Tag Archives: politics

Voice Mimicry

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Amazon is bragging about a new capability it’s developed for its Alexa service. It’s bad enough that Amazon can eavesdrop on private, often highly personal, conversations through its Alexa device.

Now the device can mimic voices—including those of deceased persons—and Amazon says, with a straight face, that this is so cool.

On the other hand, so much for voice recognition as part of a two- (or more) factor authentication regime.

And, here’s another forger’s tool brought to market.

I suppose this might be an improvement in certain circles….

A Grievous Error

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The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board had one in its piece last Wednesday. In that opinion, the Editors touted the gun control “compromise” then-soon to be passed by the Senate (and actually passed the next evening). One of the things of which the Board is so enamored is this mandate:

The state laws must contain due-process protections—including the right to an in-person hearing, to know the evidence used to justify a red-flag order, and to have counsel present.

Noting Orwellian here.

It isn’t possible for red flag laws to have due-process protections. The accused’s weapons are confiscated solely on the accusation of another, and the accused must then prove his own fitness in order to get them back—a process that takes weeks, at best. On his success, it then takes additional weeks to months actually to get his weapons returned. So much for the government’s requirement to prove the charge.

That’s the destruction of the accused’s due-process, not the protection of them.

Red flag laws also are destructive of due-process protections for related persons. If another, unaccused, is in the same household and legally owns weapons, those are seized too, all in the name of denying the accused any access at all. That ancillary person then must then go into court and defend her possession, taking weeks to do so, and taking additional weeks to months actually to get them back. So much for the government’s requirement to prove the unrelated person’s unfitness to have her weapons.

That’s the destruction of the related person’s due-process.

No, He’s Not

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Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm—who thinks it’s laugh out loud hilarious that the Biden administration could impact the cost of energy to us Americans—made the patently erroneous claim that President Joe Biden (D) is doing everything he can to reduce [gasoline] prices for American families.

Oil is a global market, and so Biden is helpless alone?

High school economics: increase the supply of something relative to demand for it, and prices for that something come down. Conversely, reducing supply relative to demand drives up the price.

Oil is a global market, and until January 2021, not only was the US a major player in its production, we were a net exporter of oil (and of natural gas) and essentially energy independent.

However, acting on his campaign promise to eliminate the oil and natural gas industries, Biden canceled a major oil pipeline project that would have fed refineries producing (among other things) gasoline, imposed regulations that made it difficult to build other pipelines, stopped issuing oil and gas leases on Federal lands and waters, outright canceled leases in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, is sitting on thousands of permits necessary to act on remaining leases, and generally inhibited our ability to produce oil and natural gas.

The Biden administration policies also (deliberately, I say) make oil and natural gas and gasoline companies reluctant to build or even to reopen additional refineries, much less restart or drill new oil and natural gas wells so those potential refineries would have something to refine.

The Biden-Granholm reduction in the supply of American oil—and so their reduction in the global supply of oil—is what’s responsible for today’s high gasoline prices.

Biden alone can, indeed, impact the cost of energy to us Americans. He’s already done it negatively. He could just as easily (or maybe not—there’s a serious trust problem now) impact the cost positively by getting his administration out of the way of the American energy industry.

And that’s just for starters.

Both Biden and Granholm know this full well; they know that Biden absolutely is not doing everything he can to reduce prices for American families. Not for gasoline, not for energy generally, and not for any of the inflationary forces in our economy.

Germany’s Energy “Crisis”

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The Russian “slowdown” of natural gas deliveries to Germany is beginning to convince the German government that they’re overly dependent on Putin’s whims for the nation’s energy.

Minister of the Economy Robert Habeck:

The reduction in gas supplies is an economic attack on us by [Russian President Vladimir Putin]. We will defend ourselves against this. But our country is going to have to go down a stony path now.

That stony path includes what, exactly? Habeck again:

The prices are already high, and we need to be prepared for further increases. This will affect industrial production and become a big burden for many producers.

What else?

Habeck, who is a Green Party politician in the center-left ruling coalition, announced a return to “coal-fired power plants for a transitional period” in order to reduce gas consumption for electricity production.
“We are setting up a gas substitute reserve on call. “That’s bitter, but it’s almost necessary in this situation to reduce gas consumption,” Habeck said.

What not else?

Nuclear power. After then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s panicky shutdown of Germany’s nuclear power production facilities—all of them—in the aftermath of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power facility accident (in which there were all of 16 injuries, from hydrogen explosions, and 2 more from radiation exposure related to the accident itself, and a single subsequent fatality due to radiation-induced cancer), the German government remains steadfastly opposed to a source of energy that is utterly free of pollution, doesn’t release evil CO2 into the atmosphere, and that is intrinsically safe: modern nuclear reactors.

To the extent Germany has an energy crisis, it’s one of Germany’s own making as that nation volksmarched determinedly down two paths: its conscious decision to subordinate itself to Russian energy delivery and so to Russian energy extortion, and its equally conscious decision to eschew an utterly reliable energy source that doesn’t depend on the vagaries of wind or of sun, the latter especially in cloudy Germany.

Unsingen, in west central Germany, illustrates that latter.

A 2nd Amendment Ruling

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The Supreme Court, by a 6-3 ruling, has struck down a New York law that required citizens to show a proper cause and good moral character in order get a license to carry a firearm outside the home. That “proper cause” and the goodness of a citizen’s “moral character” were as defined by the State’s government personnel, and if they didn’t feel like it, or if the “need” didn’t suit them, or if these Moral Superiors didn’t like the man, they blithely could deny the applied-for license.

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the Court, said that was unconstitutional.

“The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees,'” Thomas wrote.
Thomas added that there is “no other constitutional right” that requires an individual to demonstrate some sort of special need to government officers in order to obtain a concealed carry permit.
“That is not how the First Amendment works when it comes to unpopular speech or the free exercise of religion. It is not how the Sixth Amendment works when it comes to a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses against him. And it is not how the Second Amendment works when it comes to public carry for self-defense,” Thomas added.

And

New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment in that it prevents law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms.

Here’s New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s (D) preemptive reaction to the then-pending ruling:

Hochul vowed in May to call for an emergency legislative session this summer to craft new gun legislation as a means to work around the expected high court decision that curtailed the state’s concealed carry permit law.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) announced that his office is

analyzing this ruling and crafting gun safety legislation that will take the strongest steps possible to mitigate the damage done today.

These are canonical examples of why the 2nd Amendment is so necessary.

Notice, too, that this ruling looks like the beginning of the end for the concept of a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.

The Court’s ruling can be read here.