Electronic Lycanthroplasty

Sebastian has a new report about “assault weapons” from the desperate fools over at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership. At 64 pages long, it looks like they probably spent a lot of time and diminishing funds to come up with it. As such, it’s almost too bad that it’s easy to expose them as lying frauds simply by using two pictures.

Aww, who am I kidding? It’s hilarious.

• Assault Weapons Have No Sporting or Self-Defense Purpose
• Assault weapons have distinct features that separate them from sporting firearms.
• They are uniquely military features, with no sporting purpose
  whatsoever.
• You will not find these guns in a duck blind or at the Olympics.
• [and 26 other mentions of sports]

No sporting purpose? Never find them in the Olympics? O RLY?

See the magazine outside of the grip? That makes this Olympic target pistol into a spooky “assault weapon.” The frame might even count as a shoulder thing that goes up Barrel Shroud of Doomâ„¢ since it’s not all part of the slide..

Throughout the report, they list a bunch of crimes where “assault weapons” or “assault rifles” were involved. About a dozen of which name the SKS. Overall, the SKS is mentioned 23 times. In case you live on the moon, or have otherwise never seen one, here is what the SKS looks like:

From the factory, they are not equipped with detachable magazines, pistol grips, folding stocks, or flash hiders. For that matter, the integral mag only hold ten rounds. About the only thing “assault-ish” about it is the little metal square thingy near the muzzle which a bayonet can attach to. However, without a detachable magazine and one more eeeevil feature, even that doesn’t make it qualify under the expired, political definition of an “assault weapon.”

Furthermore, being that the SKS is neither designed to fire in full auto mode, nor a copy of something that was, it doesn’t remotely qualify as an “assault rifle” either.

Seems like one of these days they would stop parading out lies which have been debunked a brazillionty times. But if they want to continue to provide us with an endless source of pointing and laughing, who am I to complain?

It appears that some intrepid internet sleuths have uncovered information indicating that Barack Obama was an active member in a national socialist party. Is this the fabled October Surprise?

Granted, it’s not really surprising to anyone who’s been paying attention. What, with his ties to Bill Ayers, Saul Alinsky, ACORN, and so on. Or his epic, subversive quest to destroy the Second Amendment and disarm the public. Or his class warfare rhetoric and wealth redistribution schemes. Or his two decades of membership in a Marxist, Liberation Theology church. Or his Soviet propaganda style posters. Or the children’s choirs singing hymns to Dear Leader. Or, well, you get the picture.

But, yea, it might be the final piece of the puzzle needed to make the public realize exactly what kind of “change” he has in mind..

Hat tip to The Liberty Sphere.

Someone asked this on GTAF. May as well repost my reply here since I haven’t blogged in a while..

Capitalism, like most other inanimate things or systems, isn’t good or bad in and of itself. Any system can be used for either, and no system is infallible. So, given the choice of potential success or failure by government regulation over the same potential via consensual means, I will always take the latter. Even though government can smooth out some of the rapid, downward changes (and, in reverse, delay upticks), it is always backed by the threat or actual use of coercive, lethal force. Regardless of whether this force is aimed at the “right people” (usually determined by populist, mob mentality), it only serves to legitimize the authoritarian urges of the people drawn to government work. And it always desensitizes the public to further expansions of the state; or even worse, conditions the public to ask for more of it.

233 years ago, we fought a bloody revolution in large part due to sales taxes on tea and stationary. Yet after two centuries of ever increasing cries from the public to “do something” about this or that, we’ve reached the point where the government thinks it can control or tax anything. And the public demands more of it.

That said, Mike Tequeli is correct that we don’t have a true free market. This crisis was caused mostly by the Federal government forcing banks to lend out money to people who couldn’t afford it via the Community Reinvestment Act and its progeny/amendments. Lots of CRA supporters are pointing out that it only forced a fraction of the banks to do anything, and that the rest was all greed. This is true to an extent, however it ignores that the ones who weren’t forced to do so were still encouraged by the implicit Federal backing via Fannie and Freddie. Either way, it is a result of governmental social engineering, and getting mad at the executives who took the bait is akin to beating the family dog because it shit on the carpet after feeding it chili and locking it in a bedroom for twelve hours.

At any rate, I think the bailout might end up being largely symbolic. I heard somewhere that a number of the institutions who are affected by the mess aren’t going to take part in the bailout anyway because of all the strings which are attached to it. Even if a substantial number do play along, the (half-ass) plan probably won’t do anything other than drag the whole situation out for longer than it would have taken for the market to correct itself. Granted, this will probably make the damage more gradual, and perhaps limit the floor it would reach in the short-term. But overall, I feel the rewarding of bad behavior, both on the part of the market and the government, will only serve to obfuscate the lessons that should have been learned through all of this.

But, then again, I’m not an economist.

So. After eight years of the left shrieking that McBushHitlerCheneyBurton is going to shut down media outlets who question him and start arresting critics any second now, it has finally come to pass.

Only it’s the Obama camp that’s doing it.

Just imagine how much fun Obama can have once he’s in charge of the DOJ..

Generally speaking, one shouldn’t expect much from a political debate on a gaming site. Yet I was still dumbfounded when someone posted this video with the text “Matt Damon speaks out on Palin,” as if that means something. Since it’s late and I’m too lazy to reiterate my response, I’ll just quote myself.

Wow.

Thanks for posting that.

You know, I was almost ready to hold my nose, cast a Quixotic protest vote for Barr/Root even though Barr’s record before switching parties is about as libertarian as Ghengis Khan, but after seeing Matt Damon– who, despite making more money in five minutes than I’ve seen in a lifetime, still trembles at the alter of the nanny state for protection; and whose entire adult life has been spent in the bubble of Hollywood, far removed from the real world, thus making him nearly as much of an expert on politics as my cat is qualified to perform neurosurgery –go into such a breathless display of pants-shitting hysteria over Palin, I’ve changed my mind.

At best, the fact he’s so terrified of the ticket means they’re doing something right. At worst, well, at least I’ll be canceling out this useful idiot’s vote.

And, yes, in case any of my (maybe six?) readers haven’t noticed yet, I do enjoy run-on sentences.

But, seriously, the McCain/Palin ticket is starting to sound better and better every day. While I don’t trust McCain after the whole “campaign finance reform” thing or his rambling about imaginary “gun show loopholes,” the next POTUS will get to nominate two or three Supreme Court Justices. Even if he only gets that half right, and we get one more Thomas or Alito, there might be a shot at reigning in the magical Interstate Commerce clause. If that could be rolled back far enough, McCain’s own Justices could very well limit any damage he could do.

Damn. I really need to stop underestimating the insanity of the nutroots..

At first it looked like they were taking the high road on the Palin baby-swap conspiracy because the first links on the subject disappeared. But, alas, it seems that the conspiracy has gone mainstream (for lack of a better word..) at DKos. And expanded to other nutroot bloggers. Better yet, after popping it into googlenews, it looks like the left is fighting each other over it.

And where is The One in all of this? Isn’t he supposed to be a different kind of politician who’s above dirt like this? Shouldn’t he be telling his minions to stop it?

But, yea, I’m just glad there’s a popcorn machine at work. Gonna need lots of that while watching these so-called “tolerant” “progressives” from the “reality based community” unleash a hateful, sexist, smear campaign wrapped in a dozen layers of tinfoil!

Obama surrogate Robert Wexler is telling people Palin is the next Hitler because she may or may not have supported Pat Buchanan once back in ’99.

L.

O.

L.

I guess that puts “Reverend” Wright back on the table too. This should be fun.

McCain picked Sarah Palin for his VP slot. I’ve been guessing for weeks now that she’d get the nod. Probably should have posted my prediction to win internet points.

But, yea, it looks like I spoke too soon about speaking too soon about the Democrats’ gamesmanship yesterday. They don’t seem to know how to react to the news.

The Obama camp’s first reaction was to attack her via press release. Then a few hours later, Obama sorta-kinda retracted it, congratulated her, and made a half-assed attempt at apologizing. Like Rezko, Wright, and Snuffy before this, perhaps those ‘weren’t the campaign staffers he knew’

One has to wonder though; does he thinks he’ll get do-overs if he has to react to a national emergency in the White House? Between throwing associates under the bus after defending them or sending out multiple statements in response to the Russia/Georgia situation, the pattern developing here isn’t very reassuring. I mean, really, do we want someone with this kind of “hair-trigger” holding the Nuclear Football?

Well, someone else, rather, as that sounds an awful like the “cowboy diplomacy” complaints we hear about Bush.

It’s also amusing that Obama, of all people (and the media, pundits, and his surrogates) are criticizing Palin’s lack of experience now. Why, with the way they walked right into that, it’s almost like they’re in panic mode..

In other news, the Kos Kiddies are apparently developing some elaborate conspiracy theory that her son is actually her daughter’s based on some Google thumbnail picture or something. I would imagine that Karl Rove, Blackwater, and/or a time machine are involved somehow, but apparently the moderators over there are deleting the posts as they appear. You know you’re unhinged when even Kos rejects you.

Now if only McCain wasn’t at the top of the ticket. Meh. Oh well, at least the campaign will be fun to watch.

Looks like I spoke too soon. The Democrats upped their game considerably during the last two days. Most of the rhetoric was the same old bullshit, to be sure. But the spin the Bidens, Bill Clinton, and Obamarama put on it was much better. The parade of retired military personnel and the surprising appearance of thousands of American flags was a nice touch too. If not overkill.

For a while there, it looked like they would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory once again. With the slick packaging and timing the final day to the anniversary of Dr. King’s famous speech though, I’m afraid there might be enough idiots products of our public education system out there to fall for it.

No. On second thought. Not afraid. Terrified.

Then again, it’s kind of hard not to laugh at the irony that the man the media are calling the “fulfillment of Dr. King’s Dream” wants to bring back involuntary servitude..

Usually the political conventions are the opening salvo of the general election where the Republicrats tell you what they stand for and begin to explain to non-political-junkies just why anyone should vote for their party. So what have we learned from the Democrats at the halfway point?

Nothing really.

Day one was a bunch of emotive tripe and cliches. About the biggest revelation was that Michelle Obama memorized every episode of the Brady Bunch. Which means the Obama family are just like You and Me™. Or something.

*yawn*

During day two, we learned that McCain is exactly like Bush because he voted against the Bush/Cheney energy bill which Obama voted for. I’m still not sure how that works. If anything, shouldn’t that mean Obama is the one who is more like Bush? They also tried linking McCain to Bush with the claims that McCain wants to stay in Iraq for a brazillionty years. Even though the Bush team is working on a deal to have all US forces out of Iraq within the next three years.

Perhaps they should stop patting each other on the back for five minutes and pick up a newspaper or something..

Sprinkled in between a bunch of really tired jokes about McCain’s houses, there was a parade of Democrats telling us how doing the exact opposite of what Obama wants to do works, therefore we should vote for him.

Some of them talked about how they’ve advanced alternative energy at the State and local level without Federal mandate (so why do you need Obama to mandate it?!). The Governor of Montana talked about the greatness of low taxes on business (Obama wants to raise the corporate and capital gains tax rates) and digging for coal/oil (Obama wants to eliminate fossil fuels within 10 years somehow, and block all new mines and drilling). Most of the speakers rambled on about how they got where they are by hard work and self-sacrifice, but think you should vote for Obama to get all that for “free” from the government without all the hard work and self-sacrifice they just got done praising.

The highlight of day two was a speech by Hillary Clinton which didn’t so much explain why anyone should vote for Obama as it did talk about how women can do anything they put their mind to.

Anything, that is, except win an election.

In other news, it appears that they’ve constructed a miniature Greek temple for The One to give his acceptance speech from..

It’s a shame that the Republicans just had to go and run McCain this year. The thought of him winning kinda takes the fun out of watching the spectacular fail the Democrats are grasping at.