From the Dept. of Irony

Stabbing at Bellevue anger management class

SEATTLE (AP) — A 19-year-old woman is accused of stabbing another woman at an anger management class at Bellevue College.

The victim told police the 19-year-old complained about a video they were watching Saturday. When the victim said it was good and to give it a chance, the other woman swore at her. The two started talking trash.

More here

Does it get any better?

The Alternative Reality of the Right

Anonymous Liberal just posted an article that’s so completely descriptive of the complete abdication of any reality-based arguments on the right that I thought I should re-post it in toto here.

This is the first post I’ve written since last November. Part of what drove me to take a break from writing about politics was a growing realization that the Great Conversation in this country had completely ceased, that the various sides were no longer speaking the same language, like dialects that have–over time–drifted so far apart that they are no longer mutually intelligible. Watching Fox News and Tea Party rallies, it became apparent to me that the right wing in this country had severed the few remaining ties it had to the world I live in, the empirical world.

In its place, the Right has constructed its own Bubble World, a sort of political Truman Show complete with its own facts and rules (albeit facts and rules that are constantly changing based on political expediency). The writers, directors, and actors in this conservative version of Seahaven are the legions of GOP politicians, operatives, and conservative media outlets that relentlessly push this politically expedient alternative reality, and the Trumans are the millions of regular Americans who don’t realize the joke is on them.

In this Bubble World, it is an accepted truth that our President is a bumbling ignoramus who can only string together a coherent sentence if he uses a teleprompter (which, apparently, other politicians don’t use). I can understand a world in which Obama’s political opponents mock him as a being too professorial or out-of-touch or arrogant. But unintelligent? Inarticulate? I don’t know how to deal with that. It’s like mocking John Boehner for being pale.

Similarly, it is an accepted fact in the Bubble World that Obama is an extreme liberal, if not an outright socialist or communist. According to Newt Gingrich, Obama is “the most radical president in American history.” Again, I just don’t know how to deal with that. This is a guy who, at every point in his political career, has gone out of his way to position himself as a moderate, as a pragmatic technocrat. Since taking office, he has not, as far as I can tell, made a single policy decision that can fairly be described as liberal, much less radical. The only significant pieces of legislation he’s passed are a stimulus package that nearly every economist endorsed and a health care reform bill modeled on Romney-care (which, while better than nothing, is nowhere close to the kind of bill most liberals–much less a communists or socialists–would have crafted).

In Bubble World, there is a movement known as the Tea Party, whose members are simultaneously incensed about the size of the deficit and the fact that they have to pay taxes (even though they have the lowest tax rates in the free world and just got significant tax cuts–from Obama–in the past year). Moreover, they’re not angry at the party that built the deficit–by starting wars and giving massive tax cuts to people who are much richer than them–or that presided, just recently, over the near collapse of the economy. But they are furious at the party that just recently took the reins, inheriting both a crumbling economy and massive deficit. And if they had their way, they would put back in power a party whose only policy idea is, that’s right, cutting taxes; which, of course, would only make the deficit much worse.

But not in Bubble World. In Bubble World, cutting taxes actually raises revenue. In Bubble World, “the market” will magically solve all of our health care problems and true “freedom” is defined by one’s ability to be denied health coverage for pre-existing conditions. And in Bubble World, a set of sensible and long-overdue financial regulations designed to prevent another meltdown of the economy and foreclose any future taxpayer bailouts of Wall Street is actually a “permanent bailout bill.”

In this alternative universe, the facts are literally whatever the political consultants say they should be. Whatever resonates with the focus group. If you’re working on behalf of Wall Street lobbyists to kill a bill that would impose more accountability on Wall Street, you simply accuse those who support the bill of doing Wall Street’s bidding. It doesn’t matter that this is the opposite of the truth and is, in fact, exactly what you’re doing. While these facts might matter to people in the empirical world, the facts in Bubble World are whatever the right wing wants them to be. In Bubble World, Mitch McConnell is bravely protecting the people from the Wall Street bigwigs, not doing the bidding of Wall Street lobbyists.

And that sad reality goes a long way toward explaining why I haven’t been blogging lately. We’ve reached a point where the right wing in this country has achieved complete epistemic closure. Aided by their extensive and growing media apparatus and a traditional media that is uninterested in playing umpire, the Right has managed to escape entirely from the gravitational pull of the empirical world, and in fact, has a created a world of its own, one with a rapidly growing gravitational field that, everyday, pulls in more and more of the unsuspecting and uninformed.

From the comfort of this Bubble World, people like Mitch McConnell can simply say whatever the hell they want to say, no matter how ludicrous, and trust that much of the country will readily accept it as true. As Christof famously says in the Truman Show, “we accept the reality with which we are presented.” And that’s particularly true when that reality is one that is focus-grouped tested to conform with our pre-existing biases and hammered home repeatedly by the folks we rely on to keep us informed (which, for a scary number of people these days, means Fox News and Rush Limbaugh).

From my perch back in the empirical world, I’m just not sure know to deal with this. How do you begin to make your case when there aren’t any mutually accepted facts? How do you convince someone that the people they trust are liars and charlatans? Writing posts trying to correct the record and dispel misinformation can at times feel about as pointless as trying to bail water out of the ocean.

I had high hopes after the thumping the Republicans took in 2006 and 2008 that we had finally turned a corner, that the cracks were beginning to show in Bubble World and the empirical world was slowly re-exerting its influence. I got the feeling that more and more people who had been stuck in the bubble were beginning to sense that something just wasn’t right.

But I was wrong. Freed from the burden of any actual governing responsibility, the GOP has been free to devote all of its efforts to reconstructing their Bubble World. And they’ve been largely successful. An entire movement has formed that is based, almost entirely, on confusion and mis-directed anger, a movement that sees the world only through the lens of Fox News and other right wing outlets. The Tea Party is an army of Trumans, a movement of people who have whole-heartedly embraced the false reality with which they’ve been presented.

The central dilemma for those us left in the empirical world is how to puncture the bubble. What can we do to make facts once again relevant? What can be done to dis-incentivize the kind of lying and reality denial that has become the hallmark of the modern conservative movement? I can’t say that I have answers to these questions, but I’m pretty confident that these are THE questions that we should be asking. Policy debates are great, but only when they take place in the empirical world. If a majority of Americans aren’t living in that world, then such debates risk becoming purely academic exercises.

One would be hard-pressed to find a better better description of what’s been going on with the right wing in this country over the last 18 months.

Because They’re More Important Than Us…

I just saw this in the local paper:

LOWELL — Police have cited a 26-year-old Nashua woman for a series of driving violations that led to a crash with a police cruiser on Gorham Street Tuesday.

An investigation conducted by a Lowell Police Department Accident Reconstruction team found that Phannarouth Prak failed to stop at a stop sign, did not use a directional when turning and failed to yield for an emergency vehicle.

Police officer Narin Ma was responding to a call for medical help in car 10 when Prak pulled out of Spencer Street onto Corbett, and collided with the cruiser on Gorham, according to police reports.

Nothing unusual there except that this is not normal practice at the department. If you commit a series of driving violations that lead to a crash with Joe Civilian, you don’t get cited unless you’re drunk. So when you do something incredibly stupid like hmmm…ram into the back of someone’s car who is stopped at a red light that hasn’t been anything but red for a couple of minutes…nothing happens. This has happened to me twice in Lowell where the accident was so bad the cops had to come out. Car totaled, injuries, the works. But the two dumbasses who rear-ended me were never cited even though I requested the cop do so. I mean they rear-ended me. That’s case closed as far as who’s at fault. But no ticket unless you hit a cop. Then you get the tickets.

It’s just one more way in which our paid public servants rub our noses in the fact that they think they’re more important than the rest of us, who exist merely pay the taxes that go to their salaries. -Salaries that increasingly are better than what any non-governmental worker could hope to get doing the same job for a private company.

There are two levels of citizen in this country: At the top there are those in public employ, and then there’s everyone else. -And people wonder why voters get so pissed off at government.

Truer Words Have Never Been Said…

From a reader on Andrew Sullivan’s site:

During the campaign, Obama was demonized by the right and hounded by the press for not walking out of a church led by the likes of a Rev. Wright, whose worst sin was harsh rhetoric.  When will Catholic politicians be asked whether they intend to remain in the Church as long as it is led by a man who, at best was negligent in his role in investigating sexual abuse of children, or at worst, was actively involved in the cover up?

No kidding. But don’t wait for the anti-Obama crazies. They sold any sort of actual intellectual honesty and integrity down the river a long time ago.

Merchant Ship Guards Kill First Pirate. Predictably the Pacifists Have a Hissy

Private security guards shot and killed a Somali pirate during an attack on a merchant ship off the coast of East Africa in what is believed to be the first such killing by armed contractors, the EU Naval Force spokesman said Wednesday.

The death comes amid fears that increasingly aggressive pirates and the growing use of armed private security contractors onboard vessels could fuel increased violence on the high seas. The handling of the case may have legal implications beyond the individuals involved in Tuesday’s shooting.

The guards were onboard the MV Almezaan when a pirate group approached it twice, said EU Naval Force spokesman Cmdr. John Harbour. During the second approach on the Panamanian-flagged cargo ship which is United Arab Emirates owned, there was an exchange of fire between the guards and the pirates.

An EU Naval Force frigate was dispatched to the scene and launched a helicopter that located the pirates. Seven pirates were found, including one who had died from small caliber gunshot wounds, indicating he had been shot by the contractors, said Harbour. The six remaining pirates were taken into custody.

Crews are becoming increasingly adept at repelling attacks by pirates in the dangerous waters of the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden. But pirates are becoming more aggressive in response, shooting bullets and rocket-propelled grenades at ships to try to intimidate captains into stopping.

Several organizations, including the International Maritime Bureau, have expressed fears that the use of armed security contractors could encourage pirates to be more violent when taking a ship. Sailors have been hurt or killed before but this generally happens by accident or through poor health. There has only been one known execution of a hostage despite dozens of pirate hijackings.

You have GOT to be joking.

The last sentence of that article is a simple falsehood. In fact, entire ships have disappeared, crews and all, never to be heard from again. In another case I’m aware of, the entire crew was executed. Granted these cases occurred in Indonesia, but the idea that if you offer no resistance to a boarding of your vessel by pirates you are SAFER is simply astonishing in it’s naivete.

This is gun control writ large. And out on the high seas, apparently International Maritime Bureau is just like Martha Coakley: they discourage self help.  According to these geniuses, just give up, pay the ransom and you will be allowed to live with only minimal risk. So if one of these qat-chewing goatherders

blows you in half with an AK because he’s you know, a criminal who’s a cat-chewing goatherder with an AK, I guess you were just the unlucky one.

It might occur to some of you that when ships offer no resistance and warships can’t protect them, and where the ship owners will pay large ransoms every time, you have an environment which only encourages more attacks.  But that doesn’t matter as long as no one picks up a weapon to defend themselves.

This is the ugly face of modern neo-pacifism. It’s the same kind of face that goes white as a sheet at the thought of a person having a gun on them for defensive purposes.  They’re not real pacifists of course. They’re perfectly happy to let the police or military kill people. But god forbid an individual or group of individuals should protect themselves. No, they should just have the decency to die quietly.

Pacifism is unethical.  “Turn the other cheek ” is not saintly, it merely assists in tyranny.  When I refuse to defend myself or anyone else, I merely empower others to exert their will over me and others. If more than a tiny fraction of people acted like this we wouldn’t even have a country, much less a free world.

The far-left and yes, even the less than far-left, loves the idea of pacifism. The more you get toward the center, the more they’re willing to let hired killers do their dirty work (as though soldiers and police doing the killing somehow evades moral culpability on the part of those who support them). But the notion of honest people taking up arms to defend their lives from criminals horrifies them. And it’s that latter sentiment which should disgust everyone.

As pernicious as the idea of pacifism may be, the hypocrisy rampant in these neo-pacifists is particularly disturbing. There are not nor will there ever be enough soldiers/police to keep you safe from bad guys at all times. That is a fact that no rational person can even argue against. And the neo-pacifists aren’t even morally opposed to killing bad guys. So their stated goal of keeping merchant ships disarmed, or on a more personal note, keeping law abiding citizens from owning or carrying guns for self-defense, is outright evil.  They may as well come out and say it.

“Our demonstrably failed ideology is more important than your life.”

We Don’t Let Blind People Drive….

So why in God’s name do we let anti-gun, hoplophobic people who know nothing about firearms or firearm safety try to mandate safety practices they don’t even understand?

The latest genius effort?   … wait for it…. Childproof guns.

Yep, This is a new meme coming from among other places, the Million Mom March (aka ignorant women with no common sense).  According to these mechanical engineers,firearms experts, idiots, guns can be made as safe as a teddy bear. Sure, hand your kid that 1911 that shoots a 230-grain projectile at 865 fps. It’s ok, because the MMM has passed laws that made guns safe as a teddy bear!

Think I’m joking?

Childproof Handguns make good sense!
Many products are regulated to make them safe to be used around children:

• Medicine bottles have childproof caps;
• Toys for young children are made with parts that cannot be swallowed; and
• Teddy bears and dolls must be made of non-toxic, non-flammable materials

And how, pray tell, does one make a gun safe for 4-year-old johnny to cuddle up with all by his lonesome? According to the Brady Campaign (who sponsors MMM):  Loaded Chamber Indicators.

I kid you not. these idiots insist on trying to mandate a loaded chamber indicator as a child-safety device on firearms.

To those of you who don’t know what a loaded chamber indicator is, it’s a tab, or colored piece of plastic that is supposed to show when the chamber of a semi-auto racking handgun has a cartridge in it. The idea is that rather than checking to see if the gun is actually loaded, you can use the little tab (which is nearly invisible in most cases) to see if you’ve got one in the pipe. Yes, that’s right. Don’t actually CHECK, use the mechanical device (which can FAIL) to save yourself that extra 1 second which it takes to just look for yourself.

Basic safe gun handling indicates that you keep the gun unloaded until ready to fire. That mean’s you’ve removed the magazine, racked the slide to eject any loaded cartridges and re-checked the chamber just to be sure.  IN THAT ORDER. This is the only method of which I’m aware to be SURE a semi-auto handgun is actually unloaded. If there’s another way to be SURE, I don’t know it and I’m a NRA and State Police certified firearms safety instructor.*

So a loaded chamber indicator would do exactly what to keep kids safe from guns?  That’s right, nothing. In fact, a good bit LESS than nothing. In fact, an LCI is an open invitation to use unsafe gun handling techniques which will, absolutely and without question, lead eventually to a tragedy. You can be certain as the sun rising in the east that some jackass will use this to indicate whether or not his gun is unloaded, that it will fail and he will shoot someone. I’d be amazed if this hasn’t already happened.

Of what utility is the device? None. Zero. Nada.

If you want to check for a loaded chamber on a semi-auto handgun, you rack the slide and LOOK. You do NOT trust to a mechanical device (which can fail) to tell you something that 2 seconds and your own eyes can tell you without any possible error.  Why would you use a loaded chamber indicator? I can only think of one possible use for them and it’s a practice you’re a fool to follow:  That is, before you holster your defensive sidearm that you use the device to see if you’re fully loaded.

If you carry a semi-auto and keep a round in the chamber, that means you practice defensive tactics with this in mind. You draw, release the safety if there is one, aim and fire.What happens if the loaded chamber indicator is stuck or otherwise malfunctioning and in fact there is nothing in the chamber?

You get to hear the loudest noise in the world: a click instead of a bang. In a defensive situation that is likely to mean the difference between life and death. Are you SURE you want to bet your life on the LCI?  -Me neither.

So here we have the Million stupid person Mom March and the Brady Bunch calling for a device which actually increases the danger associated with handguns and claiming it’s going to make guns childproof.-Like a TEDDY BEAR.

I have news for the MMM and the Brady bunch: There is no such thing as a child-proof gun.

There are only GUN-SAFE Children.

That is, kids trained in basic gun safety, which starts with STOP, DON’T TOUCH, GET A GROWNUP.   You’d think educating kids about gun safety would be something these well-meaning authoritarians do-gooders would love wouldn’t you? But oh no, the antis don’t want the NRA’s award-winning educational program “Eddie Eagle” in schools to teach safety.  Oh noes, not the NRA! (shudder horror) No, they’d rather legislate new “features” which make our kids and everyone else demonstrably LESS safe than they were before.

This is how we got an “Assault Weapons” ban that banned vast numbers of firearms for nothing other than the way they looked. This is how we made felons of anyone from New Hampshire that  that makes the mistake of bringing his perfectly legal 13-round magazine into Mass. when he comes here for a shooting competition.

Only this nonsense is infinitely worse. It actually increases the danger of the firearms that the hoplophobes are so frightened of in the first place.

So I propose a new rule:

No one gets to talk about gun safety, gun handling or gun laws until they can pass a basic firearms knowledge and safety test. The test, which is part of the NRA’s basic home firearms safety course is trivial. Any eight year-old could pass it with thirty minutes instruction. Of course this means that it’s well beyond the comprehension of the average Brady Bunch member.

Gun Safety Training: Because you can’t legislate away ignorance or stupidity.

*Disclaimer: I am not in any way speaking for the NRA. I am speaking strictly as a private person. the opinions expressed in this article are mine alone.

Why Toyota Is Going to Be Just Fine And GM Isn’t

I just got a robo-call from the dealership where we have our Toyota Yaris serviced: Toyota of Nashua.

The recording said that in light of the recent recalls they wanted to let their customers know they were changing their service department’s hours. -To 24/7 until further notice.

The recording gave me the option of pressing 1 and getting connected with the service department right away.

Love them or hate them, THAT is good service and good customer relations.  -Two things I’ve never received from GM.

A Conundrum of Bloggy Proportions

I have been getting a lot of hits on this page in the last couple of months, mostly referring from other places where I post thoughts, argue points, etc.

I have been doing that (writing on other forums), primarily, rather than writing blog posts.

This is for a couple of reasons:

First, I don’t want to copy/paste someone else’s  comments from a message board or topic forum and then have a discussion with myself on the blog. I won’t learn anything and the original writer hasn’t given me permission to do so.

Secondly, the things I’m inclined to write about are varied as can be. They range from ethics to guns, to civil rights and the wonderful personality of our dogs.  I’m neither a well-known person, widely published by other organizations, nor am I a specialist that can write volumes on a niche topic. Those are great things, but it’s not me.

As much as I like to write about guns, there’s only so much I can write that’s not a rip-off of someone else or hasn’t been said elsewhere better than I’m likely to present it.

I’m tempted to let the entire blog just die when it comes to renewal time. But I would like your feedback.

Thoughts?

California Police Chiefs Back Off On Gun Control Measure

Well, they did it. The California hoplophobes, a decades-long majority in the state legislature  has finally managed to come up with a gun control idea so stupid even the notoriously anti-gun California Police Chiefs Association (CPCA) can’t support it: Microstamping.

In case you don’t know what microstamping is, here’s a good description along with California’s iteration of the process:

Firearms microstamping is the process by which firearms manufacturers would have to micro laser-engrave a gun’s make, model and serial number on two distinct parts of each gun, including the firing pin, so that in theory the information would be imprinted on the cartridge casing when the pistol is fired. Legislation mandating microstamping in California was signed into law in 2007 by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) and was slated to take effect this New Year’s Day (2010); however, since the technology remains encumbered by patents it cannot be certified by the California Department of Justice and therefore has not been implemented.

Other people have written about this incredibly bizarre idea California is trying to mandate, but I thought I’d add my 2¢, with the excuse of the letter the California Police Chiefs Association (Which has rarely met a people gun control idea it didn’t like) sent to the California AG saying essentially, “woops.”

{From the letter: } Publicly available, peer-reviewed studies conducted by independent research organizations conclude that the technology does not function reliably and that criminals can remove the markings easily in mere seconds. We believe that these findings require examination prior to implementation.”

In other words, the technical flaws of the idea without any other argument needing to be made makes this a stupid idea. But the letter itself is a perfect example of the ignorance and hypocrisy inherent in the idea of requiring the microstamp in the first place, much less registering individual gun owners.    In it’s own words the CPCA references the fact that criminals can easily find a way to evade detection via a firearm registration scheme as one of it’s reasons for opposition to the bill.

“Criminals can remove the markings easily in mere seconds.”

The antis can’t manage to come up with even a remotely plausible scenario in which this stuff would solve many crimes, even if they got everything they wanted. But they want it anyway.

To many who don’t know or care much about guns, gun registration doesn’t sound like a big deal. And if you don’t know anything about microstamping, and much more importantly the assumptions that its supposed efectiveness rests upon, it might not sound like a bad thing. I mean, it’s supposed to help the cops solve crimes right?

The only problem is that this simply isn’t the case.

Microstamping guns and registering individual gun owners depends on a large number of things for them to make more than the very slightest difference in catching bad guys. And trust me, I was a crime reporter for years in an area with high gang violence and lots of shootings. I know whereof I speak.

First, and most easily shown to be false, is the required assumption that guns used by criminals are legally owned and obtained by said criminals. Otherwise having the murder weapon (or shell casing in the case of microstamping is useless.- There’s no connection to the shooter. Microstamping, or even posession of the weapon used will only provide a connection to the gun shop that originally sold the gun or if there is registration of guns as well, a connection in some cases to a previous owner of the firearm.

That won’t help.

We have actual numbers on this stuff. They are released by the FBI and most states every single year, and wide-ranging reports, even those submitted by Clinton Administration appointees and staff in the justice department have concluded that the vast majority of crimes are committed by people with previously existing criminal records, which bars any legal purchase of a firearm, people under age to posesss a firearm legally, and in a staggeringly large percentage of cases, where the gun is stolen or obtained from an illegal black market, so far removed from the original source that tracing is virtually impossible.

Essentially, their excuse for logic is that the thing they want to use for crime solving is the one thing they are absolutely certain to not have, even with the most stringent of registration/microstamping provisions.

First, there are a grand total of about 500-600 unsolved homicides in California each year. About 2/3 of those (following national statistics) are committed with a firearm. Many of these are caught the following year, so the real number of cases where absent more information on the gun could possibly help solve otherwise unsolved cases is already very small. Knowing who used to have the gun legally is of very little help in most cases.

Microstamping, even if it were trivial to do and worked every time rests upon the idea that there are lots of cases where:

1. A registered gun is used in a crime by a legal gun owner or someone to whom he knowingly gave the gun
2. Which isn’t a revolver
3. The perpetrator doesn’t pick up his brass
4. The perpetrator keeps the gun after committing a crime with it instead of reporting it lost/stolen
5. The perpetrator is not otherwise tied to the crime
6. The perpetrator hasn’t altered the gun to defeat registration/microstamping requirements

Is this true for more than a handful of cases? For this they want to spend millions, make ammunition AND firearms prohibitively expensive for all but the well-to-do and cost the state yet more jobs as anyone who is in the firearms business or cares about their human right of self defense, rapidly flees the Golden State.  Like the famous “assault weapon” ban, where the Justice department noted that fewer than .75% of gun crimes were committed by “assault weapons” and that hi-capacity magazines seemed to make no difference in terms of numbers of people injured or in rounds fired, this is another solution to a problem that doesn’t exist outside Sarah Brady’s fantasies.

I gave up on Democrat politicians showing any common sense on gun control a long time ago, but this is enough to make my jaded opinions sit back in awe.  This is beyond stupid. As a matter of fact:

Dodging statues?

ROME – An attacker hurled a statuette at Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, striking the leader in the face at the end of a rally on Sunday and leaving the stunned 73-year-old media mogul with a bloodied mouth, police said.

I saw the story today and had to laugh at the contrast with Iraq, where they throw shoes at national leaders.

So let’s see…In Iraq they throw shoes, in Italy they throw statues… I predict Germany’s Angela Merkel will need to dodge a Tiger tank or Piano in the not too distant future.

-That is all.