Memorial Day

Remember Bunker Hill and Yorktown; Vicksburg, Shilo and Gettysburg; Ypres, Belleau Wood and Dieppe. Do not forget Iwo Jima or The Bulge or the Chosen Reservoir or Khe Sanh. Remember Fallujah, it was only yesterday. Honor those who have preserved your freedom by reflecting on their service.

If we do not remember those who gave their lives to preserve our way of life, we are likely to lose that way of life by the worst possible means - the mistake of thinking things had to be the way they are and not some other way.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep,
though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
- John McCrae, May 1915

Blog about #brettkimberlin day

News about #brettkimberlin
Brett Kimberlin, AKA "The Speedway Bomber," is a convicted serial bomber who served only 17 years of a 50 year sentence. He was convicted of perjury while still a teenager. Since his release he has been quite active in support of "Progressive" causes. He has also been busy with lawsuits against bloggers who mention his felonious past. That's why today is his day.

Rather than repeat information given elsewhere, I'm providing some links to help him lower his profile to the depths it deserves: Here, here, here, here and here.

There is much more, but those will give you some feeling for the man.

Update: 5:25PM. These links are well worth a visit: How to kill the First Amendment and Free speech blogburst.

Funding the Speedway Bomber

Conservative Blogs Learn Of Brett Kimberlin ...and more about the Tides Foundation, Barbra Streisand and Teresa Heinz Kerry, supporters all.

Follow the links at the link above. It makes Bill Ayers look like an angel. This story should be more widely known. If Kimberlin had tea party connections, you can bet it already would be.

STOP!

Just stop the #Greenfail.
Federal 'Stimulus' Spent $34.5 Million In Michigan For Only 183 Total Jobs

Petition Check

In March, the #Wisconsin Government Accountability Board certified 900,939 signatures on a petition to recall Governor Scott Walker. Apparently, they found 4,001 duplicate names, and struck 26,109 incomplete signatures. They discovered only 5 fake names.

Whether the latter number strains your credulity depends on whether your name is Eric Holder, I suppose. I find it unlikely that there weren't more bogus names. After all, there were as many University of Wisconsin doctors violating professional ethics in order to write fake "illness" excuses for Madison protestors a very short time ago.

Yesterday, Wisconsin held a primary to select candidates for the recall election. In total, 670,278 people voted in the Democrat primary. This means nearly a quarter million (230,661) of those who signed the recall petition didn't vote for a Democrat. There are many conclusions that might be drawn.

1. The names weren't fake, they just weren't living people.
2. The 230,000 voted for Scott Walker. Though he was effectively unopposed, he garnered 626,538 votes.
3. Social pressure to sign the petitions was high, and many people signed a petition they did not believe in.
4. The 230,000 didn't vote. They were turned off by overreaching Union tactics.

Evidence supporting number 3 is that the recall petition was heavily, nearly exclusively, Big Union driven. They managed to get a large number of signatures, but 25% came from people who didn't care about the result of the primary they helped initiate.

Evidence supporting number 4 is that the preferred Big Union candidate needed a huge turnout to win, which she didn't get, even though unions spent heavily on negative ads against her opponent - now the Democrat candidate for governor. Among other things, the unions said he was just like Scott Walker. We can only hope.

If we accept numbers 3 and 4 above as explanatory, we get a good demonstration of why unions want to eliminate the secret ballot from union organizing activities. This is known popularly as "Card Check." Card Check proposes to dramatically change union certification rules. Under existing law, workers are allowed to vote for or against unionization in a federally supervised secret ballot election. Under Card Check, proposed by Orwellian inclined Democrats as the "Employee Free Choice Act," if more than 50% of workers at a facility sign a card, the government must certify the union. A secret ballot election would be prohibited, whether workers want one or not.

By forcing workers to sign a card in public — instead of vote in private — Card Check is a recipe for intimidation and coercion.

What people do in private is different from what they do when a union rep is breathing down their neck.

War on women

#MarissaAlexander I've never really understood why armed self-defense isn't taught at domestic violence shelters.

A Florida woman faces prison after firing a warning shot to scare off an abusive husband.

Perhaps something other than a warning shot would have been more appropriate. After all, the serial abuser of women says he would have tried to take the gun away if his sons hadn't been there.

He's likely lying. I don't think he was worried about setting a bad example for his sons by beating a woman in front of them. He was worried about getting shot.

The 8% solution

Who are these people?! We need to get them some help.

This is only comprehensible if 8% of the population were Congresscritters and their relatives and friends. And, I guess, lobbyists, corporatist whores, OWS apparatchiks, the entire staff at MSNBC, Keith Olberman, officers of Teachers Unions and the motley assortment of 5th columnists with which we are always afflicted. Hmmm, maybe 8% isn't ridiculous.

Face to face with Authoritarian Environmentalism

New blog on the blogroll. Here's a great quote:

One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike — and yet it is the most precious thing we have.
- An elderly Albert Einstein meditates on science in a letter to Hans Mühsam dated July 9th, 1951.

Which is why this is disgusting. It takes a PhD in sociology to come up with the idea that the scientific method is a mental derangement requiring forced treatment.

"Advanced Default and Battery Capital of North America"

Here is a local #Greenfail noted by the Mackinac Center.

Our former Governor's big bet on big batteries didn't work out: A123 Systems stock is trading at $0.82, down from $26.00. Click the link above at #Greenfail if you are not familiar with this corporatist morality tale. And, click the link below: This is not the first time I've mentioned A123, but it could well be the last.

I wonder what the press conference will look like when A123 hits $0.00?

Watch Jennifer Granholm predict 63,000 jobs would be generated by her consummate central planning winner picking. Watch as the president, Mr. "Electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket," calls in to support the faithful. See the SecEng, Mr. "I want $10 per gallon gasoline" support her wisdom. Carl and Debbie are just along for the ride; on your back.



Jennifer? Carl? Debbie? mr. president? ... Lithicus? (For an explanation of that last reference, you'll have to go here.)

Neighbors, we're sorry

Obama Alienates Canada And Mexico At Three Amigos

On behalf of US citizens who voted against Mr. Obama, and will again, even if the GOP nominates John Huntsman; I apologize to all Canadians. Well, at least to those who didn't tell some pollster they wished they could vote for Obama.

I also apologize to the government of Mexico for our ill conceived attempt to encourage repeal of the Second Amendment by an act of war known as Fast and Furious.

Our President, who apologizes easily for almost anything, will never apologize for the obvious wrongs he has has done. You'll have to take my apology as an individual mandate.

Unintended consequences

Health Care and the Dynamics of Intervention

"We have a crisis! We have to do something!" Actually, what we have to do is undo a lot of things.

Every time I hear some dunderhead complain that the General Government needs to control "x" because otherwise it will cost the General Government too much to continue providing x -- and especially x's new extension, "y" -- I think of all the reasons the Founders never intended the General Government to be involved in whatever "x" is in the first place. It's why the powers are enumerated: You don't get to grant yourself an interest in something so you can gradually take it over by complaining about the results of your own actions.

As it is, the General Government is free to cause the problem, and the "fix" is always to take more liberty from individuals. It's 55mph speed limits, or "We won't give you money for roads." It's our money in the first place. If we weren't compelled to send it to them, they couldn't extort us with it.

The Founders didn't have to imagine all the ways in which these problems could be created, (they couldn't have imagined the need for a 55mph speed limit, nor Obamacare) all they had to do was recognize the universal tendency of governments over the course of centuries. The Constitution is NOT a "living document." Mostly, that holds because we've learned nothing about power and corruption. We keep electing the practitioners, and it's our fault for not holding them to the contract of the Constitution.

#Obamacare & the Supremes

It wasn't tax before it was.

We’ll just have to pass it to see what we decide is in it.

Malia's excellent vacation

If you want a worth reading look at the not so obvious issues surrounding Malia Obama's trip to Mexico, check Claudia Rosett here.

But, like Rosett, I'll relegate the Stalinist style 'disappearing' of stories about Malia's Mexican sabbatical. It's the sort of thing we're used to.

What I find curious is that there are at least a dozen parents in DC who somehow thought letting their 13 and 14 year old daughters take a Mexican sabbatical was a good idea. I imagine the conversation with the school organizers of this trip went something like this:

School: "We're planning a school trip to Mexico for 13 of our students this March. It will be very educational."

Parent: "WTF? Mexico? You don't think I'm letting my 13 year old baby go to Mexico? I can see the headline, "13 students kidnapped, raped and murdered." And it'll be by Mexican drug lords wielding guns purchased in the United States because of our barbaric Second Amendment. I think we'll pass on this one."

School: "No, no. It's OK. We've already got the Obamas on board. Your daughter will be safer in Mexico than she is in DC. There will be 25 Secret Service agents. Besides, more 13 year olds than that get raped and almost as many get murdered in this town every month."

Parent: "OH... OK, then. My 13 year old daughter gets world class protection, and I don't have to pay for it? That makes up for The President's failure to make someone pay for her birth control pills. I'm in."

He was for it before he was against it

How's that Hopey/Changy stuff working out for you, Jeffrey Immelt?

Suddenly you see government as intrusive? Wasn't the incandescent bulb ban enough for you? Nor the windmill subsidies?

Juxtaposition

Stanley Fish @stanleyfish explains why Eric Holder feels entitled to flout the Constitution. As Fish sees it, Holder's direct attacks on the Constitution are more than merely OK, they're required. Under the Fish protocol, Fast & Furious gun fakery and the extrajudicial killing of American citizens by executive order, to name just two of Holder's anti-Constitutional pursuits, are not optional. That's justified because Liberals feel superior.

The principles that will naturally occur to us – tolerance, mutual respect, diversity – are ones they have already rejected; invoking them will do no real work except the dubious work of confirming us in our feelings of superiority.

He's right about the dubious nature of this work, but, yup, us non-Fish here in the flyover wasteland are just clinging to our guns and religion - and making Fish feel superior. Too bad tolerance, mutual respect and diversity admit to no dalliance with the Second Amendment - or the Fifth, or the Fourteenth. Fish has borrowed the concept of Taqiyya to justify the means, because the ends are superior. With apologies to Edmund Burke (though it's Fish who owes them): “All that's necessary for our opponents to win in the world is for enough superior men to stop lying and cheating.”

Eric Holder is seen here presaging his future plans for Fast & Furious - "brainwashing." He cares less about the Second Amendment now, and the Fifth, and the Fourteenth, than he did when he was a Richard Pryor lookalike promoting unconstitutional D.C. gun ban efforts.

Long division

Jonathan Alter @jonathanalter has declared a loser in the culture wars:

The independent women who will help determine the election want the government--and their bosses--out of their private lives. The culture wars are over, and the Republicans lost.

If they want the government out of their lives, they most certainly will not vote for Obama. What Alter really means is that, "They want their view of government largesse out of the political arena. They'd like you to believe the culture wars are over."

Good luck with that. I don't think the case is proven that thirty year old left-wing activist students at elite Universities, testifying before faux Congressional "committees" and hugely exaggerating the cost of birth control pills, have every right to make Catholics, much less anybody else, pay for their birth control.

Meanwhile, the president is playing the religion card :

When we start using religion as a bludgeon in politics, we start questioning other people's faith, we start using religion to divide, instead of bring the country together, then I think we've got a problem.

So, I guess using religion to divide the country (And whose plan was that, anyway?) is entirely different from using race for the same purpose.

Eric Holder, call your office. The president has an update for you on how to interpret the Constitution.

Benjamins

How the U.S. Could Pressure North Korea Tomorrow: Quit the $100 Bill

As an anti-counterfeiting investigator with Europol once put it: "Superdollars are just U.S. dollars not made by the U.S. government."

It brings up the question of exactly what we mean by "forgery" and "counterfeit." Fiat is fiat, I say.

sowing doubts about our currency

Well, they'd have to charge Bernanke and Geithner with this before they start working on the Norks.

Maybe we can give Bernanke a quarter million tons of food instead of North Korea, if he promises to stop printing - in all forms. He can use the food to control the agricultural commodities market.

Blandly incinerating the base

@ronpaul @mittromney

It’s very easy to excite the base with incendiary comments. We’ve seen throughout the campaign that if you’re willing to say really outrageous things that are accusatory and attacking President Obama that you’re going to jump up in the polls. You know, I’m not willing to light my hair on fire to try and get support. I am who I am.

There you go again, Mitt, insulting the base. And when? When you're asked why the base isn't excited about you.

Silly people, they're just too excitable. They want the President called out for his policies by a free-market capitalist (at one time a redundant phrase) who thinks the Constitution means something. Who knows what they might do if you showed a little outrage over the outrageous? Maybe vote for you?

Mitt Romney thinks we need to take our Prozac and get over this obsession that Barack Obama deserves to have accusatory attacks visited upon him every single minute. If you don't like it, you aren't really his base. Mitt is who he is, alright.

I voted today for Ron Paul, because he says incendiary things about ending the Fed, and cites Constitutional limits on the general Government as if they mean something. Ron Paul is who he is, too. The difference is this: Paul espouses principled red meat, rather than pragmatic pabulum.

Heads being filled with slimy mush

John Horgan, @johnhorgan at the Scientific American @sciam blog, poses a moral question regarding Dr. Peter Gleick's recent ethical lapse:
Should Global-Warming Activists Lie to Defend Their Cause?

When, if ever, is lying justified? I talked about this conundrum this week in a freshmen humanities class, in which we were reading Immanuel Kant on morality. Kant proposed that we judge the rightness or wrongness of an act, such as breaking a promise, by considering what happens if everyone does it. If you don’t want to live in a world in which everyone routinely breaks promises, then you shouldn’t do so.

That’s a fine principle, in the abstract, but my students and I agreed that in certain situations lying is excusable. Shouldn’t you lie if your girlfriend asks you if you like her new haircut? If your boss, who’s a vindictive bastard, asks your opinion of his new business plan? What about lying in order to reveal a plot that you believe imperils all of humanity?

That brings me to the latest scandal to emerge from the debate over global warming...

Let's examine the three questions to which Mr. Horgan and his freshman humanities students agreed it was OK to lie:

1- Shouldn’t you lie if your girlfriend asks you if you like her new haircut?
No, you shouldn't lie. She'll keep getting it cut in ways you don't like, making her less attractive to you.  That wasn't her objective. 

2- If your boss, who’s a vindictive bastard, asks your opinion of his new business plan?
No, you shouldn't lie. He'll think he has a good plan (the author appears to assume it's not).  Toadyism might be his preference, but maybe he is just vindictive, not stupid. In any case, your lie will probably damage you and everyone else in the organization.

3- What about lying in order to reveal a plot that you believe imperils all of humanity?
Yes, you should lie. You and everyone else will die if you don't. Revealing a plot that imperils all of humanity (Wink, wink. Nod, nod: What Gleick did.) assumes that you lie by telling the would-be humanicidal maniacs that "I promise never to reveal your plot to kill everyone in the world."

But this hypothetical is not like the others: You lie to reveal, not conceal; And you lie about an existential threat. And it's the wrong lie. In the case at hand, Gleick's, your lie would have to be phrased, “I promise not to fabricate evidence that you have a plot to kill everybody.”

Mr. Horgan is obfuscating his way into an alternate reality where Peter Gleick lied for our sins.  Woe, woe to science when this slippery conflation of ethical situations is its defense of the unethical behavior of the former Chairman of the Ethics Committee Task Force for the American Geophysical Union. 

Woe to freshman humanities students who have such an instructor.

Finally, the fact that the headline can even pass editorial muster is telling.  They couldn't get to, "Are scientists still scientists when they fabricate evidence to protect a cultish mythology pet theory?"

Disgusting

@powerlineblog notes that an invitation to an exercise in exchanging ideas is likely what set Dr. Peter Gleick on his reputational suicide mission.

This guy was chairman of a scientific ethics committee. He was a honcho in the climate Chicken Little industry. His behavior is that of a religious cultist with an IQ of 75, except the Kool-Aid killed only his conscience. He is the True Believer writ larger, and yet even smaller, than Eric Hoffer could have imagined.

Intellectually degenerate. Morally bankrupt. Despicable, mendacious and proud. If science comes to be disrespected, it will be cretins of this sort who should be held responsible. He damages us all. And he is typical of his ilk.

While we're on the topic, it is worth reading this reality based presentation at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. The climate models are wrong, and the modelers know it. They've got nothing left, except character assassination. And they aren't good at that, either.

Coming soon to a country near you?

From Jim Rickards' @jamesgrickards Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis. #currencywars

Rickards is speaking here about alternatives to Keynesian economic theory.

The most promising new school is complexity theory. Despite the name, complexity theory rests on straightforward foundations. The first is that complex systems are not designed from the top down. Complex systems design themselves through evolution or the interaction of myriad autonomous parts. [Explaining why restricting autonomy is the favored approach for administrative government mavens, AKA "Czars."]

The second principle is that complex systems have emergent properties, which is a technical way of saying the whole is greater than the sum of its parts -- the entire system will behave in ways that cannot be inferred from looking at the the pieces. The third principle is that complex systems run on exponentially greater amounts of energy. This energy can take many forms, but the point is that when you increase the system scale by a factor of ten, you increase the energy requirements by a factor of a thousand, and so on. The fourth principle is that complex systems are prone to catastrophic collapse. The third and fourth principles are related. When the system reaches a certain scale, the energy inputs dry up because the exponential relationship between scale and inputs exhausts the available resources. In a nutshell, complex systems arise spontaneously, behave unpredictably, exhaust resources and collapse catastrophically. When you apply this paradigm to finance, you begin to see where currency wars are headed.

On March 20 Greece has a bond payment of 14.5 billion euros ($18 billion) due. Close enough to the Ides of March for government work.

"[E]xponentially greater amounts of energy."

Source: PBOC, ECB, FED, BoJ (via Things That Make You Go Hmmm...)

AAPL Price Target

A new post by Robert Leitao, a blogger with a good record of forecasting both Apple results and AAPL performance.


Posts At Eventide: Apple Price Target: $790 Per Share

Ignore the infighting

We've been hearing lately about Newt's criticisms of Reagan and tendency to have too many ideas. We've been hearing lately about Mitt's rapacious activities at Bain Capital and his accounts in the Caymans. We've been hearing this from Mitt and Newt respectively.

I'll start with sentiments I generally agree with as stated by The POH Diaries:

Here’s the bottom line. I have no dog in this fight. My candidates either didn’t run or imploded on impact. I’m not comfortable with Romney’s apparent weaknesses, and despite his ability to articulate conservatism my gut tells me that a Gingrich nomination and subsequent Presidency would end in heartache as well. But the main point is this, neither one of these men, whether they’re really conservative or not, whether they’re a rino, liberal, progressive, or just opportunistic, is Barack Hussein Obama. And that’s enough for me. Certainly it would have been nice to have a strong, conservative candidate with populist appeal to take the fight to Obama. But who the challenger in this race ends up being may mean less than perhaps it ever has in history for the simple reason that the incumbent will be Barack Obama. That one fact in itself may be our biggest asset.

Now, two comments about the revisionist history being peddled about Newt and Reagan and one on ideas. I find the "romantic belief" attractive, especially when mostly privately funded.
One. Two. And one.

And a couple of items about Mitt's "vulture" capitalism, AKA the economic system that built America and Obama wants to destroy.
One. Two.

It will help keep our heads clear to consider that GOP on GOP attacks shouldn't sour us on evicting the most corrupt and least competent President we've ever seen. "[W]ho the challenger in this race ends up being" matters less than it has in any election you've ever voted in.

Can't we all just get along?

Sometimes all of us but CAIR can.

Extreme leftwing Bill Maher and rightwing Rep. Allen West agree on the seriousness of some Marines urinating on enemy bodies:

Maher, “If they were real Taliban, if they were people who burn down girls’ schools you know, and do honor rapes, threw acid in people’s faces, I’m not that upset about pissing on them, dead or alive.”

West, "The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter.

As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell."

At least we didn't waterboard the remains.

Obama's problem?

He's never had to contemplate, much less execute, firing anyone. They just leave the sinking ship. He's been spared any angst. And any exposure to reality.

In this way he is unlike the Sun King, who executed some of his citizens. Oh, wait...

The 'greening' of the IPCC

Defund the IPCC Now

It turns out that the GAO, the US General Accounting Office, says US has been secretly hiding their funding of the IPCC for the last decade...

In other words, the IPCC funding arrangements are of a piece with their “scientific” claims and their other actions—secretive, shabby, with a hidden agenda, and full of disinformation.

Wouldn't you think they'd be proud of funding the IPCC? After all, the Science is Settled, it's For the Children of future generations, it Saves the Planet and it is Redistributing the Wealth via Green 'Jobs' for people who don't actually produce anything. When you keep such obviously "good things" secret people are likely to question your motives.

Managerial progressive?

Why is Romney doing such a lousy job defending his record at Bain Capital?

That article focuses on the number of jobs created which may be associated with Mitt Romney's tenure at Bain capital, or while he was Governor of Massachusetts. This is over thinking it. The core reason Romney isn't an articulate defender of Capitalism is that, for him, Capitalism is merely a question of managerial competence. Sadly, he lacks a principled understanding of Capitalism, and thus can't defend it as a philosophy. Much like Herbert Hoover.

Someone should ask him if he's ever read von Mises, Hayek or Ayn Rand.

Dolts, Volts and Jolts

Well, Christmas is over and we have our president flouting the Constitution and the law with a "recess appointment" when the Senate is not in recess, and when the law itself demands Senate approval. We have GM moving Chevy Volt, AKA Obamamobile, production to China. And we have the Europeans dithering - a 90 day delay - about the bailout for Greece, without which Greece defaults in March.

Happy New Year.

Merry Christmas ...from The Other Club

ID This

Flying requires an ID and a State-sanctioned groping, so it's hard to figure why casting a vote should not require you to at least identify yourself. But in Attorney General Eric Holder's opinion showing an ID to vote is a "racial burden." Of course, he also thinks complaints regarding his own prevarications about supplying guns to Mexican drug gangs are racist. He wants to limit you to purchasing one handgun per month, but voting more than once is not to be hindered.

Requiring ID has a history of being used to keep blacks from owning firearms. Since voting and owning a gun are Constitutional rights, Eric Holder should advocate disbanding BATFE, a clearly racist organization by his own definition.

If it's OK to require ID and registration to buy a gun, a clearly Constitutional right, why should voters not have ID? Which is most dangerous to the Republic, flying without ID, unlicensed guns or voter fraud?

The Gipper for Goldwater

Where have you gone AuH2O?
A nation yearns to see your like anew.

And we miss you too, Mr. President.

Transcript here.

The AGW Grant Industry's inner workings

This has been percolating for a day, and it definitely appears as if the AGW grant industry is suffering another embarrassment at their own hands: Climategate 2.0 emails – They’re real and they’re spectacular!

If you'd like a nice cross section of the flummery and deceit, go here: http://foia2011.org/

You don't even have to use the search feature, there are many examples already extracted for your reading disdain.

An don't miss this one: John L. Daly’s message to Mike Mann and The Team

Leading suppliers of guns to Mexican gangs? DoD DoS DoJ

Tom Stilson at BigGovernment.com suggests the U. S. Government May Be Primary Suppliers of Mexican Drug Cartel Guns:

Based upon the statistics I have compiled, our State and Defense Departments may be the premier suppliers of weaponry to Mexican drug cartels...

These statistics imply the State and Defense Departments may very well be the top suppliers of small arms to Mexico’s drug cartels and not civilians. Only the information obtained from ATF Firearms Traces will tell. However, those records are not public

Yes, indeed. I wondered about this very question in a letter to BATFE in April, 2009:

Have any of these weapons been traced to aid provided to Mexico by the United States through official channels? That is, which, if any, of these firearms were legally imported by Mexico from United States law enforcement or military sources, or any other government departments or programs?

I assume that transfers from any programs officially sanctioned by the United States will have been precisely documented.

I got stonewalled. So I asked again in June of 2009:

I am in receipt of your letter dated 22-June-2009, a response to my inquiry of 20-April-2009. The information was not helpful and I do need further assistance. [He asked me to let him know.]

In my April 20th letter, I asked for specific information about the sources of US firearms submitted to BATFE for tracing. You indicate that you have no information about "the total number of firearms seized by government authorities in Mexico." Thank you for letting me know that cannot answer that question, but I did not ask it.

What I did ask, and what has not been answered, regards information you certainly have.

What are the various sources in the United States of those firearms submitted by Mexican authorities to the BATFE for tracing? That is, of the submitted firearms you have, or have had, in your possession - where in the US did they come from?

I specifically inquired about the following: "Which of these weapons can be traced to official aid provided by the United States to Mexico? That is, which, if any, of these firearms were legally imported by Mexico from United States law enforcement or military sources, or other government departments or programs?

I assume that such transfers from law enforcement or military sources in the United States will have been precisely documented.

In addition, can you provide a breakdown by type of weapon? Handguns vs long guns and the number of semi-automatic, automatic and other types would be extremely helpful."

I think it is obvious to both of us that you have this information, since you have had the firearms in question in your possession for the purposes of tracing them.

Thank you in advance,
etc.

Haven't heard anything since.

...[W]hat they imagine they can design.

Russell Roberts is Professor of Economics at George Mason University and the J. Fish and Lillian F. Smith Distinguished Scholar at the Mercatus Center, and a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.:

“The purpose of economics is to teach men how little they actually know about what they imagine they can design.”
-F. A. Hayek

This lesson is not merely lost on narcissists, it encourages them in their hubris to bring "order" to the market and to "better" all our lives.

Today's example is the plummeting price of solar panels, brought about by overproduction. Overproduction due specifically to government meddling. The solar panel industry has been economically damaged by subsidies, the reputation of "green jobs" has suffered significantly, thousands of workers are losing their jobs, the rule of law has been subverted by politicians covering their bets and taxpayers have been fleeced because they have to cover those bets. Perversely, all this is used as a critique of capitalism.

Those who should be most embarrassed and enraged by these failures, statist environmentalists, are the foremost apologists. It isn't about saving the planet, it's about enforcing their will.

HT Paladin