Tuesday, December 18, 2012

THE END IS NEAR: 10 Terrifying Truths About the National Debt

Offering a long-term perspective on the debt and deficit, Tyler Durden presents a graph tracking the ratios throughout American history. The takeaways are anything but positive:

10. Beginning with the Anglo-American war of 1812, and continuing through the US civil war, World War I and World War II, the major military shocks to the US fiscal system are clearly obvious.

9. Just as obvious is the impact of not only The Great Moderation which started in the early 1980s just before the 1987 arrival of Alan Greenspan at the helm of the Fed, which allowed the US to exchange fiscal prudence for ever cheaper debt which could and would be used to fund an ever greater budget deficit, and lead to a surge in the Federal debt.

Larwyn's Linx: Let’s Have That Conversation About Guns

Send us tips! Bloggers: install a Larwyn's Linx widget. Get real-time news, 24/7, at BadBlue.

Nation

Let’s Have That Conversation About Guns: Schlichter
Armed Citizen Shoots Gunman Attacking People at Movie Theater: Sooper
Boehner Can’t Give Away the House Fast Enough: RS

So if we're going to have that 'national conversation on guns'...: Instapundit
Gov. Nikki Haley appoints Rep. Tim Scott to DeMint’s seat: RedAlert
Mall shooter killed himself after seeing gun carrier aiming at him: Scoop

Longtime Senator From Hawaii Daniel Inouye Dead At The Age Of 88: Ace
God Suffers With Us: DLim
Why can't America care for the mentally ill?: Fox

Invincible Ignorance: Sowell
How Do We Know Ban Wouldn't Have Stopped Adam Lanza?: Reason
Conscience, Not Guns: Prager

Economy

Obama's Stealth Redistribution Strategy: Ushanka
10 Million Middle Class Families Face New Tax Under Obamacare: ATR
Judge Judy Confronts Entitlement Slacker, Hilarity Ensues: Bruce

Forget the 1%, Check Out Government Workers!: RS
Special Report: The Right to Work demonstrations in Lansing: Scoop
Obama makes new offer to narrow gap on cliff: Politico

Scandal Central

Mark Levin: Why Obama didn’t mention Fort Hood massacre at Sandy Hook vigil...: Scoop
Clinton And Kerry Get A Free Ride From The Press: IBD
Patterico on Tommy Christopher and the ‘Wheelerization’ of Steven Crowder: RSM

Media

Factual weaponry for the stalwart foot soldiers fighting on behalf of the 2nd Amendment: Bookworm
The Implicit Racism of Ezra Klein: Innocent Bystanders
States with Stricter Gun Control Laws Are Less Safe: PJM

Furnishing Your Tidy Little Mind: RSM
Associated Press Story: Believe It or Not Mass Killings Are Not on the Rise, They Are on the Decline: Blaze
Village Voice Winds The Dog Whistle: Slack

CNN’s Soledad O’Brien Urges Obama to “Track” People and Firearms: AIM
Media myths on ‘assault weapons’ and ‘semiautomatic firearms’: Exam
The Clueless Words of a Man Who Fears Guns, But Doesn’t Respect Them: Marfdrat

Mark Levin: Did you notice Obama didn’t mention Fort Hood as a massacre at Sandy Hook vigil?: Scoop
Penn And Teller On Gun Control: Ace
ABC and CBS Skip News of Tim Scott’s Historic Senate Appointment: NB

World

DISARMING AMERICA: Rebuttal of Ed Markey’s and other Democrats’ blatant lies: CDN
Banning Handguns Produced More Gun Crime in Britain: MB
The Principal Product of Malmö: Jew-Hatred: GoV

Europe Has Same Rate of Multiple Victim Shootings as the United States: FPM
Hope And Change: America Falls Out Of Top 10 Most Prosperous Countries For First Time: WZ
"Greece is not Japan": ZH

While Obama lectures us on personal responsibility...: Instapundit
First Photo of Marine Jailed in Mexico Sent to Family From Anonymous Mexican Email Account: Blaze
Narrative FAIL: Woman Carrying Concealed Weapon At Nail Salon Stops Armed Robbery: WZ

Sci-Tech (courtesy BadBlue.com/Tech)

"Gun" "Control": TechCrunch
Iranian computers targeted by new malicious data wiper program: Ars Technica
Stallman and Ubuntu: Sticks and Stones and a Blogosphere Brawl: Linux Insider

Cornucopia

Life After Sex Work: Daily Beast
Sandy Hook Referenced in Dark Knight Rises: PP Simmons
Tyranny and the Monopoly of Arms: Mises

Image: Rep. Tim Scott picked to replace DeMint in Senate
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: Small Dead Animals

QOTD: "There is no system in place—at all—that routes very sick mentally ill individuals, especially those at risk for violence, to forensic psychiatry professions truly skilled to evaluate them. In any case, the numbers of such professionals are extremely low and their use largely limited to evaluating and treating those who have already committed sex crimes or very violent acts, including murder.

Clinicians in ERs and in clinics, whose resources are already stretched dangerously thin—are loathe to file the paperwork that would force hospitalization on the unwilling or force medications on individuals who need them and refuse them, if they are lucky enough to get hospital care." --Dr. Keith Ablow

Monday, December 17, 2012

CERN virtually certain it's discovered the Rosetta Stone of physics

This is serious.

In one of the last updates before the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) shuts down until 2015, CERN has announced that its observation of the Higgs boson (or a particle that is Higgs-like) is now approaching 7 sigma certainty.

5 sigma — 99.9999% certainty... — is the threshold for an observation to be labeled a scientific discovery. CERN crossed the 5 sigma threshold this summer. At 7 sigma, both the CMS and ATLAS teams are reporting that there’s only a 0.0000000001% chance that they haven’t found a Higgs-like particle.

...all they know is that they’ve found a particle, with a mass of around 125 GeV, that behaves as predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics... further analysis (due in 2013) will now focus on the particle’s spin, and other properties. Eventually, perhaps after upgrades are completed and the LHC turns back on in 2015, the particle will be officially announced as the Higgs boson (or not, which would be much more interesting).

...In other news, CERN says that it has observed the decay of the Bs meson (strange B meson) into two muons. Apparently this is one of the rarest processes ever observed in particle physics, which means it’s a good chance that it could lead to new science.

What is the Higgs Boson? I can best liken it to a Rosetta Stone of physics:

The Higgs boson is the only particle left in our understanding of particle physics (called the Standard Model) that we haven’t discovered. We think it exists — there’s math that postulates it does — it simply has never been observed. This is why it’s called the “God Particle,” because it’s the particle that would explain the difference between objects with mass and objects that have only energy — objects with form and objects without.

If we do find it, we’ll know that we have the right idea about how particles acquire mass — as in, how photons, riding on beams of light, have no mass at all, while the W and Z bosons (two particles that govern the “weak force,” one of the fundamental forces that keep atoms together) have the masses that they do, and why other subatomic particles have the weights that they have.

English physicist Peter Higgs theorized that a lattice-like field enmeshes the universe. This field explains nothing less important than mass itself. In short, discovering the Higgs Boson explains why everything in the universe has mass.

Like I said, this is serious.


Hat tip: BadBlue Tech News.

TABLET: Why Israel Has No Newtowns

Although it is awash in guns, Israel suffered only 58 gun deaths last year, compared with 10,728 Americans.

For anyone truly interested in policy prescriptions grounded in real world experience, please consider "Why Israel Has No Newtowns":

[In Israel, a]nyone can come up with an excuse to legally own a gun. I have personally witnessed more than one friend apply under false premises, claiming that their work required that they travel to settlements and other high-risk areas, and walk out, a short while later, with pistols much like the ones used in Aurora or Columbine. Assault rifles, admittedly, are harder to come by in Israel...

...It doesn’t take much of an expert to realize that these restrictions, in and of themselves, do not constitute much by way of gun control. And even though there have been no Newtown-style mass shootings in Israel, the Israeli government has tightened the reins over the past decade, passing a series of additional restrictions and placing further emphasis on enforcement. The result was clear: In 2000, there were approximately 400,000 legally owned firearms in Israel, the majority of them handguns, and the number of illegal weapons stood at about 150,000...

Ten years later, thanks largely to the new strictures, the ratio was reversed: 180,000 firearms were legally licensed, and more than 400,000 were illegally obtained, most of them assault rifles like the M-16 and the Galil, stolen from the Israel Defense Forces. Naturally, this led to an increase in the number of casualties, as it placed far mightier tools in the hands of criminals who were previously content to handle their affairs using the perfectly legal and readily available guns at their disposal...

How, then, to explain Israel’s relatively low rate of gun-related deaths? For Lior Nedivi, an independent firearms examiner in Jerusalem and the co-author of a comprehensive report comparing Israel’s gun laws and culture to that of the United States, the answer lies far from the law books. “An armed society,” Nedivi wrote, quoting the science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein, “is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” It may be a bit odd to think of Israeli society as polite, but when it comes to guns it is, and for just the reason articulated by Heinlein: When everyone has a gun, guns are no longer seen as talismans by weak, frightened, and unstable men seeking a sense of self-validation, but as killing machines that are to be handled with the utmost caution and care.

...If the United States, itself awash with weapons, wishes to benefit from Israel’s experience, it must make sure it learns the right lessons. The first and most universal one is that ever more stringent gun control is bad policy: As is the case with drugs, as was the case with liquor during Prohibition, the strict banning of anything does little but push the market underground into the hands of criminals and thugs. Rather than spend fortunes and ruin lives in a futile attempt to eradicate every last trigger in America, we would do well to follow Israel’s example and educate gun owners about their rights and responsibilities, so as to foster a culture of sensible and mindful gun ownership...

...Finally, there’s one more crucial, and tragically ignored, point to consider. In the aftermath of Friday’s shooting, a mother named Liza Long wrote a powerful essay in which she recounted the difficulties of raising her mentally ill son. A brilliant child, he is nonetheless prone to occasional fits of rage and violence. When she looked at the shooter this past Friday, Long felt a chilling sense of recognition...

...Rather than pretend that it was the objects in their hands rather than the afflictions in their minds that led Lanza and Holmes and Cho and the others to perpetrate their monstrosities, we should offer help to those young men and their families. We have no more compassionate route, and no greater hope for peace.

Read the whole thing. Then pass it on.


Hat tip: Uncle Ben.

ANYONE CAN BE A GUN-MAKER: "Regulation or banning of firearms... will soon be impossible"

Innovations in 3D printing will soon make any sort of ban on firearms pointless.

Three months ago, the gunsmiths behind the group known as Defense Distributed announced their intention to create a working, lethal gun anyone can download and 3D-print at home. Now their experiments with actual 3D-printed firearm components and live ammunition have started. And they’re documenting their progress on video.

Over the weekend the project’s founder Cody Wilson posted a YouTube clip of the group testing an AR-15 semi-automatic weapon Defense Distributed assembled with a 3D-printed lower receiver, the highly-regulated component that serves as the body of the gun onto which the barrel, stock, magazine and other elements are attached...

...The result of Defense Distributed’s experiment: Their home-printed AR-15 piece cracked and fell apart after firing just six rounds. But Wilson still considers their first test of a partially-downloadable weapon a successful learning experience...

...A lower receiver has special significance to gun enthusiasts: It’s the central part of the weapon that’s regulated by gun control laws and trackable by serial number. Print your own lower-receiver at home, and in many states all the other parts can be obtained without background checks or even identification.

Writing at TechCrunch, Devin Coldewey observes that rapidly evolving technologies render any attempts to ban guns moot:

If we as a country, and indeed we as a global community, are going to seriously address the question of gun control, we need to address the issue of fabricated weapons and weapon plans, or else the discussion will be moot. This is because the proliferation of 3D printed weaponry changes both the definition of “gun” and of what it means to “control” it...

...In World War II, the U.S. manufactured one million FP-45 Liberator handguns. These crude, single-shot pistols were designed to be dropped from the air by the thousand over occupied territory, to give the resistance there the advantage of a firearm, be it only for one shot. The fundamental difference was not between six shots and a hundred shots, but between zero shots and any shots at all.

A 3D-printed gun, were it only to fire one shot before melting or failing, is still a gun. After that, the difference is only in what kind of gun it is.

Of course printed guns don’t and won’t constitute the major part of the ideas in such a major and divisive debate as gun control. But that does not obviate the fact that we can print guns. We can do so today, and the ability to do so is only improving. It is very important to note that one need not take a side in the debate to acknowledge this. And it is very important that we acknowledge this now, so that we are not forced to acknowledge it later, when it will be too late to take either side...

Part of the discussion has to be that, government or otherwise, there can be no more control over printed guns than there can be over printed spoons. Regulation or banning of firearms, whether you think the idea is good or bad, will soon be impossible.

What this means is that criminals will soon have easy access to firearms no matter what politicians and governments decide.


GHOULISH: Senator Diane Feinstein waited an entire year for a tragedy she could exploit to advance her gun ban legislation

Never one to let a crisis go to waste, Senator Diane Feinstein breathlessly announced yesterday on Meet The Press that she will try to resurrect the "assault weapons" ban. But what wasn't widely reported is that she admitted she'd been sitting on such a bill for a year or more.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein said she will reintroduce a ban on assault weapons to the Senate on the very first day the new House session on NBC's Meet the Press.

Feinstein also said she wants and expects Barack Obama to lead on gun control from now on. "I can tell you that he is going to have a bill to lead on because as a first-day bill I'm going to introduce in the Senate and the same bill will be introduced in the House - a bill to ban assault weapons," Feinstein said. "It will ban the sale, the transfer, the importation and the possession. Not retroactively but prospectively. And it will ban the same for big clips, drums or strips of more than 10 bullets."

...There was a previous assault weapons ban from 1994 to 2004. There was some conversation about re-introducing the ban around the time of the Aurora shooting, too. "There will be a bill. We've been working on it now for a year," Feinstein said. "We've tried to take my bill from '94 to 2004 and perfect it. We believe we have.

In other words, to advance her tyrannical, progressive agenda, the malevolent Diane Feinstein couldn't even wait a week -- she couldn't wait for the poor victims' bodies to be buried -- to resume her efforts to unravel the Second Amendment.

Feinstein was accompanied by Bloomberg -- the idiot mayor, not the news service -- who already regulates dangerous substances like salt and soda in his city. For our own good, of course. The pint-sized, would-be dictator of New York City saw that this particular tragedy was the opportunity he'd been waiting for.

Glenn Reynolds -- better known as Instapundit -- put the rhetorical beat-down on Bloomberg's hypocrisy.



Will Bloomberg set an example for us and start his gun-ban initiative by disarming his cadre of bodyguards? Of course not.

Why does Michael Bloomberg believe his life is more precious than my family's?

Throughout human history, the elites have always protected themselves with the force of arms.

In America, uniquely, so do the citizens. And this right we will not surrender.


Larwyn's Linx: The Facts About Mass Shootings

Send us tips! Bloggers: install a Larwyn's Linx widget. Get real-time news, 24/7, at BadBlue.

Nation

The Facts About Mass Shootings: Fund
Vicki Soto: A Hero to Remember: Flopping Aces
I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother: Gawker

Sanitizing Adam Lanza: AT
Democrats Quick to Politicize Tragic School Shooting: Shark Tank
Worst school massacre in U.S. history: Not a shooting: Wolf Files

Madness, Deinstitutionalization & Murder: Federalist
If you lock up the lunatics before they commit crimes...: MOTUS
Why Gun Control Laws Don't Work: LoudTalker

The Wages of Gun Control: Howling
Do we need stricter gun control laws?: Marfdrat
Gunman shot himself as men with guns closed in: Pandith News

Economy

Obamacare and My Daughter: PJM
The $10,000 Degree: NRO
If you only learn one thing today, let it be this: RefBrok

Scandal Central

Rep. Louie Gohmert: Eric Holder is one to talk about gun control: RedAlert
Harry Reid should not be allowed to illegally manipulate Senate rules: RedAlert
10 people shot on Friday in Chicago, the city with the strictest gun control laws: Wintery Knight

Media

The media should be ashamed of its Connecticut coverage: TheWeek
Politico, Onn Obama's Delayed 2014 'Budget' Proposal, Fails to Note No Budget Passed For 4 Years: NB
Whether it's ranting or reporting, Bob Costas and his NBC posse are the gang that can't shoot straight: Joe Kidd

Which Gun Control Law Would Have Prevented the Sandy Hook Tragedy?: Hawkins
Tragedy and Exploitation – The Progressive Way: RWN
A second shooting was stopped on the same day as Newtown traged: RWN

Newtown: Just Leave Us to Grieve in Peace: Feldman
Stampeding Gun Control Through Crisis: Loudon
Mental Illness, Not Guns Is the Cause Of Mass Murder: Waznmentobe

Who’s The Biggest Douche In The Universe?: R&R (Language Warning)
Justice Sotomayor and Murderer Advocacy: AT
The Election Wasn’t As Close As We First Thought: OTB

World

Silence of the Feminists: City Journal
Obama Ignores Ex-Marine Wrongly Held In Mexican Jail: IBD
Depardieu Says He’s Paid Enough French Taxes in Letter to PM: BizWk

Hillary Falls Down, Gets “Concussion,” Cancels Benghazi Testimony: Bruce
Jordanian King Warns of “New Extremist Alliance” in Region: WorldThreats
'Palestinian' reaction to Newtown, Connecticut massacre: Matzav

Sci-Tech (courtesy BadBlue.com/Tech)

Dell Has A New Platform As A Service That Actually Makes Sense: TechCrunch
10 skills for developers to focus on in 2013: TechRepublic
National Rifle Association Hides Facebook Page To Avoid Hosting Flame Wars: TechCrunch

Cornucopia

Conservatism and Angry Birds?: Wellfonder
Obama politicizes vigil in Newtown, hints at more gun control: Scoop
The NFL should yank their TV rights from NBC: WyBlog

Image: Gallery of the innocents
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: Ninety Miles From Tyranny

QOTD: "I am appalled. Yes, I am appalled that a monster killed children and teachers, but I am more appalled that the first response from the professional control freaks — the political animals across the nation — is to initiate the long-planned campaign to stampede Americans into surrendering their rights, to disarm all the people who didn’t murder anyone, and — most importantly — to eliminate the ability of the citizens to defend themselves from a whole spectrum of evils ranging from common bad guys to government tyranny.

Senator Feinstein has pledged to submit new “assault weapon” legislation, even more draconian than the last completely useless ban, the one that had no effect on crime other than to create new classes of victims. Senator Feinstein, evidently in an effort to avoid accusations that this new bill is a knee jerk response to the shootings, assures us that she has been working on this bill for a year.

Contemplate that for a moment. This “new” bill has been poised to launch for months, waiting only for the (hopefully) inevitable next horrific incident, an appropriate tragedy, to whip this “solution” out while stampeding a frightened, sad and disoriented populace into accepting yet another “DO SOMETHING!” law that constrains honest people while addressing the actual problem not at all. The senseless slaughter of 20 little ones is the perfect political platform for shoving fascist policies down our throats. The media will trot out every profile of every child and teacher who died, to engender guilt, horror and remorse and bully Americans into letting go of their guns. Newsflash, asshats… we aren’t that gullible and stupid. We certainly aren’t that weak." --Terresa Monroe Hamilton

Sunday, December 16, 2012

DUDE: Giant Squid Finally Captured on Video

Try not to pee in your pants. Oh, wait. That was me.

Giant Squid on Video


The giant squid has been captured on video in its natural habitat for the first time ever. This long-sought after footage — considered by many to be the Holy Grail of natural history filmmaking — will be revealed by Discovery Channel and NHK in January 2013...


...This massive predator has always been shrouded in secrecy, and every attempt to capture a live giant squid on camera in its natural habitat has failed. Until now.


Mankind finally confronts the greatest mystery of the deep as the first-ever footage of a live giant squid in its natural habitat is revealed in Discovery Channel’s Monster Squid: The Giant Is Real, which premieres on Sunday, January 27, 2013 at 10/9c as the season finale of Curiosity.

Two words: serious Calamari.


Hat tip: BadBlue Tech.

COMING SOON: Twitter to let you download an archive of every tweet you've ever... eh... tweeted

Some users already have this kewl new feature.

As promised by Twitter CEO Dick Costello, Twitter is now letting you download a collection of every tweet you've ever tweeted, beyond the mere 3,200 tweet limit imposed by the Twitter API. If the option is available to you, it can be found under settings. Once you request your archive, all you have to do is wait, and Twitter will send you an email when it's ready.

When delivered, the archive is presented as a zipped HTML file which displays the tweets in a calender-like format, a better deal than a straight-up list of text. So get ready to dive into your own personal Twitter past. Or don't. There could be some embarassing stuff back there.


Check your settings page and scroll down to see whether an "Archive" section exists yet. If it does, you can request a download of your entire Twitter history, from your first tweet on.


Hat tip: BadBlue Tech News.

POP QUIZ: Which Sign Might Prevent a Tragedy?

Via Common Sense Evaluation (hat tip: Joe Kidd):


Related: That's weird: progressive media forgets to report that man with concealed carry permit helped stop Portland mall shooter.


THE 10 MOST EXPLOSIVE GUN CONTROL FACTS: How to Save Lives

What is the common feature of these shocking, mass attacks? They take place where guns are banned.

Take the Aurora, Colorado movie theater example: there were seven movie theaters showing the movie Batman within a 20-minute drive of where the killer lived.

He didn't go to the movie theater closest to his home. He didn't go to the movie theater with the largest audience. He went to the one movie theater -- the only one -- that posted a sign that banned concealed handguns from the theater.

Look at gun bans more generally: Now if you look at bans generally, you can't point to a place, Chicago and Washington, D.C., where we ban guns with positive results. Instead, murder rates and violent crimes went up afterwards. In the U.K. and Jamaica, Ireland, island nations that have banned guns -- you can't find a place where murder rates have actually gone down. They have gone up usually by large amounts.

Let's look at gun-free zones hypothetically on a personal level: Let's say someone was stalking you. That person was threatening violence against you and your family. Would you feel safer putting a sign in front of your home that read, "This home is a gun-free zone"?

Would that deter someone intent on violence -- or encourage one? In fact, nobody would put a sign like that in front of their home. Yet some businesses and offices think posting such a sign, at movie theaters and malls will help -- when common sense would tell us that it does not.

Rather than repelling criminals, gun bans actually encourage violence. Gun-free zones instruct the malevolent criminal where victims can't defend themselves.

The reason these mass attacks occur is because the killer wants to commit suicide. If you read the notes they leave or their diaries, if you watch their videos, you'll find that -- time after time -- they want to kill themselves in a way that will make people notice them. In their sick minds, they want to go out in a blaze of violence that will have people pay attention to them.

In these mass attacks, 75 percent of the time the killers die at the scene; the other 25 percent they planned on dying, but they couldn't bring themselves to finish the act of suicide.

These people want to get media attention. They know that the more people they kill, the more media attention they'll get. So they target the places where they can kill as many people as possible. And they're planning these things months and months in advance.

Should schools have armed guards? We should learn something from Israel. They've had a terrorist problem since the forties. For years they tried to do just that - have more police, more military, more armed security guards and they discovered they simply didn't have enough money. Terrorists have huge strategic advantages to patiently find weak points.

In the early seventies, Israel finally realized they couldn't flood areas with enough military or police. They instead began permitting citizens to carry concealed weapons. About 15 percent of citizens are so licensed.

At the time of the Virginia Tech shooting, something similar was attempted. Before the shooting, you had about one police officer for every 80 acres of campus. After the attack, it was one officer for every 40 acres. It doesn't scale.

You see this in the methodical way these killers choose locations now. They find places where people cannot defend themselves.

Do gun bans work? The natural reaction is to say, "If I can just get rid of the gun, I can stop bad things from happening." You don't think about all of the unintended consequences of that:

What about all of the successful defensive uses of guns?

More importantly, can you prevent evil individuals from getting guns? You can't find a country around the world that ever imposed a gun ban where murder rates actually fell after the ban.

Even island nations -- you would think these would be the ideal experiment -- with gun bans are unable to prevent criminal gangs from bringing in guns, drugs, and other contraband.

It's the good, law-abiding citizens that are impacted by gun bans, not criminals. To the extent that you disarm law-abiding citizens and not the violent, you find the perverse result that things get worse. This occurred in Washington, DC and Chicago. After their gun bans, violent crime and murder rates spiked.

The question you have to ask yourself about gun laws: who are you most likely to disarm: the law-abiding citizen or the criminal?

The gun-free zone provides a clear field for evil to carry out mass murder. It creates sitting ducks for violence. Those who push gun control may mean well (or not), but they haven't thought through what they want to do.

If gun-control zealots could point to even a few countries where gun bans lowered murder rates, they might have a legitimate argument. But they can't, because they don't exist.

Europe has about the same rate of public shootings per capita as the U.S., yet it has far more draconian gun regulations. Germany, which has two of the worst four school shootings, has a year-long waiting period with two psychological screens. When you have people who take months to plan attacks, and are willing to die to pull the attacks off, will not be deterred.

If you want to stop these attacks, you can take two actions:

(1) The media can stop giving publicity to these killers. The media shouldn't name the killers. This would reduce to a large extent the motivation for the attacks.

(2) We must reduce and eliminate "gun-free zones". Since at least 1950, with but one exception, all public shootings with three or more victims have all taken place in venues where guns were banned. The theater shooting, the Sikh Temple shooting, the school shootings, you go down the list and in each case, the gun-free zone is the place the killers always choose.


Via Professor John Lott, the world's foremost expert on the impact of gun control laws on society. Paraphrased from an interview on The Mark Levin Show (MP3).

No Way Out [Peter Schiff]

Guest Post by Peter Schiff of Euro Pacific Capital:

By upping the ante once again in its gamble to revive the lethargic economy through monetary action, the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee is now compelling the rest of us to buy into a game that we may not be able to afford. At his press conference this week, Fed Chairman Bernanke explained how the easiest policy stance in Fed history has just gotten that much easier. First it gave us zero interest rates, then QEs I and II, Operation Twist, and finally "unlimited" QE3.

Now that those moves have failed to deliver economic health, the Fed has doubled the size of its open-ended money printing and has announced a program of data flexibility that virtually insures that they will never bump into limitations, until it's too late. Although their new policies will create numerous long-term challenges for the economy, the biggest near-term challenge for the Fed will be how to keep the momentum going by upping the ante even higher their next meeting.

The big news is that the Fed is now doubling the amount of money it is printing. In addition to its ongoing $40 billion per month of mortgage backed securities (to stimulate housing), it will now buy $45 billion per month of Treasury debt. The latter program replaces Operation Twist, which had used proceeds from the sales of short-term treasuries to finance the purchase of longer yielding paper. The problem is the Fed has already blown through its short-term inventory, so the new buying will be pure balance sheet expansion.

To cloak these shockingly accommodative moves in the garb of moderation, the Fed announced that future policy decisions will be put on automatic pilot by pegging liquidity withdrawal to two sets of economic data. By committing to tightening policy if either unemployment falls below 6.5% or if inflation goes higher than 2.5%, Bernanke is likely looking to silence fears that the Fed will stay too loose for too long. While these statistical benchmarks would be too accommodative even if they were rigidly enforced, the goalposts have been specifically designed to be completely movable, and hence essentially meaningless.

Larwyn's Linx: Guns, Guns, Guns

Send us tips! Bloggers: install a Larwyn's Linx widget. Get real-time news, 24/7, at BadBlue.

Nation

Guns, Guns, Guns: Sultan Knish
Progressive policies are to blame for the Sandy Hook massacre: GWP
Chicago shootings spike 49% despite strictest gun laws: CNS

Repeat After Me: Gun Control Isn't the Answer: CDN
Gun Control Isn’t The Answer. Here’s Why: Loesch
Obama Fails a Test of Leadership: Dossier

Boehner Proposes Tax Hike On High Earners, Obama Refuses: ZH
Not One Dime for Obamacare federal exchange funding.: RS
Waffle House Robber Killed By Concealed Carry Permit Holder: AllAm

Economy

Fed Creates Nightmare Scenario, Closes Eyes, Sings Trololo: Testosterone
Greece is on the brink of Civil War: Insider
DOE: Suspensions of Boys, Blacks May Violate Civil Rights: CNS

Only In America: Israpundit
Printing Our Way Out of Debt: WS
Union Thug to MI Governor: “We’ll be at your daughter’s soccer game”: Hideout

Scandal Central

More Guns, Not Less (In the Right People's Hands): Times of Israel
Far Left Groups Defeated CT Mental Health Protection Laws Months Before Shooting: GWP
Congressmen Confront EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson Over Use of Alias 'Richard Windsor': WS

Climate & Energy

Warmists Really Excited Over New Global Warming Poll: Cove
Sen. Jim Inhofe blasts new EPA soot rules: Tulsa World
Obama Bypasses Congress to Mandate Black Boxes for All Cars -- Beginning in '14: CNS

Media

ABC, NY Times reporters go full-on vulture tweeting friends, family of Connecticut massacre targets: DC
Death Porn Media Victim Unexpectedly Negative About The Encounter: RSM
What gun control can and can't do: Ambinder

Some thoughts about the recent tragedy: JPA
Citizen With Concealed Carry Permit May Have Saved Lives During Oregon Mall Shooting: LoneCon
Rebuttal of POLITICO’s and liberal Republicans’ false claims: CDN

The Names: Ace
Jamie Foxx: Hollywood Deserves Some Blame for Violence (After Joke About Killing ‘All the White People’): Blaze
Researchers Develop an Internet Truth Machine: Slashdot

NY Daily News: Ban All Killer Weapons Because We’re All To Blame: RWN
MSNBC’s Ed Schultz Talks Gun ‘Confiscation’: NB
David Frum: 2nd Amendment Supporters ‘Enable Shootings’: RWN

World

Virtually Absent From U.S. Press Coverage of Egypt’s Constitution: It’s About Sharia Law: BizzyBlog
Chuck Hagel: Walt and Mearsheimer's dream come true: Matzav
Meanwhile, at an elementary school in Israel…: American Digest

Sci-Tech (courtesy BadBlue.com/Tech)

Huge Asteroid's Earth Flyby Caught on Video: Space
ESPN Teams Up With Twitter To Provide College Football Video Highlights In Stream: TechCrunch
Following Adobe user forum breach, hacker claims he has access to some Yahoo servers: NextWeb

Cornucopia

Lottery Winner Jack Whittaker's Losing Ticket: BizWk
Michigan Triplets, 21, Are Now All Behind Bars On Felony Charges: TSG
The First Lessons Of Economics And Politics: Looking Spoon

Image: Fiscal cliff talks: Speaker John Boehner pitches millionaire tax hike
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: Flopping Aces

QOTD: "Is it the number of guns? Societal breakdown? Our culture of violence? Hollywood? While there’s probably a kernel of truth in all the usual suspects, a more likely culprit may be the policy implemented by our betters which determined that mental institutions were horror chambers that inhumanely incarcerated people simply because they didn’t conform to the standards society determined to be normal (how judgmental).

As is often the case with good intentions, the “deinstitutional movement,” initiated in 1964 and fully implemented in the 1970’s, the “solution” did not fix the root problem. There are still just as many crazy people in society, only now they live amongst us free to act out their psychotic fantasies: unless and until they confess or get caught.

A culture of political correctness that doesn’t allow you to call dangerous crazy people “insane” let alone lock them up, doesn’t wish you to point out that terrorists may be more dangerous than conservative “haters,” and wants the good guys to give up their guns to set a good example for the bad guys." --MOTUS

Saturday, December 15, 2012

SANDY HOOK KILLER ADAM LANZA: "Deeply Disturbed", "Had a Tortured Mind", "A Ticking Time Bomb"

The real question we should be discussing: why wasn't this sick young man institutionalized?

Adam Lanza is being described as a "deeply disturbed kid" who was "subject to outbursts."

The 20-year-old man who killed 20 children and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School after murdering his own mother, may also have suffered from Asperger's syndrome or another personality disorder.

“This was a deeply disturbed kid,” a family insider [said]... “He certainly had major issues. He was subject to outbursts from what I recall."

Another family friend said Lanza had a condition where he couldn't feel pain.

...Nancy Lanza had previously worked at Sandy Hook but several sources said they believed she was more recently spending her days caring for the troubled Adam.

Not only was Lanza deeply disturbed, he appears to have been a hard-core "gamer" (video-game addict).

He was dark and disturbed, a deeply troubled boy from a wealthy family who unnerved his neighbors and classmates.

Mass murderer Adam Lanza, 20, was a ticking time bomb, people who knew him told the Daily News... Lanza, who friends and officials said suffered from Asperger’s syndrome or a personality disorder, had a tortured mind.

He was socially awkward and at times unstable...

One family friend described Adam Lanza as a gamer who “rarely spoke.”

“He was weird,” said the friend, who asked to remain anonymous. “He was quiet.”

I think it's time for a national discussion on allowing kids -- especially deeply disturbed kids -- to have access to first-person shooting games.


SANDY HOOK ELEMENTARY: The Sickness of the Media

During a special service at St. John's Church in Sandy Hook:

"Bunch of over-zealous photographers were just asked to leave."

Just as disgraceful?

Big-city mayors and would-be tyrants Michael Bloomberg and Mumbles Menino not even waiting for the children's bodies to be identified to begin pushing their insane gun-control rhetoric.

• Not the ongoing eradication of the two-parent family
• Not the mind-numbing violence on television and in theaters
• Not political correctness and de-institutionalization that allow insane people to freely circulate among us
• Not the removal of references to God and morality from our educational system
• Not the proliferation of first-person shooter games
• Not the "gun-free zones" that are, in virtually every case, the sites of mass shootings
• Not the fact that in every case, countries that banned guns saw increased rates of violent crime

No, concentrate instead on the ultimate mission of the totalitarian leftists who control the Democrat Party: to disarm free men and women who remain the last bulwark against tyranny.


MEANWHILE, at an elementary school on the other side of the world...

...in Israel, "Serious people know how to respond to serious threats."


American Digest also points us to this excellent observation by MOTUS:

Is it the number of guns? Societal breakdown? Our culture of violence? Hollywood? While there’s probably a kernel of truth in all the usual suspects, a more likely culprit may be the policy implemented by our betters which determined that mental institutions were horror chambers that inhumanely incarcerated people simply because they didn’t conform to the standards society determined to be normal (how judgmental).

As is often the case with good intentions, the “deinstitutional movement,” initiated in 1964 and fully implemented in the 1970’s, the “solution” did not fix the root problem. There are still  just as many crazy people in society, only now they live amongst us free to act out their psychotic fantasies: unless and until they confess or get caught.

Although  the mainstreaming of psychotics had been afoot since the passing of the Community Mental Health Act the final nail in the coffin that stopped the institutionalization of the crazies was a Ken Kesey movie (One Flew Over he Cuckoo’s Nest) which advanced the theory that the inmates were actually saner than their keepers. Hence, we should either let the inmates dictate the terms of their own incarceration or simply close the asylum and set the patients free...

...Since the novel was written by a man who did his “research” under the influence of LSD and peyote buttons it is unclear why his conclusions would hold any credibility among the sane. Except for the fact that his story’s basic premise – that people in mental institutions are not “crazy” they’re just far more “individualized” and therefore superior to the rest of us mere mortals – fit the liberal’s agenda du jour of mainstreaming all butt the (convicted)criminally insane.

As with many schemes that are based on good intentions, this one has not worked out so well either. We are now dealing with the unintended consequences and as is often the case, they are devastating...

...So a lot of our problems do stem from our culture: a culture of political correctness that doesn’t allow you to call dangerously crazy people “insane” let alone lock them up, doesn’t wish you to point out that terrorists may be more dangerous than conservative “haters,” and wants the good guys to give up their guns to set a good example for the bad guys...

...Because in a sane society citizens are not locked up for trying to protect themselves, the homicidal maniacs are.

As one of my heroes once said, "the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan."


MEANWHILE, in the nation's safest city...

Chicago, Illinois must be the safest city in the U.S. because: (a) it has the most draconian gun restrictions; and (b) it resides in the state with the strictest firearm regulations in the country.

And how's that working out for them?

10 shot, including 4 teens, Friday afternoon and night


Shootings across the city Friday afternoon and night wounded at least ten people, according to Chicago police, including four teens in three separate South and West side attacks.


Someone shot two boys, both 16, about 5:11 p.m. Friday afternoon in the 1700 block of East 71st Place in the South Shore neighborhood on the South Side. Both were taken to Comer Children's Hospital in stable condition with gunshot wounds to their legs.

Two other teens were wounded Friday afternoon -- a 15-year-old near North Avenue and Lorel Avenue in the Austin neighborhood and a 16-year-old near Western Avenue and Taylor Street in the Lawndale neighborhood...

How much of the violence in Chicago that occurs each night is authored by kids without fathers?

That's the question we should be asking. Only that question won't be asked and it won't be answered, because it indicts the Democrat Party's failed policies on a monumental scale.

How many dead, crippled and imprisoned inner-city youths has "Great Society" left in its wake? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions?

How many have died thanks to "the War on Drugs", "the War on Guns", and "the War on Poverty"? And how many more must die before we reverse course on the Democrats' failed welfare state policies and their catastrophic impact on the two-parent family?


Hat tip: Winterspirit.

Larwyn's Linx: Vultures

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Nation

Vultures: Torch
AG Holder OK’d Vast Spying on Innocent American Citizens: Tatler
Adelson: Put aside social conservativism to reclaim America: Bookworm

Deepest Condolences: Bookwom
Gun-Free Zones Don't Deter Killers Intent on Using Guns To Kill People: Ace
The Left Wants to Play Games?: iOTW

Michelle Suggests Republicans are Liars: Dossier
D.C.: More Legal Guns, Far Fewer Murders, Despite Fearmongering: Reason
Activists rally for gun control at W.H.: Politico

Economy

Is the American Economy Being Deliberately Destroyed?: Loudon
Obama Voters See Hours Cut as Employers Avoid 'ObamaCare Bankruptcy': AllAm
Is The Fed Cruising Toward A Monetary Cliff?: IBD

No Way Out: Schiff
Obama nixes ending medical device Obamacare taxes: Moe Lane
Obama's Mortgage Modification Program A Colossal Flop: IBD

Scandal Central

Huge Victory for Election Integrity: JW
Dem. lawmaker: To get gun control, Obama must ‘exploit’ shooting: Times
Tweet of the Day: Instapundit

Climate & Energy

Has The Death Knell Just Sounded For The Warmies? The Leak Of The Draft IPCC Report: Howling
IPCC AR5 draft leaked, contains game-changing admissions: Watts
Here's an idea for cutting spending: End the Wind Industry Subsidy: Elephant

Media

On the Suffering of Innocents: First Things
ESPN Analyst Calls RGIII a ‘Cornball Brother’ Because He May Be a Republican: Corner
Ace continues media smack-down, calls out NYT for using progressive blog as source on Crowder assault: Twitchy

Rampage Shootings: It's the Moral Decay of Society, not Guns: Townhall
Boehner and Cantor’s ‘War on Conservatives’ Causes Exodus of Conservatives from the GOP: VA Right
Coming Together: Erickson

Flashback: Tough Gun Control Laws Failed To Prevent German School Slaughter of 2009: Ace
Snake Blights: JPA
12-14-12: Zilla

Steven Crowder Files Criminal Complaint Against Pro-Union Protester: NB
Ed Schultz: ‘Times Change,’ Stop ‘Hiding Behind The Second Amendment’: Mediaite

World

Rejection and terror: Same old Palestinian choices: Commentator
22 children slashed by knife-wielding adult at elementary school in China...: Courant
Four people set on fire during Denver assault...: Denver Channel

Sci-Tech (courtesy BadBlue.com/Tech)

Ads in Internet Explorer Could Be Tracking Your Mouse: Gizmodo
Company's industrial heating system hacked via backdoor: NetSec
No matter how much you like your pretend internet name, it's a good idea to change it once in a while: Gizmodo

Cornucopia

On the Suffering of Innocents: First Things
Indiana Jones Mystery Package: University of Chicago Admissions
26 Moments That Restored Our Faith In Humanity This Year: BuzzFeed

Image: 15 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Star Trek
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: Sweetness & Light

QOTD: One failed law is just the predicate for the next one.

...[Germany] had tough gun laws; they had a school shooting. They tightened those tough gun laws; they had another school shooting.

To state the obvious: A man intent on mass murder is not deterred by misdemeanor level possession/purchase laws. He's bound for prison or death by cop; he is not sweating the lesser laws he may break en route to a massive slaughter of children.

...Strict gun laws, loose gun laws: An intensely motivated lunatic is going to find a way to make his fantasy real. --Ace.

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Friday, December 14, 2012

BUT SHE HAD IT COMING: Chinese woman gets tasered for buying too many iPhones

Memo to self: don't buy too many iPhones at one time.

...local TV news stations in New England were having a field day Wednesday with blurry cellphone video of a tiny 44-year-old Chinese woman being held to the ground and tasered outside an Apple Store by a pair of Nashua, N.H., police.

Piecing together the accounts of the police, the woman's 12-year-old daughter and her American boyfriend, this is what led to the confrontation:

The woman, Xiaojie Li, a Chinese national who lives in Newton, Mass., bought two iPhone 5s last Friday at the Apple Store in Nashua's Pheasant Lane Mall and was told when she tried to purchase more that she'd reached Apple's two-per-customer limit. When she made a video of other customers she claimed had bought more than two units, Apple staffers asked her to leave.

She revisited the mall Tuesday to pick up two more iPhone 5s she had ordered online, but the store refused to sell them. The store manager asked her to leave -- a request she says she didn't understand. The manager then asked a police officer assigned to provide mall security to escort her out.

"The officer approached her, told her she wasn't welcome in the store, and she refused to leave," Nashua police captain Bruce Hansen told WCVB TV. He described the use of electroshock weapons as standard procedure when a subject refuses to obey a lawful order or resists arrest.

According to police, Li was carrying about $16,000 in cash when she was arrested. She said she was buying the phones for relatives in China. Even if she was an iPhone 5 reseller, her boyfriend told a WCVB reporter, "does it rise to the level of getting a beating from police?"

Li has been charged with two misdemeanors -- criminal trespass and resisting arrest.

Two questions:

(a) So "refusing to leave" is a Tasering offense?

and:

(b) has her boyfriend told Xiaojie (pronounced Chao-Che, as far as you know) about, eh, eBay??!