Racist remarks

Edited to force Blogger to use the correct embedded video...

Cliven Bundy has been castigated in the MSM for saying that American blacks were better off under slavery than under modern "liberal" welfare.

Here's what he actually said, in context.



Video found at The Market Ticker where Karl Denninger has a good take on this.

I believe that "civil rights" as practiced for the last 50 years, and as designed by that paragon of racial tolerance Lyndon Baines Johnson, is directly responsible for most, if not all, of the black on black and black on whoever violence in our cities.

Welfare and affirmative action have produced more than two generations of people who do not know what a normal family is, who have been systematically trained to look to big government for all their needs, have been trained that working is for fools and that as long as you vote for the Demonrat candidate, you will keep getting free stuff.

Slaves in the Old South had family values and moral training from their parents. They also had something that modern blacks in inner cities do not have - the freedom to escape slavery, albeit at great risk to themselves, and the will to act to better themselves if possible.

I'll wager that if we were to bring a freed slave from the depths of Alabama in the 1850's to our time and show him this, he would recoil in horror:

Bearing false witness

Yesterday, I got broadsided crossing an intersection on my way to work. The Focus will need a new passenger door, possibly a new right tie rod, and serious metal work.

Oh, well, I was going to repaint it this Spring, anyway.

I was driving south on the frontage road to the east of the main road. Stopped at the stop sign at a cross street. Cross street had traffic lined up for the red light - I had to thread past a jerk who pulled past the "DO NOT BLOCK INTERSECTION" sign.

As I pulled past him, I caught movement to my right. Swerved left - got nailed in the right front wheel and door by the '99 Town Car that had just made a right turn off the main road, and didn't bother looking where she was going.

Pulled over and got out. The woman driving the Lincoln got out and I asked her if she was OK.

The Lincoln got some scratches on the bumper cover.

She told me she had just turned onto the cross street and I pulled out in front of her. Well, that was pretty much what happened. She called her husband to come out.

Called 911 to report the accident - they hung up on me, or the cell phone lost signal. She called the police direct from 411.

The husband took the woman off for a talk. When the police arrived, she told the officer she was northbound on the FRONTAGE ROAD, and I pulled out in front of her. The only way that would have worked out would be if I was making a left turn. Since my place of work is south on the same frontage road, there is no way I would be making a left at that intersection.

I got a $120 ticket for "improper lane usage". I could go to court, but I would lose more than $120 in lost wages and irritation, and likely would lose. Illinois traffic courts are all about revenue, not justice.

So, now it's up to the insurance company to fight it out. It's possible I will get something to help fix the Focus, but I'm not counting on it.

Driving the Ghia until I at least get the tie rod fixed. I don't need to ruin the front tires driving with extreme toe-out...

The morality of video games

Came across this - interesting...

Brian Tomasik is a consultant at the Foundational Research Institute, which explores possible avenues for reducing suffering in humans and other sentient beings, now and in the future. He maintains the website Essays on Reducing Suffering, where he writes on issues in ethics, biology, philosophy of mind, and other fields relevant to the question of how best to reduce the amount of suffering in the world.

Recently, he has become interested in the question of what moral standing, if any, we should give to non-player characters in video games (NPCs). He argues that, while NPCs do not have anywhere near the mental complexity of animals, the difference is one of degree rather than kind, and we should care at least a tiny amount about their suffering, especially as they grow more complex. We spoke on Gchat this past Tuesday. An edited and condensed transcript follows.

Dylan Matthews: What exactly is your view about the moral standing of non-player characters (NPCs)? Is it moral to kill them?

Brian Tomasik: That depends on their degree of sophistication, and whether they're built in a way such that killing them would correspond to something harmful.
Very simple game algorithms would matter to an almost infinitesimal degree, and they may not have responses that we would consider aversive. A Goomba in Super Mario Bros. that just walks along the sidewalk back and forth is arguably as simple as a physical object bouncing back and forth. It doesn't seem to have pronounced goals that are being thwarted by its nonexistence, nor does it have machinery to try and avoid death or feel bad about death.

In contrast, a slightly more complex character that plans moves to avoid being shot or injured by the player of the game has at least the bare outlines of goals and attempts to avoid injury. This case might be marginally ethically relevant. The moral significance would increase further if, for example, the character had penalties applied to its health or wellbeing level as a result of injury, as is the case in some RPGs [role-playing games] or reinforcement-learned game characters.

Present-day video games mostly use extremely simple algorithms that resemble goal-directed and welfare-relevant behavior in very crude ways. They resemble complex, sentient animals in a similar way as two dots and a smile resemble a detailed picture of a face. Hence, it seems plausible to give any single game character extremely small weight compared with vastly more complex forms of purposeful, welfare-relevant behavior in larger organisms like animals.

 If you follow Mr. Tomasik's reasoning literally, you end up with the belief that all life is sacred, and causing suffering to any living thing is immoral. Someday, we might develop a computer program that can qualify as self-aware.

I think any unnecessary suffering is a bad thing - but for the present - computer algorithms?

The bigger problem in my mind with some of these video games is desensitization to violence and common courtesy. They might not be a proximate cause of outright violence, but they can't help matters.

The Pig Trap

Powerful - h/t the Rott:

The Pig Trap

I said, “Well, you are a military man… what would that look like?”
Wheeler said, “Well, it wouldn’t look like the first Civil War… no lines of men standing in ranks and shooting across a field at each other, no “North and South” or sharply defined state lines for friendly and enemy territories, at least, not in the beginning. No, it would look more like Iraq or Afghanistan, with house to house fighting, IED’s, snipers, small factions and independent militias operating on their own, refugees streaming away from battle zones in all directions…”

“But the first question to ask is who would the combatants be? I mean, the Army isn’t going to just roll out onto the street in tanks on day one, so my guess is that it would start out as a police action, with Federal agencies like ATF and FBI taking the lead, supported by local law enforcement. But once people start shooting back, they would have to ratchet things up, do things like institute curfews and roadblocks, and they would eventually try to press the various state Guard units into service. That’s where it all goes squirrelly, because both local law enforcement and the Guard will be riddled with people who support gun rights, regardless of what laws the politicians pass, and they won’t be crazy about having to police, and maybe even fight against, their own people. The Governors may well object to the state Guard units being activated and may not wish to cooperate…”

“And it is not clear to me how many LEO and Guardsmen would remain loyal to the government and how many would join the “rebellion”. My guess is that both sides would be riddled with defections, informants, and spies. But what if, say, the Gulf states like Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, and Florida secede, and they take control of all military bases and equipment, and you suddenly have gone from an insurgency with rifles to a breakaway nation, or maybe several breakaway nations, armed with fighter jets, drones, tanks, and a navy? Whoo, buddy… now all bets are off… kiss posse comitatus goodbye. This would be the ugliest thing this county has ever seen…”
I asked him several “what if” questions and let him riff on them… I just let him talk and wargame out the Second Civil War, there in the back seat of my car as we drove to the airport, and he painted a picture of horrific death and destruction. Once this conflict started, even the best-case scenarios he described sounded truly grim. He seemed to believe that civilian casualties would be extremely high, given how much fighting would centered in and around large cities, and that food would be used as a weapon, causing famine and starvation on a terrifying scale. Booby traps, IED’s, rampant bombings, drone strikes, snipers, local-level assassinations, mortars and shelling, death squads (both government and rebel), reprisal killings, torture… it sounded more like the Middle East than middle America.

Wheeler got quiet for a few moments, and then he said something that I will never, ever forget.

“These people are playing with matches… I don’t think they understand the scope and scale of the wildfire they are flirting with. They are fucking around with a civil war that could last a decade and cause millions of deaths… and the sad truth is that 95% of the problems we have in this country could be solved tomorrow, by noon… simply by dragging 100 people out in the street and shooting them in the fucking head.”

You MUST follow the link and read the whole thing. It might save lives.

Those 100 people would be the cream of Congress' liberals, and our "ear leader", I am sure...along with people like Bloomberg, whoever are the present governors of New York and Connecticut, and people like Rahm-it-to-em Emanuel...

My wife inquired about the "bronze" (cheap) Jugearscare plan - $1,600 per month / $19,200 per year. I told her we would like to eat and pay our mortgage - so she signed up for a limited (read - illegal) critical care plan that is cheaper than our present plan - but has a high deductible. We will just have to cope with the IRS' "fine" - that I understand they can only collect from possible tax refunds. I'll just have to adjust my withholding down so I don't have any refund for them to attach.

Also, if I see one line concerning any questions about health care - other than in the itemized deductions - on next year's 1040, I'm going to fill in the line with "NOYFB*", and spell out the acronym at the bottom of the page should the person reading it be too stupid to figure it out. Since I won't be expecting a refund, I'll skip the E-file and mail the thing in. I'm guessing the electronic forms don't have margins you can send those vampires subtle messages in...

Carbon Belch Day 2014

Wow - I missed it. Carbon Belch Day was in March. I mistakenly thought it coincided with Earth Day - when all good Greenie Lefty-liberal Demonrats and their ilk bow down to Mother Gaea and pledge to end the infestation of human beings on the planet.

Damn. Getting my neo-pagan organizations mixed - I conflated the Voluntary Human Extinction crowd with Earth Day. I'm sure there's plenty of overlap there.

Anyway, better late than never. Rode the Suzuki 250 oil-injected dirt bike around the property Saturday- put another 20 miles on it. Let some friends ride also. Took the grandkids for a golf cart ride yesterday - good old Harley-Davidson zero spark advance two-stroke mosquito smoker. Moved a bunch of dirt with the Massey-Ferguson Super 90 Diesel smoker.

Burned trash and brush a couple weeks back - for me, Carbon Belch Day is whenever I go out back, mostly.

Civil Disobedience

I wonder if he had the guts to mail it in...

Congressional testimony

Must watch video on Facebook.

I guess you can't embed Facebook videos.

This lady was targeted by Jugears' IRS because she started 'True The Vote".

Just like back in the USSR.

And - capitulation?

Nevada Cattle Rancher Wins 'Range War' With Feds

A Nevada cattle rancher appears to have won his week-long battle with the federal government over a controversial cattle roundup that had led to the arrest of several protesters.

Cliven Bundy went head to head with the Bureau of Land Management over the removal of hundreds of his cattle from federal land, where the government said they were grazing illegally.

Bundy claims his herd of roughly 900 cattle have grazed on the land along the riverbed near Bunkerville, 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas, since 1870 and threatened a "range war" against the BLM on the Bundy Ranch website after one of his sons was arrested while protesting the removal of the cattle.

"I have no contract with the United States government," Bundy said. "I was paying grazing fees for management and that's what BLM was supposed to be, land managers and they were managing my ranch out of business, so I refused to pay."

The federal government had countered that Bundy "owes the American people in excess of $1 million " in unpaid grazing fees and "refuses to abide by the law of land, despite many opportunities over the last 20 years to do so."

However, today the BLM said it would not enforce a court order to remove the cattle and was pulling out of the area.

So - we win? Or - are they waiting for the crowds to leave so they can stage a "Waco fire"?

Video at the link.

More escalation

FAA Designates Bundy Ranch a No-Fly Zone

Yesterday afternoon the Federal Aviation Administration designated the airspace above Bundy Ranch near Bunkerville, Nevada a “no-fly zone” with altitude restrictions that effectively ban news helicopters.

We can't have the next Waco massacre  televised! The sheeple might learn the truth!

Escalation

Report claims cell towers in Bundy ranch area shut down

On Friday, Static Media Hub posted a tweet that said cell towers in the Bundy ranch area were shut down. According to the message, only radio communications were possible.

"Alert: On the ground reports ~ cell towers shut down, comms thru radio only," the tweet said.

Earlier in the day, a Facebook page supporting the Bundy family said some people were having difficulty using their cell phones. The tweet asked supporters to bring satellite phones if possible.

"Folks, there is a possibility the cell towers have been shut down. People are having trouble calling out, and I cannot get a hold of my people on the ground. I will update as soon as I know more," the tweet said.

"If you are headed to #BundyRanch and can get satalite (sic) phones, they are very much needed," the page said later.

The revolution will not be televised...

Bang

The government can have my guns-
Bullets First!

One of my favorite parts of running bulletsfirst.net is the interaction that I am fortunate enough to have with readers from across the country.  Therefore I was thrilled when I received a song from one among you that encapsulates the meaning behind the 2nd Amendment while putting it to a catchy tune.  The song also nails it on the head where they place blame on why criminal shootings happen.

John Chaffee wrote and produced “Bang” in Nashville Tennessee with Perry Danos providing the vocals.

Personally, I love the song so I thought I would share it will all of you.

Hopefully it can get some traction out on the internet and some people who may be ignorant of the 2nd Amendment can hear it and have it sink in.  That’s the great thing about music sometimes, you can learn something and not even realize it.

Spread the word.

And now for something totally different

Heh.

The truth comes out?

Government Lies about Standoff with Cliven Bundy – It isn’t about the Tortoise, its About Fracking 

Natural News dropped a bombshell yesterday, and I want to give you an excerpt below. Americans are smart enough to know that our government would not send 200 armed agents to protect some tortoises. It is always about money or resources/assets that can be turned into money. Mike Adams reports:

The Bureau of Land Management says its 200-man armed siege of the Cliven Bundy ranch in Nevada is all about protecting an "endangered tortoise." But a Natural News investigation has found that BLM is actually in the business of raking in millions of dollars by leasing Nevada lands to energy companies that engage in fracking operations.

This document from the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology shows significant exploratory drilling being conducted in precisely the same area where the Bundy family has been running cattle since the 1870′s. The "Gold Butte" area is indicated on the lower right corner of the document (see below), and it clearly shows numerous exploratory drilling operations have been conducted there.

What's also clear is that oil has been found in nearby areas and possibly even within the Gold Butte area itself.

It is, of course, customary for the U.S. government to bring armed soldiers to an oil dispute. (Operation "Iraqi Freedom" for starters…) Heavily armed snipers, helicopters and militarized soldiers have never been invoked over tortoises. (Anyone who thinks this siege is about reptiles is kidding themselves.)

Here's the map showing the oil exploration conducted on the land where Bundy runs his cattle (all the red crosshairs are oil and gas exploration drilling operations):

If you would like to read the full article, it goes on to give examples of oil and gas leases that are already happening in Nevada.

 I wonder which Demonrat Congresscritters have invested in this area/

This bears watching

Militias Are On Route to Help Cliven Bundy - Face Off With Feds: Will this be the Start of the 2nd American Revolution? 

CBS reports that militias from Texas, Montana, Utah, New Hampshire, and Florida will be standing with Bundy against the Bureau of Land Management.

If you aren’t a combatant, this doesn’t mean that you can’t participate in this revolt against tyranny. This is a call to action.

Here are the pertinent email addresses and phone numbers:

• Bureau Of Land Management Phone Number: (202) 208-3801
• Brian Sandoval Email Contact Form- http://gov.nv.gov/Contact/Governor/
• Brian Sandoval – Carson City Phone # - (775) 684-5670
• Brian Sandoval Las Vegas Phone # -(702) 486-2500
• Senator Dean Heller Contact Form -
• Phone #’s For Heller – Reno: 775-686-5770/ Las Vegas: 702-388-6605/ Washington: 202-224-6244
• Sheriff Douglas Gillespi - (702) 828-3231 or (702) – 828 – 3111
• Email: Sheriff@lvmpd.com

(source)

Share information in support of these people who refuse to stand idly by while theft, violence, and tyranny occurs at the hands of the government. If we all spread the word, there is no way that another Ruby Ridge or Waco can quietly occur. We can combat the disinformation spouted by the mainstream media by publishing REAL photos, REAL videos, and REAL accounts of what is happening. We can keep the communication open and tell the world what the United States government is doing to its own people.

Share this and other stories through email, through social media, through links in the comments sections of mainstream news sites. Whatever you do, don’t wait for someone else to take action. Now is the time to speak up for liberty. Make this story too viral for the mainstream to ignore. Do not allow these brave people staring down the barrel of a gun to do so without our support.

The Bureau of Land Management has picked up a snake by the tail, and it looks like that snake is going to bite.

Source

 

Open Letter from Fort Hood

Powerful.

My letter to Congress, read today at Texas Senate committee on Constitutional Carry. It is now public record.

To my friends, fellow Texans, brothers in arms, members of the committee, and everyone within the sound of my voice, greetings.

My name is First Lieutenant Patrick Cook of the 49th Transportation Battalion, Fort Hood, Texas, and this past Wednesday I found myself trapped in an enclosed room with fourteen of my fellow Soldiers, one of whom was barricading the door against a madman with a .45 pistol when he was fatally shot. Through what I can only describe as a miracle, he somehow found enough strength to continue pushing against that door until the shooter gave up and went elsewhere, at which time he collapsed. Nearly a week later, I can still taste his blood in my mouth from when I and my comrades breathed into his lungs for 20 long minutes while we waited for a response from the authorities. This Soldier’s name was Sergeant First Class Daniel Ferguson, and his sacrifice loaned me the rest of my life to tell this story . . .

But I write to you today not to memorialize this brave Soldier, nor to tell a war story about how we made the best of a losing situation, but to express the part of that story that some in high positions of power clearly do not want told: I knew this was going to happen. I had been saying for five years that Fort Hood was a tinderbox of another massacre waiting to happen. It had to happen, because our betters failed to learn the obvious lesson of five years ago. Worse yet, I know it will happen again. More will die, more will be wounded, more families will be torn apart, needlessly. It happened again, and will happen again, because Fort Hood is a gun free zone.

"Gun-free zone". The most  insane idea propagated by the lefty-liberal assholes that currently infest Washington and way too many state and local legislatures.

When you prohibit weapons from an area, you create a free-fire zone for the next disgruntled employee or unhinged person who comes along.

The Second Amendment - not just a good idea - it's natural law!

I like guns

So does Steve Lee from Down Under.



His trigger discipline isn't the best, though. If I was shooting that video, I would have knocked a gun out of his hand a couple times...

He must have moved to a free country to film that, though. Australia got rid of all those nasty things, I thought...

CCW class ad - Texas style

Gotta love this guy!



I only our "leaders" weren't part of the problem...

Musings

Why, if we have met and passed "peak oil" years ago, is EVERYTHING made from plastic these days?

We just were forced into a new refuse hauler - the old one, with trucks that required a human to dump the cans, went out of business.

The new hauler gave us two big plastic wheelie-bins, each marked "350 POUNDS MAX" and "NO HOT ASHES". One has a green lid and is labeled "RECYCLING ONLY" They are designed to be picked up and dumped by a robotic arm on the side of the truck, with little effort by the driver who never has to leave the cab now unless the homeowner does not put the bins close enough to the road.

We have laws that ban certain items from the refuse, and garbage from the recycling bin. How are these laws enforced when the first time the hauler will realize that someone tossed an electronic gadget or flashlight battery - or (gasp!) a vehicle tire or can full of paint or other "chemical" - into the garbage, or worse - into the "RECYCLING ONLY" bin is when they empty the truck? The driver never lifts the lid - it's pushed open by the contents when the bin is up over the top of the truck.

How do communities that mandated clear garbage bags (so the above abuses would be easy to spot) manage with the new collection technology? They must be counting on the sheeple being trained in proper trash etiquette by now...

Lady Bird Johnson's big "Keep America Beautiful" and "Don't Be A Litterbug!" campaign has finally succumbed to politically correctness. Those open top recycling trucks scatter as much trash on the roadside as any fifteen 1960's litter tossers.

At least they provide work for roadside community service crews...

Jugearscare unmasked!

The Democratic Party produced a television ad purporting to show Rep Paul Ryan throwing grandma off the cliff, by opposing ObamaCare.

Two San Antonio doctors have responded with an effective ad to counter this injustice. Please watch this ad produced by Dr. Jane Hughes and Dr. Kris Held, and then forward it to everyone you know.

Phishing trip

Just got a phone call from "002474". Background sounds of dozens of conversations, then a guy with a thick accent wanting to talk to me about my "Windows computer".

"Gee. We don't have Windows here - we run Linux!" I replied.

Silence for a bit - then "Sorry to bother you." and hangup.

Operation American Spring

Another march on Washington is planned:



May 16th.

What to patriots do when they can't afford to take time off work and travel 800 miles to our nation's capitol to protest our "leaders" ignoring us?

Sign

I've seen a few of the third category - but, thank God, never with a gun close to hand.