Tag: You Can’t Cure Stupid

Politics and Sports Don’t Mix

Politics doesn’t mix well with entertainment venues such as sports. Sports are the circuses of our era that help to distract the people from the reality in which they live. Once in a while somebody in the world of sports opens their mouth on a political issue and raises all kinds of havoc. Bob Costas decided to be one of those people and gave a speech advocating gun control during a halftime show during a football game:

You want some actual perspective on this? Well, a bit of it comes from the Kansas City-based writer Jason Whitlock with whom I do not always agree, but who today said it so well that we may as well just quote or paraphrase from the end of his article …

Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it. In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions, and their possible connection to football, will be analyzed. Who knows?

But here, wrote Jason Whitlock, is what I believe. If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.

Obviously Bob Costas doesn’t know his job is to distract the serfs from politics, not remind them of it. The Romans knew that the secret to keeping the people docile was to give them bread and circuses. So long as the people were fed and entertained they were very willing to roll over and let the Roman government do as it pleased. The average American isn’t much different, which is why politics is such an incredibly caustic thing to mix with sports.

Not only did Costas perform the sin of mixing politics and sports but he did a lousy job of it. His speech made the typical gun control argument that firearms increase the rate of violence. That claims is false. The fact is gun control does the opposite of what its proponents claim. By reducing the number of individuals that have ready access to firearms gun control decreases the cost of performing violence and therefore makes violence a more acceptable risk than it otherwise would be.

Keep the politicians out of the circuses less the people be reminded about how bad they’re getting screwed.

Piers Morgan Gets Owned on Gun Rights

Browsing Reddit I came across a picture of Piers Morgan having his ass handed to him on the topic of gun rights:

Even though I don’t derive my right to own firearms from the Second Amendment any student of history would be absolutely floored by the claim that the amendment was written with muskets in mind. During the writing of the Constitution the memory of the Revolutionary War was still ripe in the minds of the people. They still remembered the British attempt to sieze weapons from Concord that started the war and how necessary firearms were to win America’s independence. It seems odd to believe the authors of the Second Amendment would desire to handicap future generations by limiting them to the arms available at the time of the Revolutionary War. You would think such a restriction would have been written down somewhere.

If a Story Doesn’t Fulfill Your Agenda Editorialize

Advocates of gun control spend time searching high and low for news stories that support their agenda. Unfortunately for them such stories are far and few between so they often have to resort to editorializing in order to shoehorn their agenda into an otherwise unrelated store. Take the recent shooting in Florida that AlterNet was so good to report on. Things are off to a bad start from the beginning:

Michael David Dunn, 45, was in Jacksonville, Fla., this Friday for his son’s wedding, when afterward he decided to stop at a convenience store with his girlfriend. Four unarmed teenagers were in an SUV near where Dunn parked. After Dunn’s girlfriend went into the store to buy a bottle of wine, Dunn made a comment to the teenagers about their music being too loud. An argument ensued, and then Dunn, a gun collector, pulled out his gun and fired at the SUV between eight to nine times. Two shots hit and killed 17-year-old Jordan Davis.

Emphasis mine. No evidence is given that indicates Dunn was a gun collector. He may be a gun collector or he may not be, either way the statement is not backed by any presented evidence and it has nothing to do with the story itself. Whether somebody collects guns or not has no bearing on whether or not a claim of self-defense is legitimate or not. Owning multiple firearms does not suddenly make a self-defense claim legitimate or illegitimate.

The real editorializing doesn’t come into play until the last few paragraphs though:

Davis’s death comes about a week after a Florida task force found that the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law is mostly fine as is and recommended only small changes. Florida governor Rick Scott created the task force after the death of unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in April. The task force made their conclusions despite research that shows “Stand Your Ground” laws actually increase homicides.

Where should I begin? The author managed to slip to Trayvon Martin case into the story. In fact the author not only slipped the name in but also slipped in the implication that Trayvon was unjustly gunned down even though evidence supports Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense. That’s some great emotional heartstring pulling right there.

Let’s consider the second implication that the stand your ground law will allow Dunn to get off. Florida’s stand your ground law states:

776.012 Use of force in defense of person.—

A person is justified in using force, except deadly force, against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to defend himself or herself or another against the other’s imminent use of unlawful force. However, a person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if:

(1) He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony; or

(2) Under those circumstances permitted pursuant to s. 776.013.

The legislation clearly states that one must have a reasonable belief that deadly force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm. If the story is accurate Dunn claims to have shot the teenager because he was listening to music that was too loud. It’s pretty unreasonable to believe loud music will cause imminent death or great bodily harm especially consider the fact that the teenagers were in the vehicle and neither dead or suffering great bodily harm.

Finally the story implies that stand your ground laws cause higher homicide rates. This claim confuses me because homicide is a criminal charge. If homicide conviction rates actually increased after the passage of stand your ground laws it would imply that more people were being successfully convicted of homicide which invalidates the claim that stand your ground laws allow people to get away with homicide. Which is it? Do stand your ground laws lead to higher conviction rates of homicide or do such laws allow people to easily get away with murder? Inconsistency from gun control advocates is par for the course.

Once again gun control advocates opt for dancing in the blood by editorializing a story so heavily that the actual story, a shooting supposedly being justified because somebody was playing their music too loud, is almost entirely lost.

It was Bound to Happen

New York and California have demonstrated what happens when governments try to soak the wealthy for more taxes, the wealthy leave. Before Britain’s last general election the country’s government raised the top tax bracket to 50 percent. Needless to say the things went exactly as expected:

In the 2009-10 tax year, more than 16,000 people declared an annual income of more than £1 million to HM Revenue and Customs.

This number fell to just 6,000 after Gordon Brown introduced the new 50p top rate of income tax shortly before the last general election.

One of the reasons taxing the wealthy to makeup for government shortfalls doesn’t work is because the wealthy have the means to leave. What motivation does a person making $1,000,000 have to stay in a country if they are being forced to give $500,000 of it to the government?

Of course this only applies to declared income. As we agorists know the state can’t tax what it doesn’t know about.

The Ever Hypocritical Barack Obama

Barack Obama certainly had a taste for hypocrisy:

“Let’s understand what the precipitating event here that’s causing the current crisis and that was an ever-escalating number of missiles that were landing not just in Israeli territory but in areas that are populated, and there’s no country on Earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders,” Obama said at press conference in Thailand at the start of a three-nation tour in Asia.

Emphasis mine. This is coming from a man who rains missiles down on Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other countries in the Middle East and Africa. Does that mean he would support the countries he’s bombing in defending themselves against the United States by sending missiles into its borders? Something tells me he would not.

Obama and Civil Liberties

Supporters of Obama likes to praise his advancement of civil liberties. Unfortunately such claims are entirely false as Obama has been busy eroding civil liberties since taking office:

Most troubling, however, is the state of our freedoms. Indeed, during Obama’s first term, our civil liberties were utterly and completely disemboweled. The great irony, of course, is that this happened with a self-proclaimed constitutional law professor at the helm—a man who was supposed to understand and respect the rule of law as laid out in the U.S. Constitution.

Not only did Obama continue many of the most outrageous abuses of the George W. Bush administration (which were bad enough), including indefinite detention and warrantless surveillance of American citizens, but he also succeeded in expanding the power of the “imperial president,” including the ability to assassinate American citizens abroad and unilaterally authorize drone strikes resulting in the deaths of countless innocent civilians, including women and children.

The article goes on to cover 17 of the more egregious civil liberties violations that have occurred under Obama’s watch. What’s interesting is considering how many people make political decision in this country. During 2004’s presidential race many of John Kerry’s supporters expressed outrage over Bush’s wars and civil liberties violations. They brought up the wars in the Middle East, the PATRIOT Act, Guantanamo Bay, and numerous other despicable situations caused by the Bush administration. When McCain ran against Obama in 2008 Obama’s supporters were brining up Bush’s actions again and claiming McCain would continue down the path to tyranny.

Fast forward to today. Obama has proven to be another George W. Bush. Since taking office in 2008 Obama has continues the polices put into place by the Bush Administration and added some of his own including signing a bill that grants the president the power to indefinitely detain American citizens without trail. You would think Obama’s supporters would have turned against him during the 2012 presidential race but he managed to maintain a great deal of support. How could a man who ran on a platform of civil liberties and undoing the tyrannical policies of the Bush administration continue to have the support of his 2008 followers? Simple, a majority of voters in the United States care more about teams than issues.

Most Americans have pledge allegiance to one of the two major political parties. While some of these party loyalists may periodically vote for somebody on “the other team” to convince themselves that they’re not party shills they generally vote party lines. If “their guy” doesn’t support their issues they’ll concoct reasons to support him. I saw some rather interesting concoctions during the 2012 race from both sides of the political fence. Those who were expressing support for Romney claimed he would support gun rights (even though his has a history of doing otherwise) and fix the economy (which a president has no ability to do). People on the other side of the fence claimed Obama would bring forth a new era of gay rights (which he’s shown no intention of doing) and ensure healthcare would be available for all (which he won’t). One of my Obama supporting friends even implied that people opposing Obama were racists.

Nothing will be changed in this country through the political system. As George Carlin pointed out the public sucks:

When people are more concerned about which party gets into office than finding solutions to the problems facing people there’s now hope of improving things. So long as people care more about “their guy” getting into office than stopping the wars, fixing the economy, and defending civil liberties the wars will continue, the economy will languish, and civil liberties will keep eroding. American voters have spoken and they resoundingly said they want “their party” in power regardless of his policies.

Violent Pro-Government Extremists

Shall Not Be Questioned has a post that links to an article trying to unite the various gun control advocacy groups. The article is an interesting read because I believe the author is completely unaware of the irony of what he penned. Instead of coming up with something new or unique to say about gun control the article parrots the now common anti-government fear mongering that seems to compose a majority of anti-gun statements:

But the truly stunning growth came from anti-government “Patriot”/militia movement that views the government as their primary enemy. These groups formed in the mid-1990′s based on the perception of violent government repression of dissident groups at Ruby Ridge, ID in 1992 and near Waco, TX in 1993. The Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 is attributable to this movement which peaked a year after the incident and then rapidly declined. But the movement was once again energized in 2008 with the economic recession and the appearance of Barack Obama as a presidential candidate. The numbers of these groups rose from 149 in 2008 to 1,274 last year. Of these, 334 were militias. A state by state listing of these groups is provided here. A graph produced by SPLC showing the meteoric growth of such groups is displayed below.

What did the Oklahoma City bombing have to do with gun control? Who knows? Furthermore the article only managed to bring up the three commonly cited examples of violent anti-government actions. Everything else is pure fear mongering.

Let’s consider the other side of the coin. What about pro-government extremists? Democide, that is non-war murders by government, has killed six times more people than wars this century alone. Whether we discuss the gulags of the Soviet Union, the death camps of Nazi Germany, or China’s Great Leap Forward the number of deaths caused by governments is high. Gun control advocates will often stop me here and claim that such atrocities would never happen in the United States. I’m pretty sure asking Native Americans or residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and August 9th, 1945 whether or not the United States would commit democide would lead to a resounding yes.

Advocates of gun control want to strip non-state individuals of firearms. Their method of doing this is to implement laws against gun ownership and have state agents, armed with guns, kidnap or murder any non-state individual in possession of a gun. Who is the more violent extremist? Me, an anarchist who carries a gun but has never killed anybody, or somebody who wants armed agents of the state to initiation violence against people like me? I would say the latter show a much higher propensity for violence. They want to give more power to organizations that have, together, killed an estimated 262,000,000 people (and that’s not including the wars those organizations have waged). How does that make sense? How can somebody claim to oppose violence while advocating state-initiated violence? Just because a guy with a costume and a badge initiates violence doesn’t make it something other than violence.

Statists seems to have a hard time scrounging up examples of anti-government violence. They mention Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the Oklahoma City bombings time and time again but in each case the number of people who died was relativel small. One other other hand I can point out many examples of pro-government violence that killed millions of people. It seems disarming the people would put them at an even greater disadvantage when faced with state aggression. Why do gun control advocates want to disarm generally peaceful individuals instead of disarming states? Why are they pro-government extremists? If gun control advocates truly opposed violence they would be demanding the governments around the world disarm.

The Economics of the Affordable Care Act

With Obama’s reelection and the Democratic Party’s control of the Senate it appears that The Affordable Care Act is here to stay (it would still be with us had Romney won, he’d have just repealed it and replaced it with the same thing but under a different name). Now that the law is starting to go into affect we’re seeing the unintended consequences. Since the legislation raises the costs for many business owners we’re seeing changes in employment methodology. Many companies are laying off employees to avoid the financial burdon of the legislation, other companies are cutting employee hours, and now some franchises are going to implement surcharges to offset the additional expenses of Obamacare:

While some business owners threaten to cut workers’ hours to avoid paying for their health care, a West Palm Beach, Fla., restaurant owner is going even further. John Metz said he will add a 5 percent surcharge to customers’ bills to offset what he said are the increased costs of Obamacare, along with reducing his employees’ hours.

“If I leave the prices the same, but say on the menu that there is a 5 percent surcharge for Obamacare, customers have two choices. They can either pay it and tip 15 or 20 percent, or if they really feel so inclined, they can reduce the amount of tip they give to the server, who is the primary beneficiary of Obamacare,” Metz told The Huffington Post. “Although it may sound terrible that I’m doing this, it’s the only alternative. I’ve got to pass the cost on to the consumer.”

Economically literate individuals expected this to happen. You can’t increase the costs faced by a business and not expect that business to compensate. Unfortunately man people are economically illiterate and are therefore throwing a fit about the layoffs, slashed hours, and additional surcharges. The economically illiterate are advocating businesses that adjust their employment methodology in response to Obamacare be boycotted or sued.

What’s ironic is the economically illiterate got exactly what they wanted, Obamacare. As with anything there were consequences and now advocates of Obamacare are trying to escape those consequences. The only lesson that should be learned here is to be careful what you wish for.

People Take Politics too Seriously

Politics is a joke, and not a very funny one at that. Yet people take it very seriously. I had several people defriend me on Facebook (Whatever shall I do?) when the election was heating up because I was viciously ridiculing their candidates. People got to the point of screaming at me because I expressed distain for their candidates. There were even a couple of instances where I thought somebody was going to resort to physical violence because of what I said about their candidates. Matt Tanous brought yet another example to my attention of people taking politics too seriously:

Holly apparently believed that Daniel’s failure to exercise his right to vote had caused President Barack Obama to win re-election, and thought that a second Obama term would be bad for their family, according to local news sources.

Witnesses said Holly chased Daniel in her Jeep while he was on foot, all the while yelling at him.

“Daniel reportedly took refuge behind a light pole while Holly drove around the pole several times while continuing to yell at him,” the ABC affiliate reported.

Holly then struck her husband with the SUV, pinning him between the car and the light pole.

How ironic. Holly claims that Obama’s reelection will be bad for their family so she attacks her husband, who is a family member. I guess hypothetical threats to her family are more worrisome than direct acts of violence against her family.

Considering Romney received 902,831 votes in Arizona and Obama only received 713,858 votes I think it’s pretty hard to claim Obama’s victory was caused by Daniel not voting. His state went to Romney by a notable margin, his vote wouldn’t have changed anything.

Tuesday’s Lesson

Tuesday’s election was the inevitable result of a series of bad moves on behalf of the Republican Party (GOP). Their first mistake was how they nominated Romney. Instead of following the rules and procedures created and voted on at the Republican National Convention (RNC) the GOP decided to pull out all of the stops and actually cheat to ensure Romney’s nomination. Cheating at the RNC wasn’t even necessary since the GOP cheated in several states to ensure Romney had enough delegates to win the nomination. What the GOP’s complete disregard for their own rules did was disenfranchise Ron Paul’s supporters, which effectively turned them against the GOP. Paul’s supporters aren’t a majority within the GOP but they are a large enough voting block that pissing them off was not going to end well.

After giving Romney and his vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan the nomination on a silver platter the GOP failed to control either candidate. Both politicians made performed publicity stunts that ended up making them look bad in the public’s eye. There was also the fact that the Republican base was adamant about repealing Obamacare, which Romney failed to promise. When you fail to promise your voter base what they want they’re not going to be inclined to come out and support you. The GOP lost the presidential race because they nominated a guy that their own base didn’t like. You can’t expect to win an election by nominating a guy your own party members hate.

Problems didn’t stop for the GOP at the presidential race. Many of their endorsed candidates made extremely stupid public statements. Between Todd Akin’s claim that women seldom become pregnant from “legitimate” rape to Jon Hubbad and Loy Mauch’s defense of slavery to Richard Mourdock’s claim that pregnancies resulting from rape are a gift from God to Charles Fuqua’s advocacy of the death penalty for unruly children the Democratic Party had a lot of ammunition to use against the GOP. How did the GOP expect to win any major elections when a notable number of their endorsed candidates were running around the country spouting off things that were extremely offensive to a good number of people?

The GOP’s stupidity didn’t wasn’t restricted to the national level. Here in Minnesota the state GOP was hard at working sowing the seeds of their own defeat. Knowing that most people only show up to the polls for the presidential election and that their presidential candidate wasn’t going to fire up their voting base they took a gamble. Two constitutional amendments were put forward by the GOP controlled legislative body. One amendment would have implemented voter ID requirements in Minnesota while the other one would have made gay marriages more illegal. Both amendments were a ploy to get voters to the voting booths and it backfired. The state Democratic Party was able to use the amendments to fire up their voting base. In addition to the amendments the Log Cabin Republicans, an organization within the GOP that claims to support gay rights, stabbed the gay community in the back. I’m sure that encouraged members of the gay community that were in the Log Cabin Republicans to vote for Democratic candidates. With so many Democratic voters at the polls the state GOP got slaughtered.

I also want to take a moment to address the Senate race. Klobuchar was up for reelection and the GOP fielded Kurt Bills against her. Kurt Bills claimed to be a liberty candidate, a claim that was proven to be false when he switched his presidential endorsement from Ron Paul to Mitt Romney. Not satisfied that switching his endorsement would piss off enough liberty voters within the Republican Party Bills also made a public statement against all third-party voters. Minnesota’s liberty movement is fairly strong so alienating them can be costly, especially when the state is already strongly Democratic to begin with.

Tuesday had a valable lesson for the GOP. Alienating as many people as possible is not a good political strategy. Between a presidential candidate hated by the GOP’s voter base, endorsed candidates running around spouting offensive statements, and taking every opportunity to move against the gay community and their supporters the GOP sealed their fate. They got exactly what was coming to them. Frankly, after the RNC, I was hoping to see a little revenge during the election. I attended the Republican Party party in Bloomington, Minnesota just so I could watch the spirits of hardcore GOP supporters get crushed in real time. It felt good seeing what happened to my friends in the liberty movement happen to the neoconservatives. Vengeance was had by the liberty movement and all they had to do was stand by the sidelines and watch the GOP hang itself. To those of you who actively worked to surpress the liberty movement in the GOP I hope you enjoy the next four years because they are years of your making.