Reinke Faces Life

http://duckdown.blogspot.com/2008/02/thoughts-on-school-shootings.html

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I wonder when Americans will stop blaming guns for the deaths of Americans in school shootings and start seeking out root cause. Consider the simple fact that in Canada, they have even more liberal gun laws than in the United States yet you don’t hear of school shootings there.

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Perhaps, we have school shootings BECAUSE they are “gun free”.

(Like passing a law EVER prevented anything. A determined human being is unstoppable.)

So, does the school janitor have tools. The teachers have rulers. Principals have pens.

A gun is a tool.

And, we don’t have to arm everyone. Just create uncertainty.

Those that want to can “pack heat”. Those that don’t benefit by the illusion that they might be.

Then when the nut jobs show up on campus and start shooting — as we know they will — they MIGHT get a surprise BEFORE they get off their first shot. At the very least, when they reload or are not looking, surprise surprise.

America was supposed to be a “free to carry your gun” zone.

Maybe that’s why we don’t have shooting at police stations, gun clubs, and GOA meetings!

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http://www.kxmb.com/News/Nation/209747.asp

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Another Massacre At A “Gun Free Zone” College Campus

Disclaimer: This article is a blog post and does not represent the views or opinions of Reiten Television, KXNet.com, its staff and associates and is wholly owned by the user who posted this content.

One gun, one person trained how to use it and willing to do so could have stopped most of this:

DEKALB, Ill. – Another person shot when a gunman opened fire at a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University has died, bringing the toll to seven, including the gunman, a coroner said Friday.

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It just seems absurd to create the conditions for a disaster and then everyone is surprised when it happens.

Why don’t massacres happen at police stations, gun shows, or Gun Owners of America meetings?

Because killers may be crazy, but they’re not stupid!

In today’s politically correct world, the sheeple believe in fairy tales.

The police are here to protect you. Laws mean something. Or my personal favorite, gun free zones are safe.

Let’s call “gun free zones” exactly what they are “victim disarmament zones”. Or maybe “Come shoot me” invitations?

Did you ever notice that folks don’t put “this house is gun free” signs on their lawn?

But yet the gooferment skoolz advertise the fact.

Results: not surprising.

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http://www.windley.com/archives/2008/02/universal_housing_anyone.shtml

Universal Housing Anyone?

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Liberal solutions to problems tend to sacrifice property rights for a future utopia (give us your tax dollars now and health care will be better in the future—we promise).

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I think this usually an IT blogger has hit the nail on the head!

Statists — either liberal or conservative — seem to think that their “latest greatest” idea should be imposed at once. On everyone but them (Look at the Congress’ health care and pensions) for “our own good”. Like we are to stupid to figure it out for ourselves.

And, don’t forget there has to be a big bunch of highly paid gooferment bureaucrats on the payroll to figure it out, administrate it, and extend it enormously.

Argh!

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[4] National Identification Plan Announced
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On January 11, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael
Chertoff released the agency’s final regulations for REAL ID, the
national identification system. The proposal has drawn sharp criticism
from state governments, members of Congress, civil liberties advocates,
and security experts. The law was passed in 2005 and will require
significant changes to the state driver’s license if such ID cards are
to be use for “federal purposes.”

REAL ID was appended to a bill providing tsunami relief and military
appropriations, and passed with little debate and no hearings. The REAL
ID Act repealed provisions in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism
Prevention Act of 2004, which contained “carefully crafted language —
bipartisan language — to establish standards for States issuing
driver’s licenses,” according to Sen. Richard Durbin.

In the final regulations, Secretary Chertoff scaled back some of the
requirements, reduced the cost, and extended the deadline for state
compliance. As part of the cost-saving effort, Homeland Security has
decided not to encrypt the data that will be stored on the card, leaving
the data open for download by third parties, such as clubs and bars. The
agency said that it would make $360 million available to the states to
implement REAL ID — $80 million in dedicated funding and the agency
will allow the states can use up to $280 million in homeland security
grant funding. States argue that those grants are apportioned to first
responder training, port security, and other homeland security programs,
and that funds should not be diverted away from these programs to pay
for the national identification system.

Homeland Security says that states must apply to the agency for an
extension and promise to implement the REAL ID national identification
system or else the states’ driver’s licenses and ID cards will not be
“accepted for federal purposes” beginning on May 11, 2008. Currently,
“federal purposes” is defined as entering federal buildings, boarding
commercial flights, and entering nuclear facilities. However, Secretary
Chertoff also indicated that the REAL ID card would be used for a wide
variety of purposes, unrelated to the law that authorized the system,
including employment verification and immigration determination. He also
indicated that the agency would not prevent the use of the card by
private parties for non-government purposes.

The states are rebelling against the national ID scheme. On January 18,
Montana governor Brian Schweitzer wrote to the governors of 17 states
asking them to join him in rejecting the REAL ID system. Montana is one
of 17 that has passed legislation against REAL ID. “Today, I am asking
you to join with me in resisting the DHS coercion to comply with the
provisions of REAL ID,” Gov. Schweitzer wrote. “I would like us to speak
with one, unified voice and demand the Congress step in and fix this
mess.”

Congress is considering legislation to repeal REAL ID. Sen. Patrick
Leahy, who co-sponsored legislation to replace REAL ID with the
negotiated rulemaking process originally enacted in the 2004
Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act, criticized the final
regulations. “The Bush administration’s REAL ID program will not only
lead to long lines at every DMV across the country, it will impose a
massive unfunded mandate on state governments while offering absolutely
no federal privacy protections to our citizens,” Sen. Leahy said. “It is
unfortunate that instead of addressing the fundamental problems this law
poses for the states, the Administration appears content merely to
prolong a contentious and unproductive battle to force the states to
comply.”

The Department of Homeland Security has also been criticized for its own
poor security practices. In May 2007, a Homeland Security office lost
the personal data of 100,000 employees. According to security expert
Bruce Schneier, “Measures like REAL ID have limited security benefit.
Identification systems are complex, and the unforgability of the plastic
card is only a small part of the security equation. Issuance
procedures, verification procedures, and the back-end database are far
more vulnerable to abuse, and — perversely — a harder-to-forge card
makes subverting the system even more valuable. Good security doesn’t
try to divine intentionality from identification, but instead provides
for broad defenses regardless of identification.”

Department of Homeland Security’s Page on REAL ID (including links to
Final Rule and final Privacy Impact Assessment):

http://www.dhs.gov/xprevprot/programs/gc_1200062053842.shtm

Sen. Patrick Leahy, Press Release about REAL ID Final Regulations (Jan.
11, 2008):

http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200801/011108a.html

Letter From Montana Governor to 17 States (Jan. 18, 2008) (pdf):

http://governor.mt.gov/brian/RealID_080118.pdf

Stop REAL ID Campaign:

http://www.privacycoalition.org/stoprealid/

EPIC’s Press Release: Homeland Security Department Announces Deeply
Flawed Regulations For National ID System (Jan. 11, 2008):

http://epic.org/press/011108.html

EPIC’s Page on National ID Cards and REAL ID Act (includes links to
states’ anti-REAL ID legislation):

http://epic.org/privacy/id-cards/

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We just don’t need this bunch of boobs!

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http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs72.html

Libertarian Foreign Policy in the Hobbesian Crosshairs: A Reply to Bret Stephens
by Robert Higgs

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Nobody “forced” Americans to begin to build a navy in the 1790s. Government officials and seafaring merchants decided to do so and to deploy this force against (among others) the pirates to whom the government had been paying protection money. They might instead have continued to pay off the Barbary raiders. Or they might have rested content to let the merchants of other nations, perhaps Great Britain, which already had a large navy, handle the shipping of American goods in the Mediterranean. The fact that U.S. leaders resorted to force does not demonstrate that they chose the best option. This option did, however, socialize the costs of engaging in the Mediterranean trade, spreading it across all American taxpayers largely for the sake of the traders who had an immediate interest in the matter.

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Here’s a interesting formulation of gooferment.

SOMEONE has a problem. Whey then make it a gooferment problem, it can be FIXED regardless of cost. TAXPAYERS pay and SOMEONE benefits.

Look at everything the gooferment is in and you’ll see the same paradigm and meme in play.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/14/AR2008011401709.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Supreme Court Declines to Hear Experimental Drug Case
Petitioners Argue Terminally Ill Should Have Right to Drugs Not Yet Approved by FDA
By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 14, 2008; 4:36 PM

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The Supreme Court today declined to consider whether dying patients have a right to be treated with experimental drugs not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

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Silly citizen. You need the FDA’s protection. Even if you die waiting, you’ll be “safe”. Your betters know what is best for you!

How dumb are we?

How much protection does Big Pharma want?

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http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=8204

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Government anti-poverty programs are a classic case of the therapeutic state setting out to treat disorders created by the state itself. Urban poverty as we know it is, in fact, exclusively a creature of state intervention in consensual economic dealings. This claim may seem bold, even to most libertarians. But a lot turns on the phrase “as we know it.” Even if absolute laissez faire reigned beginning tomorrow, there would still be people in big cities who are living paycheck to paycheck, heavily in debt, homeless, jobless, or otherwise at the bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. These conditions may be persistent social problems, and it may be that free people in a free society will still have to come up with voluntary institutions and practices for addressing them. But in the state-regimented market that dominates today, the material predicament that poor people find themselves in—and the arrangements they must make within that predicament—are battered into their familiar shape, as if by an invisible fist, through the diffuse effects of pervasive, interlocking interventions.

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Like the supposed “war on drugs”, the supposed “war on poverty” is another one that’s been lost. It would seem that the only purpose of the “poverty war” was to enhance the number of gooferment bureaucrats on the payroll.

Thanks, LBJ!

Can we now admit defeat and try something that works?

Liberty.

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http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2007/12/31/the-market-for-liberty

The Market for Liberty
By Michael Hampton
Posted: December 31, 2007 5:30 am

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Economics isn’t merely a dry, boring study of money. It is, boiled down to its essence, a study of human nature: how people interact and trade with each other. Since this obviously involves money, there is no shortage of people who want some of that money for themselves, when they haven’t earned it. And the chief ways in which they take that money are to confuse people and to establish governments.

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Interesting that a great book is now a free MP3 file.

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http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2008/tle450-20080106-04.html

War is a Racket
by General Smedley Butler, USMC
Special to The Libertarian Enterprise
Published in New York by Round Table Press, Inc., 1935.

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Looking back, Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had “kept us out of war” and on the implied promise that he would “keep us out of war.” Yet, five months later he asked Congress to declare war on Germany.

In that five-month interval the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds. The 4,000,000 young men who put on uniforms and marched or sailed away were not asked whether they wanted to go forth to suffer and die.

Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly?

Money.

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Time to have an accounting of all the dead, missing, wounded, crippled, scared, and maybe even inconvenienced at the hands of big gooferment and its accomplices. When we total up the costs, what did we real get for all the blood, sweat, and tears?

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http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080103/EDITORIAL/583177106/1013

Guns in the cockpit
By Tracy Price
January 3, 2008

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In a recent interview, Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida stated: “The need for guns in the cockpit is just nearly not [sic] as acute as it once was. There are all kind [sic] of screening systems, there is now the reinforced cockpit door, there are air marshals, we now have a lots of checks and balances.” Hearing this, some might ask, “Do airline pilots still need to be armed?” The answer is, “Absolutely — now more than ever.”

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Duh!

This seems like restating the obvious.

The gooferment is the villain.

It seems like a cheap and easy control to implement.

I’d do it if I was “king”. And, I wouldn’t mention it. Keep it as a surprise.

The times for depending upon others to protect us are OVER!

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