How the Bastards Will Be Shot
Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent. -- H.L. Mencken
From samizdata:
To end corruption in high places, don't try to end corruption, end high places. -- Matthew Edgar
From GOP News & Views:
Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, 'What should be the reward of such sacrifices?' Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship, and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen! -- Samuel Adams
Kevin Tuma - Dr. Pepper - cartoon commentary on the Dr. Pepper cans sporting the Pledge of Allegiance but missing "under God".
whitehouse.org - Governor Ridge: "Patriotic Tattooing Has Commenced. All Citizens Are to Report to the Nearest Bankrupt K-Mart Outlet" - tongue-in-cheek rendition of an unfortunately likely future: Operation Mandatory Patriotic Tattoo. Time to brand the cattle. [market]
Scott Bergeson at Project: Safe Skies - FAA Justifies Groping - a tongue-in-cheek account of the next wave of airport security measures. Hehe. [safeskies]
The FAA is set to unleash a firestorm of criticism early next week when it issues a directive to airlines calling for "close, hands-on inspection" of all women with large breasts who are checking in for flights.
Liz Michael - All Hail Fatherland Security: Has the time come to shoot the bastards? - "Fatherland Security" instead of "Homeland Security". I like it. I'll use it. Of course, it's been way past time to shoot the bastards for quite a while, just a practical problem of how to do it effectively. Ms. Michael has a pretty good idea of how it will happen. It will be because of the national ID craze. There will be plenty of regular Joes who attempt to comply with the ID requirements, but fail through no fault of their own. Some of them will get hassled too much and lose it. They're who the tyrants need to fear real soon now, not political dissidents. Until they try to take away our guns. Then the shit will really hit the fan. Shplufft. Sierra Times has a copy of this article here. My mirror is here. [lizmichael]
When complying with the tyranny becomes more difficult than just shooting the bastards, the bastards will begin to be assassinated, and in rather large numbers.
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For example, a cop will pull over someone who registers a false document or a card whose magstripe has been damaged. This officer, on a power trip, or under order of superiors, will get a bee in their bonnet and attempt to throw EVERYTHING at someone who doesn't pass their ID test. And some of these people will snap under the pressure. Dead cop. Or maybe dead citizens, whose friends and relatives then go after the surviving cop. Or his family. Or after all cops.
It's probably not going to be what is commonly thought of as a "patriot" that fires the first shot. It's probably not going to be a political activist from the left, the right or the center. Most of us would rather sue you than shoot you, and most of us have heavily ingrained value systems which restrain us from outright whacking some of these noodniks and shooting them where they stand, although they do deserve it. The first shooting of the bastards will probably be by average citizens who tried to comply but were not allowed to, and whose lives were overcomplicated by that inability to comply. The subsequent shootings of the bastards will be by common criminals who have hated authority all their lives and find that they can now easily assassinate an LEO and get away with it.
And you won't be able to stop it. Because you won't have a clue as to whom to look for. And it will spell your ultimate downfall.
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Envision the following, you law enforcement officers, because it is going to be a common occurrence. You are going to pull someone over, and harass them about not having the proper documents. You are going attempt to confiscate their vehicle. They, of course, need that vehicle, and need to get to where they need to go without your harassment. They are going to snap, and they are going to shoot you dead, and your wife will be a widow and your children orphans.
Or envision an air traveler, who has honestly tried to comply with all these tyrannical regulations, yet has been harassed, maybe even sexually violated, perhaps even unduly arrested. One of these people is going to snap. They are going to go home, return to the airport, pull out a gun, and shoot you, Mr. Airport Security flunkie. Or their husband will. You will be dead. Maybe your entire crew will be dead. Why? Because someone just could not bear all the folderol they were forced to go through.
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Let me spell it out for you graduates of the Los Angeles Unified School District. If an internal passport system, disguised under another name, becomes a reality, and people cannot freely travel between places in this nation, then those "noncompliants" who have a serious need to travel to a destination will only have one choice. They, Mr. Patrolman, will have to go through your dead body to do it. And they will. If the only way we can exercise freedom is to shoot you, then we will shoot you. You can take that to the bank.
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Do not think for a second that anything I have said which applies to the government, or applies to law enforcement, doesn't also apply to corporations trying to do the same thing. Do not think that the officers or the workers of corporations who either do evil, or enable the government to do evil, will be spared when the time does come to shoot the bastards. Often, the rebels of the Left are FAR MORE effective in their violent response than the rebels of the right or of the center.
But again, it won't be the political activists who fire most of the first shots. It will be the victims.
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There is a saying among people, that you can take a man's personal wealth, and you can do anything you want to him, and he will not resist you. But that same man, if you try and hurt his family, will kill you. Unfortunately, since the law doesn't seem to check the child protective services racket, the only thing left will be the barrel of a gun. And you will begin to see it MUCH MUCH more often.
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We are about to reach a critical mass where it just doesn't pay to do it all. Where it just doesn't pay to comply. Where it's easier not to comply. Where even those who WANT to comply, because they think they are being good citizens by doing it, will not be allowed to fully comply.
Then it will begin to happen. These people who shoot you and orphan your children will not be patriots. They won't be political activists and extremists for the most part. They won't be someone like me, for instance. No, it will be Joe Sixpack who takes you out.
hunter at Project: Safe Skies - America: A 21st-Century Soviet Union? - This one's so good that I'm copying the whole thing. [safeskies]
This may not at first seem relevant, but bear with me. At one of the hearings in Concord I attended last year to stand on politician's feet, grab their lapels, and yell up their nostrils, a doddering old WW2 vet got up to testify. Fellow must have been in his 80s; his voice wasn't that strong, and he had trouble walking. He apologized for how long it took him to get up the steps to the podium, and for his frequent pauses to catch his breath while he was speaking. Told us he wasn't going to go into all the other arguments being covered by others that day about why gun rights were so important; he thought they were doing a better job than he could anyway - he had a warning to he wanted to deliver. It turned out to be utterly different than anybody expected.
He explained that he helped liberate some of the concentration camps, and fought his way through occupied France and Germany, along the way seeing first-hand some of the fruits of a totalitarian society. He said ever since then he had been something of an amatuer historian. But he had an unusual focus - he wanted to know how such an atrocity could come to be. Over the years, he told us, he thought he had come to understand it pretty well.
He read several passages from a couple of books he had with him into the record, detailing what had happened in several different totalitarian regimes right after whichever nasty faction history remembers came to power. Without exception, within months of siezing power, ALL of them had liquidated the people Lenin called "useful idiots" who had supported them - teachers, low-to-middle level politicians and bureaucrats, and the list went on and on. Representative's hall was absolutely silent as he concluded that the people pushing so hard and these days openly for a socialist consolidation of power in America should think long and hard about what it was going to end up costing them personally. I'm pretty sure that old man got the biggest round of applause of all the hundreds of people who spoke out in support of gun rights that day, and he never mentioned guns or unalienable rights once the whole time he talked.
America: A 21st-Century Soviet Union? - Commentary on airport "security". [safeskies]
I TOOK MY 89-YEAR-OLD mother home to New England from California this past week by air. American Airlines was most solicitous and very kind making sure she had wheelchair service at every stop along the way. However, the security people at the Santa Barbara Airport made her not only walk through the security device, they made her take off her shoes while teetering from one foot to the other.
I was again randomly chosen by the computer to have all my baggage gone through by ticket agents and security personnel, my body wanded and my shoes searched, while the security person did his best to pat me down with his hands. Watching security search me thoroughly, my mother, whose first husband had escaped from the Soviet Union, said, "It's just like Soviet Russia, isn't it?"
Tanstaafl at PersonalOdyssey via Project: Safe Skies - "Fear" of Flying - a personally created "ID" card that worked for the author before 9/11. Interesting. [safeskies]
Rick Gee at anti-state.com - State of the Kingdom - commentary on GW's state of the union address. There is an axis of evil, but it's right here in the U.S. of A., not far away across the ocean. [anti-state]
I can think of a couple other triads more worthy of the axis of evil label: how about the Republicans, the Democrats and the mainstream American media, who conspire to sell this war as a just, defensive battle. Or perhaps the executive branch, the legislative branch and the judicial branch of the federal Leviathan, who far from checking and balancing one other, instead collude to shred what's left of the Constitution.
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Beyond expressing the need for virtually unprecedented increases in Pentagon spending to wage total war, Bush continued the traditional State of the Union "here's what I will do for you with all the money I confiscated from you in the first place" orgy of social-spending initiatives. One could argue that his self-styled "compassionate conservatism" had morphed into a mushy, leftist nanny-state feel-goodism.
Blake Morrison at USA Today - Federal officers to police airports, 'Trusted-traveler' ID card to be tested - the Amerikan gestapo continues to grow. [market]
[Transportation Security Administration leader John] Magaw said the new federal agents will work in tandem with police and other federal authorities currently at airports. He called their role "hugely different" than that of Federal Aviation Administration inspectors, who handle regulatory, not law enforcement, issues.
"If we open up their locker, I would expect to see undercover clothes . . . to work undercover and just watch the public and look for things that don't fit," Magaw said. "I would see them in sport coat and shirt and tie working some investigations. I would see them in different clothing out on the ramp and in back exits, making sure people aren't subverting some of those checkpoints. And I would see them in uniform backing up those checkpoints."
How many agents will be hired remains uncertain. Magaw said initial projections range from 3,000 to 5,000, but he cautioned that hiring and training will take time. "We wouldn't have that by the end of the year," Magaw said.
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Magaw said a test program for the special ID card could feature members of Congress and flight crews as the initial subjects. The card is designed to speed travelers through security, but Magaw said an ID holder's baggage would still be screened.
Magaw said the agency wants to "weigh all the pros and cons" before moving forward on a card. Cardholders would provide detailed information to the agency, along with fingerprints, palm prints or retina scans.
Aaron Zelman and Claire Wolfe at JPFO - The Last of the BOHICANS: How You've Been Conned into Surrendering Your Gun Rights And How You Can Turn the Tables - Bend Over, Here It Comes Again, or... create a bill of rights culture and return freedom to the land of the free and bravery to the home of the brave. Stop attempting to stop government tyranny by talking to politicians. Talk to your neighbors instead. The government will change, or fall, once the culture changes. [smith2004]
Walter Williams at Capitalism Magazine - Campaign Finance Reform: Wrong Target - Bill of Rights enforcement solves another problem. [mind]
Why do corporations, unions and other interest groups fork over millions of dollars to political campaigns? If you think it's because these groups are simply extraordinarily civic-minded Americans who just love participation in the political process, you probably also believe that storks deliver babies, and there really is an Easter Bunny and Santa Claus.
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I say: Forget about campaign finance reform. If Congress did only what it's constitutionally authorized to do, influence-peddling would be a non-issue because Congress wouldn't have the power to grant favors. It might also help if we had a law that read: Whatever Congress does for one American it must do for all Americans. If Congress pays one American not to raise pigs, every American not raising pigs should also receive payments.
AP via ABC13 (Houston) - Sow sentence - Don't call a cop a pig in Painesville Ohio. [unknown]
AP via The Denver Post - Court upholds Denver gun law - with one dissent, the Colorado state court of appeals ruled that the Colorado constitution doesn't mean what it obviously says. [kaba]
Joel Spolsky - The Iceberg Secret, Revealed - most of software development is invisible, just as most of an iceberg is below water. Another winner from the expert on software management. [joel]
If there's one thing every junior consultant needs to have injected into their head with a heavy duty 2500 RPM DeWalt Drill, it's this: Customers Don't Know What They Want. Stop Expecting Customers to Know What They Want. It's just never going to happen. Get over it.
Instead, assume that you're going to have to build something anyway, and the customer is going to have to like it, but they're going to be a little bit surprised. YOU have to do the research. YOU have to figure out a design that solves the problem that the customer has in a pleasing way.
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You know how an iceberg is 90% underwater? Well, most software is like that too -- there's a pretty user interface that takes about 10% of the work, and then 90% of the programming work is under the covers. And if you take into account the fact that about half of your time is spent fixing bugs, the UI only takes 5% of the work. And if you limit yourself to the visual part of the UI, the pixels, what you would see in PowerPoint, now we're talking less than 1%.
That's not the secret. The secret is that People Who Aren't Programmers Do Not Understand This.
