Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Gun control: a work of fiction

Well, since the shootings at a grammar school in Newtown, Connecticut, last week, the issue of gun control is back on the Comrade's mind. Never let a crisis go to waste? Apparently the Fast & Furious thing didn't work out right, so here's another opportunity.

At a news conference today, he announced some kind of commission -- I don't know the details, seeing his ugly face on TV sort of trips a scream reflex and I didn't hear what he was saying. However, he put Joe Biden in charge, so I doubt it's going to be a serious effort.

But let's examine this -- seriously -- for a minute.

Blockheads like Pazzo Pelosi hold firmly to the fiction that if you pass a law, you're solving a problem. I once had a magic wand I picked up at a Renaissance Faire. This blind in faith in "there oughta be law," is a magic wand. And it works about the same.

First of all, the challenge seems to be: how do we get guns out of the hands of criminals and lunatics?

Are criminals and lunatics going to worry about not obeying gun control laws? They don't obey any other laws.

What happens in real life is that law-abiding citizens follows the laws. The criminals do not. Net result: armed criminals are free to run rampant over law-abiding citizens. It happens every time.

Second, there are millions of guns in the USA. Hundreds of millions. More guns than population. Think you're going to get rid of those? Think muggers and robbers and hijackers and psychopathic killers are going to give up their guns? If so, I'd like to offer you a parcel of land in Florida....

On the other hand, where "gun control" includes legal "concealed carry," which means anyone might have a gun in their pocket or backpack, violent crime goes down. Criminals aren't usually fools. If you might be armed, they get a little more polite and might consider pursuing other illegal channels rather than stick-em-up games.

Third, a friend just posted some interesting statistics on my Facebook page. Did you know, for example, that gun violence doesn't kill as many people as non-gun violence? Or that non-car accidents (as in, Hey! Watch this!) kill many more people every year than ANY KIND of deliberate violence?

Interesting, no?

In additon, that kid in Connecticut played by the rules -- except on that last day of his life. He was using his mother's guns, which were registerd, and which he was trained to use. The school had a security system -- apparently the killer shot out a window to get in.

His problem wasn't access to guns so much as it was something wrong in his head. He'd lived in a home with guns for several years and doesn't seem to have been compelled to kill anyone. His mother had trained him how to use those guns safely. More or different gun control laws wouldn't have made a bit of difference in his case. Maybe his mother should have thought twice? Maybe the kid just snapped for some reason we'll never know.

But let's do SOMETHING, right? Let's see if we can't violate the Constitution and take away more freedom as some kind of memorial to the 26 dead people in Connecticut. Gun control is just another fascist-liberal hobby horse, like taxing the rich.

Hmmm.... taxing the rich. A much more serious issue than gun control right now. Don't get me started.

But I especially don't want tighter gun ownership restrictionw with the Comrade in the White House. How about a cooling off period before taking this up? How about a period of about four more years?

That's it.



Monday, December 17, 2012

Why the violence?

It's a couple days after some loonytoons broke into a grammar school in Newtown, Connecticut, and shot 26 people. He killed his mother before he left home, too. And killed himself.

No one so far has been able to proivde any kind of plausible reason, except the kid was nuts somehow. Apparently he played a lot of video games, but he was20 years old, too. Not exactly "a kid."

He had been diagnosed with Asperger's -- a high-functioning autism. But I've never of autism generating violent behavior. Maybe just the opposite.

There's the usual talk about "adjusting the 2nd Amendment to suit today's realities." No. What happens -- and it's been proven statistically -- when and where guns are banned, then only criminals own guns. I mean, criminals are not people who are apt to abide by the law, are they? John Lott has some interesting statistics on that. And if that kid in Connecticut didn't have access to guns, he could have made bomb with a Coke bottle and a spritzer of gasoline. Would have done the trick, I'm guessing.

The school had some security. The guns the kid used were registered and licensed. His mother was a gun collector, and had taken care to show him how to use the guns.

I can't imagine walking into a first grade classroom and gunning down the kids and their teacher, and their principal, and the school psychologist, etc. Of 26 victims, 20 of them were six and seven years old. Horrible.

Then tonight, sick of the non-stop reporting on every detail of every victim's life -- each was a hero in his or her own way, of course, and certainly not one of them had done anything to justify their murder -- I'm not being cynical, I mean that. Anyway, I got sick of listening to it, so turned on a movie, "Taken," With Liam Niessen.

So Liam Niessen is a dedicated father to a 17-year-old who lives with her mother and her mother's second husband. Niessen is a former CIA operative who retired to be near his daughter. Long story short, the daughter goes to Paris, get kidnapped by a white slave ring, and Niessen goes rogue to find her.

And he kills about 30 people along the way. All very bad guys, mind you, including a corrupt cop, a bunch of thuggish Albanians, and the sheik who eventually bought the daughter.

Niessen kills all of them. To save his daughter.

And did you ever see the movie "Ronan," with Robert De Niro? Another version of "Let's see how many people we can kill in Paris." For a good cause.

I can't imagine why a kid with some kind of personality defect would resort to violence.

I mean, wherever did he get the idea that violence is a solution?

That's all.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Win the election, lose the country

No doubt, the Comrade won the last election. But, ironically, he seems to be losing the nation on every other count.

For example, under dictates of Obamacare, the states have the option of setting up their own "healthcare exchange," whatever that is, and working with the feds to run it, or just letting the feds come in and do the whole thing. The states have to the end of this week to decide which way to go. About 10 states still haven't decided.

But yesterday Tenneessee joined the states that have refused to set up the exchange themselves. Tennessee says it's too expensive for one thing. The other, and more important thing, is that, to paraphrase, "The feds haven't defined the partnership. We're not committing to a partnership without understanding it."

Just the other day another governor explained: "The states don't exercise any control over the exchanges, anyway. So basically we'd have to pay for it and run it, but we'd just be following orders from the feds."

Can't find an exact count, but I believe it's 23 or 24 states as of this moment who have refused to participate in Obamacare.

(A brief pause for na-na-na-na-na. Told you so.)

Also, currently there are a couple more cases questioning the legality of Obamacare heading for the Supreme Court. So maybe John Roberts will have a chance to redeem himself as someone who is both literte and capable of rational thought -- very unusual to find both these characteristics in one person in Washington.

And as wonderful as that news is, it gets evrn better.

Yesterday the Comrade went to Detroit to waive his arms around and shout about the wonderfulness of unions. And then MICHIGAN PASSED A RIGHT-TO-WORK LAW.

OK, until yesterday, Michigan was a "closed shop" state, like Illinois. That is, if you worked at a company that had a union, you had to join the union or not work there at all. (I have been in the SEIU and the Teamsters due to this law in Illinois.) By contrast, "Right-to-work" means you don't have to join the union.

I repeat, MICHIGAN, HOME OF THE UAW, AMONG OTHER UNIONS, HAS PASSED A RIGHT-TO-WORK LAW. OVER THE COMRADE'S SWEATY RANTS AND ARROGANT DEMAGOGUERY.

Now the unions are all over Lansing, the state capitol. Just this morning, they tore town and trampled a big tent that belonged to Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group. Well, no surprise the unions would oppose a group with a name like that. They also went after a couple news reporters, telling them not to film their actions.

So, unions will be unions, right? Violent, brutal, brainless. No intelligent argument, so bully and intimidate. Assholes. Standard behavior for rogue states and terrorists of all kinds.

Liberals claim that that's just what happens with passionate protest. Bullshit. Hundreds of thousands ot Tea Party occupied the Mall in DC with no violence, and they even picked up all their trash before they left.

Anyway, I find it very interesting to watch this large chasm opening up between Washington and The Rest of The Country. See, that is the way to get rid of this bullshit. Let people see how their lives are going to be ruined by all thiese socialist power grabs and thuggery and then decide -- and you voted for this asshole?

Did he win? How did he win? Better still -- What did he win?

You cannot fool all the people all the time.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

What's the president up to?

We've been blessed in the United States. We've all loved our liberty so much, and taken it for granted, that we have no first hand familiarity at all with demogogues and dictators.

We'll we've got one now.

No one seems to be able to figure out, what the hell is the Comrade up to? He makes ridiculous budget demands, pushing a plan that not one democrat has supported in two or three years, and doesn't talk to anyone about it. He relies on people like Chris Matthews and the rest of the folks at NBC, ABC, and CBS to pretend like this is all very normal and just a "boys will be boys" dispute inside the Beltway. "Isn't that cute? Nothing to worry about, folks."

Meanwhile, the Comrade seems to want to extend his election campaign -- just a few more times, let him go out and raise some rabble, talking to the ignorant, selling his pie-in-the-sky wish list.

And I'm afraid Americans are so goddamn stupid, distracted by iPhones, Christmas shopping (sorry, hoiliday shoppiing), and video games, that they turn around momentarily, cheeer, then sink back into apathy.

What the Comrade is trying to do is consolidate his power base. He's trying to usurp the powers given to congress, and apparently he already has the Supreme Court in his hip pocket, if John Roberts' idiotic blather about trivial bullshit over socialized medicine is any indication.

The Comrade, like any mafia chief, is trying to kill off and otherwise "neutralize" any opposition to his stupid power grabs. Constitution's getting in his way, but as useless bitch Pazzo Pelosi noted, "The Constitution? Are you kidding?"

I'm fairly certain the election was rigged somehow -- probably the voting machines. Not that the democrats didn't work really hard on turnout, too. My polling place was packed with people, most of whom looked like they were scraped out of doorways.

So there we have it. The Republic is lost. Our freedom is lost. And nobody gives much of a shit.