Happy Birthday, Karla!

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sun, 02 Feb 2003 13:00:00 GMT

From fmn:

I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way. -- Robert Frost

"Television enables you to be entertained in your home by people you wouldn't have in your home." -- David Frost

It's my wife's birthday today. Happy Birthday, Karla! It's also Ground Hog day. Six more weeks of winter? Ugh.

JMaze now works in multi-player mode on my machine. I haven't uploaded it yet, since there are still some bugs to work out and I haven't done the Applet client code yet. I probably won't get to work on it much more today, so the upload you can play with will likely be mid-week, in sha' allah.

CNN - Columbia shuttle breaks up over Texas - Yesterday morning. Bummer. Bad bummer. [trt-ny]

An administration official said the shuttle's altitude -- over 200,000 feet -- made it "highly unlikely" that the shuttle fell victim to a terrorist act.

Dyan Hardison at Counterpunch - Shuttle Crash & Smug NASA Managers - Ms. Hardison worked for NASA, as a safety engineer, until her warnings about imminent disaster got her fired for rocking the comfy boat of the top-heavy bureaocracy. [smith2004]

Like Challenger, those who are most guilty are the ones who will attempt to make the most political capital out of it. But the blame for Columbia lies entirely and totally with the NASA administrators. They should all be investigated for their criminal negligence. They should all serve time in jail.

Rick Fisk aka demidog at Liberty Forum - Waxman: "50 Caliber brought down shuttle - ban imperative" - satire, folks. Hahahahahahaha! [smith2004]

At a hastily-prepared press conference in his Washington D.C. Office this morning, Henry Waxman (D, CA) called for a total ban on .50 Caliber sniper rifles.

"It is obvious that the terrorists have managed to once again inflict damage on America's freedoms by shooting down the space shuttle", said Waxman to reporters. "It is imperative that we get these dangerous weapons off the street," he added.

Asked how it was possible that a .50 Calibre rifle could hit a target moving over 12,500 miles per hour and 22 miles above the ground, Waxman responded, "These rifles are dangerous. I've been warning the American public for quite some time about their dangers. You could shoot the moon with one of these rifles."

Kel-Tec's SU-16 Press Release page now contains an exploded parts diagram and mechanical workings diagrams illustrating the self-loading action. Unlike the M-16/AR-15, it doesn't defecate where it eats. It has an operating rod instead of direct gas impingment. Good. High Road discussion here. [highroad]

L. Neil Smith at Rational Review - The Nineteen Eleven Effect - 'tis the end of the era of prohibition. Praise the Lord! With a bow to the Zippo ligher and one of John Browning's masterpieces: "the .45 caliber Colt Automatic Pistol Model of 1911A1."

If you took all the American presidents of the 19th and 20th centuries (the current occupant of the White House being no exception) and threw them in a pond, you could skim stupid for decades.

The phenomenon isn't limited to presidents. Our political system selects. for stupidity -- along with evil and insanity -- and you can see it work from the Senate and the Supreme Court right down to your friendly neighborhood silly council. Politicos with an IQ higher than an artichoke may be numbered on the fingers of one elbow.

Free-Market.Net is back online, having been purchased by The International Society for Individual Liberty (ISIL). They are asking for donations to ISIL. Freedom News will return on Monday.

The Liberty Committee - American babies are next, II - urges contact of the members of the conference committee for the House's omnibus appopropriations bill telling them to retain Ron Paul's language that would put a moratorium on the "unique health identifier". No national health ID. No branding of our babies.

Tony Swindell at LewRockwell.com - A Question From One Patriotic Veteran To Another: Mr. President, Whatever Happened To Osama Bin Laden? - some predictions about the abominations being planned in Washington. [smith2004]

Let me tell you in advance how this war will unfold: our initial casualties will be minimal, because the type of urban combat offered in Iraq is too casualty-intensive, despite the fact that the vast majority of the people will be unarmed. This landscape isn't an empty jungle but mile after mile of heavily populated collections of narrow streets and rock/masonry buildings, filled with endless dead ends and cul-de-sacs that can be contested with small arms. The military brass is still smarting from the political lessons learned during the Mogadishu slaughter and will insist that there is no alternative to saturation bombing. Yes, most Iraqis will run, but some will stand and fight -- it is, after all, their country and their homes we're liberating with 500-pound bombs and cruise missiles.

As the smoke clears, the bodies of women and children by the tens of thousands will fill piles of rubble and will be videotaped and sent all over the world in real time, along with digitized screams of the wounded and dying. The stench will be horrific and you can bet that nauseated journalists present at the carnage will have an overwhelmingly negative impression of the American "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out." mentality. Military commanders will not be capable of managing the media situation simply by the overwhelming size and scope of the operation. For those with a high pain threshold, a report titled "Collateral Damage" at medact.org is frighteningly instructive.

Meanwhile, every Muslim with a television set and a CNN signal will correctly interpret this as an open, lethal declaration of war on each and every one of them, and that we will not hesitate to blow them, their families and their homes to bits. We will have instantly made ourselves the enemy of 20 percent of the earth's population and every filthy rich tin-pot with paranoia and a nervous trigger finger will scramble to obtain one of the 14,000 nuclear weapons AND delivery systems from the ruins of the Soviet Union. The example of North Korea has been quietly but acutely observed.

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Quotes

Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair