Monthly Archives: May 2008

Quote of the day–Lazarus Long

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Political tags–such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, conservative, and so forth–are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.

Lazarus Long
A character in Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein
From Page 47 in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
[This correct division of political philosophy explains why so many people are dissatisfied with the current set of political candidates for U.S. President. In essence all the candidates are on the same side of the aisle.

My reason for using this quote today will become more apparent after reading my next post.–Joe]

The irony boggles my mind

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From the Brady Bunch we discover the Brady Campaign Director To Be Honored By Rev. Jesse Jackson And RainbowPUSH Coalition:

Jennifer Bishop, Program Director for Victims and Survivors at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, will be honored by Reverend Jesse Jackson’s RainbowPUSH Coalition this Mother’s Day weekend. 

The organization is recognizing several women whose work has furthered peace, justice, and civil rights around the world with the “Odds Breakers and Dream Makers” award. 

“We’re very proud that Jennifer’s work on behalf of the victims of gun violence is being recognized by Rev. Jackson and the RainbowPUSH Coalition,” said Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign.  “This award appropriately recognizes Jennifer, but also serves to inspire the countless volunteers around our country who are fighting for sensible gun laws to keep all Americans and their families safe.”

“Eighteen years ago my sister, her husband, and their unborn child were murdered.  Every day, this nation loses 80 people to gun violence, eight of them children,” Bishop said. “I am so grateful to our great allies at RainbowPUSH who work every day at the community level to try to prevent such tragedies.”

summary of the Brady Campaign’s recent activities in Illinois is available at
http://www.bradycampaign.org/illinois/.

# # #

As the nation’s largest, non-partisan, grassroots organization leading the fight to prevent gun violence, the Brady Campaign, with its dedicated network of Million Mom March Chapters, works to enact and enforce sensible gun laws, regulations and public policies. The Brady Campaign is devoted to creating an America free from gun violence, where all Americans are safe at home, at school, at work, and in our communities.

Recognizing women whose work has furthered civil rights? Wow! How can they say that and not be ashamed to the point of suicide? What if the last sentence describing the Brady Bunch mission statement said:

The Brady Campaign is devoted to creating an America free from black violence, where all Americans are safe at home, at school, at work, and in our communities.

As I have said before, “Never forget that the anti-gun bigots are the KKK of the 21st Century. Look for opportunities to make that point. Make belonging to the Brady Campaign the equivalent of a membership in the KKK because it’s true.”

Doing no harm

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Both the ATF and FBI are banned by the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution so it’s rare that I can be happy about their actions. But at least some of their time is spent doing things that don’t cause innocent people harm. From the WaPo we discover the FBI, ATF Battle for Control Of Cases Cooperation Lags Despite Merger:

In the five years since the FBI and ATF were merged under the Justice Department to coordinate the fight against terrorism, the rival law enforcement agencies have fought each other for control, wasting time and money and causing duplication of effort, according to law enforcement sources and internal documents.

…

At crime scenes, FBI and ATF agents have threatened to arrest one another and battled over jurisdiction and key evidence. The ATF inadvertently bought counterfeit cigarettes from the FBI — the government selling to the government — because the agencies are running parallel investigations of tobacco smuggling between Virginia and other states.

There is lots of other good stuff to be found in the article, for example:

Some question whether the ATF can survive. “It just doesn’t make sense to have two agencies . . . responding anytime a bomb goes off,” one Justice Department official said.

One could claim that if we can get rid of one then we are half-way there. But that isn’t the way it really works but I will agree it’s a good start.

Boomershoot 2008 blog coverage

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There were several bloggers not present that made mention of Boomershoot 2008 but here is a list of blog posts and pictures from people who were there:

Quote of the day–H.L. Mencken

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Why should democracy rise against bribery?  It is itself a form of wholesale bribery.  In place of a government with a fixed purpose and a visible goal, it sets up a government that is a mere function of the mob’s vagaries.  Its security depends wholly upon providing satisfactory bribes for the prehensile minorities that constitute the mob . . . the very head of the state, having no title to his office save that which lies in the popular will, is forced to haggle and bargain like the lowliest office seeker.

H.L. Mencken
[Think about it; Elections are bribery in both directions. The people who seek and win elections are those willing to engage in bribery and are best at it. Do not expect politicians to be honest. The system discriminates against honest politicians. This is just one more reason why our government is (theoretically) and should be limited by strictly enumerated powers.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Alan Gottlieb

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This trial is supposed to be held in a federal court, not a kangaroo court. What’s next, a request that Judge Weinstein not allow defense witnesses or rebuttal? Why not just dispense with the trial altogether and lynch Mr. Wallace from the limb of a tree out in Central Park?

…

Apparently, in Mikey’s world, a fair trial is one in which a defense attorney is muzzled, and the defendant is already guilty until proven innocent. Bloomberg missed his calling. Instead of being mayor of an American city, he should have been the administrator of a gulag.

Alan Gottlieb
Founder of the Second Amendment Foundation
May 9, 2008
Bloomberg outrage: Asks judge to ban 2nd Amendment references!
New York Sun article on the topic.

Quote of the day–Milton Friedman

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Columbus did not seek a new route to the Indies in response to a majority directive.

Milton Friedman
[Translating to present day for the weak-minded (Clinton and Obama supporters–I’m talking to you) the same applies to low cost medical care, housing, oil, and gasoline. Columbus wanted to get rich by finding a shorter shipping route for spices and other goods. People seek to make goods and services available at a lower cost because they want to make money for themselves. The allure of “getting rich” is a great motivator and “majority directives” by government take the incentive away from the real goal–providing goods and services at a better value than others. Government directives and incentives motivate the creators of goods and services to please the government not the consumers. This leads to corruption in government, high taxes, and goods and services of lesser quality and greater cost than if the free market were allowed to work.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Dennis A. Henigan et al

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Once the right to keep and bear arms is separated from its long-established tether to a militia purpose, it is unclear what legal standard gun laws would need to survive constitutional challenge. There is little doubt, however, that recognition of a broad private right to be armed will create a new presumption against the constitutionality of gun laws, whereas currently there is a virtually absolute presumption in favor of their constitutionality. Guns would achieve a specially protected constitutional status imposing unique limits on the legislative authority of the elected representatives of the people that would apply to no other dangerous products. Ironically, regulation of guns, the only publicly-available consumer product designed to inflict lethal injury, would be required to meet a higher constitutional standard than regulation of cars, lawnmowers and other dangerous products capable of inflicting lethal injury, but not designed to do so.

Dennis A. Henigan et al
Director of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence Legal Action Project
Some time after March of 2007
Second Amendment Fantasy–The Brady Center’s Critique of the Parker v. District of Columbia Decision
Emphasis in the original.
[Henigan et al overlook two important points:

  1. Federal regulation of cars, lawnmowers, etc. is prohibited by the 10th Amendment.
  2. Regulation of a products unintended consequences is much different than that for which it is designed.

Ignoring the first point for today and concentrating on the second point a little thought will reveal the regulation Henigan supports is much different than that of cars and lawnmowers.

A regulation requiring a self-propelled lawnmower to turn itself off when the operator releases their hands from the controls would be analogous to something like requiring a gun to tolerate being dropped without discharging. Which, if it were done by a state legislature, I wouldn’t pick a constitutional fight over. A regulation which restricted self-propelled lawnmowers to government employees is analogous to the type of restrictions Henigan advocates.

Beyond the above points the 2nd Amendment specifically protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms. So yes, assuming the Heller (formerly Parker) decision goes our way, guns would achieve a specially protected constitutional status imposing unique limits on our government. This was the original intent of the 2nd Amendment.

Therefore a more succinct response to Henigan et al would be, “And your point is?”–Joe]

I almost used this exact paragraph from here as my QOTD but decided to look around some more and save that for some other time. I then saw this exact paragraph while visiting here and again was sorely tempted. As I continued to wander my RSS feeds revealed Sebastian and Kevin eliminated my backups. Either it is a conspiracy against me or great minds think alike. I’m inclined to think the later because Say Uncle has the same complaint as I do.

Boomershoot 2008 raffle proceeds

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The following should be self-explanatory.

From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2008 8:55 AM
To: ‘soldiersangels@gmail.com’
Cc: ‘Chuck Ziegenfuss‘; ‘Barb Scott’; ‘Jason Scott’
Subject: Boomershoot 2008 Raffle proceeds.

 

Boomershoot (http://www.boomershoot.org) is an annual long range precision rifle event held in North Central Idaho. Each year soldiers from Fort Lewis attend and for two days prior to the main event help teach Boomershoot participants the science and art of accurate long range shooting. Some of those soldiers later went on to Iraq and Afghanistan and were injured and some were killed.

 

Last October my wife and I met Chuck Ziengenfuss at the Gun Blogger Rendezvous in Reno. He told us of his injuries and how Soldiers’ Angels helped him. It turns out that it was the second time my wife had met Chuck. She had also met at Walter Reed when she was visiting our nephew Jason Scott who was wounded in Iraq and benefited from your help.

 

At Boomershoot this year we held a raffle with the intent that half of the proceeds would go to raffle participants and the other half going to Project Valour-IT. All winners of the raffle proceeds gave the money to me to forward on to you. Two other people quietly came up to me and each gave me three $100 bills to give to you.

 

Below is the reference number and other information from my bank who is mailing you a check of the entire proceeds. If it does not arrive as expected please let me know.

 

 

PENDING PAYMENTS

Payee

Reference #

Send On

Expected Delivery

Amount

Soliders’ Angels

EBUBC5PX 

05/06/2008

05/13/2008

$1,860.00

 

 

Regards and thank you,

 

Joe Huffman
Boomershoot Event Director

Quote of the day–Barack Obama

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We’ve got to tighten up our gun laws. I’ve said before we should have a much tougher background check system, one that’s much more effective and make sure there aren’t loopholes out there like the gun show loophole.

Barack Obama
April 25, 2008
Laws alone can’t stop violence: Obama
Chicago Sun-Times
[I’m probably just bitterly clinging to my guns, but it sure doesn’t sound to me like Mr. Obama thinks of the 2nd Amendment as right. After all, I don’t hear him talking about background checks for books and the “book show loophole”. There is other stuff in the same article that makes it very, very clear where he stands on the gun issue. I’m going to remain very bitter about him being a public servant instead of behind bars as a felon.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Chris Rock

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Never go to clubs with metal detectors. Sure it feels safe inside. But what about all those niggas waiting outside with guns? They know you ain’t got one.

Chris Rock
[The same thing applies with schools and other “gun free zones”.–Joe]

Book meme

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I was tagged by The Unforgiving Minute a week ago which was right in the middle of Boomershoot. I’m still recovering and trying to catch up on things so this is a bit late.

The rules:

  1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
  2. Find page 123.
  3. Find the first five sentences.
  4. Post the next three sentences.
  5. Tag five people.

When I read that I was tagged “the nearest book” was over a 1/4 mile away in someone else’s house so I decided to use the nearest book to my bed where I do nearly all my book reading these days.

From Explosives Engineering by Paul W. Cooper.

Page 123 is page 5 of “Table 9.1 Heats of Formation of Inorganic Compounds” and is not broken down into sentences. I’m going to page 124 which has some actual sentences on it.

Hydrochloric acid, HCl, will react with sodium hydroxide, NaOH, to form sodium chloride, NaCl, and water, H2O.

HCl + NaOH –> NaCl + H2O

Calculating the standard heat of reaction from the standard heats of formation, we have:

ΔHr0 = [ΔHf0(NaCl) + ΔHf0(H2O)]products – [ΔHf0(HCl) + ΔHf0(NaOH)]reactants

I would tag my daughter Xenia Joy and a few other friends but they always ignore me on the meme thing anyway. So if you sort of think you know me and want to participate go right ahead.

Quote of the day–Alan Gottlieb

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Legal theatrics that deflect attention from the failure of Bloomberg’s administration to prevent crime while pursuing an agenda of victim disarmament are all flash and no substance and the people know it. Judging from today’s appeals court ruling, so do the courts.

Alan Gottlieb
April 30, 2008
SAF CHEERS FEDERAL COURT REJECTION OF BLOOMBERG LAWSUIT
[I’m frequently told it is because of a personality “defect” that I expect people to obey the law instead of openly disobey. Even though the 2nd and 10th Amendment are so blatantly violated that you would think I would get a clue and not have those expectations of our public servants. Still occasionally those servants who believe themselves to be masters get their wrists slapped and that is a good thing. Not as good as being sent to prison for violation of 18 USC 242 as they should be but it is better than letting them get away with it entirely as is usually the case.–Joe]

Feeding the poor

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Ignoring the fact that no where in the U.S. Constitution does it allow for the Federal government to do this it’s just plain stupid even if it was allowed:

President Bush called on Congress Thursday to approve $770 million to help alleviate dramatically escalating food prices that threaten widespread hunger and increasing social unrest around the world.

In a surprise mid-afternoon appearance at the White House, Bush announced he is asking lawmakers to approve the additional funds for global food aid and development programs. The money is being included in a broader $70 billion Iraq war funding measure for 2009 that the White House sent to Capitol Hill on Thursday.

If it were the case that it was some sort of rare natural disaster at a personal or business, not governmental, level I could see accepting promissory notes in exchange for food or even making gifts of food. The goodwill generated might prove worthwhile. But to feed those that can no longer afford to feed themselves and have no realistic hope of improving their economic situation will only increase the suffering.

A short story will illustrate. The essence is true but I forget the details.

A few years ago a group (I think it was a state wildlife department) decided to feed a small herd of hungry deer searching for food in the snow. There were only a few of them–perhaps 20 or 30. Nearly all the deer made it through the winter when perhaps a five or ten of them would have died had they not been given assistance.

The next winter, at the same location they again fed the deer but this time there were 40 or 50. The wintering area could only support perhaps 15 or 20 deer. If they didn’t feed them again then perhaps 20 or 30 would die. If they could not allow for five or ten to die last year then certainly the could not allow 20 or 30 to die this year! A few years later the herd was in the hundreds and not only was it prohibitively expensive to feed them the deer were destroying the plant life of both their winter and summer feeding grounds. That many hooves and mouths became, in essence, a swarm of locusts that stripped the countryside clean.

What should be done now that they realized the folly they had engaged in that first winter? They had reached the point where they would have to feed them even in the summer to avoid the deaths of hundreds and still they would destroy the plant life and endanger other animal species wherever they went. I believe some were trapped and moved to other areas but increasing the bag limits on hunting season thinned the herd down to levels where the environment could support them. Most of those deer they feared would die were killed.

So what do we do about people in some distant land that cannot afford to feed themselves? I don’t know exactly but the free market, if it were allowed to work, will find solutions such that most of them will not starve. Someone who is hungry and whose family is hungry will work hard and for long hours. Cheap labor attracts the capitalists. The smart ones in those areas of food shortages, if allowed to do so, will find products and/or services they can export in exchange for food and/or money. And yes, some will die of starvation. The media will show us high resolution color pictures of dying children and say it is the fault of the greedy capitalists. But giving them food without anything in exchange will only mean death is delayed and the magnitude of the tragedy increased.

Quote of the day–Al Capone

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When I sell liquor, it’s called bootlegging; when my patrons serve it on Lake Shore Drive, its called hospitality.

Al Capone
[I’m reminded of this by the apparent suicide of the “D.C. Madam” Deborah Jeane Palfrey. How sad that a provider of a desired service is convicted of a victimless crime and ends up dead. The real criminals are those that created and enforced such a law.–Joe]