Category Archives: Commentary

Commentary, Liberty and the RKBA, News

The Unarmed Man with a Knife

“Instead of standing there and teaching a cop, when there’s an unarmed person coming at them with a knife or something, you shoot them in the leg instead of in the heart is a very different thing. There’s a lot of different things that could change,” Biden said in a meeting with community leaders at Bethel AME Church in Wilmington, Del.

[https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/joe-bidens-terrible-gun-advice/]

I actually had to look that up because (and I hate to admit this) I couldn’t believe that even Joe Biden said that, but apparently he did. The article quoted above provides some very apt, very common sense analysis on why this is patently stupid advice, so I’m mostly going to stay away from that, but I will say that in my opinion, the article was just a little too soft on the “patently stupid” observation. It takes about two seconds for a man (even an unarmed man) with a knife to charge you from ten feet away and mortally wound or instantly kill you. If you are not in mortal danger, you don’t use deadly force. If you are in mortal danger, you shoot to kill. Even leaving aside the stupidity of risking your life, shooting to wound would leave the shooter open to the charge that he was not actually in fear for his life and therefore the use of deadly force was not justified.

Off to prison you go!

But I sat down at my keyboard tonight to record one simple observation: of all the stupid, nonsensical, totally incoherent thoughts that former Vice President Joe Biden has expressed, surely this one has to rank near the top. An unarmed man with a knife or something? Something like a sword? Something like a handgun, maybe? Or a hand grenade? Maybe the unarmed man has a chainsaw? Or perhaps the unarmed man is armed with a semi-automatic “assault weapon” with a “high-capacity magazine”?

We all know that Joe Biden is a walking gaffe machine, but this is just too much.

Commentary, News

Singularity

Those familiar with my website are aware that I usually reserve these posts for commentary on political matters. However, today I wish to discuss what is possibly a very serious existential threat facing, not just the United States or even humanity, but our planet and, perhaps, our solar system.

It has come to my attention that a micro-singularity exists somewhere near the floor in my workroom beside my bench. Under the right circumstances, small objects that are dropped or that fall from my bench are drawn into this tiny black hole and pass out of existence in our physical universe. Many small washers, screws, nuts, springs and other important parts have already been gobbled up, and I have, in fact, noticed a direct correlation to the likelihood of an object being captured in this fashion and the level of difficulty there would be in replacing it.

This phenomenon seems to be occurring with greater frequency, and computer modelling indicates that the singularity is increasing in size at an exponential rate. Larger objects, such as wallets, car keys and power tools are at increasing risk. Unfortunately, it does not seem likely that our dog or cat will be threatened until just before the earth is swallowed up.

I am willing to make my workroom available for study and research to any qualified physicist or other suitable scientific professional, provided that a grant offering adequate compensation is forthcoming. In the meantime, I suggest that less important matters such as the Climate Crisis be sidelined until it is determined if there will even be a climate this time next year.

Commentary

Jesus and Socialism

We’ve all seen Democrats and others using the language of religion and Christianity to push their version of social justice. “Jesus commanded us to take care of the poor!” they declare. We’ve also seen the phenomenon of activist Catholic priests and nuns openly working to advance socialist revolutions in various countries in Central and South America. I’ve thought about that a lot, and it actually occurred to me the other day that I do recall reading about socialist sentiments in the New Testament.

Before I get to that though, I just want to ask all “religious” socialists out there a couple of questions. Your neighbor next door lost his job, and he can’t make his house note. So you go to your bank and draw some money out of your account and give him $1000. I think we can all agree that this would be in line with the teachings of Jesus on loving your neighbor and caring for the poor.

But how about instead of going to the bank and drawing the money out of your account, you go across the street to your other neighbor, hold him at gunpoint and force him to open his safe. Then you take his money and give it to your poor neighbor so that he can make his house note. What do you suppose God thinks about that?

We are not talking about God’s commandments, Christian charity or charity of any kind when we use the coercive powers of government to take from someone else so that we can give to others. That’s just stealing, and that is exactly what socialism is.

“Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, which should betray him, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein.” [John 12:3-6 KJV]

There we have the first socialist: Judas Iscariot.

Socialists want to help the poor…with something that belongs to someone else. Bernie Sanders doesn’t want to sell a couple of his homes and give to the poor. All those super-rich Hollywood liberals who want America to become a socialist worker’s paradise like Venezuela don’t want to sell their mansions and cars and jewelry and give to the poor. The Democrats don’t want to sell their stock portfolios and homes behind walls in gated communities to help the poor. They always want a big slice of your money so that they can give it away to the needy in exchange for more votes and more power.

Not because they care for the poor, but because they are thieves, they hold the bag and they carry what is put therein.

If you want to help the needy, by all means, do so. But do it with your own money, and that is pleasing to God. Stealing from others to help the poor is just stealing, and you are doing it to help no one but yourself.

Commentary

There Could Have Been People…

My youngest son, Stephen, drives a tractor-trailer and a little more than one year ago, in the early hours of the morning, he became a hero and nearly lost his life. He was driving in rainy conditions on I285 east when he came upon an accident that had just happened. Two cars were involved blocking three lanes of the interstate. He did not know if there were any people in those cars, but he knew that if there were and he hit them with his rig, they were going to die. With only that thought in mind, he reacted immediately and, risking his own life, drove his 18-wheeler into the ditch. His truck was totaled but miraculously he sustained only minor injuries. It turned out that there were no people in the cars, but even so I consider Stephen a hero because he risked his own life to safeguard the lives of others.

The anniversary of that same day was also the National March for Life, and the conjunction of those two events struck me. Leaving aside for a moment all of the logical and emotional arguments for and against the supposed right of a woman to choose to abort her unborn child, I reflect on the fact that the real and all-important question about this issue is never discussed by the pro-abortion lobby: when does human life begin? I would argue that by definition, human life begins at conception, since that single fertilized cell is unquestionably alive and unquestionably human, but I do recognize that there are arguments against this position that could be valid. But we do need to ask and try to answer this question: when does that life become a human life, worthy of all the protections that a civilized society can and should provide to the most innocent among us? Is it when the fetus can feel pain? Is it at viability? Thirty seconds after the child clears the birth canal? An hour later, when the woman and the doctor decide to let the infant live? When the child begins to walk?

Science has vastly increased our knowledge about the development of a human within the mother’s womb, and this, in turn, has increased the difficulty of the questions we must answer. But has it really? The most important question, when does human life begin, simply cannot be answered by science. This is a moral and philosophical question that has monumental consequences for us and our society.

But in a contest between one person’s right to choose and another person’s right to live, shouldn’t we err on the side of human life? If there is just a chance that the embryo or fetus inside a woman’s body is another living human being, shouldn’t that be given due consideration before sweeping it away?

By some estimates, about fifty million abortions have taken place in America since Roe v. Wade. It is long past time that we asked these questions.

Commentary

Breaking up Families

The democrats are getting traction with this issue, so it’s not going away anytime soon, but frankly, I am sick of hearing about it. Yes, children are being separated from their parents who have brought them across the border illegally, and it’s very sad, and I have sympathy and compassion for those children.

But children are being separated from their U.S. citizen parents every day here in this country. Here’s a couple that are running a thriving identity theft business out of their garage. When the police finally catch up with them and arrest them–guess what? They separate the children from their parents. Sometimes there’s another relative to take custody of the kids, but often there is not. The kids then go into the foster care system, where the treatment they receive may or may not be as compassionate and gentle as that received by those illegal immigrant children at the border.

Sometimes the children of U.S. citizens are being “ripped from their parents arms” when the parents didn’t even break any laws. Spank your child in Wal-Mart and it’s possible that DFACS will be waiting at your door when you get home. You could have your children taken from you and dropped into the foster care system just on the suspicion that you may be mistreating them.

When law-breaking moms and dads get arrested, the authorities have three choices: separate the kids from their miscreant parents, put them all in prison together or simply let the parents go, because after all, they have children, and we don’t want to separate children from their parents!  When it comes to illegal immigrants, this is obviously what is wanted by those now screaming the loudest, and it is guaranteed to boost the numbers of those sneaking into our country with their own or someone else’s children in tow. Our compassionate treatment of illegal immigrants with children is why we have so many assaulting our border now!

But with illegal immigrants, there is another choice: immediately put both parents and children back across the border and tell them to go back to where they came from. Or how about this? Build a wall to keep them from breaking into this country in the first place! You and I both know that neither of these options would be met with approval by the same people who are now screaming so loudly about the inhumanity of the Trump administration’s enforcement of our immigration laws. Why? Because their ultimate goal is not the humane treatment of children and families. It is the unending flow of cheap labor and future democrat voters.

Commentary

Déjà Vu All Over Again

On July 5, 2016, then-FBI Director James Comey declared that Hillary Rodham-Clinton would not be prosecuted for multiple violations of federal law in her mishandling of classified information. He then proceeded to list all of the facts that clearly, inescapably demonstrated that she had, indeed, broken the law multiple times. But, he said, there was no evidence that she “intended” to break the law, and “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring a case, so he was clearing her.

Flash forward to June 14, 2018, when the Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s long-awaited report was released. After clearly demonstrating that political bias for HRC and against Donald Trump was widespread and fanatical among the top brass at the FBI–the same people who were assiduously working to exonerate Clinton and “stop” Donald Trump–he then somehow finds no evidence that political bias played any role in the indefensible “errors of judgment” that he describes in the report.

In both cases, we see the Deep State trying to tiptoe down a thin line between open, bold-faced lying and an unconscionable assault on common sense. The facts are what they are, and they are inescapable: Hillary Rodham-Clinton massacred federal law in her mishandling of classified information, committing crimes that would land anyone else in prison for decades, but she could not be indicted or prosecuted because she was the great hope of those who so-hated Donald Trump and were horrified at the possibility of his election as president. There was never any intention of seriously investigating her crimes, and the political bias of those who were determined to clear her was manifest, but because no one put a big red stamp on the statement clearing her that said, “I hereby make this outrageous decision because I politically embrace Clinton and despise Trump,” Horowitz declares, “Our review did not find documentary or testimonial evidence directly connecting the political views these employees expressed in their text messages and instant messages to the specific investigative decisions we reviewed.”

They do indeed think that we are stupid.