Light posting

This will be the fewest posts I have made in a single month since March of 2006.


Things are very very busy at work. I can’t tell you how many nights I have stayed at the office until nearly midnight or worked from home until 02:00 or 03:00, or worked all weekend. I’m watching a build run out of the corner of my eye as I type this.


Next month isn’t looking good either. The pressure will remain high for most of the month and then I will need to do a lot of stuff for Boomershoot. Please believe me that I intend to post more and will do so again. It just might not be until sometime in May.

All Hopey Changey in the UK

From Drudge.  Pet shop owner fined 1,000 pounds and charged criminally for selling goldfish to an under age buyer.  No one puts up any meaningful opposition.  I hope y’all like this sort of thing (and I’m sure some of you do) ’cause we’re getting more and more of the same crap here.


You have to hand it to the statist scum.  They do know their business.  Anything to keep the citizenry off-balance, distracted and afraid.  The question remaining unanswered is when and how the advocates of liberty will acquire the same sort of organization, audacity and clout.


We’re only about 80 to 100 years behind the statists in this war, give or take.  How long, you figure, will it take to catch up to a point where we’re on par?

Quote of the day–Lyle @ UltiMAK

I’ve had enough of the tacticians being all too careful not to piss off the opposition. It’s as useful as shunning pork and cutting down from whiskey to beer one day a week to keep the jihadists from hating you. That’s playing games when the enemy is serious. If they’re not trying to kill you, you’re doing something wrong anyway.


Lyle @ UltiMAK
March 31, 2010
In private email.
[The context was a discussion of politicians who claim they “stand up for the Second Amendment” but actually mean they are trying to play both sides of the fence well enough to get both sets of votes.


I agree with Lyle. As I have said many, many times we need to politically exterminate those who advocate infringement of our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. When we finish that task we need to politically exterminate those who tolerate infringement of our rights. They need to be as politically viable as a leader of the KKK. If we were doing our job correctly they would be just as physically dangerous or just as politically impotent.–Joe]

Lies and distortions

Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign is at it again.

I have no problem with Helmke being upset about Jim Brady and other people who are killed or injured. But it doesn’t help his case any that he lies and distorts the situation. Here are some examples:

Almost two million dangerous people have been stopped from buying a gun since 1993.

Wrong. The correct statement is, “Almost two million people have been stopped from buying a gun via a licensed gun dealer since 1993.”

The first point to make is that we don’t know how many of those that were stopped were not actually dangerous. Is someone who failed to pay their taxes 30 years ago and has committed no crime since that felony convictions a dangerous person today? Or what of the black guy who committed the felony, 40 years ago, of being in possession of a deck of cards which had pictures of naked white women on them? Are they dangerous? In both cases they would have been stopped from buying a gun and Helmke includes them in his numbers.

The second point to make about this claim is that just because a truly “dangerous person” was stopped from purchasing a gun at a licensed dealer doesn’t mean he or she didn’t get a gun via the black market a few minutes or hours later.

The third point to make about this claim is there is no evidence this law has made the general population safer. Helmke measures success in terms of people blocked from purchases not in terms of making society safer. Answer Just One Question Paul.

They can buy guns without a background check from “law-abiding citizens” like Timothy McVeigh, who used his gun show sale profits to blow up the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and kill 168 innocent people. The killers at Columbine were outfitted at a gun show.

McVeigh could have used profits from a dry cleaning business or maintaining the web site of the Brady Campaign to blow up buildings. That he legally made money at gun shows is irrelevant to his criminal activities. Helmke attempts to make a subtle guilt by association claim here. But the guns shows McVeigh attended do not share responsibility for the bombing anymore than Al Gore does for Ted Kaczynski’s bombings.

The Columbine killers didn’t need gun shows to obtain their long guns. The elder of the two psychopaths was old enough to purchase long guns on their own at any firearms dealer. Again, Helmke is attempting to make the innocent appear guilty by association.

Now radicals proudly carry assault rifles to visits by President Obama, and the current holder of Jim’s old job says it’s just fine, and they’re not at all worried.

Wrong. It was an ordinary semi-automatic sporting rifle. It was not an assault rifle.

He leaves out the fact that the people with the firearms were not even within eyesight of President Obama, did not engage in any threatening behavior and broke no laws.

And I find it very telling that he uses the term “radical” to describe someone exercising both specific enumerated rights to free speech and keep and bear arms.

He concludes with:

… we’re far from being as safe as we could be.

True. But Helmke and the Brady Campaign have a proven track record of advocating laws that accomplish nothing but creating an impediment to people exercising their rights with no increase in public safety. And I guess the trauma of this headline from msnbc was just too much for Helmke to remember to include in his post, Record numbers now licensed to pack heat–Firearms deaths fall as millions obtain permits to carry concealed guns.

Helmke can’t be trusted to tell the truth or the whole story. That would endanger his job at the Brady Campaign where the truth doesn’t fit their agenda.

Quote of the day–Bjorn Sandberg

These new bats are too powerful. They’re like weapons.


Bjorn Sandberg
March 26, 2010
Metal bats unsafe to swing?
[Haven’t we been saying that after guns are banned they will try to do the same thing with knives and baseball bats? And the anti-freedom people laugh and make fun of us about it.


While this article isn’t in the context of “crime prevention” the “right” words are being used. If we were to lose the right to keep and bear arms I would expect there would be “safe storage” requirements and other restrictions on baseball bats within a few years.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Robb Allen

Free people make choices that change their status in relation to others. Can’t have that can we?


Robb Allen
December 22, 2009
Advantage, us
[Look at the health care issue, look at the graduated income tax issue, look at double taxing of corporate profits, look at the victim disarmament laws. The anti-freedom people want people equal–even if it is equally poor, equally at risk, equally sick, or equally dead.


There is are numerous very profound problems with equalizing people. Probably the most obvious, but not the most hazardous problem, is this.


I had read this shortly after Robb posted it but I didn’t give this particular set of words the independent focus it deserved. Thanks to Mike L. for bringing it to my attention.–Joe]

Private party for Ian

As I have previously reported Ian is an intern at Microsoft from Canada. I took him shooting once and he enjoyed it a great deal.

 

Last Friday after work he and I left Redmond and headed east to Idaho where we could have some real fun. Idaho is less repressive in a number of ways than Washington. In particular the explosives law are a pain in Washington.

 

Saturday morning daughter Kim, Ian and I loaded up the van and went to the Boomershoot site. Barron, Janelle, and Ryan were already there when we arrived. We were going to put on a private party for Ian and do a few experiments to test out some ideas for a new target deployment method.

 

Some of the pictures are below see also the fireball demo pictures here.

 


Ian about to shoot his first boomer.

 


This was just after detonation. Notice the streak of something headed to the left in the tree.

 


Ian preparing for the blast of debris.

 


Ian realizing he is going to live.

 


Ian realizing that was fun (debris still falling).

 


Ian realizing that was really fun (debris still falling).

 


Ian, Ryan, and Janelle (only her shadow is visible on the far right) do a miniature High Intensity Event.

 


Ian shooting still more boomers.

 


Ian seems to like this too.

 


Ryan brought an old laptop in need of an Idaho Stress Test.

 


Ryan preparing to initiate the stress test.

 


The test is complete in a few microseconds.

 


Ryan was very happy with the test results even if he did have to pick up all the pieces.

 

Ian, Kim, and I took the scenic route back to Moscow, picked up Barb just as she got off from work and went to VJs BBQ (there was a reason for chosing this particular place) for dinner. They have a Gadsden flag and the Declaration of Independence on the wall if that gives you a hint.

 

What I wonder is what the anti-freedom people in this country have to offer interns who visit. It’s not like they have anti-gun ranges to go have fun at.

 

Update: Linoge linked to this post and claimed one of the pictures of Ian above is “Photo of the year“. In the interests of completeness I have uploaded the original, untouched, photo here.

Quote of the day–Joycelyn Elders

If Medicaid does not pay for abortions, does not pay for family planning, but pays for pre-natal care and delivery, that’s saying: I’ll pay for you to have another good, healthy slave.


Joycelyn Elders
WASHINGTON POST
February 16, 1993
[So I wonder what she says about Obama signing an executive order not allowing government funds to be spent on abortion.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Daniel Webster

In the nature of things, those who have no property and see their neighbors possess much more than they think them to need, cannot be favorable to laws made for the protection of property. When this class becomes numerous, it becomes clamorous. It looks on property as its prey and plunder, and is naturally ready, at times, for violence and revolution.


Daniel Webster
Address, Massachusetts Convention, 1820
From The Great Thoughts, (but I have the first edition) compiled by George Seldes.
[Laws protecting property had a knife slipped between their ribs with the passage of the 16th Amendment. Laws protecting the possession of property mean nothing if you can’t purchase it to begin with. The government takes such a high proportion of my income that I don’t really work for myself and my family anymore. I work for the government which distributes my life energy to those people the government thinks are more worthy.


Where is Galt’s Gulch?–Joe]

Preventing violence

It always raises warning flags when I hear of someone wanting to prevent violence. This is no exception. They want to “figure out which people are genuinely dangerous” and “reach out” to them:



Rahr says the science to answer that question is available, and she’s asking the federal government for money to set up a pilot task-force program here that she hopes would serve as a model nationwide.


I am of the opinion that anytime the government starts “reaching out” to “prevent violence” it’s time for me to make sure my “reaching out” tools are in good working order.


[H/T to Chet who walked into my office this morning to tell me the cheery news.]

It’s a small world

Barb called me tonight to tell me she saw a woman open carrying in the grocery store. It looked like “the woman in Moscow who reads your blog”.


I’m pretty sure there is more than one woman in Moscow that reads my blog–considering both of my daughters and Barb are women, live in Moscow, and make mention of the things I write on a fairly regular basis. But regardless, I was pretty sure I was able to disambiguate who she was talking about. It had to be Laurel.


Barb told me she approached her (Paul Helmke and friends are wrong, normal people don’t get scared, run away or call the cops at the sight of an openly carried firearm) and asked. It turns out the guess of Laurel was wrong. Close, but wrong. It was Laurel’s sister.


Further chatting revealed that sister and her husband own the local BBQ joint. Barb was absolutely thrilled. In addition to me now smiling when she spends money at Starbucks she is convinced I will spend more money on their delicious BBQ (we have been there before and found it quite good). Barb went on to say that she just wishes Michaels and Joann would do something to curry my favor such that she could spend as much money as she wanted without me developing a frown.

Quote of the day–Nicolo Machiavell

It should be noted that hatred is acquired as much by good works as by bad ones.


Nicolo Machiavell
The Prince, Chapter XIX
[I suspect this is part of the problem people of liberty have. They don’t want to be disliked and are willing to make compromises to make other people less hateful of them. Tyrants and “progressives” have no problem with the hatred others have of them. It’s just not that big of an issue to people like leftists Bill Ayers (neighbor and family friend of President Obama), Joseph Stalin, or Pol Pot. If they have to kill a few million people in order to create their utopia and are hated by some for that, what’s the big deal? It was for a good cause.


I think a little non-violent ruthlessness in pursuit of liberty might be a good thing. Someone that doesn’t fasten their seat belt or eats the wrong foods and is injured or gets ill at an early age should be considered an example of what not to do and left to the care of those that might see some benefit in helping them. Those examples are not justification to use the force of government (the point of a gun) to take from those that played the cards life gave them more carefully. We might be hated for that but the end result is a smarter and healthier society in more ways than one.–Joe]

The Revolution has Begun

Just so we’re clear; No, I’m not kidding.


I attended a rally for Idaho Gubernatorial candidate, Rex Rammell last night in troy, and spoke with him for some time.  No arrests were made.  They fed us elk spaghetti.  Afterward, I told my older brother that Rex was either the best damned actor in all the world or he is for real.  I’m now convinced he is for real.  Rammell has fought the Idaho Legislature and won, he has defied state authority over his own property rights, had his livestock killed and taken by state goons, been arrested, fought that, and won, and he is now jacked up to fight for Idaho, within Idaho and with the feds, for liberty.  His plan is make Idaho an example for the rest of the states to follow.

Read his website and his Facebook page.  That’s not the half of it.  This is our guy.  I don’t care what state you call home, Rex wants be the one to show the rest of the country how it’s done, he’s willing to push back and to defy the powers that be in order to restore liberty based on America’s founding principles.  Among the agenda items in what he refers to as “The Cause” are; eliminating the Idaho income tax and creating a welcome environment for business to grow the economy, that will in turn attract more motivated people into the state to grow the economy, massively reduce the state department of education thereby eliminating the top-heavy system and relinquishing education control back to the locals, get everyone in the state off of welfare, and (get this) returning the two thirds of the State of Idaho that’s now federal land, back to the state.  If elected, he promises to climb aboard a bulldozer and use it to rip out some Forrest Service gates in front of the TV cameras.


He’s willing to “force them (the feds) out” of the state and he has a plan for doing just that.  “Gone.”  I don’t mean he’s going to sue on Tenth Amendment gounds or whatever.  That’s just a first step.  Rex is willing to do whatever it takes.  He’s been there before, as state goons were shooting his elk (with 5.56 mm AR-15s, the dipshits) right in front of him on his own property.  Don’t let his soft looks fool you.  He’s that skinny, quiet kid who’ll nail his targets at 1,000 yards and carry the water after the loudmouth bodybuilder has quit the fight.


Rex is a Mormon, and some will be put off by that.  Don’t be stupid.  Listen; he’s convinced that fighting for American principles is his calling in life.  That’s passion.  He has courage and a sense of purpose, and those are exactly what we need for this fight.  Make no mistake about it; there will be a fight and it will get ugly.  Best we start it from inside the system, with the constitution and founding principles of liberty as our guide.


If you’re one of those people, as am I, who’s been alarmed and disgusted at the direction this country has been going, and yet frustrated that there seems to be no one to vote for who’s serious, Rex is your candidate.  For years I’ve been watching the culture war in this country, hearing talk show host after talk show host, reading blogger after blogger, all chronicling the corrupt behavior of the Evil Party, and the cowardice, capitulation and corruption of the Stupid Party.  For years I’ve been saying; “OK!  I get it already!  Now what do we DO about it?”  Well this is what you do about it– you spread the word about Rex Rammell, attend his rallies, and support his primary campaign.  If you live in Idaho, you get at least ten people out with you and you vote in the primary election in May.


The Idaho Gubernatorial election will be decided in the May primary.  Rammell is up against Butch Otter, and the winner in the primary is going to be our next Governor.  Spread the word.  His campaign is running on a shoestring right now.  This Revolution can either splutter to a pause, leading to more and deeper pain, or it can roar forward.  It depends on you.


There you go.  I’ve never said much of anything nice about a politician before.  Most of them are sub-human scum.  If you knew me, you’d understand what a difference I see in this guy, to say anything positive about him.

The male brain

I really, really liked the book The Female Brain. So has everyone I have convinced to read (or listen to) it.


The same author now has published The Male Brain. Here is a story by the author on CNN regarding some of the results elaborated on in the book:



Perhaps the biggest difference between the male and female brain is that men have a sexual pursuit area that is 2.5 times larger than the one in the female brain. Not only that, but beginning in their teens, they produce 200 to 250 percent more testosterone than they did during pre-adolescence.


If testosterone were beer, a 9-year-old boy would be getting the equivalent of a cup a day. But a 15-year-old would be getting the equivalent of nearly two gallons a day. This fuels their sexual engines and makes it impossible for them to stop thinking about female body parts and sex.



All that testosterone drives the “Man Trance”– that glazed-eye look a man gets when he sees breasts. As a woman who was among the ranks of the early feminists, I wish I could say that men can stop themselves from entering this trance. But the truth is, they can’t. Their visual brain circuits are always on the lookout for fertile mates. Whether or not they intend to pursue a visual enticement, they have to check out the goods.


To a man, this is the most natural response in the world, so he’s dismayed by how betrayed his wife or girlfriend feels when she sees him eyeing another woman. Men look at attractive women the way we look at pretty butterflies. They catch the male brain’s attention for a second, but then they flit out of his mind. Five minutes later, while we’re still fuming, he’s deciding whether he wants ribs or chicken for dinner. He asks us, “What’s wrong?” We say, “Nothing.” He shrugs and turns on the TV. We smolder and fear that he’ll leave us for another woman.


I have put the book on my “Wish List” at Audible.com and will buy it the next time a good sale comes around.


[H/T to son James for the IM with the link to the article.]

Six million and one?

Sebastian pulled the number six million concealed carry permit holders out of the MSNBC story on concealed carry.


I wonder if that number is the sum of all the permits currently issued or the number of people with permits. I doubt that anyone was able to get a complete list of all the people with permits from all the states and remove duplicates. But they might have made some estimates.


In any case, daughter Kim called me up today to tell me she received her Washington State Concealed Pistol License (CPL) today.


So depending on how the numbers were tallied it could be six million and one licenses are now issued.

Quote of the day–Rep. John Dingell




Let me remind you this has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.


Rep. John Dingell (D-MI)
March 23, 2010
Via Ed Morrissey at Hot Air (after hearing the audio on the Rush Limbaugh Show).
[I am reminded of something I said a long time ago:



Does it ever strike you as odd that some of our servants demand that they have a monopoly on certain types of weapons?


I keep thinking that they must have either forgotten they are servants or intend to change the relationship.


I think the selection of which conclusion is correct should now be obvious.–Joe]