Reflections From a Murky Pond

Every time there is a well-publicized shooting certain elements residing within America – mostly, but not entirely, Liberals – starting frothing at the mouth and jabbering about how we “need” to ban or, at a bare minimum, severely restrict gun ownership and availability in America.

It’s predictable to the point of being passé, with the same sorts ranting or whining the same baseless arguments.

Leaving those arguments aside for now on the grounds that they’ve been addressed and refuted time and time again, let us, instead, look to the hypocrisy or stupidity of their arguments themselves.

There’s a strong overlap between the groups who want to ban firearms and who want to legalize marijuana and other illicit recreational drugs. It’s not a 100% overlap, but the majority of those who are vocal in calling for legalization of drugs are also vocal in calling for tighter gun control.

On this issue they also tend towards using the same argument repeatedly.

The argument, which borders upon mantra amongst them, is that the War on Drugs is not only a wasteful failure but has actually caused the various gang-related crimes associated with the drug culture. They liken it to Prohibition aka the 18th Amendment which arguably led to the rise of organized crime in America in the early parts of the 20th century.

I’m forced to admit that this isn’t a completely baseless argument. While a lot of the problems were and are problems of lax enforcement and weak punishments, there’s no denying that anytime that a high profit margin, easily portable commodity is outlawed a black market for that commodity will develop. There’s also no denying that more organized and violent criminal groups will eventually, unless mercilessly quashed, gain control of that market.

The question roiling through my mind is why do these people believe that it would be any different with firearms?

In the wake of the Tuscon,AZ massacre CBS conducted a poll of Americans’ attitudes to many things vaguely related to the incident including anti-government violence. Most such polls are poorly crafted and conducted bu CBS’ was, in some of its questions, far more execrable than most – though the responses were even worse.

We’ve reached a sad nadir as a culture.

Amid other things the CBS poll in question found the following:

Whether politics played a factor in these shootings or not, few Americans think it is ever justified for citizens to take violent action against the government.  Three in four think it is never justified, similar to the percentage that said so last April.

Is Violent Action Against the Government Ever Justified?

	Now	20-Apr-2010
Justified	16%	16%
Not Justified	76%	79%

The anti-American, Leftist propaganda outlet, Daily Kos was not – for rationales that largely escape me – satisfied with this already pathetic result. Supposedly the filth, kos emailed CBS to get the party affiliation breakdown of the results.

What? 16 percent of Americans think anti-government violence is justified? I emailed CBS and asked for the partisan breakdowns of that question. Here they are:

Do you think it is ever justified for citizens to take violent action against the government, or is it never justified?

Republican	28% yes	64% no
Democrat	11% yes	81% no
Independent	11% yes	81% no

Note, this poll was conducted after the Giffords shooting. Yet while a tiny (though still too large) fringe of Democrats and Independents approve of anti-government violence (likely the Alex Jones crowd), over a quarter of Republicans do so.

28 percent.

I wonder where that 28 percent gets their news. (Not really, it’s pretty obvious.)

NOTE: Markos Moulitsas aka kos is not the sort of creature whose accuracy or veracity can ever be trusted, but there seems little enough reason for it to lie to overtly about this data. I believe it’s safe enough to use these figures for now.

A Bad Question

The most egregious error or wrongdoing that CBS committed in their poll was asking an overly simplistic question with only two diametrically opposed answers, yes or no, allowed. Such XOR or binary toggle questions are almost always meant to illicit polarizing results or inflame an issue as opposed to gathering useful data.

This is made worse by asking such a question during a time of national shock and/or outrage since the results will likely be skewed and answers that are perceived as being unpopular will only lead to largely unwarranted vilification by various ideologues and agendists.

Is Violent Action Against the Government Ever Justified?

That’s just too wildly simplistic of a question to be asked in a yes or no format. Doing so ignores any form of context or circumstance and, hence, serves no valid purpose.

There’s also the issue of the missing 8% of the responses from the poll and the missing 5% of responses from the April 20, 2010 poll.

A Worse Result

Even given how piss-poor the question that CBS asked was, the results were appalling. That only 16% of respondents said that violent against the government is ever justified does not bode well for the future of our country or the liberty of our children.

In the best of a bad set of cases this is an example of sloppy thinking and answering a question that was not actually asked. If this is true, the respondents just weren’t hearing or reading the word “ever” and were thinking in terms of right then and in the current circumstances.

I have a hard time, however, in believing that a strong, much less overwhelming majority of those respondents fell into that particular cognitive trap. That strongly implies that the American people doomed to be subjected to tyranny by a government drunk on power – not today and likely not too soon, but in the not-terribly-distant future.

~*~

Like it or not, America was founded by violent actions against the government; we’d still be a British Crown Colony otherwise. The turbulent and often deplorable history of Man also indicates that it’s more than likely that America will someday have to be reborn through violent actions against the government.

To say or, worse, believe that violent actions against the government are never justified is tantamount to accepting the shackles of servitude. Worse even, when later generations seek to cast off those shackles, and sooner or later they will, a far greater level of violence will be required.

Does that mean that it isn’t or shouldn’t be a horrific thought? No. I, for one, would consider it quite horrific and hope that our politicians find the thought even more so and refrain from doing that which would cause such reprisals. Yet, horrid or not, anyone who loves America and the liberties we enjoy within it must accept that violence will one day be necessary for their continuance.

In the wake of Loughner’s shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and 19 other people — six of whom were killed, including a 9 year-old girl — in Tucson, AZ on Saturday, January 8, 2010 I’m left in an odd quandary. Truth be told, I’m searching for outrage within myself but finding only a mild sadness, a lingering frustration, and more than a little ennui.

Obviously, normative American society says that I should be outraged, especially since a child was murdered. That point was made quite clear, though no such clarification was needed.

I am going to unfriend you on FB, don’t take it personally – I am sure you will not. If you cannot muster up feelings for a 9 year old child as collateral damage, then my unfriending wont ruffle a hair on your head.

The somewhat worrisome thing is that I can’t seem to summon up any significant feelings for the murdered Christina Taylor Green or any of Loughner’s other victims. I can’t even seem to call up more than a certain level of disgust with “opportunistic feeding” that been done by politicians, demagogues, and pundits in the wake of the massacre.

So I’m left searching for outrage but not finding any.

Jared Lee Loughner’s shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and 19 other people — six of whom were killed, including a 9 year-old girl — in Tucson, AZ on Saturday, January 8, 2010 should have shocked the nation. That, at least would be the normative common consensus about such a brutal and sudden massacre, coming, as it did, without forewarning and leaving so many people dead and/or wounded.

Obviously such shock is part of the innocence that America has lost over the years; it was not in evidence that Saturday. The victims’ bodies hadn’t finished bleeding out, much less grown cold, before the ghouls of the Left were doing their best to capitalize upon the lethal attack.

The Professional Left

Within minutes of Loughner’s attack Liberal pundits and the Left-Wing, “lamestream” media were trying to blame Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sharron Angle, the Tea Party, and American patriots in general for “inciting” the attack with their rhetoric.

These filth didn’t know at that time what had actually happened or who the attacker was, much less what his motivations were but that didn’t stop them from feasting on the fresh corpses for the sake attacking their American rivals.

The Race-Baiters

Right behind the Professional Leftists were the race-baiters, though there is, of course, an overlap between two varieties of ghouls They did, perforce, have to wait until Loughner was identified as being a White. Once he was known to be White though, they dove right into the feast.

This particular breed of domestic enemy was, after establishing the Whiteness of the attacker, was as quick as always to paint the whole incident in racial terms and attempted to tie it into immigration laws even though Giffords was not a proponent of porous and insecure borders.

After that initial spate of anti-Americanism came the Muslims and their shills who jabbered on about how, if Loughner were a Black or Muslim, he’d have been treated differently by the media and would have been called a terrorist as opposed to a murderer.

The Gun-Grabbers

Finally came the ghouls amongst the gun-grabbers, hell-bent on using anything to disarm the law-abiding members of American society.  They were last to the feast because they had to wait until the evidence pointed to Loughner attempted assassination of Rep. Giffords being the act of a madman as opposed to a political act.

They Hunger For Blood Of The Innocent

Both Americans and our Liberal and Progressive enemies knew this sort of cynical use of the Tuscon, AZ rampage was going to happen. It’s part and parcel of realpolitik and is firmly embedded in modern ideological warfare.

You never want a serious crisis to go to waste, and what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you didn’t think you could do before.

— Rahm Emanuel

What is disgusting is how fast the Leftist ghouls descended on the victims and twisted their deaths and injuries, and the resultant anguish of their loved ones, into agenda-driven political and ideological attacks against America, Americans, and fundamental American values.

President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama led the nation in a moment of silence Monday morning in honor of the victims of Saturday’s mass shooting in Tucson, AZ. As laudable a symbolic gesture as that was, the nation would have been better off if the Left had held a moment or two of silence on Saturday before starting their macabre orgy.

Back in 2003 ABC aired an episode of NYPD Blue that “featured” a seven-second shot of Charlotte Ross’ naked butt and the side of one of her breasts as she prepared to take a shower.

The always eager censors at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) stridently screamed foul and hit the network with a $1.2 million fine for indecency in 2008.

Sadly for the FCC, on Tuesday, January 4, 2010 a federal appeals court in New York struck down the fine.

The 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan decided Tuesday to nullify a $27,500 penalty that the FCC imposed on ABC and 45 of its affiliate stations after the image was broadcast on the police drama for less than seven seconds in February 2003. The combined fine was greater than $1.2 million.

The appeals court said its finding was consistent with its decision last year that TV stations can no longer be fined for fleeting, unscripted profanities uttered during live broadcasts.

Of course the FCC should have, and probably did, expect this ruling. It is completely consistent in findings and reasons with the Court’s earlier rulings on “fleeting obscenity” and “transient nudity,” rendered on July 13, 2010 and July 21, 2008 respectively.

Getting To The Bottom Of The FCC’s Complaint

It also falls perfectly in line with other, lower court decisions regarding indecency and obscenity.

I’d like to think that the FCC and other Federal Agencies, especially those solely appointed by the Executive, would sooner rather than later, understand that their inappropriately and unconstitutionally vague mandates and regulations are antithetical to everything that is truly American and an abomination to we, the People.

I rarely say, “There aught to be a law,” because that’s how agencies like the FCC got out of hand in the first place, but perhaps this should be the exception that proves the rule.

Perhaps they should make a law that makes it a federal felony for any member of- or employee of the federal government to knowingly violate the US Constitution. Preferably it would be a capital crime punishable by death and only punishable by death – specifically, hanged by the neck until dead and their corpses left to rot at the foot of the Capitol steps as a warning.

It would certainly save a lot of taxpayers’ money if they weren’t consistently in expensive and losing litigation trying to defend their wrongdoing.

I’m not going to expect it though. Such agencies do not willingly relinquish any form or level of power; it must be taken from by force, either of fiat by the Courts or of arms by we, the People.

~*~

And for those people who just love side views of women’s breast – called “sideboobs” or “sidebreasts” – here’s a gallery you might enjoy. I know I enjoyed creating it. 😛

I’m also sure that many of you will find Reflections From A Murky Pond by accident while searching for such images as those depicted above. I’m a little sorry to disappoint you insofar as the overall content of this blog is concerned, but please do read a post or two; you might find them interesting, if often less than prurient.