You’re Asking the Wrong People Obama

It’s being reported that Obama is meeting with Senate leaders to negotiate spending cuts:

President Barack Obama is meeting Senate leaders negotiating on spending cuts and raising the US debt ceiling, as a deadline for action looms.

Mr Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden had what officials said was a “constructive” meeting with Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Mr Obama was due to meet Republican leader Mitch McConnell later on Monday.

The problem lies in the fact that there seems to be only one person on Capitol Hill that has actual knowledge in economics and financing. Obama shouldn’t be talking to the Senate leaders but should be picking up the phone and calling Dr. Ron Paul who is one of the few members of our government that isn’t a complete Keynesian (and those are the fuckers who got us into this mess).

Unfortunately for those of us living in the United States Obama has decided to talk with Mitch McConnell who only seems capable for parroting the standard Republican party line:

The White House has said Republicans want to use the negotiations with the Obama administration to secure tax loopholes for corporations, tax breaks for the wealthy and subsidies for oil and gas firms.

“We have to have a balanced approach so that no sector of society, not the middle class, not seniors, not any one segment of the business community, has to bear any disproportionate burden,” Mr Carney told reporters on Monday.

This is what gets me about the Republican party, the often talk about things that sound somewhat libertarian on the surface but underneath they lack a true understanding of why libertarians express the beliefs they do. The majority of Republican also talk the big talk until it comes time to act, at which time they reveal their true colors as authoritarian Keynesian just like the Democrats (really there is no difference between the two parties).

Securing tax breaks isn’t going to fix the problem, we need to dramatically cut spending if we want any hope of keeping our inflated fiat currency from dropping in value fast enough to violate the theory of general relativity. Unfortunately the spending cuts must come from the political suicide sectors of Social Security, “defense” spending, and Medicare. Without cutting heavily from all three of these no major change will occur and our money will continue to inflate which will reduce the purchasing power of everybody who is dependent on our paper currency.

I also doubt the Republicans have the balls required to keep the debt ceiling where it’s at. At least if we did that it would force us to adopt a balanced budget for the year. But as usual there will be a back and forth between the Republicans and Democrats that will be little more than a pissing contest. After the pissing contest both sides will agree to compromise and raise the debt ceiling which will further increase our debt and fuck us over in the long run.

How Officers Handle Real Threats

As Uncle aptly points out the police love putting on their SWAT gear and kicking in doors when they’re in pursuit of a criminal who is likely not going to provide much resistance. When federal agents decided to go after James Bulger, a man suspected in 19 murders, the police didn’t storm in his apartment with guns blazing but instead used good old social engineering to lure the man out:

Then, according to people familiar with the case, James “Whitey” Bulger’s 16 years on the run came to an end Wednesday night with a phone call and a lie.

Federal officers arranged for a call to Mr. Bulger in his third-floor apartment to say that his storage locker might have been broken into.

Officers could use similar tactics in many arrests but then they wouldn’t get to toss on the riot gear and play soldier as they kick down your door, run in with guns drawn, and then act surprised that people are appalled at their antics. After all what’s the point of having authority if you don’t get to force people to respect it?

In all seriousness I would appreciate it if police officers would utilize social engineering methods in their arrests instead of brute force. If you trick somebody into coming out so he can be arrested the risk of violence is much lower than kicking in the suspect’s front door during a no-knock raid.

Meet The Springfield XD(m) Competition Pistol

Springfield Armory has been busy with their line of imported pistols and I must say they’re certainly working to make sure all the holes in their product line are filled. A new pistol in the XD(m) line has been unveiled and this one is specifically for competitions.

It comes out of the box with a rear adjustable target sight, a fiber optic front sight, and the slide has a large cut out across the top to bring the weight down. Beyond that it looks like a standard XD(m). Personally I think it looks neat and I’m glad to see Springfield working diligently on ensuring there is a XD model for everything need.

Site Migration Update

It appears as though the site migration has gone much smoother than I expected. With the exception of my embedded YouTube links needing repair everything appears to be working correctly. I’ve had a couple people report that the RSS feed transferred over without any trouble, my Twitter integration seems to be working, and all the links are going where they’re supposed to. I’m sure there will be some problems in the coming weeks but overall I believe this is one of the less painful transfers I’ve dealt with.

WordPress has some very good tools available to those wanting to jump from one server to another. Of course if you notice any problems (besides the YouTube links not working, I’m already aware of that) either post a comment or send me an e-mail at blog[at]christopherburg[dot]com.

Lulz Security Calls it Quits

I’ve mentioned my interest in Lulz Security and Anonymous stemmed strongly from their ability to keep themselves anonymous for quite a length of time considering the high value targets they went after. Well Lulz Security has called it quits claiming that they only intended to perform their attacks for 50 days.

This story doesn’t really hold water though as personal information of many members of the group has been published leading which makes their sudden “planned” disbanding rather convenient. What I would like to know though are where they failed in keeping themselves anonymous. The ability to keep one’s self anonymous online is a valuable thing and learning from the mistakes made by others is the only way we can ensure those needing or simply wanting to hide online have the ability to do so.

Of course it’s also possible that Lulz Security’s announcement of the organization disbanding is just them trolling everybody. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them announcement that their previous announcement was just made to fuck with people and that they’re restarting their attacks.

Government Money Management

There are numerous jokes about the government paying obscene amounts of money on frivolous things. How much do you think the United States government spends on air conditioning tents and temporary facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan? Information presented by Every Day, No Days Off puts the bill at $20 billion which is $1 billion more than NASA’s entire budget.

The largest part of United States spending is military related. Some people will say that spending $20 billion on keep our troops comfortable is a minor cost compared to the sacrifice those soldiers make. I say that sending them over there in the first place is not only an offense against them but also against those countries. Most of those soldiers signed up with the intention of defending this country but instead were sent overseas into third world countries that posed no viable threat to the United States. We’re risking the lives of soldiers for needless occupations that accomplish nothing more than getting soldiers kill and dumping endless amounts of cash into the military industrial complex.

When a country has to spend more on air conditioning for occupying troops than getting our asses further into space you know the is a problem. In our case that problem is imperialism which has been shown to be an unmaintainable system time and time again (seriously it didn’t work out in the long run for the Mongols, Romans, British, Spanish, Soviet Union, or any other military force).

Another Murder Linked to Project Gunwalker

Not surprisingly another murder has been linked to operation Gunwalker:

CBS News has confirmed that ATF Fast and Furious “walked” guns have been linked to the terrorist torture and murder of the brother of a Mexican state attorney general last fall.

Two AK-47 variant rifles were found at the scene of a shoot-out with the murder suspects. Sources say the weapons were part of the controversial ATF program in which agents allowed thousands of guns to fall into the hands of suspects trafficking for Mexico’s drug cartels.

Results like this are typical when government agencies get bright ideas. As government agencies don’t have to obey the same laws that they’re tasked with enforcing they often get ideas that involve allowing criminals to perform illegal actions unhindered. This wouldn’t be so bad if the agency didn’t then turn around and claim the criminal activities they allowed are justification for giving the agency more power.

The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) really fucked up here. Not only did they allow firearms to knowingly be sold to members of Mexican drug cartels but these same firearms are also being linked to murders. To top it off the ATF has nothing of value to show for these antics making it hard for them to make excuses when inquired. If the United States were a just country the ATF would be disbanded and the heads of the agency would be brought up on charges of breaking numerous American gun laws.

So Long Helmke

Uh oh it appears the Brady Campaign president, Paul Helmke, is finally stepping down:

According to an article in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, Helmke said he’s leaving the Brady Campaign on good terms after what he considers “five years of positive work to promote its platforms as moderate, reasonable approaches to gun control.”

The article went on to say that Helmke hasn’t figured out what his next step will be. “I’m going to take some time to figure things out,” he said.

I’m betting money that Helmke has seen the writing on the wall and realizes his sweet Joyce Foundation money is likely to dry up soon as the ineffectiveness of the Brady Campaign comes more and more blatantly obvious. Not to mention nobody shows up for the Brady Campaign press releases anymore so he can’t even get his name out there by remaining president of the failing organization.

There isn’t much else to say besides good riddance and I wish it was the entire organization that was leaving, not just the president.

Monday Metal: Po Syroi Zemle by Arkona

It’s once again time for Monday Metal and this going to be another one of those entries into the list of bands you’ve probably never heard of before. Today’s song is Po Syroi Zemle by Arkona, a Russian folk metal band who is not only a rare breed for being a folk metal band but also because they have a female lead singer:

Welcome to The New Site

If you take a look around you’ll notice absolutely nothing appears to have changed but alas I’ve moved my blog for WordPress to my own personal server. The migration isn’t flawless as all of my embedded YouTube video links are in need of repair but otherwise I believe everything is here as it should be. If you notice any bugs let me know (blog[at]christopherburg[dot]com) and I’ll get to fixing them right away.

I’m sure the next question out of your mouth will be “Why the move?” Frankly I’ve been working on getting my own “cloud” setup. My e-mail has been hosted on my own server for a while now as are several other accounts. That means when you send an e-mail to the above address it goes straight to my server. Regardless to you this move means basically nothing but for me it means I now have complete control over my website, e-mail, and other online accounts. It’s likely that I may experience some downtime here and there being I’m hosting this on my own personal server and not several servers distributed around the country but so far my personal “cloud” experiment has lead to great up times and I don’t get page hits twenty-four hours a day so I have times that I can perform scheduled maintenance.

A couple of other things have changed. First you can now access this website via christopherburg.com, www.christopherburg.com, or the good old blog.christopherburg.com. The first two URLs may redirect to a new site someday but I will keep the blog subdomain pointing directly here for as long as I have control to do so (unless I change my mind).

I hope you’ll bear with me as I work out the bugs here. I’m not sure if the Twitter feed is going to work perfectly, I think the RSS feed link will need to be changed, and there are probably a few other issues that will crop up as the weeks pass.