Random Reflections Pt12

46. I’ve never heard of anyone being robbed at the shooting range.

Just think about it - Multiple instances of usually expensive items, which beyond resale value have great occupational use for an aspiring thief, often tended by just one or two people, who are far more interested in viewing holes in paper hundreds of yards away than keeping track of their $500-$1500 investments laying on the table next to them.

And despite all that lax security, despite the major incentives, I’ve never heard of one instance of anyone’s guns being stolen at the range. And doesn’t more guns equal more crime? You’d think the gun range would be a MAGNET for the criminal class. Why isn’t it?

Nah, the obvious answer can’t be the right one.

47. Riffing on school shootings a little more, why is it that whenever some little wacko flies off the handle and kills someone the predictable response is always “He was bullied. Where were the social workers?”

Bullying is a bad thing. I’ve dealt with it some in my life. And it seems to me that as long as we allow their unconstitutional, completely useless existence, schools should be safe places for kids.

But: Would these kids find it necessary or desirable to shoot up a school IF they were allowed to respond in an appropriate fashion to their tormentors? But no: Jack a bully in the face a couple of times and you’re getting booked for assault and battery and expelled from school.

But instead, we turn a blind eye to the bullying, dang near criminalize the resulting fisticuffs, and then we can’t imagine how things could’ve gone so wrong when these tormented youths, forced against their will to spend 8 hours inside a concrete box running around to the Prussian equivalent of Pavlov’s bell finally explode in an unjustifiable and evil surge of repressed rage.

48. I hate the way most TV portrays men. For the most part, men are portrayed as arrogant, ignorant, lustful, socially insensitive clods.

Look at the classic sitcom Home Improvement. The basic plot goes thusly: Family breadwinner Tim Taylor does a whole host of stupid, dangerous things at work. He comes home and causes a major disturbance by getting in an argument with his wife – which is ALWAYS caused by him being wrong and unable to admit it, or completely ignoring his wife’s feelings. After fumbling around a bit in the dark (so to speak) he’s enlightened by his genius neighbor, usually to the tune that he needs to listen to his wife more and quit obsessing over himself or his tools and (though I hate to say this) ignore his some of his male instincts and behavior. He goes into his house, misapplies his neighbor’s sayings, and begs his wife’s forgiveness, understanding, and tells her to go ahead with whatever it was he was too blind and stupid to take a shine to in the first place.

Or watch any episode of According To Jim. Much the same situations, same portrayal of men. Heck, most any sitcom you can think of shows husbands and fathers as completely out of touch with their family, and usually obsessed with projecting a stereotype of maleness.

Now, reverse the gender roles, and tell me it would be as well received. Tell me there wouldn’t be a public outcry to the tune that it’s stereotyping women in a negative way. Tell me there wouldn’t be hate mail, demonstrations, boycotts, and finally an apology or cancellation.

Most men strive and sacrifice for their families, usually with very little thanks or recognition. This is not the norm on TV. And yes, it is television – so what, right? What lessons do people take away when they constantly see MEN being held up as objects of ridicule, the wonderful and defining differences between them and women being scorned as old-fashioned or out-of-fashion or stupid? Yes, there are traditional roles for men and women in society. That doesn’t mean that women should be kept barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen, it means that MEN are usually the ones to run the household, and that’s the way things have been for thousands of years, in any society worth noting (find me one instance of a matriarchal society worthy of the label "Civilization"). It’s almost human-bloody-nature. When MEN as heads of households are held in scorn and contempt, and their NECESSARY roles in their childrens’ and significant others’ lives negated by social assistance and scorn, it’s no wonder we have a skyrocketing problem with out-of-wedlock births and broken homes. The simple presence of a male role model, teaching them traditional values of honor, loyalty, hard work, and respect (especially for women) is invaluable for boys – I would propose that it is as damaging to have a large percentage of our young male youth raised solely by their mother as it would be to have a large percentage of our young female youth raised solely by their father. Each gender needs close role-models for its gender, and you chip away at some of the validity of that by ridiculing one or the other.

Best sitcom ever was Malcom In The Middle. At least there both parents were portrayed as equally insane.

49. Like Christians never being able to outrun the Crusades, I’ve come to the conclusion that constitutional government will never outrun slavery.

Speak of the wonderful freedom guaranteed (not granted) by the Bill Of Rights – the other side brings up slavery. Speak of the wisdom and courage of a handful of men in creating, out of thin air, a style of limited government never before seen on earth – the other side brings up slavery. Speak of following the Constitution as the only way to achieve legal, righteous government – the other side brings up slavery.

Yes, slavery was bad. Yes, it was antithetical to hold people in servitude while espousing the cause of freedom.

HOWEVER: In the eyes of the majority of the people back then, blacks were not viewed as anything more than property. To speak of giving them freedom was like speaking of giving one’s carriage freedom. This is not an excuse, it’s an explanation. Furthermore, in order to create and continue a union that guaranteed freedom to the MAJORITY of its citizens, the founders had to pander to certain…special interests. Despite a good number of them believing black should be free, we would not have the freest country on earth if the founders had’ve stood on pure principle and demanded equality for everyone RIGHT NOW. They realized that the union had to be preserved, else NO ONE be free.

Yes, that was a terrible decision to have to make. But frankly, I’m glad they made the decision they did – that decision guaranteed that we’d have the freedom some day to sit back and call them dead white men and bigots and racists.

To conclude: The prevailing attitude towards blacks, mixed with the necessity of preserving the union led to the perpetuation of slavery. It was a fault of the day, not of the men of the day. Their failings in no way taint the beauty of the gift they gave us.

50.Yet again, it is time to be insensitive. *sigh* You’ve been warned.

If I were presented with a lineup of the Halloween decorations of fifty domiciles, I could, with a reasonable degree of accuracy, pick out which belonged to duplexes, and which belonged to houses.

For some reasons, duplex dwellers buy really expensive, massive, and totally ugly lawn decorations, mostly the inflatable variety. One would think, if you live in a duplex, it’s generally because you can’t afford a house. So why decorate with dozens of expensive (and horrendous) blow up dolls and tinfoil headstones and fog machines.

Not that I’m saying every duplex yard contains ugly Halloween decorations, or that houses don’t occasionally go overboard (there’s one in my neighborhood that is an absolute eyesore any time there’s a holiday), but in my experience, people living in duplexes have a monopoly on the ugly lawn ornament trade.

I Smell Bacon

Or: Run-Ins With The Pigs Part 2.1

So, yesterday my dad receives a letter in the mail from the Green Bay police department stating something to the effect that a car registered to him (as the head of the household) violated traffic laws and he owes $185 dollars; if you require information before we shake you down, or you wish to contest this charge, call ***-***-****. (Notice the use of the emotional-charged phrase "shake you down?" That's called fore-shadowing.)

Not having been pulled over for anything recently, every driving member of the household is a mite perplexed.

My dad calls the number and receives a rundown on the charges against one of the family members. Apparently my mom turned in front of a bus. Still no recollection of having been pulled over or charged with any form of crime. Confusion all around.

Now,given the police departments previous public relations debacle with my family (taking 11 minutes to respond to an attempted home invasion 7 years ago, taking 7 minutes to get to our house when a neighbor had a heart attack (despite the standard presense of four black and whites in the area), and sending 3 B&Ws, an unmarked, and 4 armed, vested up pigs to arrest my brother for fireworks ten days before the 4th, when resounding explosions could be heard all night long for 3 weeks prior), you can probably guess that this is about to take a bad turn. It takes a lot to awe me when it comes to government incompetence, disinterest, or downright malicious behavior slash law.

I have been suitably awed.

Seems no cop was ever involved, no traffic citation ever issued, no crime ever recorded, no one ever charged. See, the bus driver wrote down the license plate, submitted it to the police department with a complaint, and without so much as sending one of the boys in blue over to get a statement, the city proceeded to charge our family nearly $200.

Without taking a statement.

Without charging anyone with a crime.

Without informing anyone of the charges against them before levying punishment.

All on one person's say so.

Because we called, were polite, and decided to cooperate, they've generously lowered the fine for the unsubstantiated, undocumented crime by $100.

Let me see if I can lay this all out in plain language, in case there's any miscommunication leading to misunderstanding here: A bus driver can write down the license plate number of any car on the road, submit it to the police with a complaint about the driver's conduct, no investigation is ever performed, no communication is innitiated, and then based on one person's word, an unsuspecting person can be fined nearly $200.

Now, does that seem...I don't know...right? Just? The way a fair and equitable government should conduct its business?

Stay tuned for breaking developments in "I Smell Bacon:Run Ins With The Pigs Pt2!"

Random Reflections Pt11

41. Please, for your own sake, never cough while drinking orange juice. You won’t be able to breathe for about a minute, you’ll cough violently for fifteen minutes, and your throat will taste like vomit for at least twice that long. Please, just don’t.

42. It may sound contrary to already posted Reflections, but I really don’t care if you’re overweight. Like Jefferson said about religion – “It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Long as you’re happy with your life, so am I. I just get a little torqued when you blame someone or something other than yourself for being overweight. As long as we all accept responsibility for our lives, everything’s cool.

43. I can understand 15 MPH speed limits around elementary schools. You never know which screaming, insensible critter is going to follow their own inner voice and do a nose-dive into the street.Around middle and high schools however…it’s a different story. You should’ve learned that the big, fast things can hurt you. Lowering the speed limit is an insult to both our intelligences, and it’s being unfair to Mr. Darwin.

44. A group in Wisconsin, the benighted state in which I live (but far more intelligent, legislatively, than CA or most of the east coast) is pointing to Cuba’s mandatory HIV testing as the reason for their low HIV/AIDS problem, and proposing that a similar program be adopted here.

These mush-minded despots actually seem to be gaining some Congressional traction in Madison. And according to the call-in show on Wisconsin Public Radio, everyone else in the state thinks it’s a good idea.

NO! Absolutely NO! You do NOT make criminals of people based on their unwillingness to submit to medical testing. You do NOT get to do whatever you please simply because you can hoodwink a majority of the populace into accepting whatever you can justify with the excuse of public safety. You do NOT go door to door rounding people up for bloodtesting for any reason. And by god, you do NOT darken my doorstep. There’s one solution for people who demand part or all of your body, and in this case, my solution is very much like theirs’ – small pieces of metal, inserted into the skin.

45. All year long we tell kids: “Don’t take candy from strangers.” Then Halloween comes along and we tell them: “Go, take candy from strangers.” What’s up with that?

Riffing on school shootings

Or: Smart stuff for students

Some *expletive* walks into a one-room Amish schoolhouse, kicks the teachers and boys out, zipties the girls, and shoots 5 of them in the head before eating his own pistol.

According to his notes, he picked the Amish schoolhouse because he knew he wouldn't face any resistance from the inhabitants (apparently victimhood is Godly to them or something) and because there weren't any police in the community.

As Lawdog http://thelawdogffiles.blogspot.com said, for all the resistance they offered up, he could've walked in with a pliers or a baseball bat and the outcome would've been the same.

Fortunately, the Victim Disarmament gang has kept relatively quiet over all of these murders. The call right now is for better mental health screening at schools. Me personally, I think they're waiting to spring the Victim Disarmament on us as soon as their socialist candidates get voted into office by the Anybody-But-Bush crowd in a little less than 2 months.

As promised a few posts prior, I'm now going to speak on self-defense.

My dad's a highschool chemistry teacher at a public school, and he says the invasion drills they practice are death. Tip the flimsy desks up, cower behind them, turn the lights off, pretend no one's home...never mind the fact that any intruder will KNOW the classroom isn't empty simply because it's the middle of the day. To that end, my dad has decided to turn the "stop or I'll say stop again" drill on it's head. He makes it known to his students that he has access to the chemical closet, and in the unlikely event that there's ever an invasion, anyone coming through the door is getting a beakerful of nitric acid in the face.

THAT, ladies, gentlemen, and assorted transgender beings is taking responsibility.

To return to Lawdog for a moment, he recently had a controversial post to the effect that you and ONLY you can truly be responsible for your safety. You can't be paid off, you're always there, and with the proper mindset, you can never be truly disarmed, only incovenienced.

Principal Klang in southern Wisconsin realized that, and while unarmed, fought an armed intruder to protect himself and his charges, and sacrificed his life so that many more could live.

The Amish in Pennsylvania did not realize that (or if they did, they chose the Godly route of being shot in the head) and so 5 of them died.

The 6 girls held captive in Colorado did not realize that, and they were assaulted, and one of them was killed.

Do NOT depend on anyone else to save you. Only you are responsible for you. To abdicate authority over your life is foolhardy and a burden on everyone else.

Therefore, I propose that if you are a parent, you send your kid to school with a knife. If you are a student, I propose that you buy a knife and carry it with you.

I was going to do a post on my knife eventually, but I might as well do it here.

My fully-serated Spyderco Endura is with me all the time. If I'm alive and awake, it's clipped to the back of my belt, where only the most thorough of patdowns could find it (and even then, probably not, likely only if I was strip-searched). If I'm alive and asleep, it is less than a foot away from my hand. I carry it everywhere I do not expect there to be metal detectors. My employer would fire me if they found out - I carry it anyway. My knife is always with me - I no more consider it a tool than I consider my hand a tool. I can tell you where the discolorations on the handle came from, the mars on the blade. I have beat that knife up and it's still as sharp and reliable as the day I got it.

It is utterly reliable and dependable. I would bet my life on my knife's ability to perform, with as much hesitation as I would (and do, in case of emergency) bet it on my battle-rifle: Specifically, no hesitation at all.

It's not necessary to buy a $400 knife like a Kerambit or a Benchmade butterfly, or a Microtech Halo. It is however necessary to buy a $50-$80 knife. Any full-size knife lower in price, or sold at the mall is probably crap. It should be thin and light enough to carry all day long, and not print in a pocket, and you should be able to forget that it's there. It should have a blade at least 3 inches long, with a handle at least an inch longer than that. Serrations are IMO better than none, but it's a matter of personal preference. It should have a point on the end of it (you laugh, some knives don't have a hardly any point). It should NOT be a switchblade or butterfly knife. You'll have an easier time explaining to Officer Bacon that knife you have in your pocket is a "utility knife" if it's a rather innocent looking folder than if it's a genuine Italian stilleto with "da switch."

(Yes, if you have to, LIE about your knife. To anyone. God/Nature/Other Himself/Herself/Itself gave you the right to carry it. Everyone else's opinion on the topic is secondary, and should only matter to you based on the amount of harm they can inflict on you. Anyone who would prohibit you from defending yourself does not deserve your respect. (Look up L. Neil Smith's excellent Murder By Gun Control for his three adjective diagnosis those who would prevent self defense.))

Similar to what you carry, where you carry it is another concern, and should partially dictate what you carry: If you're a student, like me, there are lots of places to hide a knife on your person. If you're required to maintain a professional appearance (ie shirt tucked in, tie, etc), it'll be a little harder, though behind-the-belt carry like mine would be easy with a suit coat. Think of everywhere BUT the pockets first.

Of equal importance to carrying a knife for defense is knowing how to retreat. Face it, unless you're a captive and can manage to puncture his - the school shooter's (or any shooter's) - anatomy while he's distracted, your knife is of less usefulness than being able to get the heck out of Dodge BEFORE you become a captive. Look at all the exits from whatever building you're in. Try and figure out how to get out through any of them, from anywhere, without attracting attention. Now figure out how to do it in a panic, in the middle of a panic. Back routes are good, and every school has them, especially colleges. Explore. Walk around. Think about it.

Your mind is your only weapon. It is the only tool you can never be deprived of. Use it to keep yourself and others safe. It's the only thing you can depend on.

Saga Of The BAG Day Gun Pt2

To recap, my BAG Day gun thinks its a bolt action. FTEx, FTEj. It thinks it's a bolt-action. The gun-smith at Gander Mtn says it works perfectly well, I just had it set wrong. I set it right and wrong, and it still thinks it's a boltie.

So. I take it back today, with MY ammunition. He fires 4 rds of mine vs 4 rds Federal, and says that my Wolf is sticking in the chamber - I need to buy $20/20rd boxes of Federal to fix the problem. Never mind the fact that the gas tube is dang near falling off, a fact I've informed him of 3 times, once before I brought the rifle in, once when I took it in, and once when I picked it up. Nope, this cheap, junker gun, designed to be used by an illiterate peasant who probably peed in the action to keep it from freezing has developed a highly sophisticated and expensive palate now that it's on American soil.

I'm currently trying to contact a guy online about a replacement gas valve. Mine is too short, hence the gas tube wiggle, hence the escaping gas, hence the short-stroking, hence the bolt-action mentality.

Oh yeah and: My dad left his 1911 with the gun-smith. Apparently it came out of the factory with a burr on the ramp/in the barrel that is aggravated every time the gun cycles, to the point when it's FTFing nearly every round 2 years after manufacture. This gun was expensive enough that it should be point-and-click every time.

Range Day

With my brother. More on that presently.

When last we saw my BAG day gun, it was being worked over by the gunsmiths at Gander Mtn. because it thought it was a bolt-action (and not a very good one at that) instead of a semi-automatic. Failure to extract or eject. According to everyone I asked, gas was escaping through a wiggly gas tube, and the lack of gas was short-stroking the bolt.

So, I give the gunsmith my gun, explain that yes, this gun can be set to fire cartridges or grenades (w/ blanks) and it's set on cartridge setting and not still not ejecting. (If you know guns, you probably have some idea of the gun of which I am speaking).

Gander Mtn says turnaround is 2 weeks. A week and a half goes by. I stop in on Monday, ask what's up. Apparently their military-surplus guy is on vacation, he'll be back next Tuesday. Next Tuesday comes and goes. I call on Thursday, say I thought I was supposed to get a call on Tuesday. Their response: "No one told you that."

We manage to get things squared away. They'll definitely give a call next Wednesday. Wednesday comes and goes. Thursday I call. "It's the next one up, I just cleared my bench for it. We'll call on Saturday.

Saturday comes and nobody calls. I've been eyeing a Sig 220, so I stop in to fondle it and ask about my BAG day gun. It's finished, you can pick it up on Sunday.

I pick it up on Sunday. $15 and 12rds of maintence later, the smith says I set it on grenade launcher, it's perfectly fine. I tell him one of his employees did that, I watched him fiddle with it when I handed over my rifle. No no, your mistake. Fine.

I take it out today, and dang, if the thing doesn't STILL think it's a bolt-action. On both regular AND grenade launcher setting.

We'll be going back. And I want my $15 back or a free fix.

EDIT:I suppose I should mention, the gun fires fine. It's dead-on at 25 yards, about 5 inches low center at 50, though I think I'm messing up with the aim because there was no discernable difference between rest shooting and standing shooting.

Oh yeah and the shooting shed we fire from got struck by lightning. I was outside about 5 feet away, standing next to a metal light pole at the time. I am SO lucky to be alive right now.

Random Reflections Pt10

36. Argh. I hate to keep going on religion like this, but there’s something I must comment on in the news today.The pope recently did a speech, like he usually does, the theme this time being that violence was incompatible with God, and quoted an old Byzantine guy’s comments that at that time, Islam had been spread by the sword.

Whereupon radical Muslims across the world call Islam a religion of peace and further call for the killing of the pope, the bombing of the Vatican, and the killing of even more Christians. Whereupon Muslim leaders explained that Muslims take their religion very seriously and we have to be sensitive to that.

Is it any wonder that Muslims think there’s a war on against their religion? Like it or not, the vast majority of people who commit terrorist acts are Muslims, and they’re using religious excuses to call for our deaths.

Not that all Muslims do that – but the vast majority of people who do that are Muslims. There’s a fine line there. It’s just as reasonable to say that the majority of people who commit crimes are black, but the majority of black people aren’t criminals.

The Muslim community has been sadly lacking in the spinal area when it comes to the more crazed members of their faith. We hear lots of “Islam is a religion of peace” but very little “Those who pervert our faith for an excuse to kill people are insane dogs.”

What you don’t punish, you subsidize. What you subsidize, you encourage.

Again, it’s no wonder they think we hate their religion – like it or not, their religion only receives airtime whenever a believer picks up a sword or a gun or a block of C4, kills some people who were just minding their own business, and then issues a statement that everyone who’s not Muslim should die. That’s the “brand” we’re seeing advertised right now. You don’t like it – rebrand your product.

37. I’d just like to state, for the record, that I hate Bush. He signed the McCain-Feingold bill into law, which prevents me speaking my mind about a candidate in the paper or on tv or on my own website. I am currently a criminal for doing just that. He banned the importation of FAL and AK47 kits, and has not rolled back ANY of the +25,000 laws illegally restricting my right to keep and carry anything I want for my own protection against thugs of the common or jackbooted variety. He signed into law the Patriot Act, which grievously violates the 4th Amendment among others. He has had American citizens held in prison without cause, without notification of the charges against him, without the notification of their families. And those are just the examples I can come up with at the moment that can affect ME. He’s invaded a country for bad reasons, without a declaration of war. He’s had foreigners tortured by other foreigners for suspected links to terrorism.

There’s one punishment for treason on a scale that grand, and folks, it ain’t a slap on the wrist.

However: I am perfectly willing to acknowledge the good things he has done. He has, in a faltering and somewhat wrongheaded manner prosecuted those who would attack America throughout the world, as he should. He has, in a faltering and somewhat wrongheaded manner attempted to secure the American nation and economy from the wave of invaders (their reasons for invasion mean not a thing) pouring over our southern border.

He’s done a few good things, for which he deserves credit. The majority of the country would just rather focus on the bad things he’s done, of which there are many. Yes, he’s done bad things – we know already! It’s not being a jingo-istic, right-wing chickenhawk to admit the man has done some good things.

This is what’s known as Bush-Derangement syndrome online: Previously rational human beings driven to a fit of frothing anger any time George Bush Jr.’s name is mentioned. He is not the font of all that is evil in the world. His successes deserve proportional airtime with his failures.

I’m absolutely sick of hearing EVERY-BLOODY-WHERE on tv, radio, internet, and carrier pidgeon how Bush personally thanked the 9/11 hijackers and that Michael Moore snuck into his secret mountaintop headquarters to film his meetings with the Zionist cabal of Haliburton and that he cut a few dollars from the massively inflated and ineffectual education budget so minorities won’t get a good education and that he wants to conquer the world with his moon based Laser Of Death. GROW UP!

38. People don’t understand something about war. I have to thank U. S. Grant, evil though he may be, for giving me this understanding. What they don’t understand is this – it’s hell. I mean that, and not in the trite, sound-byte way. War is the sum of all evils in the world. It is the highest sacrament we can pay to the devil.

You see, war isn’t about right and wrong – it’s about winning or dying. It’s about killing the enemy until they can’t fight anymore. And to so completely devastate the enemy that they can’t hurt you, you have to go all out – you have to attack and attack and attack without ANY regard for any life, enemy or civilian. You have to fight a war like an animal, or you will lose, because all the other guy has to do is outlast you (and if you’re not willing to commit to a war, it won’t take long). We can clear Baghdad of jihadists, all we need to do is firebomb it like we did the large cities in Japan. But we’re not willing to do that.

And if you’re not willing to go whole hog, to destroy and kill everything, then you’re doing nothing but encouraging your enemies. They will grow stronger despite your minor victories. It is absolutely fatal to engage in war without the will to do anything to win it.This is why war must be avoided if at all possible. Because it is every horrible thing human beings can do to each others, the sum of all evil. Because to win a war, you have to make good people suffer, you have drive good people to do things they should never have to do, you have to put good people in situations where it is kill others or die themselves, or allow others to die so that others may live.

War IS hell.

39. No matter the good it does, I have come to the realization that the Christian religion will never be able to live down the Crusades. Criticize the violence some might say is inherent to another’s religion (and we all know which religion that is) and point out that most places as practice it are roughly 1000 years behind in the development of civilization – you hear about the Crusades and you’re hypocrites. Stand up against the invasion of Iraq for religious reasons – you hear about the Crusades and you’re hypocrites. Good God, we know about that already, get over it!

The crusaders and their kin have been dead a thousand years, their actions in no way taint what we do today.

40. Wow, I didn’t think I’d get to 40. Just think how big a milestone 50 will be.

There are multiple levels of programming in a computer. There’s the stuff you see and interact with. There’s the operating system that runs behind it. And behind that, there’s the BIOS and all the hard-coded code that keeps all the chips and parts in synch with each other and running without tripping over their feet.

You can change the visible stuff with relative ease. The operating system…a little harder, but it can be done. But the stuff you REALLY don’t want to screw with is the code behind that. Mess with the BIOS and hard-coded instructions at your own risk – like as not you’ll crash the computer, and it’ll be “lights on, nobody home.”

People are just the same. You can force a change in their visible behavior with relative ease. For a little more effort, you can change what they believe. But deep down, we’re still all animals. We’re just animals who can choose. And when you screw with the animal instincts and impulses and behavior, you’re begging for trouble.

You can attempt to change the programming that runs behind our conciousness – but you will affect absolutely no change whatsoever and will do unimaginable worlds of destruction.

Recent Events Pt3

So, some new information on the shooting of the principal in Wisconsin. Turns out the perpetrator had been given in-school detention for smoking. He made the statement to a friend that he doubted the principal would live past homecoming, whether before or after the detention has not been stated.

The shooter was 15.

Now, before we go any further, what makes a 15 year old kid, with their whole life ahead of them, throw it away by murdering the principal over a detention? How does one make that...LEAP...from detention to murder? How do you justify that to yourself, and then choose to commit the crime? He knew he'd be caught, he knew he was torpedoeing the rest of his life over a couple hours sitting in the school office...how...what...

He's an animal. Unless it comes out that the principal was torturing him or threatening to kill his family, he should be tried as an adult, convicted, and at the very least be given life in prison without possibility of parole.

Now we turn to the actions of the not-guilty. The janitor who wrestled the shotgun away...did so BEFORE the kid shot the principal. He took it, the kid started digging in his pockets for the .22 revolver that became the murder weapon (don't bother to look for the Million Mom March or VPC to start calling THOSE assault weapons), and the janitor, now armed with possibly the most devastating close-quarters-combat weapon ever devised does...what exactly?

Does he shoulder the shotgun and blow the clearly armed miscreant off his feet? Does he fire a warning shot and yell for the student to drop and kiss the pavement?

No. Now that he's ARMED, he RUNS out the front door.

A quote of the unfortunately late Jeff Cooper's springs to mind: "An unarmed man can only run from evil. And evil is not defeated by fleeing." Or something like that.

So:Our little *expletive* takes his .22 revolver, enters the principal's office, and is immediately engaged in a scuffle for the weapon. During the course of which, the brave principal takes shots to the leg, chest, and head, and STILL manages to remove the weapon from the criminal.

The principal died of his injuries 7 hours later. If it hadn'tve been for the headshot, I think he'd still be with us.

I'll be blogging on school shooting/invasion preparedness drills in the near future, but I recommend you turn your eyes upwards towards Mr. Cooper's quote once more. It bears multiple readings.

Recent Events Pt2

Colorado School Shooting

Seems the hostage taker at the Colorado high school didn't get ventilated by the police.

Pity.

I would've liked it to have NOT been his idea.

What's not being discussed is why the gunman was the only man with a gun in the school. See, us law abiding folks generally, uh, abide by the law. Meaning, when the law says "Don't Carry Guns" we usually leave our pistols at home. Those that do not abide by the law, and choose to place themselves outside of society by causing harm to innocents will do whatever they dang well please. They'll do things like bring guns into schools, shoot people, take hostages, molest hostages, kill hostages...very much like the reprobate in Colorado did. While those that follow the laws do not bring guns to school, and because of their nature, do not engage in the acts that Mr. BadGuy did.

Simplifying that paragraph, if you prohibit people from arming themselves, the good people do so. If you prohibit people from arming themselves, the bad people will not. And then the bad people will have absolutely free reign to do whatever they damn well please. Ask Teresa Halbach about that.

What dismays me even more than the faculty members (or, heavens to Betsy, the students) not putting two rounds in Mr. BadGuy's center mass followed by another to the third eye is that no one used any other weapons to subdue him. Guns are merely the easiest way to dispatch Mr.Badguy - knives, pens shoved into various weakpoints like ears and throats, belts, or even feet all produce the same result in the end. And unless the captives were bound, it sounds like there were, er, several opportunities where he was distracted enough that SOMEONE could've tickled his brain with a Bic.

Give a kid a good knife, it may just save their life.

Another School Shooting

Elsewhere in the world, my state to be specific, several faculty members and students found they had the cajones to STOP a school shooting. Far south of where I live, a torqued off 15yo walks into school with a shotgun, shoots his principal once, and is promptly subdued by a janitor and other students.

A few notes on this:
1. A longgun is what you bring when you mean business. To achieve a guaranteed kill with a handgun, you have to shoot A LOT. Yes, two or three shots usually does it, but to be sure, going to slide-lock is recommended. A shotgun or mid-caliber rifle at room distances should produce the same effect (a kill) in one shot.
2.Contrary to popular opinion, unarmed people (and I'm SURE one person was using something as a weapon) were able to stand up to a villain armed with probably the deadliest close-range weapon ever invented and LIVE. And subdue him. If you comply, you will end up injured. If you resist and are unarmed, you are slightly less likely to be injured. Resist while armed, and your chances go WAY up. Crime statistics bear this out time and time again.
3.If anyone among those heroes was armed, we'll never hear about. You ever hear about the school shooting where the principal went back to his car, got his gun, and stopped the shooter? Or the school shooting where two students with rifles subdued the attacker? Don't worry, most haven't. Of the roughly 800 stories generated about each of those incidents, only around 40 per mentioned any defensive action by anyone other than the police, even while the vast majority noted the make and model of the attacker's weapons. In the "2 students with rifles" story, most articles mentioning the action taken by the students say that they "tackled him." Why do you think that is?

Reflections On Current Events

Health Inspector Video

Courtesy of The Smallest Minority http://smallestminority.blogspot.com, we get this fine video of what happens when people draw their lines in the sand further and further back. Watch, but lock up anything that could damage your monitor 'aforehand. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVACCaVxYEk&eurl=

At least he had the brains and guts to bring along a video camera. They really don't like it when their work winds up online. Only thing better would be getting the home addresses, work addresses, telephone numbers, car profiles, email addresses, driver's license and social security numbers, and photographs of those involved in the criminal trespass, and then posting them online. Everywhere you can think of. Sports sites. News sites. Adult interest sites. Gun sites. Goth sites. Democratic Underground. Dating sites. Sites for people recently released from prison. Bathroom walls in gas stations with the byline "For a good time."

Let's hope Mr. Cameraman winds up with all the property previously owned by Mrs. Health Inspector, who winds up spending the next ten years in the pen.

Treason In The House: Or, Reasonless, Warrantless Searches Of Children

Look for H. R. 5295 on http://thomas.loc.gov/ if this link doesn't work: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c109:2:./temp/~c109XZ2ysO::

Basically, it says that since schools are such nasty places, we need to set rules defining how to search children without warrants. The only type of searches not permitted are invasive - the precedent for which is set by the New Jersey Supreme Court which ruled that only cavity searches are invasive. Or so says public radio.

School Shooting In Colorado

Apparently a gunman wanders into a highschool, fires a handful of shots, the students flee, he hides with two teenage girls as hostages. Most recent development: He shoots a hostage, the police put him down. Rehabilitation by reincarnation - works every time.

I say apparently because: It could not have happened. School zones are gun free, totally. The law prevented anyone from bringing a gun onto the premises. Therefore, since law is so effective, no gunman.

Non-sarcastically, this is NO excuse to pass legislation restricting anyone's unalienable right to defend themselves (ie victim disarmament, or "gun control"). It sounds harsh, but I DON'T CARE what happened, I DON'T CARE how anyone feels, my rights are not dependent on others' good behavior.

No Shooting This Week

I've been getting out to the range every week to fire 50 rounds through my battle-rifle. I go with just my brother (we only get one day a week when our days-off coincide), I use my rifle, he takes a .22 of some variety, we spend two hours total, everyone goes home happy. This week
we detoured around construction on the way to the range. And: Spent 1.5 hours cruising the countryside, looking for a way home. Ran through an entire Bon Jovi CD looking for the range and then the highway home, wound up following a dump truck into town.

I've budgeted completely for my 2 new battle-rifles in November. Now I'm looking at that Sig 220 I wrote about last year. It's still there, and I still want it.

Random Reflections Pt9

31. Rosie “My bodyguards can have guns but you can’t” O’Donnell recently claimed there’s no difference between Islamic Fundamentalists and Christian Fundamentalists. An opinion of this nature can only result from a severe case of mental retardation or a severe case of stupidity.

Last time I checked, the most vocal wing of Christian Fundamentalism wanted to teach evolution in public schools, outlaw abortion, and take Christina Aguilera off MTV (and both of those last two points have a smidgen of merit).

Also last time I checked, the most vocal wing of Islamic Fundamentalism wanted to tax unbelievers for the privilege of not being killed, institute Sharia law all over the world, and just generally sally forth and kill anyone not found kneeling in an easterly direction five times a day.

If you can’t tell the difference between the two, you need to have your head examined.

32. Anything and everything is a perversion when taken to extremes. There’s a little tribe in New Guinea that practices institutionalized cannibalism, the men hold raunchy conversations with the spirits that live in the rafters of their huts, and the citizens are occasionally accused of witchcraft and killed if they can’t cook a perfect torte (or the small, strange New Guinea tribal equivalent).

Confined to a small portion of a small island, they’re an anthropological oddity, interesting to study and watch.Now imagine that small, strange New Guinea tribe spread over the entire world. Their laws are our laws. Their religion is our religion. Their customs are our customs.

Yeah.

Ain’t pleasant at all to think about, is it.

You take anything too far, it becomes horrible. Christianity. Islam. Communism. Capitalism. Democracy. Eating. Drinking. Driving. Love. Pets. When ideology or belief becomes obsession, and obsession becomes religion, and that religion becomes the center of the world, something that once was beautiful is destroyed by the hold it has on someone, and the hold someone has on it.

When Christianity becomes the sole object of the mind of everyone on earth, to the exclusion of all else, there WILL be Hell on earth. When capitalism becomes the sole object of the mind of everyone on earth, to the exclusion of all else, we will have the tyranny it keeps in check. When good health becomes…fastforward…life won’t be worth living.

I think it was the Greeks who had a saying about this. “Nothing over much.” Wise words.

33. My dad once told me that ironically, the freest people are those who exercise the most control over themselves. I’ve attempted to live all my life by this credo. Control is all that separates human beings from animals.

34. It is now time to be inflammatory. Not without reason or intelligence however. Avert your eyes if your are easily offended.AOL recently had a feature on how the twin girls making up the white supremacist pop-folk band Prussian Blue have been ostracized by their hometown. They’ve received death threats and “get out by high noon” style missives, have had signs posted on their fences and yard, etc and so forth.

Their message, roughly translated from the propaganda, is that they want white people to recognize how wonderful being white is.

Ahem.

When you’re caught modeling Hitler Smiley-Face shirts, you’re not celebrating your race, you’re celebrating mass murder on the scale of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Armenian genocide…that one defining piece of legislation enabled all +120 million homicides is not something we’ll cover today. Anyhoo, Hitler isn’t a racial pride symbol, he was a murderous nutcase.

And then I got to thinking.

Sometimes that can lead to unpredictable results. I hesitate to say these next words, honestly. But I will.

What would happen to me if I started an organization called the Nation Association for the Advancement of White People? Petitioned Congress for a White History month? Demanded certain acceptance quotas of white students in colleges across the country? Started a television channel called White Entertainment Television?

Do you have any idea how fast I would be excoriated in the media? How fast thousands of people would call me an evil, bigoted racist? How fast my symbolic head would be hoisted upon a symbolic pike? How every acquaintance of mine would be put in the public fishbowl, their association with me examined by pundits and talkshow talking heads? How fast doctors and psychologists would be examining my psyche on national television, saying I had one mental malady after another.

Seems to me we’ve got entrenched racism, or at the very least preferential discrimination in this country, and we don’t even know it. At least the white-colored racists marginalize themselves.

35. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the inhabitants of the planet Stupidia lived in nearly perfect freedom. After a long, bloody war they had secured a democratic republic much like our own was intended to be. Peace reigned for a hundred years.

After a hundred years, a small segment of the population caught the disease of radical religion. Now, growing on the planet of Stupidia was a plant called the Amora plant. Since the Stupidians had crawled out of the oceans and discarded their fins, they’d chewed the berries of this plant. When ingested, the berries made the Stupidians very happy, and loosened their inhibitions for a short period of time. The various varieties of the Larom plants had the very same effect, to different degrees. Due to the effects to the different types of plants, a statistically small percentage of the Stupidians chewed the berries to excess, lost their jobs, became addicted, sold their possessions to buy more the plants, etc and so forth. This has been the way of things for thousands of years. Many people enjoy the effects of the Amora and Larom plants to moderation, and a handful use them to excess.

So: A group of Stupidians get the radical religion virus. And they decide that the cause of society’s evils is the Amora plant. With much arm-twisting of the elected representatives, they get the berries of the Amora plant banned from public consumption. The Stupidians can no longer buy, sell, or grow the Amora plant. These actions, which have been legal for thousands of years, are now crimes.

But strangely enough Stupidians go on doing what Stupidians want to do. They form underground organizations to grow and distribute the “A” berries to those who want them. Because those caught with the plant risk jail time, they demand a higher price for their risk. Local police forces have to be bribed and corrupted to overlook the crime going on under their noses. Due to the profitability, the underground organizations go to war with one another to eliminate competitors, secure distribution territory, etc.

After ten years of skyrocketing crime, the Stupidian representatives realize that human behavior can’t be controlled, only guided. They legalize (despite much crying and hand-wringing from the religiously sick) Amora again. Crime does not skyrocket further. Now that “A” sellers and growers can do so openly, and market their products freely, they have no reason to bribe the police, go to war, stay underground… Crime goes down.

However, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people who’s work it was making sure that Stupidians didn’t use “A” as they had for thousands of years were now out of work. So with the help of the religiously sick, they sold the Stupidians on the notion that Larom was now the cause of all society’s evils.

No one thought to ask…but weren’t you wrong last time? Or, why wasn’t it the cause of society’s evils last year, or the year before, or any year in recorded history…

So now Larom is illegal. The same crime skyrockets, the same people who used Larom before are still using it. But this time something is different. The Stupidians DON’T abandon the prohibition of Larom. As crime grows and grows, and its citizens demand action, the Stupidian government does things it would never have dreamed of doing before. It starts whittling away at the Stupidian’s rights to privacy. And to travel. And to defend themselves. When last checked, the Stupidians were still slowly sinking into tyranny, all while looking at the failure and its evidence around them and shrieking “Something must be done.”

Now, the question for you is: Why hasn’t anyone told us about this planet yet?

Reflections On Conspiracies

Not a far distance from my house, well within the limits of the city I inhabit, 3 teens were recently arrested for conspiring to perpetrate a Columbine style school shooting. According to reports, articles, and interviews on tv, radio and in the paper, they’d been planning this attack for years, had amassed an arsenal to rival that of Frank Castle, and were training to, among other things, commit mass murder on a grand scale and blow up their school.

The newspapers waxed horrific about the dozens of weapons found at the kids home, the bombs, the training sessions, yadda yadda yadda…and I must’ve seen the same footage of the box of guns being carried out of one of the kids’ home a gross of times.

If you will pardon the pun, I’m about to shoot a few holes in this story.

First off, the majority of the “weapons” the kids had were BB and airsoft guns. Easily identifiable in the tv clip by their bright orange muzzles. The remainder of their weapons were single shot .22s, a shotgun, an SKS, and .40SW handgun. If the mayor and the police chief consider that enough of an arsenal that a televised press conference is desperately required, they’d have a heart attack if they looked under my bed most nights, never mind the basement shelves. (By the way, if anyone from the Green Bay Press Gazette is reading this, you can't use AKS rounds in an SKS. But what I'm sure you meant to confuse the issue by confusing the AK47 with the SKS. Leave the paper, grow a brain stem, and THEN go back to journalism.)

Second, target practice for these young reprobates consisted of firing airsoft pellets into Styrofoam heads. This is to target practice what writing a letter to granmaw is to winning a Pulitzer. Their “bombs” were toilet paper tubes filled with bbs and gunpowder, detonated by firecracker – certainly capable of causing injury, but if you’ve ever spent the weeks leading up to the 4th playing with all manner of fireworks conceivable, you know that single firecrackers have about the same fuse time as a sneeze. Yeah. Blown up criminals.

Their much ballyhooed napalm was gasoline and Styrofoam shavings. That ain’t napalm folks, that’s a cheap imitation.

I certainly hope the mayor wasn’t watching that night we buried artillery shells in the lawn and used them to launch bricks and basketballs…they'd probably get the electric chair out of mothballs just for me...

And the “years” of planning…three kids plan an attack on a highschool for years, even before they get there? You know what that means? They were THINKING about it. “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if…” And they never had the guts to do it. For years. If thinking about something earns you a conspiracy charge, we’re all in deep trouble. Calvin of Calvin And Hobbes fantasized one Sunday about nuking his kindergarten with an F-16. Innumerable fiction writers have written innumerable books describing in graphic detail terrorist and criminal acts. I myself am currently engaged in writing a novel about the start of the third American Revolution.

Obviously, these kids were seriously disturbed individuals. They could’ve done some seriously bad stuff, had “luck” been on their side or if they’d been a hair more competent. We can’t do a catch and release here, they WERE planning on trying to hurt a whole bunch of people. That’s unacceptable. They need to be punished. But the question remains, what is the best punishment for coming up with a half***ed plan to kill your classmates with contrived and unworkable bombs, fewer and lower-quality weapons than the average Texan household, and chickening out on it a dozen times?

How do you punish evil defeated by one's own cowardice?

Random Reflections Pt8

27. There was a recent warning about an obesity “pandemic.” My dictionary defines that (pandemic) as a wide-spreading, near universal disease. When did making the conscious decision to put more food into your mouth than needed become a disease? Seriously here folks, if I choose every day to slam my head in a car door, do I have disease? If I choose to drink water to excess every day, do I have a disease? If I choose to spend 16 hours a day playing Donkey Kong, do I have a disease? NO! I’m choosing to do something that I know is bad for me, and I’m doing it anyway.

Everyone knows, if they eat to excess, they’re going to get fat. It’s a fact of life people, get over it. It is a choice that they make. It’s not a disease. Again, my dictionary defines disease is an ailment afflicting the body, caused by infection, environment, heredity, or diet. Note the diet isn’t the disease, it can help cause the disease.

Calling it a disease is the sunshine-and-bunny-rabbits way of letting those people who eat themselves towards diabetes, strokes, and heart attacks off the hook. It’s not a choice anymore, it’s a disease. You don’t weigh more than a Honda Civic because you ate 6 Big Macs, 5 Fries, 4 Cokes, 3 Pies, 2 Onion Rings, and the partridge in the pear tree AT EVERY MEAL – it’s a sickness you have. It’s not your fault – you can’t choose to get sick with SARS, influenza, or obesity. Go eat another 3rd world country’s GNP in Snicker’s bars, you’ll get fat or you won’t. Don’t worry, be happy!

28. As I write this a major flight somewhere in the United States has been diverted. Not because of explosives found on board, not because a 50 year old “student” from Saudi Arabia with razor-burn tried to set his shoes on fire, not because Grandma realized the wire in her undergarments didn’t set off the metal detectors at the TSA groping checkpoint, but because…wait for it…an unclaimed Blackberry was found on board. Oh the humanity. I expect much rending of clothing and wearing of sackcloth will be seen on the nightly news. A major flight, chock full of people who have to go somewhere, maybe jobs, maybe vacations, maybe to see their ailing cousin twice removed have been detoured and detained for hours because a phone was found without being attached to the side of someone’s head.

If you can’t find the owner, give it to a flight attendant. Bonus. Or just press redial and ask the person on the other end, “Who did you last speak to?”

Note: My reaction would’ve been different if said Blackberry had been found attached to an ominous looking pile of whitish silly putty. There’s a difference between reasonable fear and freaking out – something a lot of people would do well to learn. A little responsibility goes a long way, especially when so few people are in possession of it.

29. Would you, if possible, help a person getting mugged on the street? I think we all would, that’s basic human decency – “help out your fellow humans” is ingrained into our minds. Now, upon dousing said mugger with a RAID sized can of pepper spray and picking muggee’s wallet up off the ground, would you call the robber back if you found that wallet to contain a sizeable stack of hundred dollar bills? I doubt anyone would. Would you choose NOT to help that person if you had prior knowledge that they were rich? Again, probably not? Why?

Shouldn’t that rich person contribute a little bit to that misfortunate youth, driven to a desperate act by a life of poverty and minimum wage jobs? Shouldn’t that rich person have to give more than the rest of us, I mean, they have so much more, they should feel absolutely compelled to give it to that mugger to help him along in life…

Editing out the words involving crime from that last paragraph, you have pretty much verbatim the “hate the rich” position of the majority of this country and the world. This boggles my mind, this hatred of material gain through hard work, or the hard work of one’s ancestors, or intelligence, or simple dumb luck. If I make a lot of money, it is MINE. NO ONE has ANY claim on it whatsoever, for any reason. IF I am feeling charitable, I will do something to help someone else. My possession of MORE does not give anyone else the right or privilege to take my property and redistribute (remember, all laws involve the threat of violence) it to those who have less. The same goes for any money my parents would leave me – they didn’t work hard and save so that some jackboot could come along when they’re dead and gone and take what they wanted me to have.

My money is MY MONEY. YOU may NOT have it simply because I have more. Yes, that is selfish. Anything else is theft. At threat of violence, don’t you forget. You wouldn’t come try and knock me over and take my wallet *snicker* so don’t try and have someone in government do your dirty work for you. You want my money, Molon Labe.

Come and get it.

30. Why do companies call yellow cake mixes “Moist yellow” cake mixes? Do some companies sell “Incredibly dry yellow” cake mixes? Are there moist WHITE cake mixes? If all yellow cake mixes are moist as they are advertised, doesn’t that mean that none of them are special by virtue of being moist?

The Happy Dance

I'm a laid back kinda guy. Takes quite a bit to ruffle my feathers, good or bad. But right now I feel like doing a Snoopy-style happy dance. Calvin and Hobbes in their pajamas, listening to classical at 700RPM, that sort of thing.

Thursday afternoon I picked up Max Payne 1. Fantastic game. Not as good as Far Cry, but beautifully gritty, with a film noir feel straight out of a Dennis Lehane novel. I'm 2/3 done with it, which is good - it's sucking up all the time I should be spending doing productive stuff, like schoolwork or writing.

Thursday evening sucked. I've felt lower, I know I have. I just can't remember when.

Friday afternoon rocked. I'll share more when I feel it's appropriate, but I still can't help but smile.

Friday evening we had a bonfire. Great fun, throwing old financial documents and ammunition receipts into a huge blaze.

Saturday afternoon, on the way to the range, I picked up another magazine for my battle-rifle and 60 more rounds of ammunition. Ran into 2 ex-soldiers out at the range, got an eye-witness account of what Iraq is like. Kinda busts your world view when the soldiers you believe are the bad guys are just like you.

Anyway, they were great company on the range. I shot my battle-rifle off a rest (I need time to develop my muscles, that's why I'm shooting 50 rounds a week with my brother, in addition to range time with my dad), at 25, 50, and 100 yards. Even with the added pressure of 2 soldiers and my dad hanging over my shoulder I put a 25 yard, 20 round group together that you could cover with a measuring cup. Taking it out to fifty, I fired an around-10-round string, 8 of which grouped together on the paper plate in such a way that you could cover them with a vertical tongue depressor.

I've never used my battle-rifle at 100 yards before. A 16 inch barrel and a target you can't see the bullseye for isn't a good combination. After working my flinch out, I line up the sights and discover that the front post is the same size as the plate. Dang. I managed to make paper by lining up the top of the front sight with the top edge of the plate. Out of about 20, between 5 and 10 made the plate.

Now, that's not good shooting. But given the fact that I fired my battle-rifle for the first time in nearly a year LAST WEEK, that's pretty dang good. I'd rather be shooting my CX4, truth be told, but I'm going to get proficient with this gun. And come November, I'm going to buy 2 more as insurance.

Oh yeah, and Gander Mtn. is working over my malfunctioning BAG Day gun, to get that working again.

I am so pumped right now.

Sent In My Taxes Today, Reposted from elsewhere

Sent off my taxes a few days ago, and my anger over the evil of it has been percolating in my bloodstream like Folgers coffee.

For those not familiar with the standard US employee pay setup, here's how it works. Your earnings are taxed at a certain rate by the federal and state governments, and a certain amount is assessed for the cost of Medicare, Social Security, whatever communistic Ponzi scheme they're using. I don't even care to know. All of this is deducted from your paycheck before you ever even see it. And lest one think they only hit the employees, your employer has to match your Medicare/SS/whatever deduction with their own money, money they could A)Be paying you or B)Be using to benefit their store. Every spring your employer sends you a statement, called a W-2, showing how much each parasite has sucked from your paycheck. It is then your obligation to fill out paperwork showing how much money you made, and how much of it is "taxable." Taxable means if you were a productive member of your company and were paid in an equal proportion to your productivity, you may owe the government more simply because you worked harder and got paid for it. (W-2 forms should be considered null and void under the 5th Amendment "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself" protection, however comparing Constitutional behavior to 99.6% of any level of government is like comparing apples to...bobsleds) Now, if you got paid less than a certain amount, you still have to go through this whole dog and pony show, and they'll send you back everything except the SS money, that stuff you'll NEVER see. I was lucky. I'm getting all the money that was stolen from me back.

Why am I torqued off about this?

It's my ******* money. And it was stolen from me in the first place.

I worked for that money. That money is a measurement of the life and energy I gave to my employer. I TRADED valuable time out of my finite lifespan for that money. Anyone can tell you, I worked HARD. That money represents my life, and it was taken from me without my permission. Whether I receive it all back or not is irrelevant. It was stolen from me.

For society not to have a serious breakdown of the social order, thieves should still be punished for their theft even after they returned their misgotten goods. They shouldn't get a time with a duncecap on merely because they weren't good enough to avoid getting caught. Nor should theft be ignored as long as the thief assures us that he'll drop a few bucks from our stolen wallets in the Salvation Army bucket - charity is meaningless when you perform it with money other than yours. The argument that all the nice and wonderful (and by the way unconstitutional) services the government performs or offers would cease to exist without the IRS coercing us into funding them with the threat of death or jailtime is moot.

I guess that would explain, why, while filling out my tax forms, I kept seeing Nazis lined up against a wall, justice being delivered to them in excess of 2000 feet per second.

And the absolute most hilarious thing about this is: It's all illegal! By the rules of their own agency, the IRS has absolutely no claim on your money. If you can find a copy of the IRS rulebook and are willing to wade through the morass (emphasis on those last three letters please) of sickening legal-ese, you'll find this little gem: "The tax system is based on voluntary compliance"

Thus spake the Federal Tax Regulations, Section 601.602.

Is it voluntary? Of course not. But by filing your taxes to avoid all that unpleasantness involving courtdates, judges, and trolls with guns, you give the IRS permission to continue looting your paycheck. Don't see it that way? Go talk to our court system. They've repeatedly held that by requesting permission to exercise a right, you thereby give the government permission to deny that permission to you, turning a right into a privilege. Basically, they can make your life an unbearable hell in order to force you to give them the ability to loot your paycheck, after which you have no legal leg to stand on. And your employer is prohibited by law from hiring you until you've filled out a REQUEST for withholding, otherwise known as the W-4 form.

Further wading through the tax code turns up a few more beautiful nuggets of rage-inducing regulation. Check out form Paragraph A of form 668W (the one authorizing the IRS to seize your paycheck, home, bank account, and property for lack of tax payments)...oh wait...it starts at Paragraph B. Guess what? That's because Paragraph A authorizes the IRS sieze money NOT as taxes from...only government employees. Which completely defangs the IRS.

Yet another interesting piece of information is the fact that the tax regulations to enforce the aforementioned paycheck seizure statute, come under the heading 27 CFR in the Code of Federal Regulations, not 26 CFR (Internal Revenue Code). 27 CFR is otherwise known as *drumroll please* Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearm. Which again completely defangs the IRS since this means they can only levy penalties on government employees who've made income relating to those three areas. (That taxation is a form of infringment, and it is therefore illegal under the 2nd Amendment to apply it to firearms is another story)

And another funny little tidbit about withholding. Remember that other onerous deduction, taken from your paycheck and flushed down the soiled Porta-john of Social Security? Check out Title 26, Chapter 21, Subtitle C, Section 3121 of the United States Code. Social Security deductions can only be made from the paychecks of employees within the United States. Which sounds legal enough, until they define the United States - as being the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa. Pretty much anywhere under US jurisdiction except the 50 states.

Real nice.

There's really no point in my posting this except to get it off my chest. The most infuriating thing about all of this is not the Constitutional and legal abuses, but the principle behind it. My money was taken from me, I want it back and the thieves punished. At the same time however, I don't really want to be a martyr for the tax movement, so I'll shuffle along and fill out all those self-incriminating forms like a good little serf. The pains of making a principled stand far outnumber the benefits. I can only hope, one day, every Na...I mean IRS agent gets their day in court. A real court, not the tax courts that they haul us off to for tax violations, the ones where the above facts are inadmissable as evidence. After which, hopefully, everyone who's been coerced into turning over their money (and especially those RUINED by the IRS) will have a chance to decide their fate.

Wow. That started off as what LawDog and Kim du Toit (google those names) would call a proper rant, and veered sharply off course for nearly 40 minutes into legal waters. Thanks to Vin Supryowicz for writing the most EXCELLENT book "The Ballad Of Carl Drega" without which I would know very little of this infuriating information.

Patriots Day 4/19, Reposted from elsewhere

Today is Patriot's Day.

Today, 231 years ago, a few dozen men and boys stood in a town square in Virginia, stared down the barrels of their own government's rifles, and told the soldiers (who were just doing their appointed duty) that they'd rather die than allow them to take their military arms. A handful of them did die, and after the British had destroyed their arms depot, the militia extracted a terrible price from the British on their march out of town, killing well over a hundred them.

Today is the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's illegal blockade of Southern ports, marking the beginning of the War Of Northern Aggression.

Today marks the anniversary of the final defense of the Warsaw ghetto in Poland. A handful of poorly armed men, women, and children- many barely older than the patrons of this message board - stared down the barrels of the rifles of the Nazi army and told the soldiers (who were just doing their appointed duty) they would rather die fighting than be treated as a subhuman race. Most did die, but during their several-week defense of the ghetto, they killed dozens if not hundreds if not thousands of Nazi Germany's finest.

Today marks the anniversary of the final defense of the Branch Davidian Church in Waco, Texas. +80 men, women, and children stared down the barrels of their own government's rifles and told the soldiers (who were just doing their appointed duty) that yes, they did have the right to possess military arms and use them in defense of their lives, property, and families, and that they were innocent of all charges against them. They were then burned to death in their own church/living quarters, the culmination of a siege starting with perjured warrant stating that the Branch Davidians were making methamphetamines in the church basement, and an illegal and intentionally lethal attack on the Branch Davidian homestead.

Today marks the anniversary of the detonation of the Murray Building in Oklahoma, City. Whoever is responsible for it (and we'll never know), it was a terrible tragedy, and it marked the beginning of the American government's crackdown on the legal groups it believes to be a threat to its power - civilian militias. Militias are defined as civilian soldiers, or all able-bodied civilians capable of bearing weapons in defense of their nation, state, city, or family.

The Virginians standing before the guns of the British military were a militia.
The Southerners standing before the guns of the Northern military were a militia.
The Jews standing before the guns of the Nazi military were a militia.
The Branch Davidians standing before the guns of the American military were a militia.

They were Patriots.

Happy 4th Of July, Reposted from elsewhere

Imagine going to prison.

The cold steel of the manacles on your wrists, the way the chains make your footfalls clumsy, the chafing of the bracelets through the ankles of your orange jumpsuit. The feel of the guards hands on your arms. Your heart rate quickens as you approach the door to your cell.

There. An intake of breath as you cross the threshold, never quite enough. The atmosphere here seems stifling, too little for too many people to breathe. The door to your cell slams shut. The metal clashing – not clanging – against the doorframe, the locks engaging.

There’s a hot dull pain in your chest as you contemplate your future behind these bars. You are totally at the mercy of someone else. Your life is no longer your own. The choices presented to you throughout your day are totally without meaning.You live at the capricious whim of Someone Else.

You have no freedom.

I made that sound really bad, didn’t I? Now imagine it being real. Imagine being incarcerated. I want you to feel it, if just for a moment.Today is the 4th Of July. Today we celebrate, with marching bands and parades and cookouts and (where permitted by law) fireworks. We celebrate the birth of the American nation, the freest country on earth. We celebrate 230 years of freedom, and the reasonable expectation of many, many more.

But that’s a lie.

Handed down through generations, as a matter of fact. The 4th of July has nothing to do with the birth of America. Neither the Constitution nor the Bill Of Rights, both of which secure inviolable individual freedom against encroaching government, were written on this day. The Articles Of Confederation where not written on this day. It does not mark the date of any battle, though if a battle occurred on this day somewhere in the past, it has been lost to history.

No, today marks the approval by the Second Continental Congress of the Declaration Of Independence – a document that has as much to do with the birth of the United States as apples do to bobsleds. The Declaration Of Independence was a statement of grievances the Congressional Representatives of the colonists had with England. It is also their kiss-off to the fatherland, a literary middle-finger to the king, a “screw you” to the legitimate authority of the time.Emphasis on “legitimate.” See, the Representatives of the Second Continental Congress, were not citizens of America, or of the United States. Such words had not yet entered the language to describe the government of the North American continent. They were citizens of England. They had no country to go to – they had not formed one yet. They were in a state of insurrection, armed rebellion…to their own government. They were, in the purest sense of the word, terrorists. They had betrayed their nation, taken up arms against it, preached the gospel of resistance to such masses as would listen, encouraged the killing of their brethren, those that supported the king. They were the very definition of the word “criminal.”

The English government was the legitimate ruling power of the day. It is not too much of a logical leap to compare it to the government of America – it had the legal authority to enact legislation, pass and collect taxes, punish criminals, do anything and everything that any government throughout time has done. It had as much claim to the lives and loyalty of the founding fathers as our government has upon us today, you and me, right now.

The Declaration Of Independence lays out, in detail, the grievances held against this legitimate authority:

The king refused to pass certain laws his citizens requested.
He disbanded legislatures that attempted to pass said laws without his consent.
He refused to pass re-districting laws for the convenience of the provincial governments.
He requested the provincial legislatures to meet in places they did not desire.
He dissolved public assemblies that opposed his laws.
He put judges on English - not local - salary.
He created new government offices.
He kept the army ready during times of peace.
He convened military tribunals for soldiers convicted of crimes against civilians, refusing to let his soldiers be tried by a biased civilian court.
He blockaded cities that refused to obey his laws.
He enacted taxes his citizens did not agree with.

And that’s just transcribing a few of the beefs they had with the king.

That list reads like something from the Anarchist Cookbook. Imagine the sheer stupidity if one were to go to war with the American government today because the president created a new government office. Or because he didn’t pass re-districting laws. Today is the day we celebrate the criminal actions of a handful of rich high-society men against reasonable authority. A small minority created, out of whole cloth, an entire philosophical rebellion against the “president” of the day, and the government he led.

Why?Because, through even the lightest touch of the hand of English law, they felt that cold steel around their wrists, the guards’ hands pushing them forward, the halting steps as their chains impeded their progress. They had one guiding star, one supreme belief that led them to call some of their brethren to arms, that they might kill some of their other brethren who believed something different than them.

They believed in freedom - the right of every man, woman, and responsible child to do WHATEVER they so wished, so long as they harmed no other. Such an extraordinary thought, handed down, almost in secret, as generation after generation passed on earth – people have the right to live as they want, do as they want, BE what they want, and as long as they cause no harm to another, no single person or group of people on earth has the legitimate authority to interfere with their lives. It did not matter to these men whether a tax was a penny or a thousand pounds – it was illegitimate if those it affected did not have a say in its passage.

They believed the words of John Locke: People are most free in a state of nature i.e. people are most free when they are governed by the fewest laws. Put another way: The government governs best that governs least.

Furthermore, they knew where the legitimate authority of the time would take its laws…to the logical conclusion we’ve seen legitimate authority take its laws throughout the 20th century. Millions of civilians dead at the hands of their own legal governments – China, Russia, Cambodia, Germany, Armenia, a whole host of small African nations…a laundry list of homicides enacted by government against those who believed it would protect them and played by the rules.

Our own government is not immune. Look up Operation Keelhaul.

Feel the dirt under your knees? See the shallow pit you just dug, open before you? Feel that metal dig into the back of your head? Your family will be billed the cost of the bullet...

Or maybe: Your family is kneeling beside you.

This was what the founding fathers feared so, that they pledged their Lives, Fortunes, and sacred Honor to oppose – power, unchecked, unfettered power exercised over those who had harmed no other.

Yes, the broke the law. Yes, they were criminals. Yes, they betrayed their fellow citizens, their nation, their leader. All over taxes that amounted to less than a handful of pennies they could spend without thought. All over courts and judges who held allegiance, not to the citizens they tried, but to a power that wished to control them. All over governmental edicts designed not to safeguard liberty, but to make criminals out of men and women and responsible children, who wanted to do as they wished, so long as they did no other harm.

All over the clashing shut of the prison door. The orange jumpsuit. The metal bands around your wrists.

They opposed the legal authority of the day, because they believed in freedom. In their right, you right, my right to be left alone. They opposed legal authority because since it opposed that right, it was no longer legitimate, as no government is that opposes that right.

They declared war on their own government, on their own country, because in the hand illegitimate law they felt the chains. Heard the cell door slam shut. Felt the muzzle of the gun pressed to the back of their head.

So today we honor the actions of criminals, who in declaring war on their own legitimate government, gave true freedom the only chance it has ever gotten to grow and prosper. They watered the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants – its natural fertilizer – and gave us a chance to live without fear of chains, of cell doors slamming shut, of the gun pressed to the back of our head.

We honor men like Carter Braxton, a wealthy trader, who lost his business to the war and died a pauper.

Thomas Nelson Jr. aimed the first cannon of the battle of Yorktown at his own home after Cornwallis took it over as his headquarters. He died bankrupt as a result.

Francis Lewis lost his home and property to the English. His wife and son died in English prison.

John Hart was driven from his dying wife’s bedside by the advance of the English troops. They destroyed his farm, his home, all his property. He took to the forests and lived more than a year there before dying of exhaustion and a broken heart.

Today, we honor these criminals.

These heroes.

Happy 4th Of July.

My Anarchic Roots

So I’m talking fireworks down at a neighbor’s house, and there’s this woman, looks to be in her sixties, going door to door. My neighbor holds up the flyer he got from her, and by golly, she’s out campaigning for a state rep. So, me being a somewhat political person and smelling a debate on the wind, run down the street, stop her for a flyer, and ask her what her candidate thinks of the second amendment (in the most neutral terms, if you tip your hand, they have something to play to). She says she’s not sure, but points to the phone number on the bottom of the paper and says I should call and ask. I return to my neighbor’s garage and discussion resumes.

About five minutes later a beat up Grand Prix shows up in the driveway, the woman yells “You don’t need to call him” and this similarly aged man hotfoots it across the lawn. I meet him halfway, shake his hand, tell him I applaud his campaign style and that every candidate should be willing to shake the hands and talk to prospective voters. He then gives me a 20 minute discourse on how he carries a .357 everywhere but his hometown when he’s out for his electrician business, he’d vote for concealed carry, and he thinks we should repeal 2 laws for every 1 we enact.

I’m out running that night and I think “What a cool guy this guy is” and “I should vote for him, he’s exactly the kind of person I w…” And then I stop.

He’s exactly the kind of person I want ruling me? Huh? Where did that come from? I don’t want to be ruled. I might like this guy, think he’s a really cool person, but I don’t want him telling me what I can and can’t do.

I am an individual. I was born free. I’ll die free. How I choose to live my life in the interregnum is nobody’s business ‘til I infringe upon their business.

I am a sovereign nation.

The only rules I am bound to follow besides my own are those that are in accordance with natural law, or How Things Should Be. Any laws I follow beyond those I do so out of fear.

The only reason I associate myself with the Libertarian party or is because their ideals most closely match my own. The only reason I strive to see the Constitution Of The United States upheld is because the ideals enshrined within match my own closer than most any other document.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

I am a sovereign nation.

Strange, that one little meeting can shake up one's world-view, and yet make so little difference in the long run.

I still believe the United States Constitution is possibly the greatest document and definitely the greatest example of government ever written. I think the Libertarian party, despite its internal cracks and slightly out-there focus holds in its sights the true picture of human freedom. I believe the Republicans are only slightly less evil-slash-stupid than the Democrat party. I believe the Democrats and other sundry leftists are positively inimical to the foundations of liberty and human values.

I still don't want any of them ruling me though.

Because I am a sovereign nation.

Random Reflections Pt7

21. Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson irritate me. They’re further examples of how to get ahead in the world by promoting your image rather than your talents. Their highly publicized breakup was supposedly a terribly tearful and awful experience, but what do they do? Besides going out and finding new pals to slum with immediately (dissolving a 3-5 year marriage should merit a time out for reflection of at least a year, or so one would think) but they each come out with CDs, the selling point of which is that each is about the breakup. I’m just cynical enough to believe that maybe just maybe they orchestrated the whole thing to give their careers a little Bam! (as a well known cook would say) Jessica Simpson’s certainly gotten a fair share of publicity from the divorce, and Nick Lachey’s music was ignored beforehand, now it gets some airplay. Gah, the whole thing makes me sick. Have some class you morons.

22. California seems to be racing New Jersey and Massachusetts to see who’s going to be the first to nationalize health care. We all know how well socialist medicine works – look at Russia. During the heyday of the USSR, every good little peasant had the right to free healthcare paid for by all the other good little peasants. As such, their lifespans were 10-20 years lower than every other civilized country, infant mortality was twice as high as in every other civilized country, mental retardation afflicted 25% of the children, 80 million people had chronic illnesses, and 68% of the public was health-deficient by accepted international standards. Every good little peasant had the “right” to free heart surgery, but the reality was 98% of those needing a bypass died waiting to get one.

Russia’s best and brightest went to work churning out MiG fighters and AK47s, because that’s where the fame and opportunity were. Canada (who also has socialized medicine) is seeing a dramatic decline in doctors going into specialty fields, because there’s no pay incentive to continue on through college. They may have cheap or free medication, but their waiting lists are interminable, and their free physicals last somewhere around 2 seconds. Their best and brightest are jumping into the lifeboats and paddling away from the sinking wreck of socialist medicine – and coming here, where they have a financial incentive to do well.

What’s even funnier about all of this is that those advocating socialist medicine get extremely irritated with me when I compare them to the communists of yore, and do things like quote Communist party platforms and literature at them. If you’re going to look like a commie, have feathers like a commie, and quack like a commie, then be proud of it – you obviously think you’re doing the right thing – and don’t be offended when I call you, of all things: A commie. Take some responsibility for your political beliefs. That I can at least respect.

While pointing and laughing of course.

23. There are those out there who are drawn to religion because it gives them a position of power. Having an “in” with your all-powerful invisible friend makes it really easy to cast declarations of damnation down on the average folks, while maintaining your own superiority. In all seriousness, I’m religious. But my religion is between me and the Creator I’ve chosen to believe created me. It’s not between me and you, you and Him, or anyone else and anyone else. If you wanna know, I’ll be happy to tell you what I believe, but I have no vested interest in seeing you have the same invisible friend as me. Those who use religion as a step-stool to raise themselves above everyone else are incredibly dangerous – because they believe they have the ear of the most high, they WON’T stop, they’ve been appointed by God himself. They also give real religion a bad name. If you see one of these people, tear them down, publicly. Or, if you’re assured of their being disliked, let them prattle on until they self-marginalize themselves.

These religious types that love power – they never, ever listen to reason. Or rational thought. You can bring it to bear against them, but they don’t understand it. What is rationality compared to a mission from God?

Religion is a matter of choice, of opinion. From a purely rational standpoint, there’s no right answer – one is just as good as another. There is a “right” answer in relation to human affairs however, and that is what ensures the freedom of the most people. Let that be your guiding light in whatever you do.

24. All laws have a basis in force. They must, otherwise they would not be law. In order for any law to have any power, there’s gotta be some guy somewhere, who puts on a uniform, straps on a gun, and goes out and cracks some heads when people don’t obey the law. Understand this, and you’ll have a leg up on the rest of society, because no one else gets it. To enforce any law, there ABSOLUTELY MUST be the threat of force, of violence, of death, behind it to extract compliance.

I have a diploma in Constitutional Law from Patrick Henry University out of Virginia. My teacher, Michael Farris, was an *expletive*. Not only was he one of those folks who loved the power that having the religious “high ground” gave them (I was suitably unimpressed), he could not get it through his head that every law is enforced with, in the end, violence. He wanted to outlaw the state of being gay – I asked him if he himself was willing to put on a gun and go out and kill people who broke the law and resisted coming to court. He blustered and said that’s not what the law was about. This was a man who wanted to round up gays and put them in concentration camps (couldn’t figure out how to do it without violating everyone else’s rights, so he reserved that fate for people who’s orientation was discovered during the course of a criminal investigation), and yet he didn’t understand what obvious principle Comrade Mao stated – all political power comes from the barrel of a gun.

Legislating without the knowledge that it will be enforced by violence is a huge problem. Everyone wants special benefits, everyone wants the next cozy, cuddly, help-everyone, sunshine and bunny-rabbits West Wing law to be passed. No one wants to go out and evict a family from their home because they didn’t pay the taxes to fund that law though. No one wants to go burn that family to the ground because they refused to leave that home. No one wants to break into the house, smash the father’s teeth in with a rifle-butt, and drag him off to court. Yet, that is precisely what happens when the laws you advocate are broken. That is what HAS to happen.

Which is precisely why law should be used so sparingly. The threat of violence should only be applied in the most extreme cases, lest it be applied liberally, randomly, and to the innocent.

You can have peace, security, the illusion of safety, sunshine and bunny-rabbits for all, or you can have freedom. If you choose the first option, you’ll have to kill or imprison everyone who disagrees with you. Are you willing to do that? Are YOU willing to do that? Are you WILLING to do THAT?

If you’re not, you can just wait for the government-run schools to breed all the courage and intelligence out of our population, that should only take another 20 years or so. But that’s a story for another day.

25. Choice is the one of the few things in the world worthy of respect. Choosing, of your own free will, the right over the easy, the difficult over the wrong, is the hallmark of greatness. If there is any truth or reality to the concept of value or worth in the world, choice is the yardstick by which value is measured.

9/6/2006

26. We need to return to a culture of respect and responsibility. Respect for each other and each other’s intelligence, and responsibility, as in taking responsibility for our actions. There’s a video floating around the internet as I type, showing a highschool football player slamming another player during downtime. Shortly thereafter, slammed player’s father charges onto the field and flattens the teen who tackled his kid for no reason. Not the best thing to do, certainly not appropriate.

What’s even less appropriate is the fact that the father is getting slapped with felony child-abuse charges. What the heck, over? Used to be a time in America, a couple of guys could work out their differences in a rousing fight, loosen each other’s teeth, blacken each other’s eyes, pay for any damages they caused to the venue, shake hands, and agree to disagree. Not any more – now it’s a felony.

Not that I’m saying we should all go out and start picking barfights for fun, but we’d be better off with the days of guys getting thrown out of saloons than getting hauled down to the precinct and then off to jail for 5 years ‘cause they pounded some loud-mouth jerk into the floor.

Yet another case of the law getting used too much.

Another example: Up until about the 60s, couples mis-matched in age weren’t a problem. Lots of kids got married at 15, 16, 17, 18, etc. and if their partner was a year or two younger than them, it wasn’t a big deal. Teens around our ages pledged themselves to each other, got jobs, started families, and began responsible life a whole lot younger than the morons I see every day in college. Today a deeply-in-love-couple aged 16 and 18 would get married and whichever one was older would be hauled out in cuffs ‘afore the rice was thrown. Hell, you can’t even date a year or two down if you’re over 18, no matter what the younger feels for you – their whim changes and it doesn’t take more than an allegation to get you branded as a child molester an’ lose all your rights for life.

What’s funny is, kids my age are still having kids, almost like this was something nature intended. They’re just not getting married, not taking on any of the responsibility of a committed relationship. We had a lot fewer societal problems when we had less law and more of a sense of responsibility.

So As I Don't Go Forgetting

So as I don't go forgetting what I want to remember - September 8th, 2006. 99% certain.