The world has gone stupid.

You know, with all the far-reaching political subjects I talk about, sometimes it's little stories like this that make me question the future of humanity.  The headline: "Auburn Man Facing Charges After Kiling Bear in His Backyard."  So a crazy guy shot a bear that was rummaging around the trash or something, right?  Wrong.  A 76 year old guy was being chased by a 400 pound, 7-foot enraged bear that had cubs, right up until the point that he blasted it in the face with his shotgun.

I kid you not, he is being charged for an act of obvious self-defense.

Let me go through the charges one by one:

Charge #1: Illegally killing a bear.  First, there's the saying, "Better to be tried by twelve than carried by six."  Second - it was self-defense.  I'm no expert on Massachusetts law, but my understanding is that even in that incomprehensible state, lethal force is permitted if something poses an imminent threat to your life.  Let me repeat: 7-foot, 400 pound bear vs. 76 year old.  He would have had his face eaten off if he hadn't shot the animal.

Charge #2: Illegally baiting a bear.  Apparently, putting food in a bird feeder on your own property is considered baiting a bear now.  Of course, the bear came out as he was putting food in the feeder, meaning that the bear was not, in fact, after the food, but after him.

Charge #3: Illegal possession of a firearm.  Even in MA, it's still legal to own most shotguns, so unless he was packing a freaking Saiga 12, I don't really see what the problem is.  The article makes no mention of any history of violent crime that would disqualify him, either.  He was also on his own property.

Charge #4: Failing to secure a firearm.  Ah, no.  It was in his hands, it really doesn't get more secure than that.  As noted in #2 and #3, he was on his own property, as well.  Apparently, in MA, "safe storage" of a firearm means never taking it out of a safe, EVER.

You know, that last sentence was supposed to be sarcastic, but I can't help but wonder if it isn't actual policy.

As the icing on the cake, the cops have decided that the bear "wasn't a threat."  Yes, I absolutely agree.  The furious, four-hundred-pound mass of muscle, claws and teeth that was actively chasing a man was not a threat.

Let me remind the reader of something else: authorites say the thing had cubs.  If there's one thing we all know about bears, it's that mother bears most definitely do not approve of the existence of anything larger than a Chihuahua on the same plane of existence as her cubs.

If any of the Auburn cops are reading this for some reason, the sarcasm probably went over their heads, so, other readers, I will spell it out for these cops: the angry bear was, in fact, a threat.

It used to be a moment like this would be considered a great story, if not an outright act of heroism, removing a threat to public safety.  Instead, this guy is viewed by the authorities (at best) as a man who defended himself but still needs to be mercilessly attacked for killing a creature by means of a legal firearm.

What a sad, sad place this country is becoming.

The double standard in war

Well, it's being reported prominently that several Americans, including a diplomat, as well as an Afghan doctor, have been killed by the Taliban. Fair enough - it's certainly newsworthy. In a display of fairness that is highly unusual in today's media, Drudge Report also linked to an article talking about civilians killed during the same timeframe. In other words, today's casualty list for the United States and its supporters:

Three American civilians
One Afghan doctor
Three American soldiers

Casualties for the Taliban:
Eight insurgents

On the other hand, there's another less-reported casualty list, that of the Afghan civilians, who apparently matter so little to Americans that a UK news site had to report it instead. Casualties? Ten children and two women.

Leaving aside the fact that the war is literally accomplishing nothing, one has to wonder - who decided that this kind of ratio is acceptable? Common sense would dictate that firing high explosives into population centers would result in disproportionate civilian deaths. The ratio we have here is for every two Taliban killed, three innocents died.

Fair trade? While I'm sure a number of Americans would say so, the families of those who died would likely beg to differ. See, here's the big problem in Afghanistan. Most of the hated "insurgents" are just civilians who are angry with U.S. occupation - and understandably so. The rather callous attitude towards civilian casualties only makes it worse, since the death of an innocent loved one, caused by an apparently malicious foreign power, is VERY likely to result in feelings of vengeance, and the Taliban are all too happy to take in these furious Afghans, equip them with rifles, and show them how to build bombs to kill more American soldiers.

In short, this war is self-perpetuating; not all that surprising, though, given that it's the longest-running war in U.S. history.

Still no Progress with Iran

I figure I've talked enough about one psycho dictator of a third-world country, so now I'll talk about Iran.  We've all heard about how Iran is dangerous, and how Iran is gonna get a nuke and blow up Israel/the United States/Eastern Europe/everyone.  As comedian Jon Stewart put it, "The range of opinion on foreign policy appears to be 'I unequivocally support Israel and might bomb Iran' to 'I unequivocally support Israel and will bomb Iran.'"

The common theme, of course, being that everyone wants to blow up Iranians, apparently.  Unsurprisingly, the latest talks have achieved nothing.  I think, however, that we need to understand why they're failing.

Point one - we don't actually know that Iran is building a nuke.  Literally every single one of our (numerous) intelligence agencies have said that Iran either is not working on nukes, or that we can't prove one way or the other.  It apparently has not crossed politicians' minds that maybe, just maybe, getting Iran to give up its weapons program isn't working because it doesn't have one in the first place.

Point two - it IS possible that Iran is in fact working on a nuclear weapon.  We need to ask ourselves, "Why?"  The general answer amongst politicians and conservative pundits is some variation of, "So they can blow up Israel."  Well, if their leader is absolutely, certifiably bugnuts insane, then possibly.  He certainly doesn't like the country.  However, he IS a politician, and if politicians are anything, it's self-interested.  Were he to attempt a nuclear attack on Israel, he would not only bring that country's full wrath (and the Mossad - yikes) down on his head, he would also be giving the U.S. a perfect excuse to go on an absolute rampage in the Middle East.  I doubt he's that suicidal.

In addition, I think there's a larger reason they might want a nuke.  Think about this: Nobody - not even the Chinese - like North Korea's government.  As far as I can see, almost nobody would have any real issue with invading and giving Kim Jong Un the bin Laden treatment, or quietly assassinating him and starting a revolution, yet... they're untouchable.

Because they have nukes, and if they face an existential threat, they will use them.  Gaddafi - the guy who got violently overthrown recently - actually had a nuke.  At the request of the UN and NATO, he surrendered it, given that he was a "U.S. ally."  Well, look what happened to him.  He got revolutioned out of office, by way of U.S.-supplied rebels.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the real issue behind Iran's hypothetical nukes.  1953, CIA assassinates Iran's democratically-elected president, replacing him with a brutal pro-America authoritarian.  Said brutal authoritarian is then overthrown and replaced with an anti-America authoritarian.  The Iranian government - understandably - does not wish to be given the manufactured revolution treatment AGAIN.  Thus, nukes.  If they get even one weapon, they'll be effectively untouchable - sure, they won't win a war, but nobody'll try to start one, either.  They've learned from other dictators.  Cozying up to America is no guarantee of safety, but get a nuke, and you can be as violently anti-America/Israel/NATO as you please.

This is quite odd.

With a few exceptions, politicians generally don't care about the Constitution or the writings of the Founding Fathers.  It's certainly not a partisan flaw - George W. Bush violated the Constitution just as gleefully as Obama's been doing.  In fact, I can't think of a single president in the past half century that's had even a slight amount of respect for the law of the land.

This, of course, make's Barack Obama's recent comments all the stranger.  In an attempt to reduce opposition to his gun-restriction agenda, Mr. Obama told gun owners that he was constrained by the system the Founders put in place.  He dismisses concerns about overreach by government - in order to defend overreach by government.  Cognitive dissonance, much?

Mr. Obama seems rather arrogant, if not intentionally so, in this dismissal.  Consider this: the Founders, shortly after winning a revolution fought primarily by citizen militias equipped with privately owned firearms, wrote an amendment stating that the "right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."  The obvious intent was to provide a state-level counterbalance to Federal power.

These comments are a fascinating insight into the mind of politicians.  Mr. Obama literally is arguing that there's nothing wrong with subverting the Founders' intent because it won't be subverting the Founders' intent, even though it is.  It's a bizarre, almost circular line of reasoning, similar to the idea that freedom can only be protected by taking it away.  By saying that it's silly to worry about having a means to defend yourself from government, he is stating that the Founders' concerns were silly, while paying lip service to the Founders' system.

Then, there's his comment that tyrrany can't happen because "the government is us."  Well, no, it's not.  We live in a republic, not a democracy.   "The government" is, in fact, the few hundred senators and representatives, judges, the president, department heads and Heaven-knows-how-many bureaucrats.  While I normally would avoid Godwin's Law like the plague, I can't help but dispute the argument that democracy prevents tyrrany by pointing out that, of all people, Adolf Hitler was also fairly elected.

I am not calling Mr. Obama an equivalent of Hitler by any means.  However, his statements reflect the concerning attitude of complacency common in America, that "it could never happen here."  It's a dangerous sentiment.

Housing crisis all over again?

There's an old saying that goes something like this: "Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it." Makes sense, right? We need to learn from past mistakes. Even things that happened hundreds or thousands of years ago can teach us valuable lessons about economics, human nature, warfare and politics.  It's really important to be able to learn from the distant past.

Then again, there's also some merit to paying attention to things that happened, oh, four or five years ago, too.

See, President Obama wants to push banks to make loans to risky borrowers.  Based on even a brief glance at the past few years, this is obviously a Very Bad Idea.

Now, why is this a Very Bad Idea?  Take a look at the housing bubble and bust from 2007-08.  The housing market had become a tremendously inflated bubble thanks to two policies.  The first of these is the artificially low interest rates created by the Federal Reserve.  Guess what's happening right now?  In an effort to stimulate the economy, the Federal Reserve is... wait for it... creating artificially low interest rates.

Oops.  This by itself is a recipe for disaster, but the next policy makes it worse.  During The Bubble, one of the policies enforced by the government was forcing banks to provide those artificially low-interest loans to people who were very risky borrowers with low credit ratings.

This sounding familiar?  That's exactly the policy that the administration wants to pursue.  Now, I dislike the strangely popular "blame Bush for everything" tactic, but in all fairness the policies that created the housing bubble and subsequent bust were Bush policies.  What baffles me is the fact that Mr. Obama insists on following this same course.  I know history repeats itself, but I honestly did not expect it to happen this quickly.

The deeper issue, of course, is the idea that the government can "stimulate" the economy at all.  Our system is a pseudo-free market - that is, it's technically capitalist, with everyone being more or less free to trade as they see fit (free market) but with such absurdly heavy government involvement (socialism, progressivism, whatever) that it's definitely not an actual free market; the proper term is corporatism, or, if you like loaded words, it would be technically accurate to call ours a fascist system.  When the government decides to "stimulate" the economy in whatever way, it invariably results in distortions in the market, creating false demand and generally resulting in unnatural developments.

The result?  Because we don't have a full socialist (everything is government-owned) economy, the market will correct what's happening.  Those bubbles?  Yeah, they bust, making things even worse, and when they bust, it gets blamed on the free market, which in turn results in increased regulations that stifle growth, as well as policies like Mr. Obama's proposed ideas, which cause still more bubbles, which then bust, and so the cycle continues, as history endlessly repeats itself.

As an aside, it should be noted that when America's economy was stable, it had no central bank.  In the years between central banks, it was stable.  Every time a central bank showed up?  Boom-bust cycle yet again.

I've decided that my new criteria for supporting a presidential candidate will be looking at their knowledge of history.

And we're back to guns.

Of course, this time it's pretty much justified.  Three rather important events have just happened relating to the subject.

First, the United Nations passed the very vaguely worded "Arms Trade Treaty," which is ostensibly to regulate illicit arms sales to terrorist groups.  That said, the wording of the treaty in question is very, ah, broad, leaving it open to abuse.

Second, a little town in Georgia passed a mostly symbolic law mandating firearms ownership, making it the second town in that state to do so.  It should be interesting to watch what happens.

Third, and most importantly, Connecticut just got a sweeping set of gun laws.  This is what I'll be writing about, given that it's almost certain that the legislature will approve everything.  Post-Newtown shooting, the big rallying cries were for three things: increased mental health care, better school security, and gun control.  Well, unsurprisingly, Connecticut, where the shooting happened, is following in the footsteps of New York (SAFE Act) and Colorado (magazine ban) in going for dramatic gun control measures.

Now, most of what we see in the proposals consists of the standard fare, such as "universal background checks," magazine restrictions, and so on.  However, there are some new features that aren't common in new proposals.

The first of these is mandating a registry for magazines over 10 rounds; aside from the initial versions of Senator Feinstein's ban, this hasn't really shown up in any important legislation.  It has not been explained how on Earth they plan to enforce it, however.  Magazine purchases are regulated exactly the same as buying most household items - that is, they aren't.  They have no way of tracking these down, and odds are quite a few gun owners will pretend they only have 10-rounders.  Interestingly, in the context of the Newtown shootings, it should be noted that the murderer changed magazines repeatedly without emptying them, often leaving them half full at 15 rounds.  If the massacre had been committed with 10-round magazines, it's doubtful that the death toll would be any smaller.

The second of the unusual features is a requirement for state permission to buy ammo.  As far as I know, this has not been seriously proposed until now.  I have the same issue with this that I do with "may issue" concealed carry licenses.  While the merits of state authorization are up for debate, the idea that a government can deny the ability to purchase ammunition to anyone they choose seems to me to be giving the government far too much power.

Your hard-earned money at work.

First of all, yes, I realize that anything less than a billion dollars is pretty much meaningless in terms of total spending.

However, I cannot help but be mildly surprised at the level of stupidity of some of the things our money is being spent on, like, oh, spending $880,000 to study snail sex.  As with many of my posts, this represents a larger issue, but first, I want to emphasize something.

They just spent well over 16 times the average household income to study why the New Zealand mud snail has sex instead of reproducing asexually.  Not only will this provide no actual benefit whatsoever to any human being in existence, nobody actually cares.  I'd be willing to bet that until this post, you'd never heard of the New Zealand mud snail.

Now, the bigger issue.  Remember my last post, about the Congressman who thought he was above everyone?  I mentioned in that post that because of their superiority complex, our governing officials don't actually care what we think.  Because of this, they gleefully throw money around like a drunken 18th century pirate on shore leave - the spending is unproductive, expensive, and frivolous, and it's not actually their money that they're spending.

See, this is just further evidence that they don't care.  They're not willing to sift through bills and take out unnecessary spending; the government happily gives scientists grants without regard to the merit of the study in question.

Our government, in short, feels that it is completely justified in spending however much money it wants on whatever it so chooses, ignoring public opinion, common sense, and fiscal responsibility - and again, ignoring the Constitution.

Finally, I must end on this sentiment.  Why do we need to know why New Zealand mud snails have sex?!