Ilya Somin makes a case against ignorant voting. When I first started voting, I felt like I had to cast a ballot in every race, no matter what. I tended to vote party in races I didn’t know about. Now I will abstain from races where I don’t know the candidates or the issues. Ignorance is a good reason to not vote.
Author: Sebastian
Tomorrow, it Gets Real: Vote!
Tomorrow marks the end of this silly season, and I will be glad for that no matter what the outcome. For the past week or so, I have tried to tune out election related news, polls, etc. The only poll that matters is the one tomorrow.
They Can Harmonize
Hey, NRA members… you’re racist! Put this crap in the realm of feel good nonsense that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans when it comes to making phone calls, knocking on doors, and getting people out to vote:
CSGV: Against the First Amendment as much as the Second
CSGV tried to have Examiner.com censor Kurt Hoffman, a number of bloggers stood up for his right to speak. A free exchange of ideas is what healthy free societies support. I’ve had my issues with the III percent philosophy, which I have not been shy about criticizing on this blog, but I absolutely believe they have a right to speak and publish on their viewpoint. This is yet another desperate attempt by CSGV to silence dissenting opinions.
I read Kurt’s post which started all this hubbub, and as best I can tell he told people to read a book. I will forthrightly back people’s desire to publish and read materials, even controversial or potentially dangerous materials. The book Das Kaptial contains ideas that are responsible for the deaths of millions of people in the 20th century, but I’d still suggest people read it. Does that make me a marxist or violent left-wing revolutionary? The adult thing to do in these situation is to counter speech with more speech. If you don’t agree with the insurrectionist idea, understand what it really is, and speak out against it in a serious manner. But that’s not what the straw men builders at CSGV have chosen to do; they have chosen to attempt to silence and intimidate people who stand up for our rights and freedoms.
Canadian Long Gun Registry Destroyed
Good news for Canadian gun owners, but there’s still a dispute about Quebec registrations, and that is sticking around until that dispute is resolved.
While the then-governing Liberals sold the registry to gun owners as a minor, reasonable bureaucratic nicety, they also had the bad habit of trotting it out in public as a sign of their government’s commitment to public safety and ending gun violence. You can’t blame the people who had to register their firearms for feeling like the government was treating them as mass-shooters in waiting. Or, at the very least, a political punching bag.
That’s one of the primary things that motivates my opposition to gun control, because in fact, they do think we’re all mass-shooters in waiting. It’s patently obvious from their rhetoric that’s the case. But I don’t think they can solicit donations being nice to gun owners. The reason all the anti-gun groups have become so hateful is likely because that keeps the checks rolling in from those looking to buy a stronger self-image at the expense of looking down on others.
Canadian gun owners are well within their rights to thank the Tories for scrapping the hated registry while still demanding changes — clarifications and improvements, mostly — of Canada’s gun laws. Clarifying safe storage laws and rationalizing the classification system that divides guns into non-restricted, restricted and prohibited groups (with different regulations for each) would be a good place to start.
It is very important for Canadian gun owners to build on that victory, and not just go home and savor the victory. Canada will likely never be like the United States in terms of gun laws, but it could probably be better than it is today.
LEO Cover for Anti-Gun Groups in Minnesota
The retiring police chief in Minneapolis is going to lend his name to the anti-gun cause. Every once in a while you get a true believer among police brass, and I guess this guy is one. Joan Peterson must adore him.
“I think, basically, he will be a resource on gun policy … and give feedback on legislation,” Martens said. “He has always been a voice for preventing gun violence.”
He’ll likely be someone they trot in front of the legislature or TV cameras every time they need an authentic law enforcement voice to tell the public how bad whatever bill X or Y that expands Second Amendment liberties is. Let’s just hope we can keep Tim Dolan very busy with that line of work.
From Breezy Point, New Jersey to Brooklyn
Apparently a bar just floated off, and arrived in Brookyn still well stocked. What would have made this story a truly humorous component to this otherwise cluster fsck of a storm would be if the NYPD had opened it up to find a few drunks still inside drinking.
Leadership
A resident of the Rockaways asks Mayor Mike:
“When are we gonna get some help?†blasted one desperate woman, who had to be held back by the mayor’s security detail as Bloomberg stood by with a deer-in-the-headlights look.
“When are we gonna get some f–king help?†she demanded.
“There’s old ladies in my building that don’t got nothing,†lashed out a man on video caught by a NY1 reporting crew.
Why, he’ll help you just after he makes sure you’ll drink your soda out of sippy cups, finds emergency rations that don’t have too much salt or trans-fats, and cures the rest of the country of its strange obsession with its Second Amendment rights. What makes you think you matter to Mayor Mike? He’s America’s Mayor. He’s not your mayor.
You Mean Like When Hurricanes Hit Florida?
CSGV is apparently unaware that hurricanes making landfall is a regular occurrence in some parts of the country, like Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, and North Carolina. All of these states have “weak” gun laws by CSGV standards. Category 1 hurricanes making landfall in these places might dominate the news cycle for a day or so, and then the media moves on.
But while we’re on the topic of defense, CSGV acts like there are no guns in New Jersey or New York. I can assure you there are, and the media has been reporting on such if you care to dig.
A sign outside a home in Long Beach, LI, summed it all up for storm weary New Yorkers. It read, “Looters will be shot by local vet.â€
In the mean time, I’ve been keeping in contact with a few people in the Garden State who’ve been without power, but nonetheless sufficient armed. Good people armed in the wake of large scale natural disasters like this does more to prevent violence than it does to foment it. A lesson that is totally lost on Mayor Bloomberg, who is refusing help from the National Guard for the 5 Boroughs, 3 of which were utterly battered by this storm:
“We don’t need it,†Mayor Bloomberg said on Wednesday during a press update on the city’s ongoing Hurricane Sandy cleanup. “The NYPD is the only people we want on the street with guns.â€
So for Bloomberg, even the guns wielded by our National Guard are undesirable. And how many of your towns have signed onto this radical and un-American agenda? You know what that sounds like to me?
Good people need to be able to defend themselves in the wake of events like this. We will bring the Second Amendment, true Second Amendment right, and not the nonsense Mayor Bloomberg disingenuously claims to support, to the people of New York. In this struggle I believe we will ultimately prevail. But a lot of that depends on next Tuesday, and who gets to pick the next several Supreme Court justices.
Blog Troubles: Comcast link to Verizon Broken
Since Sandy went through, Comcast is having issues communicating with Verizon. If you have Comcast, you may have trouble getting to the blog. Comcast and Verizon peer with each other through a third party called Tata Communications, which has its data center in North Jersey, which of course is without power and suffering in the aftermath of a hurricane.
We are on a 25Mbit/25Mbit Verizon FiOS connection here with the blog. My employer is on Comcast, so that means I have been unable to work from home, and have been in the office. When in the office, I have either no communication or unreliable communication to home, so blogging suffers. We will return to a more regular schedule once things get back to normal.