...or maybe kryptonite.  Demanding clarity from a socialist is, universally, considered a personal attack.  Remember this next time you see a Leftist interviewed.  Here is just one of countless examples.  Its from 1994, the year of the deadly "assault weapon":

My position is that anybody who's in favor gun control is a fucking moron.

Jackie Mason
From Penn and Teller: Bullshit! Gun Control
See also Wikipedia.
[Actually, I can think of three other options. The gun control advocate could also be one or more of the following: 1) Ignorant, 2) Evil, 3) Insane. If you are a gun control advocate and are unsure as to your classification let me know and I'll help you figure it out.--Joe]

My main computer just died. It won't even get to POST. I'm virtually certain no data has been lost but I haven't really verifed that yet.

The biggest issue is that my email access will be significantly impaired until I get it repaired (it may still be under warranty). Email sent to me after about 21:30 Pacific Daylight Time is in limbo for now as well. Resend if you sent me something that needs to be addressed soon.

Update: It is still under warranty and although I have to take it back to Moscow, Idaho (300 miles from where I am now) it might be ready when I return.

In case you haven't seen it yet. It's 28 minutes spent worthwhile even if the language is a bit crude at times.

I will be using a sentence from it for the quote of the day tomorrow.

They want to return the world to a pre-age-of-reason/age-of-enlightenment world. That is where the split took place that put the muslim world as second rate to ours. They believe that their world, following the will of God, must be able to express that as also being the best world in all aspects. If not they must in the eyes of God being doing something wrong. Since they cannot compete with us in this world, they must destroy it to return it to a state when they were the best (their enlightnment during our dark ages).

Greg Hamilton
August 8, 2006 6:58 PM
From the email list: insightstraining @ yahoogroups.com

I had long misunderstood. I had only causally paid attention but I thought dark matter was just ordinary matter that was in too low of energy state to emit light or other radiation. Wrong. And now they have actually proved it's existence. What really got my attention was this:

The two galaxy clusters passed through each other at an incredible speed of 16 million kilometers per hour. As they did, the bulk of the luminous matter in the two clusters, which is in the form of hot gases, bumped into each other and slowed down. But the dark matter sailed ahead because it does not interact with normal matter the same way.

...

Sean Carroll is a cosmologist at the University of Chicago who was not involved in the observations. He says particle physics laboratories around the world are trying to capture dark matter in an effort to determine its properties.

"So there absolutely is a new particle that physicists get to go out there and find," he said. "That's great news because it tells theorists what to think about - to think about models for dark matter - and experimentalists what to do to go out there and look for that particle."

A completely new type of matter which composes the majority of the mass in the universe. Wow! There has got to be some science fiction stories enabled by this. Parallel universes come to mind...

This is like going through life thinking people like you were the norm and then one day having the majority of the population "coming out of the closet" and finding you actually were a very small minority.

You remember Jenny Price from the other day, right? I was just looking at who has been visiting me and saw this:

Domain Name		usdoj.gov ? (United States Government)
IP Address		149.101.1.# (US Dept of Justice)
ISP		US Dept of Justice
Location		Continent  :  North America Country  :  United States  (Facts) State  :  Maryland City  :  Potomac Lat/Long  :  39.023, -77.1993 (Map) Distance  :  2,059 miles
Language		English (United States) en-us
Operating System		Microsoft WinXP
Browser		Internet Explorer 6.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; DOJ3jx7bf; SV1; DI60SP1001; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
Javascript		version 1.3
Monitor		Resolution  :  1280 x 1024 Color Depth  :  16 bits
Time of Visit		Aug 21 2006 7:30:47 am
Last Page View		Aug 21 2006 7:31:54 am
Visit Length		1 minute 7 seconds
Page Views		2
Referring URL		http://blogsearch.go...22&btnG=Search Blogs
Search Engine		blogsearch.google.com
Search Words		guns & "jenny price"
Visit Entry Page		http://blog.joehuffm...55-698f2960fb51.aspx
Visit Exit Page		http://blog.joehuffm.../Thinking Small.aspx
Out Click
Time Zone		UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time		Aug 21 2006 10:30:47 am
Visit Number		95,122

I wonder why the DOJ is interested in what bloggers are saying about Jenny Price. Did she get a credible death threat or something?

Very interesting...

I quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I will still make use and get advantage of her as I can, as is usual in such cases.

Henry David Thoreau
(1817-62), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist.
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849).
[I hope to expand on this theme in a blog post soon.--Joe]

I just made all my reservations for attending the Gun Blogger Rendezvous in Reno. There are already lots of people signed up that I'm looking forward to meeting. You don't have to be a blogger to attend, just have an interest in meeting some of the gun bloggers.

See you there?

Baby formula doesn't kill people. Islamic fascists kill people.

Ann Coulter
August 20, 2006
Terrorists win!

Islam, in and of itself, however, is an Allah-worshipping, Kamikaze Nation, exactly like pre-World War II Imperial Japan. It's Bible, the Koran, can be read like Hitler's Mein Kampf. It demands to rule the entire human race. Islam's only idea of freedom of religion is the freedom of Islam to rule everything. Islamic Political Parties should be no more trusted than neo-Nazi, White Supremacists and David Duke of the Ku Klux Klan have been trusted. Tragically, the only language Islam, like Hirohito's Japan, understands is violence. The measures Harry Truman took to end the war with Japan may prove tragically necessary with Islam.

Michael Moriarty
August 16, 2006
An Interview with Emmy-Winning Actor Michael Moriarty, Presidential Candidate

The other night at the Jim Stafford show Stafford asked how many people had ever been called various names. One of those names was "Democrat". A few people, perhaps ten, indicated they had been. Stafford commented sadly, "You find them everywhere." He then asked how many had ever been called Republican. Most of the probably 150 people in the crowd indicated they had.

Another hint of the political leanings of the area comes from reading some of the local history:

Thus the stage was set for a conflict between the settlers, mostly Republican and law-abidders, and the natives, mostly Democrats who liked the status quo.

The status quo was:

... government for the most part had ceased to exist with anarchy reigning over the county.

Some things never change I guess (I'm thinking of the cities of New Orleans and Washington D.C.).

Interesting:

The study by Hamburg Sex Researcher Professor Dr Werner Habermehl looked at the sex lives of hundreds of German women and compared them with their hair colour.

He said: "The sex lives of women with red hair were clearly more active than those with other hair colour, with more partners and having sex more often than the average. The research shows that the fiery redhead certainly lives up to her reputation."

He added that women who dyed their hair red from another colour were signalling they were looking for a partner, and added: "Even women in a fixed relationship are letting their partners know they are unhappy if they dye their hair red. They are saying that they are looking for something better."

Despite standing right beside the Muslim extremist who shot her and listening while he "ranted on the phone about Jews, Israel and the U.S. role in the war in Iraq and the Middle East" Ms Klein is concerned about all the wrong things:

Klein said she hopes the shooting will serve to renew local and national efforts to draft gun control legislation.

How and why Haq "was able to legally acquire two semi-automatic weapons in our state is still a very disturbing mystery to me," she said.

...

"Naveed Haq has wasted enough of my time," she said.

Huh? Haq is the reason she may not regain the use of her hand. His extremist religious beliefs are the reason he and millions of others want her dead. And she is distrubed because it's legal to purchase firearms? Had she purchased and carried a similar firearm she and others might not have been shot. She should exercise her rights, her brain, and before pushing for more useless gun control legislation answer Just One Question.

For reference see:

• The Seattle Times
• Seattle PI
• The Daily Herald

As pointed out by Denise, Jenny Price wrote another editorial. This time on gun owners instead of guns. I commented on her last one here. This one is about being "Targeted by Gun Nuts". At the time I suspected she visited my blog a week or two after I wrote that post because of what I saw in my log file, but one never knows for certain.

Jenny, if you visit again please answer Just One Question.

I think the most telling part of the editorial are the last two paragraphs:

...do you really want these people on these websites (and 40 million other people in the country) to have guns?

I can cite statistics, and I can tell you why the right to carry a 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun with a 10-shot clip is not guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment. But the paranoia and bone-chilling hatred that spew from such sites as packing.org and freerepublic.com make for an equally — and unusually — effective argument for a ban on handguns.

She can cite statistics but can she do it correctly? Last time she had a terrible problem doing so. I've looked around a fair amount this morning and as near as I can tell she is off by about a factor of two, on the low side, with the number of gun owners in this country.

And if she can tell us why the 2nd Amendment doesn't guarantee us the right to carry a 9mm handgun with a 10 round magazine there are some others besides me who would be interested in her reasoning. For example:

• The Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 97th Congress, Second Session, 2/82
• The judges in U.S. vs. Emerson, 5th Circuit Federal Court
• The U.S. Attorney General

But then she could have done that this time but instead went for the emotional appeal and claims it's is an unusually effective argument.

I think the 2008 presidential election will be won or lost on environmental degradation and new thinking on the environment.

Fabian Nunez
California Assembly Speaker
August 17, 2006
California on brink of global warming breakthrough
[We are in the middle of WWIII (or IV) and this guy thinks "new thinking on the environment" will be the deciding issue of the next presidental election? The guy is a Barking Moonbat.--Joe]

I remembered as soon as I heard it, Barb and I mispronounce Missouri. It's pronouced mi-ZER-ah by the locals here. With that small error corrected we are doing fine (other than the marginal Internet connection).

Monday was spent in Branson. In the morning we visited the Titanic museum. We were quite impressed. But why such an extensive Titanic museum in the Midwest? I could see having it in New York City, Belfast, or even London, but Branson Missouri? Never mind. We liked it a great deal.

Monday afternoon we rode the ducks with "Captain Clyde." Very funny and pleasingly informative.

Monday evening we had dinner at the Shogun Restaurant and were pleased with both the food and the show.

After dinner we went to the Jim Stafford Show. He and his kids are very talented musically but the humor was disappointing.

Tuesday afternoon we visited the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Mansfield. I haven't read even one of her "Little House on the Prairie" books or watched one of the T.V. shows but still enjoyed the museum. Her daughter Rose Wilder Lane was quite impressive too and a large section of the museum is devoted to her. Rose is considered seminal force behind the Libertarian party!

Late on Tuesday afternoon we found our way deep into the "hills" to the home of Ozark Pyrotechnics owner Dave and his family. The highest point in the state is 1772 feet and the lowest is 230 feet above sea level so it's not really possible to have "hills" that qualify to our Idaho sensibilities. Dave is a self described hillbilly. If Dave and his family are representative of hillbillies then it is no insult to be called one. For hours Dave and talked about Boomershoot and his first effort at a similar event while Barb was entertained by the two girls:

Dave, knowing we were celebrating our 30th anniversary this week fixed us a wonderful dinner, complete with champagne, and put on a fireworks show for us. This wasn't just a few fountains, sparklers and firecrackers. This was a real fireworks show that required a call to the local sheriff and the fire marshall beforehand. Here is a picture of Dave with his idea of real fireworks (the biggest shells for us were 'only' four inches):

Update: I forgot to mention the fireflies! Barb and I had never seen fireflies before. We saw our first fireflies Tuesday night as we were preparing the fireworks. The dark haired girl in the picture above caught a couple and showed them to us up close.

It was such a cool way to celebrate our anniversary. Other people celebrate anniversaries by going to Hawaii or Europe. We visited hillbillies in the Ozarks and saw fireflies and our own private fireworks display. How many people can claim an experience like that?

The folksongs of the 1960s will never be written again because of President George Bush. He has hampered the liberties of my country in the name of September 11. Songs now can only talk of patriotism, they cannot mention peace.

Catherine Mayo
AN AMERICAN IN PAKISTAN: Value of dissent
March 18, 2003

[Mayo is the Barking Moonbat who urinated in the aisle of United flight 923 from London to Washington D.C. yesterday.--Joe]

The Democrats are the party of government activism, the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller, and get the chickweed out of your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then get elected and prove it.

P. J. O'Rourke
Parliament of Whores

The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery. They're the kind of people who'd stop to help you change a flat, but would somehow manage to set your car on fire. I would be reluctant to entrust them with a Cuisinart, let alone the economy. The Republicans, on the other hand, would know how to fix your tire, but they wouldn't bother to stop because they'd want to be on time for Ugly Pants Night at the country club.

Dave Barry