Guns Part 2

So at some point in my life, having never owned a gun, I decided that the rights of others should be upheld.

First they came for the Communists but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists but I was not one of them, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews but I was not Jewish so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.

Now, some people throw this around, but it stands out in this particular circumstance. Hitler banned the citizenry from having their own firearms. No one could rise up against him unless they were military which he had an even tighter rein on. Some people want to pretend that violence does not happen unless there is a spark, something to start a violent act. In most cases, this is true. Something needs to happen before Ted Bundy went off to rape and torture young women. Did a gun do it? No. How many times do you hear about someone using their own personal firearm for self defense? Quite a bit, but unlike any other news, a gun stopping a crime is quite a bad thing. It doesn't sell as well as "GUN GOES NUTS KILLS FIFTY- More at 10."

Women are even more victemized by these people who hate a true hatred for guns. A woman who is generally classified as a victim by these people, could easily be alive and safe had she been trained and given the permit to carry a concealed handgun. Think about how many fathers and mothers wish that their daughter would have been alive today and could have been, if only they had taught them how to use a gun.

At least one segment of the community gets it. The "Pink Pistols" is a group dedicated to gays defending themselves. "Armed Gays don't Get Bashed" their main page declares. It's true. People who have a gun are less likely to die in a violent crime, for several reasons. First and foremost, gun owners are much more responsible than non-gun owners. They tend to avoid areas that are high crime or high risk. Second, they have the training and the know how to avoid confrontations, they use it quite well, and last they have force to back up their words.

Anyone who thinks that guns are a problem and not a solution should travel to Africa for a month, maybe they might feel a little better.

Guns Part 1

Let me preface this whole section with a single statement. I own no firearms. I have some replica toy guns, but nothing real. That having been said, let us delve into this topic

Now, I believe in the absolute right to gun ownership. Should I ever feel the need, I should be able to openly and freely get a gun at any time for any reason. It is not the business of the gun shop, the government nor anyone else to need to know why or for what reason I want a gun. Now, I was chastised when I was in high school because several times I stood up for absolute gun rights. I made the claim that a cannon or an anti-aircraft gun is no different than a pistol. In physical aspects it is, but in practice it is not.

Now, people quite often prop up a lot of stupid statements "Guns dont kill people, people kill people" or "Guns and crime go hand in hand." Both statements are equally stupid. If someone takes a minute to look over the statistics of guns and other countries, they would be shocked. England, which passed an absolute abolishion of guns and gun merchandise has an incredibly high GUN CRIME rate. A country that has a "no-gun" policy has a surprisingly high crime rate with guns. Flip it around then, countries with mandatory gun ownership would have astronomical gun crimes, right?

Switzerland requires every citizen to go through military training and retain their military rifle in good working order after they leave. Every citizen has a gun in their home, but their gun crime rate (and crime rate in general) is well below almost any nation of the world. Israel is much the same way.

Now of course we have the people who think for whatever reason, that if you ban guns none will ever make it to the hands of criminals. Just like banning drugs has made it impossible to get them into the country, just like banning terrorists kept them from getting into the country, just like banning spies prevented them from getting into the country......

Mantra

The most commons phrase I hear from liberals these days is "Bush lied, people died!". The other big one is "No one died when Clinton lied" which I hope they made sure to reference to the people in Kosovo and Iraq, lest we forget that in order to get the press to settle down on his affair he made more sensational news for the media to report on.

Now the conservatives have a chance, "Newsweek lied, people died." A story they ran caused people to act so violently that people died because of it. A story that was completely unverifiable, totally bogus, yet printed as the honest truth. Except, people died for newsweeks sensationalist journalism. It is truly sad that they printed a story with no fact checking, especially a story like this where they knew it had further reaching consequences. Of course though, the news and media outlets have their standard bias, America can do no right.

Drudge has a link to a transcript which tells me something about the press as a whole:

MR. McCLELLAN: Look, this report caused serious damage to the image of the United States abroad. And Newsweek has said that they got it wrong. I think Newsweek recognizes the responsibility they have. We appreciate the step that they took by retracting the story. Now we would encourage them to move forward and do all that they can to help repair the damage that has been done by this report. And that's all I'm saying. But, no, you're absolutely right, it's not my position to get into telling people what they can and cannot report....

Q Are you asking them to write a story about how great the American military is; is that what you're saying here?

MR. McCLELLAN: Elisabeth, let me finish my sentence. Our military --

Q You've already said what you're -- I know what -- how it ends.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, I'm coming to your question, and you're not letting me have a chance to respond. But our military goes out of their way to handle the Koran with care and respect. There are policies and practices that are in place. This report was wrong. Newsweek, itself, stated that it was wrong. And so now I think it's incumbent and -- incumbent upon Newsweek to do their part to help repair the damage. And they can do that through ways that they see best, but one way that would be good would be to point out what the policies and practices are in that part of the world, because it's in that region where this report has been exploited and used to cause lasting damage to the image of the United States of America. It has had serious consequences. And so that's all I'm saying, is that we would encourage them to take steps to help repair the damage. And I think that they recognize the importance of doing that. That's all I'm saying.

Q As far as the Newsweek article is concerned, first, how and where the story came from? And do you think somebody can investigate if it really happened at the base, and who told Newsweek? Because somebody wrote a story.

MR. McCLELLAN: I think Newsweek has talked about it. They took it --

What!? First they go the Dan Rather route with it, "Government Censorship!" they cry, then when beat back by McClellan they finally resort to trying to make it appear as if this incident did happen. Can someone investigate, what? We already know of the report from there, it was not the military who desicrated the Quran, it was the terrorist swine who did it, but of course, being good liberals and all, the facts of the case simply do not matter.

Newsweek Lied, people died.

Star Trek and Politics

As I was watching the final episode of Star Trek: Enterprise last night, I felt a heavy heart realizing that the Star Trek that I knew was dead. Enterprise was the first in the series that rejected the Federation principles (not in whole but overall). For example, the Prime Directive in the other series was a good example of a very lofty goal. The idea is that by preventing technology to going to cultures that havent gotten to a certain stage is harmful. Enterprise didn't have that distinction. They were allowed to interfere and play God as they wanted.

Now much like America, Enterprise finds themselves alone. Yes the Vulcans are there to "help", but throughout the series they hindered them, even stopped the peace process. Much like the French are today. The whole premise of the Federation though strikes me as a very leftist group. Now I understand that humanity is united, but the whole way they went about things strikes me as wrong. For example, the Klingons. We know that the Klingons were a group of honor driven, blood thirsty brutes, but they respected combat. They fought a war with them, the entire time trying for a peaceful resolution. The peace treaty came only after a blow so crippling to the Empire that they had to negotiate a peace or face an enemy who had nothing to lose. Such battles are always won, but at a price far too high.

The Borg are another threat. A group whose entire goal is the total destruction of each speceis. Yes I realize assimilation is not destruction but it is a merging of everything together to erase identity. Now the idea behind the Borg was to show the weakness of losing cultural identity. However I see it this way. The Federation fights every war to a stalemate. They got so good at it that rather than develop weapons to take care of actual problems, they stuck with technology that didn't improve on itself for hundreds of years. However look at the Romulans for example. They had a cloak that revealed ones ship through the cloak every once and a while. by TNG they had perfected it to correct that imbalance and were still working on a cloak that allowed the ship to move through solid objects. I have no doubt that the Klingons or the Romulans would have faired much better against the Borg Cube than the Federation did.

Deep Space Nine took the series into a depth that I never thought I would see. It started off with the same reflection as TNG but quickly evolved into the Federation vs. the Dominion. It was so refreshing to see how the Federation went about its' wars. We had heard about all these wars between series and before series but never did we get the experience of one. Even in TNG episode where they sent the Enterprise C back into time did we get to see how they ran a war time battle, but it didn't feel right. It still seemed to peaceful for war. So now we are in the middle of the war with the dominion. You would expect the Federation to grab the Klingons hands and rush into battle and crush the Cardassians and the their allies.....right? Of course not! They bickered for peace, held their borders. They lost territories, they lost betazed. When they finally took the war to an offensive stance they waited too long and the breen came in with a weapon to decimate their fleets.

Voyager was a series I liked, but I couldn't grasp. Janeway went out of her way to do everything she could to follow the rules even though the rules held her and her crew back. I honestly didn't believe she would have made the alliance with the Borg over trying to get herself killed in getting peace with speceis 8472.

Of course most people looking at this would challenge me by saying, "The alternative was shown in the episode Mirror Mirror." Except, that the Mirror universe takes everything to the same extreme as the episodes do. There is a balance between peace and war. You should always strive for peace but be prepared for war, or as Washington put it "To be prepared for war is the most effectual means to promote peace."

So let's wrap around the whole thing here. Many many fans of Star Trek, no matter what they (or you) call them, take the views of Star Trek and promote them as real world solutions. Thus we get people on the left who promote principles like these simply because they worked on Star Trek, without seriously considering if they would work in the real world today. No doubt the principles of Star Trek can no doubt be applied to our lives, but as long as society needs laborers and manufacturers and not everyone is out for the good of mankind we are at a serious impass. Just because the earth is united under a signle government in the show does not mean that the UN should dictate what we should and should not do. Look at the people who head the UN, a majority of members are brutal dictators. Saddam Hussein was in the UN, his record on human rights and treatment of his people is appauling. Until we have people run governments across the board there is no way we can point to a single world government when the needs of the many are outweighed by a single dictator.

Star Trek is good entertainment, lets just leave it at that, however, if Mr. Berman reads this, I would really love to see a series based off of the In a Mirror, Darkly or Mirror Mirror. Can be a whole new crew and ship, but the basic premise would thrill me to no ends.

Leftists of the world unite

I thought today would be a good day to prove to the world, the absolute evil of the left. The people of diversity, tolerance, non-violence.....

First lets start off the tour with a visit to a site of pictures from just Minnesota.

Lets start with the most recent one with a moveon.org protestor that can not even spell legalized correctly, and the other who compares Republicans to the Taliban. Let us do that shall we, in fact let us compare both parties to the taliban and we shall see who is the closest ally of the taliban. Next to each Republican value we will put a star (*) and for each Democrat value we shall put a pound sign (#)

Religion Run State
Women unable to vote/unable to go outside/unable to look at men et cetera
Absolute Right to Gun Ownership*
Random and State Controlled Searchs of private property without a warrant
Honor Killings#
Death Penalty for WORST offenders*
Inability to express non-state religion#
State Controlled Economy#
State Controlled Media#
No Freedom to Political Speech#
"Elections"#
Aggressive foreign Policy*
Run to the UN for every minor problem#
Supply terrorists with materials and safe haven#
No persecution of Terrorists#
Total Populace reliance on state#
Free use of narcotics#
Anybody But Bush#

Hmmm......Look at how much the taliban and the left have in common.

Next lets move to this incredible display of idiocy. (Thanks to Pardon My English for this one)

'Kill Bush,' Swastika Painted On Golden Beach Home

POSTED: 7:28 am EDT May 3, 2005

UPDATED: 7:49 am EDT May 3, 2005

GOLDEN BEACH, Fla. -- Golden Beach might be known for its cozy atmosphere and seaside mansions, but those homes have seen a series of burglaries in recent weeks and signs of hate crimes.

Those signs have come in the form of vandalism against a home in a gated community. The vandals smeared the Center Island home with swastikas. They also spray-painted the words "kill Bush" across a garage.The swastika and "kill Bush" signs were painted on the home April 23, the first day of Passover. Police said someone returned over the weekend and spray painted the number "2" with a circle around it in two spots. Investigators said they believe it may be a hate crime because the family that owns the home is Jewish. The family is not currently living in the home because it is undergoing extensive renovation.Police said they have upped patrols in the town since the incidents, using both marked patrol cars and unmarked vehicles.Golden Beach officials said that they are also considering adding more cameras to the town's surveillance network

Now, I have always been told by the left that the Nazi's were "Bush Lovers" and that Nazi's were modeled after Republicans. Except the above chart comparing Americans political parties to that of the taliban can easily substitute the Nazi's for the taliban and remain exactly the same.

Also we have repeatedly been told that the KKK is the base of the Republican party, but the only Senator who was a KKK member is democrat Robert "Sheets" Byrd. Interesting how this party of tolerance has turned itself into allowing those who killed people simply because they didn't like the color of their skin.

It saddens me that anyone can vote for these people who take absolute stands to make them appear to be for the people, but in practice are quite against the people

Software Companies, take note

I remember the old write protected CD's. The ones where you simply had to wait for a patch from clone-cd or some similar program and you were ready to go. Now we have to deal with software companies using virus like programs to attack our computers in an attempt to "prevent piracy".

Now, I am a pirate, I will freely admit it. I play a lot of games that I have never payed for. However, a demo doesnt really do justice to a game. I bought half life after playing a copy of my friends. I got about half way through and thought that it would be fun to play online and thus I needed a cd key to play. So I bought it. A better example though would be the new Axis and Allies game. I downloaded the game and played it for all of 2-3 hours in single player mode. I got so frustrated trying to get the game to play well that I gave up. The game was poorly made, poorly balanced, even more poorly thought out and damn near impossible at times.

The problem is here. There are games I would buy (and have bought) right when they came out....Jedi Knight Academy, Half-Life 2, Enter the Matrix......There are games I would have bought only because their packaging looked good, Civilization 2, Pax ImperiaL Eminent Domain.....There are games I have skipped because I didnt want to spend the money on, and games I bought that I pretty much left on my shelf because they sucked. If the gaming industry really wants to prevent piracy, they need to drastically lower their game prices. Those who have the name to back themselves up can charge higher prices, but saying that you charge 60 bucks for a game because everyone else does will never make your game sell better or play better.

Putting protections like this on will only increase piracy because downloading a game means not having to download these dumb ass protections.