Obama is Smarter than You

At least according to CNN. Jay over at MArooned brings the fact that we’re all idiots compared to the Obamessiah. According to CNN:

President Obama’s speech on the gulf oil disaster may have gone over the heads of many in his audience, according to an analysis of the 18-minute talk released Wednesday.

Yup you’re too stupid to understand his brilliance. So sit down and shut up you stupid surf. Don’t criticize him, because you really have no fucking clue what he’s talking about you moron. Here’s one of the examples they cite:

He singled out this sentence from Obama as unfortunate: “That is why just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation’s best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge — a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation’s secretary of energy.”

Yeah I’m sure a huge majority of Americans have trouble with large words such as scientists, engineers, challenge, and Nobel Prize-winning. Yup those are some complicated words all right. Woowee our president is a smart man.

What a bunch of pandering nitwits CNN’s analysts are.

HP to Start Printing Ads On Your Printer

Oh this should go over like a lead ballon. HP has released a new line of Internet connected printers. One of the features of these new printers is they each have a unique e-mail address so you can e-mail documents directly to the printer and they’ll print them. But that’s not all they’re going to print. They are also going to print advertisements and you’ll be footing the bill on the ink for them. Yes that’s right not only do you get to pay for the printer and the ink but now you also get the privilege to pay for a little extra ink so HP can print advertisements onto your documents. Oh and this is just great:

“What we discovered is that people were not bothered by it [an advertisement],” Nigro said. “Part of it I think our belief is you’re used to it. You’re used to seeing things with ads.”

Really? You must have an odd test group because if I pay for something I don’t expect to have to deal with advertisements. If the product were free then I can see the justification in doing this to pay for the hardware but the customer is purchasing the printers. And yes I know HP sells their printers at a loss but they make up for it with the overly expensive ink. Now they’re double-dipping but overcharging for ink and advertising. But to make it really bad they are printing those advertisements with the overly expensive ink.

Fuck I hate what HP has become. I still remember when they were a good company that made reliable products.

All Things Being Equal

They’re not. Here’s an interesting headline item from the BBC, tell me if you can spot the inconsistency:

Bags are to be put over scores of surveillance cameras in parts of Birmingham with large Muslim populations, after local objections.

So Britain has decide that Muslims now are a higher class of citizen so they get special privileges? Don’t get me wrong here I’m glad they’re covering up the cameras I just believe they need to cover up the cameras everywhere. But here’s my favorite line from the article:

Councillor Salma Yaqoob said people had lost faith in the authorities.

Welcome to the party. Cookies and juice are over on the table in the corner.

Don’t Win Too Hard

You know what’s a great feeling? Grinding your opponent to dust in a friendly competition. Well being this is no longer the awesome country founded on competition it once was that’s no longer the politically correct feeling to have. See winning can hurt your opponent’s feelings and we can’t have that. To that end a soccer league in Ottawa has established a rule; if your team wins by more than five points you automatically lose. Wait what?

Yes that’s right if your team scores six points more than the other team has you automatically lose. This is because a crushing defeat can really hurt a child’s feelings and thus prepare him for the real world where nobody is going to give two wooden nickles about his or her feelings.

This sissification of the next generation is sickening. The weight we’re putting on peoples’ feelings is getting out of hand. I’d like to bring up reality for a second. There are two types of people in a competition, winners and losers. By definition one side of a competition must lose and one must win. If this basic criteria is no met it’s not a competition anymore. Just wait until these kids grow up and realize that they could be yelled at or even fired if they fuck up on the job.

A Slight Change

Yeah I made a slight change on the side of the page here. I removed the link to join Gun Owners of America and replaced it with a link to the donations page of the Second Amendment Foundation. After the two previously mentioned fiascos involving the NRA there has been a lot of calling for people to abandon the NRA and join Gun Owners of America. It was this that reminded me that I still had the link for joining Gun Owners of America (GOA) on the side of my page. I’ve been meaning to replace it for a while now but haven’t gotten around to it due to sheer laziness and a memory that doesn’t really remember things.

So why the replacement? Because after being a member of GOA for two years I’ve determined something, they don’t do anything. Well that’s not entirely true they do whine a lot. But in the two years I’ve held a membership I’ve not seen them actually work much for the right to keep and bear arms. Sometimes they send out envelopes with postcards pre-addressed to my representatives that they want me to sign and send. It’s an interesting gesture but I’ve already sent letters to those same representatives about the issue labeled on the postcard. Furthermore those postcards are far and few between. Their RSS feed for alerts almost never updates while the NRA-ILA feed has a rough average of 10 news items a day. The only decent thing GOA has is their rating page for representatives but that’s even tainted by non-gun related issues.

The bottom line is they claim they are the only no compromise group in Washington but don’t actually do anything. This is where people usually tell me GOA can’t accomplish much because they don’t have a whole lot of money. Bullocks. The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) doesn’t have nearly the same number of members as the NRA, nor nearly the same amount of money, but they manage to bring up lawsuits against entities who infringe on the right to keep and bear arms. Heller vs. D.C. and McDonald vs. Chicago were both SAF initiatives. They also hold a Gun Rights Policy Conference every year (where they work with other gun rights organizations like the NRA which GOA seems unwilling to do).

Another gun rights group is the Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership (JPFO). Once again even though they don’t have the membership numbers of money of the NRA JPFO manages to do something. They produce literature and videos dealing with the right to keep and bear arms. They did an English translation of the Nazi’s gun laws and compared them to the Gun Control Act finding them to be very similar. They produced several videos relating to the right of self defense and the roots of gun control, racism (real racism not what the “progressive” liberals accuse pro-rights people of being). Like SAF JPFO is able to do something with less money than the NRA. Also you don’t have to be Jewish in order to join, just thought I’d toss that out there.

So really my point is this, if you don’t want to be a member of the NRA at least put your money somewhere useful. Join SAF or JPFO for instance. Join a local gun rights organization that’s doing something. But please don’t join GOA and then claim your money is being used to fight for your right to keep and bear arms. Unless I’ve missed something in my two years of membership I haven’t seem them do a whole Hell of a lot.

Maybe I’m wrong and my rage is misguided. I would love to be proven wrong on this so if you believe GOA is doing something please comment on what it is. I love being wrong on these kinds of issues. I do believe their hearts are in the right place but their lack of action depresses me.

Another NRA Shit Storm

This week is just riddled with NRA shit storms. First they drop opposition to the DISCLOSE Act after being granted an exemption and now they’re endorsing Democrat candidate Ted Strickland.

Being one to share my opinion with everybody (because this is my site and I get to do that) I thought I’d jump into this fray as well. What do I think about this? Well I’m not a fan of Governor Strickland nor most of his polices. But the NRA endorsing him makes nothing but sense. When it boils down to it the NRA’s main focus are gun rights. That’s their thing*.

There is no way the NRA could have endorse the Republican candidate because he has an F rating from the NRA. The R in NRA doesn’t stand for Republican. Further many people are parroting how the NRA is working against freedom as a whole by endorsing a Democrat. Guess what? If you personally endorse either the Republican or Democrat party you’re working against freedom as a whole. Neither party is pro-freedom. They both want to take your rights, they just want to do it in different orders. So the excuse that the NRA is working against freedom as a whole by endorsing a Democrat holds no water with me, I despise both major political parties for their polices towards my freedoms.

The NRA endorses candidates based on their stance in regards to gun rights. That’s what they rate representatives on, their stance on gun rights. If you want to know where a candidate stands on gun rights go to the NRA. If you want to know where they stand on other issues go to other organizations. An NRA endorsement simply states the candidate is better on gun rights than the opposing candidate. That’s it. It’s pretty simple.

* For those about to jump at me and claim I just ripped on them for being single-issue in the last post please realize that my complaint with them abandoning opposition to the DISCLOSE Act is due to the fact that was a direct attack against them. They left the second the government gave them an exemption even though nothing is going to stop the same government from later making an amendment repealing that exemption and nobody is going to be willing to help the NRA to fight it. It’s a long term defensive strategy failure in my book.

Who Cares so Long as Our Dog Isn’t in the Fight

I’m sure you’ve already heard about the veritable shit storm hitting the gun blogs today as the NRA pulled it’s opposition of the DISCLOSE Act. Well they made an official statement stating they are a single-issue organization and this issue isn’t their issue. Needless to say this has created somewhat of a rift between the NRA and many of it’s members.

Sebastian says this is OK being the NRA is a single-issue organization. Robb made an analogy regarding how only fighting for a single issue can not win your the fight, even on that single issue. Sailor Curt lays it out that the NRA doesn’t seem to care since they have an exemption everybody else can fend for themselves. Alan brings up the fact issues don’t exist in vacuums all to themselves.

Well I love giving my opinion on things so here it is. The NRA fucked up big time here. With all due respect (never mind when anybody says that it’s instantly followed by a lack of respect) regard to the fact the NRA does the most when it comes to fighting for the right to keep and bear arms they are being juvenile and idiotic with this. I agree with the general sentiment that the NRA is more than happy to drop this issue now that they no longer have to worry much about it. More or less they went from fighting this bill as a crusade against the freedom of speech to a “single-issue organization” that only has focus on the second amendment. That’s just plain short sighted and dirty.

Let me make an analogy since they’re fun. Let’s say you and two friends get into a fight with four other people. The reason for the fight is irrelevant but you are outnumbered and stand less than a 50/50 chance of winning. You’re one of the larger and more capable fighters in your little group of three and the opposition want you out of the fight. To that end they make you an offer, they will not pursue you to kick your ass if you leave right now. If you leave you may save yourself an ass whoopin’ but your two buddies are going to be even more unlikely to escape without a few broken bones. What do you do? Personally I’d stand with my two friends if for no other reason than someday I may need their assistance and abandoning them now is not going to motivate them to help me later.

The NRA is a powerhouse in Washington D.C. They have a lot of weight and thus clout with the people on Capital Hill. By pulling out they abandoned other pro-rights organizations and their own members who happen to be members of those other groups that will still be affected by this legislation. Those other groups and those members will remember this and are likely going to be less than cooperative with the NRA in the future should they need help.

All they had to do was keep opposing this legislation. That’s it. Really other organizations could do the lobbying while the NRA could have been in it name only. But they second they were cut a deal they cut out of the opposition. Classy.

Basically they fucked up and I’m joining those who are calling them on it in the hopes they do better in the future.

Shut Up Slave

Although they often claim to be working for us our representatives seems to really believe they are above us. For instance find out what happens when a lowly slave questions the mighty congressman Bob Etheridge:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v60oNUoHBYM]

You don’t ask questions, you shut up and do as you’re told.

And for those saying the Congressman didn’t physically harm the student I ask you this; what would have happened if the student had done the same to the Congressman? The answer is he’d probably be in jail on the charge of assault. I don’t ask for much but I do demand the elimination of double standards when it comes to our representatives. Remember they are not above us, they are not higher than us, they are our public servants. They answer to us.

More Anti-Gun Rhetoric

I’m sorry have I deprived you of your daily spoonful of bull shit? Well fear not because here it is! Via the “fair and balanced” Washington Post we get to learn the “facts” about gun control “myths.” And boy are there some real winners. The first one, guns don’t kill people, people kill people:

But in a groundbreaking and often-replicated look at the details of criminal attacks in Chicago in the 1960s, University of California at Berkeley law professor Franklin Zimring found that the circumstances of gun and knife assaults are quite similar: They’re typically unplanned and with no clear intention to kill. Offenders use whatever weapon is at hand, and having a gun available makes it more likely that the victim will die. This helps explain why, even though the United States has overall rates of violent crime in line with rates in other developed nations, our homicide rate is, relatively speaking, off the charts.

Funny because according to another researcher holding a Ph. D more guns leads to less crime. Of course we can’t trust somebody like John Lott because he refuses to write a book on the subject… oh wait. Also I love this stupid quote:

As Ozzy Osbourne once said in an interview with the New York Times: “I keep hearing this [expletive] thing that guns don’t kill people, but people kill people. If that’s the case, why do we give people guns when they go to war? Why not just send the people?”

Why not just send the guns? Funny enough if you send the people without guns there are still going to be deaths, if you send the guns without people there won’t be any deaths. What part of the equation leads to death then?

Next up is the “myth” that gun laws only affect law-abiding citizens:

The ban on felons buying guns, part of the 1968 Gun Control Act, doesn’t stop them entirely, of course. In fact, most homicides involve someone with a criminal record carrying a gun in public. Data from 2008 in Chicago show that 81 percent of homicides were committed with guns and that 91 percent of homicide offenders had a prior arrest record.

Here’s a hint when debating something, don’t support the opponents argument by making it for them. And in classic anti-gunner lack of ability to use basic logic:

But the gun laws provide police with a tool to keep these high-risk people from carrying guns; without these laws, the number of people with prior records who commit homicides could be even higher.

So according to this article convicted felons are still obtaining guns but these laws prevent convicted felons from obtaining guns? I’m sorry but it’s either one or the other. “Myth” number three is when more households have guns for self-defense, crime goes down:

The key question is whether the self-defense benefits of owning a gun outweigh the costs of having more guns in circulation. And the costs can be high: more and cheaper guns available to criminals in the “secondary market” — including gun shows and online sales — which is almost totally unregulated under federal laws, and increased risk of a child or a spouse misusing a gun at home.

Almost totally unregulated? Really? Seriously? Go to a gun show some time. That’s what Matt Snyder did when he found out gun shows are not an unregulated source of firearms. Likewise try buying a gun on GunBroker and see if the seller will ship the gun to your home. Guess what? They won’t, it has to be sent to an FFL holder in your state and transferred to you (which includes the NICS check and you having to fill out ATF Form 4473). Unregulated my ass. Also I love this dribble:

Our research suggests that as many as 500,000 guns are stolen each year in the United States, going directly into the hands of people who are, by definition, criminals.

So what you’re saying is gun laws only affect law-abiding citizens since criminals will just steal them from said law-abiding citizens? Nice you once again countered your own so-called argument. Also since when have we punished law-abiding citizens (the gun owners in this case) because of what criminals do (the gun thieves)? Well I guess for a while now but that shit has to stop. Let’s move onto their fourth “myth,” in high-crime urban neighborhoods, guns are as easy to get as fast food:

Our own study of the underground gun market in Chicago, with Columbia sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh and Harvard criminologist Anthony Braga, contradicts this claim. Handguns that can be bought legally for around $100 sell on the street in Chicago for $250 to $400. Surveys of people who have been arrested find that a majority of those who didn’t own a gun at the time of their arrest, but who would want one, say it would take more than a week to get one. Some people who can’t find a gun on the street hire a broker in the underground market to help them get one. It costs more and takes more time to get guns in the underground market — evidence that gun regulations do make some difference.

So according to your research over 500,000 guns are stolen every year in the United States. But now you’re saying guns are hard for criminals to get. Riiiiiiiiight. But I thought they could just walk into any gun show or buying guns on the Internet and not have to worry about an regulations preventing their criminal asses from obtaining guns. Make up your fucking mind. This isn’t an argument so much as a spastic tossing of random ideas on the wall hoping people reading will be dumb enough not to know how to use logic (an anti-gunner). Let’s move onto “myth” five which is, repealing Chicago’s handgun ban will dramatically increase gun crimes. Wait that is an actual myth. For fuck’s sake make up your mind!

Local officials from Dodge City to Chicago have understood that some regulation of firearms within city limits is in the public’s interest, and that regulation and law enforcement are important complements in the effort to reduce gun violence. Even before the repeal of D.C.’s handgun ban, the city’s police reestablished a gun-recovery unit and focused on seizing illegal firearms. The city’s homicide rate has been relatively flat the past several years. If the court decides that Chicago must follow D.C’s lead in getting rid of its handgun ban, we can only hope that it leaves the door open for sensible control measures.

So much double-speak it hurts. D.C.’s homicide rate has remained flat even with the repeal of their handgun ban. But only after said ban was lifted did the police actually work on recovering illegal firearms. Does that mean illegal firearms were available in D.C. only after the handgun ban was lifted? Seriously my head hurts from the lack of basic understanding of forming a logical argument.

And even though D.C.’s homicide rate has remained flat after the ban the author hopes if the ban falls in Chicago it leaves the door open to “sensible” control measures? Would you like to maybe, oh I don’t know, give an example of such a measure that was used in D.C. to keep the homicide rate flat? Because if you meant the reestablishment of the gun-recovery unit as being a “sensible” control it’s not a control at all, it’s enforcing laws already on the books at a federal level. That’s not further regulation or additional “sensible” controls.

What a dip shit. Seriously this is why we win, the anti-gunners can’t form a coherent argument.