RNS Quote of the Day: 03/10/08

Found by Sir Soyer @ Alphecca

Knives are used in nearly three times as many violent crimes as guns, yet no one calls for a knife registry. Even blunt instruments are used more often than guns without demands that government licences be required before one may buy baseball bats and lead pipes. So why do liberal-left politicians expend so much energy trying to restrict gun ownership or even ban guns outright?

The principal reason, of course, is that modern liberalism is the victory of symbolism over substance. A public policy or law is seldom designed mostly to solve an identified problem. Its primary purpose is to reflect well on the good intentions of the person or group proposing it.

So what if laws and social programs produce no tangible benefits? They remain on the statute books and retain full funding — complete with massive bureaucracies — because they enable liberals to convince themselves something is being done. Activity is confused with achievement.

Gun control is constantly put forward by intellectually lazy politicians and do-gooder activists because attempting to restrict gun ownership is easier than taking on real criminals. More importantly, anti-gun laws enable politicians and activists to claim they are doing something to cure a problem that concerns voters and donors, even though restricting gun ownership among law-abiding citizens has no mitigating effect on violent crime.

Lorne Gunter – A Handgun Ban Won’t Work – National Post – Canada

Take some time to read it all.

Posted in Quote of the Day | 2 Comments

Today, Tomorrow, Next Weekend and Beyond

Today, in Washington DC, The Usual Suspects will be doing their thing to commemorate the start of the war in Iraq.

The actions planned include:

Monday March 10, and Tuesday March 11: the personal delivery of “official” stop-loss notices* to all members of Congress in their Capitol Hill offices, notifying them that all of their LEAVES, VACATIONS, PASSES and HOME VISITS HAVE BEEN CANCELLED (sic) until further notice. The people delivering these orders will include active-duty personnel who are enduring involuntary extensions of their tours of duty — who will tell Congress that they, too, will have their tours of duty INVOLUNTARILY EXTENDED until every foreign soldier and mercenary is out of Iraq, and home, and that when all the troops and “contractors” get home, then Congress can go home, and no sooner.

*Wednesday March 12: nonviolent DIRECT action on Capitol Hill, to enforce full compliance with the Stop-Loss Orders, and ensure that the members of Congress and their staffs will not go home but remain to DO THEIR DUTY, and immediately end the funding of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and that No member of Congress goes home until ALL THE TROOPS COME HOME.

These actions are all complementary to the WINTER SOLDIER events being organized by I.V.A.W. which will bring together ACTIVE DUTY troops and veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. The term “STOP-LOSS CONGRESS” came from IVAW leader Adam Kokesh.

Not ones to be forgotten, this Saturday the local moonbats are going to “take on the man” by attempting to shut down one of the largest malls in the region.

Tacoma Mall prepares for protest

Fort Lewis officials are alerting soldiers and their families to avoid the Tacoma Mall between noon and 5:30 p.m. March 15 because of a planned anti-war protest at the commercial center of Pierce County.

Mall officials are preparing accordingly.

Local protest groups have announced their intention to “shutdown” the Tacoma Mall, specifically the military recruiting station in the commercial tower located on the north side of the property. The building does not fall under mall management.

Calls for protest claim the groups want to “make it impossible for business as usual to continue as the Iraq War approaches its fifth year.”

“We are aware of their intentions to protest,” the mall’s Marketing Director Sarah Bonds said. “We do not allow potests on our property.”

The mall plans to notify protesters of that policy when they arrive and take other measures as needed, she said, noting that the mall will be meeting with police and security officers to develop detailed plans to handle the protest in the coming days.

Military officials warn that protesters plan on distributing anti-war and anti-military literature as well as confront local recruiters or interact with soldiers, family members and civilians who appear to be military affiliated.

Recent protests against the war at the Port of Olympia have been marked by increased levels of violence, the military alert reports.

That is a rather convenient time and place for me and my video camera. If I’m not pulling Galaxie parts that morning for The Wife’s car, I might just swing on by.

But the one that we will all probably feel, is the ILWU Port Shutdown on Mayday.

In a major step for the U.S. labor movement, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has announced that it will shut down West Coast ports on May 1, to demand an immediate end to the war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Middle East. This is the first time in decades that an American union has decided to undertake industrial action against a U.S. war. The action announced by the powerful West Coast dock workers union, to stop work to stop the war, should be taken up by unions and labor organizations throughout the United States and internationally. And the purpose of such actions should be not to beg the bourgeois politicians whose hands are covered with blood, having voted for every war budget for six and a half years, but a show of strength of the working people who make this country run, and who can shut it down!

My only comment at this time: “Fire them. Fire them all. If you decide to not work May 1st. You have decided that you don’t want to work on May 2nd.”

Posted in Too Stupid to Live | 4 Comments

Um, huh?

It is true that “One thing leads to another”. But this is not true in this case.
It is also true that the leg bone is connected to the hip bone.

However, I’m pretty sure that this guys headbone is connected to his ass bone.

“Iraq War” caused slowdown in the US

The Iraq war has cost the US 50-60 times more than the Bush administration predicted and was a central cause of the sub-prime banking crisis threatening the world economy, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

The spending on Iraq was a hidden cause of the current credit crunch because the US central bank responded to the massive financial drain of the war by flooding the American economy with cheap credit.

“The regulators were looking the other way and money was being lent to anybody this side of a life-support system,” he said.

That led to a housing bubble and a consumption boom, and the fallout was plunging the US economy into recession and saddling the next US president with the biggest budget deficit in history, he said.

If you don’t currently have a migraine and don’t mind risking getting one, you can click the link and read the rest of the article.

The basic premise is that the American people weren’t taxed to pay for the war and they had all this money, but not enough to buy houses, so the banks stepped in to help the Bush Administration by loaning people money to buy homes so they’d forget a war was on.

Or some such nonsense.

In reality it is just your basic run-up article for an upcoming book by two former Clinton officials in which they tell the readers that “Bush Lied!!1!” and then describe everything that could have been bought with the money spent (AKA: A future Kos-Econo factoid pamphlet).

Posted in Color me confused | 1 Comment

Takin’ Donations

I think I need a houseboat.

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Anyone got a cool $4.5 Mil I can borrow?

Posted in Kewel! | 3 Comments

Because everyone in the world hates the US

The Kiwis held an “Americarna” rally in NZ.

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In forum form here. Just keep scrolling. Thanks to Paul.

Posted in Kewel! | Leave a comment

Hearing things in a different way

Watch and wonder why no one else has done this before.

Found at Right Thoughts, who thinks this is better than the new NIN album.

Posted in Kewel! | Leave a comment

Sunday Confessional

Seeing as how I’ve been telling these sordid tales of my past to The Wife as of late, I suppose I can share them with you all now too.

I’ve been following the case of the arson at the UW Forestry building more closely than would be noticed here at RNS. Looking at names, mostly.

You see, back in the pre-posting at RNS I was barely politically minded. I was “busy” with other stuff. Work, cars, and wimmin’-folk. I could care less what the girl’s “issues” were, provided that the annoyance factor of said issues didn’t outweigh their physical attributes.

At around 20 years of age, I had started dating what my friend Robert had labeled as “ASB’s” (Art School Bitches). An ASB could be defined as: Well-enough off parentally that you weren’t being asked to pay their bills, Feminist enough that you weren’t paying for movies, meals, etc., on dates, Good looking enough that your buddies were jealous, No stigma on sneaking you into the women’s only dorm after the RA had went to bed, And 99% of the time are very liberal and/or activist minded on one issue or another, though if you catch them early, you are not required to attend to the issue yourself because, and most importantly, they didn’t mind being “Ms. Right Now”.

I’m not going to name names here (this is a confessional, not kiss and tell), but I’ve run across the names of at least three former acquaintances of the female persuasion in the news stories about eco-terrorism in just the last couple years. None of the convicts, but the “friends of the accused” who get quoted about “what a nice person the accused was/is”, etc., this latest case being one of them. The other being a biologist testifying on behalf of the salmon in the Klamath Water Wars a few years back.

When I pointed this latest one out to The Wife, to my benefit, she was non-plussed. She knows she has no worries in that department. She didn’t even ask why in the hell I would go out with “someone like that”. Instead, she turned it around and asked why “someone like that” would go out with me.

I had to remind her about who, what and how I was before we hooked up, though she knows a goodly number of the stories already.

She jokingly pretended not to believe it and cracked that I was an ELF-mole inside the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Hoping to get get the last word, I replied that that wasn’t true, that (name redacted) simply liked the sustainable growth in my pants.

As usual, wife came back with a kicker: “Oh, then her and I DO have something in common.”

Damn sassy-lipped wimmin’-folk.

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | Leave a comment

Lovin’ It

Seattle uber-leftosphere blogger and proponent of urban living, Goldy, bitches about living in the city

To the assholes who keep parking in front of my bins on trash day… goddamnit! Trash cans and recycling (or yard waste) bins are lining the streets for miles around, because, you know, it’s trash day, and the haulers only empty those cans that are placed by the curb. And you have to choose my cans to park your fucking truck in front of? Are you fucking oblivious, or do you simply just not care?

That rant continues and there are three other examples that explain why I’d rather live in the sticks than where he is at (though I’m currently stuck in the burbs, but still with none of his problems).

If I was having the problem with hookers and Johns that he was, I would have no problem with not so kindly stepping out to the John’s vehicle, catching them quite literally with their pants down, and demanding their immediate dispersal.

Being a liberal though, he would just rather let them conduct their business, leave their “refuse” on his sidewalk, and then bitch about it.

Or maybe because he doesn’t have the balls to do so?

Sorry, I repeated myself there.

Posted in The Left is Never Right | 3 Comments

Guessing Games

Name this actor

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Answer and controversy here.

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | 3 Comments

A Day of Porcine Aviation

This never, ever, would have happened in my school. Apparently, the north end of Puget Sound is more different than the south end than I thought.

The tension built.

For a week, Totem Middle School students met after class in the library, posted messages on MySpace and whispered conversations in the hall. They made signs, painted T-shirts and circulated petitions.

When the clock hit 10:40 a.m. Wednesday, they were ready.

They walked out.

Around 200 students risked suspension and broke school rules to demand more discipline.

No, these kids aren’t into bondage, they’re just tired of the fights, the gang tags and the drug and alcohol busts not amounting to anything.

It seems the school administration was too busy trying to collect the dough the Little Johnny Gangbangers were worth from the state and federal bean counters that they didn’t bother to worry about how the illegal, and expulsion worthy, activities might effect the education of the other students who are there to, you know, learn something.

Ain’t free great!

Posted in Academia and Other Nonsense | 3 Comments