Consequences, Intended and Not

Consequences, Intended and Not

Planning is usually a prudent thing to do and, usually, the planning pans out. Sometimes, though, especially when the planning is done by politicians, unintended consequences of misbegotten schemes make you wonder where the pols’ heads are.

Communist regimes are big on planning. Five Year Plans to re-vamp its economy were always a big favorite with the old U.S.S.R. commissars and always resulted in big failures.

One of the few sad remnants of Communism, North Korea, also has little luck when it comes to economics although it is spectacular in staging funerals. The recent obsequies for its late dictator Kim Jong-il were no exception.

North Korea demonstrated its expertise in not only planning its Supreme Leader’s funeral but in its consequences for hapless North Koreans who didn’t cry enough.

As an informant reported, within days of Kim Jong-il’s death, “The authorities are handing down at least six months in a labour-training camp to anybody who didn’t participate in the organised gatherings during the mourning period, or who did participate but didn’t cry and didn’t seem genuine.”

So much for Communism, so much for the dictatorship of the proletariat where the proles are forced to grieve for a bloody tyrant.

More relevant to Americans are interesting intended and unintended consequences in the U.S.

Last month, the FBI released a report indicating that violent crime in the U.S. fell 6.4 percent in the first half of 2011 and property crimes fell by 3.7 as contrasted with the same time 2010 time period.

That was the unexpected good news.

The bad news–for liberals who seek to disarm law-abiding citizens–is that the increasing number of armed law-abiding citizens in the country no doubt accounted in large part for the drop in crime.

As proven in Florida and elsewhere, criminals are far less inclined to maim, murder, and break into homes and businesses when their prospective victims are prepared to blow them away.

The intent of gun laws is to inhibit the unrestricted ownership of guns, the true consequence of which is to concentrate guns in the hands of criminals while denying honest Americans the right to defend themselves. The joke on liberals is that the latter stocking up on weapons to defend themselves serves as a deterrent against the former.

In a related issue, a presumed unintended consequence of excessive liberality has led to excessive violence.

A federal court judge decided last year that allegedly non-violent California prisoners were uncomfortable in their crowded facilities. He didn’t comment on the discomfort felt by their victims but did order California to give more space to the perpetrators. Strapped California had no money to build more prisons and chose instead to release thousands of convicted and accused “non-violent” offenders into society.

According to La Puente Mayor John Solis, his city and others are suffering the consequences of the judge’s beneficence. Solis reports that ”Sexual assaults are up about 300 percent and assaults with guns and knives up nearly 150 percent citywide” since the release of the reprobates.

He blames “prison realignment,” a euphemism for loosing barbarians in a state where gun laws are strictly enforced and a resultant explosion of barbarity.
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=12104.)

Guns Kill People Yet Curettes Don't Kill Fetuses?

Guns Kill People Yet Curettes Don't Kill Fetuses?

The gross hypocrisy of the liberal mentality is no better demonstrated by the seemingly-unrelated issues of gun control and abortion, both of which are strongly supported by libs even though the issues are antithetical: Control of guns is endorsed in the interests of preserving human life, abortion by definition destroys human life and is considered a virtual liberal sacrament.

Liberals can be awfully confusing.

Following yet another bloody weekend in New York City, the pro-abortion, imperial Mayor Michael Bloomberg trotted out the tired, old liberal mantra, regarding guns not abortions.

In reaction to 52 shootings in the city between Friday and Labor Day, including a shoot-out at the festive West Indian parade on Monday in Crown Heights that left 3 people dead, Bloomberg again resorted to the tried and true shibolleth that people don’t kill people, guns kill people.

He didn’t phrase his explanation of the mayhem in quite those terms since it’s been logically and statistically shown that guns aren’t the cause of gun violence and that people are the cause. It’s also been proven in Florida and other states that guns–in the hands of law-abiding people–actually deter criminals. Instead, the mayor invoked the more popular if less catchy line of the anti-gun lobby by blaming the shootings on illegal guns.

Memo to Bloomberg: Legal or illegal, firearms don’t usually discharge themselves.

None of this is meant to suggest that the ubiquity of weapons on the mean streets of New York, in predominantly black Crown Heights or anywhere else, isn’t a serious problem.

Nor is it meant to imply that accidents involving legal guns never happen. They do, although those occurrences are usually attributable to carelessness and are rarities even if the media blows them out of proportion when they do occur–in the interests of promoting gun safety–and the liberal agenda of denying Second Amendment rights to Americans.

The sad truth–as illustrated by New York City which has the most stringent gun possession laws in the nation and also has, per capita, the most illegal weapons in the nation and is undergoing a rapidly rising violent crime rate–is that “gun control” doesn’t work, except to the advantage of criminal elements.

Nevertheless, Bloomberg stuck to the liberal script and ignored reality by nasally intoning, This is ”what happens when elected officials in Washington fail to take the problem of illegal guns seriously.”

Those damned guns. They keep shooting and killing people, an implicit and ridiculous claim that serves to absolve the shooters and killers of individual responsibility for their actions.

The high priest of the liberal church and most-enthusiastically anti-gun and pro-abortion president in America’s history, President Barack Hussein Obama, has said little about guns or babies lately. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5372.)

Mayhem in Tucson III: The Truth about Jared Loughner

Mayhem in Tucson III: The Truth about Jared Loughner

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”

Those words were not spoken by alleged Tucson shooter Jared Loughner nor by Sarah Palin nor by Glenn Beck but by presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama at a town hall meeting at Radnor Middle School in Wayne, PA on June 14, 2008: “That’s exactly what Barack Obama said he would do to counter Republican attacks . . . Because [as Obama said] ‘from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl.’ “

Then, to show he found humor in using guns, Obama added, ”I’ve seen Eagles fans:” http://tiny.cc/34yhm. His comments evoked laughter and applause since, after all, isn’t the use of guns amusing?

If not amused by the massacre at Fort Hood by Nidal Malik Hasan on November 5,2009 then President Obama cautioned the nation not “to jump to conclusions” over that mass murder by a Muslim since, after all, he was a Muslim.

Obama’s mass mainstream media quickly jumped to a slew of conclusions and accusations in the Tucson aftermath blaming everyone from Palin to Beck to Fox News. Virtually all of the MSM conclusions and accusations have been defamatory and premature–and erroneous.

The president’s MSM never lets facts stand in the way of a good smearing interlaced with good lying. That media can be forgetful, though, as with Obama’s gun joke or as with ousted Arizona Democrat Rep. Harry Mitchell’s 2006 campaign ad depicting Republican J.D. Hayworth in the crosshairs of a rifle sight or as with the 2008 display of Sarah Palin hanging on a noose in front of a West Hollywood house.

They can be so very forgetful, so intentionally, demonically forgetful.

Not that the MSM will feature, or even cover, it but the truth about Jared Loughner is beginning to seep out. Why report truth when partisan fiction is so much more productive and satisfying?

Loughner’s fellow students at Pima Community College know that truth well, know well that he was expelled and recommended for a mental examination for causing a variety of disturbances. Classmate Caitie Parker tweeted that he was “left wing, quite liberal” in 2007 and known to be a reclusive “anti-flag pothead” who liked Jimi Hendrix and . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3371)

Mabel Defends Her Turf in Florida

Mabel Defends Her Turf in Florida

“Load up the blunderbuss, Mabel! Feel free to fire whenever you want!”

“But, Zeke, the guy is vamoosing! He’s hightailing it!

“Makes no nevermind, Mabe! Dang it, he done shot the dawg and he’s runnin’ away with our chickens! Ya can at least wing the bastard if ya aim straight.”

“Watch yer mouth, Zeke.”

“Sorry, Mabes. But get him, dammit!”

“I done got him, Zeke!”

“Nice shootin’, Mabel!”

“Thanks, Zekey.”

I doubt that’s exactly the scenario envisioned by Florida’s First District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee in a recent ruling, but it’s not far from it.

The court ruled that even if a felon was movin’ on out, retreating from the scene of a crime, Florida residents would be within their rights to blow him away.

The case involved Jimmy Hair who was incarcerated for two years awaiting trial for first degree murder after killing Charles Harper. Harper had forced his way into Hair’s car outside a Tallahassee night spot following an argument in the bar.

Hair was released under the 3-judge appelate court’s unaninmous interpretation of Florida’s “stand your ground” law. The court decided that, “The statute makes no exception from immunity when the victim is in retreat.”

Now, back to Mabel and Zeke. Let’s just say the chicken-napper was already out the barn and skedaddling for all he was worth, a hen in each grimy hand. Would Mabel be justified in shooting, winging, and/or killing him?

I have no clue. I’m not a lawyer. However, that appeals court would probably rule she acted within her rights.

What I do know is that, with this ruling, chicken-napping as well as all other crime in the Sunshine State should now take a severe downturn since nappers, muggers, and other criminals will think twice before perpetrating other crimes.

It’s said by some that capital punishment laws don’t deter murderers. I would say . . .

(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com)

Lying Words and Lying Wordmeisters

Lying Words and Lying Wordmeisters

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me. Some readers may recall that taunt from childhood days, either as the taunted or the tauntee.

While it’s definitely true that sticks and stones can do immeasurable damage to the human frame, it’s not always conversely true that words can never harm us. Words have meaning, words have impact, words can be far more damaging than sticks and stones, depending on the size of those sticks and stones.

The pen is mightier than the sword, an adage coined by Edward Bulwer-Lytton before it became an adage, had confused me as a kid when I figured the only way a pen could be a more effective weapon than a sword would be if you were in close combat and stuck the pen in your adversary’s eyeball.

I was wrong.

Pens seem headed the way of high button shoes and dodo birds anyway but words will always be mightier than mere physical weaponry whether expressed to make a salient point, to drive home an argument, or to conceal an issue and deceive the reader/listener.

The Obama administration and the master wordster himself, President Barack Hussein Obama, are extremely adept at manipulation of the English language to suit their purposes.

Hence we see and hear that the administration’s DOJ supports the Defense of Marriage Act, designed to preserve the one man-one woman institution of marriage on June 12th. That serves to placate “social conservatives” and most normal people. Less than a week later, Obama announced plans to extend health benefits to gay unions, thereby consoling one of Obama’s major constituencies, to a degree since they want much more than that: http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=49670.

However, the Master Deceiver has succeeded in keeping two large blocs relatively content for the moment with a piece of the pie and he knows most voters have this penchant for forgetting. He’s also aware that gays know that his message to them is, “Chill, people! Be patient. You’ll have the whole pie soon enough.”

Likewise, Obama must have satisfied some gun owners with his stated support, albeit less than staunch support, for the constitutional right of Americans to own guns. Yet, gun owners are finding it increasingly difficult to find and buy ammunition for those guns, rendering any weapons dust collecters or, at best, useful as clubs.

CNN attributes the ammo shortage to gun owners stocking up, a reflection of gnawing fears over this administration, substantive fears based on Obama’s history of opposing the D.C. gun-ownership law and voting against the right to keep and bear arms. That stockpiling could be part of the reason for the shortage: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/05/04/ammo.shortage/index.html.

Another reason is more clandestine. Rumors have long been afoot that government agents have been buying up boxcar loads of ammunition in an Obama effort to say one thing, “Sure, you can own guns!” while making citizen-owned weapons as useless as teats on a bull.

As one blogger put it, ”I hate to point out the obvious, but it’s called enforced disarmament. If they can’t take your guns by law, they just take the ammo. At the end of the day it has the same outcome. Martial Law here we come!:” http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread439348/pg1.

Extreme? It sure is but it makes as much sense as believing billions of bullets and shells are being bought up by everyday gun owners. With his stimulus funds overflowing, what better way can gun-phobic Obama disarm Americans than diverting a few billion to buy ammunition?

(Not just incidentally, Boy Scouts and whittlers should be put on notice: Customs agents are now using “convoluted reasoning” to prohibit the importation of pocket knives. Knives like guns kill people too, ya know!: http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=49527)

George H. W. Bush lost the election of 1992 largely because of his foolish “Read my lips” comment on raising taxes. Obama won in 2008 largely because of his promises of change, chief among which changes was reversing the recession and getting Americans back to work.

Now don’t just read his lips but note his empty promises. The country is far worse off in June, 2009 than it was in January when he took office, . . .

(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com)

Lying Words and Lying Wordmeisters

Lying Words and Lying Wordmeisters

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me. Some readers may recall that taunt from childhood days, either as the taunted or the tauntee.

While it’s definitely true that sticks and stones can do immeasurable damage to the human frame, it’s not always conversely true that words can never harm us. Words have meaning, words have impact, words can be far more damaging than sticks and stones, depending on the size of those sticks and stones.

The pen is mightier than the sword, an adage coined by Edward Bulwer-Lytton before it became an adage, had confused me as a kid when I figured the only way a pen could be a more effective weapon than a sword would be if you were in close combat and stuck the pen in your adversary’s eyeball.

I was wrong.

Pens seem headed the way of high button shoes and dodo birds anyway but words will always be mightier than mere physical weaponry whether expressed to make a salient point, to drive home an argument, or to conceal an issue and deceive the reader/listener.

The Obama administration and the master wordster himself, President Barack Hussein Obama, are extremely adept at manipulation of the English language to suit their purposes.

Hence we see and hear that the administration’s DOJ supports the Defense of Marriage Act, designed to preserve the one man-one woman institution of marriage on June 12th. That serves to placate “social conservatives” and most normal people. Less than a week later, Obama announced plans to extend health benefits to gay unions, thereby consoling one of Obama’s major constituencies, to a degree since they want much more than that: http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=49670.

However, the Master Deceiver has succeeded in keeping two large blocs relatively content for the moment with a piece of the pie and he knows most voters have this penchant for forgetting. He’s also aware that gays know that his message to them is, “Chill, people! Be patient. You’ll have the whole pie soon enough.”

Likewise, Obama must have satisfied some gun owners with his stated support, albeit less than staunch support, for the constitutional right of Americans to own guns. Yet, gun owners are finding it increasingly difficult to find and buy ammunition for those guns, rendering any weapons dust collecters or, at best, useful as clubs.

CNN attributes the ammo shortage to gun owners stocking up, a reflection of gnawing fears over this administration, substantive fears based on Obama’s history of opposing the D.C. gun-ownership law and voting against the right to keep and bear arms. That stockpiling could be part of the reason for the shortage: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/05/04/ammo.shortage/index.html.

Another reason is more clandestine. Rumors have long been afoot that government agents have been buying up boxcar loads of ammunition in an Obama effort to say one thing, “Sure, you can own guns!” while making citizen-owned weapons as useless as teats on a bull.

As one blogger put it, ”I hate to point out the obvious, but it’s called enforced disarmament. If they can’t take your guns by law, they just take the ammo. At the end of the day it has the same outcome. Martial Law here we come!:” http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread439348/pg1.

Extreme? It sure is but it makes as much sense as believing billions of bullets and shells are being bought up by everyday gun owners. With his stimulus funds overflowing, what better way can gun-phobic Obama disarm Americans than diverting a few billion to buy ammunition?

(Not just incidentally, Boy Scouts and whittlers should be put on notice: Customs agents are now using “convoluted reasoning” to prohibit the importation of pocket knives. Knives like guns kill people too, ya know!: http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=49527)

George H. W. Bush lost the election of 1992 largely because of his foolish “Read my lips” comment on raising taxes. Obama won in 2008 largely because of his promises of change, chief among which changes was reversing the recession and getting Americans back to work.

Now don’t just read his lips but note his empty promises. The country is far worse off in June, 2009 than it was in January when he took office, . . .

(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com)

GUNS Part II

Addendum to “Guns Don’t Kill People, Liberals Do!”

Please see previous article, “Guns Don’t Kill People, Liberals Do!” http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1058.

On reconsideration, that article title is woefully incorrect due to misuse of the word, “liberals.” In point of fact, that word is really another language distortion by the Left, a distortion comparable to their calling abortion “reproductive rights.”

There’s nothing remotely reproductive about aborting a pre-born baby’s life and there’s nothing even vaguely liberal about today’s American liberals.

The first definition for “liberal” on Dictionary.com is: “favorable to progress or reform, as in political or religious affairs,” whereas those who purport to be libs in America are diametrically opposed to true progress or to anything remotely resembling reform in either politics or religion.

What they endorse and advocate is not progress and reform. It is nothing less than retrogression and deformity, destruction, dissolution, and deviance from what Americans have long held true and inviolable. And it is the responsibility of all Americans to resist any efforts to impose those deviances on the rest of us.

Take the whole issue of guns, for example. Conservatives are often accused of living in the past, thrashing about in antiquated ideas and seeking to preserve the outdated meanings and intent of our Constitution, such as Americans’ right to keep and bear arms.

(Again, to save the writer the onerous task of repetition, please see the previous article on this subject.)

The past has many enticements, aside from outdoor plumbing. However, we do seek to preserve those beliefs which are anything but antiquated and which were, and are, the foundations of the greatest nation ever created on the planet.

We do indeed believe in less government, greater individual responsibility, moral and national integrity, and we believe in the Almighty God that helped make all we are and all we have possible.

We may not always live up to our ideals but we hold dear those values of patriotism, honor, and morality without which America would long ago have ended up on the scrapheap of so many other pretenders to greatness and success.

We are accused of being flag-wavers by liberals who often seem ashamed of our flag and we are often sarcastically reminded of the definition of patriotism by the 18th century curmudgeon, Dr. Samuel Johnson.

“Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel,” but only for those who wrap themselves in a nation’s flag while living lives antithetical to that nation’s values. (Johnson also defined oats as “A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.”)

Aside from the incessant, discredited, blather about banning of guns in order to keep our streets safer, refuted in my original article on this subject, another distortion of intent behind that lib nostrum, is absolute gun, and ammunition, control.

Such is the dream of the pacifist minions of the Left and such is the quickest path to subjugation and tyranny by unbridled, usurping government.

Similar to the proven wisdom of the adage that, “Si vis pacem, para bellum–If you wish for peace, prepare for war,” if we wish to continue as a free, independent, and democratic republic, we must be prepared to struggle and fight for that privilege.

Before some dolt reports me to the FBI as an insurrectionist, let me clarify . . .

(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com)

America 2016 II: Disarmament?

Here’s a mouthful: The Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and other Related Items.

Politicos get turned on by long titles such as that one which refers to a treaty never ratified by the United States Senate and which more commonly goes by its Spanish acronym, CIFTA. If you haven’t heard about it, you will soon enough since President Obama is now pushing it as is Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana.

It’s no surprise Obama is on board but Lugar, the most senior Republican in the Senate, is a major shocker.

CIFTA fits very nicely with Obama’s obsession with internationalism. (See “America in 2016,” http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1022, which discusses the un-American scheme for the ”use of international law in interpreting the Constitution of the United States.”)

The seventy-seven year old Dick Lugar, however, is generally considered a pretty conservative guy so his support for a treaty for which there is very little enthusiasm in the Senate is indeed a surprise. The CIFTA treaty has been gathering dust there for 12 years ever since Bill Clinton proposed it but made little effort to get it ratified.

I can’t figure why a conservative Republican would advocate for a treaty which, among other features, would provide all available United States’ governmental information on every gun owner in the country to bureaucrats in foreign nations.

Catch the video on the subject with CNN’s Lou Dobbs, who says, “We’re fools” to buy into this farcical treaty, here: http://wearechangecoloradosprings.org/blog/?p=594. Dobbs added that “We will have only ourselves to blame” if the Senate ratifies it.

Speaking of fools, the far left wing The Nation . . .

(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com/)