Bad Gun Advice Courtesy Of...

...Joe Biden.

For folks that wonder why pro-civil rights folks do not trust Democrats, Joe Biden is a near perfect case study.  He knows next to nothing about guns, but feels qualified to propose legislation for the entire country.

He recently suggested that a shotgun is as good as an AR-15 for self defense purposes.  He went so far as to suggest that you shoot a shotgun through a door at suspected assailants.

Aside from the fact that shotguns kick far more than an AR, the primary problem in the above is that it will buy you a ticket to court for reckless handling of a firearm.

Another problem with the above is....surprise....shotguns are used far more often to commit crimes than assault rifles.  The only weapon class used more often is an ordinary revolver.

These folks know nothing about guns yet feel qualified to legislate our lives.  Incredible.

Asset Forfeiture Gone Wild

So you own a building.  You rent office space to businesses.

One of those businesses makes a $37 pot sale to an undercover state trooper.

And the DEA decides to seize your building.

Tar and feather were invented for such moments.

Violence Against Women - Media Bias Edition

I was listening to an NPR report on John Boehner a couple days ago.  The reporter was insinuating that Mr. Boehner's leadership was lacking because he could not compel the GOP caucus in the House to support bills that his office was bringing to the House floor.  The example used was the recent continuation of the Violence Against Women Act.

The final bill passed in the House by a vote of 286 - 138.  Only 87 Republicans voted for this version of the bill.  Other Republicans had issues with the bill that ranged from questions of Constitutionality with regards to expanding tribal law enforcement authority beyond tribal members to ideological issues with providing abortion services to rape victims.

For the record, I think the Constitution matters.  Questions regarding Constitutionality matter.  I do not know if their concerns were fully legitimate as I have not studied the issue with any depth.

Also for the record, the GOP needs to get off the anti-abortion wagon.

Back to the issue of Mr. Boehner's leadership, I find it curious that he is being criticized for bringing a bill to the floor that passed the House and was signed into law as this is being typed.  He is the Speaker of the House.  He is not the Speaker of the GOP in the House.  Mr. Boehner's position exists to serve every American. 

So he brought a bill with bi-partisan support to the floor for a vote.  That is is job.

Isn't bi-partisanship something we want?  Or does bi-partisanship only count when the GOP is caving to a Democratic initiative?

The Holocaust

In case you missed it, researchers at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum recently released updated information on the Holocaust.

Everyone....at least those in the reality based community...agrees that the Holocaust was massive tragedy.  What they don't know, is that was worse than anyone realized.

Go and read.  I can't do it justice.

Those Little Cuts

I've observed this elsewhere, so it may as well go here, too.

When we had the so-called "fiscal cliff", we had roughly US$85billion in tax increases.  With the "sequester", we have had roughly US$85billion in spending cuts.  To be sure, those cuts are poorly focused.  If only we could get the Democrats to be responsible partners in passing a federal budget.

While I support an 80/20 ratio of cuts to tax increases, I also think that the above is "balanced".  Or at least, the perception of "balance" is a good test between a reasonable observer and a ideologue or a partisan.

It is hard to know exactly what the problem is with the Democrats in the Congress as well as our President.  I suspect that they see government spending as a means of power and control.  Anything that diminishes that power is something they oppose.

I also suspect that they may also suffer from a sense of denial.  Like every other person that has taken a real world look at our budgetary problems, they understand that the driving force behind our out of control spending is the unrestrained and unsustainable growth in social programs.  But because their "base" has been sold on the relative merit of those programs, they do not dare act as responsible legislators and begin limiting spending in that area.

Instead, we continue on an inexorable course towards national fiscal insolvency with plenty of pain for people that will find themselves dependent on government programs.

One disappointment is the lack of Presidential leadership on the issue.  Mr. Obama has said that we need to cut wasteful spending.  I have heard him issue such pronouncements in the past.

Yet he has not seen fit to demonstrate any leadership on the issue.  The White House has yet to issue a detailed list of programs to be cut.  Rather than work face to face with the Republicans to develop cuts that make sense, Mr. Obama has returned....again, and again...to the campaign trail.

The Democrats in the Senate are worse.  They haven't passed a budget for almost four years.  They won't pass their own budget.  They voted against Mr. Obama's budget in significant numbers.  And they refuse to bring any budget passed by the House to the floor of the Senate.

They are doing little more than closing their eyes and hoping that are nation's fiscal issues will somehow disappear.

Their eyes are closed. 

Ours are not.

Oh Mighty Passion

From John Cox....

I suspect engineering a few other fields of endeavor would suffer as well.

Plenty of other great art to see while you are visiting his site.

The Songstress

Carole King is one of America's musical treasures.  Here are ten songs that you might know were written by this talented woman.

I mean....The Monkees....really??

Economics, Like Gravity

What do you do when the price of gasoline rises?  Do you adjust your driving habits?  Do you consider purchasing a more fuel efficient vehicle?

If you are a normal person with a normal budget, then you do some combination of the above.

Why should we expect normal people running normal businesses to behave any differently?

If government regulations impose additional costs for people that work more than twenty nine hours a week, then normal people will limit employees to twenty nine hours.  If government regulations impose additional costs if you have fifty employees or more, then normal people will limit their number of employees to forty nine.

These are the normal, predictable consequences of poorly developed government policies.  Courtesy of Mr. Obama and the Democrats, a whole lot of people who are already struggling to survive will find themselves less able to find full time employment at wages that will allow them to live something close to a normal life.

DUI With Zero Evidence

How would you like to be found guilty of driving under the influence even if there is no proof that you were in fact driving under the influence.  Perhaps you were under the influence at some point in the past few days...or perhaps weeks.  Perhaps you were under the influence in a time and place where it was legal for you to be in that condition.

Then you get pulled over days...or perhaps weeks....later while you are quite sober.  And based on residual chemicals in your blood stream due to past events, you end up convicted of a DUI.

And the courts endorse this conviction due to the twisted idea that actually conducting an accurate test for whether or not you are under the influence would "unduly restrict law enforcement."

That's right.  Our right to a trial based on fact is less important that the convenience of law enforcement.

So What Happens When...

...you are a clown who exists to create laughter in the world when your daughter is dying and you cannot imagine a reason to laugh ever again.

The story was shared with The Moth Radio Hour by Anthony Griffith.  Stories presented by The Moth are more typically humorous.  This one is not.

However, it is a singular act of bravery as Mr. Griffith opens the deepest wound in his life for our inspection.  And, one hopes, our empathy.

I Love Libraries

As does John Scalzi.  Have a read.  Then visit your local library to see what you have been missing.

A Breakdown Of Sorts

I am getting to the end of a little "break" from participating on Facebook.  Quite frankly, the whole gun debate was getting to me in unhealthy ways.

A big part of the problem is that there is no firm basis for a reasoned discussion of the subject.  The "facts" have been polluted by liars to the extent that rational people are no longer able to express an argument that is based in reality.

Robb Allen of Sharp As A Marble links to an article penned by a doctor that is filled with factual errors.  Somewhere, someone with a lack of knowledge about guns and who is trusting of medical professionals will read that story and become committed to banning or severely restricting gun rights.

And it will be impossible to have a rational discussion with that person until you first go through the laborious effort of emptying out the lies and replacing them with facts.

A short list of the lies involved include:

• Including 24 year old adults as "children".
• Using heart disease as a comparative with gun deaths.  Heart disease is the result of decades of low exercise, poor food choices, and smoking.  Children don't get heart disease because they haven't lived long enough.
• Not using drownings as a comparative with gun deaths.  Because kids (the real kind) die from drowning at a much higher rate than they do from guns.  Yet the movement to ban backyard pools is pretty ineffective.
• Talks about rates of fire as if it makes a difference in the number of deaths.  The issue is not the gun.  It is the intent/purpose of the person holding it.
• Calls our rights "privileges" and states that they were "granted" by the Constitution.  Our rights, including the right to self defense, existed before the Constitution was written.  It only acknowledged what already existed.

The list continues in the comments.  Having a rational discussion on gun issues is impossible because of the rhetorical filth such as the above that have contaminated public discourse.  Perhaps irreparably so.

Book Recommendation: Flowers For Algernon

Charlie Gordon.  Mentally handicapped.  Then a genius.

In "Flowers For Algernon", author Daniel Keyes presents a first person view of the life of someone who is marginalized by society due to his lack of mental ability.  He cannot remember without years of repetition.  And if he cannot remember, then he cannot repeat.  Nor can he consider his actions to see if they could be changed for the better.

Such are the challenges of some of our most marginalized citizens.

The book is Charlie's story told from his perspective.  It is written as a kind of journal that Charlie is keeping at the request of his doctor.  The spelling and grammar reflect that of a person who barely possesses the ability to write.  Charlie is an open, honest, trusting, and caring individual.  He wants to do well.

And he is treated by those around him with just about as much compassion and love as you might expect.

Until the surgery.  A team of doctors believes they have developed a means for improving intelligence.  They have tried it out on mice.  It seems to work quite well.

Charlie agrees to undergo the procedure.  And in the days and weeks to follow, he gets smarter.  He learns.

He learns how much he has been missing.  He reads voraciously.  Knowledge is assimilated at an astounding rated.

He also learns how poorly his "friends" have been treating him.

"Flowers For Algernon" was one of those books that you heard about when I was in school.  Being an avid science fiction fan, I saw the title several times and had always intended to read it.  Chance and happenstance had other ideas on the matter.

Fortunately, used book stores are a treasure trove of books that people have always been meaning to read.

"Flowers For Algernon" is one of those rare modern books that really should be more prominent in our school curriculum.  It is at turns an instruction on the importance of treating people properly regardless of their abilities, or lack thereof, as well as a thought provoking journey that should cause us to envision a wider world of "what if".

It is impossible to create that world of "what if" without first seeing it in our minds.

Spoilers after the break.

A Cake No One Should...

eat.  Or perhaps one that everyone should eat.

As friends on Facebook should have discerned by now, I've been working on my general health for about 18 months now.  I have a longer post on the subject on which I have been working for some time.  Perhaps you should be grateful that it is not yet complete!

Part of that work involved making better choices in my diet.  Those choices are complicated by the fact that I love food and I love to eat good food.  It is safe to say that my indulgences have been few and measured.

A couple weeks ago, the guys at work came across a recipe for bacon jam.

Mmmmm.....bacon.

It involves bacon, maple syrup, brown sugar, and a bunch of other things that are not really good for you when consumed in large quantities.

We have a wonderful young lady at work that loves to cook.  She has made goat cheese in the past.  She also makes the best cakes.

I do not want to give the impression that she had no choice in the matter, but the guys did leave an unsubtle hint that she should give this bacon jam thing a try.  It took her five hours on a Sunday night to complete a triple batch of the stuff.  The fruits of her labors were in our break area for public consumption Monday morning.

As it turns out, she didn't like the bacon jam.  All the guys loved it.  Someone bought English muffins and we imbibed throughout the day. The jam had more of a savory taste that was reminiscent of baked beans, sans beans. 

I was very good that day.  I had half of a half of a muffin with the bacon jam.  And while it was most delicious, I was able to refrain from eating any more of it.

Our talented young cook/baker had a surprise for us on Tuesday morning.  She had been looking at a recipe for a dark chocolate cake that used dark chocolate frosting.  Both components used Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate.

There are few things better in the world than dark chocolate.

I behaved myself and only took half of a piece of cake.  It was great.

But then I got to talking with my friend Eric as we all were gathered around the cake in the break area.

Eric and I share some common background.  I am a former Marine.  He is former Army.  We both were in Desert Storm, although he actually was up front doing the dirty work while I was in the rear with the gear.  These experiences have mentally twisted us in ways that some people find utterly baffling.  Fortunately, our friends are more amused than mortified.

Eric has had the further experience of being a paramedic for close to 10 years.  The stories he tells ought to make most folks question whether humanity will survive the next 15 seconds, much less the next 15 years.

Which is why when we got to talking about this very delicious cake, it was not terribly surprising when we thought that the only way to make it better was to put a little bacon jam on it.  Fortunately, there was a small amount left over from the previous day.

I plopped the container down in front of Eric as I had already had my quota of cake for the day.  He applied an appropriate portion of bacon jam and took a bite.

Sadly, his eyes rolled back in his head shortly thereafter.  I say "sadly" as his reaction was good enough that I just had to go back for the other half of my half a piece of cake that was still sitting in the pan.  I plopped on a dollop of bacon jam and then headed for the nuke-o-lator to warm it up.

OH

EM

GEE

This was the reason those letters were strung together in the first place.

I can't tell you how awful I felt later that afternoon when I found that there were a couple of pieces of cake left in the tray.  I didn't even bother with the whole "half a piece" nonsense.  Some bacon jam, a round in the nuke-o-lator and I was back in Nga-atua.

Tax Policy Matters

Via the TaxProf comes the story of Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao declining to have his next fight be in the United States.

Manny Pacquiao's chief adviser insisted Monday that the Filipino superstar's preference is for his next bout – a fifth fight against Juan Manuel Marquez – to take place away from Las Vegas, with the off-shore Chinese gambling resort of Macau emerging as the "favorite."

Michael Koncz told Yahoo! Sports that the 39.6 percent tax rate Pacquiao would face if he were to fight again in the U.S. makes a fall bout in Las Vegas "a no go."

On a related note, State Farm Insurance may be getting ready to leave uber-taxing Illinois for the comparatively lower taxing Texas.

Insurance chain State Farm is reportedly buying up substantial workspace in Texas, which may signal a coming exodus from the company's home state of Illinois. ...

At the end of 2010, in a special session, the Illinois Legislature passed a 67% hike in its corporate and personal income tax. The state is struggling with a structural deficit and its credit rating was recently lowered. The state now has the worst credit rating in the country. A number of businesses have floated the idea of leaving the state. A move by State Farm, however, would devastate the downstate economy.

California is suffering from a similar trend...for similar reasons.

Tax policies do matter.  Higher tax rates will drive the wealthy into different areas.  They....like most of us....don't mind paying their fair share to support legitimate government activities.  But an unfair share will cause them to react accordingly.

Over The Falls In A Barrel

Daredevils have been going over the Niagara Falls for over a century.  Sometimes in a barrel.  Sometimes not.  Sometimes they survive.  Sometimes not.  Curiously, the results of the plunge rarely live up to expectations.

Despite the risks, and the known history of this stunt, people continue to try it to this day.

Which brings us to the fiscal waterfall that is Obamacare.

The Washington Post has a story on the impending massive rate hikes that young people are about to experience.

The result: Older, sicker people will pay lower premiums. Younger, healthier people will pay higher ones to make up the difference. The price of a policy for a young, healthy man in, for instance, Milwaukee, could triple from $58 per month to $175, according to a survey of insurers released by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank, and a former director of the Congressional Budget Office.

Curiously, the above is not precisely news to those that were paying attention when Obamacare was first passed into law.  It has been clear from the beginning that the intent of this nationalized health care system was to take money from the young and the healthy only to give it to the poor and the less well.

But we were promised that we could keep our current doctor and current insurance plan if we were happy with them.  Of course that promise did not stop my physician from buckling under the new federal regulatory burdens to end up selling his practice to our local mega-hospital.  The story above is really focused on people that have to buy individual health insurance.  It doesn't really apply to those that obtain insurance via our employers.

Right?

It has become very clear to everyone involved who is analytical and not ideological that the rational strategy, for both large and small firms, is to cease providing health care insurance to employees.

No company wants to admit that they are considering eliminating health insurance as an option, or be the first one to drop their health insurance plan, but once a competitor does so, the preference cascade will begin. The clear sentiment is “We will not be the first one to drop our health insurance plan, but we would be a close second.”

The coming preference cascade for employer group health plans is what the Democrats fear the most, because Obamacare was sold to the masses as “if you like your health insurance plan, you can keep it.”

The people who really know the law, and who have been following the avalanche of regulations, have already figured this out. It will take a while for this specialized knowledge to seep downward, because right now only $800+ an hour ERISA attorneys and the most sophisticated HR people understand how Obamacare really works.

The fruits of government action have long been known by anyone with the least interest in history.  Those fruits inevitably cause costs to rise and access/quality to fall.  Government will...once again...break our rhetorical legs and then expect gratitude for the crutches it offers.

The result of socialism is as predictable as the seasons.  It is to create an equality of poverty by destroying the means of producing wealth.

When the current scheme fails...a result of which I have no doubt...will the government advocate a return to free(er) markets?  Or will they say that he problem is that we did not cede enough power over our private lives to the federal nanny?

Sophisticates And Intellectuals

The following was written a while back in the wake of the allegations that Dominique Strauss-Kahn had raped a hotel maid during a visit to New York City.  I let it sit for a while thinking that it might be good to let the story develop a bit.

It turns out that waiting was a good idea.  Prosecutors declined to prosecute Mr. Strauss-Kahn due to issues regarding evidence and witnesses.  Of course, that doesn't mean that he is a pillar of moral rectitude.

In any case, I think the larger point as to the moral basis for what is presented as "sophistication" and "intellectualism" is worthy of your consideration.  My belatedly offered thoughts continue after the jump.

Can You Hear The Hate?

Probably not.

During a recent interview on NPR, ESPN's Howard Bryant made an analogy between the remorseful cyclist Lance Armstrong and a theoretic spokesman for the NRA.

I mean, I think the big problem that I had with listening to Lance over the last couple of days was how controlled – how much he was trying to control this confession. That someone had put out a very funny tweet in my timeline that other day that said, "With this much remorse he could be the next spokesperson for the NRA." I mean, it was really that controlling. And I'm listening to this, and I'm thinking, he's not sorry at all about this.

But when a listener later went to the NPR website to get the transcript, the offensive remark had been scrubbed.....er...edited.

Just imagine if this had been Fox News instead.....

Getting The Attention I Deserve

Well I have finally hit the big time.  Big Brother...or the Fatherland...or the Motherland....someone...cares enough to stop by.  But they couldn't bother to leave a comment!

We welcome our visitors from DHS with open arms, but not open legs!

My traffic sucks, but it is mine!

Global Warming And Asteroids

Via Newsbusters comes the story about a CNN anchor that asked Bill Nye (the theoretically "science" guy) if the recent near visit by an asteroid was the result of "global warming".

And folks wonder why I don't trust the media when it comes to the science of climate change.

For the record, Mr. Nye avoided addressing the obvious error in the young lady's question.