Tag: You Can’t Cure Stupid

Bloody Terrorist Bird

Saudi Arabia has detained a vulture on charges of being an Israeli spy. No I’m not making this up and no it’s not an article on The Onion:

Saudi Arabian officials have “detained” a vulture on accusations of being a spy for Israel, media reports say.

The griffon vulture was carrying a GPS transmitter bearing the name of Tel Aviv University, prompting rumours it was part of a Zionist plot.

Yeah those vultures are always trying to get jobs from various intelligence agencies. In fact I hear many former CIA spooks have a hatred of birds because they claim so many jobs in the spying world preventing regular people from getting said jobs. Oh and birds spying for Israel isn’t the only crazy coming out of that region:

Last month, Egyptian officials implied the Israeli spy agency Mossad was to blame for shark attacks off its coast.

Those bastards are training sharks to kill people! And here I thought out government’s fear mongering was bad.

The Oxymoron of Socialized Medicine

Big surprise here but I’m not a fan of socialized medicine. My reasoning is different than a lot of peoples’ though. I’m not against it because it creates longer wait times, causes rationing of medicines, and empowers insurance companies. My problem with socialized medicine is the violence required to implement it.

This is actually a problem with all forms of socialism, not simply socialized medicine. Let’s look at how insurance works. People purchase insurance from an insurance company with the agreement that should something horrible happen the insurance company will be there to foot the expense. In order for this to work there needs to be on key thing, more money being paid into the system than removed.

Socialized medicine is sort of a larger scale of insurance except every person in under the force of law pays into the system in the hopes of generating enough money to pay for those who can’t afford medical care. It sound so nice when you explain it that way but there is one major problem with socialized medicine that never gets brought up, it requires the force of a gun.

In a market based health care system each person pays their own way or gets involved with insurance. It’s not a perfect system obvious as not everybody can afford either of the two options but there are still options for those who can’t pay (charity, pro bono work, family members pitching in, etc.). The main advantage though is the fact that it’s voluntary, you’re not being forced to participate. If you don’t with to receive medical care you don’t have to pay into the system.

There is no such option with socialized medicine, much like social security there isn’t an option to opt out. To ensure everybody participates the government uses their monopoly on use of force to make everybody participate. If you refuse to pay into the socialized medical system you’re usually fined or your wages are garnished. If you refuse to pay the fine the police will come to toss you into prison for the crime of not allowing your money to be stolen, and if you resist arrest physical violence will be brought against you.

Does it seem like an oxymoron to use physical force to steal money from one person in order to pay for the medical care of another? Doesn’t it even seem more of an oxymoron when you realize the threat of physical violence is being used to steal from more people than will be needing medical care? When using socialized medicine you’re actually harming more people (theft if harm in my book and if you refuse to participate you will be physically harmed) than you’re helping.

Yet people tout socialized medicine as a good thing that will help people. So long as you ignore the force required to create and operate such a system I guess you can make a claim it helps some people.

They Were Just Kidding About That Whole Constitution Thing

When the Republicans were running for the House and Senate they made a “promise” to their constituents. The promise was simple, all bills introduced would be accompanied by an explanation of how the bill was constitutional. I didn’t buy it and neither did most people who hold the idea that all politicians are crooks. Our politicians have been doing this for years already but they just keep citing the “general welfare” clause.

Scott Garrett, a representative of New Jersey, put forth an amendment to the whole “constitutionality” requirement. The amendment would prevent law makers from citing the “general welfare” and the “necessary and proper” clauses in the Constitution. Well the amendment failed so it looks like business will continue as usual (did anybody expect anything else?).

Canadian Surgical Wait Times

It should be no surprise to anybody that I’m against any form of socializing anything. When I mention I’m against socialized medicine I usually get various response ranging between me being the second coming of Satan to simply being a complete tool of the “corporations” (which corporations I’m not sure, nobody ever tells me). One thing never fails though, when I get into an argument involving socialized medicine somebody invariably brings up how great it works in Canada.

The problem with this argument is it doesn’t work that great in Canada. Well I guess it works great so long as you are willing to wait on average 18.2 weeks for surgical and therapeutic procedures. That’s what the average wait time ended up being in 2010.

Personally I’ll take the horrible system here that allows me to get much needed surgery in a timely manner (although it would be nice if we could get rid of all the government interference which has increased the cost to an astronomical rate).

Blood in the Streets

Now that the Heller case has been concluded and firearms are no longer all but banned in Washington D.C. the homicide rate must be through the roof. Blood must be flowing through the streets with the increased number of firearms. People must be cowering in fear with all the violence that has occurred because of the Heller case.

Wait… what’s that? Oh homicide rates in Washington D.C. fell by 9% in 2010? I guess the anti-gunners were wrong yet again. It’s almost as though this is no correlation between gun control laws and homicide rates.

Mexican Gun Canard Strikes Again

The Washington Post has yet another article about all the evil scary guns being trafficked across the United States border into Mexico. The problem is the problem, it’s not really what they claim it is:

To back up its assertion that the U.S. is the source of most of Mexico’s guns (“statistics . . . show that 80 to 90 percent of the weapons seized in Mexico are first sold in the United States”), the Post cites the claim that “Federal authorities say that more than 60,000 U.S. guns of all types have been recovered in Mexico in the past four years.” This is a wild exaggeration. The Post is referring to an oft-cited U.S. Government Accountability Office study which shows that, of the guns seized in Mexico and given to the ATF for tracing from 2004 through 2008, approximately 87 percent originated in the U.S.

But this number says nothing about the percentage of guns seized in Mexico that originated in the U.S., because the U.S. does not trace – because they are not of U.S. origin, and so are not submitted by Mexican authorities to the U.S. for tracing – the majority of guns seized in Mexico. According to the GAO, the number of guns seized in Mexico that have been traced back to the U.S. has ranged from 5,260 in 2005 to 1,950 in 2006 to 3,060 in 2007 to 6,700 in 2008. That is a total of about 17,000, nowhere close to 60,000.

Oh, I’m sorry did your bullshit get discredited again Mr. Anti-Gunner? We in the gun rights community seem to be making a habit of that. Then again if you didn’t lie you’d have no leg to stand on so I guess I see why you’re doing it (It’s because you’re assholes isn’t it?).

Revisionist History

Raise your hand if you’re a fan of revisionist history. OK, those with their hands raised get the fuck off of my site. I have a friend who’s political orientation I would best describe as Democrat. I don’t mean to say he’s liberal or “progressive” but a Democrat. Everything the party says is correct and if he disagrees with it he performs endless mental gymnastics until he “understands” why he was wrong and the Democrat Party was right. Needless to say a red flag was raised upon reading the following statement by him:

The Republicans are clearly on the wrong side of history over the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell just like there were during the Civil Rights Act of 1964…

It was an interesting statement to say the least as the second part is completely false. My response was as follows:

[Name Removed] I usually don’t question your knowledge of history dealing with the civil rights movement but I think we need to have some clarification from you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964#Vote_totals

The Civil Rights Act vote breakdown shows far more Republicans (by percentage as there were fewer of them in the legislature at the time compared to the Democrats) voted for the bill than Democrats.

Likewise the filibuster was done by a Democrat.

If you’re going to make claims that the Republicans were on the wrong side of that bill you should clarify what you mean by that. Because as I see it a larger percentage of the Republican party supported the bill.

Of course he never posted a counter argument as there isn’t one and he couldn’t admit that his beloved party did something reprehensible to him. When you look at the vote breakdown of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 you find the Republican party (in both houses) had about 80% of their people voting in favor of the bill while the Democrats only had roughly 60%. I’m not trying to make a statement on the quality of our political parties (as a libertarian I support neither party) but on the fact people like to craft history to their needs.

When you get into an argument with somebody it makes sense to have Google at hand to fact check their statements. People love to lie and sometimes they really don’t know that they’re lying (in other words somebody told them something and they couldn’t be bothered to do a fucking fact check).

Likewise watch out for people who try to revise history. A classic example of revisionist history is the idea that Abraham Lincoln went into the Civil War to free the slaves. That’s completely false as Lincoln stated several times he didn’t care whether or not the slaves were freed, he wanted to preserve the union (an easy read on the subject would be Lincoln Unmasked). A more recent example would be statements made by Supreme Court Justice Beyer on the Second Amendment.

Allowing revisionist history to go unchallenged does nothing positive and destroys any lessons that could have been learned from the actual events that unfolded.

Magic Gun Barrier Fails Again

I honestly don’t believe this story because it’s so impossible. It seem a man was able to get a gun into a school. That’s impossible though as schools have the magical gun-free zone barrier surrounding them that prevents all firearms from entering the grounds.

This news ends well in that nobody of consequence was killed or even injured:

The gunman opened fire at Husfelt and school board members. He missed them all, even though he was at close range, said Lee Stafford, director of student services of Bay District Schools. Duke said, “I’m going to kill [unintelligible],” while he fired.

Mike Jones, chief of security for the school system and a retired police officer, exchanged fire with Duke, who was wounded and rolled to the ground. Duke turned his gun on himself, dying of a fatal gunshot to the head, authorities said. Husfelt called Jones a “hero.”

It’s a good thing he was a really bad shot or didn’t want to kill anybody (I don’t care which it is, it’s just good news). It’s interesting to know that another person was able to get a firearm through the school’s magic gun barrier, I think they need to hire a better wizard.

If you look at the pictures on the site Mr. Crazy drew a crude ‘V’ with a circle around it:

But a Facebook page belonging to a Clay Duke has a profile photo of a “V” in a red circle, a logo that is used in the movie “V for Vendetta.”

According to the Internet Movie Database, the 2006 film is about “a shadowy freedom fighter known only as “V” uses terrorist tactics to fight against his totalitarian society. Upon rescuing a girl from the secret police, he also finds his best chance at having an ally.”

I’m glad CNN latched onto the V for Vendetta thing as that same symbol is often used by my friends who advocate voluntarism (and they’re smart people who don’t need CNN trying to demonize their entire movement). Either way crazy is crazy but in this case nobody important was hurt so it’s the best ending you can hope fore.

You Just Don’t Get it Do You

Wikileaks wikileaks Wikileaks… did you hear about Wikileaks? The Air Force has decided that they will prove themselves to not be hypocrites and only block Wikileaks. Now they’re blocking several publications that released information on the leaked cables:

Air Force users who try to view the websites of the New York Times, Britain’s Guardian, Spain’s El Pais, France’s Le Monde or German magazine Der Spiegel instead get a page that says, “ACCESS DENIED. Internet Usage is Logged & Monitored,” according to a screen shot reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The notice warns that anyone who accesses unauthorized sites from military computers could be punished.

The Air Force said it had blocked more than 25 websites that contained the documents, originally obtained by the website WikiLeaks and published starting late last month, in order to keep classified material off unclassified computer systems.

I don’t think the Air Force really gets it. Once something is online you can’t censor it, you can prevent people from seeing it by blocking a few sites, the information has spread out to more sites than you can ever hope to censor. Once information has his the Internet it’s game over as far as controlling it. The only real option available to the Air Force is the creation of a white list of sites that it’s employees can access as opposed to their current blacklist of sites you can’t access.