Month: February 2011

Busted

Fox News is the neo-con’s favorite channel. Not only do they spend a lot of time arguing how terrible the “liberals” are they also like to take swings at actual conservatives. Take for example this stunt they pulled in an attempt to make Ron Paul look bad after winning the CPAC presidential straw poll:

Congressman Paul replicated his 2010 victory over Mitt Romney by defeating the former Governor of Massachusetts for a second consecutive year at the annual CPAC conference.

However, before anchor Bill Hemmer introduced a segment concerning the story, Fox News played a clip of the 2010 announcement of the poll results, during which Mitt Romney supporters had loudly booed Ron Paul’s victory, passing off last year’s footage as representative of this year’s event.

This is why nobody takes Fox seriously (it’s actually the same reason nobody takes MSNBC, CBS, or CNN seriously either).

I Don’t Think That Argument Will Work

Today is logical fallacy day. This is a day where the logical arguments made by anti-gunners are brought to light. First we had Josh Horowitz claiming the gun confiscations in New Orleans were a conspiracy theory that never happened and now we have another idiot spouting off statements that are quite questionable. Arma Borealis called out a local (to me) Minnesota anti-gunner for the following statement (I’ll not link directly to the anti-gunner post as I have a strict policy against doing exactly that):

I give you the argument of the guys with the “man pants” on ladies and gentlemen-” We’re saying that we’d rather have more gun deaths and lower overall violent crime, than zero gun deaths and higher rates of violent crime if given the choice” And there you have it. Nothing more to say here except “Wow” and “unbelievable”

See an increase in violent crime is perfectly OK so long as guns aren’t used. If more women are raped that’s OK so long as there are less gun related deaths. If more people are murdered it’s OK so long as those murders were committed with weapons besides guns. The main thing needed according to these people is lowering gun related deaths at any cost including lives. I’m apologize for the fact I lack the cognitive dissonance required to make this argument seem like it makes sense.

It’s also interesting that I’ve found somebody who appears to be my opposite right here in my own state. I’d certainly enjoy a debate on guns with this person but it would likely devolve into her inserting fingers into her ears and yelling “LA LA LA” at the stop of her lungs until I left.

Disconnected from Reality

I often accuse anti-gunners of making shit up and being overall disconnected with reality. These accusations are pretty easy to backup as well. Let’s take Josh Horowitz of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence who recently stated:

Following Hurricane Katrina, the NRA promoted a conspiracy theory about mass gun confiscations in Katrina and compared New Orleans officials to Mao, Stalin and Hitler.

As pointed out over at Self-Defense, Survival & Preparedness Daily it’s not a conspiracy theory when it has actually happened. After Hurricane Katrina struck the National Guard performed massive gun confiscations leaving many residents completely defenseless against the criminal entity of New Orleans. These guns have yet to be returned which is why the National Rifle Association has outstanding lawsuits to retrieve the property that was stolen by the government.

But the Horowitz has to find a way to drum up hatred of the “evil gun lobby” (you have to hold a lit flashlight under your chin when you say that) in order to get some inkling of funding for his failing enterprise of anti-rights propaganda.

A Novel Idea by Cellular Providers

Long Term Evolution (LTE) is the new cellular data standard that is being adopted by Verizon and AT&T Even Sprint is considering switching their WiMax network to LTE. I’m rather excited for the technology as it means we’ll be able to blow through our impending data caps even faster now.

Currently there are two competing cellular standard in the United States, GSM and CDMA. Verizon and Sprint use CDMA while AT&T and T-Mobile (and the rest of the world) use GSM. Both standards have pros and cons. While CDMA is less susceptible to interference GSM allows a user to access their data plan while on a phone call. Data networks give a means of bypassing limitations of both GSM and CDMA but cellular providers haven’t been willing to utilize this potential until now.

AT&T and Verizon have both announced plans to do voice over LTE (think Skype). This would allow both carriers to use their upcoming LTE networks for voice and data through the wonderful fact that voice really is just data (as both CDMA and GSM use completely digital voice networks). Utilizing voice over LTE would alleviate many of the problems faced by nothing having a universal cellular standard in the United States, namely you could take your roam on Verizon’s network if you were an AT&T subscriber and visa versa (so long as both companies used the same voice over LTE protocol and had roaming agreements). This would be great being many locations in the United States have great coverage for either GSM or CDMA but not both (for instance my hometown has CDMA coverage but not GSM coverage).

I’d love to see this happen. It also makes economic sense since there wouldn’t be a need to support multiple radios and protocols for separate functions of phones. Likewise anybody who has used Skype on their phone has already done what AT&T and Verizon are looking into. It’s not a difficult idea to implement as the technology is there and the LTE networks are being built.

Another One Bites the Dust

Days of Our Trailers reports on the apparent removal of Peter Hamm from the Brady Campaigns list of employees. Are the rats fleeing the sinking ship? Can the Brady Campaign no longer afford to pay senior staff? Are senior staff members no longer able to cope with the complete ignorance of reality required for their job? Who knows but it’s not looking good for them.

Your Tax Dollars at Work Arming Mexican Drug Cartels

Governments are interesting entities. They claim to need power over the citizenry in order to protect the citizenry. This power often includes the ability to prohibit certain activities and establishes punishments for those citizens who disregard the prohibitions. What makes this whole situation interesting is the fact once these very prohibitions are in place the government turns right around and disregards them.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) has been one of many organizations covering what we gun rights activists have labeled the Mexican Gun Canard. The Mexican government has been claiming the source of drug cartel guns has been the United States. Due to this the Mexican government has urged our government to enact stricter gun control laws and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) have jumped right onto this bandwagon in order to obtain more funding. The ATF have also been asking for emergency powers to record people buying “assault weapons” near the Mexican border.

Recently stories have broken that show the ATF is likely responsible for guns flowing from the United States to Mexico. Well the NSSF has a good post that brings up a story about a WikiLeaks document showing our government as a source of guns for the Mexican Drug Cartels.

To sum up the cables the drug cartels have obtained many of their weapons from other Central American countries which were supplied with weapons by the United States. Shocked? Didn’t think so as anybody who knows anything about the National Firearms Act knows machine guns and grenade launchers aren’t exactly things you can go down to your corner drug store and buy. Likewise the export of arms to other countries is strictly regulated meaning selling arms to other countries is one of those things that we can’t do (without proper licensing) but our government most certainly can.

There is a bit of irony in the fact we have to fight against the same weapons that our government gave out so many years ago. What isn’t ironic through is the fact our government officials are claiming we need to regulate private citizens further to prevent the flow of weapons into Mexico. I guess passing the blame onto somebody else is a common tactic used by 8 year-olds which is roughly the mental maturity level of our government.

Credit Card Fraud, So Simple an Inmate Can Do it

I’ve always known credit card fraud was easy to do but I couldn’t appreciate how easy until I read this story which I found via Bruce Schneier’s blog:

A Rikers Island inmate ran a nationwide cyber-crime ring from behind bars that forged fake credit cards to buy $1 million in iPads and Apple computers, officials said Wednesday.

Shaheed “Sha” Bilal, 28, directed the massive syndicate, instructing his girlfriend and three younger brothers on how to encode the magnetic strips on credit cards with stolen financial information, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said.

Obviously the prison system works well if those incarcerated for performing criminal acts can continue to perform criminal acts while imprisoned.

Simply Amazing

I follow politics, can you tell? I also do what I can to ensure legislation I want to pass is passed and legislation I don’t want passed is shot down. Often though I’m amazed at the apathy of most people when it comes to our political system. It’s almost impossible to rally people to make simple phone calls to their “representatives” asking them to vote against things like the PATRIOT Act. Until last week I didn’t think there was anything you could do that would get people active in fighting the cronies at our capitals. You want to know the secret to raising a political army? Get alcohol involved.

Minnesota’s liquor laws are quite special in their complexity and stupidity. Due to our laws a brewery can not sell more than 3,500 barrels of liquor a year and have a restaurant at the same time. This has put a kibosh on Surly Brewing Company’s plans for a massive new facility which would include a restaurant. All of the sudden the most politically apathetic people I know are all fired up to fight these laws. They’ve gone from yelling about fighting “the evil lobbyists” to meeting with a lobbyist group. The irony is delicious I will admit.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that the best way to raise a political army is to somehow involve alcohol. I’m trying to figure out a means of doing this with every political issue I care about and you should to.

Dedication to One’s Art Form

If there was ever a man who has dedication to his art form it would be the mystery person found passed out on Joel DeSpain’s lawn. The man’s art form? Drinking apparently as he had a blood alcohol level of 0.559. According to the story you need to do some furious drinking to accomplish this:

As an illustration, a 150-pound man would have to drink 22 shots of 80-proof whiskey in two hours to get that drunk, according to an online blood-alcohol calculator maintained by the University of Notre Dame’s Office of Alcohol and Drug Education.

Cripes! What’s even better is this blood alcohol level isn’t even the record:

Drunkenness to such a degree can be deadly, but people have survived even greater levels of intoxication. In 2007, for example, an Oregon woman was found unconscious in her car and with a blood-alcohol content of 0.72 percent.

Dedication, these people most certainly have it.

House Voted to Extend PATRIOT Act Spying on Citizens Powers

No surprise here but the House voted to piss all over our rights yet again by extending the “surveillance powers” of the PATRIOT Act:

In a 275-144 vote, the chamber voted to extend until December provisions on wiretaps, access to business records and surveillance of terror suspects.

I’m sure it was only a coincidence that Janet Napolitano claimed that the United States currently faces it’s largest threat from terrorist attack EVAR!!!!OMGTHINKOFTHECHILDREN.

Seriously every so-called representative that voted for this should be instantly recalled by their states and brought up on charges of treason. The legislators in Washington are supposed to uphold the Constitution not use it a toilet paper to wipe their collective asses.