Utah, it is RINO season!

I’m going to talk about local politics tonight, and this post is aimed at our Utah delegates. If you know a Utah delegate, please spread the word. Our convention begins Saturday morning, which makes me wish I’d written about this sooner.

I live in District 18, which is parts of Weber/Morgan. We’re getting a new state senator.

I’m supporting Lars Birkeland. http://www.larsbirkeland.com/ He lives near me. I’ve known him for about three years now. He’s a good guy, has a great family, but most importantly, he’s a very pro-liberty, pro-business, small government republican. We’ve had many discussions about politics since I’ve lived here, and I’ve got absolutely no problem with Lars being our guy.

But because I want to be informed, I wanted to see who was up against him… Ann Millner. Ann Millner was president of Weber State University. Having dealt with career academics, that could go either way, with some of them being sharp, but many more being sheltered elitists. So off we go to Google… and holy moly, she’s a RINO. (Republican In Name Only for those of you who’ve only recently started paying attention)

Utah is a funny state. We’re the reddest of red states, but we’re still a two party system, only our democrats run as republicans and try to sneak through. So we always end up with a RINO infestation at the capitol, and they go about growing government and meddling in everyone’s business.

If you can’t tell, I really dislike RINOs. Don’t lie to our faces and then be democrat lite.

Since I got my start in political stuff lobbying for concealed carry rights for university students against the University of Utah, you can guess what the first thing I wanted to know about her was. She says she’s a supporter of the 2nd Amendment… Let’s see about that:

http://archives.wsusignpost.com/results.php?query=SB+108+&type=body

Republican Sen. Lyle Hillyard recently introduced Senate Bill108. The bill, signed by Governor Olene Walker on Mar.17, 2004,went into effect on May 3of this year and allows students to carry concealed firearms on campus. WSU President F. Ann Milner doesn’t oppose guns, but does believe they should be banned on campus. I think the issue is about creating a safe learning institution,President Milner said. Its about helpingstudents learn. Milner went on to say that though she is currently unfamiliar with research on how guns may affect students ability to learn, she believes it is not a healthy learning environment for students to be in.

So she doesn’t “oppose” guns. She just wants to ban the legal use of them by law abiding citizens, in one of the places most likely to attract a mass shooter, because they might make somebody uncomfortable. Wow… So in typical RINO fashion she pays lip service to the 2nd Amendment. I bet if we really needed her to stand up for our rights she’d be willing to let us keep our deer rifles, as long as they weren’t scary looking or didn’t hurt anyone’s feelings.

I went head to head against the U of U’s lobbyist testifying at the Capitol on this issue. I knew Ann’s name sounded familiar. She is one of the geniuses that brought us the whole “safe room” nonsense, so that bad people with guns would know exactly where the good people wouldn’t have guns. When the U of U appealed the legislature’s decision, WSU supported them.

On the other hand, Lars is a shooter. He kicked off his campaign at the Morgan County gun range. I volunteered to RO the rifle range for him where we let people take turns on a Barrett. (I got to shoot a Tavor for the first time, and now I want one) The happiest I saw him this year was when he got his new AR. Lars actually grasps the fundamental principles of the 2nd Amendment.

In her speeches Ann says all of the good conservative stuff that you’d expect to say to make the delegates happy, so let’s see what else she’s got.

She’s big on Global Warming. http://www.presidentsclimatecommitment.org/about/commitment If it gets warmer, it gets colder, or if the weather changes in any way, then obviously what we need is more socialism. Fantastic.

She’s pro Common Core. I don’t know about you guys, but when I think of things that will improve the education of my children the first thing that pops into my head is more intrusive federal meddling. http://educationfirstutah.org/initiatives/ I’ve been led to understand that Education First is a partner with Prosperity 20/20, which is related to Common Core and the UN Global Education Initiative. I’m not sure, my wife is the one that keeps up on Common Core, I’m still livid about the gun thing.

I was told, but can’t confirm, that she’s been an independent all her life and only registered GOP to run for this seat.

But to balance it out she’s also been a proud long time member of such stalwart conservative organizations as the…. Well… shoot… Can’t find any.

Let’s look at her resume: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Millner College, college, more college, then some extra college, and oh, hey look at that, college. Yes. That sounds like somebody who will be in touch and understand the issues facing Utah… Okay, Utah colleges, but since we’re not electing our new dean, I’m going to have to go with the guy who works for a living on this one. Lars works at a bank. His wife runs a day care.

Just the gun issue alone kills it for me. I can’t tolerate that asinine, morally reprehensible philosophy of “I believe you have unalienable rights except for where they might make someone feel uncomfortable for totally ridiculous and illogical reasons.” Law abiding adults going to college? Too bad, no effective self-defense for you. You can just be defenseless because a concealed firearm might cause an uncomfortable learning environment to people with x-ray vision. Look how good that worked out at Virginia Tech. You know what else causes an unsafe learning environment? Getting shot to death during a crazy person’s rampage.

Luckily we were able to defeat the college’s lobbyists so that our people could be safe from maniacs. Utah allows concealed carry in schools now, no thanks to Ann.

So delegates, please don’t take my word for it. You get to listen to these people talk and grill them. Please, help make the RINO an endangered species in Utah.

A letter from John C. Wright
An explanation about the Hugo awards controversy

90 thoughts on “Utah, it is RINO season!”

  1. “only our democrats run as republicans”

    Ain’t it the truth. We I first came to Utah it was pretty solidly Democrat: The governor was Rampton, Moss my senator, and McKay my representative. The tide turned with Nixon vs McGovern and these days the Republican party is large, it contains multitudes 😉

    I have relatives in Oklahoma and, although it is fairly Republican these days, my impression is that it is a socially conservative Democratic state. If the Democratic party hadn’t moved on from religious liberalism to atheist progressivism, Oklahoma would probably be solidly Democratic.

    Political parties in the U.S. are coalitions, they seldom have ideological purity. The current state of the Democratic party is anomalous.

  2. So many posts lately. I hope it’s not cutting too much into your writing time.

    I’ve never handled a firearm in my life, and I’d kind of like to learn how. I live in Salt Lake City and, so far, I haven’t found any good information on how to take the first step. If anyone out there in internet land can point me in the right direction, I’d greatly appreciate it.

  3. Here’s what you CAN say about Flora Ann Millner – according to the Voter Database available from the State of Utah, she has never even been registered to vote until 2014.

      1. Unfortunately, it looks as if the weapon (if it was even used?) had no effect – Ann Millner – 66 votes – 61 percent – NOMINEE

  4. I went to WSU while Milner was president, it seemed like every year she raised tuition….and also gave herself a raise. I was so happy when she left WSU, hopefully we can keep her from office.

    1. Look at tuition now, haha I am glad we got out while we did. The only thing worse than the presidents it he footballs coaches. She did normal politicians stuff so I doubt it would be any different in office.

  5. Law abiding adults going to college? Too bad, no effective self-defense for you. You can just be defenseless because a concealed firearm might cause an uncomfortable learning environment to people with x-ray vision.

    Ha. I carried in college back in the 1980s. Nobody eeeever knew it was there.

      1. Exactly. Too many packers, especially new ones, feel the need to let it be known. Concealing isn’t hard when you plan.

  6. To be fair, Mr. Correia, if an organization is dedicated to largely disarming people’s minds, they’d wish to disarm them bodily as well.

  7. The unfortunate side effect of the blatant dishonesty is that it makes voters cynical. A certain amount of cynicism is healthy (power corrupts, and all that). But you end up with people who throw their hands up in disgust instead of voting.

    Though having said that, I probably wouldn’t complain too much if we could get some DINOs here in California…

  8. One of my favorite comments recently was in regard to the “Truth in politics” law in Ohio up before the Supreme Court. Sounds like it is particularly appropriate here.

    “If it is against the law to lie during a political campaign, what will they talk about?”

  9. Larry, has anyone ever told you that you look like El Macho from Despicable Me 2? You have the attitude to match as well!

  10. I’m not onboard to kill common core primarily because of the “enemy of my enemy” theory. Here on Long Island public school teachers easily pull six figures and phenomenal benefits with summers off. Their union contracts require any shortfall in their pension funds from an underperforming market to be made up elsewhere, hence my 12.5% property tax increase and loss of elementary school music. The law requires the shortfall to be made up so even a failed budget would go up 10.5% with the additional loss of busses.

    Why am I supporting common core? Because the teachers’ union responds to it like a vampire to sunlight. The concept of their performance being judged is abhorrent to them. The ability to compare performance of teachers’ students in different schools with similar demographics as well as teachers within the same schools will reveal who is doing the job and who isn’t.

    Common core certainly isn’t great but neither is chemotherapy. Are schools are a disaster and the cancer within them is the teachers’ union. Performance data and accountability are the chemo.

      1. The problem I see with common core is that even if it ticks of the teachers union, that I think needs to be trashed, and focused on the students so that they can actually get what they need, I recently saw a bit of how math was done with it and it was one of the stupidest things in my opinion. How many children are going to suffer because they don’t learn and understand the way a small number of others do. As I understand it they can’t even learn another way that might work better for them, they still fail even with the right answers because it wasn’t reached the same way as they were supposed to.

  11. I live in the People’s Commonwealth of Massachusetts where the democrats are democrats, and republicans might also be democrats.

    (Odd note, my particular district in the Attleboro’s is known as “the Utah of Massachusetts” for its higher density of republicans, and something of the shape.)

    Sometimes, the best we can do here is get a Scott Brown, Mitt Romney, or Bill Weld in preference to such luminaries as Elizabeth Warren aka Lie-awatha, Deval Patrick, or Michael Dukakis.

    Ann Millner sounds like she summers in Cambridge, MA and has the full collection of NPR totes to prove it.

    1. Some of the best words ever said by a Democrat were when Dukakis said he was going to do for the united states what he’d done for MA. Call that a critical hit to his campaign and there was no saving roll possible.

  12. Well thought out but while the 2nd A is a huge issue so are many others. while the woman running sounds wrong on all counts i just have to ask how you would feel if she was strongly pro 2nd A, but at the same time believed religious views should be made into law such as in regards to marriage equality ect. I’m sorry i’m quite new to your blog having just found it reading about the HUGO debacle and promptly making yet another Baen purchase. and i only ask this because i tend to have trouble finding candidates that i feel i can vote for. I’m a member of the Pink Pistols a group dedicated to firearm education and training for LGBT people such as myself. i believe in small government and responsible spending. i believe that people so long as they do not infringe on another’s rights should be able to do whatever they want. i guess when it comes down to it a quote from Eisenhower describes me best “In all things to do with people be liberal, in all things to do with people’s money be conservative.” if you made it through this wall of text ty for your time.

    1. Don’t worry, I read all my comments. Except for the ones that threaten to murder me, those I just skim. 🙂

      And I love the Pink Pistols. They’ve done some good work, especially in communities where gun rights often get zero traction.

      1. Ha! That’s something I’ve just never understood the whole “I disagree with you so don’t talk.” type of people. I frequently look at things like the french philosopher Voltaire (not to be confused with the hilarious musician) “I may not agree with what you have to say but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” I also find it hilarious how in general the same people making those threats when someone says something they don’t like are the same ones who lose their mind in regards to the 2nd A, the NRA, or any scary looking black rifle. Well wishes from TN looking forward to your next book. (seriously i should just send my money straight to Baen at this point.)

      2. These days you end up with people who quote Voltaire, and then try to shut you up, all without batting an eye or even realizing that there’s anything hypocritical about what they’re doing and saying.

  13. The media has more than one political bias. We all know most of the people in the news and entertainment industry are politically various shades of pink to deep red. Even the people who work for FOX make a majority of their political donations to Democrats.

    The other big media bias is one of near total silence when it comes to doing any news coverage on libertarians. The networks never do live coverage of Libertarian Party conventions, never ever have remote units at LP candidate campaign headquarters on election day. The rare times they do stories on LP candidates are usually to ridicule them or inflate some stupid little thing or taken out of context snippet into a “scandal”.

    The biggest news coverage any libertarian group has ever gotten was of the big TEA Party events, but I never heard anyone say the word libertarian – but I did hear plenty of lies about what went on, with no proof, just libel and slander.

    What’s the worst thing a Democrat can ever do? Leave the Party! Not just sticking a different label after their name to get elected, I mean actually, really, truly leave. Abandon their former soft, squishy abode of nannystatism and decide that actually doing things that really help instead of hinder is a good thing.

    Who were the best Republicans ever? Mostly a bunch of former Democrats! Among them George C. Wallace, Strom Thurmond and Ronald Reagan.

    Reagan was a Democrat before he ran for public office the first time. He had also been president of the Screen Actors Guild for several consecutive terms. I suspect that long-term basting in the bourgeois communism of post-HUAC * Hollywood engendered a deep loathing in Mr. Reagan for their ilk and everything they believed.

    Wallace and Thurmond, as Democrats, stood steadfast against desegregation. Then they became true Republicans and were just as solidly for it. The Party and the media continue to tell the Big Lie that it was Democrats and only Democrats who were for desegregation – but the truth is entirely the opposite. Without the support of Wallace, Thurmond and some other truly ex-Democrats, the civil rights movement would have gone nowhwere.

    Look up the failed Dixiecrat party and where its members went afterwards to see the roots of how the Democratic Party became so screwed up.

    The ones who really believed, or really came to believe, that people should be treated equally, and that the best way to help people succeed is to get out of their way – switched to the GOP.

    * Which is yet another Big Lie the media cannot stop telling. Senator McCarthy had nothing to do with the House Un-American Activities Committee. His big deal was rooting out communist infiltrators and supporters in our federal government. The Hollywood parlor pinks were small potatoes compared to the damage being done by soviet agents and supporters in the government.

  14. The idea that allowing everyone to have guns makes you safer is laughable rather than the concept that you are supporting here. Especially given the divisions within society.

    1. Please explain how only bad guys having guns is safer than everyone having guns. Feel free to use small words if you think you need to.

      1. Because if you make it difficult for bad guys to get guns then a lot less bad guys have guns meaning you have a lot lower chance of encountering any bad guy with a gun. Simple statistics.

      2. No, no…hear him out. I mean, it’s worked SO well for alcohol and drugs; history shows that making *them* illegal has CLEARLY prevented the bad guys from having access to them.

      3. @Robert.
        …except the laws you support do NOT make it “more difficult” for bad guys to have guns. They affect honest citizens more. As planned.

      4. Draven: and that would result in less deaths. Please note I am not fundamentally opposed to guns being owned privately but the notion that it keeps you safer is just deluding yourself. By making guns so openly available to those that would use them for wrongdoing you greatly increase your chance of getting shot.

        1. Actually everything you said there is incorrect.

          That is not what the stats say. That is not what the evidence or history say. The parts of the country where weapons are openly available have less violent crime than the areas of the country where they are restricted. Take cities of equal size, equal poverty levels, equal ethnic diversity and stratification, like El Paso vs. Detroit, or Chicago vs. Houston, and the cities with more open availability of guns are safer (even though they border violent northern Mexico instead of peaceful Canada). Utah and Idaho per capita are the highest gun owernship states in the US, also, some of the lowest chances of getting shot.

          You may want to examine your assumptions, because they are factually incorrect. Here, read this. https://monsterhunternation.com/2012/12/20/an-opinion-on-gun-control/ I don’t have the time or inclination to type up all of this in the down comments of an old blog post where hardly anybody will see it. I wrote this explaining why most of the proposed gun control laws don’t make sense. It is one of the most widely read articles on gun control there is. https://monsterhunternation.com/2012/12/20/an-opinion-on-gun-control/

      5. Sorry Larry but several of your ‘facts’ within that link are false. For starters it is far too US-Centric. Comparing US cities is a statistical irrelevance as they will not all exhibit the same traits.

        Then when you state details about my country (the UK) you refer to a sharp rise in violent crime. This was more down to how crime was recorded/reported rather than an actual rise in crime. And it still stands well below the levels of that seen in the US, never mind the number of homicides.

        You attempt to use a one-off shooting in Norway as ‘evidence’ of a failure yet that demonstrates the opposite as gun crime is an exceptional event in Norway despite high ownership rates. I would also argue that what Brehvik did was more akin to a terrorist attack rather than a shooting as such.

        US social divides provides much of the problem you have with gun crime and why it is dangerous. Making it easy for criminals for to be armed makes it easy for them to use guns on you. This leads to the argument that you then need a gun to ‘defend’ yourself. We can both provide links from ‘experts’ that say whether it really does say so ignoring that are you saying that you think making guns easily available for those liable to commit criminal acts makes you safer?

        1. Dude, seriously. I’m not going to take the time to debate you on this topic here for a few reasons.
          1. I only argue on the internet if there is a sufficient audience. My time is valuable. I have no delusions of convincing the willfully ignorant. I only argue to convince the undecided. Far down the comments in a week old blog post that isn’t about that topic has no audience.
          2. If you care to read through the comments I do believe everything you bring up there was brought up in the comments of that linked post. Including having some other Englishmen debate your crime stats.
          3. Yes. I am US centric, because I live in the US. Your country is already fucked on this issue. Anybody who wants to live with your shitty gun control laws can feel free to move there and leave us alone. 🙂

      6. That is up to you, other than your first point it is a cop-out though. You clearly are not actually open to accepting that there may be some major problems with your gun laws in the US and not open to discussing it, as your main post itself makes clear. Why bother having comments available when you are so pathetically dismissive to opinions other than yours relating to this subject?

        Sadly you appear to have tunnel vision on issues and come across as blinkered without being able to see the other sides viewpoints.

        1. It isn’t worth it for me to argue gun control unless a few thousand people read it. Go over to my Facebook page, bring up your asinine points, and then my people will kick them about like a soccer ball. Feel free. All the answers you want and more. Setting a win condition where I have to give up my valuable time to answer our stupid questions is weak. Do I look like a community college social studies professor? Fuck off.

      7. Apropos of nothing much I cite the UN crime statistics from 2010.
        The UK with one fifth the population of the US had roughly the same number of violent crimes as we did. That’s the same UK that is held up as the shining example of sensible gun control by proponents of such legislation. They have completely banned private possession of handguns and highly restrict and control ownership of long arms. Should be the most peaceful place on earth yet their violent crime percentage is five times ours. Splain that one to me please.

      8. Uncle Lar: if we reported violent crime in the same way then maybe it would be comparable. However our definitions of robbery are substantially different and whilst an accurate comparison is difficult it is almost certain that the USA has a higher violent crime rate on comparable offences. But there is probably little in it and you have been seeing a reasonable reduction in violent crime across the last twenty years whilst we have probably seen an increase (difficult to establish due to changing criteria across that time on how crime is recorded in the UK). Of course the real big one, and by far the most relevant to this, is death by gunfire which is so much higher in the States and certainly suggests that restrictions on gun laws saves lives. As i put before, I do not think that alone is the sole arbiter here or that the laws need to be anywhere near as restrictive as they are here, but there is no doubt that more gun crime occurs and more deaths occur because of your much lower level of regulation.

        Larry: Is that the best someone who writes for a living can do? Given your views on people writing offensive things to you re:your Hugo nomination telling other people to ‘fuck off’ is pretty pathetic and along the same level. Maybe people are offensive to you or protest about what you say because you come across as a whining hypocritical and narrow minded individual who does not know how to have a debate and acknowledge other viewpoints.

        1. You seem to be missing the part where I don’t owe you shit, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to write you a term paper in a place where hardly anybody is going to see it. Me telling a demanding little annoyance to fuck off isn’t quite the same as getting character assassinated all over the internet, and if you think it is on the same level, you live a sheltered little life. Speaking of acknowledging viewpoints, how about you acknowledge my viewpoint that you’re not worth my time? If I’m going to debate gun control for free, I’m only going to do it where there is a sufficient audience. Down stream in a week old blog post about a different subject ain’t it.

          Like I said, you want to debate gun control, my Facebook page is that way.

      9. If it is not worth your time why did you bother to reply? The simple fact you took time to reply is a pretty clear statement that it is worth your time….

        To be honest a gun debate is not worth it as it is one of those where the chances of getting others to change their views is pretty limited, especially one as blinkered as you and all a discussion on FB would do is result in abuse from your more rabid fans.

        As for over sensitive it is nothing of the sort. It is more an example of the internet cowardice you castigate others for. Or do you casually when debating with someone tell them to ‘fuck off’?

        1. I just tell entitled morons to fuck off. It usually saves time for everybody that way.

          Me insulting you took about 20 seconds a post. (85 WPM baby!) Writing up an well researched essay on gun control (which you have already demonstrated that you will immediately dismiss) takes time that I could be using to write stuff that will pay me large sums of money. Since my writing time averages out to a few hundred bucks an hour, you are quite literally, not worth the time. I told you where to go to get the debate you supposedly want. Only you don’t actually want that, you just want to play a game, where if I don’t write a term paper for you, you win. Hence the fuck off. Maybe I need to translate that into British. Sod off. Bugger off. I don’t know… scamper… Whatever.

          You’re basically full of shit. I know it. You know it. Because if you wanted to debate with people who have a clue, know the topic, and have links and stats ready to go, I told you where to go. But you insist on demanding that I pay attention to you here. Nope. You’re on my turf asshole. I don’t let you set the rules. 🙂

      10. You appear to be the dismissive one Larry. And the one who gets abusive. Suggests you feel threatened by something. When your boasts are now resorting to your typing speed then you know your arguments are getting a bit poor. Never mind the evasion of my key point since you got abusive. It is ok for you to be abusive to others but not for you to receive abuse? That sort of view explains a lot about you.

        As for knowing the numbers I do. I am a professional analyst and work with the law with a specialism in Criminal work. So I know the numbers and the subject from a first hand perspective across the last 16 years rather than spewing out crap that supports my argument from a biased organisation. But it would not matter what I put. You will believe what you want to believe. Convincing yourself though that open gun laws makes people safer in a disparate society is just self delusion though. There are numerous arguments that can be made for more liberal gun laws than we have in the UK. That is not one of them.

        Anyway that is it for me. I have made my point and you have further demonstrated it with your replies and hypocrisy therein. Unlike you, when I say you are not worth spending any more time on I mean it.

        1. Yep, if you actually want to talk gun control, go to that Facebook page. But you don’t. Because you’re a hypocrite and a troll (thirty page essay? Well, I disagree with one arguable statistic on page 15! DISMISS! even thought it was discussed in those comments? EXTRA DISMISS! Now write and answer all my demands so that I may waste your time and dismiss them too!). Sadly, I don’t feel like writing a term paper for you. So toodles. 🙂

          1. Larry, I was thinking about spending a few minute correlating what Richard has been doing with the checklist… but like you, I have writing to do that pays money instead.

    2. And the idea that only the government should have guns (which eventually gets extended to other weapons as well) is SO much safer, right?

      1. If you do have a government that follows the law then yes. And if you have a dodgy government then you have bigger problems than the gun control laws.

    3. Please explain to me a member of the group most often targeted by hate crime bullies (it’s what they are bullies) by the FBI’s own statistics. I who have scars from a previous assault i survived. How me having a fire arm is not making me safer. I may have been a victim the first time but I’ll be damned if I’m a victim a second time. The idea that me in possession of a fire arm is dangerous to society is laughable especially given statistical evidence from better sources than your emotional feelings.

      1. So are you serious when you are saying that you think you need a firearm to defend yourself from your government and the police? So you are choosing to stay living in a country where you feel that you are willing to shoot at your own judiciary? So what action are you taking politically to oppose and challenge this? What action are you taking to seek asylum in another country if you are not willing to oppose and challenge it within your own country? Or are you taking a very lazy (and dangerous option) of thinking by carrying a gun it makes you safe when in reality it makes you far more likely to be a victim in a shootout?

      2. One question, Richard:
        What kind of people do you think make up “the government”? Seriously: are they like you? Like me? Are they smarter than you? Wiser? Do you think that the men and women, elected and appointed, who make up “the government” are more or less ethical or moral than yourself?

      3. DaveP.: It all depends upon what layer of the government. Given that I work for the government though I would also say they are just like me 😉 What I would say is that “Who watches the watchmen” is probably more valid today than it has ever been,

      4. So, since you obviously don’t feel that you should be trusted with a firearm… why do you trust the rest of your co-workers to have a monopoly of force?
        Obviously you don’t think the people you’re trusting to point guns at you are smarter than you are, or more ethical, or wiser… but you trust them with your life?

      5. I have said neither of those things Dave P. Make things up if you wish but it is not going to progress the discussion if you do.

      6. Dave P, you could not score if you had won the jackpot in Vegas and walked into a brothel….. I just cannot be bothered to debate points you are making up.

      7. BOOM- Markley’s law violation.
        Gee, that was predictable… troll loses the arguement, troll breaks out the sexual references.

      8. I love the trolls who don’t even know they’re trolling, or (probably) what a troll is. They just break out the Internet Arguing Checklist(tm) and start (unwittingly) checking boxes.

        Some of the breathtaking arrogance and lack of self-awareness manifests in their apparent failure to realize that the logical fallacies, appeals to authority, contempt, dismissal, etc., etc., in which they engage have all been tried before and handily defeated.

        I suspect Richard found his way here more or less by accident. Knowing nothing about this community, its rules, or its interests he started drunkenly banging on the doors and shouting.

        He’s a prime example of the unwarranted assumption of superiority I’ve encountered from so many mid-level, mid-wit Englishmen who are both intoxicated by their glorious history and deeply in denial about the current state, and ultimate probable future, of The Place Where Great Britain Used to Be(tm).

        William Gibson nailed it in Mona Lisa Overdrive, where UK is basically a quaint theme park owned by the Yakuza.

      9. The joys of arguing gun control with liberals: Everything always comes down to a cheesy sexual innuendo in the end.

        Sigh.

  15. Why is worrying about climate change a bad thing?
    The articles I have skimmed indicate that it isn’t a big deal (few degree shift) while burning oil, but coal will be more of a problem

    And…given that major infrastructure like power plants can take decades, planning ahead makes sense. That said, I dislike environmentalists unless they favor breeder reactors – essentially inexhaustible fuel-and minimal long lived waste – or, possibly solar satellites.

    For gun control advocates, the nanny state argument relates to unnecessary deaths. Random gun control blogs indicate that two-thirds of gun-related deaths are suicides, of which an unknown percentage wouldn’t happen without available guns. That’s probably accurate, but people should be free to die.

    For the other third of deaths, they are mostly homicides. Some percentage of those are domestic violence. And would be less likely without guns. Probably accurate too, but if you marry someone with control issues and keep firearms in the house, think of the bullet as your Darwin award.

    Basically, they value life to the exclusion of liberty.

    1. Worrying or researching about? Fine. Inciting panic by screaming “The sea is rising, the sea is rising”, chicken little style, not so much so. A great sane look at climate change is a documentary call “Cool It”. It examines the costs of many of the programs being pushed, and looks for better more efficient ways to spend our money.

      1. Heh. Agreed. My assessment is that a 30-40 year plan would be a good idea for climate change. That plan probably involves setting up a global carbon credit market and working on better fission plants. Later, it involves, probably nations starting construction of plants a decade early.

        The chicken little stuff…not so smart. It mostly irritates me.

        1. I have a great 40 year plan for climate change. Wait 40 years. It will change.

          (if some recent NASA data is correct, its *not* going to be warming…)

    2. “worrying about” climate change isn’t a bad thing. “Ginning up fake data to support massive government intervention” is a very bad thing, especially when the act is paid for by sponging off of the taxpayers. “Coming up with a passel of lies to ‘hide the decline’ and then trying to shut down all debate by announcing that ‘It’s all settled’ and that anyone who questions must be a monster in human guise” is straight out.

      1. When I was growing up, the big fear was the ice age that was going to come and freeze us all. Then they did an about face and started talking about global warming, and how the seas were going to rise and drown us all. Now it’s just “climate change”, which is a neat little catch-all that manages to encompass everything and anything without actually standing for much.

        You can probably guess why I’m a skeptic.

      2. Junior:
        Yup. I clearly remember “YOU WILL FREEZE IN THE DARK!1!” … which was, come to talk about it, being pushed by some of the exact same people and organizations that are now pushing “GLOBAL WARMING!!” and with the exact same proposed solutions (massive government intrusion, social control and taxation).

    3. You make the typical logical error of failing to account for any positive benefit from civilian armament.
      The FBI itself estimates that a firearm in the hands of a civilian either prevents or halts the commission of a crime something like 500,000 times a year. Since that only accounts for reported incidents, the actual number may be in excess of two million.
      Balance that against the possibility that ready access to a firearm makes attacks and suicides more lethal, but discount those numbers by the reality that it’s basically impossible to control access of illegal firearms, so it is extremely doubtful that any gun control law would significantly impact the availability of crime weapons.

      1. You raise a good point about positive impacts. Albeit, I suspect that suicides and domestic violence typically involve legal weapons – so gun control laws would be expected to have an impact.

        Heh. I didn’t know about the freezing scare – unless that was a nuclear winter thing. To be fair, climate science is hard. For chemistry, you just mix a with b twenty times and check whether or not you get c. With climate, you just get one test.

      2. Nope. It wasn’t a nuclear winter thing. It was “experts” loudly proclaiming to any and all who would listen that we were about to enter a new ice age.

      3. Just to add to that, it seems as if there’s always an impending catastrophe that must be resolved RIGHT NOW!!! When I was very young, it was the supposed population bomb (the aforementioned cooling scare was a thing, but it wasn’t THE thing). The world’s population was going to explode to unsustainable levels, and there’d be mass starvation before the end of the 20th Century. Obviously, that didn’t happen. Acid rain was a brief scare mid-way through my adolescence (note that acid rain is a real thing, though it doesn’t appear to have become nearly the problem that people predicted it would). Then the panic shifted to global warming. And now it’s the nebulous “climate change”.

        In short, there’s always some impending catastrophe that’s just about to occur, and that requires the West to quit being the West. And yet those catastrophes never seem to actually take place.

        Meanwhile, China’s got a pollution problem much, much worse than Los Angeles did while I was growing up (and LA’s air is MUCH better than it used to be; visibility is worse due to constant haze, but the breathability is much much better), but gets ignored by those same people who constantly preach environmental armaggedon.

  16. Note: Note a Utah resident/citizen, so I have no dog DIRECTLY in this fight, but. . . From what information you have presented here, it sounds like “RINO” is an inappropriate designation. DIABLO would seem to be closer (Democrat In All But Label Only, although depending on her other views, that could change, from “Democrat” to “Dhimmicrap”).

    1. RINO is a long-standing and widely accepted term. It isn’t an acronym that Larry created on his own. So he could use a new acronym… but the current one is already understood within the conservative sphere.

      1. I suppose we could always substitute “Vichy Republican” or “quisling” for “RINO,” if there’s now a problem with the latter…

  17. Enough of the politics, I’d like to mention something of actual importance. Larry, welcome to the Tavor fold. Handy little rifle, isn’t it?

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