Category: Politics

Links, Links, and More Links

July 14, 2021 / / 0 Comments

First, I heard about this on the Assorted Calibers podcast. Essentially, a gun Prohibitionist group tricked John Lott and another gun rights activist to speak to a field of three thousand empty chairs. Let’s see, you lied about (and made a fake website for) a commencement for a fake university. Yet, I’m supposed to believe that you’re telling the truth about your gun death statistics?

Next the President signed an executive order to “promote competition.” Reason has a response of yeah, not so much. Much like the original infrastructure bill, there’s a bunch of stuff in there that has no bearing and/or hurts our ability to compete.

Cuba is seeing mass protests. This could get interesting. Assuming that the Cuban government doesn’t go all Tiammenen Square on them.

And now for some lighter fare. Looks like someone is trying to reboot the Silverhawks. Considering the trend to take old cartoons and worsen the animation, I’m not hopeful. And yeah, I didn’t watch the show that much when I was a kid. That being said, I fucking loved the intro theme:

Friday Quote – John Stuart Mills

July 9, 2021 / / 0 Comments

But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth. If wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

Can We Just Celebrate?

June 23, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Last week President Biden signed legislation designating Juneteenth as the newest federal holiday. Of course, like everything in the news, this gets politicized. I’m kinda getting tired of it. We commemorate momentous events. Please explain to me how the end of slavery is not a momentous event. Yes, technically, slavery wasn’t officially ended until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. However, that’s not the tradition that has arisen. Kind of like how we celebrate Independence Day on July 4 instead of September 3.

So, instead of letting the chattering class whip up dissent, how about we remember those who suffered under that terrible institution and those who fought and died to end it.

Friday Quote – Greg Lukianoff

June 4, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Words are supposed to hurt. That’s considered a legitimate way of fighting things out. And what did it replace in the historical scene? It replaced actual violence. Words are supposed to be free so we CAN actually fight things out, in the battleplace of ideas, so we don’t end up fighting them out in civil wars. If we try to legitimately ban anything that can hurt someone’s feeling, everyone is reduce to silence.

Clearing the Browser Tabs

March 24, 2021 / / 0 Comments

This week’s kind of a big one at the Ward household as we’re closing on the new Ward Estate of Northern Rural Suburbia. Yeah, I’ll explain that later. Today, it’s links.

From Military.com comes an older article on Sig delivering its final prototypes for the new Army SAW. Including chambering in a new 6.8mm cartridge. The article expects new individual rifles in that chamber next year.

In the “Yes, Please” category, Variety reports that the Justified crew are looking to bring Raylan back in a new series. Still need to get The Wife through that series.

The title of this NY Post story kicked over my giggle box. Cancel culture is out of control – and Gen X is our only hope. Considering how overlooked the Gen Xers, I find this highly amusing.

I’ve got two articles from The Wirecutter. The first is how to clean your ear buds.. The second one is on why many of The Wirecutter’s picks are on the expensive side. These are good principles when looking at any purchase.

I’ve got an article from the Mises Institute on why everyone is so more freaked out about the riot at the Capitol. I refuse to call that an insurrection any more than I’d call a violent BLM an insurrection. It was a violent political protest, not an attempt to take over the government.

Finally, The Firearms Blog has a look at the 1986 Miami Shootout. This is one of those seminal gunfights that people who are serious about using guns in self-defense should study. How to stay in the fight when you’re hurt, nothing seems to be working, and everything around you is going to hell.

Thinking About Year-Round DST

March 18, 2021 / / 0 Comments

I hate the “fall back” and “spring ahead” of the changing between Daylight Savings Time. I’ve been advocating for us to pick one and just stick with it. There’s movement among the states to go to year-round daylight savings time, and I was all for it. That was until I heard the host talk about when the nation tried it back in 1974.

It was 1974, and the energy crisis was cutting into the American way of life, with odd-even gas rationing, a national speed limit and shortened Nascar races. The Emergency Daylight Saving Time Act signed by President Nixon dictated that clocks would spring forward one hour on Jan. 6  and stay that way for almost 16 months, until April 27, 1975.

By fall, the dark mornings were apparently wearing on the American people. Proclaiming “it’s for the children” those scholars standing at bus stops in the predawn lawmakers threw in the towel of gloom. Year-round DST was scrapped, and on Oct. 27, clocks fell back.

Empirical evidence of a failed national experiment is a pretty strong argument against year-round DST. Not sure if that would mean the same for year-round standard time. I know where my proclivities lie, which makes me skeptical of my position in the light of new evidence.