Gyroscopic Investing

moda0306 wrote:

Pointedstick wrote:

moda0306 wrote: What kinds of loss of freedom?  Please elaborate? 

Let's accelerate things a bit. Let's say that here on out, terrorists manage to kill 5,000 people per year for 10 years. Absolutely huge compared to now. Name how that loses me my freedoms.

Well that's easy: politicians will use the attacks as excuses to curtail those freedoms, just like Obama is doing right now by pushing for the unconstitutional, 5th amendment-shredding "no-fly list" to bar gun purchases.

So the real direct threat to my freedoms is (gasp) government and not terrorism?

Amazing, isn't it? Who would have thought?

Other than most of the Founding Fathers and every libertarian, anyway. 

Israel does a couple of things:

- They built a physical wall to separate themselves from the people who don't like them
- They unashamedly profile those who "fit the description"
- There is a pervasive and government-encouraged attitude of "if you see something, say something" (nobody's gonna call you racist if you say you saw a suspicious Arab man)
- Off-duty soldiers are permitted to carry their rifles anywhere (not loaded, but with ammunition on their person, ready to load and fire)
- Police are all over the place and many carry rifles
- In fact, rifle open carry is totally normal and you see rifles everywhere
- Every Israeli citizen has served in the military and therefore has a basic knowledge of tactics, weaponry, first aid, etc.
- There is a strong sense of comprehension and unity on a basic level; Israeli liberals are still liberals but are not unrealistic and utopian about the nature of the threat they face the way American liberals are
- Buildings are heavily hardened and fortifiable; everything is thick masonry with heavy lockable doors and concrete roofs

Contrary to libertarian perception, gun control for civilians is actually fairly strict, though concealed carry exists and there is a widely-supported push to loosen the laws in response to the recent stabbing spree.


Source: been to Israel, have Israeli relatives.

Pointedstick wrote: Contrary to libertarian perception, gun control for civilians is actually fairly strict, though concealed carry exists and there is a widely-supported push to loosen the laws in response to the recent stabbing spree.

I suspect the military conscription and armed-police-to-civilian ratio likely makes their gun control work, at least until recently.

There must have been very valid historical reasons for gun control given the proximity of their location.  My gut feeling is to try and keep it out of the hands of their enemies.

And guess what?  As far as I know, Israeli is still a functioning democracy and not a dystopian police state.  Could we expect the same kind of benevolent outcome here?  I seriously doubt it.  Israeli is to Switzerland what the USA is to Rome.  They're just an outpost not the core.

Fred wrote:

Reub wrote: We either get serious about fighting this scourge now and release the NSA/FBI hounds on these Jihadists including record collection, mosque closings, profiling, refusing entry to those from nations known to harbor terrorists, enlarging Gitmo, waterboarding, bombing the hell out of them over there, propping up and creating strong armed allies, weapons running, etc or we will have to do much more later including martial law and the suspension of our Constitution after the loss of thousands of additional lives, many of them children and women.

That's a very stark choice to have to make. Thanks for having such a clear vision into the future for pointing it out to us.

All you have to do is look at present day France to see where we're going. It really isn't very hard to see.

MachineGhost wrote: I suspect the military conscription and armed-police-to-civilian ratio likely makes their gun control work, at least until recently.

There must have been very valid historical reasons for gun control given the proximity of their location.  My gut feeling is to try and keep it out of the hands of their enemies.

And guess what?  As far as I know, Israeli is still a functioning democracy and not a dystopian police state.  Could we expect the same kind of benevolent outcome here?  I seriously doubt it.  Israeli is to Switzerland what the USA is to Rome.  They're just an outpost not the core.

Exactly. It is a wonderful lesson in how government policies don't translate well across cultures. The underlying Israeli society that largely supports restrictive gun control is one that is both well-trained in the use of firearms and constantly protected by government agents wielding automatic weapons who are drawn from the very same population, and therefore largely admired and viewed as trustworthy. No such thing exists in the USA, not by a long shot.

That said, the gun control laws may well be loosened after the latest round of attacks. Even with armed police and military all over the place, they can't be literally everywhere.

The Long War [with Islam] will last at least 50 to 100 years unless there is a disaster so large the West is compelled to mobilize with ruthless efficiency and destroy the capacity for Islamic Supremacists to function


http://www.breitbart.com/big-government ... new-world/

TennPaGa wrote: This is all about obtaining political power in government and has absolutely nothing to do with actually keeping people safe.

I heard an interview with Ron Johnson(Republican Senator from Wisconsin) this morning.  He was asked about the prospects of a new AUMF (Authorization for the Use of Military Force).  His response was, basically, that Congress did not want to do anything that restricted President Obama's power.

Think about that.

I ain't a neocon and have no desire to get us involved in the middle east.

What do you propose we do given that  we just had an act of terrorism killing people on US soil  and it is likely to continue? 

What would you do if e.g. a nuc went off in a major city?  OK how about bombs in a number of shopping malls?

I can't think of any good ways of dealing with this, but denying a problem exists and focusing of global warming and/or gun control does earn one a DSM diagnosis.

This would have been reported to the authorities before it happened, so the blood of those people is on political correctness. 

This has to do with the power of Islamic terrorists to kill us and destroy our society. Not the power of the govt taking away our rights. How misguided!

On the whole gun thing...in China the T's execute mass knifing attacks and regularly get numbers equal to/around what you see with guns. Obviously not at the scale of Paris but something like San Bernadino for sure.

Benko wrote: I can't think of any good ways of dealing with this, but denying a problem exists and focusing of global warming and/or gun control does earn one a DSM diagnosis.

Or overthrowing Assad which is the same thing ISIS wants.  I can't believe OBAMA!'s Joint Chiefs of Staff are that fucking stupid.  I guess once he's out of office, we'll find out what the truth was: either Newt is right and/or OBAMA! was overruling the Pentagon.  Probably both.

What if Russia hadn't stepped in and started doing a proper job?  Scary thought.  Russia alleges OBAMA! knew about the ISIS oil that Turkey was buying.  Why was no action taken?  ISIS was our "friend" becase they wanted Assad gone too?  OBAMA!'s beyond incompetent.  He's actively dangerous.  He's starting to remind me of Dr. Strangeglove.

I hope we can get out of this quagmire without triggering a formal WWIII but if OBAMA! is fucking stupid enough to come to ISIS and Turkey's aid against Russia as a NATO member, I fear its all but assured.

TennPaGa wrote: That said, I am still opposed to the idea of giving Barack Obama (or any U.S. president) more power, and am flabbergasted that Republicans wish to do so.  I am similarly flummoxed by Congress's lack of desire to use the power they have (like the power to declare war).

Flabbergasted?  Seriously?  Where have you been?  Republicans have had an active ideology for decades when it comes to using the power of the state for unilateral interventionism.  You think they would let OBAMA! being a Democrat stop them from furthering their NeoCon aims?  That's just game show fluff for the rank and file.

TennPaGa wrote: Are there any candidates for president besides Trump and Paul who have pointed out the folly of U.S. involvement in Syria?

Carpetbagger Canadian Cruz is non-interventionist.  He may be the next establishment non-establishment favorite if Rubio doesn't stop faltering, but honestly, he's too right-wing socially to ever get elected.

Who the hell knows what Trump is, really?  He's so hyperbolic about everything.  Do we believe his platforms or believe what comes out of his mouth?  I really don't care at this point becuase either Trump will get the nomination via a Black Swan or a RINO like Rubio or Bush will.  The Tea Party that is against RINOs isn't that big or influential enough other than silly government shutdowns.  Not much any of us can do about it unless we're electors or know any.

If a 25-year non-hyberbolic right wingster woman can start winning in France, why the hell can't Rand Paul?    There must be something about his attitude and charisma that just turns off voters to his common sense.  Maybe if he actually had concrete platform proposals instead of wishy washy "I advocate" or "I propose" he'd be taken more seriously.  It seems like common sense and media savvy Bullshit are diametrically opposed to each other.

http://news.yahoo.com/video/rand-paul-r ... 07057.html

Rand Paul reacts to President Obama's speech. He makes a lot of sense without being hyperbolic; a very nuanced and thoughtful response IMHO.

[quote=http://www.breitbart.com/big-government ... errorists/]Stephanopoulos broached the subject of gun control, saying:

    As you know, some of your Republican rivals have also criticized you for focusing on gun control after the San Bernardino attacks. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) points out that France has some of the strictest gun control in the world.

    That didn’t stop the Paris attacks. California has some of the strictest gun control laws here. It didn’t stop those attacks, either. So what law would have stopped this?

Clinton responded:[/quote]

The Challenge of Lone Wolf Terrorism:  http://www.theamericanconservative.com/ ... terrorism/
-- Philip Jenkins in The American Conservative
"If the biggest threat is leaderless resistance, it seems unlikely that military escalation in another part of the world would help make the U.S. safe."
Thanks TennPaGa, this is really an insightful article and comment.

Who says that bombing the hell out of ISIS over there won't help to stop lone wolf terrorists over here? That's utter nonsense...like most left wing and libertarian views on fighting radical Islamic terrorism.

Even the people in France are coming to their senses in electing Marine Le Pen, a French nationalist with a great name.  Of course it's probably already too late for France to save themselves from this Jihadist/Sharia scourge but at least they're recognizing the problem and trying to save themselves from these animals.

We had better do it too and fast because it's going to get worse every day. There are almost certainly radical Jihadists out every day preparing to kill our kids in their schools, massacre those in church, blow up football stadiums, bridges and tunnels. Poison our water and food supply. I guarantee you that they are doing this even as I type this. Let's get serious and stop hand wringing over the alleged loss of freedoms. How much of their freedoms were lost by those 14 innocents killed in San Bernadino? Now those are tangible losses!

Oh great...  this is how more terrorists are made!

https://news.yahoo.com/muslim-sixth-gra ... 00570.html

With asshole rhetoric from Trump that tolerates the above behavior, we are doomed.  Doomed.

MachineGhost wrote: Oh great...  this is how more terrorists are made!

https://news.yahoo.com/muslim-sixth-gra ... 00570.html

With asshole rhetoric from Trump that tolerates the above behavior, we are doomed.  Doomed.

Sounds like kind of a stretch to blame the incident on Trump.

I remember when I went to school there were two twin sisters with swelled heads from water on the brain or something like that and they got picked on unmercifully. Also, a girl with one arm who was from a very poor family and dressed shabbily. If you touched her, you had "cooties". It's hard to imagine what would have happened to girls dressed in the Muslim hijab.

If you're referring to Trump calling for a moratorium on immigration from Muslim countries, I've only seen the headlines highlighting what he said but if that's what he's calling for I tend to agree. I read on the Unz Review in an article today, I think it was by Steve Sailer, that since 9/11 immigration from Muslim countries has doubled. Why is that and how does it make any sense? We barred known communists from entering the U.S. during the cold war and I think we probably still do because they advocate an ideology that is against our way of life. So how can you not say the say the same thing about Muslims, especially the kind who enter the county wearing the hijab like the San Bernando killer did?

And what's really weird is seeing progressives like Obama and Hillary being all in favor it. Do they think these kinds of immigrants are going to be in favor of women's rights, gay marriage, etcetera?

Fred wrote: And what's really weird is seeing progressives like Obama and Hillary being all in favor it. Do they think these kinds of immigrants are going to be in favor of women's rights, gay marriage, etcetera?

This more than anything is what boggles my mind. Assuming 0% of Muslim immigrants are terrorists or terrorist sympathizers, by and large they still have a substantially more traditional, conservative, and religious way of life than even most far-right Americans do. It makes no sense whatsoever to me.

It's not about any of those issues and never was. It's about creating voter blocks that you can count on. Soon they will have a new one.

"Marine Le Pen states with absolute clarity that this is by no means a war against terrorism — it is a war against the ideology of Islamic Fundamentalism. Refusing to state that truth where “terrorism” is merely a weapon, one cannot wage war or ever defeat such a weapon because there is no acknowledgement of what we are really facing."

Martin Armstrong

TennPaGa wrote:

Benko wrote:

TennPaGa wrote: This is all about obtaining political power in government and has absolutely nothing to do with actually keeping people safe.

I heard an interview with Ron Johnson(Republican Senator from Wisconsin) this morning.  He was asked about the prospects of a new AUMF (Authorization for the Use of Military Force).  His response was, basically, that Congress did not want to do anything that restricted President Obama's power.

Think about that.

I ain't a neocon and have no desire to get us involved in the middle east.

What do you propose we do given that  we just had an act of terrorism killing people on US soil  and it is likely to continue? 

What would you do if e.g. a nuc went off in a major city?  OK how about bombs in a number of shopping malls?

I can't think of any good ways of dealing with this, but denying a problem exists and focusing of global warming and/or gun control does earn one a DSM diagnosis.

Why do you accuse me of denying that a problem exists?  I don't understand.

I wasn't accusing you of it.  My apologies.  I was more of just venting given how insane all of this is.  Yes I should know better by now.

No I certainly don't want O to have any more power. 

TennPaGa wrote:

Benko wrote: This would have been reported to the authorities before it happened, so the blood of those people is on political correctness.

You mentioned this upthread too:

Benko wrote: "A man who has been working in the area said he noticed a half-dozen Middle Eastern men in the area in recent weeks, but decided not to report anything since he did not wish to racially profile those people."

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/12/ ... ed-farook/

Not knowing anything beyond what was in the link you posted, I disagree with your assertion that the shooting's occurrence can be blamed on political correctness.

A few things:

1. If indeed there was a person who suspected that Farook and his wife were planning something violent, and did not report it on account of some nebulous fear of being labeled as politically incorrect, then I would say that person who failed to report is the accountable one.

Disagree.  In the country we live in, expressing wrong beliefs can get you punished (or audited)

Fox news suspended for 2 weeks Lt. Col. Ralph Peters who called O live on air a “p***y”, and Stacy Dash was suspended from fox news for 2 weeks for saying that O didn't care about terrorism.  I though you had recently posted a link regarding the insanity going on on callege campuses i.e. I thought you had finally gotten this point.  In any case  I don't think you fully realize what is going on in society.  The day after muslims kill a bunch of people the attourney general says:

"Attorney General Loretta Lynch pledged to a group of Muslim activists that she would take aggressive action against anyone who used “anti-Muslim rhetoric” that “edges toward violence.”"

Inciting violence against anyone is not something generally I'd condone, but if Muslims kill a bunch of people and the attorney general says that, the better part of valor is to keep your mouth shut.. 

Reub wrote: It's not about any of those issues and never was. It's about creating voter blocks that you can count on. Soon they will have a new one.

Why would Muslim immigrants vote Democrat when they're even more conservative than Santorum?