Chronicling the depravities of the State.
If you’re reading this then Rapture didn’t happen, I’m not gunning down demons from Hell with with a BFG-9000, and I’m rather sad and cranky about the whole situation. On the upside with the lack of demons running around trying to murder us there will be new metal to listen to. Alestorm just released a music video for their new song Shipwrecked. Nothing too surprising here as it’s much like their previous material; bad ass pirate metal:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggyC0FOzqHM]
Apparently tomorrow is Rapture Day. As the world is ending it appears as through I’ll not be around to post again. I have no illusions of beings swept up to Heaven during this event which is fine as I’d prefer Valhalla anyways. Speaking of Valhalla that’s where I’ll be going because when the demons of Hell burst through the ground and start slaughtering those of us who still remain I am so going Doom on their asses.
Excuse me while I charge up my BFG-9000 and get ready to murder demons to the sweet sounds of death metal.
EDIT: 2011-05-20 12:54: I’ve been informed by my editor-in-chief Nicole that delusion was not the correct word. It has been corrected. I was also informed I such as using commas. That has not been corrected.
You know what I haven’t done in a while? I haven’t proclaims my fanboy-like love for the Kindle in a while. Let me change that by pointing out the fact that Amazon just announced that Kindle books have outsold traditional books on their website. As Amazon is one of the largest booksellers in the world this is pretty big news.
Wow anti-gunners say amazingly stupid things. I’ve pointed out how most of the claims made by anti-gunners are downright false so for this exercise I’ll just let you watch the movie, smile, and realize these people may actually believe their “blood in the streets” claims even though none of them have come to fruition:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDOyqvE4o8I]
I’m amazed that much stupidity could be compressed into a single video.
Ladies and gentlemen brace yourselves I’m actually going to link to a post written by a syndicalist. OK I’m joking, I don’t care what somebody’s political orientation is when I like to it on this site. On a serious note though I found an excellent writeup dealing with a topic of privatization that has always bothered me, who gets the money from the sale of “public” works:
Taxes entail coercion; this is why they’re not called donations. Accordingly, one might think self-styled advocates of free markets and smaller government, Ayn Rand aficionados especially, would be cognizant of the fact that, when it comes to a moral claim over the things that said taxes go to — from telecommunications to transit systems — the coerced taxpayer would have the strongest case for ownership.
You’d be wrong, of course. When it comes to downsizing the state, most conservatives and libertarians have a raging hard-on for privatization, by which they mean the government auctioning off taxpayer property to the highest private bidder. The problem with this approach, from a Freedom! and individual rights perspective, is that those who were forced to invest in the state entity to be auctioned off are left with next to nothing to show for it, usually some multinational corporation instead swooping in to pick it up at pennies on the dollar.
This has always been an issue to me. I’m all for privatization (gee could you have guessed that one) but I’m against the government getting the money from sales of “public” works. The fact of the matter is “public” works are funded through stolen… I mean taxpayer money. Throughout the list of any “public” work taxpayers are the ones who foot the bill for building and maintaining the work. Yet when the government decides it’s time to privatize the system (a good thing) they auction off the work and keep all the money for themselves (a bad thing). Were the government honest that money would be equally divided amongst the taxpayers in the form of either shares or money. If we payed for the damned thing we should get our money back when it’s sold off. Obviously this will never happen as government is none to keen on the whole idea of returning stolen money.
So the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has posted up a guide to surviving the zompocalypse. Read through it and then realize your tax dollars paid for somebody to write this guide up. The guide posted is wholly irresponsible in my opinion as the CDC doesn’t even touch the concept of property defensive weapons to utilize when the dead rise. For instance this is what the CDC recommends you have in your preparedness kit:
- Water (1 gallon per person per day)
- Food (stock up on non-perishable items that you eat regularly)
- Medications (this includes prescription and non-prescription meds)
- Tools and Supplies (utility knife, duct tape, battery powered radio, etc.)
- Sanitation and Hygiene (household bleach, soap, towels, etc.)
- Clothing and Bedding (a change of clothes for each family member and blankets)
- Important documents (copies of your driver’s license, passport, and birth certificate to name a few)
- First Aid supplies (although you’re a goner if a zombie bites you, you can use these supplies to treat basic cuts and lacerations that you might get during a tornado or hurricane)
How about a fucking gun? Zombies are serious business and all the first aid supplies in the world won’t do you a damned bit of good if you get bitten by the undead. I also love how they have a picture of family members meeting outside near a mailbox. You know where a better place to be in that situation is? Inside of the fucking brick house. Yes it has a glass door but it also has two stories meaning there is a choke point on the stairs where you could gun down the undead… you know if you had a gun. Oh, and this is fucking rich:
If zombies did start roaming the streets, CDC would conduct an investigation much like any other disease outbreak. CDC would provide technical assistance to cities, states, or international partners dealing with a zombie infestation. This assistance might include consultation, lab testing and analysis, patient management and care, tracking of contacts, and infection control (including isolation and quarantine).
Notice how they make no reference to bringing in the military or weapons to arm local militias? I’m sure that an investigation is going to make mom feel better when her daughter gets bitten and turn into a brain eating undead pile of decaying flesh. Once again the government has proven itself unable to spend tax dollars in a responsible nature. Following the advice in this writeup will likely get you turned into a rancid mass of human hunting death. If the government is going to steal money from me I at least ask that they come up with a proper zombie defense guide.
Fuck the government can’t do anything right.
Gun “buy back” programs (which are ill named as you can’t buy something back unless you previously owned it) are one of the dumbest ideas that government agencies have ever conjured up to fight crime. Anybody with working cognitive capabilities could tell you that criminals aren’t the ones who will turn in their firearms for the measly offering made by the state. Well it appears as though one police department has figured out that many guns that have been turned in are actually non-functional shit. That’s their claimed reason for offering less money at least although I’d say it’s likely they are just getting cheap:
Instead of offering $50 per gun, the city will pay $50 per person.
This is being done to discourage people who might misuse the program as a way to unload defective weapons, said Martha Earnhardt, a spokeswoman for the Montgomery Department of Public Safety. A news release about the buyback program states that the city specifically forbids gun dealers from participating in the buyback.
If you have a firearm you wish to rid yourself of be smart and sell it to somebody who will give you fair market value for it. Most firearms are worth more than $50.00 and frankly I find the actions being performed by departments doing these gun “buy back” programs to be fraudulent. They are taking advantage of people who haven’t a clue what firearms are worth which is something the state often decries when private individuals do it.
Personally I find handing over completely broken and non-fixable firearms to the state a great idea. It’s kind of like getting stolen money back, you dump a broken gun and receive $50.00 of your taxpayer money back. On top of that no functional firearm is needlessly destroyed.
A tip of the hat goes to The Truth About Guns for bringing this article to light.
Here is another example of a completely reasonable reaction by the United States government. In their recently released International Strategy for Cyberspace [PDF] the United States made a few statement one of which was a threat to bomb the shit out of anybody who hacks their computers:
States have an inherent right to self-defense that may be triggered by certain aggressive acts in cyberspace,” says the policy. Indeed, such aggressive acts might compel a country like the US to act even when the hacking is targeted at an allied country.
Certain hostile acts conducted through cyberspace could compel actions under the commitments we have with our military treaty partners,” says the document. “When warranted, the United States will respond to hostile acts in cyberspace as we would any other threat to our country.”
Personally I feel that may be a bit of an overreaction, especially threatening to bomb countries that hack into computers owned by allied countries. I certainly feel this is an overreaction as the paper says the United States will take these actions “when warranted” which translates roughly into “if you country has any natural resources we desire.” Yeah I’m cynical.
It seems the Coalition to Stop Gun Ownership (Fucknuts) is having some problems with their Twitter account… namely it’s not there because they got their stupid asses banned. As you could see by my last post Fucknuts were “outing” gun bloggers by posting personal information. My life and identity are fairly public thus this didn’t concern me and I even tried helping them out by ensuring they posted about the correct Christopher Burg. Many gun bloggers like to have a semblance of anonymity and thus were none too happy with the shenanigans being pulled by Fucknuts.
Linoge took a few seconds to inform Twitter of the harassment being performed by Fucknuts and lo and behold their Twitter account went away. It seems Twitter isn’t very happy about the whole posting of private information thing. Too bad Fucknuts but it seems as though your attempt of winning through harassment isn’t nearly as successful as our winning through factual information.
I also would like to applaud Linoge’s method of dealing with these idiots. The e-mail he sent to Twitter was factual and to the point. Unlike the anti-gunners we pro-gun individuals prefer not to resort to lying to accomplish our goals.
EDIT: 2011-06-19 11:06: Corrected a couple of grammatical errors pointed out by my editor-in-chief Nicole.
It seems as though the Coalition to Stop Gun Ownership has been making a habit of trying to “out” gun bloggers. Although I find this maneuver childish I also like to be helpful when I can. I also realize that anti-gunners are often… how can I put this delicately… retarded. Thus I’m going to offer some help to the Coalition.
My name is Christopher Burg. That’s Burg spelled B-U-R-G. I’m from Minnesota so don’t mistake me for some schmuck in New York named Christopher Burg. My Twitter account is @ComradeBurg but you can find me on most other sites simply enough by looking for the user name ChristopherBurg.
There you go, now you can take some credit for “outing me” if you so choose.