Free Republic

Thought the following descriptions and caustic quotes concerning liberals might be amusing to many. Oddly no definition for "libertarian" though a bit of running commentary about both Republicans and Democrats. Extracted from the newly released The Devil’s Dictionary (new millennia edition). Grab a copy for your cynical old man for father's day. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0983240752/liberal, noun 1. Someone who does not care what you do as long as it is compulsory. 2. A person who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which he proposes to pay-off with your money. 3. A person whose interests aren't at stake at the moment....

I was on a UC Santa Cruz public forum panel last week, where we were discussing gun control (myself, Adam Winkler from UCLA Law, some out-gunned chap from the Brady Campaign, and a co-founder of the Liberal Gun Club (yes, they do exist). While running through the various sources of gun deaths (62% of which are suicides and thus clearly a mental health issue) it occurred to me that your garden variety street gang member isn't mentally stable ... at very least a sociopath, and in many instances an utter psychopath. So this link is to my opening investigations into...

Inequality mainly evokes jealousy, but it can also get you killed. This week we face that dismal ritual of the State of the Union Address. I dearly long for days that existed before I did, when presidents summarized the national condition in a brief letter to Congress. Instead we witness an unseemly joint session where every move, gesture, utterance and blink is scripted except when Joe Wilson is around. Sustained applause for speaking common truths is a grand waste of energy and television bandwidth, though it may be the only exercise some congressmen get. Our Statist in Chief plans on...

I somehow failed to pass this along to the Freepers. Good news for those active in the gun rights field. Key Points: • De facto guide to gun control myths now online and mobile • 14 years of debunking information now on every smartphone Gun Facts – Online, Mobile, Anti-Agitprop The top guide to debunking gun control myths is now in your pocket San Francisco, CA – December 13, 2013: Gun Facts, the de facto reference for debunking gun control propaganda has been reborn into a mobile-ready web site, just in time to combat the next wave of gun control...

There is a cancer in the American body politic. It is looking likely that only radical surgery can save the patient. Cancerous cells have three common mutations that make them fatal. First, they have to avoid being killed (apoptosis is the process where abnormal cells are destroyed). Next, the cells must have a means to grow unregulated. Finally, cancerous cells must spread throughout the body. The political cancer called socialism works in the same three phases. In America, our Constitution of limited and enumerated powers was the primary apoptosis mechanism, designed to keep government from doing the nasty things other...

Ever wonder how the gun control industry molds public opinion? Here is a deconstruction by the NRA's California litigator. http://youtu.be/r247zPqLeI8

Brook’s Law echoes van Braun's Law and both show the insanity of the administration’s response to the fragile Obama(doesn’t)care scheme. Then again all sentient beings who can perform their own post-potty cleaning-up operations knew Obama(doesn’t)care was a fiasco in the making. As everyone – including the president – has heard, the health insurance “exchanges” erected by the government to supplement the existing market for health insurance has done nearly nothing. The web sites and back-end software have malfunctioned to the point that people are unable to even discover if they qualify to receive “exchange” insurance, much less buy the stuff....

Journalism isn’t what is used to be, and it wasn’t great to begin with. Last week a man who heard voices in his head followed the advice from the voices in Joe Biden’s head about armament, bought a shotgun, hacked off the barrel and killed a bunch of people in the Washing Navy Yard. As with all such incidents, two completely predictable occurrences came to pass. First, after waiting for facts to emerge, the sanity of the suspect was shown to be non-existent. Second, the gun control industry did not wait for facts to emerge. Neither did the media. One...

“Don’t be scared,” was Crazy Dave’s advice as I set out to document some of San Francisco’s sexual quirks (writing can be a dirty and dangerous profession). It was and remains good guidance that applies to most matters, especially politics. But politicos and their propagandists have long recognized the value of fear for creating herd mentality and inciting reaction ahead of thought. The Lie of Fear (“creating a false sense of fear in order to motivate people to action while easing them past critical thinking”) was the very first entry in the Catalog of Canards included in Shooting The Bull....

Big data is watching. You can almost hear the computer servers in Washington buzzing with new activity. If you have never been in a large data center, they actually pulse and throb as systems surge to ingest, process and dump bits. Disks spin, cooling systems lurch and power panels hum. Data centers are seemingly alive, and the bigger the joint, the more ominous they sound – like the devil’s own demon factory. This is the backdrop for recent revelations concerning your government and big data (the phrase “big data” is IT industry slang for massive info crunching, the “crunch” verb...

Congressional approval ratings have sunk to their lowest level in recorded history. Anyone expressing surprise, please board the short, yellow bus. Congress has always been held in low esteem, ranking on trust surveys somewhere between used car salesmen and Satan. Some call this cynical while others call it realistic. Then again the difference between cynicism and realism is vague. Cynics are either disappointed optimists or well informed optimists depending on how cynical you are to begin with. It’s not that they view the glass to be half empty, just that they don’t expect anyone to fill the glass soon. Such...

If your cell phone stops working, don’t blame your battery. The government remotely disabled it. Central to society is the constant question of who is in control. Our quaint republic is rather unique in that we believe, and actually once enforced, the right of individual self-determination. In short, you were in charge of you and any problems you created for yourself were yours to deal with. Despite being widely popular, certain insecure individuals with weak mental constitutions wanted a perpetual nanny once they were too old for their original keepers, and found pliable politicians to allegedly protect them. In return,...

The most creative propaganda organization in the business today is the Daily Show. John Oliver, who begins a long stint guest hosting tonight, is deconstructed in this short YouTube video about his recent rants concerning gun control. Poor Brits never get it right. http://youtu.be/JveejEGxgP0

Who do you trust? Trust is a fundamental fallacy in politics and government, or in any realm where power is concentrated. This adage is so true that P.J. O’Rourke summarized the American political experience in a book he titled Don't Vote – It Just Encourages the Bastards. Yet trusting politicians aligned with one’s basic beliefs causes such encouragement every election cycle, which in recent history has elected philanderers, dufuses and con men as president. Placing trust in any politician or party (aside from the Libertarians, who seek power in order to dismantle it) invites abuse of power in the present....

Wealthy Californians would like to thank you for buying them expensive automobiles. Didn’t know you that generous, eh? In fairly recent political history, left-of-center ideologues and other special needs people have advocated “public/private partnerships”. Once opposed to anything corporate, alleged progressives now embrace funneling tax funds to corporations of every ilk that sustain their ideology, regardless of how insane the plot sounds to common folks with common sense. No less of a man than Bill Clinton (and given his serial freelance philandering, there is no lesser of a man) has focused his face into television cameras proclaiming that government funded...

“Most voters still get their news from television,” a Rasmussen survey sadly reported before dropping the big bomb. “[They] consider the news reported by the media generally trustworthy.” Any serious student of media and propaganda rapidly comes to the conclusion that if one strives to be misinformed, they must watch the evening news. This is nothing new (and hence not news). Long ago a wag opined “Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's St. Matthew's Passion on a ukulele.” Little changed when news quit being produced with ink and started...

All they have left is violence. A political scientist one concluded that elites maintain power using propaganda, economic disincentives and violence. In America, propaganda has become ineffective and economic disincentives have been stretched to the point of whipping dead workhorses. If those primary tools of controlling to populace fade further, the elites will use violence because they are unwilling to lose control. First, let’s establish who are the elites. Columnist and television titilator John Stossel indicates the elites live around Washington D.C. as indicated by a large cluster of top 1% wealthiest counties surrounding the asylum. Since power (government) controls...

“Shame on us if we've forgotten,” was Barack Obama’s lament concerning the Sandy Hook school slaying. But we will forget. It is human nature, and not a subject of shame despite Obama’s attempts to make it such. To forget is natural. Memories not etched strongly and personally fade. Even great memories of people loved and then lost dim over time (and if you don’t believe that, try remembering exactly how your high school sweetheart sounded and smelled). After their initial grief, Americans came to learn that the relatively small (statistically speaking) Sandy Hook killing spree was the work of a...

Some days mocking elites is too easy. It would be more fun if they offered a challenge and if the flipside of their misbehavior wasn’t routinely repugnant. Being in San Francisco, one of my favorite snobs to snub is our own Senior Dementia Senator, Dianne Feinstein. Being of autocratic attitude, she is simply ripe for ridicule. She provides everyone – even her admirers – with comic content and which unintended consequences. Yet as you will soon see, she pays no penalty while her betters – people with functioning dendra – are punished for the crime of thinking wrong. (A cop...

For release March 13, 2013 Gun Facts Version 6.2 Released 13 Years of Debunking Gun Control Myths San Francisco, CA – March 13, 2013: The latest edition of the de facto desk reference for debunking gun control mythology was released today and marks its thirteenth year in production. See www.GunFacts.info. “Another tragedy, and one again the gun control industry is on the move,” said Guy Smith, editor of Gun Facts. “Yet as in 2000, their rush to crush civil rights meets the brick wall of facts, perspective and reason. The gun control industry won’t get far.” Gun Facts categorizes gun...