STICKIED. Scroll down for newer posts.

Thank you for bookmarking and using my Amazon links for your online shopping. It really helps a lot.

Share or Bookmark

Posted in Money | Comments Off

• “Sovereignty without Territoriality?” (H/T Hobbit)
• Anybody seen Mud yet? A friend recommended it glowingly and it’s at 98% on RottenTomatoes.com — almost unheard of for a live-action feature.
• Become your very own spy agency with these secret! NSA! Google! Tips! (Creepy, and a far cry from a Orphan Annie Decoder Pin). (Tip o’ hat to JJ)
• Speaking of creepy: Skype. It could have been very non-creepy. But it’s a M*******t product; so what can you say? It’s creepy. (H/T Wendy McElroy)
• Oh, that laugh-a-minute IRS. Turns out they also gave supposedly “private” info on conservative groups to a liberal group. And there’s so much more of this tale still to come out. Does Big O really think it can be hushed up with a couple of IRS resignations?
• I’ve been meaning to do something deep and profound with that excellent PBS piece on the Stockholm Syndrome and money printing. Since I’m not brilliant this week, I’ll just link for the edification of anybody who hasn’t already seen it. Good one, definitely.
• One of the all-time great opening lines: “The friends of freedom are accustomed to being beaten like a rented mule in Washington.” (Bovard reviews James Antle’s Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?

Share or Bookmark

Posted in Books and Movies, Mind and Spirit, Miscellaneous, Money, Poly-Ticks, Privacy and self ownership | 10 Comments »

Because, you know, “survival-types aren’t known for being the most socially suave category of people…”

(Tip o’ hat to C^2)

Share or Bookmark

Posted in Humor, Preparedness | 6 Comments »

With the veritable plethora* of scandals abounding now in Obama’s DC, it’s fun wondering which will become the Scandal du Jour — that is, the one that’ll last more than a week.

No, the scandal that lasts won’t be the horrendous treatment of prisoners in Gitmo or the slaughter of children via drones. Though both are outrages of war-crime proportions, those are just the usual ho-hummers. No doubt most Americans wish more furrin’ kids would be blown to smithereens and would rejoice if everybody in Gitmo were waterboarded six times a day.

Will the lasting scandal be Benghazi? Probably not. Too “Fox-ish” to grow any real media legs. The best we can hope for from that one is that it’ll keep Hillary out of the White House in 2016.

A lot of people are betting that the Justice (sic) Department’s secret wholesale seizure of AP’s phone records will be The One. Goring the media’s ox does tend to be a really, really bad idea — but that’s usually done only by Republicans. It’ll be fun to watch the MSM twist itself into a pretzel. (“How can we kiss Obama’s butt at the same time we’re screaming in his face that he’s raping the Bill of Rights?”)

My personal favorite Scandal of the Week, though, is the IRS targeting “patriot” and “tea party” non-profits with wink, wink, nod, nod no political intent. Sure, that’s also probably too Foxy for the MSM to care about. (Because nobody has yet noticed any group with “Progressive” in its name going under extra IRS scrutiny.)

But you know, it’s been a long, loooong time since we’ve watched the IRS get kicked around. And heaven knows it deserves it, based on its lifelong status as a political tool alone. (Beyond that, we could count the ways …)

So I’m rooting for that one to become the next Whatevergate. How about you?

—–

* I’ve always wanted an excuse to say veritable plethora about something; finally got my chance.

Share or Bookmark

Posted in Government | 13 Comments »

Tsk, tsk. As usual I’m behind in noticing that one of my print articles has gone online. This time it’s “Preparedness Basics” from the current (June 2013) issue of S.W.A.T. magazine.

I’ve been doing a series of preparedness-related articles for them. And they’ve been doing some other excellent preparedness articles covering everything from canning meat to vehicle survival kits. Although cool! guns! cool! gear! smart! tactics! is still their focus, I love they way they’re returning to their survivalist roots.

My current article is a checklist of fundamental preparedness needs. Take the challenge and see how ready you are.

If I’d have known this one was going to go online, I’d have made it more interactive. But what the heck. Check marks. It’s the old-fashioned way.

Share or Bookmark

Posted in Preparedness | 7 Comments »

• Dan Brown’s got a new potboiler coming out. I like Dan Brown. I wish I could boil the pot like he does. Critics disagree. One says so in a familiar voice. :-)
• Almost a neighbor. Glad he’s not quite.
• Yet another judge fails to grasp the Fourth Amendment. (H/T JJ)
• Travis (TJIC) Corcoran’s upcoming novel sounds intriguing. I’d think so even if he didn’t take my name in vain in his trendy self-interview thingie.
• The Escherian stairwell ;-)
• Okay, so we’ve all heard about how the IRS illegally targeted tea party and related groups around the 2012 election. And they are so very, very sorry. And we’ve heard how they were actually targeting them for much longer than they originally admitted. And it’s no big news because the IRS has been a political tool since it was only the irs and hadn’t earned its capital letters yet, so you have to wonder what everyone’s getting so flapped about. What’s really mindboggling is that any reporter or editor could quote this with a straight face: “…the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias.” Wow. Orwell! Thou should’st be living at this hour.
  
  Share or Bookmark
  

  Posted in Books and Movies, Government, Humor, Miscellaneous, Official thuggery, bad prosecutions, and bad law, Privacy and self ownership | 13 Comments »

David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” From a unique perspective. Performed by an actual astronaut in actual outer space.

Source for those who can’t see the embed.

Share or Bookmark

Posted in Books and Movies, Miscellaneous | 5 Comments »

Back in the 1990s, the Clinton administration tried to snuff out PGP using the very same obscure regulation it’s wielding against Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed now.

Yes, PGP was (and IIRC, still is) a “munition.” The regs didn’t change; the fedgov just knew that was a battle it was going to lose so it backed off. Encryption is everywhere and Phil Zimmerman is a free man. But nothing’s new under the sun reeking pall of Mordor.

Now a new generation of regulators — and a new anti-gun president who has vowed to take covert action against firearms if he can’t get his way in the legislature (whimper, whine) — wants to use absurdly complicated ITAR once again to stop the unstoppable.

Question: What’s the outcome going to be in the case of Furiously Frustrated Fedgov vs Cody Wilson?

There are lots of aspects to consider here. Not only what will happen to Wilson and DefCad. Not just what will happen to the banned “blueprints” (we already know that).

But aspects like: Will the feds back off the their King Canute routine? Or will they end up drowning in this rising tide? Will the ATF get into the act? The FBI? Will there be some attempt to control/surveil 3D printers (e.g. force them to keep records for the feddies, as photocopiers do now)? Will the tech community wield its power — or will the big tech voices keep mum because this is “a gun-culture thing”? What kind of laws will be proposed or passed? Will people get that you can’t stop this any more than the Church could stop Gutenberg’s outrageous information diseminator? Will they laugh at the folly of the pols and bureaucrats? Or will the media buffalo them into hysterical fear? Even if they buffalo and legislate their little hearts out for a decade, where do technology, freedom, and the best sort of Bad Attitude take us from here?

Envision a scenario, envision the future …

Share or Bookmark

Posted in Computers, Guns and Gun Rights | 22 Comments »

State Department demands Defense Distributed take down files. From Forbes:

On Thursday, Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson received a letter from the State Department Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance demanding that he take down the online blueprints for the 3D-printable “Liberator” handgun that his group released Monday, along with nine other 3D-printable firearms components hosted on the group’s website Defcad.org. The government says it wants to review the files for compliance with arms export control laws known as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR. By uploading the weapons files to the Internet and allowing them to be downloaded abroad, the letter implies Wilson’s high-tech gun group may have violated those export controls.

Love the way they just order files taken down because of a bunch of “may haves” and “wants to reviews.”

The signal has already been beamed, people. Already been beamed.

http://thepiratebay.sx/torrent/8449468/Liberator_-_First_3D_Printable_Gun

If you have any of the banned files, Mike Vanderboegh would like to have them to … continue enhancing the signal. UPDATE: After just a few hours, Mike got copies of all the banned files — “20 times over.”

Yeah, that signal ain’t gonna be jammed …

UPDATE 2: Several sources that were publicly posting Liberator (and other DefCad gun-related) files have taken them down in the last 24 hours. “Advice of lawyers” and all that. Robb Allen still has The Liberator. I presume Sipsey Street will soon have that and all the other banned files. People more techie than me (e.g. Brad at WendyMcElroy.com) are working to ensure that files being distributed are the unaltered, verifiable real deal.

(Tip o’ hat to JB.)

Share or Bookmark

Posted in Government, Guns and Gun Rights | 26 Comments »