Talking about Bush to focus on economy at news conference – The White House- msnbc.com

 

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Bush to focus on economy at news conference – The White House- msnbc.com

The main priority ought to be focussing on how to keep meddling to a minimum.

A lot of the present mess was created by government and quasi-government meddling in the economy.  The Federal Reserve and the corresponding institutions in other countries are particularly dangerous as they try to manipulate economies. 

One of the main proper functions of government is to allow people to arrange their affairs without being blindsided by government.  Governments have to take actions that allow people to plan their lives.  The Federal Reserve is the antithesis of that concept- and much of it is controlled by private interests.  Wise men opposed the creation of the Federal Reserve many years ago on the basis that it was unconstitutional and dangerous.  I happen to agree with them on both counts.

And so the Reserve does things like lure people into economic deathtraps with low interest rates, then rapidly increases those rates in a short period which destroys the economy. 

The Reserve also tends to favor short term indicators of economic conditions like how fast the country is producing junk at this very instant rather than long term indicators like debt loads.   And so what the Reserve and the meddling politicians have done with the economy over the past few years is like driving down the highway at 100 miles per hour until you run out of gas, then slamming on the brakes in the middle of nowhere. 

The trap that we are in is partially international.  Because others are performing these manipulations too, people here increased rates in line with the international reserve banks to hold up the currency- although preserving the currency at the expense of the economy is generally a mistake. 

One way to avoid these traps in the future is to set a fixed rate that everybody goes by and nobody changes without the agreement of the rest.

Although the independence of the Reserve is a concern constitutionally, I would note that there are ways in which it appears that the Reserve is not independent enough.  

I remember back in 2002 or 2003 there was a day when Greenspan correctly denounced the Bush administration’s financial policies as totally irresponsible and a threat to America’s future.   When Mr. Greenspan said that he was totally correct and it was his job to say that.  He warned us that the Republicans were taking us to disaster. 

The very next morning, he was rushed in to a press conference in which he said that everything was fine and he retracted what he said the day before.  Somebody leaned on him awfully hard.   That incident needs to be investigated.  Mr. Greenspan blew the whistle before it was too late and somebody shut him up. 

I imagine that is the reason that Greenspan resigned, that he was not allowed to retain his position and act with integrity required. 

Other people had to know what was going to happen with the economy but have kept their mouths shut.  A lot of what is going on is really Mickey-Mouse stuff that you don’t need a high school diploma to figure out, like that if you get a lot of people to buy homes that they can barely afford when rates are at 2% and then you increase rates to 5%, that they won’t be able to afford their homes any more.

In other news related to meddling by people who know better, by meddling in other cultures we have allowed their populations to grow enormously.  Eventually there was going to be a food problem and we may be there.  In the past we have come up with the ability to grow more food with genetic manipulation and the like, so that the problem has been deferred.  The result is that the populations have continued to grow and to avoid another disaster we have to come up with another miracle.  But eventually there will not be a further miracle.  The massively increased populations that are using our technologies will cause great environmental devastation in the meantime, which will probably reduce the population that the planet can sustain in the long term, making the eventual crash worse and worse the longer it is put off.   Our meddlers are great at creating "bubble" effects generally, not just with the economy, where when the eventual reckoning comes, the result is worse than if they had not been meddling in the first place. 

Then these populations that we have meddled with will in all probability start fighting each other over food with guns that we have taught them to use.  Before all is said and done, there will probably be some nuclear weapons in the mix. 

A good time to stock up on a couple of years supply of food and clean water.  

Talking about Marine Widow’s Attorney Accuses DA Of Misconduct – KNSD-TV- msnbc.com

 

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Marine Widow’s Attorney Accuses DA Of Misconduct – KNSD-TV- msnbc.com

A prosecutor has no duty to seek a conviction.  A prosecutor’s duty is semi-judicial, to ensure that justice is done.  Defendants do not usually have the kind of resources that the state has to chase down leads.

In this case it sounds like there are all kinds of open questions remaining.  Yet another case that has gone through trial before a sufficient investigation has been done to warrant charges. 

First question is, was the dead guy killed by arsenic?  Considering that the widow was accused of poisoning him with arsenic, that would be a good place to start any investigation.  

The articles have said that the arsenic levels in two of the dead guy’s organs were 1000 times normal.  Sounds nasty, but you really need to know whether the fatal level is 100 times normal or 1,000,000 times normal for that figure to mean anything.   To put that figure in front of a jury without a direct statement about what that level of arsenic means, is highly improper if that was not done.

Also, those with arsenic poisoning have a characteristic profile of symptoms.  The victim in this case supposedly just dropped dead, which is different. 

Then there is the issue that is now raised of what the other tissue samples mean.  In some cases, toxins can accummulate over time in specific organs that trap them.  Tissues that don’t trap the toxin might be good to help separate chronic exposure from one large acute exposure.  With one enormous exposure it may be that everything is contaminated.  If arsenic is from well water, one of the most common sources, it may be that it accummulates over time in some tissues but not others.  The body does pass arsenic.

It should be important to determine whether the varying amounts from the different samples are medically possible.  If not, then the lab should be investigated.  Some labs in the United States have concocted evidence to assist with prosecutions.  When they do this, they should themselves be prosecuted. 

The information is important for another reason.  If the marine had been exposed to a great deal of arsenic in drinking water, other marines may have been so exposed as well.  We could be years behind in the medical treatment of the others because the case was treated as a criminal matter from the outset. 

Talking about Polygamist raid raises concerns – U.S. news- msnbc.com

 

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Polygamist raid raises concerns – U.S. news- msnbc.com

One of the causes of the kidnapping of the families of this odd religious group is the binaryism of the present legal structure and generally the thinking processes of those that like to make rules is usually infantile and reactionary- that the world is black and white, guilt and innocence, good and evil.   And so there may be a choice between two equally unhelpful extremes- do nothing or overreact. 

There is also an elementary error in the philosophy of law.  Laws are a limitation on authority.  Before there were formal laws whoever had power could do whatever they wanted.   The most important law, the foundation of all law, is habeus corpus, the principle that a person cannot be spirited away, without which other laws lose their force.  The point is that the state must have something to point to before a person’s liberty can be taken away.  That should not be taken to mean that if that criterion is met that the state must take a person’s liberty away.  Laws should be seen as a limitation on the state rather than the individual.

The clearest example of why this distinction is important is with the mundane area of speeding tickets.   Speeding is likely to cause accidents when there is heavy traffic, the roads are wet, there are turns, visibility is poor, etc.   That is no doubt why cops like to set up speeding traps where traffic volume is low, the roads are dry and it is clear and sunny (so their donuts don’t get wet) and on straightaways, especially down a hill where a car will naturally tend to pick up speed.

Conducting oneself thus is a perversion of justice.   Whoever makes the road has to post a number that covers all conditions, fair or foul, and so it is usually the highest safe speed under typical but not extraordinary adverse conditions.  Unless we get speed postings that have two numbers, that’s just the way it is.  The speed limit will always be inappropriate for perfect conditions and most people who aren’t cops know that.   The cops could better protect society by setting up speed traps in adverse conditions…but then their donuts would get wet. 

So most people are speeding most of the time.  Research shows little objective risk for going a small amount over the speed limit when no other risk factors are involved and so most speeding tickets are really about revenue generation.

The point of laws about speeding, as with any other laws, is so that if something is done wrong then there is a rule to point to.  Leaving what speed is excessive purely to the subjective discretion of a police officer would not do.  That doesn’t mean that there is anything magical about the number.   It means that in the event that there is behaviour sufficiently egregious that it merits citation, that there is something that we can point to.  If the behaviour isn’t sufficiently egregious, then in my view it shouldn’t be pursued over a technical violation.

There are further issues of victim’s rights.  I think that one of the key rights of a victim should be to decide if you are a victim at all. 

Arranged marriages, generally, I consider to be an abomination.  As Jesus said, let no man separate what God has put together, and I would add, what god has chosen to keep separate, let no man put together.  To give marriage vows to somebody that you have not been given love for is in my view akin to perjury and probably worse.  Exchanging marriage vows with somebody that you do not love should be seen by a religious person as spitting in God’s face, something like defecating on an altar. 

That being said, if some idiot wants to go along with such a process of their own free will, better that they damn themselves by so doing than that you damn yourself by meddling. 

The way in which our legal system works on alleged victims is hard.   The consequences of an allegation may be worse for the alleged victim than for an alleged perpetrator.  

Once a legal complaint has been made, control often passes to a prosecutor.  The interests of the victim may be different than the interests of the state.  Transfer of the complaint to state control may mean that a victim has even less control of their life if the victim is re-victimized by the state. 

The illegal actions of law enforcement with regard to this odd religion are a classic example of this issue.  An entire culture has been kidnapped further to a fishing expedition to charge a minority of them with offenses that did not exist when their sect was created. 

All of the people involved will be severely traumatized.  All of them.   What has happened to the children by being removed from their homes and summarily dumped in the homes of a different culture will probably be the worst thing that happens to any of them in their entire lives, including any abuse that a minority of them may have suffered.  This is a vendetta by those of a different religious persuasion, but not one that is any more enlightened.  The children are viewed as means to the end of destroying those with different religious ideas and that view is dangerous.

What is needed is some response in the middle, something that isn’t binary.   Most important with these alternative systems is that a person have a right to leave, and if they leave, that they have somewhere to go. 

This religious group doesn’t take efforts to silence those that leave the group, but they can fall on hard times because they don’t know anything else.  What is probably best is that the group allow social service organizations to come through trolling for dissenters and that they pay the cost of integrating any of these into normal society.  My standard policy- if they want to organize things in a particular manner, there are two main caveats.  One is that whoever stays, stays by consent, the other is that they pay the full cost of the way they do things.  If they generate especially a lot of male cast-offs, I don’t see why the rest of society should offer their community a subsidy. 

In judging them, look at the eyes.  It has been said that the eyes are the windows to the soul, and there is a lot of truth to that.  If you look at the eyes of those women from the compound on television, they are typical christian eyes, the eyes of somebody that has been raised to believe that it is their duty to suffer- but again, typically christian.  Nothing extra indicating some superhuman evil.  

If you look at the eyes of the children, many of them look so genuinely happy with their eyes shining that I cannot believe that they are abused in the ways described.  It puts a mark on a person when they are abused or otherwise suffer.  If you are accustomed to seeing it then you can see it immediately.  I’ve been a security guard for nine years, five years working at a hospital including work with psych patients, and dealing with drug addicts, I’ve been involved in law including volunteer work as as student for over eight years and I sure as hell know what the eyes say. 

The woman that has been the most bitter opponent of this Texas religion, who is seen regularly on TV, has hard, hard eyes.  Whether there or elsewhere, you can see that she has had a hard life.  But she is only one.  We cannot take her life of indicative or conclusive of what everybody else has experienced.

I would also stress that the restraint that I would advocate is about pragmatics.  It isn’t about relativism or even necessarily about humanitarianism.

I’ve seen an article about Chechnya today for instance in which the practice of abducting women for "brides" has been tolerated.  Unlike the situation with the Texas religious organization, the situation in Chechnya is institutionalized rape per se.  The appropriate response to this custom is to raid any place where a victim may be held, and summarily execute the family holding them without trial.   There are situations in which I am not in favor of a trial, including any where a trial would be a show trial.   Similarly I can’t agree with the trials of Nuremburg.  If you are just going to shoot someone, do it and have done with it rather than perverting the judicial system with kangaroo courts.  In situations of pervasive corruption, trials may not be appropriate.

Similarly, there are the Eunuchs in India who must be exterminated.  The way in which the Eunich culture perpetuates itself is through the abduction and sexual mutilation of young boys.  That culture must be ruthlessly exterminated, to the last Eunich, to protect those who would be future victims.

There is a culture on the Isle of Wight which, if destroyed by the English government, would also earn my praise for that government for doing the right thing.  The one in question is the purest evil on Earth today.

These exceptions though are rare.  With that cult in Texas, when I see the pictures of their happy, smiling children, I think to myself, can I say with any certainty that they have nothing to teach us?

And that is the message that is most important, that there is no message.  The certainty that we are perfectly right and others are perfectly wrong leads to nothing but grief, and it may be that if we can find a way to relate to one another on a human level, that a way better that what we have or what anybody else has may be found.

Talking about Fianc�e: ‘They killed Sean all over again’ – Crime & courts- msnbc.com

 

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Fianc�e: ‘They killed Sean all over again’ – Crime & courts- msnbc.com

At the very least this story shows why it can be tactically important to see things from another person’s point of view. 

The wedding party shot up execution style by police had been threatened with violence by other parties in the club.  The officers involved in starting the incident as I recall were supposed to be in an undercover narcotics investigation of the club, although from context and the length of the investigation I have to wonder if they were actually working for the people that they were supposed to be investigating. 

So this wedding party goes out after being threatened by violence and get in their car to drive away, whereupon an unmarked van tries to block them from leaving and unmarked men pull guns and point them at the car.  I’m not surprised that the driver was seen to move rapidly and smashed in to vehicles.  Any sane person would have put their foot to the floor and tried to get the hell out of there. 

The officers testified that they thought that they were being shot at, which doesn’t make a lot of sense as the first shot had to be fired by an officer.   And if they didn’t know where their fellow officers were or what they were doing but knew that there were a number of other officers in the area, filling the area with lots and lots of bullets is pretty stupid.  There is an unacceptably high risk of hitting another officer with friendly fire. 

The officer creating the mess said that he thought that one of the party that was ambushed had said something about coming back with a gun.  Well, they weren’t coming back, they were driving away.  It was over.  Then some idiot pulled a gun and started shooting to kill. 

Once an undercover officer has pulled a gun and established himself as a police officer outside of the establishment that he is supposed to be investigating, he’s obviously done there.  If you want to wrap up a lengthy investigation without showing any result to your superiors, egregiously blowing your cover is a good way to do it.   I wonder if the officers in question were under any pressure to show results. 

The key here is pursuing motive.  Without motive, a jury is going to see the incident as an act of stupidity alone.  At the very least the officers in question should not be allowed to carry firearms any more and shouldn’t be allowed in the field because their judgment can’t be trusted. 

The situation still has a very bad smell to it.  Some of these officers were senior enough to be detectives and if they were in the habit of filling the air with bullets every time one black man said something stupid to another black man, they wouldn’t have made it through the probationary period. 

The good news is that if there were some improper motive, double jeopardy only attaches to the offences that have already been tried in court.  This case may in part show the peril of proceeding too quickly to trial with an incomplete investigation.   Especially in high profile cases, prosecutors seem to have this tendency to hope that a bad smell is enough for a conviction.  In some cases this may allow a guilty man to go free because they didn’ t nail a case down, in others where the tactic is successful it may lead to a wrongful conviction.   I regard it as bad practice.  Hold off on the charges until a reasonable person would give a conviction, even when there may be public or internal pressures to proceed immediately.  Connect the dots and take away the argument.

In the event that this shooting was all one enormous act of stupidity, I would also like to see this incident raised in the same breath as Virginia Tech.

In order for an event to get much press, it usually has to be unusually rare and preferrably gory.   Medical malpractice kills as many people every day in America as would happen if two jumbo jets were colliding head on every single day.  Yet the occasional crash landing of a Cessna will almost always get more press.

This means that the media tend to turn public priorities upside down.  The more unlikely and unusual an event, i.e. the lower the objective threat, the more likely it is to make it to the front pages, and the more likely gutter politicians and the like will seize on it as something that must be acted on immediately, ahead of more important but banal priorities, in order to advance their careers and influence.

Of people matching the generic profile of those that shot up Columbine and Virginia Tech, maybe one in a million are going to so something serious about it and one in a hundred million people are going to generate those kinds of death tolls. 

It is notorious that our society lacks the resources to fully investigate and prosecute offences that are already and definitely occurring.  Now cretins driven by irresponsible television programing want to devote precious resources to investigating crimes that have not yet happened and in most cases are a very long shot to ever happen. 

Which brings us to this New York case.   If every time somebody says something stupid we send in cowboys for a code-5 takedown, the social costs will be enormous, the costs of investigating the incidents will be enormous, in the "fog of war" innocent people will get shot and killed, and there are likely to be unconscionable abuses of power. 

There are times when politicians need to be unified against the general population and the press because the press, who have no responsibility for the consequences of important public policy decisions, are very good at whipping up mass hysteria- indeed the Nancy Disgrace show and some other programs seem to exist for that sole purpose. 

And so when the public calls for overreaction, the New York case may be in a way fortuitous.  After Virginia Tech, the baying for a response to this unique incident has been obcene, like children in a supermarket whining for candy.

And so we should be showing these whiny children the New York incident and telling them, this is the America that you are asking for.  Is that what you really want?  Any time that incidents get escalated and people start waving loaded guns around, whether police or civilians, there is a good chance that bad things are going to happen.   Responses have to be appropriate to the objective threat level.  Anything else is not sound policy.

Talking about Can DNA tests reveal a criminal mind? – Washington Post- msnbc.com

 

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Can DNA tests reveal a criminal mind? – Washington Post- msnbc.com

Anything can be used for good or for evil, even holy books, and so that a given activity has the potential for evil shouldn’t necessarily be cause for stopping it. 

As far as DNA being used for mitigation of criminal acts, I would think that to be just as hokey as the defences to do with upbringing and environment.  Everything happens for a reason.   Knowing the cause doesn’t undo the effect.   I do have concern though that for some misguided liberals DNA testing will continue the ongoing silly trend of avoiding holding anybody responsible for anything- except the actions of others. 

Every person has one or more areas of temptation to engage in antisocial behaviour and most resist.  Tonight I was watching a show on gorillas, focussed on a particular gorilla named Titus.  Titus had grown up in a very negative environment including a period in which he lost his entire family within a very short period, yet he grew up to be a relatively stable and consistent leader of his pack and under his leadership his gorilla clan grew and flourished.   When I was watching the program a little light went on as I realized that even a gorilla is able to make that choice.  Maybe it would be easier for the gorillas as they don’t have small armies of pseudo-intellectuals dedicated to contriving excuses.

On the other hand we will have to be careful with big government, especially in combination with drug companies, taking too much interest in genetics, and police already have some problems with the profiling systems that they use in big cases.  When police get early tunnel vision they tend to focus on one suspect to the exclusion of others which leads to botched cases and wrongful convictions. 

The implications of some genetic correlations are already around and not being used to their full potential.  Blood type, as noted by Peter D’Adamo, tends to be bundled up with other traits.  Of particular interest is that, for instance, blood type O correlates strongly with manic depression and with more impulsive behaviours.   The natural levels of the stress hormone cortisol are twice as high in the average blood type A person as with the average blood type O person, which may be a reason why blood type O’s are more likely to engage in risk taking behaviours than average. 

And so I would expect to see a higher rate of crimes of passion and stupidity among blood type O persons, with possibly fewer crimes that involve careful premeditation although the latter portion is less certain.

The other major blood type, blood type A, on the other hand is skewed towards obsessive-compulsive behaviour.  Blood type A’s tend to be gentler and more organized.  As their stress levels are already high to begin with, they tend to avoid unnecessarily creating stressful situations.  But the obsessive-compulsive and premeditative nature may have a correlation with crimes that have those qualities to them.

There is further an interesting correlation between the character of nations compared with the predominant blood type.   Americans have a plurality of blood type O and they act like it.  Germans have a plurality of blood type A and they act like it.

Lest I should be taken as saying that blood type A is a gene for good, which I do think is generally the case, remember Auschwitz- calm and methodical evil can be the worst of all.

But where this point really gets interesting is blood type B, the third most common blood type and about 10% of the world populations.

Blood type B is found commonly in populations descended from raiders (particularly, Aryan raiders) and is the dominant blood type in some of the more notoriously corrupt populations today. 

Among those persons that I have known to be blood type B, my subjective anecdotal observation is that they tend to be dishonest and manipulative.

While blood type A and O are both able to support large, coherent populations, populations that have a plurality of blood type B are a shambles and I have a suspicion that they require a larger host population in order to thrive.

But where do we go with this?

A lot of blood type O’s are already on Ritalin or other attention deficit drugs, not so much to remedy their attention deficits but more to make them docile and controllable.   If they are identified for predisposition at a very early age there may be moves to pre-empt their behaviour even before it has manifested.

Genetic testing will be used by drug companies to begin getting people on drugs at the very earliest age possible- if we let them get away with it. 

There is the further problem that people tend to conform to our expectations for them.  It is therefore dangerous to assume the worst from the outset.  My favorite classic example of this is the case where a number of students were given aptitude tests.  Due to computer glitches, the results were roughly inverted such that the brightest performed worst and the dumbest performed best.  When the error was found some time later, those that had been erroneously identified as being bright actually were doing the best in school, while those with the false negative results were doing poorly.  Somehow the teachers had caused the students’ results to conform with their erroneous preconceptions. 

Likewise, if we assume fatalistically that a given population is genetically disposed to crime or evil, we may cause what we fear to come to pass.

There is further the issue of giving people a chance as genes are only one factor in determining how a person will be.  Our genes are flexible enough I think, that most people could be either a saint or a monster from birth, although tendencies may be one way or the other.   We are all descended from barbarians, we all have the capacity to be that, yet most can function in a modern society.   Any of us born in another time and another place could have taken up a sword and cut another man down without pity.  That is not an excuse for doing so now. 

And further note that, of those that are abused as children for example, only about one in three turn in to abusers themselves.  That is, in the existing regime of excuses, that a person had a rough background is not conclusive that the person will continue a cycle of abuse.  I would expect genetics to be the same way. 

To be good or evil is a choice, and it’s one even a gorilla can make.

 

Talking about How Texas town became polygamists’ refuge – Crime & courts- msnbc.com

 

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How Texas town became polygamists’ refuge – Crime & courts- msnbc.com

And on and on it goes, the media feeding the religious hatred of this odd religious faction.

That the initial search warrant and the whole business were initiated by a fraud, the calling in of a fake complaint, has gotten a little press, but not much. 

That the police, prosecutors and judge seemed to have been ready to react, and indeed overreact to an extent unknown to law to this fraudulent complaint has gotten far less press than it should.  Each of the persons so involved in this conspiracy should be facing life imprisonment and should be stripped of all personal assets in civil suits for their fraudulent actions. 

The judge will be the most difficult to convict, but is curiously unconcerned that fraud was used to get her initial order, which went far beyond what any reasonable judge would have ordered.   Most judges when they are deceived into giving such an order are very irate and set aside the initial order without delay. 

At the very least the judge must be de-frocked, and the judge and prosecutors must be disbarred, and the police prevented from acting as police officers ever again because none of them can ever be trusted in their respective capacities again. 

If you are looking for somewhere to start with religious improprieties, how about circumcision?   Those worshipping the devil, Melchizedek, thousands of years ago adopted his practice of the sexual torture of young boys to further their devil worship.  That hateful practice continues to the present day.  If there is any place to start with shutting down religious excesses, that would be it.   At least the practice of burning people alive or crucifying them to worship Melchizedek has been discontinued, but there is a long way to go.

Moreover, the issue of circumcision shows the delicacy with which such issues must be handled.   In Jewish history, the laws of those following God and those following the devil became intermingled, to the point where in the Judeo-Christian religions most followers don’t really know their right hand from their left.  They follow wicked things and good practices with often equal conviction because they are often both equally unexamined. 

I think that most people know at some level now that circumcision is wrong, but because of the size of the religions involved and related factors they hold back and are perhaps too deferential because of the feedback likely to entail from pressing the issue forcefully.  So because some groups are powerful and well connected, their wicked practices are tolerated, not because they are good, but because they are common.  To challenge what they do would be inconvenient and too politically costly. 

And, following the principle of cognitive dissonence and similar psychological pulls, they believe that because they engage in a practice it must be good.  Whatever any group of people do, they find some way to rationalize that it is good.  This is a more complex issue than good or evil.  All people find a way to live with what they do, although they may seem in other respects to be normal, decent people. 

Saint Paul himself was only prepared to come out and say that circumcision was unnecessary, I presume because if he had come out and said outright that it was an abomination, nobody would have followed him. 

And so the real failing of the group in Texas is not anything that they have done, but that their practices no longer have broad acceptance although it is beyond question that their practices would have generated little interest in many times and places.  Those whose practices are worse may continue to be unchallenged through political correctness and because of their political power and connections, and because their actions have general acceptance although they are worse. 

This is precisely the sort of situation that any democracy must guard against the strongest, where the will of groups backed by the majority of the population is contary to the practices of a minority.  For true democratic principles to be upheld, minority rights must always be stronger than the principle of majority rule. 

And so, if you would not condemn the jews for circumcision, or seize their children, I cannot see how it can be possibly justified with the group in Texas- particularly when it is accomplished by deliberate fraud.  That they lack the same means for their defence is no justification.

For those who have sold their souls to destroy the Texas group, I sincerely hope that you get all of the bad karma that is coming to you. 

In praise of Walmart

Give praise where praise is due.  Walmart has taken the unusual step of taking some responsiblity for whom it sells guns to.   This is an important first step and it would be a good idea for those who believe in gun responsibility to buy whatever guns they do buy from Walmart as a sign of support. 

 

Of course the NRA complained bitterly about the business and the constitutional right to bear arms.   That shows a misunderstanding.  The constitution is a contract between government and people, it has no bearing on relations between say, a business and its customers unless it is absolutely explicit about that.   So there isn’t, for instance, a constitutional right to bear arms in a Walmart.  That is a matter of other laws, and where there is no law, a business can sell to you on whatever terms it wants.

 

The NRA will have to content itself with presumably thumping the District of Columbia in the Supreme Court on the probably unconstitutional gun ban. 

 

I would take this a step further than Walmart though.  Provided that the costs are within reason, every gun sold in the US should be test-fired prior to sale and the bullet markings be entered in to the appropriate police registry.  That isn’t a constitutional violation even if it were ordered by the government.   There is a constitutional right to have guns in the absence of an articulable reason why a given person specifically should not be allowed to have one.  To read that as a constitutional right to assassinate people anonymously is more than a stretch.  Nothing wrong with taking finger prints of everybody buying a gun either.  For stores with appropriate tech abilities, they could be hooked right in to a police database and get a no-sell instruction for anybody questionable.

 

Walmart’s stand is an important first step in what I was talking about in an earlier blog, that those who make or sell guns should be prepared to pay the full cost of the guns to society and if they don’t then they are receiving a subsidy.   The threat of paying the real cost of gun sales will incite businesses to take steps to deter improper use of guns that they sell and it may be that the steps that they take are as effective or even more effective than those taken by government because they will look at the cost-benefit.    It could be that Walmart realized that it is only a matter of time before they get sued for a gun nut using a gun that they sell in a rampage, and sooner or later those who sell guns will be held accountable.  If they get sued in Texas it may take an awful lot of gun sales to make up for the damage award. 

 

 

Talking about Obama hits back amid ‘bitter’ flap – Barack Obama News- msnbc.com

 

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Obama hits back amid ‘bitter’ flap – Barack Obama News- msnbc.com

For anybody that values truth above all, what Hillary Clinton has said about Barack Obamas comments indicate that she is unfit to be president. 

Mr. Obama says that people in small towns who become bitter turn to guns and religion?  How’s he going to go out on a limb next?  By saying that the sky is blue or that the sun will rise tomorrow?

I think that Stephen King once said it best when he wrote that small towns have a dull, moronic kind of evil about them.   Small towns breed the kind of inbred, 70 I.Q. white trash that think that date rape or burning a cross on a black man’s lawn are the funniest things ever. 

Not that the slick, tricky form of evil that tends to be more common in cities is necessarily any better. 

If Mr. Obama said that the sun would rise tomorrow, Hillary Clinton would probably object that it could be cloudy and demand an immediate retraction.  She may as well start an advertising campaign bragging that she represents politics as usual.  If that’s the best that she can do she may as well throw in the towel and declare Obama the nominee.

Her loss will probably become a textbook example of how not run a campaign.   The people want the candidate that represents the voice of reason and purpose.   If Hillary had stuck to her strengths and just used more polish she would have been unstoppable.   No doubt her pollsters told her that her number one downside is a perceived coldness.  But there are downsides to everything.  Turning her into "soccer mom", dancing around and smiling and clapping was corny, it didn’t work and it made her look un-presidential.   They should have just polished the rough edges.  Every president has to be able to make certain types of decisions with a detached objectivity and most voters in their hearts know that. 

Having Clinton go all the way the other way and turn into deranged harpy doesn’t make her look presidential either.  Sounds like she needs new handlers.  Barack Obama speaks like a black Bill Clinton. 

There lots of hard issues that need to be talked about in the US and all over the world.  When some politicians make it impossible to talk about these issues because they perceive a possibility to gain by it, what they are doing is selfish.  A good leader has to lead. 

 

Talking about Rampant abuse alleged at polygamist camp – Crime & courts- msnbc.com

 

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Rampant abuse alleged at polygamist camp – Crime & courts- msnbc.com

Mohandas Gandhi and his wife were both 13 when they married.   The culture that he was raised in turned him in to probably the most positive humanitarian influence on the 20th century; of course by modern western standards they were all criminal perverts.

How many cultures in the world still marry young? 1 billion people? 2 billion?  More? 

Of course in the cultures that do this, children are usually raised to be self reliant and think like adults and so they are probably better prepared to think like adults at an early age.

In our culture children are trained to continue to think like children for their entire lives and defer to authority and slick sales pitches, and so they are more vulnerable than need be to predation both in childhood and adulthood.  

Would I like the people from the raided community?   No idea.  The news reports are rather one sided.  The people there aren’t exactly running away like North Koreans although it would be a lot easier.  If bitterness is a guide, there seem to be a lot more people percentage-wise leaving other churches.  

Before we categorically dismiss these people as evil, it is wise to remember that they are a relatively closed society and that in many places in the world they wouldn’t draw that much attention.  There are many times when this activity would not have gotten that much attention.  Remember Romeo and Juliet, the foremost romance in the western world? Juliet was not yet 14.  Probably shouldn’t have said that, now the usual people will want to have it banned and burned and Shakespeare condemned as a pedophile.

And the rights of people to chosoe their own way that have only just been received in our society after decades of conflict, our society expects other societies to instantly adopt without incident or resistance.  A woman has only had the right not to have children in the United States for less than 40 years, and it is still under attack, and about 20 years ago there was a dramatic shift in the United States whereby for the first time in many or most states it became illegal for a husband to rape his wife. 

The same evil that has always infected human society remains though, only changing its form.  That is puritanism, phariseeism, the belief system that one has the inherent right to control others and the inherent right to make decisions for others, and if they suffer that is fine as long as our rules are followed. 

Most religions, and most other movements, suffer from this defect. 

Worse, people and organizations are not static, and when they move in a direction, they tend to move more in the same direction.  There is a psychological phenomenon that must be carefully studied, called "cognitive dissonance".  Any time one does something- anything- the brain changes a little bit to justify what was done and normalize it.   And so people and organizations must carefully police what they do.   Cognitive dissonance is a greater force in the world than Islam and Christianity combined.

This self restraint is not just for the sake of potential victims, it is also for the sake of oneself.  As was once said, what does it gain you to win the world but lose your soul in the process?  

Once people and groups start meddling and deciding that they know what is right for everybody else, it tends to take on a life of its own.  It is uncommon for the end result to be good.  I would even suggest that those with the greatest certainty of their own perfection tend to have the least grasp of what is right for anybody else.

And so we should worry, not just for the sect that has been unconstitutionally destroyed, but for ourselves.   If big government gets away with abducting a whole people in this case, what will be the next step?  Will the Jehovah’s witnesses be targeted for their unusual beliefs, including those about blood transfusions?  Will the lands of the Amish be expropriated because some industry believes that they can be put to some more profitable purpose? 

I am particularly unfond of the idea that those from the sect are supposed to assimilate the so-called "modern world".  Will we, say, forceably expose the minds of Amish children to broaden their viewpoints?   Will we define it as child abuse not to indoctorinate children as is done in our culture?

Our culture has increased productivity to the point where a small amount meets all of our real needs and the rest is devoted to vanity and excess, which incidentally is destroying the entire world.  Should we be preaching to anybody at all?

 

 

Talking about Polygamist camp searched for victim – Crime & courts- msnbc.com

 

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Polygamist camp searched for victim – Crime & courts- msnbc.com

I hope that this case is being done by the book, but I doubt it.  I would not even be shocked if the victim alleged to have come from the compound never lived there.

Child abuse is rampant throught America so one has to wonder why it is that these kinds of allegations against odd religions lead to the cavalry being sent in, even with the use of tanks at Waco.   

And the breadth of the investigation- all of the women and children getting bused away, presumably to see if there are more victims.  An armed fishing expedition.   Again, when run of the mill allegations lack sufficient resources to pursue properly, one has to wonder why this case resulted in this treatment. 

I was somewhat disgusted to see that the people being taken away from their religious compound were bused away in buses clearly marked as belonging to the Baptist church.    I would have expected to see more sense than that, when there is likely to be an accusation of religious persecution.   Even if the allegation in this case is true, the element of religious persecution is obvious.  Busing people away in buses from a rival congregation rubs salt in the wound, and again makes one wonder about inappropriate religious interference with due process.

I doubt if more than one in a hundred congregations of that size of any faith do not have a single abused child.   If one abused child is grounds for taking an entire congregation hostage Guantanamo style, that ought to be making everybody nervous.   We are not at the point where one allegation of abuse will be sufficient to have tanks sent to Catholic cathedrals, but the trend in that direction is disturbing.  When one person’s right to religion, or right to abstain from religion, is threatened, there is an implied threat to everybody else’s. 

Is there any abuse at that enclave?  Given the number of persons, it would be surprising if there were none.  Having police take away hundreds of people in a fishing expedition to see if any cause for charges can be found remains a dangerous precedent. 

The incident is probably primarily about religious hatred, and should be investigated by outside investigators as such.   There was a case from LA a few years back where police raiding a Hell’s Angels location on a fishing expedition took everything related to the Hell’s Angels that they could find, even paving stones that had their gang insignia on it.   As a matter of law, what the police did in that case was theft and they got hammered for it in a lawsuit. I presume that the officers and prosecutors in that case were probably not charged with theft, as they ought to have been. 

Does it make any sense that the Hell’s Angels should have more rights than a religious institution?

If they are allowed to sue the state of Texas under Texas law for unlawful detention, those people from that compound ought to, and if they can seek punitive damages, they ought to.   I would be giving them a million dollars a pop if I were on the jury to send a message to the government that you can’t be doing that.

And once again I’m left wondering if Ron Paul is the only person from Texas who realises that there is a constitution.