Garbage Collection, Gangnam Style

I am back on Facebook, and even after starting with a stealth name (James Moore, not incredibly stealthy for those of you who already knew my mom's maiden name/my middle name) my beloved convinced me I should truly identify myself as Jim Riddle.

But,

I pledged not to go political on facebook. Now, I will occasionally post something that I think transcends political. Gun control is not in my perspective a political issue as much as it is a legal issue of fundamental right, but I will still control my Facebook postings on the matter. Some things are truly political but to me are common sense, but I will keep them off Facebook. And, that means that the really political things end up here.

Opening Shots:

Brought to you today from Town Hall, if you have not clicked in your own email:

NYC soda ruling just 'temporary setback'

and the law will reappear brought by the ghost of Elvis accompanied by Jimi Hendrix on guitar? Who is Bloomberg trying to kid? His greed for power is now sheerly lunatic as he continues to get away with grabbing rights. If I have the right to choose, that includes Big Gulps. And Super Big Gulps.

Additional: A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum; Emperor Bloomberg was smacked down by a judge that saw a serious problem with separation of power with respect to the controversial large soda ban. The mayor who has taken the nanny state to a level rivaled only by President Obama wants to regulate what we eat, what we use to carry our food and other aspects of our lives that should be protected under that line about pursuit of happiness.In this new realm of redistribution of accountability, he figures Big Macs, Large Gulps, and handguns overpower human will and make us do evil things-he's here to protect us because he's a billionaire and must be smarter than the rest. Talk about executive privilege.

Do our elected officials really believe we are so beaten down that we will forget our rights?

The rule was so absurd it brought together an eclectic bunch to fight back. Action was brought by the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (represents 200,00 Hispanic businesses), the Soft Drink and Brewery Workers Union, the Teamsters, the National Association of Theater Owners of New York State, the National Restaurant Association, and the New York Korean-American Grocers Association (representing 4,000 Korean-American grocery, deli and store owners in New York City).

The rest of Charles Payne's column compares Being a Man...Being a Jerk and is also worth reading

Medicare: Did You Really Pay For That?

No. I am sure, arithmetically, that I didn't. In high school, 1963-64, we debated Medicare as the national topic. It was a bad idea then, it's a bad idea now. But, after 50 years of getting used to it and not figuring out anything else to do, we are stuck with it. When life deals you lemons - hey, free lemons!

Speaks completely for itself. Remember, the number is 1.5 billion rounds. For the Social Security Administration, Food and Drug Administration, Park Service ...

If Obama doesn’t show any leadership on this matter it’s an opportunity for. Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, to summon Secretary Napolitano over for a little … national conversation. Madame Secretary? Buying 1.6 billion rounds of ammo and deploying armored personnel carriers runs contrary, in every way, to what “homeland security” really means. Discuss.

Kim Jong Un, revoked the Korean War armistice

Anyone remember the Korean "Police Action"? Some of us do. I was actually alive then but hardly remember anything about it, other than it was really not nice and was quite a bit uglier than "the big ones", WWI and WWII. Now you have a nation of desperate people led by a total lunatic (Dennis Rodman's buddy?). All bets are off.

'Killer dolphins' escape from handlers

NOT a joke. The finest trained dolphins in the navy armed and dangerous free on the high seas. Seriously. You can't make this stuff up, people!

Educational Rot

Like this is something we didn't know; but, it is still overwhelming to look at all of it altogether.


Have a great day, folks!

Sequestration

This is NOT a scary threatening cut of massive proportions in critical programs, people! It's a little reduction on some stuff that people do NOT have yet - not stealing money out of anyone's pockets, just limiting the amount that they might get from the government if all of the appropriating goes through.

 I hate to see this sequestration situation coming around. It is a no win situation for a lot of us. I'm fixed income (disability), and obviously I should like to have the government paying me more. Also, I should not want to be paying more taxes. It is a mutually exclusive thing - you wants more money you pays more taxes. But I want the sequestration to go into effect, because it's the only way we are going to quit spending huge amounts of money we don't have.

But - the administration is setting itself up to move into a role of socialist dictatorial control by dealing a death blow to the people and to the Congress. Not just to Republicans, or Tea Parties, or Democrats, or blivnaps or whatever. Don't forget: President Obama designed the sequester and where budget items will be cut. So what he is cutting does not make sense to most people and would really hurt everyone. SOOOOOO, if the Congress does not override sequestration by approving exactly what Obama wants, then the cuts come in. If Congress does pass what the president wants, then any good things will be credited to BO himself - Barry will see to that. If bad things happen, it will all be blamed on "the Republicans", "the Right", "the Radicals", "the Lugnuts", fill in your own noun. The Democrats will then play it for all it is worth to ensure that the Republicans get hammered in the 2014 elections, thereby ensuring his permanency in office. 

Politics stink!

And the sad part is: the money in the sequester is really insignificant. None of that gloom and doom stuff is gonna happen. Have you ever seen a general quit fighting because some politician somewhere didn't pass a certain budget line item? No, doesn't happen. Will schools close because their Federal support is minisculely (really, minisculely) diminished? Not a chance. It is all a manufactured crisis. The great Barry Soetoro himself once said "Never fail to take advantage of a good crisis." He has gone on to become expert at manufacturing good crises, building them out of pure cloth if necessary. 

We'll see over the weekend what happens. 

So, what DOES the Constitution mean about guns?

I saw this news article in one of my venerable lugnut feeds this morning: New York will prosecute veteran with high-capacity magazines. The first thing I thought was at least they didn't call them clips.

Magazine:                                                       Clips:


















You can obviously tell how felonious this perpetrator is for possessing 5 of these things that he routinely carried every day when he was in Afghanistan. How dastardly!

Contrary to what you read, the Second Amendment reads:


As ratified by the States and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State:

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

 Notice the commas. The version recorded in the records of the Executive Branch, which is the true and correct version, is two clauses instead of the four clauses that are shown many times and truly do show in the one hand-scribed version of the Bill of Rights in the National Archives. Remember - that is a copy of the original text and the law is what was passed by the states.

Notice also: The Second Amendment does not grant a right. The amendment provides that a pre-existing right shall not be infringed. In that it is not granting a right, the Bill of Rights recognizes the validity of the inalienable right to keep and bear arms. Since the right is not granted by the government but pre-existed the government, the government may not alter something that is not its to alter.

At least that's the way my little pea brain breaks down the logic. Being neither an attorney nor a politician I am not invited into the clubhouse to talk about these things though. Nor do any lobbyists pay me to vote one way or the other about this stuff, since I have no vote anywhere. Nonetheless, that's what I think these things say, that's the way I think things are.

Moving Along to More Law that Most People Never Heard of or Know to be Law

Of course, you recognize 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA ET AL. v. HELLER
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR
THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT
No. 07–290. Argued March 18, 2008—Decided June 26, 2008

and, I'm sure the words are right on your lips from

130 S.Ct. 3020 (2010)
Otis McDONALD, et al., Petitioners,
v.
CITY OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, et al.
No. 08-1521.
Supreme Court of United States.
Argued March 2, 2010.
Decided June 28, 2010.

These two court decisions, both fairly recent if you will notice, clearly state what the meaning of the Second Amendment is. Surprise? Of course it is. The media will never just plain read simple statements from these; they always want to take what the media wants to say and wiggle around the words of the court to support their, probably totally wrong, allegations.

That being said, first a direct comment from DC v. Heller:

The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a
firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for
traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited.It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.

 and, from McDonald v. Chicago:

Two years ago, in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. ___, 128 S.Ct. 2783, 171 L.Ed.2d 637 (2008), we held that the Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense, and we struck down a District of Columbia law that banned the possession of handguns in the home. The city of Chicago (City) and the village of Oak Park, a Chicago suburb, have laws that are similar to the District of Columbia's, but Chicago and Oak
Park argue that their laws are constitutional because the Second Amendment has no application to the States. We have previously held that most of the provisions of the Bill of Rights apply with full force to both the Federal Government and the States. Applying the standard that is well established in our case law, we hold that the Second Amendment right is fully applicable to the States.

Now, I am not an attorney; and, I never played one on television or in the movies. But this language seems straightforward. Weapons in common usemay be possessed by an individual and used for traditionally lawful purposes such as self-defense within the home, and that right is fully applicable to the States. In a case where a veteran merely possesses items that are, indeed, commonly used accessories to weapons, and is not using them for any purpose, and they are in his home, I would offer that the State of New York has no jurisdiction to prosecute. Actually, if they show up to confiscate his magazines, I say he has the right to use his weapons to defend his home and property. This would be viewed dimly, and he would undoubtedly be plugged dead by law enforcement officers "doing their duty", but then I would say his estate should be able to sue the bejabbers out of the state in Federal court.

Like any of that would ever happen.

But, think about it ...

Absurdity to the nth degree

OK. What are they drinking in Washington? They need some purple Kool-Aid, I think to clear the benches and start again, but ...

News today: the Department of Homeland Security at the request of law-enforcement agencies has paid $2 million to make new training targets of a non-traditional type. Pregnant women, senior citizens, protective mothers, children in playgrounds. Yes, seriously, all of the above:

WHAT POSSIBLE KIND OF THREAT DO THESE PEOPLE PRESENT?

As far as I am concerned, they are just regular people standing their ground to protect themselves and their families. A "hostile young mother depicting a threat on a playground"? The guys that thought these up suffer from severe craniorectal inversion disorder!! Of course, with that 2 billion rounds of hollowpoint .40 caliber and 9mm ammunition that the DHS bought for training purposes, the desk clerks to whom those automatic pistols have been issued are going to need something to practice on. What better than these realistic targets of the great threat to our country: informed citizens protecting themselves from a government that has become destructive of the inalienable rights among which are quite obviously life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I guess they do not count any more under the current administration and their game rules. Obviously the Consitution and the law-making process are insignificant, since so many Executive Orders and recess actions are being taken and made.

Like I say - arm up so when they take you out you can at least take two with you.

Guns, God and Politics - hey, what else do we need?

I ran into anssemblage of reasonable commentary about guns and religion. Worth a look.
Also interestingly humorous, from the Vice President, Mr. Biden:  "We need more gun laws because we don’t have time to enforce the ones we have"

And, in the inevitable, a study of: To what political party did mass murderers belong over the last 10 years. For you purists: this is a secondary source, but contains a link to the primary source, a video.

Finally, I was blessed today with the Short Devotion's selection. First, it has one of my favorite optical illusions. I see it infrequently enough that when I see it it takes me a while to see the "other" image, although my first impression will, of course, hit me right away. That being the case, it always tells me, when I see it, what my underlying mood is despite how I might say I feel. This morning I felt yucky, but as I looked at:
the first thing I saw was the cute young woman. It took, as a matter of fact, considerable effort to find the old lady with a somewhat ugly nose and non-attractive countenance.

I then read the devotion on John 9:1-3. "that works of God might be displayed in Him" - a simple phrase of deep meaning and complex interpretation and application, to understate the obvious.

In God’s wisdom, he has decided to not divulge too much of where evil comes from or it’s origin (Deuteronomy 29:29). ...[P]eople ...  never forgive God for an event they feel he is to blame for (they focus on the one part of the picture and forget to see it for the beautiful young girl). But, we do know that all things work together for the good of those that love God (Romans 8:28). [ Here let me comment that 8:28 is the most commonly quoted, misquoted, misinterpreted and complicated verse about good and bad that we usually run into. I have written blogs about this. Don't think for a minute it is that easy!!!] Instead of focusing on the “disease”, we should be focusing on the cure that is Jesus.

Yeah, I have to admit it! Just like Paul Hoganmächer has said, not part of the disease but part of the cure, in our pain His grace is made perfect.

After a good night's sleep, I read the news. oops

Items well worth reading. The first is straight data and analysis, no bleeding heart plea from either side. The rest are recent articles from online.
Here is the only known scientific study, covering a span of 20 years, of multiple victim public shootings and the effects on them of legislation.

Multiple Victim Public Shootings

John R. Lott Jr.
William M. Landes
University of Maryland Foundation, University of Maryland
University of Chicago Law School; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
October 19, 2000
Abstract:     
Few events obtain the same instant worldwide news coverage as multiple victim public shootings. These crimes allow us to study the alternative methods used to kill a large number of people (e.g., shootings versus bombings), marginal deterrence and the severity of the crime, substitutability of penalties, private versus public methods of deterrence and incapacitation, and whether attacks produce "copycats." The criminals who commit these crimes are also fairly unusual, recent evidence suggests that about half of these criminals have received a "formal diagnosis of mental illness, often schizophrenia." Yet, economists have not studied multiple victim shootings. Using data that extends until 1999 and includes the recent public school shootings, our results are surprising and dramatic. While arrest or conviction rates and the death penalty reduce "normal" murder rates and these attacks lead to new calls from more gun control, our results find that the only policy factor to have a consistently significant influence on multiple victim public shootings is the passage of concealed handgun laws. We explain why public shootings are more sensitive than other violent crimes to concealed handguns, why the laws reduce the number of shootings and have an even greater effect on their severity.



Obama himself actually signed into law the NDAA which authorizes secret assassinations of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. Instead of the red list being “conspiracy theory,” it appears to be a key component of Obama’s domestic policy. It's not an urban legend, it's the law!


Something’s fishy with all this. It’s becoming increasingly apparent that an order has come down from the very top to destroy, silence, threaten or execute true American patriots. OK, think of that as an alarmist statement, then read these two links, again holding facts, not innuendo:

Regis Giles
summarizes and includes a link to naturalnews.com discussing "Prominent rifle manufacturer killed in mysterious car crash days after posting psych drug link to school shooters" addressing the possible use of psycho drugs by school shooters and the lack of any picture from Sandy Hook of Adam Lanza holding a rifle. Then a list of amazing coincidences.

The part-time crossing guard in Yonkers revealed to be a gun owner and now treated like a sex offender.
“Communism begins where atheism begins…” - Karl Marx Friends, distorting American history is a deliberate lie, and lying is not permissible by law.

2 shot at California high school, suspect in custody READ MORE AT FOXNEWS.COM A 16-year-old student armed with a shotgun (not an assault rifle or "automatic" weapon ) walked into class in a rural California high school on Thursday and shot one student, fired at another and missed, and then was talked into surrendering by a teacher and another staff member, officials said.

Virginia voters favor armed guards in schools Two-thirds of Virginia voters say they want armed guards in schools.
[This color is "Hokie Red". In case you ever wondered, a hokie is actually a poor farmer or a neutered turkey, even though we go as the fighting gobblers. When I attended and was on the faculty at Virginia Tech no one worried about gun violence on campus, probably because concealed carry was allowed and everybody knew it. Heck, it's the Corps of Cadets, for goodness sake, for whom military training is a big part. Likewise when I taught at Colorado Mines I feared no evil because there were students in the mining department who OPEN carried - go Blue and Silver Orediggers].

The Second Amendment Foundation, which was formed to guard gun owners’ legal rights, was not invited, even though they asked to come.
As we know now, that was no big deal because the Vice President pretty much ignored the NRA and, instead, lectured them a la' Des Moines Register columnist Donald Kaul [Kaul: Nation needs a new agenda on guns. This time, the debate has to be about more than not offending the NRA's sensibilities.] The column advocated, in case you missed this crowning jewel of journalism defended as sarcasm but accepted by many as sincerity:

• Repeal the Second Amendment, the part about guns anyway. It’s badly written, confusing and more trouble than it’s worth. It offers an absolute right to gun ownership, but it puts it in the context of the need for a “well-regulated militia.” We don’t make our militia bring their own guns to battles. And surely the Founders couldn’t have envisioned weapons like those used in the Newtown shooting when they guaranteed gun rights. Owning a gun should be a privilege, not a right.
• Declare the NRA a terrorist organization and make membership illegal. Hey! We did it to the Communist Party, and the NRA has led to the deaths of more of us than American Commies ever did. (I would also raze the organization’s headquarters, clear the rubble and salt the earth, but that’s optional.) Make ownership of unlicensed assault rifles a felony. If some people refused to give up their guns, that “prying the guns from their cold, dead hands” thing works for me.
• Then I would tie Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, our esteemed Republican leaders, to the back of a Chevy pickup truck and drag them around a parking lot until they saw the light on gun control.
And if that didn’t work, I’d adopt radical measures. None of that is going to happen, of course. But I’ll bet gun sales will rise.

In contrast, one of the good old guys, a rational, level, salt of the earth Iowan, John Carlson, retired editorial writer, did give us this to the point article, "It’s hard to have a conversation about guns if everyone’s yelling".

Me? I'm more worried about watching our government than I am about watching anyone's guns. Read how they are scrambling to find a scapegoat for yet another serious security leak.

And now, it's time for breakfast.

When the toast is burned
And all the milk has turned
And Cap'n Crunch is wavin' farewell
When the big one finds you
Let this song remind you:
They don't serve breakfast in hell!

The Golden Rule, revisited

"O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone; and you have no longer an aristocratical, no longer a democratical spirit. Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all?" --Patrick Henry, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

Patrick Henry's comments regarding benevolence and arms specifically, but overall regarding power, remind me of the Golden Rule of Arts and Sciences:

He who has the gold makes the rules

or, in the case of our government today, he who makes the rules has the gold.

HERE'S THE POINT:

The government will never change, the Congress will never do their job, the President will not be able to do his job, unless the people have power to punish, to alter or abolish, those in charge who fail to do their job. Such a government will just continue whittling away at rights that are not the government's to infringe until one day we wake up and find all of our rights gone.

Obviously there is little, if any, fear with today's politicians of being re-elected or not, and with the pensions they get they really shouldn't care about losing their job anyway unless they are (1) dedicated servants who stand no chance of losing their job, or (2) otherwise incompetent but power-hungry miscreants who will do anything to keep carving the pork to get their own ham. The choice of the people must be to decide that this phrase must be emphatically re-applied:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Remember: rights existed before government. Some governments are established in such a way that they control all rights - monarchy, dictatorship, plutocracy, etc. But, in a republic the people are the government and in our republic we have said that anything not specifically in the Constitution is up to the people, or the states, to control. Further, the Bill of Rights identified certain rights that were definitely NOT to be controlled by the Government - the Bill did not grant any rights at all, it merely lists as sacred certain rights that, again, pre-existed government because all men possess them until they are given away or taken.