Are you tired of the same old cold leftovers served up by the prevailing political ruling class? Here is a fun and easy way to combine the things that are already in the fridge to make a tasty new dish for national consumption. This stuff is just going stale anyway; we might as well use it up. Take the following steps:
- Fill our prisons with as many drug users and low-level dealers as possible, diverting as many legal resources as possible from pursuing, prosecuting and imprisoning the most dangerous criminals.
- Refuse to fill as many judgeships as possible in order to checkmate your political foes and keep them from rewarding their own political sympathizers.
- Empty the mental institutions and make it as hard as possible to hold someone for mental evaluation in the name of patients' rights. (This step has the added advantage of freeing-up funds to build more prisons to hold all the dangerous marijuana growers.)
- Make it as easy as possible for anyone to own a gun. Refuse to put any reasonable restrictions on gun ownership and make the few conditions you do have ineffective. Let anyone who wants one have a Glock and 33 load clips. Hell, let’s give ‘em bazookas.
- The above step will create a healthy firearms industry; export as much as possible of the excess production to Mexico, helping to destabilize our closest neighbor.
- Add a massive portion of common theft by the most privileged, best educated members of society and do not punish them in any way for their destruction of trillions of dollars of Americans’ savings. In fact, reward them with a $700 billion tax cut.
- Add a pinch of liberal demogodery and a pound and a half of Fox News.
- Now put it all in a hot oven set to 10% unemployment (with another 10-15% underemployed).
- Borrow as much money as you possibly can to make as much of this soup as you can. Give no thought what-so-ever to whether you'll ever be able to repay the money.
This should produce a really tasty treat that all members of your family will enjoy for years to come.
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12 comments:
And don't forget -- we can have everything we want -- low cost medicare, all the military toys we can imagine, ever increasing social security payments -- and it won't cost us any extra because we hate taxes.
In the immortal words of Sam Cooke "What a wonderful world it would be".
While I agree with you on the majority of your points, I take issue with you on two items.
First is reasonable firearms restrictions. Who defines 'reasonable'? When does the Second Amendment get removed from our Bill of Rights? "...the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." I have a feeling your being 'reasonable' will 'infringe' on my rights.
Next is the common and untrue argument that we provide all these guns to the Mexican drug cartels. The cartels and gangs don't want anything to do with the semi-auto sporting rifles we are allowed to own. They want full auto AK-47s and Uzis and HK91 clones made all over the world and happily supplied to them at a low, low price by, among others, Hugo Chavez, Russian arms dealers and China. The American guns that are found near the border are usually purchased by legal US citizens and are then smuggled to their relatives in Mexico for protection against the gangs and thugs (Mexican law prohibits the ownership of weapons in any "military caliber", leaving citizens with the choice of .38 Super and .22, neither of which I'd choose to eradicate even a swarm of rogue squirrels). But hey, it makes for a great story and gives Eric Holder something to base a full-scale erosion of rights on.
@ Nik: The majority decides what's reasonable and the vast majority of Americans want to eliminate semi-automatic weapons from private hands for starts. But the ruling class in the form of the NRA has been able to defeat reasonableness.
Your assessment of the Mexican situation is just wrong. There is ample evidence that huge numbers of firearms (upwards of 80,000) have been smuggled into Mex from US in the past year alone. They may prefer Uzis but they'll take Sat Nite Specials if they can get them.
A simple question is what do arms refer to? If the purpose is to allow the citizens to keep themselves safe from the tyranny of the state, then why limit any arms? As a former Marine, I am sure that a squad of well trained Marines will eliminate a ragtag militia that lacks the sophisticated weaponry of the Marine Corps with ease.
The colonial militias had arms confiscated by the British because many were not loyal to the crown. To insure the Federal government could not do that the second amendment refers to militia. If that was the intent of the founding fathers then logic would be that all citizens should be allowed any weapon they want, anything less is infringement.
Nik, I know you mean well, but I have to question your reading material.
One thing we all have in common is a resentment for special interests. Unfortunately, proportional representation is open to interpretation. The final arbiter is the Supreme Court. And they have been a little too right of center for my sensibilities. Perhaps enablers would be a better word.
The other avenues of change are legislation and constitutional amendments. Legislation is what special interests are all about. That leaves amendments. The news media, often called the darling of the left, is best hawked by the right; Murdock, Beck, O'Reilly and the list goes on. "As if" as they say in France. Garbage in garbage out.
Just doing some quick searching on the topic of illegal arms in Mexico netted some seriously interesting results. The most interesting I found was this: The majority of military-grade hardware used by cartels and gangs comes from... the US *government*. Legitimate sales of vast quantities of machine guns and ammunition to the Mexican government and law enforcement agencies are being intercepted by the cartels or sold out from under the government by rogue employees. It's no wonder the Mexican government cannot get a handhold on the war when the weapons they buy are being snatched from them and used against them. Found it here - http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2009/03/legal-us-arms-exports-may-be-source-narco-syndicates-rising-firepower
Now, on to the argument that insane numbers of legally purchased civilian weapons are being smuggled from the US into Mexico... Like I stated before, the argument is just untrue. It's a game. I know I am gong to be hammered for the source of this article, but please at least read it, research some more, and then draw your conclusion -http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/02/myth-percent-small-fraction-guns-mexico-come/
The key to the argument are the words "that can be traced". Believe it or not, not every country requires arms to be serialized. As a matter of fact, when the CIA has contracted weapons manufacturers to build guns for deployment with rebel groups or mercenaries or guerilla forces, they require the guns are made with no markings other than caliber. So, while it may be true that 90% of weapons that *can be traced* are traced back to legitimate US gun sales, 90 percent of a small number is an even smaller number. Yet another article - http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2009/0408/p06s19-woam.html
People like Eric Holder and NGO's like the Brady Campaign like to pick at "facts" and twist words around until it says what they want it to say and scares those incapable of thinking for themselves into believing it.
If you scratch off the petina of fear and rhetoric and control, you can find a much different story that tells another tale.
And I really have to challenge you on "the vast majority of Americans want to eliminate semi-automatic weapons from private hands..." That just sounds like you were in NYC for way too long and drank too much of the blue Kool-Aid.
The last 2 paragraphs of one of your sources (Fox News):
"But Tom Diaz, senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center, called the "90 percent" issue a red herring and said that it should not detract from the effort to stop gun trafficking into Mexico.
"Let's do what we can with what we know," he said. "We know that one hell of a lot of firearms come from the United States because our gun market is wide open."
'Nuff said.
But the US is to blame for being a market for drugs, which keeps the cartels in business. Do you feel these users are corrupt because the Constitution's tenor is unfulfilled? That the blame is to be lain on the feet of liberal America? That the right is spotless? Take a step back and see the bigger picture. Special interests profit in the battle of right and left. We are a flawed species. The right feels we can work it out by ourselves. The left looks to the state to solve problems. Personally, I don't think corporations or individuals are capable of dealing with certain issues, the environment is a good example. The left, as in communist Poland, has polluted the Vistula. As GM has the Hudson, but to a lesser extent. Do not look to either side to solve our problems. However, money and politics are a volatile mix. Ideally, we should be supporting such as Common Cause. We do not live up to our potential being a cover band for those with hidden agendas.
According to NPR yesterday, there is only one gun store in Mexico, and it is run by their army. The guns are coming across the border, giving them something to fill their vans on the way back from deliveries of drugs and immigrants.
But at the risk of giving my fellow leftists a heart attack, I'm a big supporter of the right to own guns. Face it, we may need them the most. And if you look at what the founders said, you see the word militia. Originally we had no standing army, just militias. So I think one can make a reasonable case that we should be allowed to own anything - even bazookas - that would be needed to go to war. If you don't agree with that, I think a constitutional amendment would be in order.
Hank, I feel there is plenty to charge the right with. Archaic drug laws, incredibly harsh punishment for relatively harmless crimes, lack of oversight for banks and financial companies... I could go on.
I find it amusing that so many on the left jump to attention and insist on sending more federal law enforcement agents to the border to control what's *leaving* our country, but insist that anyone who wishes to send feds to the border to control who comes in are bigoted or inhumane or cold-hearted. Why can't the Mexican government get a tighter control of what comes into their own country? Oh, that's right, then they would have to take responsibility for their border and control their most valuable exports - illegal immigrants and drugs. It makes my blood boil whenever I hear Vicente Fox or Felipe Calderon and others call Americans who demand tighter border security to stop the illegal immigration and flow of drugs "racist" - it's as if they are relying on those criminal activities to prop up their economy and maintain status quo.
aren't the comments supposed to be shorter than the post?
@Nik - i don't do research or homework here; i just say what i feel. that said, i did a quick google search on opinions re auto gun control and found 4 surveys total, each showing American favor banning auto weapons by between 53-67%. perhaps the word "vast" was bombastic, but i stand by my opinion.
This is it for me on this topic. i find it indescribably depressing that so many people seem to honestly believe that the best way to stop gun violence is for more people to carry guns. you all can keep talking if you want but i'm checking out.
One last post for me on guns.
NY Times today, Gail Collins, surprisingly not on the online site but in the national print version here in Utah:
""One can only hope that Saturday's horrible attack on Tucson encourages more citizens to carry concealed handguns," wrote John Lott, Jr., a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, in The Time's Room for Debate on Wednesday. As a model, he pointed to Joseph Zamudio, who was carrying a concealed pistol while shopping near Representative Gabrielle Gifford's event last weekend and eventually helped subdue the killer.
Lou's theory was that Zamudio us able to lend a hand "because his legally carried 9 mm semiautomatic offered him protection." He neglected to mention that while Zamudio never fired at the gunman, he almost drew on an innocent man by mistake. (As William Saletan pointed out in Slate, Zamudio later admitted he was "very lucky" not to have accidentally contributed to the carnage.)"
And as to allowing citizens access to unlimited munitions. Sure, the fire department will gladly go into homes to recuse you and your loved ones knowing any home is an ammo dump. Or, how about when your next door neighbor falls asleep with a lit cigarette and you wake up in heaven.
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