Category Archives: Individual Rights

UPDATE II: Who Made ‘Jim Carrey Talking Ass’ So Mighty? You! (Carrey & The ‘Idiocracy’)

Celebrity, GUNS, Hollywood, Individual Rights, The Zeitgeist

“Jim Carrey is a talking ass,” sings a bloke on Reason TV, below. Very funny. True too. But let’s get serious. Carrey is a bad actor in more than one way. His venomous contempt for my right to defend myself aside; Carry is without talent. His slapstick schtick is pathetic, repulsive. So tell me this: Who made him the celebrity he is, and who’ll continue to patronize his rotten films? YOU! And you won’t change a bit, despite the man’s manifest contempt for your right to life*, will you?

*Inherent in the right to life is the right of self defense, as a right that cannot be defended is a right in name only.

Lyrics:

It takes a talking ass
to oppose a vaccination
when your Ph.D. is in
making funny faces

It takes a talking ass
to tell people they can’t arm when
you don’t walk around
without an armed bodyguard

It takes a talking ass
to call fans dumb and demented
when you are the one
who wants something uninvented

It takes a talking ass
to be out there passing blame
when you’ve shot someone
on every TV ever made

Lyrics:

Sometimes dudes’ minds are skewed
and they choose to go a-killin’
’cause they saw a Batman villain
killing, well … ring a bell?

Sometimes stars get armed guards
when they make a million buck-ers
then call you heartless motherfuckers
to want the same … is it the fame?

Polio and smallpox they no longer kill en masse
because of vaccinations they are a thing of the past
but you tell parents to skip them and the science you contrast
because just like in your movies … you’re talking our your ass

UPDATED I: “Idiocracy” pegged the Jim-Carrey humor brilliantly in the segment, “Ow my B-lls!”

UPDATE II (3/29): Chime in on Facebook. From the thread:

I’m proud to say I have never watched anything by Carrey the cretin. I know his “worth” from flicking through channels. I might have paused b/c of a Kim Basinger scene (she is utterly gorgeous). Did she do one with him? Maybe not.

UPDATED: The Balanced Budget Deception (‘Debt? What’s That,’ Says The Ass With Ears)

Conservatism, Constitution, Debt, Economy, Federalism, Founding Fathers, Individual Rights, libertarianism, Republicans, Rights, Taxation

At least those who tout the Republican budgetary version of a decrease in the increase in spending are no longer claiming to downsize the government.

So proud was Sean Hannity of Paul Ryan’s latest budget iteration that he boasted that, while it increases spending by trillions, it still manages to shave off $4.64 trillion in increases.

According to the Washington Examiner, the current spending trajectory will see “federal government outlays … rise from $3.61 trillion this year to $5.77 trillion in 2023, for a cumulative 10-year total of $46.1 trillion in federal spending.”

“Under Ryan’s new budget, federal spending would reach just $4.95 trillion in 2023, for a 10-year total of $41.46 trillion. That’s $4.64 trillion in deficit savings, which is a good start,” conclude the Examiner editors.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has dusted off last year’s budget, tweaked it a bit and resubmitted it to Republican applause.

Lauding so-called “balanced budget” initiatives is laughable. The real problem is that the quest to “balance federal spending and taxes” is meaningless. It does nothing to stop the federal government from raising taxes as it increases spending and grows in scope and size, ad infinitum.

Ultimately, “A balanced-budget requirement implies is that government has the constitutional right to spend as much as it takes in; that government is permitted to waste however much revenue it can extract from wealth producers, and that the bums must merely bring into balance what was stolen (taxes) with what is squandered (spending).”

“The Powers Delegated to the Federal Government are Few and Defined.” A return to the 18 or so functions the Constitution delegates to the federal government would be a much better start. This requires that entire departments be shuttered.

UPDATE: Scrap everything I’ve just said (NOT). This just in from the president: “There is no debt crisis.”

Without reading what TAWE (“The Ass With Ears”) has said, you know that, to dismiss a $16.5 trillion debt, you have to think that macroeconomics and microeconomic are two separate solitudes, governed by different laws.

To say such a stupid thing as TAWE has said, “You have to to believe that the values and virtues ordinary mortals hold themselves to don’t apply to government; that the laws of economics are NOT natural, but political, laws.”

“We don’t have an immediate crisis in terms of debt,” President Obama told ABC News correspondent George Stephanopoulos this week.

In uttering such a fatuity, BHO showed that he has no regard for or knowledge of what Thomas Jefferson was warning about, when he said:

“The greatest danger came from the possibility of legislators plunging citizens into debt. We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.”

David Mamet Packs Heat, Sheds Light

Affirmative Action, Conservatism, Constitution, Government, GUNS, Hollywood, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Race, Republicans, The State

In “Gun Laws and the Fools of Chelm,*” the talented Hollywood playwright, author, director, and producer David Mamet motivates for his individual right to defend life, liberty and property.

As a conventional conservative or Republican, Mamet’s positions are often pat, lacking philosophical depth. For example: He fingers The Bureaucracy as ineffectual because lacking in compassion and common sense. However, like most members of the right-leaning establishment, Mamet is incapable of explaining the underlying dynamic or structure that accounts for the inversion of economic incentives in the bureaucracy, irrespective of the good intentions and good character of the bureaucrats.

Mamet also mouths the conventional conservative talking points about affirmative action: that it is based in the mistaken premise that “black people have fewer abilities than white people,” a notion Mamert calls “monstrous.”

The “I love blacks, so I want to make them compete on an equal footing” mantra is as prevalent a platitude among conservatives as it is stupid. Affirmative action is based on the immutable fact of blacks’ lower aggregate scores in academia and in other fields. The “monstrous” part of it is that quotas treat all individual blacks as part of an underachieving, oppressed cohort. As does it lump all whites—the poor, the underprivileged and the victimized too—in a group that needs to suffer for the sake of black upliftment.

Also lackluster or absent is Mamet’s defense of a natural right that predates the constitutional right to bear arms. But Mamet should be appreciated for writing very well, and for being a lone voice for reason and rights in Hollywood, writing that,

…there are more than 2 million instances a year of the armed citizen deterring or stopping armed criminals; a number four times that of all crimes involving firearms.
The Left loves a phantom statistic that a firearm in the hands of a citizen is X times more likely to cause accidental damage than to be used in the prevention of crime, but what is there about criminals that ensures that their gun use is accident-free? If, indeed, a firearm were more dangerous to its possessors than to potential aggressors, would it not make sense for the government to arm all criminals, and let them accidentally shoot themselves? Is this absurd? Yes, and yet the government, of course, is arming criminals.
Violence by firearms is most prevalent in big cities with the strictest gun laws. In Chicago and Washington, D.C., for example, it is only the criminals who have guns, the law-abiding populace having been disarmed, and so crime runs riot.
Cities of similar size in Texas, Florida, Arizona, and elsewhere, which leave the citizen the right to keep and bear arms, guaranteed in the Constitution, typically are much safer. More legal guns equal less crime. What criminal would be foolish enough to rob a gun store? But the government alleges that the citizen does not need this or that gun, number of guns, or amount of ammunition.

[SNIP]

* Chelm: From Mamet’s reference to Chelm, I concluded that he is probably Jewish (and well-educated, of course, which he is).

Uncle Sam: ‘The Greatest Purveyor Of Violence In The World’

America, BAB's A List, Family, Government, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, Military, Pop-Culture, Race, Terrorism, War

BAB contributor MYRON PAULI agrees with MLK, who said: “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today–my own government.”

‘The Greatest Purveyor Of Violence In The World’
By Myron Pauli

“The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government” is the revered Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior saw America. Well, we are now a country where millions go to the movies to applaud “terrorists” being tortured by the CIA which, apparently, enabled us to lynch Osama bin Laden (the “terrorists” do not deserve to be put on trial since our government tells us they are “guilty” and it is none of our business to ever question the government but just to shut up and applaud). We have a secret and unaccountable organization, the CIA (instead of our own military which has more accountability) conducting secret undeclared wars all over the planet. Some people objected when Nixon did this in Cambodia – rather that Nixon be hailed as a Prophet of what was to come. Gadhafi comes clean on his nuclear program so WE OVERTHROW HIM and scatter his forces into Mali where …. – “Good Golly Miss Molly” – now the “terrorists” are destabilizing Mali – send in the French and troops and airplanes and drones. Like a proverbial tube of toothpaste, it will probably spread to Niger or Mauritania or who-knows… – remember when Cambodia was a quiet neutral ignored country until the US and the Vietnamese Communists decided to use it as a battleground and 2,000,000 Cambodians later died?! Collateral damage!

Meanwhile, the Washington Post of January 11 told of how foreign governments and our own are cracking down on parents who want to adopt orphans from overseas. Yes, ostensibly there are rules to prevent foreign kidnappings – but 2 hours of investigation by a reputable orphanage should be sufficient. A couple spent $45,000 over 5 years and came up with no child! The Homeland Security Department made them submit their fingerprints twice because the first set of fingerprints “expired”! And the foreign governments use the children rotting in their orphanages as fodder for their own corrupt political aims. Any cretin can give birth, and any other cretin can have an abortion, but G-d help us from those evil people trying to adopt babies. They are now on the lookout for single parents, the obese, elderly, divorced parents, gays, or whatever. Imagine a kid being adopted by a single old fat divorced lesbian – call out the drones. Perhaps we should be thankful for abortion since it prevents these kids from being adopted?!

Nowadays, 55% of black American developing children get aborted, and 70% of the rest are born out of wedlock. Whites are lagging behind but gradually catching up. Naturally, we will be subjected to the 40th Anniversary “discussion” of that random exercise of Harry Blackmun’s stream-of-consciousness, “Roe v. Wade,” in spite of its irrelevance. Even if Utah could outlaw abortion, a woman could hop on the Greyhound bus to Nevada to dispose of her developing child. Additionally, it is highly dubious that a jury of 12 in any jurisdiction would ever convict when 65% view abortion as less morally objectionable than burping at the dinner table. Heck – just announce that the fetus is part of “Al Qaeda” and the audience will cheer! Kill, kill, kill!

But perhaps the aborted babies are not missing much. Any child born in America comes into the world owing $50,000 of national debt and about ten times that in promised obligations to current Americans. Government grows in secrecy while Americans are regularly spied upon. Prosecutors threaten a jerk like Aaron Schwartz with 180 years in jail for computer “crimes”, e-mails are read, due process of law is disposed of entirely, laws are passed without being read and subject to arbitrary “interpretations” by the executive. We can celebrate Martin Luther King day because instead of Lyndon Johnson conducting idiotic wars in far-flung places, we now have a half-African origin President conducting new idiotic wars in far-flung places. We can celebrate because thanks to technological advances, we can conduct new idiotic wars with less American casualties.

America has advanced to the point that a dark skinned American can now be “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” and even do it “on the cheap” – out of view from the public which focuses more on the phony girlfriend of some Notre Dame football player than our trillion-dollar war budget and the dozen or so ongoing perpetual wars.

******
Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.