Jake2

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Thu, 02 Jun 2005 12:00:00 GMT

From The Federalist:

"Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve." -- George Bernard Shaw

and:

"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." -- Aesop

and:

"Here's a rule of thumb nobody's bothered to lay out because it's so obvious: When someone like [Senator Robert] Byrd says he's lifted himself above politics, watch your wallet. Now, as they say, the Senate can get back to 'the people's business.' Which means, as far as Byrd is concerned, getting back to the business of transferring the federal treasury wholesale to the state of West Virginia. But enough about the only known surviving dinosaur from the Cretaceous period." -- Jonah Goldberg

and:

"The word is Dick Cheney is thinking of running for president in 2008. He's already come up with a pretty catchy slogan 'the pulse stops here.'" -- Jay Leno

# Couldn't sleep last night, so I buzzed my head and loaded 50 rounds of .44 Magnum. Reloading is usually good for what ails me, and last night was no exception. 24 grains of H110 pushing a 240 grain Speer soft point. I hadn't tumbled any cases, so I used new ones. Always a pleasure, though the flaring die held on to them pretty hard. Hodgdon says this gets 1817 fps from a twenty inch barrel, so it'll likely get a little less from my sixteen incher. Every time I load with H110, I want to get a better powder thrower. The tiny grains slip through the mechanism of my Lee nylon model, making a small pile on the board to which it's screwed.

# Paine's Torch - Grateful Slave - a poem about living in a democracy. [lrtdiscuss]

My master lets me vote for a new master,
every few years.
I cannot vote to have no master,
but he generously lets me choose
between two candidates he has selected.
I eagerly wait until election day,
since voting allows me to forget that I am a slave.
Until then, my current master tells me what to do.
I accept this.
It has always been so,
and I would not change tradition.
My master is a good man.

# Claire Wolfe at Backwoods Home Magazine - Closing the Borders of Hardyville - The Hardyvillians are worried about REAL ID Not that they'll have a hard time with it They won't. They'll just ignore it. But they're worried that it will cause lots of people to invade Hardyville, people who aren't really ready to live there. [claire]

# Edgar J. Steele - Pogo Was Right - we have met the enemy, and he is us.

Shortly after 9/11, George Bush told us that Arabs armed with box cutters and no flying experience commandeered three jumbo jets and flew them with air-show precision into three buildings...because "they hate our freedom." Well, he was partially correct.

Those responsible for 9/11 and other atrocities, both here and abroad, do hate our freedom. And we do need to be afraid of them. Problem is, they are us - our own government, actually. Otherwise, why would our own government be taking away our freedoms at such a rapid pace? Why are they so afraid of us and in such a hurry to regiment us, lock us down and throw so many of us into jail? What is going to happen that they need such tight control of us? What, exactly, is it that they plan next to do to us?

We have nobody to blame but ourselves. We may not have elected them, such a sham has America's electoral process become, but we allow them to continue to rule over us. An earlier America would have seen such "leaders" tarred, feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. A more responsible population today spontaneously would form leaderless mobs and drag them from their plush Capitol Hill and Wall Street offices, to languish in the prison cells to which they consign our fellow citizens for the slightest offense...and worse. Osama bin Laden, in one of his earliest communiques, justified the targeting of ordinary American citizens by pointing out that we have both the responsibility and the collective ability to replace our leaders, yet we do nothing while they plunder the world in our name. He was right.

# David Carr at Samizdata.net - European Constitution. 2000 - 2005. R.I.P - with its rejection by the Dutch, the EU Constitution is effectively dead. Entertaining opinion by Mr. Carr. "Too True" posted this comment:

I recommend wooden stakes, garlic and silver bullets. These buggers are known to rise up from the dead and suck the blood of thier victims in the dark.

# Cryptome - PGP Demands Removal of PGP Free - LOL! [grabbe]

The PGP Free collection had been removed from JYA.com last week to free up about 62 MB of storage space. Now restored to meet this demand for attention.

# PGP Desktop Home 9.0 is available. It costs $99. Some previous owners of PGP 8.x can get a 50% discount. Everybody can get a 30% discount. Unfortunately, it costs $99, so even with the 30% discount, we're talking $70. Sounds pretty expensive to me. Don't think I'll upgrade. Version 8.1 is working fine.

# bytonic software - Jake2 Webstart - Jake2 is a Java port of the Quake2 gaming engine. This page provides two Java Webstart versions. Requires a Quake2 dataset, a demo version of which (34 megs) will be automatically downloaded if you don't have one on your machine. Works good on my Dell 600M. [javalobby]

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Previous Posts:
May 2005
Project for the Old American Century
Not One More Drop of Blood
Remembering Gullibility
Murio la Verdad
Hang 'em Before They Outlaw Rope
Democracy: The Scum Rise to the Top
Why Do They Hate Us? It's Newsweek's Fault
Neoeconomics
Sunshine May Prevent Cancer

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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