Month: December 2011

Agents of the State Find Time to Harass Teenagers

With all the ills going on in the world it’s good to see members of the Kansas governor’s staff are finding time to tackle the really important issues:

“Just made mean comments at gov. brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot,” she wrote to her 60 followers who tuned in to her sporadic updates about the Twilight films and Justin Bieber. In fact, Sullivan hadn’t said a word to the governor during his brief speech, and she now says the Twitter comment was just an “inside joke” among her high schol friends who were also on the Youth in Government field trip and disagreed with Brownback’s politics.

But the humor was lost on members of Brownback’s staff, who found the tweet while scouring social media sites for his name and alerted Sullivan’s high school principal. The principal reprimanded Sullivan and demanded she write an apology to the governor.

There’s so much stupid in the second paragraph that it almost physically hurts. First of all how the hell are members of Brownback’s staff finding the time to browse through social media sites looking for the governor’s name? If staff members have enough time to do that they either need more work or the size of the staff needs to be reduced. Remember that the people of Kansas are footing Brownback’s bill to pay his staff so if he has any decency (which he probably doesn’t being he’s a politician) he’d ensure his staff was as efficiently sized as possible.

Next we have the concern of staff members contacting the kid’s principle. Her tweet said she made mean comments at the governor, not that she was planning on committing any act of violence upon the man. Just for fun and in case anybody from Brownback’s staff is reading this site I’d like to say that Governor Brownback is a huge steaming pile of shit. Granted I don’t know the man but if he feels sending staff members out to browse social media sites for mentions of his name is a good use of taxpayer dollars then he is a piece of shit in my book.

The third point of stupid is the audacity of the principle to demand the kid write a letter of apology. Nobody should be made to apologize for their opinion, especially when that opinion is about a public official. There is a pesky amendment in the Constitution that says something about people have the freedom of speech. While I understand schools are actually more akin to prisons it is still disgusting to see students having their supposedly Constitutionally guaranteed rights stripped without actually doing any wrong. Don’t even both giving me that line of bullshit about the Bill of Rights only applying to adults, nowhere in the Bill of Rights does it contain any disclaimer that it is meant to apply only to adults. It appears as though the kid is pretty smart I must say:

And while Sullivan’s tweet is still rude, Brownback’s staff response makes him look thin-skinned and unable to take a joke. “I can’t believe they would prioritize that over other issues they have going on now,” Sullivan says. “I can’t believe they take time out of their day to look at social media and Twitter for his name.”

Exactly. The people of Kansas should be up in arms just for the fact that they’re paying idiots to sit around and browse Twitter all day. Let me also commend the kid for sticking to her guns and ultimately deciding not to write an apology letter:

Sullivan, who now has more than 9,000 Twitter followers and has begun quoting Gandhi, says she hopes the principal will accept her decision not write an apology letter. She says the incident has been a “reality check” to her and her friends that their comments on social media sites are not anonymous nor consequence-free.

You should only apologize when it’s sincere, which means you should never write a letter of apology for speaking the truth or your opinion. Too many people believe that apologies must be issued whenever you hurt somebody’s feelings but truth be told this simply creates a society that ends up giving a bunch of insincere apologies for everything and also ingrains people with the idea that they can get away with anything so long as they issue a phony apology afterwards.

Since the heat was turned up Governor Brownback did finally issue an apology of his own:

“My staff over-reacted to this tweet, and for that I apologize. Freedom of speech is among our most treasured freedoms. I enjoyed speaking to the more than 100 students who participated in the Youth in Government Program at the Kansas Capitol. They are our future. I also want to thank the thousands of Kansas educators who remind us daily of our liberties, as well as the values of civility and decorum. Again, I apologize for our over-reaction”

How about you apologize to the people of Kansas for wasting their money by paying people to sit and browse the Internet?

90,000 Permit Holders and Counting

I’m pleased to report that Minnesota now has over 90,000 carry permit holders and so far we’ve not had any trouble with the fabled “blood in the streets” foretold by the anti-gunners. This fine state even allows carry in establishments that serve alcohol, hell a person carrying a firearm can have a blood alcohol level of .04%, and we still haven’t had any increase in the number of drunken shootouts at our local watering holes (which remains at zero as far as I know).

Either we’re doing something wrong in Minnesota or the anti-gunners are incorrect when claiming more people carrying guns leads to more gun violence.

Crunching the Numbers of the Chevrolet Volt

Jay crunches the numbers on the Chevrolet Volt and discovers an interesting fact:

Got that? 35 freakin’ miles on a charge. The rest of your trip takes place courtesy of a tiny gasoline motor that gets less-than-fantastic mileage, mainly because it’s trying to power a vehicle that’s too large for it. You’ll save $7,600 in fuel costs over five years! It’s right there on the sticker! Too bad it costs about $25,000 more than any other comparably sized vehicle, so it will take you more than 15 years TO BREAK EVEN.

Let me state this as clearly as I can: If you buy this car expecting to save money, you are a fucking moron.

You’re not saving any money whatsoever – at $46,000, the difference between the Volt and a Civic/Corolla/Sentra/any other comparably sized gasoline engine car in gas mileage is negligible. Even with gas at $4 a gallon and and an annual commute of 20,000 miles, the gasoline-only car getting 25 MPG would cost you $3200 for the year. Even if the Volt were 100% free, it would still take almost 10 years of driving to offset the cost differential.

People generally have a hard time calculating cost-benefit ratios. That is to say people will look at the initial numbers as see that buying a car will save them some $7,600 in fuel over five years but will then fail to crunch the numbers of the cost difference in fuel between the expensive vehicle that uses less gas and the cheaper vehicle that uses more gas.

I purchased my Ranger before fuel costs started going up and when I saw the prices jumping I calculated out how long it would take me to break even if I traded in the truck for something more fuel economical. My Ranger has a 4.0L engine and gets roughly 17.5 mpg. I compared it to something that go 30 mpg at $4.00 a gallon gas and found out I wouldn’t break even until I had driven the car about 100,000 miles. In other words the cost-benefits ratio was piss poor and therefore buying a more economical vehicle was pointless as it would take ages for me to recover my costs.

Also I wouldn’t be able to piss off the enviro-nazis if I drove an economical car and somethings are worth the additional cost.

Obama Administration Moving to Coverup Government Gun Smuggling Case

After the slaying of United States Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry it was discovered that weapons were being smuggled from the United States into Mexico by our own government. This culminated into the discovery of Operation Fast and Furious, which has been a rather undesired blemish on the current administration’s already heavily blemished record. It appears as though the coverup is now in full swing though:

The case against Osorio-Arellanes and others involved in the shooting has since been sealed, meaning that neither the public nor the media has access to any evidence, filings, rulings or arguments.

The U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego, which is prosecuting the case, would confirm only that it was sealed. Also sealed was the judge’s reason for sealing the case.

The indictment lists the names of other suspects in the shooting, but they are redacted.

In the Terry killing, two Romanian-built AK-47 assault rifles found at the scene were identified as having been purchased in a Glendale, Ariz., gun shop as part of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) failed Fast and Furious investigation.

A number of rank-and-file Border Patrol agents have questioned why the case has not gone to trial, nearly a year after Terry’s killing. Several also have concerns about the lack of transparency in the investigation, compounded now by the fact that the court case has been sealed.

Nothing to see here, move along citizen. This shouldn’t come as a shock to anybody considering how big of a deal this entire case is. The government was caught doing something naughty, arming Mexican drug cartels, and they want the entire mess to go away. You’re not suppose to inquire about it, records are now sealed, and everybody is supposed to pretend this entire situation was caused by American’s “loose” gun laws.

Only one word comes to mind after reading this, disgusting. On the other hand this should demonstrated without a doubt that our government doesn’t feel as though they need to answer to us, if we ask a question they can just classify all related documents and tell us to buzz off.

Lieberman Pushing to Further Censor Free Speech

I hate Joe Lieberman. He’s one of the dumbest fuckwits in Washington DC who seems to have a loud opinion about every single thing he doesn’t understand. Now he’s demanding that Google place a button on Blogger to flag terrorist content:

Joseph Lieberman, the independent senator from Connecticut, sent a letter to Google CEO Larry Page this week expressing his opinion that Google-owned blogging platform Blogger should provide a button that would let readers of Blogger-powered blogs flag “terrorist content,” according to a report.

[…]

“As demonstrated by this recent case, Google’s webhosting site, Blogger, is being used by violent Islamist extremists to broadcast terrorist content,” reads the reported Lieberman letter, which was posted online by blog TPM.

Where do I begin? First of all what qualifies as terrorist content is entirely subjective. If you ask a government agent any anti-government content would likely be considered terrorist content while people asking me what qualifies as terrorist content will get a quick response noting basically everything government agents have ever written.

Are people advocating terrorism using popular blogging software to get their message out? Yes. Is such content protected under free speech? You’re damned right it is. How can I say that? Easy, unless somebody is acting upon their advocacy of violence no crime has taken place because no victim exists. There is a day and night difference between saying something and doing something. Many people say things that they would never act upon, often times just to let off steam.

What Lieberman wants is really the censorship of speech. How do I derive that? What do you think that “terrorist flag” button is supposed to do? I’m sure if jack-booted thug Lieberman had his way it would send all available personal information about the post author to the Department of Motherland Homeland Security and dispatch a Reaper drone to blow the author straight to Hell. Since that isn’t really possible due to pesky laws (not that they’re stopping the government from doing anything) the next best thing will be to have the button remove the content from Blogger, at least for review.

Instead of trying to further stifle our rights how about you work on real problems Lieberman? Perhaps you can use your large and idiotic opinion to demand stupid changes that you believe will fix our country’s major debt problem. At least you could claim you’re working on a pressing issue in an attempt to justify that fat paycheck and great benefits package you earn for doing nothing besides being a dick.

Cognitive Dissonance Regarding Paying Off the Federal Debt

National Public Relations Public Radio (NPR) has a piece that tries to explain how paying off the federal debt ended poorly for the United States. I’m not quite sure what their angle is but it appears to be an argument against ridding ourselves of the yoke of our national debt:

That was the one time in U.S. history when the country was debt free. It lasted exactly one year.

By 1837, the country would be in panic and headed into a massive depression. We’ll get to that, but first let’s figure out how Andrew Jackson did the impossible.

What? Paying off the national debt will lead to a depression! Oh no, we need to make the debt bigger! Due to a failure of logic it’s pretty easy to see the depression that followed paying off the federal debt was due to the use of fiat money.

When Jackson took office, the national debt was about $58 million. Six years later, it was all gone. Paid off. And the government was actually running a surplus, taking in more money than it was spending.

Damn, if it wasn’t for that whole massacring American Indians Andrew Jackson may actually be on the very short list of presidents I respect.

That created a new problem: What to do with all that surplus money?

Jackson had already killed off the national bank (which he hated more than debt). So he couldn’t put the money there. He decided to divide the money among the states.

Um… I don’t think the author understands what a national bank is. A national bank isn’t some place for the federal government to place its money so that it can be loaned out to other countries as banks we interact with daily are. National banks exist simply to control the supply of money without having to deal with that pesky free market that prevents easy expansion of the money supply. What a national bank does is print money and loan out that money (usually to other banks) to expand the supply of money and recalls loans to contract the supply of money. Through this convoluted process the national bank attempts to control inflation but in actuality causes inflation as the money supply is only expanded due to the government wanting more and more money to spend on frivolous projects.

Thus eliminating the Second National Bank didn’t prevent the federal government from storing the surplus of money, that statement is just idiotic. Fuck it, take it away Rothbard:

The state banks went a little crazy. They were printing massive amounts of money. The land bubble was out of control.

Exactly what I said above, when government is given the power to expand and contract the money supply they only expand it. Fiat money systems are bad m’kay.

Andrew Jackson tried to slow everything down by requiring that all government land sales needed to be done with gold or silver. Bad idea.

Please, explain to me how that was a bad idea.

“It was a huge crash, and the beginning of the longest depression in American history,” Gordon says. “It actually lasted six years before the economy began to grow again.”

That crash is what we would call a market correction. In essence the value of land was much higher than the market could bear due to government distortion (printing money to buy up land, thus artificially increasing demand and therefore value). This is exactly what happened with the housing market and is currently happening with the education market.

By demanding all land purchases be made in silver and goal Jackson was saying the states had to give something of value instead of worthless paper they could simply print up willy nilly. The crash wasn’t due to the requirement of using gold and silver, it was a demonstration of the fact that land wasn’t worth what people were selling it for.

Let’s use another example because I love examples. Due to some fortune vendors have decided to accept paper notes you print off in exchange for goods. At first you decide you want to maintain your purchasing power so you only print 100 notes. You also don’t produce anything besides these notes so at one point you run out of these notes and come to a crossroad; in one direction you have to get a job and start producing while in the other direction you simply print more of these notes. Being lazy you go with the easy method of print more notes. Seeing how easy this really is you start printing vast numbers of these notes and buying up as much product as you can. Unfortunately the massive influx of new notes has made them easier to come by, which fills demand, which reduces the value of each individual note (supply and demand). As each note is worth less value people who have them are able to buy less, unless they control the printing press and can simply punch up more paper!

Inflation is a delayed phenomenon. The first receiver of the printed money has vast purchasing power because the notes haven’t entered the market yet and thus haven’t increase the supply (and therefore reduce demand). Therefore the first person to receive these new notes is able to buy products at their current market value at which point the notes enter circulation. Now that those notes are in circulation the supply has increase and thus the individual value of each note is reduced.

Gold and silver can’t simply be printed up and they’re both used in actual manufacturing so the supply of money stays relatively stable. Thus gold and silver (which aren’t the only commodities you can use for money) are good to use for money as their supply remains relatively constant, which keeps inflation in check.

Now you know why fiat money is bad.

I Support the Second Amendment But…

We’ve all had discussions with supposed supporters of gun rights where they say, “I support the Second Amendment but…” and they start spouting off a bunch of inane reasons why they don’t actually support the right to keep and bear arms. Saying you support gun rights but want restrictions on gun ownership is the same as saying, “I’m not gay but I like fucking other men in the ass” (before somebody wrongly claims I hate homosexuals please note that this is an attack against hypocrites). What really gets me in these debates is how quick I’m getting at countering their arguments. This isn’t because I’m some kind of genius, I’m not, it’s because these people all use the same damned arguments. Is there some book of anti-gunner arguments floating around? If so the author really needs to release a second edition to include some new arguments because I’m getting sick of the current cookie cutter arguments. For your conveniences I’m going to write some of the most common arguments I’ve encountered throughout my life along with counterarguments.

We need to perform background checks on gun buyers otherwise felons will be able to get guns!

Most anti-gunners hold the beliefs they do because they hold hope that controlling guns will reduce violent crime. Due to this primary belief they demand that felons not be allowed to purchases guns but they also fail to realize that most felony level crimes aren’t violent. A person convicted of tax evasion isn’t likely a violent individuals and therefore no logical argument exists for prohibiting them from possessing firearms.

Where does it stop? Should people be able to own nuclear weapons!

This argument is a classic case of reductio ad absurdum. On the surface it appears to be a valid argument but in actuality it’s like comparing apples to oranges in a debate entirely about apples. Here’s the thing, firearms are discriminatory weapons while nuclear devices are nondiscriminatory weapons. That is to say I can direct the fire from a gun to hit only my attacker while a nuclear weapon will kill everybody in a large radius. This argument would be no less absurd if the debate was about knives which are also discriminatory weapons.

What I’ve said goes double when the debate is about self-defense as there is almost no way to use a nuclear weapon in self-defense because detonating one will negatively harm (through radioactive fallout if nothing else) individuals other than your attacker.

Restricting guns will mean less are available for criminals!

Right… just like prohibiting the production and sale of marijuana has made the weed so hard to get. There is thing little thing called the black market and it exists when something people want it made illegal. Just like marijuana, guns can be purchased illegally and often are. Firearm black markets are even more interesting to note as home manufacturing technology improves and people are easier able to build firearms in their basement without outside assistance.

While less gun will be available in total I would argue if near 100% of the market demand can be filled then the ban is meaningless. If nearly 100% of people who want marijuana can get marijuana then the laws are pointless and have accomplished nothing, the same can be applied to firearms if made illegal.

Guns kill people!

So do cars, swimming pools, chainsaws, alcoholic drinks, medicinal drus, grizzly bears, white sharks, and bubonic plague. The world is a dangerous place and there are almost countless different ways to die. Thankfully guns have no mind of their own and if left without a human user are entirely harmless.

If we don’t control guns black people will get them!*

Stop being a racist piece of shit.

I’m OK with my bolt-action hunting rifles but you have to admit AR-15s were designed to kill people!

Wrong dipshit, I don’t have to admit to anything. These are the people I hate the most because they think their firearm is OK because they like it but those “evil black rifles” (again stop being racist) look mean and therefore should be banned.

Here’s a bitch of a history lesson, all guns are designed to kill people and that’s why we call them weapons. Modern semi-automatic rifles are simply an evolution of a mature design. Before the M-1 Garand the United States military used the M1903 Springfield bolt-action rifle. A couple of other famous bolt-action rifles designed for the purpose of killing people are the Mosin-Nagant and the Mauser Model 1871.

Finally a 7.62x51mm is just as deadly coming out of a Remington 700 as it is coming out of a M-14 or AR-10.

Big clips are only useful for killing lots of people! We need to limit clip capacity!

You know these people are idiots because they keep referring to magazines as clips but alas that really isn’t the important part of their argument. When somebody says this I ask them the following question: What do you believe should be the maximum magazine capacity for civilian ownership and what is your justification?

The second part of the question, demanding justification, is where you shoot down this argument. I’ve not met a single person who can explain to me why an 11-round magazine is somehow more deadly than a 10-round magazine. Most people who believe there should be a limit on magazine capacity select the number 10 because humans really like the number 10 (seriously that’s the only justification when you boil it down). If you can’t justify your argument using scientific data then your argument holds no water in my opinion.

Criminals use handguns so we should ban handguns!

Criminals also use cars, should we ban those as well? If our society decides what is legal and illegal to possess based on what criminals use we’ll soon find everything illegal to own. After all criminals usually wear shirts so we’ll end up banning shirts and then we’re going to have to look at each other’s fat disgusting bodies.

You don’t need a gun that powerful!

What the fuck does need have to do with anything? Do you need as powerful a car as you own or would you be served in getting between home and work with a Geo Metro? Do you need as powerful computer as you own or could you check your e-mail and post pictures of cats on Facebook with a far less powerful computer? Do you ever end up throwing away food because it has expired before you had a chance to eat it? If so you obviously didn’t need that much food.

Need has as much to do with our ability to own products as Karl Marx had to do with physical labor. If this argument is being used by a hunter be sure to remind him or her that he or she doesn’t need to hunt because he or she can just buy meat at the grocery store.

*OK I don’t come across this argument with any frequency, I just felt like writing it.