Self-explanatory, really

When in doubt, empty the clip

- Somewhat aged, but as the target flotsam study floats around the confines of the Internet, this should serve to shut down mindless yapping to its affirmative: Eugene Volokh tears into the University of Pennsylvania study claiming that carrying a firearm increases the chances of being shot by 450%.

- Color me unsurprised: the proletariat in the PRK is unhappy with the situation in Sacramento, but is unwilling to remove the persistent source of the problems that plague the state.

- Unpossible; guns are illegal in Chicago! Perhaps if they made them double-plus-ungood-illegal, that would convince those that already disregard the laws to stop disregarding the law.

- Speaking of, guess what has reached a new low?

- It's popular for a reason.

- Wynn is full of win.

- If "recovery" is a new euphemism for "muddled financial cluster-screw", then this does indeed deserve the moniker "Recovery Act".

It's already been written-off

Could you speak directly into the lamp, please?

A Dance With The Devil

(Included article is somewhat risqué in content; open at your peril.)

Excluding their political mishaps, I have always admired the practical nature of the Russians:

In the new capitalist Russia, a country consumed with money and status, snagging a desirable man is a tough business. "Women want a husband who owns a private plane, a yacht, and an oil well. It's not impossible, but they need super-fantastic skills to succeed," says Varra, who has a riot of curly blonde hair and wears tight black jeans tucked into silver boots -- high-heeled, of course.

I like Varra already; she understands the reality of the market, the fallacy behind the "equality" paradigm, and has created a business based on not only preventing unnecessary divorce, but enabling others to attract and keep suitors of their own choosing.

The problem is not only one of demographic disparity, however; it is (and should be) completely unsurprising that the State is causing an unnatural distortion with regard to demand:

Holding on to a good man long-term is an equally high-stakes matter. Divorce in Russia is easy; a powerful man can divorce his wife "in an hour," according to one local insider. Under the country's anachronistic divorce laws, husbands are generally not obliged to give their wives a penny, and they are often awarded custody of the children. "Relationships are like roulette for modern Russian women," says the insider. "They have a lot to win and everything to lose, so they can never afford to get complacent."

Heh. "Anachronistic" when the bias is in one direction, "progressive" in the other; are relationships for men not "like roulette" for men in Western nations? Complacency is no less a mistake, but diligence will not guarantee safety in either case.

As always, Old Scratch hides himself in the details:

To the Western feminist mind, it might seem a bit retrograde, yet Varra insists that Russian women are the ultimate post-feminists. "We know all about equality and independence -- we've been there," she tells me. During the Soviet era, which ended in 1991, millions of men died in wars and labor camps. Women often ran their households alone, while also working in factories. The problem is that Russian men, says Varra, remain deeply patriarchal and still expect women to be subservient. "Rather than try to change men, which will take another 200 years," she says, "we might as well get whatever we can out of them now."

Startlingly similar to the "pump-'n-dump" philosophy of secular men in this post-modern age, isn't it? If one is not the empowered party in the divorce, it pays to invest in a strategy that emphasizes either placating the desires of the other party or minimizing the liability of exposure. The strategy isn't symmetric, but neither are the demands: endless jokes have been made over the impossibility of pleasing a woman, and the utter simplicity in pleasing a man. Varra is not a fool, and obviously the evaluation is proving accurate enough for her to run a successful business in instructing other women in the more "delicate" aspects of doing so. What is surprising is the amount of Western women that refuse to believe that the corollary is true, and that preponderance of bias in the family-courts encourages the adoption of such a strategy, or as is the case with those men with misgivings about freelance-sexuality, complete avoidance.

It should come as little surprise to anyone, then, that such interested parties eventually seek each other out in spite of regulatory barriers and social-pressure applied by those seeking to exercise power through the State against them; it is a comfort to know that despite their best efforts, the market always wins, and the howls of protest from the feminist ranks will die with them and any State that adopts their philosophy.

Did they ever really have it?

More excellence from A Softer World.

When in doubt, empty the clip

- "We love the idea of the Kindle, but Amazon really needs to step up and start communicating more honestly with customers about the details of the invisible shackles they use when they sell us ebooks. How can their license agreement promise you permament access to a copy if that access to it is taken away after a certain number of actions?"

- Incredibly invasive, idiotic and inimical to even the pretension of liberty: more "change we can believe in".

- "In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has ruled that prosecutors aren’t obligated to turn over DNA for testing after someone has been convicted, even if the state acknowledges that a DNA test would prove conclusive as to guilt or innocence, and even if the defendant agrees to pay for the testing himself."

- "The Mexican legislature has voted quietly to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and other drugs. Past efforts have proved highly controversial, most recently three years ago, but President Felipe Calderón is expected to sign the bill into law this time."

- Speaking of drugs,votes, and advocating products and services without full disclosure...

The tariffs are exorbitant

So, if America exports democracy to Iraq, and we import freedom from China, and freedom comes from democracy, is Iraq manufacturing black-market freedom from taxpayer democracy to sell to the Chinese to sell to the Americans?

If my math is correct, we should have an incoming invasion of Chicago, as I hear they have the technology to manufacture democracy from dead people; doubtless we could use this to our benefit in Iraq.

A half-truth is a whole lie

For the many times I have seen this story posted, not once have I seen a clear distinction made between the Exploring and Boy Scouts, as many that have posted about it have failed to bother themselves with independent research or digging in the New York Times' rubbish-bins. To wit, Learning for Life (the parent organization for Exploring) recently posted a response to the article that addressed the deliberate obfuscation of that distinction:

Last, the article inaccurately describes Explorers as Boy Scouts. Exploring is a program of Learning for Life, a nonprofit organization that provides character and career education programs to participating agencies or groups. Learning for Life is affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America.

Overall, the complete piece was a weak, ineffectual reply to the article, but this is more of a reflection on its leadership, which cannot afford to be principled by nature of its relationship with a broad variety of national education-focused programs. This is not to say that I approve of the aims of the Learning for Life program; to the contrary, I neither approve nor condone the existence of a program so intimately involved with the State, and it is my sincere belief that the Boy Scouts of America would do well to totally disassociate itself from the program and focus its attention on Scouting.

This, of course, is the the point: lingering association with Learning for Life has damaged the reputation of the Boy Scouts of America, and it will continue to do so as long as the BSA continues to espouse its rights as a private organization. This has been the avenue of drift since I was in the Boy Scouts some years ago as a youth, during which traditionally-used buildings on military property at the Defense Language Institute (rest in peace, Uncle Paul) became increasingly unavailable due to the refusal of the BSA to adopt a "more inclusive attitude".

On a more personal note, and speaking for more than a few Eagle Scouts other than myself, involvement in the program has done infinitely more good by us than any of the public-schooling, forced volunteerism or feel-good "Rock The Vote" schema implemented by public do-gooders, even in their most fevered delusions. Indeed, much of this obligatory social-engineering has back-fired due to our Scouting experience, and many of us have become self-professed (and actively agitating) libertarians with a penchant for good-natured mayhem because of it.

It's not a perfect program, but I've yet to see better.

Over 200,000,000 served

Once Upon a Time in Mexico

Senate Judiciary Committee, 3/17/09:

SEN. RUSS FEINGOLD: ... So the hearing today is important to move this forward. Mr. Kibble and Mr. Hoover, I was deeply troubled to learn that the vast majority of weapons used by drug cartels in Mexico come from the United States and that the Mexican cartels are increasingly smuggling military equipment that cannot be legally sold to civilians in either country. Could you please describe the primary source of such weapons and what efforts are under-way to enhance the ability to present these weapons from entering the civilian sector? Mr. Hoover?

WILLIAM HOOVER (BATFE): As far as military firearms, Sir, we have had fewer than, I believe, a dozen traces that go back to military firearms. Now, we have had some military United States-originated military instruments, such as grenades, that have ended up with the cartels, and I would like to speak with you in another hearing or another matter, but I can't go further into that as we are in this session.

KUMAR KIBBLE (ICE): Sir, and this is more anecdotal, but we do have some investigations that have indicated that those weapons may be diverted from other regions and not necessarily coming directly from the U.S., and that's something that we could discuss in greater detail.

Contrast this with recent commentary from the State Department regarding the escalating violence to the south:

Clinton late Wednesday called letting a previous US ban on the sale of assault weapons expire "a mistake."

"I think these assault weapons, these military style weapons, don't belong on anyone's street," said Clinton who pushed for the ban as a New York senator.

"During the time period from 1994 to 2004, when the ban was in effect, our police in America were able to drive crime down because they didn't have to worry about these assault weapons getting into the hands of criminals and gang members," the chief US diplomat said.

"So we will make the case that we need to put more teeth in the law, try to prohibit the sale outside of our borders of these guns," Clinton said.

Lies, lies, and damned lies.

According to Christopher S. Koper in a report to the USDOJ at the end of the original 1994 "Assault Weapons" Ban, Hillary is blowing smoke:

Should it be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement. [Assault weapons] were rarely used in gun crimes even before the ban.

Folks, I don't want to beat a dead horse here (even if it would raise Ingrid Newkirk's dander), but the facts are there: semi-automatic military-style weapons are simply not the weapons of choice for domestic criminals. Or, to really push the equine floggings, there simply is no terrorist with a fully-automatic AK-47 (that he bought at the pawn-shop down the street) hiding behind the azaleas in the front yard. TIME Magazine (horror of horrors) corroborates this claim:

The top 10 guns used in crimes in the U.S. in 2000, according to an unpublished study by U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and obtained exclusively by TIME:


1. Smith and Wesson .38 revolver
2. Ruger 9 mm semiautomatic
3. Lorcin Engineering .380 semiautomatic
4. Raven Arms .25 semiautomatic
5. Mossberg 12 gauge shotgun
6. Smith and Wesson 9mm semiautomatic
7. Smith and Wesson .357 revolver
8. Bryco Arms 9mm semiautomatic
9. Bryco Arms .380 semiautomatic
10. Davis Industries .380 semiautomatic

The list is derived from the center's investigations of 88,570 guns recovered from crime scenes in 46 cities in 2000, is being analyzed for ATF's youth gun crime interdiction initiative, which helps local police forces understand and counter gun trafficking to youth in their jurisdictions.

Frankly, the whole notion that the United States is supplying the drug-cartels with weaponry is idiotic, to put it in polite terms. Let's pause for a reality-check: in world where the cartels can afford to use submarines to smuggle drugs, why would they bother to do the red-tape waltz in the United States to acquire semi-automatic weapons at market price?

Answer: Crime isn't the issue, drugs aren't the issue, but you and I, the tax-payers, with semi-automatic military-grade firearms is an issue.

Take a few minutes to mull that over. I'll be here.

When in doubt, empty the clip

- Atlas smirked.

- This charming lady reminds me of my Grandma: Clara instructs a new Depression-era generation in the "old ways". (I actually make a version of the "Poorman's Meal" quite frequently, but I eschew hot-dogs for Italian sausage. I'm not that poor.)

- Photovoltaic power-systems research breaks the dollar-per-watt barrier.

- There are so many impossibilities involved here, it makes my frontal lobes ache.

- That's some fine police work there, Lou. (Via Agitator)

The White House doth protest too much, methinks.

Santelli merits a response from the Hope-Change Foundation:

“I’ve watched Mr. Santelli on cable the past 24 hours or so. I’m not entirely sure where Mr. Santelli lives or in what house he lives but the American people are struggling every day to meet their mortgages, stay in their jobs, pay their bills, send their kids to school,” Gibbs said. “I think we left a few months ago the adage that if it was good for a derivatives trader that it was good for Main Street. I think the verdict is in on that,” the press secretary said, poking directly at the cable journalist, who reports from the trading floor at the Chicago Board of Trade.

Gibbs insisted Santelli was misinformed when he said Obama’s program would amount to a transfer of money from prudent taxpayers to those who had taken reckless risks.

Under the assumption that those without financial liabilities will not be getting financial assistance, and some of those that have said liabilities are receiving assistance, funding a bailout for a subset of the taxpayers at the expense of all taxpayers amounts to exactly that, Gibbs.

Forced Stimuli

Honesty in advertising

When in doubt, empty the clip

- One more tragic reason to be energy-independent, even within the boundaries of one's property.

- In which I am tempted once again to add a "Chicago" tag to this blog.

- They finally killed it.

- It is on the agenda, despite the claims that firearm-owning Obama-apologists are making. If you own a firearm and you did the deed, you ought to be tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail... And I'm not joking.

- My catalog for the Seed Savers Exchange came in this week, and although I have seeds for this year's garden already (mostly), I'm still enjoying browsing and compiling a new order. (SSE catalogs are free. I have others on the way, and will report in on those at a later date.)

Hammer & Sickle All-Star Line-Up 2008

Old socialists don't die, they just get moth-balled for a while:

Another notable name is joining Barack Obama's Cabinet -- former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle will be Health and Human Services secretary pending Senate confirmation, FOX News learned Wednesday...

As Health and Human Services chief, Daschle will be responsible for helping set health care policy. He supports a government-funded insurance program for the nation's uninsured.

Daschle has also been the head of the health care working group in the Obama transition team. Democratic officials shied away from a term some are throwing around -- "health care czar" -- but say Daschle "is likely to play a leading role in the passage of health care reform and the strategy to implement it."

Upcoming predictions for the cabinet-positions:


Secretary of State: Hillary Clinton

Secretary of the Treasury: Karl Marx's Mummy, with guest puppeteers from "Avenue 'Q'"

Secretary of Defense: N/A; this position is to be subsumed by Secretary of Homeland Security

Secretary of the Interior: Saruman; has experience with forest management policy beneficial to the aims of the State

Secretary of Agriculture: Robert Mugabe; expected to accept after having exhausted Zimbabwe's resources

Secretary of Commerce: Paul Krugman; expect a lot of "use a bigger mallet" theory

Secretary of Labor: Mola Ram; an equal-opportunity employer of children, followers strikingly similar to Obama-volunteers

Secretary of Health and Human Services: Tom Daschle

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: The Borg Collective

Secretary of Education: Ted Turner; infrastructure for mass-programming already in place

Secretary of Energy: Tinkerbell; provides an endless and renewable source of pixie-dust

Secretary of Veterans' Affairs: TBA; "Veteran" implies turnover in enlistment

Secretary of Homeland Security: The Smiths; 'Nuff said.

These might be the droids you're looking for

I'm sure they're nice people and all, but assurances do not a legal document make:

State officials say there’s no doubt Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.

Health Department Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino says she and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, have personally verified that the health department holds Obama’s original birth certificate.

... She says state law bars release of a certified birth certificate to anyone who does not have a tangible interest in it.

I believe applying for a job as the President of the United States both gives any arbitrary voter reason to claim "tangible interest", as per Berg's case, and raises additional questions about how Obama obtained his current occupational position without said verification.

They're talking, but all I'm hearing is, "Stand aside, plebeians! We are on Imperial business!"

The Nature of the Beast

Evidently, BBC is an acronym for Big Brother Communications:

"Using a television without an appropriate licence is a criminal offence. Every day we catch an average of 1,200 people using a TV without a licence. There is no valid excuse for using a television and not having a TV Licence, but some people still try - sometimes with the most ridiculous stories ever heard. Our detection equipment will track down your TV. The fact that our enquiry officers are now so well equipped with the latest technology means that there is virtually no way to avoid detection."

-- from the official website of the British Television Licensing Authority, May 2003

...

In an email, Bennett wrote that "living without a television in the UK is not as simple as getting rid of the TV set. In the UK the licensing authority operates under legal statute giving them wide powers. The licensing authority have no real concept of the non-viewer and class them as suspect licence-dodgers. Thus, we are subject threats and other manner of persecution. Considering we are only refusing an entertainment service it is a ridiculous situation."

I suspect in the not-too-distant future that the wards of the United Faildom can expect to have daily dosings of antidepressants with mandatory viewings of State programming for several hours a day. "You're watching BBC... watching you."

If nothing else, the situation highlights the danger that stems from government involvement in the marketplace. Protectionism creates a symbiotic relationship between the protected and the government, and like any bureaucratic entity will seek to perpetuate itself by any means necessary and at the expense of the governed. Britain-That-Was carries a long history of mercantilist behavior; in this case, the entity has been subsumed into the government, empowering said entity by means of regulatory powers with little oversight or self-discipline.

And if you think this is outrageous, realize that this is precisely the relationship that exists between the government and the banks in any nation that utilizes a central-banking philosophy.

I'm not going to quibble about the minutiae regarding the nature of the philosophy that would best establish a governing entity (or lack thereof), but attempts at interventionism in recent history by governments to guide the economic activity of the people in the long-term have been ineffective at best, monstrously destructive at worst. Indeed, the only proven correlation has been that involvement acts as a damper for market change, often to the detriment of those being governed.

Tragically, this country has forgotten that government is a primitive, impulsive, ravenous beast. It has no morals, no remorse, no sympathy. It does not sleep, it does not rest, it does not relent. Only through constant vigilance can it be chained and its will subdued, and we have let the chains rust from neglect. Now, with the election around the corner, rhetoric hangs thick in the air over the choice of deaths we are offered: the beast is unchained, and we presume to choose someone that will use the reigns to lead it to captivity rather than to gorge itself on the unwary. Both of them have sworn in front of millions, live, that they will feed it and in so doing bind it to their will.

The majority are fools, the minority helpless, and all of us doomed if we cannot put away childish things and speak with one voice, a voice of reason. We are a nation of laws, a people with inviolate rights and an extremely-limited government, or we are no better than that which we struggle against... Beasts.

Eye for an "aye"

The Republicans are in italics. (Original link to Campaign for Liberty.) Print it out, distribute it to your friends and family.

Vote. Them. Out.

I don't care if he/she was your college roommate, or sends you Christmas Cards, or you personally saw them walk an old lady across the street. Their actions belie a willingness on par with touching your children in an inappropriate way, nevermind the willingness to ignore an estimated 100-300:1 ratio of public sentiment against this bailout.

AYES:

Ackerman Allen Andrews Arcuri Bachus Baird Baldwin Bean Berman Berry Bishop (GA) Bishop (NY) Blunt Boehner Bonner Bono Mack Boozman Boren Boswell Boucher Boyd (FL) Brady (PA) Brady (TX) Brown (SC) Brown, Corrine Calvert Camp (MI) Campbell (CA) Cannon Cantor Capps Capuano Cardoza Carnahan Castle Clarke Clyburn Cohen Cole (OK) Cooper Costa Cramer Crenshaw Crowley Cubin Davis (AL) Davis (CA) Davis (IL) Davis, Tom DeGette DeLauro Dicks Dingell Donnelly Doyle Dreier Edwards (TX) Ehlers Ellison Ellsworth Emanuel Emerson Engel Eshoo Etheridge Everett Farr Fattah Ferguson

Fossella Foster Frank (MA) Gilchrest Gonzalez Gordon Granger Gutierrez Hall (NY) Hare Harman Hastings (FL) Herger Higgins Hinojosa Hobson Holt Honda Hooley Hoyer Inglis (SC) Israel Johnson, E. B. Kanjorski Kennedy Kildee Kind King (NY) Kirk Klein (FL) Kline (MN) LaHood Langevin Larsen (WA) Larson (CT) Levin Lewis (CA) Lewis (KY) Loebsack Lofgren, Zoe Lowey Lungren, D. E. Mahoney (FL) Maloney (NY) Markey Marshall Matsui McCarthy (NY) McCollum (MN) McCrery McDermott McGovern McHugh McKeon McNerney McNulty Meek (FL) Meeks (NY) Melancon Miller (NC) Miller, Gary Miller, George Mollohan Moore (KS) Moore (WI) Moran (VA) Murphy (CT) Murphy, Patrick Murtha

Nadler Neal (MA) Oberstar Obey Olver Pallone Pelosi Perlmutter Peterson (PA) Pickering Pomeroy Porter Price (NC) Pryce (OH) Putnam Radanovich Rahall Rangel Regula Reyes Reynolds Richardson Rogers (AL) Rogers (KY) Ross Ruppersberger Ryan (OH) Ryan (WI) Sarbanes Saxton Schakowsky Schwartz Sessions Sestak Shays Simpson Sires Skelton Slaughter Smith (TX) Smith (WA) Snyder Souder Space Speier Spratt Tancredo Tanner Tauscher Towns Tsongas Upton Van Hollen Velázquez Walden (OR) Walsh (NY) Wasserman Schultz Waters Watt Waxman Weiner Weldon (FL) Wexler Wilson (NM) Wilson (OH) Wilson (SC) Wolf