No Tin Foil Hat Shortage

Let’s debunk some idiocy. Did you know that the Department of Homeland Security bought up all the ammunition in this here country? Yep. Obama is using DHS to create a de facto gun control by buying up all the bullets so we reel ’merkicans can’t defend ourselves when DHS comes roundin’ us up. Yessir. Or not.

Right now, it’s very popular among paranoid idiots certain people, to talk about this amazing bullet conspiracy. They went down to the Gun & Smoke and found no ammo on the shelves. So they asked the clerk where all the ammo had gone. Said clerk responded that DHS bought all the ammo so there would be a shortage of ammo... something something... and we all end up in camps!

Mark “tinfoil hat” Levin added this:

“I’ll tell you what I think they’re simulating: the collapse of our financial system, the collapse of our society and the potential for widespread violence, looting, killing in the streets, because that’s what happens when an economy collapses. I suspect that just in case our fiscal situation, our monetary situation, collapses, and following it the civil society collapses, that is the rule of law, they want to be prepared. I know why the government’s arming up: It’s not because there’s going to be an insurrection; it’s because our society is unraveling.”

Get back on your meds Mark.

Anyway, this conspiracy theory is quite popular at the moment because IQs have dropped in recent years. It’s so popular that Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan) even asked DHS why they were buying up all the ammo. Do you know what DHS told him? Nuthing! They refused to answer! At least, that’s what Huelskamp told CPAC, “They have no answer for that question. They refuse to answer to answer that.” Problem is, that’s a lie. Not only did DHS respond to his letter, but they previously responded to an identical request from Sen. Tom Coburn.

Drudge then ran with this, using the following three headlines: “Homeland Denies Massive Ammunition Purchase,” “Won’t Answer Congress” and “Cover-up?”. These headlines are entirely misleading. DHS did not deny the purchase and they did answer Congress. In fact, if you read the links behind the headlines you will see that quite clearly. Be careful what you trust from Drudge.

So what is the truth? Let’s explain the ammo purchase.

First, the contracts in question are DHS contracts for the purchase of “up to” 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition over five years. That’s about 320 million rounds a year. That may sound like a lot, but consider this. DHS has more than 100,000 law enforcement personnel including border security (ICE). They use bullets in their jobs. They use bullets for training. They use bullets for quarterly qualifications. The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia, for example, uses 15 million rounds a year in training exercises, and that’s just one center. Last year, DHS used 148 million rounds. Over five years that would be 740 million rounds and that’s without them operating a single concentration camp for Glenn Beck listeners. Even the NRA has said this purchase is not excessive or unusual.

Moreover, when something like ammo is purchased, agencies often purchase for multiple agencies under the same contract. This creates economies of scale and lets smaller agencies piggyback on the expertise of larger agencies. You have no idea, for example, how much stuff the Army buys for agencies you would never imagine.

Further, what you need to understand is that a contract for “up to” 1.6 billion rounds is NOT a contract for 1.6 billion rounds. Government contracts don’t work that way. Requirements contracts typically dramatically overstate the actual purchase to be made because government procurement is a cumbersome process. For example, new contracts can be protested and delayed, whereas task orders under an existing contract can’t. Also, getting money for new work is difficult, especially across fiscal years, whereas using money already on a contract is easy. So it is simply easier to issue a massive, multi-year contract that covers every possible need plus a huge fudge factor and then issue task orders under that contract as needed, than it is to issue a new contract whenever a need arises. I can’t tell you the number of contracts I’ve seen that never reached even a tenth of their face value. The truth is, DHS will buy what they always buy and the rest of the contract will expire and it won’t be close to 1.6 billion.

Here’s the thing. This is all publicly available information which people like Levin and Huelskamp could have looked up if they cared about the truth. . . but they don’t. They would rather mix ignorance with paranoia and spin this crap to get your attention. And let me add that this fantasy has been going on for some time. In 2008, right after Obama got elected, these same people screamed about the army being retrained at Fort Polk, Louisiana to go house to house to confiscate guns. That didn’t happen. Then in 2009, they discovered the shortage of ammo for the first time and they attributed it to new regulations by the EPA intended to prevent the manufacture of bullets. Only, that didn’t happen either. Now it’s the great bullet purchase mystery.

This is nonsense. According to the NRA, there are between 10 and 12 billion rounds of ammunition produced in the US each year with “billions more imported.” Now do the math. That means there will be more than 50-60 billion rounds produced in the US over five years. In that same period, the feds will buy up a maximum of 1.6 billion rounds, or 2.5% of all domestically produced rounds. Is it remotely possible that the feds buying 2.5% of the domestically produced ammo will cause an ammo shortage in the country? Hardly. The shortage, if there is such a thing, is because people are panic buying because people like Levin are telling them there is a shortage.

By the way, Levin claims this 1.6 billion round purchase represents 24 times the number of bullets used in Iraq. Here’s his quote:

“To provide some perspective, experts estimate that at the peak of the Iraq war American troops were firing around 5.5 million rounds per month. At that rate, the Department of Homeland Security is armed now for a 24-year Iraq war. A 24-year Iraq war.”

This is being repeated in article after article now, but it’s total crap. According to the GAO in 2005, US troops were firing 1.8 billion rounds of small-arms ammunition per year in Afghanistan and Iraq (about 28 times what Levin claims), so the 1.6 billion round purchase wouldn’t even cover a full year... much less 24 years. Again, this information was out there if Levin wanted to check it.

Don’t believe this garbage. And more importantly, don’t trust people who push this garbage.

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What Passes For "Conservative" At HuffPo

Leftists are interesting creatures. They are immune to reality. Logic and truth are foreign concepts to them. They are seething with hate. They love to put their ignorance on display. And sometimes, they pretend to be conservatives. Take, for example, Eric Margolis, who rants at Huffpo on occasion. Eric claims to be moderately conservative, defining himself as an “Eisenhower Republican.” You can tell me in the comments if you buy into that laugher.

To properly get a sense of who Eric is, let’s look at two pieces that he ran over at Huffpo about Afghanistan and Iraq. But first, some background: Eric is a fool with no understanding of history, no grasp on reality and an indifference to facts. He believes that “America has become addicted to debt and war,” and he seems to despise the American military, which he describes derisively as “professional soldiers” (in the Roman context) and “mercenaries.” He also thinks that using modern weapons in a place like Afghanistan is “cowardly”:

“In my view, as an old soldier and war correspondent, using heavy bombers to attack tribal levies or employing gunships and drones against tribal compounds is cowardly.”

Note the assertion that “America’s professional soldiers” are waging a war against civilians.

You may also note that Eric mentions that he is a former solider. In fact, he reminds us of this over and over because he thinks this means something. Perhaps he’s forgetting that Lee Harvey Oswald, Hitler and Alan Alda also were soldiers, and they were all less paranoid than Eric.

And speaking of soldiers, Eric has no love for “fire-breathing Gen. Stanley McChrystal” or our “Special Forces ‘mafia’.” He also hates Fox News, Republicans and the American people, as he was just sure that those morons would make McChrystal into a hero, and thereby the Republicans would “again sadly demonstrate they have become the party of America's dim and ignorant.” He also hates the Tea Party because it appeals to the “fears and prejudices” of its followers, and he rejects the Republican Party because it is influenced by the evil Tea Party.

Oh, and speaking of evil, in a 2009 essay titled “Don’t Blame Hitler Alone for World War II,” Eric claims that it was wrong to give Hitler full blame for World War II, because this was a “preventive war” forced on Hitler by the Soviets.

Ok, so that’s conservative Eric. Now let’s take a quick look at what he just wrote about Iraq and Afghanistan. Here are some highlights.

The Taliban are resisting “western occupation” of Afghanistan. . . forget that the Taliban were there long before the West arrived.

And why would we occupy Afghanistan you ask? Well, first he rants something about the US wanting to control the biggest exporter of heroin. But then he changes his mind mid-rant to alert us that the US wants Afghanistan to control its “oil”. . . which doesn’t exist.

But his real hatred is aimed at our being in Iraq. See if you can follow this:

He starts by saying that we only went into Iraq because the “Seven Sisters” have been squeezed out of their oil fields in places like Iran, and they needed Iraq’s oil wealth to get back into the game. The “Seven Sisters,” by the way, was the name given to the big seven American oil firms in the 1950s. Only four still exist and only two remain American.

But then he suddenly realizes that people might not buy the idea that we need Iraq’s oil because. . . well, we don’t. So he says that the real reason we wanted their oil fields was to gain influence over people like Japan who need the oil. Apparently, occupying Japan doesn’t give us enough influence. His proof? Well, “as the old saying goes, America’s trinity is ‘God, guns and gasoline.’” Wow, now that’s definitive!

Then he gets a little crazy. . . er:

1. He notes that “American ‘liberation’ left Iraq politically, economically and socially shattered, ‘killed’ in the words of former foreign minister, Tariq Aziz.” To back this up, he claims that “reputable studies estimate Iraq’s death toll at mid-hundreds of thousands to one million, not counting claims by UN observers that 500,000 Iraqi children died of disease as a result of the US-led embargo before 2003.” Of course, there are no reputable studies that say this, there are only a couple of far left guesses. Even the AP only puts the death toll at 100,000.

2. He goes on: “four million Sunni Iraqis remain refugees.” FYI, that’s more Sunnis than exist.

3. He says the “surge” only worked because Iran ordered the Shia Mahdi Army militia “to temporarily end resistance” and because of “deft bribery” by the Americans who spent “untold millions bribing Sunni fighters.”

4. Then he takes a quick side trip to warn us that Washington is building new “fortified embassies” in Kabul, Islamabad and Baghdad? These “may hold 1,000 ‘diplomats.’ Osama bin Laden calls them, ‘Crusader Fortresses.’” You see people. . . it’s all there in black and white!

5. And what about the “50,000 US troops left until 2011 . . . to ‘advise and assist”? Well, “to this old war correspondent and military historian, that sounds an awful lot like the British Empires employment of native troops under white officers.” Military historian? Yeah, sure.

6. Of course, he couldn’t leave the Jews out of this because no paranoid rant is complete without a little anti-Semitism. So, did you know that “Large numbers of Iraqis doctors and scientists have been murdered”? And guess who did it? Well, Eric doesn’t want to say definitively because there’s no “hard evidence,” but he lets us know that a lot of people are saying they were killed “by Israel’s Mossad.”

That’s probably enough for you to get the point. Eric is an anti-Semitic, anti-American nutjob with paranoid delusions of American schemes to conquer the world. He fits right in at Huffpo. And he is anything but a “conservative.”

I guess it’s become the vogue thing for leftists to masquerade as “conservatives.”


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Conservatives: Beware The Crazies

I want to take a moment to discuss a danger to the conservative cause: the integration of the insane into the conservative community. During times of great economic and political upheaval, like the present, people will crawl out of the woodwork to take advantage of your heightened emotional state. They play to your fears. They spout false facts and use false logic. They make emotional appeals and demonize all who disagree. They are cultists without the god, and too many normal conservatives are being pulled in. This is a real danger to conservatism.

Yesterday, as I visited one of the websites that I often visit (I won’t name the site), I came across an article in which the author promoted a particular book. Despite recommending that people read this book, the web-author failed to mention that the book spins a vast, ignorant, misleading, paranoid and oft-discredited conspiracy. Indeed, the book is almost a model for how such false conspiracy theories are cobbled together:

1. Begin with an author who does not understand the subject matter about which they are writing, but is willing to claim unique, almost-clairvoyant insight;

2. Mix in cherry-picked data by including only facts that can be spun to further the theory and ignoring all contrary data or evidence;

3. String the data together in suggestive ways and allege that this is evidence of a vast conspiracy that threatens everything we hold dear -- or prevents us from achieving some better state of humanity;

4. Toss in a little false logic, usually centered around the "absence of disproof";

5. Allege a cover-up to explain the lack of data and the sketchiness of the theory -- though the author must simultaneously assure us that they have broken through the otherwise perfect cover-up; and

6. Demonize all potential critics of the theory and any expert who might provide a counter fact.

These are the same principles and mechanisms upon which the 911 truthers, the moon landing conspiracy theorists, and the great international Zionist conspiracy theorists build their mal-theories. They allege vast conspiracies based on irrelevant data and suggestions that the lack of disproof proves the theory -- a ridiculous bit of illogic that you could use to prove the existence of unicorns, leprechauns, or anything else. And when people try to challenge their "facts" or present "disproof", they accuse those people of being part of the conspiracy. Essentially, it's a self-proving delusion.

After reading the article, I pointed out that the web-author should not promote such a book, certainly not without warning about the nature of the book and the lack of credibility of the author -- a John Birch society member who has been vacillating between seeing the Supreme Court, the banks, the Federal Reserve, and a half dozen other institutions as either a communist or capitalist plot, and who claims that the AMA, the FDA and the American Cancer Society are “withholding the truth,” that vitamins cure cancer, because they have economic motives to keep you from curing your cancer.

The web-author responded that he had mentioned in some prior post that he does not condone the conspiratorial aspects of the book, but that he thought it would be a good primer for average people to get an understanding of monetary policy. But this is wrong. This is like recommending Chariots of the Gods, a book about aliens building the Great Pyramids, because the author presents a good primer on Egyptian construction methods. It’s like sending someone to Karl Marx’s Das Kapital because Marx does a good job of explaining the division between capital and labor. It is inappropriate to send people to advocacy books, particularly nutty ones, under the guise that the book provides a good basis for them to learn about an issue, especially without warning them about the degree to which they are being misled.

So why does this bother me? Because the adherents to these fantasy theories are learning to peddle their garbage to unsuspecting conservatives as just another reason for opposing Obama. They are trying to smuggle their agenda into the conservative movement disguised as legitimate concerns. And unfortunately, I am seeing more and more of it creep into the conservative community at large.

For example, every day I receive unsolicited faxes from a group that wants to scare me into opposing Obama. As you know, I do not support Obama. To the contrary, I oppose everything he's proposed. Yet, I am offended by these faxes. Their tone is hyperbolic and they are cholk-full of lies: ObamaCare makes private health insurance illegal and includes forced euthanasia, people older then fifty will be denied surgeries, ObamaCare social workers can seize your children and raise them, Obama is training a group to go house to house seizing guns, the FDA is making it illegal to grow your own food, and Obama has cut a secret deal to give Jerusalem to the Muslims. All lies. In fact, these are the same lies, slightly rephrased, that the wing nuts on the left used to scare their voters about Bush: Dick Cheney is hiding under your bed. But if you only give this patriotic, anonymous group twenty dollars, they can save you!

Now, on their own, these faxes mean nothing. I throw them away. But then I visit websites full of normal conservatives and I see these allegations repeated. That's right, these same insane theories are starting to appear on conservative websites, often promoted by normally intelligent conservatives who know better (or should know better).

This is highly destructive of our movement. Not only is it destructive of the intellectual core of our movement, because it replaces rational thought with illogic, it replaces fact with fiction, and it replaces reason with emotion and demonization, but it also distracts people from the real issues, and it scares off the people who might want to join us. Nobody wants to walk into a room full of terrified, angry people huddle in the corner shouting about burning a wizard.

It is time to stop listening to these flakes, and to tell them to go back to crazyland without us.

Further, conservatives need to repudiate the “idiot movement” that seems to be taking hold. For the same reasons that conspiracy theories are taking root, there seems to be a new strain of thinking that education is bad (often promoted by the same people who espouse the conspiracies). At website after website, I’m seeing more and more rants about “them educated” people and “them college types.” At one site, I saw the ridiculous rant: “we should make it so that you can’t serve in Congress if you went to college.” Yet, far from repudiating this fool, many of the normally reasonable conservatives at the site agreed.

Do you really think being uneducated is a good idea? Who do you think built the car your drive? Who designed the road or the bridge you crossed, the computer you’re using to read this, and the systems that bring you your food every day? Did a high school drop out invent your cell phone? What about that vaccine that kept you alive? Do you look for the stupidest doctor you can find? How about a dumb lawyer? Do you want your kids to have stupid teachers or are you taking them out of education because it's a waste of time?

And let me ask this, does anyone believe that the Founding Fathers were uneducated or that they would support a movement that views the educated with suspicion? Do not confuse those who misuse their education with education itself. To attack education is to attack everything that made this country what it is today.

Education is the pathway to the future. It always has been. It is about opportunity. Education is the key to your success. These days, having only a high school degree is the surest indicator of poverty. And it’s only going to get worse as the world becomes more advanced. If you don’t get an education, in fifty years, you’ll be doing the jobs illegal aliens won’t do.

Moreover, conservatism is an intellectual philosophy. It takes brains to be a conservative -- it takes only emotion to be a liberal. Conservatism, unlike liberalism, understands cause and effect and the fact that people react and adjust. It is often a difficult philosophy because you need to understand the future, you need to see how the world will change when people respond to your policy. It is about thinking ahead. Liberalism is about being swayed by emotion, about hero worship and trusting that a great leader, who knows more than you, will figure it out. This anti-intellectualism that is spreading in conservative ranks runs the danger of destroying conservatism and replacing it with a form of anti-liberal liberalism, and that’s not a governing philosophy, that's a cult of personality.

We need to stop being enticed by false, emotional appeals and crazy conspiracy theories, and start thinking reasonably: question authority, don’t join a cult.

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