No Nanny State - Molon Labe!

Where does it end?

It seems that more and more, I see articles about how our government, and this administration in particular, seems to be intent on controlling the populous, regardless of how it infringes on our rights or what laws it side-steps.

I've written extensively on how the domestic spying scandal is so clearly in violation of laws that were established to stop exactly what the administration is doing - spying on Americans (here, here, here and here). The laws on the books provide provisions that allow the administration to act in the case of "imminent threat". They simply choose to ignore those provisions. Too much paperwork, you see.

Gunner at No Quarters points out how federal employees are not allowed to voice their opinions, at least when they are in conflict with those of the administration. Imagine if you were at work and two armed officers told you that you could not voice your opinion through bumper stickers and other signs that are on your car. This is The United States of American, is it not? Why should the government care if you are a federal employee or working on federal property (which is owned by The People, right?) when you park your car with bumper stickers?

The whole article and transcript between this guy and the Homeland Security goons is Soviet-esque.

Officer: Step back here please.

Dwight Scarbrough: Let's have a seat.

O: I'd like to talk to you.

DS: Let's have a seat.

O: Sir, come over here please.

DS: I don't want to come over there. I want to sit down.

O: Let me tell you what's going on here. OK, there's a violation of the code of federal regulations.

DS: For what?

O: The CFR. 41, CFR, 102, 74, 415. Posting or affixing signs, pamphlets, handbills or flyers on federal property. Do you understand that?

DS: I'm not doing anything on federal property.

O: Yes, sir, you've got signs posted on your vehicle. I'm informing you that you're in violation.

DS: That's not illegal. That's not illegal.

It goes downhill from there. These goons understand that they can cite and fine you, then YOU have to go to court, spending your time and money, to defeat bogus charges.

And our representatives just keep piling-on the laws to deprive us of our liberties. Have you seen the latest "twist" proposed for the USA PATRIOT Act? Oh, it's a doozie. It's called the "Combat Methamphetamine Act". Sounds like a drug law to me. Clearly, I'm confused.

"The growing availability of methamphetamine is a form of terrorism unto itself."

Huh? What kind of twisted, uber-authoritarian mind came up with that? Am I in some kind of a time-warp, where the Stasi or KGB didn't really need to have a reason to arrest you?

These vast new police powers, contained in a new "Combat Methamphetamine Act" (CMA) and other provisions, serve no purpose in the ongoing and serious struggle against terrorism. One proposal could place millions of Americans who purchase cold medicine on a huge government watch list; another could broaden powers that have been used to prosecute people for catching lobsters whose tails are too short. What could possibly be Congress' motivation in adding stuff like this to a mammoth piece of counterterrorism legislation (ironically, as part of an agreement negotiated with wavering Senators to put more checks on the government's PATRIOT Act powers)? The answer is, to tweak the parlance of pundits, very September 10th. The CMA pushes Congress's favorite pre-9/11 bipartisan activity: escalating the never-ending War on Drugs.

Just like the RICO Act, which was bastardized from fighting organized crime and re-shaped into a catch-all asset forfeiture act, the USA PATRIOT act is being transformed into whatever type of hammer the government needs at the moment.

Why this preoccupation with drug laws? What spawned this perception of Nanny that our citizens don't know how to run their own lives? If an individual wants to ruin their life on drugs, why should the government care? Why should they intercede? The crux of personal liberty is the ability to make your own decisions, good or bad. You have to live with the results of those decisions.

There is nothing in the Constitution that even remotely authorizes these governmental activities. Why is it allowed? Why are we standing still while we're being stripped naked of all we hold dear?

In the coming months, I am going to attempt to figure out how much money we spend on the "War on Drugs". Enforcement, prosecution and internment. I know it will drive me nuts, but it's something I think we need to understand.

The old adage of, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" is precisely what is happening in our country right now. As our government grows, like a bully on a playground, Nanny pounds you when you don't play along.

You think I'm exagerating? Think again.

The Heritage Foundation, which supports the PATRIOT Act and general drug-control measures, nevertheless charges that even the current loose definitions of money laundering and smuggling are leading to the "overcriminalization" of petty regulatory violations. A Heritage paper cites an astonishing example of how far combating meth could take the PATRIOT Act from its ostensible business of combating terrorism. Fisherman David McNab is now serving a multi-year sentence because smuggling and money laundering charges were tacked on to a minor environmental violation in bagging lobsters that were less than 5.5 inches in length. "The lobsters were 'smuggled' in plastic bags for all to see," Heritage authors Paul Rosenzweig and Ellen S. Podgor note. "The proceeds from the sale of the lobsters were 'laundered' because they were deposited in a bank." (A good description of the McNab case is also available in Gene Healy's Cato Institute book Go Directly to Jail: The Crminalization of Almost Everything, but one detail is worth noting here: McNab wasn't even guilty of attacking American lobster interests: He was fishing in Honduras, and the smuggling charge stems from his violation of the "Lacey Act," a law that prohibits importation of wildlife that was taken in violation of foreign law.)

Something needs to be done. Quickly.

This was a tough find

I've added another gun to my arsenal. The Mossberg International Silver Reserve.

Take a peep.....

Click here if you want to see a blown up image. This is a truly beautiful gun, at a hell of a price. I was out the door, after tax, tip, mandatory gun lock and state-mandated colonoscopy at under five big ones.

Vent rib, chrome plated bores, front bead sight, silver precision machined receiver w/ gold game scenes, 5-choke tube set

Now for the 10 day waiting period.

My first outing will be to here, Birds Landing.

Great place for trap and skeet, but I usually do sporting clays. If you join their club, you can go for pheasant and chukars. Maybe this year....

Anyways, I could not find this gun ANYWHERE. I called all of my regular gun shops, and they said their west coast distributor was all out of them. I was starting to look at the Remington SP310. It, too, is an over/under at about the same price. So I walk into Big 5 Sporting Goods and ask to see what type of O/U they have. First one on the rack was the Silver Reserve! Holy Shit! I tell him my story, and he says they have tons of them! I coulda had that bad boy already all broken in....

Gonna kill me some clays on an upcoming weekend...

I'm going to start keeping a tally...

My earlier rant was about how the Federal government is out of control, and spending nearly $90,000 of our money every damned second of every damned day. I had mentioned in passing that the state, regional and local governments aren't much better.

Oooooh, how right I was.

My state, The People's Republic of California has an agency called the California Department of Managed Health Care. Apparently, they have the task of fucking with doctors and clinics and doing everything in their power to drive them from the state.

Saying non-English-speaking patients do not have equal access to medical care, state health officials announced Thursday that all health plans must provide care in the patient's primary language — the first such regulation in the country.

Just think of the cost that will be borne by private companies because we don't require the people that come into our country - into our state - to speak our official language. Even if the private hospitals all leave, every state and county hospital will have to do this. Paid for by you-know-who. Instead, we place the burden of accommodation on the business and the state, not the individual that wants to live here.

If your stated goal was to drive out all of the tax paying, English speaking, State Constitutionally loving residents and businesses of the state, you could not have designed a better tool.

Typical leftist brain rot.

As an aside, and I'm not making this up: Our state song is "I love you, California". The music was written by..... A. F. Frankenstein. We are indeed building a monster...

I didn't vote for the fucker, did you?

What options are left for a libertarian like me?

Have you seen the latest Federal budget? The one thing that you expect from a supposed Conservative is fiscal responsibility. It's the essence of conservatism. What a fucking joke.

At the last elections, I didn't vote for Bush because I believed - and have since been proven correct - that he lied to us about Iraq. Call it "stretching the truth", or "providing information not based upon proven fact", whatever you want. If you're OK having smoke blown up your ass, so be it.

I felt it was an "optional war", and I don't think that should ever be the case, not when you're putting lives at risk. Yeah, yeah, I know. You pro-Iraq war types will say that this incursion will save more lives than it will cost. I call BULL SHIT. That's a fucking crystal ball experiment, and that's not included in the Presidential Powers anywhere I've seen. But I'm sure Bush can have Gonzalez pull that out of his ass just like he did with the domestic spying justification.

I digress. Have you heard what Iraq is costing us each month? $7 BILLION. A FUCKING MONTH. You have to try real hard to spend that kind of cash. Do you know what the entire Federal budget comes out to? $87,836 each and every SECOND! How is that possible? How could we have gone so wrong? And that's just the Federal government. The money that passes through the state, county and city budgets of America are just as sickening.

Congressman Ron Paul from Texas - a fucking heroic patriot - provided the following tidbits of information:

* "With a 7% rate of growth, federal spending will double in just 14 years. It
once took 100 years to double the federal budget."

* "Federal spending has grown twice as fast under Bush than Clinton, averaging
6% and 7% increases compared to the 3% and 4% increases of the 1990s."

* "The biggest increases in federal spending under Bush are not related to the
war on terror or homeland security. Education spending, for example, grew a
whopping 137% between 2001 and 2005."

* "The administration will ask for at least $120 billion in so-called 'off
budget' funds for Iraq and Afghanistan over the next year, perpetuating the
deception that war spending somehow doesn't count toward the budget deficit."

$87,836 a second. During a conservative administration, House and Senate. Great way to get re-elected, guys...

Update: A number of people have asked how I came up with the $87,836 number. Simple. The new federal budget is $2,770,000,000,000 (two point seven seven trillion). Divided by 365 days; divided by 24 hours; divided by 60 minutes; divided by 60 seconds equals $87,836. Scary, huh?

Light These Bastards Up

I'm a sensitive kinda guy. If a fellow human being genuinely asks for my help, I'll do what I can to help them meet their goals. Here's a request from Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah:

Hizbullah leader, responding to U.S. charges that Syria and Iran organized Muslim protests against Muhammad cartoons, says: 'We'll defend our prophet not just with our voices but with our blood. Muslims must continue to demonstrate until an apology is made'

If these whack-jobs want to give their lives, I say let's help them out. Let's get them to their 72 virgins, to their meeting with Muhammad, and their class reunion with the other martyrs of Islam.

But to do that, we need to get our stupid asses out of Iraq. We have North Korea with nukes. We have Iran with nukes. We have Syria with anti-American terrorists. We have Saudi Arabia sponsoring anti-American schools and sponsoring terrorists.

And George is busy Nation-Building in Iraq. Focus George, focus. Focus on the actual threat, not on some "spreading democracy" crap. Instead of a western democracy, you've helped Iraq build.... an Islamic theocracy. Well done.

Unless you are planning on having troops there for decades, admit you fucked up, and re-deploy our troops to countries that actually pose a threat to us and the rest of the world.

These asswipes want to be martyrs. Let's help them out.

See what happens when you take a couple days off?

Sorry for the light posting, but I took a couple days off for some R&R, including a break from blogging. What is the first thing I hear on the news this morning?

Fed up with kids dropping burger wrappers, beverage cups and french fry cartons on the streets and sidewalks surrounding the city's schools, the Oakland City Council is poised to take the unprecedented step of taxing fast-food joints and convenience stores to help clean up the mess.

Has Oakland caught the Stupid Virus that seems to have infected San Francisco? Good God Almighty, shit like this just scrambles my brain.

To summarize: Kids buy fast food, drop the wrappers on the ground, and the solution is to make the businesses pay to clean up the mess. The mess made by the kids.

Councilwoman Jane Brunner, who wrote the legislation, said the trash generated by the businesses is choking city streets, and she wants them to chip in to keep things tidy because, she says, they refuse to clean up after themselves.

Oh, there's the problem. This numb-nuts thinks that the businesses generated the trash. What does she think is happening? Does she think the businesses dump their trash bins into the streets each night? Dumbass...

"These fast-food establishments are making a profit off of students," Brunner said Tuesday at a joint meeting of the Oakland redevelopment agency and council community and economic development committee, which unanimously recommended the council approve the tax when the matter comes before the council Feb. 7. "All we are saying is if you are making a profit off of this, help us clean it up."

Oooooooh. Can't have anyone making a profit now, can we?

So the agency which is chartered with bringing business into Oakland - and believe me, they need it - is passing an ordinance that will make it more difficult for those businesses to make a profit. I guess they don't realize that if the businesses don't make a profit, they'll go out of business, or they'll leave - and take their jobs with them - and make a profit somewhere else.

Here's a thought: Make the kids pick it up. Woo Hoo, I'm a genius! How about having a cop stand by the areas that have the most problems, and bust kids that litter. Fine them (to pay for the cop's time) and sentence them to community service - which would include picking up litter. If they can't pay the fine, double up the service. If they don't do their community service, they don't graduate. If they're a drop out, they have an arrest warrant issued, and the next time they're popped, they do the extra time.

I guess that Oakland is jealous about how San Francisco is rapidly sliding into the shitter, and feels the need to join them. The mind of a politician is a scary thing....