Red Flag Laws. This is what will happen...

It’s a Sunday night and your family has all gone to bed. You let the dogs back in and lock the deadbolt like you do every night. All the lights are off now except a couple of night lights scattered throughout the house leaving that dim glow throughout your home. It’s bedtime and work and school are going to come early in the morning. You crawl in bed, kiss your wife and drift off to sleep being thankful for the air conditioning that allows you to pull that heavy quilt up over your shoulder despite the fact it’s still 85 degrees outside. A few hours pass...

0200 Monday morning and your wife taps your leg and says, “baby I heard something outside”. As you sit up in bed you hear the dog growling in the living room and you know something isn’t right. You grab that trusty ole 870 and head into the living room. Your wife grabs her 9mm and heads down the hall to the kids rooms just like you have rehearsed. “Good boy” you say as you enter the living room, trying to calm both the dog and your wife just as splinters fly across the room and the front door flys open. “Oh shit!” As you shoulder your weapon and send a load of 00 Buck across your living room and see the perpetrator fall in a heap. Before the “thank God” can even run across your brain, you see a second man coming in the door and you fire again. This time you hear the pop of your wife’s 9mm as she has joined in the fight. It has to be those damn meth heads from down in town! Just then you are consumed by a wall of bullets as you see multiple muzzle flashes from just outside the door and you realize something isn’t right. You turn to yell at your wife to “get down” just in time to see her take a load of buckshot to the face and her brain matter splatter the wall behind her. You feel the burning as 5.56 bullets Riddle your body. One clips your spine as you’re scrambling away and paralyzes your lower body. The last thing you see before you bleed out is a SWAT guy from your local PD holding your teenage daughter on the floor with a knee in her back as she screams and cry’s because she just watched her parents being murdered.

Why did this happen? You’re no criminal. You’re a Conservative and an honest family man. Your wife is a school teacher and your daughters are on honor roll. Why did this happen?

Well two days ago, you and your wife went down to welcome the new neighbors to the community. Your wife made them some of her “world famous” cookies and you invited them to church on Sunday. Later that afternoon, you got a friend request on Facebook from your new neighbor, which you gladly accepted. They seemed a little odd, but in the few minutes you talked they were pleasant enough. The next day while you and your family sat in church, your new neighbor scrolled through your Facebook profile. He saw that “Trump 2020” post and got infuriated. See, he’s a staunch liberal and he hates your kind. The next thing he sees are the hunting pictures you took last fall when your daughter bagged her first buck. Now he’s seething with fury because he is wholeheartedly against the “slaughter of innocent animals”. Next he sees your post from the last range day with your buddy and sees those scary black assault weapons on the table and that does it! He has to do something about the racist domestic terrorist living next door. He picks up the phone, calls the local Sheriffs Office and reports you as a threat under the new Red Flag law. The SO follows their SOP’s and conducts a no knock warrant because you have now been denied due process and you are considered guilty until proven innocent.

Now you, your lovely wife and two deputies have been killed for nothing. Your daughter will have absolute hell for the rest of her life. She will never be that successful person you dreamed for her to be because of the mental tragedy caused from seeing her parents murdered. The local news paper will report that you were killed after firing on and killing two deputies and that “over a thousand rounds of ammo and 22 guns were confiscated from your residence”.

Oh, those two deputies were just following orders. They left behind families as well and had served their community for over a decade. They didn’t know you were a stand-up guy with a great family. They weren’t allowed time to investigate things under due process. They were told you had threatened your neighbor and were out in the street waving an AR15 around.

This is the reality of Red Flag gun laws.

Innocent people will lose their lives.

Red Flag laws will be used for petty and vengeful reasons without merit.

Stop them.

The crime of noticing

It’s all too prevalent, this “crime” of noticing. You start looking at things. Digging into statistics. Monitoring trends. Delving more deeply into the historical accounts and data. Pattern recognition becomes ever more the norm. You can’t unsee what you’ve seen or unknow what you now know. It bothers you, but it also awakens you. That’s your first mistake.

The second is that you start to verbalize what you’ve noticed. The information you have seen. The wider context. The connections. The ongoing, consistent reality that certain people, certain groups are disproportionately a part of what’s happening, whatever that may be. It’s not just some narrative being spun, but facts. Unavoidable, inexorably linked facts. Something one avoids only if he consciously refuses to break free from the accepted position, the norm. The overarching belief that must never be questioned. Yet, when you verbalize it, when you write it down for others to see, you’re told you’re overstating matters, you’re an extremist, you’re a bigot — no matter how tight your position is or how overwhelming supporting facts may be.

It’s not always a left or right thing. It can even overlap between them, depending on what you notice. You may be able to get around the inevitable condemnation with an off-the-cuff remark or, more likely, through memes — but even then, tread carefully. Am I able to express my findings with a friend, a close family member, any confidant? Will he reject what I say? Will he reject me? Must I stay silent when the reality is staring me in the face every day of my life? Speaking freely is not really permitted. There are always limitations; censorship is always involved from across the political spectrum (as well as internally via base fear of rejection and social alienation).

If I do finally decide to speak up, will I just receive a condemnatory reaction? A damning response: “Did you say something about [fill in the untouchable subject]? How dare you! You’re clearly a bigot.” Now you must be denounced. Now you must be vilified, marginalized, isolated, and silenced. Now you must be destroyed.

The “crime” of noticing. It’s unpardonable.

h/t Cam Brown, Monty Pelerin

Michelle O runs for Prez?

Beyond merely "announcing", she wouldn't have to say a word of substance. Her surrogates and the MSM would do it all for her. Black, Female, Liberal - the 2020 Trifecta. Anything Trump might say in contradiction to any policy would be flamed as racist for 3 news cycles. Mag covers, TV appearances, fawning "editorials" would flood the media everywhere creating a "world consensus". Any opposition would similarly be cast as racist and homophobic. Any organized activist opposition would see the inside of the Emergency Room.

OTOH, the O's have a damn cushy life. Why leave it to return to the DC Swamp and Maelstrom? Only HRC has been so virulently and pathologically power-mad to push it. But then... power corrupts...

Brian Wilson

My Vote This Time

Maybe if I post it here, the phone will stop ringing, the mailbox will unclog and everyone who really really wants to know will….know.

Actually, I’m really excited about my guy! Can’t say I’ve ever been this stoked about a candidate! How could anyone not be?

Unlike the Dems, he has definitive, articulate plans for the future;

Unlike Warren, he has no doubts about his lineage;

Unlike Biden, he has never flip-flopped on essential issues, plagurized someone else's work, does push-ups, has had a face life or sports hair plugs;

Unlike Kamala Harris, he became a success the old fashioned way: he earned it. While standing upright.

Unlike Spartacus, while born in New Jersey, he is not delusional, minds his manners and maintains a full head of hair;

Unlike Bernie Sanders, he is unlike Bernie Sanders;

The same can be said for the rest of the Democratic Wanna-Be's.

The person I’m voting for has always been courteous and responsive to my queries and honestly concerned about my concerns for the future and my family;

He has demonstrated fiscal responsibility, the financial discipline to run clean, efficient, sucessful businesses; he respects the entrepreneur and importance of the Small Business Owner;

He agrees with me: taxation is theft;

He understands the vicissitudes of “politics”, career politicians and the Siren song of Power;

Just like me, he believes strongly in the sanctity of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, the primacy of the Individual, free markets, Natural Law and Spontaneous Order;

He agrees and believes “the Individual is the smallest minority on earth”;

Unlike all the others – including Trump - my guy understands “Individual rights are not subject to a public vote”;

He often quotes Henry David Thoreau: “I wasn’t born to be forced.”

He unequivocally supports Self-Governance.

And, yes, he is the “Boss of Me” — and I’m totally OK with that!

That’s why, again in 2020, I am throwing my entire support and vote for the only person who knows what’s best for me, born to be the only “Boss of Me:

Me

Simple Fact; Simple Truth

Government is a criminal farce. 

Why subject yourself to it, much less believe it's going to make your life better? 

It isn't. 

It won't.

It can't. 

And it doesn't want to.

Brian Wilson

Power Corrupts

Lord Acton is famous for his proclamation that “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Personally, I prefer “absolutely power corrupts” or just “power corrupts absolutely.” Either captures the reality that power, no matter how small, is always abused and always grows.

Power is an aphrodisiac but one that never satisfies. More is always demanded. That is why boundaries and controls are always defined for delegated power.
Private vs. Public Sector Incentives

It is extremely difficult to monitor and control power. Control requires nearly constant oversight. Violations must be punished to reinforce boundaries.

The private sector does this effectively as profits are the standard by which all departments and personnel are measured. Violations are usually met with demotions, terminations and/or criminal prosecution.

The public sector has no similar standard. It is a bureaucratic model that is controlled by rules and regulations. Bureaucrats have little incentive to innovate or make improvements. Numerous studies suggest that most bureaucrats desire to expand their staffs as it makes them more important.

Change in a bureaucracy is not welcome. Most bureaucrats are content to keep their heads down and stay within the rules. Such behavior is optimal.

When rules are violated, it is easy to overlook them or issue mild rebukes. Rarely is anyone demoted, terminated or prosecuted.

Political motivations also play a role. No Administration wants to call attention to malfeasance on its watch. Ignoring it, unless it is publicly known, is both easy and politically optimal. There is little motivation to criticize or punish fellow bureaucrats.
Standards Deteriorate, Especially in Bureaucracies

Those with power resent oversight. That goes for presidents, elected officials and others in the bureaucracy. When those with power also have a veil of secrecy covering their activities, it is easy to bend rules. Bending rules without criticism merely resets these rules in the eyes of the violators. Over time, standards degrade and the lowered standards become de facto standards.

What once was considered out-of-bounds becomes normal. Over time, this process repeats again and again until behavior becomes so egregious that it becomes impossible to ignore it. That is the point that has been reached in the Deep State scandal involving Donald Trump.

-Monty Pelerin

More Than Yelling "STOP"

A recent dust-up over conservatism’s goals and methods was triggered by public libraries promoting drag queens to kids, which, if this Vice report is accurate, is not very dissimilar to the sexualization of kids in Afghanistan, where young boys are dressed as women to dance and are sexually abused by pedophiles.