[NYTimes] Sometimes in American politics it seems as if we are all talking past each other, that whatever one side says about an issue like, say, taxes zooms right past the other side. The current fight over gun control is not one of those moments. It is a howling storm of misrepresentation, sadly almost entirely from one side. This week’s developments fit the pattern. A bit of projection on the editorial writer's part. I would say "misrepresentations" is a liberal way of saying "lies"...
On Tuesday in the East Room of the White House, President Obama formally announced that he would be taking a series of executive actions — all of them within his powers as president. It was an important step, since he sometimes seems alone in Washington in his willingness to take on the issue of guns. But none of his actions are aimed at taking weapons away from law-abiding citizens, and none will have that effect. In fact, there has been no bill in real contention in Congress for many years that would reduce the number of guns currently in circulation, or disarm any law-abiding Americans. In fact, none of the Executive Orders he has issued impact firearms possession except the one that forces private gun sellers into the Federal Firearms Licensing system. What the NYT is complaining about, between the lines, is that Champ really is ineffectual. It's the first time in a long time the NYT and I have agreed about anything...
And yet, as happens every time, the response from the anti-regulation crowd (even before the White House said a word in public about Mr. Obama’s plans) was to deliberately misstate what Mr. Obama was intending. The president said he wanted to increase the number of government agents to process background checks and make the existing system more effective. He also plans to modestly expand the number of dealers who need federal licenses under current law and said he would ask Congress for more money to combat mental illness. He wants to expand government control over guns. Does that about sum it up?
The Republican machine’s reaction took none of that into account.
“From Day 1,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan, “the president has never respected the right to safe and legal gun ownership that our nation has valued since its founding.” Mr. Ryan said that “rather than focus on criminals and terrorists, he goes after the most law-abiding of citizens. His words and actions amount to a form of intimidation that undermines liberty.”
Unlike Mr. Ryan, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, arch-right candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, did not even wait for the president to talk before he started spitting out his usual talking points on Monday. “This is a president who for seven years has abused his constitutional authority,” he said, adding: “We don’t beat the bad guys by taking away our guns. We beat the bad guys by using our guns.”
There may be an interesting argument over whether having more civilians walking around with guns and empowered to use them enhances public safety. Our position on this page has been that it makes people less safe. Especially if liberals have guns, as is their right.
But propagandists like Mr. Cruz are not interested in conversation. Mr. Obama is not proposing “taking away our guns.” In truth, Mr. Obama is not currently advocating renewal or expansion of the expired assault weapons ban, which is politically understandable but still unfortunate. It’s impossible to believe that Mr. Cruz does not recognize what Mr. Obama is doing, and not doing. Obama is setting up his own supporters for the next mass shooting by saying: "Look. I tried to do something but it wasn't enough. Contact your Congressional representative if you want meaningful gun control."
Given the situation, it’s hard to imagine a serious conversation about guns as long as politicians in thrall to the gun lobby choose to misrepresent what supporters of gun safety laws are actually saying. Those supporters, by the way, include the 90 percent of Americans who favor universal background checks for gun buyers. Even if they could count 99 percent who want universal background checks, the law fails in two fundamental respects: 1) It is unconstitutional, and 2) It doesn't have consent of the governed. Laws on the books that fail either of these two standards are not laws at all. They are Constitutionally null and void, and should be ignored. Additionally, in the instance in which universal background checks get passed, as a gun owner I still get a vote. "Conversations" on "gun control" wind up being lectures by the terminally liberal and end up as personal attacks. No thanks.
The hear-nothing crowd did not budge when college students were slaughtered on campuses like Virginia Tech, when grade school children were massacred in Connecticut, when people were shot to death in a movie theater in Colorado — and in so many other places, including every day on our streets and in our homes. Why? Because 99.999 percent of gun owners did not commit those crimes and should not be held accountable by having their only means of protection controlled or taken from them.
They were not even moved to have a serious conversation about gun safety after self-proclaimed Islamist terrorists attacked law-abiding American citizens in California using weapons obtained in the free market of death-dealing instruments so highly prized by the National Rifle Association and those who do its bidding. It would be at this point I have to ask if they are really serious, but alas they really are.
#1
Hmmm, bad choice in mentioning Virginia Tech because it was a private gun owner who went to his car and retrieved his side arm who confronted the shooter and caused him to flee.
They also didn't mention how Virginia Tech is the poster child for gun free zones.
#4
They also call Senator Cruz "arch-right" and describe him "spitting out his usual talking points". When will they call Obama the "arch-left President spitting out his usual talking points?"
I had an officer like that. The gung-ho moron nearly got me killed. He did get some of my friends killed---for nothing. Fortunately, he got a bullet in the head and joined the vegetable kingdom.
[Al Ahram] North Korea said Wednesday it had successfully tested a miniature hydrogen bomb, which if confirmed, would place it among a small group of countries with such dangerous weapons.
The world's nuclear arsenals have typically comprised two types of warheads: atomic bombs (A-bombs) such as those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and much more powerful hydrogen, or thermonuclear bombs (H-bombs).
A third category of "enhanced radiation" (ER) warheads, once dubbed "neutron bombs" was developed using the thermonuclear principle, but they are not considered to be widely deployed at present.
Britannia, La Belle France, China, Russia and the United States, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, officially have nuclear weapons.
India and Pakistain also have nuclear weapons along with Israel, which maintains a policy of nuclear ambiguity, and North Korea is known to have carried out tests. If North Korea masters the technology needed to produce miniature warheads, it could conceivably use them to arm ballistic missiles able to reach neighbours in Asia and possibly the United States.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/07/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
News reports indicate that the yield was 600 kilotons of TNT. That is solidly in the fission bomb class. A fusion bomb uses a fission bomb as a trigger. The first US fusion (H) bomb had a 10 megatons of TNT yield. It is possible that the 2nd stage failed to ignite. Or fat boy is lying.
Posted by: Sven the pelter ||
01/07/2016 0:23 Comments ||
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#2
Does it matter as long as they'll be willing to sell whatever it is to Iran?
#3
Time to ratchet up pressure on China. State that it is the position of the US that South Korea and Japan should pursue an independent nuclear deterent. Two can play at this game and turnabout is fair play.
Posted by: Sven the pelter ||
01/07/2016 8:33 Comments ||
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#4
Right, to the Mad Mullahs, it's a 600 kiloton 'hydrogen bomb'.
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/07/2016 11:36 Comments ||
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#5
Steven - add Taiwan and the Philippines into that mix to make it more VEXING to the ChiComs - Oh and a sea burst Neutron Bomb would be a great way for Singapore to clear the sea-lanes of pirates.
#6
The entire UK nuclear arsenal comprises of 100 kiloton H bombs.
These are the MIRVed Trident SLBM warheads on its nuclear submarines.
50-100 kt warheads would be ideal for modern missile warheads. It isn't the 1950s where missiles were inaccurate and warheads were huge. It makes no sense for NoKo to produce megaton sized H bombs.
Posted by: john frum ||
01/07/2016 14:52 Comments ||
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#7
If you have the tech, it's a great way to stretch your U235 and plutonium.
Speculation is swirling that front-running Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton still suffers from the effects of a 2012 concussion and blood clot that sidelined her while she was secretary of state, Breitbart News reports.
Retired New York Police Department officer and Blaze radio host John Cardillo tweeted Monday his suspicions about Clinton's long bathroom break during the last Democratic candidates' debate.
He then elaborated to Breitbart:
"I got this from both a [federal agent] . . . and I also got it from a New York [NYPD] guy who worked security at a Hillary event in New York City," Cardillo tells the conservative news outlet.
"These are two people that aren't just personal friends," he tells the website.
"I worked with one and then post law-enforcement worked with another on some related things . . . Both of them told me the same thing, that after her speeches, whether she did a talk or a policy speech, she had to sit behind -- she would come off the podium backstage -- and have to sit and rest before making it back to the car because she was so fatigued, dizzy and disoriented."
According to Cardillo, one of the sources claimed Clinton at one time was "very pale, kind of disoriented. He said she looked like she was about to faint. She was very pale, almost sweaty."
Cardillo tells Breitbart one of the incidents detailed by his sources occurred while she was secretary of state and another one was about a year ago.
"A number of New York Democrats, very prominent, well-known, wealthy New York Democrats, told me last year that Hillary had very significant health issues and that they were surprised that she was running in view of her health problems and her lack of stamina," Republican strategist and former Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone tells Breitbart.
"I don't think she has the physical stamina to be president."
Trump made the identical case Wednesday.
And journalist Edward Klein has argued Clinton's health issues are significant.
"To this day, Hillary still suffers from many of the troubling symptoms that I wrote about in ['Unlikeable: The Problem With Hillary']: blinding headaches, exhaustion, insomnia, and a tremor in her hands," Klein noted last month.
He adds:
"There have been several incidents in which she has nearly collapsed. For example, after her 11-hour testimony before the Trey Gowdy Benghazi committee, Hillary swooned as she walked to a waiting car. She had to be supported in the arms of her aides and helped into the back seat."
Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill responded to a list of questions from Breitbart News about Clinton's health saying they were "all addressed in her health statement," referring to a July 2015 letter from Dr. Lisa Bardack that cleared the former secretary of state as "fit to serve" as president. And as we all surely know, Hillary wouldn't even think about being dishonest enough to go shopping for a doctor stupid and greedy enough to agree to this, even if it were true.
#1
"To this day, Hillary still suffers from many of the troubling symptoms that I wrote about in ['Unlikeable: The Problem With Hillary']: blinding headaches, exhaustion, insomnia, and a tremor in her hands," Klein noted last month.
Nah...that's just what happens to us when we have to look/listen to the crazy old bat...she's just a carrier.
Saw this essay in the Diplomad 2.0 site. We have a bigger enemy than ISIS, but we already knew that. W. Lewis Amselem covers it completely, and it should prompt all of us to think how we can get out of this hole the progressives have dug.
Over the years as an FSO and as chief--er, sole--blogger of this little blog, I have called a number of international developments right. Readers can go back over my writing on Libya, for example, and see that I called that right from the start of our ill-fated intervention. I think also called it right on Iran, Russia, Cuba, China, the EU, and on the chaos in North Africa and the Middle East resulting from our misadministration's disastrous policies. I noted at the beginning of the Obama regime that it gave foreign policy only a second thought, and what thought it gave sought to reduce US and Western influence and abandon traditional interests and allies.
I think I also called it right re fracking and the impact it would have on OPEC (see below.) The Progressive mainstream media, by and large, has missed what should have been a major story in 2015, to wit, the death throes of the once-mighty and much-feared, OPEC.
Founded in 1960 in Baghdad, OPEC became a major staple of international relations in following years. It encouraged members to seize control of their oil production and sought to control the supply and, of course, the world price of hydrocarbons. It was, perhaps, the most powerful cartel in history. Those of of us old enough to remember Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter recall how OPEC drove prices through the roof, and used oil as a weapon primarily against the West, but with considerable collateral social and economic damage throughout the world. You all know the history and don't need me to tell it. In short, during the golden era of OPEC we saw fuel shortages in the US and Europe, and, most importantly, the rise of Islam as a global force. OPEC, oil, and the rise of Islam as a political and "military" power are very much intertwined. The most important members of OPEC were and are Muslim; the Saudis alone could dictate world prices and to a large extent controlled OPEC policies, and had a huge influence on the development of today's highly retrograde and murderous strain of Islam--I saw them at work, for example, in the 1980s among the Afghan refugees in Pakistan. The Saudis for decades served as one of the major promoters and funders of international terror--the understanding being that the terrorists would leave in peace the corrupt Wahabi guardians of Mecca (topic for another day: how that understanding has frayed.)
OPEC is dead as a major player on the international scene, and only can come back to life by Progressive insistence on making the West energy deficient--Do it for Gaia! As I have written before, America's remarkable "fracking" revolution has up-ended the world's energy market for the benefit of the West (also here and here). Not everybody agrees: Here, for example, is a thoughtful article claiming that reports of OPEC's death have been exaggerated. The main argument seems to be that the Saudis ARE OPEC--don't disagree--and that they aren't going anywhere--on that, I disagree. Here and here, however, are a couple of interesting pieces laying out the serious long-term economic problems facing Saudi Arabia--and, of course, this info from our own government shows the dilemma facing OPEC. I find those convincing as well as another article which bluntly states,
So, what's going on now?
The answer, in a nutshell, is the shale revolution. The new technology for extracting oil and gas from shale reserves ‐ which, let's remember, was opposed every step of the way by progressives, and is characteristic of a special American inventiveness ‐ has proved a boon to the economy, and to employment, and even to the environment, since the revolution is driving a lot of oil and coal to be replaced by less-carbon-intensive natural gas.
OPEC is stuck in a Catch-22: Low prices mean they don't control the market anymore; but if they raise prices, they lose control of the market.
Investment in shale is only going to continue. And that means we may be witnessing one of the most significant geopolitical and economic events of the past 50 years: the death of OPEC.
That, as far as I am concerned, sums it up re OPEC, with, as stressed, the one caveat being that progressives do not stifle fracking and other moves, particularly in the US and Canada, to achieve energy independence.
All that should be good news in the fight against terror. And it is. Today's new terrorists cannot count on the sort of heavy-duty centralized financial backing that their ancestors in the PLO, for example, got in the 1960s and 70s. In addition, of course, we have the unlamented death of the USSR; the Soviet bloc provided major support for all sorts of terror groups that ran rampant in Europe and the Middle East during those decades and even into the 1980s. (For another day will be the discussion of Iran as a major financier of terrorism--I suspect they will not have the deep pockets of the Saudi regime, even with Obama's disastrous "nuke" deal which frees perhaps as much as $150 billion in frozen assets.)
We should be sitting pretty in our "war" with the Islamic terrorists. We're not. Most of us missed a major development that has almost nullified the victory over OPEC and the Saudis. I touched upon it in a discussion of the Boston bombers, but did not fully appreciate the magnitude of the phenomenon I was describing,
Our tolerant, liberal, and inclusive system was providing these clowns (their name, I will never write) with welfare. I guess that answers one of my early questions about how these creeps supported themselves. The older one, of course, had his idiot convert wife working 80 hours a week while he sat home and collected his, yep, welfare checks. The younger murderer got his citizenship, a scholarship and welfare. Yes, just as in the olden times when you gave your executioner a gold coin to encourage him to make a swift and painless job of the beheading, it seems we pay our executioners. Even more interesting is that these cretins' scumbag parents were also collecting, even though they did not live in the USA.
Progressivist policies are now second only to the Koran as the greatest support to international Islamic terror. The Progressive hatred for Western Civilization makes a perfect match with Islam's hatred for Western Civilization. As noted before, in effect, what we have is a Molotov-Ribbontrop Pact between Progressivism and Islam. We see in Germany, for example, this Progressive hatred translated into the active encouragement of Muslim "immigration" into the heart of Europe--perhaps as many as one million, mostly young men, in the past few months. The results are catastrophic and we are only seeing the beginning. Even before this latest "refugee" crisis, we had hundreds of thousands of Muslim immigrants living in Europe, many if not most on some sort of public assistance--just like the murdering brothers in Boston--and seething with hatred for the "white dude" culture that took them in, feeds them, gives them housing, etc. The Progressive hatred for our Civilization is so complete that even when Muslim "refugees" attack favored constituencies of Progressives, e.g., women, Progressives make excuses for the Muslims and advise women to "cover up" and "keep an arms length" from men. Progressive media is full of stories worrying about the potential "backlash" against the "refugees" because of the stories (oh so carefully worded) of mass rapes and assaults by the "refugees."
As stated previously (here, for example), the Gates of Vienna have been breached, well, better said, opened from the inside. Our political betters have decided to transform fundamentally our culture into a copy of the savage cultures where Islam rules--and we are not to resist. Here at home, for one example, we see two Muslims go on a jihadist rampage in San Bernardino, and that prompts weepy calls from the bien pensants to disarm us. I guess per that logic, the attack on Pearl Harbor was a call for Americans to get rid of their personal weapons.
While our PC schools and media actively seek to undermine our will to resist, our taxpayer pounds, euros, and dollars now fund the terrorists. We are paying our executioners.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/07/2016 18:28 ||
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#1
Excellent, AP
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
01/07/2016 19:45 Comments ||
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#2
nice catch, Al-Aska Paul
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/07/2016 20:57 Comments ||
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h/t Instapundit
Have you ever looked at an SJW and wondered "just what is this idiot trying to tell me?" Or, have you perhaps contemplated the intellectual musings of a Tumblrista and wondered "what in the everlasting fuck is this person actually saying?"
#1
I had to google what SJW means. Okay now I know. In earlier days they were known as parasites or spoiled children of the idle rich who when they snorted their trust fund up became the clueless poor.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
North Korea
Speculation is swirling that front-running Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton still suffers from the effects of a 2012 concussion and blood clot that sidelined her while she was secretary of state, Breitbart News reports. 
