Liberalism at its best …

 

… and most amusing.

I could not believe this when I first saw it in my e-mail, I thought …

Well, wait a second and let me back up.

A few years ago, more than a handful actually, I subscribed to a German news service which was headquartered in D.C.

The reason I did so was because, ironically enough, I wanted to keep abreast of legislation in Europe related to firearms ownership control, and crime trends.

It turned out that although I did receive some useful news links, especially concerning crime and economic trends in Germany, I was able to accomplish much of what I really wanted to do with my own research.

So I cancelled, and after wrangling for some months, eventually managed to put an end to the service.

Imagine my surprise then, when about a year ago I started receiving e-mails from “EIN” ( that was the name of the service) containing links to various news items from around the globe. Well, sort of from around the globe. Many concerned the United States, and I’ll be “doggoned” if the strangest thing hadn’t happened. It seemed almost as if some breathless politically “progressive”  intern from the Huffington (Facebook conversations reflecting community values only please) Post had assumed control over news item selection and captioning.

My routine became, click to open, quick to glance, click to close.

So, anyway today I opened up the latest EIN “World News Monitoring” e-mail , and found that according to EIN News Editors’ Picks for June 27, 2014, Walmart was peddling sniper rifles to all and sundry.

EGAD! SNIPER RIFLES!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My goodness! Walmart is selling Barretts? Or at least honest to goodness sniper rifles?

Gee. “How much could I pick one up for?”, I wondered. Or maybe Kathy would get me one and stash it away for Christmas?

No, no. I better get right over there and scoop up mine before the horders arrive!

So I followed the link.

Now, let’s actually  take a look at the “sniper rifle” Walmart is selling,

 

Walmart’s .177 pellet gun

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A pellet gun! A lousy pellet gun!

This “sniper rifle” turns out to be a pellet gun – a crummy pellet gun. You know, of the same caliber as the standard BB gun, but with a higher velocity, and maybe suitable under some circumstances for dealing with smallish rodents where the law allows. Don’t shoot at that red squirrel if there is a window behind it Johnny!

Perhaps the EIN News writer, knows so little about guns that he or she doesn’t even understand the difference between a BB gun or a pellet gun on the one hand, and what they insinuate is a firearm on the other?

Well maybe. Perhaps the person I early on mocked as an apparently histrionic intern, is in fact British. That might explain it, since the alarmed reaction might then make some sense; since even toy BB or air soft guns are disallowed in that so-called “cradle of liberty”.  As is when you come right down to it, so much else illegal in Great Britain nowadays, such as for example, truly free political speech.

But, you would at least think that someone, other than a transparently lying propagandist, or a timid twenty-something ignoramus from Great Britain, or their American equivalents, would exercise a final editorial supervision over the titling of these links: so as to at least minimize, if nothing else, the ridiculousness of the situation when the redounding stupidity of their presentation became, as it inevitably would, comically apparent to all and tarred the writer with the label “IMBECILE”.

What are these idiots thinking? Oh that’s right. Idiots don’t.

That’s why they are idiots.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Judicial Watch: IRS Officials Have “Pinned Themselves Into A Corner” (Video)

Orville Reddenbacher needs a bigger truck.

Nice Deb

Judicial Watch’s   Chris Farrell appeared on Justice with Judge Jeanine with fill-in host Kimberly Guilfoyle, Saturday night.  Due to Judicial Watch’s efforts,  the IRS will have  to face a federal judge in court on July 10, 2014 to explain why the tax agency didn’t inform the court that Lois Lerner’s emails had been lost even though the agency had knowledge of the missing emails and of other IRS officials’ missing emails.

Via Gateway Pundit:

“We’ve been involved in litigation for months now. In fact, the revelations that have come about are because of our litigation to force the IRS to produce records… They never mentioned to us or the court about the supposedly lost emails. So, we forced them into court. They need to appear on July 10… The real problem with the IRS in this case is they’ve been in communication with the court and they have never told the…

View original post 308 more words

It’s Been Found :-)

Premeditated Invasion

The Central American Children Invasion was Premeditated by the Obama MalAdministration

Escort Services for Unaccompanied Alien Children – Federal Business Opportunity or FED BIZ OP

https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=c6d7c0050b912fbc917a46d6709d38bd&tab=core&tabmode=list&=s=opportunity&mode=form&id=c6d7c0050b912fbc917a46d6709d38bd&tab=core&tabmode=list&

THIS IS AN ACTUAL BONA FIDE Gummint Site

This was ISSUED in January, 29, 2014 The anticipated release date of the solicitation is March 3, 2014. The solicitation closing date will be thirty (30) days after release of the Request for Proposal (RFP).
Part of this Reads:

A. Introduction
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has a continuing and mission critical responsibility for accepting custody of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) from U.S. Border Patrol and other Federal agencies and transporting these juveniles to Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) shelters located throughout the continental United States. ICE is seeking the services of a responsible vendor that shares the philosophy of treating all UAC with dignity and respect, while adhering to standard operating procedures and policies that allow for an effective, efficient, and incident free transport. The Contractor shall provide unarmed escort staff, including management, supervision, manpower, training, certifications, licenses, drug testing, equipment, and supplies necessary to provide on-demand escort services for non-criminal/non-delinquent unaccompanied alien children ages infant to 17 years of age, seven (7) days a week, 365 days a year. Transport will be required for either category of UAC or individual juveniles, to include both male and female juveniles. There will be approximately 65,000 UAC in total: 25% local ground transport, 25% via ICE charter and 50% via commercial air. Escort services include, but are not limited to, assisting with: transferring physical custody of UAC from DHS to Health and Human Services (HHS) care via ground or air methods of transportation (charter or commercial carrier), property inventory, providing juveniles with meals, drafting reports, generating transport documents, maintaining/stocking daily supplies, providing and issuing clothing as needed, coordinating with DHS and HHS staff, travel coordination, limited stationary guard services to accommodate for trip disruptions due to inclement weather, faulty equipment, or other exigent circumstances. In emergency situations, the Contractor shall be called on to provide temporary shelter locations (such as trailers) with shower facilities for juveniles who are pending placement with HHS when bed space is unavailable nationwide for extended periods of time. The Contractor shall provide temporary guard services and other support as necessary during these emergencies.
In addition, the Contractor shall have personnel who are able to communicate with juveniles in their own designated language(s). While this may not require each employee to be fluent in all of the encountered languages, personnel should have access to and knowledge of translation services.

All of this is at the address above.

We had a liberal visitor …

 

 

This blog might be said to be  semi-inactive, receiving only modest attention from its authors as we ruminate on subjects of peculiar interest to ourselves, rather than busying ourselves trying to feed the day-to-day social frenzy.

Not infrequently though, an outsider drops by. Surprisingly, a number of them leave off a blogging “like” icon without ever commenting.

The other day, John, of the American Liberal Times, a personal blog of his, and one which is,  shall we say, intensely opinionated, stopped in to read my remarks on the AOL Huffington Post.

That post concerned their Facebook channeling of any commentary on their news articles. This action was supposedly intended to enhance civility, thoughtfulness, and community, by eliminating the option of an even thinly veiled anonymity.

The policy obviously failed in accomplishing the first two supposed aims, but succeeded in ending the use of screen names or e-mail names as commenting identities. Whether it “enhanced community” as a result of eliminating the comments of conservatives who preferred not to take the first step in making their home addresses available to politically correct activists and picketers, is probably a matter of opinion.

The Huffington Post’s action certainly does seem to have cleansed the comment section of much conservative opinion, even if it did nothing to elevate the tone or improve the quality of the comments. Whether that constitutes an improvement in “the community” is as I just stated probably a matter of opinion.

Now, John of the American Liberal Times, remarked that he agreed – sort of – with the thrust of our post. At least he agreed that it was unwise to hand out much personal information on the Internet.  And he also left us a link to his own site.

So I visited him; and just in time to see him posting notice that he was turning over a new leaf himself “tonewise”,  and that he had thought better of his former practice of giving free rein to invective and vitriol.

I commended him for this, and left some other remarks.

John was gracious and profuse in his thanks for my visit, and by way of leaving comments on my comments, precipitated something of an exchange.

Throughout it all John was reserved, moderate, and polite; always thanking me for my visits and contribution.

After concluding our series of exchanges, I then decided to go back and take a look at where it had all led us. And I am afraid that the results have pretty much matched past patterns of such exchanges; especially the pattern that seemed to develop in my exchanges with Perry, a significant difference being that John had not descended to the level of making personal accusations of treason, or hardheartedness, or that of libertarians’ having a genetic tendency toward Neanderthal-like behavior.

But what was virtually identical was the manner in which the exchanges “evolved”. Those who recall my observations regarding the lack of an “on point” quality in my exchanges with Perry or the Iowa Libs, and how the logic of the arguments as developed in the thread were consistently sidestepped will … well you can take a look if you are interested, and judge for yourself.

Unfortunately, it may be that we are ultimately fated to largely talk past one another.

 

http://americanliberaltimes.com/2014/06/18/the-neocons-should-not-be-pontificating-about-iraq/

 

 

Now, it’s “Facebook Conversations”

 

As is by now well-known, AOL/Huffington Post has been seeking to, as they say, increase the level of civility and elevate the tenor of the conversations in their news comment sections by eliminating anonymity.

Their first attempts seemed aimed at reducing the number of made up names and identities while still allowing the use of AOL account screen names or identities. Now, at least for the most part it seems, you must register through Facebook.

Not only will you have a properly registered and consistent and therefore potentially held-to-account commenting identity (all well and good), but now it will be your real life name and address, and whatever else in the way of personal information a deranged leftist might be able to ferret out.

So how is this working out for them, “Tone-wise?”

A sample provides some indications …

The “news” …

Huffington’s mutual grooming troupe thrown fodder

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next comes the progressive Facebook echo chamber.

What passes for elevated discourse among progressives

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Free speech? Well, The Huffington Post is their playground and they are welcome to it. But don’t let anyone tell you that the marketplace of ideas is anything they have ever had an interest in.

 

Remember When The Democrat Convention Booed Providence And Israel?

Check this out:

In a new Pew survey, nearly half of respondents said they would be unhappy if a member of their immediate family married an atheist, including 73 percent of conservatives, 51 percent of moderates, and 24 percent of liberals. In fact, liberals were only slightly more likely to be unhappy if a family member married a born-again Christian.

Now, why would any Christian or Jew ever align with the Left? Can you answer me that, Leftist Catholics and Jews?

Let’s Amend The Second Amendment

HT Bmore (Note: His link changes on a regular basis, so it won’t always show the graphs I have below.)

Take a look at these charts and tell me what correlations you found.

I suggest we amend the Second Amendment as follows: If your voting record is to the Left of The Crying Man* you are not permitted to own guns or knives or any sharp objects. What do you think? Do you think the lying liar# who “bought his way into Heaven” by lying and demagoguery would like the idea?

I know, I know. Correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but the Left are always misrepresenting correlations and declaring by fiat (not the decrepit car company) that their misrepresented correlations necessarily mean causation for their pet takeover desires.

*John Boehner
#Former NYC Mayor Bloomberg

The Long Road Home

There’s a saying: “You can’t go home again.” Yorkshire wrote about the emotionalist without convictions from the Old Country who found she couldn’t go home again. The resident fifty-dollar-wordsmith (he’s very good with his fifty dollar words) wrote about how the emotionalist emotionalizer tried to rationalize her rationalizations (I’ll leave the big words to the one who is so good with them, heh). Well, my daughter went home again, after 5.5 years in the Army and 15 months in Iraq. And she agrees, you can never really go home again. Everything has changed. Or, like she said, it’s not that everything has changed necessarily, especially in hick-town fly-over country. Sometimes everything has, indeed, changed. Sometimes, it’s that nothing has changed, except for the one who is trying to return. In my daughter’s case, she had changed dramatically and she returned to find everyone she knew from home to be in their same ruts. Floyd still sat in front of the barber shop with next to no customers. Barney still kept his lone bullet in his shirt pocket. Otis was still a drunk. But Laura… Laura had life experiences that forced her to be a different person and made her Rockwell portrait of our hometown completely out of place with reality.

I’m home again. More accurately, I’m in my daughter’s house, having no home of my own. I pay her rent to be able to claim this as my home. But don’t feel too bad for me. I live in my truck. And I’m satisfied with that, for now. See, I have a plan, and that plan requires me to be on the road as much as is possible.

Since March 15, 2013, I had spent a total of 62 hours in my hometown: 30 hours once, 20 hours another time, and 12 hours the third time home. That is, until yesterday. I’m spending yesterday, today, tomorrow at home, leaving out Saturday morning. And I’m really only home now in order to complete an application for a US Passport. I’m just extending my stay, and losing money while doing it.

It costs me about 800 dollars a week to keep up with my truck, if I don’t turn the key to the ignition. So, it’s best that I keep my truck rolling. And my plans of owning a fleet and semi-retiring early require that I keep rolling and maximizing my earnings potential. And that’s what I have been doing.

I leased my truck on June 1, 2013. Since then, I have traveled just over 260,000 miles in my truck and purchased just under 34,000 gallons of fuel, all while training tomorrow’s truck drivers today. I voluntarily stayed on the road for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Easter, Memorial Day, etc, etc. More miles, longer trips, quicker re-loads mean maximized profitability. And means a better opportunity to quit driving altogether more quickly, which is my ultimate goal: I sit at the house and let other drivers make me money. How anti-socialist of me. How American Dream of me. How “corporate shill” (something some clown socialist on Hot Air called me) of this “corporate owner”.

Truth be told, I’m one of the laziest people you will ever meet. And constantly running, constantly rolling, never going home is the ultimate in lazy. It means I can sooner quit working and still living the good life.

But yeah, this retirement community masquerading as a small city is more undesirable that I’ve been gone so much and so long. It feels dreary, too tightly squeezed (after driving across west Texas, west Nebraska, Wyoming, etc), too je ne sais quoi. I spent over 44 years in this town, but it doesn’t feel like home.

It may be emotionalist, and I’m much more into logical than emotionalist, but there it is. I came back, but I’m not home. It just doesn’t have the home feel. The cab and sleeper of my truck has more of a home feel than this place.

Informal fallacies?

Strange how the obvious and already known sometimes hits you right between the eyes with a clarity and force originally lacking, or at least not remembered as there, much, much after the fact.

Say, oh, about thirty-plus years after the fact.

I was driving in the car a day or so ago, and for some reason the concept of “informal fallacies” popped into my head, along with an annoyed internal dialog relating to how the concept had expanded, seemingly exponentially, since I was back in school studying logic and rhetoric.

It seems there is a fallacy for every occasion nowadays, and that they have multiplied as fast as do the political polemicists who frantically brandish them about as if their mere mention constituted evidence of intellectual credentials.

Courtier’s reply! Au contraire, No true Scotsman! No! Argument from authority! Blah blah blah

Irving Copi, a genuine expert in affairs logical, in his famous and widely used university level “Introduction to Logic”, usefully observes (after paragraphs of provisional comments) that, “We may divide informal fallacies into fallacies of relevance and fallacies of ambiguity”

This scope obviously has something to do, as he states the issue, ” … with errors in reasoning into which we may fall either because of carelessness and inattention to our subject matter or through being misled by some ambiguity in the language used to formulate our argument.”

It seems to me that one of the main problems with those who like to bandy charges of fallacious reasoning about, is that they often seem not to understand the supposed issue involved in the fallacy itself.

For example, what some people imagine they have in mind when they charge others with an “appeal to authority”, mystifies me. There is nothing wrong with citing, or appealing to a legitimate authority regarding his area of expertise.

A classic and extreme illustration of the real “fallacy” was provided by old cigarettes ads featuring Hollywood or sports figures who were pictured extolling the virtues certain brands for their power to relax and energize without impairing endurance or health.

On the other hand it’s no error in argument, as Copi notes, to cite, say, a recognized authority on Medieval history on some point of common law bearing on our own times.

But I digress into the morass of the fallaciously polemical use of fallacies.

The point being here, that informal fallacies however they are to be construed, are just that: “not-formal” in the sense of “not a violation of form”. They don’t even rise to that level of error.

They are informal not because of some casualness – though this is often a condition of their appearance – but because they are not the end-product violation of a valid deductive argument form.

They, informal fallacies, thus constitute errors in reasoning which unlike formal fallacies, are not the result of errors which violate as Copi says, “valid patterns of inference”. (Of course these valid patterns themselves  only guarantee that the conclusion asserted validly follows from the premisses when the rules are followed; but not that the conclusion is sound in and of itself, nor that the argument “true” in the way we usually think of truth as reflecting our experienced reality.)

But with the general move away from deductive reasoning as a means of convincing political opponents to yield ground, it’s not surprising that the list of informal fallacies has mushroomed.

Those persons who would not know a modus ponens from a modus tollens, and would probably have a problem intellectually grasping their significance if confronted with the same, can nonetheless muster the resources to shout “NO TRUE SCOTSMAN FALLACY!” at an opponent on the vaguest suspicions of a “violation”, and most inchoate conception of the idea defining the fallacy itself.

There is something nonetheless kind of interesting about some of the “newer” fallacies. And that is that they don’t fit neatly into errors of relevance or ambiguity or even internal or extrapolative construction as with the fallacy of composition; but rather, seem to be laid against claims of intellectual privilege,  definition, and framing: More as if they are describing rhetorical gambits than strict errors of reasoning or inference.

But then I make no claims of expertise in this area and am just recounting some things that crossed my mind the other day as I was driving.