large Secret Service detail while on Martha's Vineyard, our Ambassador was wandering around Libya without the benefit of a Marine guard. 

While the Middle East bursts into flames our President plays golf and attends fundraisers. 

Where is a fiddle when you need one?

Surrender in Advance

The Obama Administration has announced our surrender in Afghanistan, and now our troops are paying the price for this cowardice with their lives.

You win wars in two ways:

1.  Kill or incapacitate the enemy
2.  Make them realize that they cannot win

When you announce in advance that you are ending the war on some future date you are effectively surrendering.  This makes options #2 unavailable as a path to victory, and you can therefore only win by taking path #1.  You must kill them all.

Well, we have ridiculous rules of engagement in place that prevent us from killing them all, so we have lost the war in advance.

This has several effects on the battlefield.  It emboldens our enemies and disheartens our allies. (Something that would be called treason in a sane world)

The Taliban will never negotiate or stop fighting now that they know they are a few short months away from victory.  They will simply keep the pressure on our troops with IED's and ambushes, with the occasional spectacular attack.

The worst effect of pre-emptive surrender, however, is the effect that it will have on our allies and the troops stationed with them.

The Afghans that allied with us will know that they are screwed.  Much like the South Vietnamese that fought for their freedom only to be abandoned, the Afghan National Army and the Police forces will be hunted down and executed to a man after they lose the war. Their families are also at risk, with the vengeful Taliban killing, maiming, and raping the families of those on the losing side.

The ANA troops know this.  They can see that we have lost our will to win and that the Taliban will be back in command of Afghanistan within weeks of our withdrawal.

They have only one way out of this quandary: betray the Americans.  Kill a few Americans in a 'green on blue' attack.  If you die, you are a martyr to the cause and your family is saved.  If you somehow survive, you become a hero who will be welcomed in the Taliban with open arms.  It is the perfect solution to this issue.

How do we know that I am right?  Because the pace and effect of the 'green on blue' attacks is increasing every week as we get closer to losing the war.  Our troops must watch their 'allies' as closely as they watch the enemy.  These attacks will continue to grow in frequency until something really tragic happens.  We will see an entire ANA unit defect at once, and kill every American they are based with.  We will lose an entire platoon in a single attack in the near future.

More US troops are being killed by our erstwhile allies than by enemy action.  Eventually we will need to stop working jointly with the ANA, and perhaps even try to disarm them.  This will result chaos and civil war.  Our troops will be engaged in a bloody civil war where everyone in the country is trying to kill them.

All of this is the result of the incredibly stupid decision to announce our surrender in advance.

Afghanistan is lost unless we reverse course.  And all of the lives we lost there are squandered. 

Thanks, Obama.

Tightwad Liberals

I have stated before that Conversatives are better human beings than Liberals.

Here is more evidence...


http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | <!— attribution —>There are 366 major metropolitan areas in the United States, and a comprehensive new study by the Chronicle of Philanthropy ranks them on the basis of generosity -- the percentage of income the median household in each city gives to charity. According to the Chronicle, the most generous city in America is Provo, Utah, where residents typically give away 13.9 percent of their discretionary income. Boston, by contrast, ranks No. 358: In New England's leading city, the median household donates just 2.9 percent of its income to charity.
Provo's generosity is typical for its region. Of the 10 most generous cities in America, according to the Chronicle's calculations, six are in Utah and Idaho. Boston's tight-fistedness is typical too: Of the 10 stingy cities at the bottom of the list, eight are in New England -- including Springfield (No. 363) and Worcester (No. 364).

What's the matter with Massachusetts? How can residents of the bluest state, whose political and cultural leaders make much of their compassion and frequently remind the affluent that we're all in this together, be so lacking in personal generosity? And why would charitable giving be so outstanding in places as conservative as Utah and Idaho?

The question is built on a fallacy.

Liberals, popular stereotypes notwithstanding, are not more generous and compassionate than conservatives. To an outsider it might seem plausible that Americans whose political rhetoric emphasizes "fairness" and "social justice" would be more charitably inclined than those who stress economic liberty and individual autonomy. But reams of evidence contradict that presumption, as Syracuse University professor Arthur Brooks demonstrated in his landmark 2006 book, .

However durable the myth, wrote Brooks (who now heads the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank), there is no getting around the data. For years, academic research and comprehensive national studies have confirmed that Americans who lean to the left politically tend to be much less charitable than those who tilt rightward. The Chronicle of Philanthropy's new report is only the latest in a long series of studies corroborating that fact.

In 1996, for example, the wide-ranging General Social Survey asked a large sample of Americans whether "the government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality" -- a key ideological litmus test. Thirty-three percent of respondents agreed; 43 percent disagreed. The two groups differed sharply in more than their politics. The conservatives -- those who opposed government programs to reduce inequality -- were significantly more likely to donate money to charity than the liberals. And among those who did donate, conservatives gave away, on average, four times as much money per year.

Though there is a strong link between religious belief and philanthropy, it wasn't just churches the conservatives were giving to. "They gave more to every type of cause and charity: health charities, education organizations, international aid groups, and human welfare agencies," Brooks noted. They even gave more "to traditionally liberal causes, such as the environment and the arts."

None of this was what Brooks had anticipated when he began his research. "I expected to find that political liberals � would turn out to be the most privately charitable people," he says. "So when my early findings led to the opposite conclusion, I assumed I had made some sort of technical error�. In the end, I had no option but to change my views."

The Chronicle's new study, which is based on IRS records from 2008 (the most recent available), accounts for regional differences in the cost of living. It calculates charitable giving only from discretionary income -- the dollars left over after paying for taxes, housing, and food. But the economic differences are not nearly as significant as cultural differences. In parts of the country where conservative values dominate, charity tends to be high. Where liberalism holds sway, charity falls. "Red states are more generous than blue states," the Chronicle concludes. The eight states that ranked the highest in charitable giving all voted for John McCain in 2008. The seven lowest-ranking states supported Barack Obama.

Of course this doesn't mean that there aren't generous philanthropists in New England. It doesn't mean selfishness is unknown on the right. What it does mean is that where people are encouraged to think that solving society's ills is primarily a job for government, charity tends to evaporate. The politics of "compassion" isn't the same as compassionate behavior. America's generosity divide separates those who understand the difference from those who don't.

F*ck the Rich? Thank the Rich!

The OccupyRNC is a small group of Occupy types that have gathered to protest the Republican National Convention.  They number in the tens.  Maybe almost a hundred.  These people are fully supported by Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat party and are getting a lot of attention from the left leaning press.

But they do say some interesting things that reveal the agenda of the Occupy movement.  Watch the video as this OccupyRNC genius explains his world view.


Aside from the obvious snarky responses (he is holding an expensive camcorder and wearing clothing manufactured by rich capitalists while decrying the role of the rich) his point of view deserves some serious examination.

"The rich re-allocate wealth from the environment and its inhabitants"   This is completely untrue.  The rich create wealth by adding value.  Copper ore in the ground is a resource in the environment and it is worthless.  Copper that has been mined, smelted, and forged into tubes is of far greater value.  The man who got rich by adding all that value did not steal wealth, he created it.  The wealth in that copper ore exists only in the abstract.  It takes effort, capital, and reason to transform it into something of value.  The Marxist view that all wealth is stolen is false.

The rich have 'lavish parties for themselves while people starve.  This narrative is a non-sequitur. The two things have nothing to do with each other.  His view seems to be that no one should have more than anyone else until everyone has enough food.  Yet he stands there holding an expensive camcorder, purchased with money that could have been used to save a village in Africa.  Hypocrisy aside, he has things backwards.  Hunger and starvation are pre-existing human conditions throughout human history.  The only societies that have been able to banish hunger are the rich capitalist ones.  We not only do not have people that are starving, our poor people are fat.   It is the rich capitalists that create the means for the poor to live better than in any other time in history.

Where is his ideology used successfully?  "Freetown Christiania...Somalia...Afghanistan.."   Freetown Christiania is a small commune that supports about 850 people.  It is located in the center of one of the most modern western cities, and is clearly not self-supporting.  It is also not large enough to qualify as an example for an entire nation.  He claims that Somalia and Afghanistan are successful examples???  If that is success, then I want no part of it.  These are two of the poorest and most barbaric places in the entire world.  One country survives on an illegal heroin trade, the other by piracy.  I can't think of two worse places to use as an example.  This is the vision that Occupy-democrat axis has for us: Somalia and Afghanistan.

"Sure [the rich] can create jobs, but what we really need is housing and food"  How does he think housing and food are created??  Is he so far removed from reality that he no longer understands that these things have to be created?  Food does not grow on trees.  Well, OK, some food does.  But you know what I mean.  There is no food without the farmer and his employees.  There is no housing without the carpenter and the mason.  Jobs are just a way to add economic value for those that cannot create it independently.  Jobs are ways in which the rich give access to capital to others so that they may be more productive.  Who adds more value to the process of building a house?  20 men with their bare hands, or 20 men working for companies that use bulldozers, cranes, and other tools that are purchased with capital??  Obviously men using tools are more productive.  That is why even the lowest skilled laborer in this country is richer than 90% of the rest of the planet.  We have rich people that use their capital to make us all richer.  We should thank the rich, not f*ck the rich.

I hope this give you some insight into the madness and wrongheadedness of the occupy movement.  Remember that this movement is fully supported by the Democratic party. 

Think about that at election time. 

You are choosing between a capitalist future of un-evenly distributed wealth, and the Marxist-Democrat future of evenly divided poverty and violence.

On the Deck of the Titanic

Almost four years ago America looked at the two presidential candidates and chose the one we wanted to lead our country. We chose the path we wanted to take.

Aided and abetted by the leftist media, Obama was elected to the Presidency. 

Many people were excited and there was talk of how this was a watershed moment in America.  And they were right.  This election will be looked at as a critical inflection point in world history.

It will be seen as the moment that America decided to commit suicide.

When you look back at the decline and fall of the many empires that have gone before us, it is often difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when they became doomed.   But we shall not be burdened with this challenge.  We will know. 

We gave up our ideals and our identity as we elected this closet-Marxist to the highest office.

His prescription for America was billed as an elixir that would cure all of our ailments.  What he was offering was hemlock.  Over the past four years we have consumed a steady diet of this Marxist-Keynesian poison and the results are becoming clear. We are dying as a nation.

Ours is a nation of ideas.  This is what makes us unique in the world and in history.  Our identity is not based on our tribal origins, or our religion, or even history.  Our identity is based on the ideas enshrined in the Constitution.   We have had astonishing success over the past 200 years as this empire of ideas had conquered the world.

Americans dominance in every field of endeavor has made us wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of the kings and emperors of yore.  It enables event the poorest among us to live better than anyone else in the world by any measure you care to take. This wealth has also generated envy and hatred for America.

This envy and hatred does not come only from our enemies.  It also festers here at home.  Since the turn of the century there has been thread of progressivism and populism running through America.  Both of these terms are designed to mask the true identity of the socialist ideology lying just under the surface of these movements.

Well, the people that despise American ideals have finally ascended to the highest office in the land.  The short term results are bad and will continue to echo for many years to come.  But the long term results will be disastrous for the United States and the entire world:

·       Radicalized Islamic nations have risen throughout the Middle East with the support and approval of the Obama administration.   This crescent of Muslim Brotherhood-green will result in wars, oil embargoes, genocide, the repression of millions of women and non-Muslims.

·       Obama has deliberately spent us in to $15 trillion in debt and counting.  Our debt levels will cripple us financially for the foreseeable future.  Every American will be poorer in the future due to the wanton and wasteful spending.  Unlike previous spending binges, we don’t have anything to show for it.  At least FDR gave us some dams and roads.  This administration has simply squandered the money.

·       Our military folly of fighting a war in which we have pre-announced the date of our surrender, plus the looming budget cuts to the Air Force and Navy, will embolden our enemies and leave us unable to project power across the globe.  When America is weak, our enemies will act.  Our military weakness will certainly lead to a shooting war or the wholesale abandonment of our allies.  God help Israel if the Arabs invade in a few years.   Weakness encourages aggression, and we will be the targets of plenty of aggression.  It is not inconceivable that this devolves into World War III.

·       A nation of dependents cannot survive.  The Obama administration has encouraged and created dependency to record levels.  We are nearly at the tipping point where more people will get benefits than there are people paying in.  As Tocqueville point out, we cannot survive when the people can vote themselves more ‘freebies’.  Reducing our dependency levels will be very painful and may well result in the sort of street riots that we saw in Greece.  We may well already be past the point of no return, where the political forces driving spending cannot be reined in. 

Many disasters unfold slowly.  But there is always a point of no return where the result is inevitable.  The Titanic was doomed long before it started to take on water because the mass and speed of the ship meant it could not turn fast enough to avoid the collision.  The people on that ship were effectively dead long before they even knew something was wrong.

Think about the fact that proposed small decreases in the rate of spending increase are met with howls of protest and remember that we have to actually cut spending 40% just to stop adding to the national debt.   Obama may have set us on a course with an iceberg that it is too late to avoid, and like the Titanic, we are doomed to sink and perish and there is nothing on earth that can stop that now.

 

 

 

No Room for Gun Control

The recent mass shooting in Aurora, CO have renewed calls for more gun control from the usual suspects.

New York Mayor Bloomberg, Michael Moore, various celebrities, and virtually every leftist talking head have called for new laws and restrictions on the ownership or possession of guns or ammo.

The problem is that there is no room for gun control anymore.

There are only two types of gun control laws: 'small laws' and 'big laws'.

Small laws are the incremental restrictions that try to ban the little things: bayonet lugs, flash hiders, one-gun-per-month, large capacity magazines, armor piercing ammo, and so on.

Large laws are the complete ban of firearms or types on firearms: local gun bans, banning handguns, banning assault weapons, etc. 

Here is the problem for erstwhile gun control fanatics: the small laws don't work, and the big ones have been struck down by the Supreme Court.

The small laws have been tried for decades in various configurations. The 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, for example.  All of these laws have had zero effect on crime.  Banning Saturday night specials did not reduce handgun crime at all.  Nor did banning the importation of certain guns, nor restricting teflon coated ammunition. None of it worked to reduce gun crime. 

The big laws were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.  The Court held that the Second Amendment meant what it said: there is a right to keep and bear arms.  Therefore all the laws banning the possession of firearms are null and void.  You cannot ban entire classes of weapons, nor can you restrict the ownership of guns. 

So with the small laws proven to be ineffective and the big laws off limits, there is no room left for gun control.

The American public has figured this out, and support for gun control has dropped to post-war record lows.  The voting power of the pro-gun lobby has made gun control measures impossible to pass, and politically lethal for politicians except those ensconced in the most liberal districts.

100 Degrees of Hot Air

100 Degrees of Hot Air

It is 100 degrees out today, so it seems like the perfect time to talk about Global Warming.  Err, Climate Change.  Whatever they call it now.

It seems the Inter Academy Council (IAC) just release a new report about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.

You know what it says?  It says all the previous IPCC reports are complete and utter lies.  They are 100 degrees of hot air.

Well, it does not use those exact works.  But it does make some startling admissions that show pretty clearly that all of the previous reports were politically motivated junk masquerading as science by a pretty important organization.

"The IPCC is the world's most prominent source of alarmist predictions and claims about man-made global warming. Its four reports (a fifth report is scheduled for release in various parts in 2013 and 2014) are cited by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the U.S. and by national academies of science around the world as "proof" that the global warming of the past five or so decades was both man-made and evidence of a mounting crisis."

"The IAC reported that IPCC lead authors fail to give "due consideration ... to properly documented alternative views" (p. 20), fail to "provide detailed written responses to the most significant review issues identified by the Review Editors" (p. 21), and are not "consider[ing] review comments carefully and document[ing] their responses" (p. 22). 

In plain English: the IPCC reports are not peer-reviewed.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/07/ipcc_admits_its_past_reports_were_junk.html#ixzz20uqTjtu9

There are further criticisms:

The IAC notes that the summary sections are 'too political'.  Since the summary part is the only part that laymen and the new media ever read, everything we have been told about climate change has been 'too political'.  And by 'too political', they mean 'not science at all'.

False use of confidence intervals gives the report more gravitas than it deserves.  Confidence intervals have a specific meaning in statistics and science.  The IPCC would ask people for their opinions and then report that global warming predictions have an '80% confidence', conflating mere opinion for science.

The IPCC summary findings are no more than opinion polls of true believers.  This would be like going to a church and asking all the congregants if they are confident that there is a god, and then reporting that there is a 80% scientific certainty that god exists.

If you ask people who will directly benefit from solving the problem if the problem is real, of course you get 80% confidence.  The real question is, who are the 20% of  'climate scientists' that do not believe that climate change is real??

There are more problems than this, but the point is made. 

Several years ago skeptics began to question the processes and assumptions of the IPCC.  They were ignored by the press, and ridiculed by the warmist community.

Well, now the IAC has admitted the truth.  The IPCC reports are not science.  They are political manifestos trumped up to look like science.

Can we please stop talking about climate change?  It is time we all accept that the gig is up, the news is out.  Climate Change is a hoax perpetrated by Leftists to gain personal power, money, and glorious headlines.