Monthly Archives: July 2008

Maniacs Class of ’73-35 years later

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Barb and I went to our 35th High School reunion tonight. We are Orofino Maniacs. There is more going on tomorrow, this was just a warm up. As usual we had a good time. Here are some of the pictures I took:


Dale Nickels and Terry Thornton.

Terry supplies the portable toilets for the Boomershoot. His wife was a high school teacher for our children.

Phyllis (McIver) Parks. Phyllis is from the class of ’74 but married Ray Parks who is in our class. Phyllis is also a distant cousin of mine. I went to school with her since grade school.


Barb is showing off her tattoo to Lori Bruce and Sally Duty.

 

Lance Jones and his wife, Sandy, of 21 years. We hadn’t seen Lance for over 35 years. I used to play chess with him and hung out quite a bit with him. He retired from the navy after 24 years. He joined straight out of high school and married one of Barb’s best friends just before he left for boot camp.


Terri Duff and Barb.

 

 

Debbie Estenson hit me after I showed her this picture. Barb says that now I have posted it on the Internet she is going to kill me.

Update: I told her about the picture and I’m still alive. She did try to bite me though. But I don’t think she is all that mad at me because she told me her husband lets her do whatever she wants and then later she gave me her email address and phone number. She lives in the Seattle area now.


Here is a better picture of Debbie.

This is what happens in places without guns–Case XXIII

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Via Dave Hardy I came across this:



It also sent shockwaves across France where the loss of two of the country’s finest young minds was seen as proof of Britain’s spiral into knife-obsessed lawlessness.


…


Mr Bonomo was stabbed 196 times, with up to 100 wounds inflicted on his back after death.


Mr Ferez, who lived several miles away in Thornton Heath, suffered 47 separate injuries.


So… how’s that gun control and hostility toward self-defense working out for you guys on the other side of the pond? Confiscation of knives followed by rocks and pointed sticks seems like what is needed next.

I’m quoted in World Net Daily

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As Jed points out (and I had noticed a few minutes earlier via a Google News Alert) World Net Daily quoted me when reporting about the ACLU getting ripped apart by comments on their own blog regarding their stand in regards to the Heller decision.


Cool! I was proud of that rant but I didn’t expect any big names to pick it up. I should have put a link in the comment I guess. No traffic from WND is being directed here.

Quote of the day–Milton Friedman

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The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.


Milton Friedman
[Gun control, laws against recreational drugs, welfare, socialized medicine, and rent control are just the examples that come to mind in the first few seconds.–Joe]

The director of the FBI and the courts

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As Third Power, Say Uncle, Progun Progressive, and Dave Hardy have been pointing out our current FBI Director Robert Mueller “is not happy with the Supreme Court’s recent handgun ruling.”

But this isn’t the first time the Director of the FBI has acted as if he knew better than the courts. In 1995 there were hearings on the incident at Ruby Ridge. This was after Randy Weaver were acquitted of all charges except failure to show up in court (only Weaver, not Harris). Harris’s killing of Federal Marshal Degan was found to be justifiable homicide. Despite that jury finding FBI Director Louis Freeh repeatedly referred to Degan’s death as a murder. I recall, but can’t find the written transcript, him being called on this and responding something to the effect that he “fully respects the court system and abides by it. But Degan was still murdered.” If I could have jumped through the T.V. and grabbed him by the throat when he said that I would have. He cannot simultaneously respect the courts decision and claim Degan was murdered.

Mueller apparently thinks he is no less superior to the courts than Freeh thought he was. He needs to be reminded that he is a public servant and not a public master.

Update: Sebastian and the NRA-ILA have something to say as well. I overlooked them when I first made the post.

Only the police should have guns

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The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms laughs and points at Bloomberg caught with his pants down:



WHILE BLOOMBERG FRETS ABOUT OUR GUNS, NYPD CAN’T KEEP TRACK OF THEIRS


BELLEVUE, WA – Anti-gun New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg should “mind his own store before telling others how to operate theirs,” said the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, after an audit found that the New York Police Department lost track of dozens of guns in its own storage lockers.

“While this guy has been bullying gun dealers around the country about so-called ‘slip-shod’ operations,” chuckled CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “his own police department seems to be slipping quite a bit on its own. Bloomberg needs to back off, shut up and get his own house in order before telling others how to operate.”

According to the New York Times, “nearly one out of three handguns and rifles that had been turned in to the police could not be immediately accounted for in a Manhattan property clerk’s office.”

“We’re waiting for Bloomberg to send a team of undercover vigilante investigators down there to find out what’s wrong,” Gottlieb said. “Can one of his infamous lawsuits be far behind?”

Bloomberg dispatched non-police “investigators” to run stings on gun shops in several states more than two years ago, ostensibly to show how easy it is to illegally obtain guns in other states. He then sued gun dealers in five states. This rogue operation landed the mayor’s office in hot water with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for jeopardizing on-going legitimate investigations. Ultimately the Justice Department warned the mayor not to pull that stunt again.

“If Mayor Bloomberg wants to find mismanagement of a firearms inventory,” Gottlieb stated, “he doesn’t need to send goon squads to Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia or anywhere outside of his jurisdiction. All he really needs is to do is visit the police property room in Manhattan and turn his lawyers loose.

“It’s a pity that Bloomberg can’t lose his arrogant attitude as easily as his cops can lose track of their gun inventory,” he concluded.

Quote of the day–New York Times

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In some ways, the Supreme Court term that just ended seems muddled: disturbing, highly conservative rulings on subjects like voting rights and gun control, along with important defenses of basic liberties in other areas, including the rights of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The key to understanding the term lies in the fragility of the court’s center. Some of the most important decisions came on 5-to-4 votes — a stark reminder that the court is just one justice away from solidifying a far-right majority that would do great damage to the Constitution and the rights of ordinary Americans.

 

…

 

In other cases, like the gun-control decision, the rulings might have been more sweeping and more damaging if the conservative bloc had not needed the moderate-conservative Justice Kennedy’s vote to form a majority. One more conservative appointment would shift the balance to the far-right bloc.

 

If that happens, the court can be expected to push even further in a dangerous direction. It would most likely begin stripping away civil liberties…

 

New York Times
Editorial
July 3, 2008
A Supreme Court on the Brink
[Conservative justices threw out the D.C. handgun ban so that people were allowed to exercise a “new” right. And if we have more conservatives on the bench they would do “great damage” to the rights of ordinary Americans and “begin stripping away civil liberties”. What sort of mental problems do these people have? It’s worse than the Nazis who claimed Jews were vermin and literally spread disease like rats and fleas yet they were also in control of the banks and many governments. How can they not see they fail to keep their story straight even for an entire paragraph? It’s like something I would expect to hear from someone in a mental hospital.

 

I guess we don’t really have to understand them. We just have to defeat them.–Joe]

A billion? (the Cost of Statism)

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My father in law sends me all sorts of chain mail.  My response follows at the bottom, but for the intro, here’s the chain letter:


Subject: A Billion?


How many zeros in a billion?


The next time you hear a politician use the word ‘billion’ in a casual manner, think about whether you want the ‘politicians’ spending YOUR tax money.


A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of it’s releases.



A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.


(Actually, that’s 1.5 billion, but that’s not the point)


B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.


C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.


D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.


E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes at the rate our government is spending it.
 
While this thought is still fresh in our brain, let’s take a look at New Orleans …
It’s amazing what you can learn with some simple division.



Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D) is presently asking Congress for 250 BILLION DOLLARS to rebuild New Orleans.  Interesting number…What does it mean?


A. Well… if you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, and child) you each get $516,528.


B. Or, if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans, your home gets $1,329,787.


C. Or, if you are a family of four, your family gets $2,066,012.


Washington, D. C
 
 HELLO!
Are all your calculators broken??


Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL License Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Tax
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service charge taxes
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax (Truckers)
Sales Taxes
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Tax
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax


STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?


Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in the world.


We had absolutely no national debt, we had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.


What happened?  Can you spell ‘politicians’?


And I still have to press ‘1’ for English.


I hope this goes around the USA at least 100 times


What the heck happened?
 
For my money it is called greed.


———————————————-


My response:



They left out special, punitive state and federal taxes on guns and ammunition, which account for a large portion of the cost of the product.


The list of taxes does not address the many and various requirements and restrictions on businesses.  One small example out of thousands is; a window was broken in our Clarkston, WA store during a robbery.  Had it been in Moscow, we could have called one of several glass shops and had it replaced the same day.  Because this happened in Washington, there is a tempered safety glass requirement for storefronts that increased the cost of the window by several hundred dollars (wanna bet some legislator’s cousin owns a safety glass business?).  But that wasn’t the main expense created by the law.  Far and away the biggest expense was that we had to wait several weeks for the window, meaning we had no storefront for that amount of time– just boards.


That cost, and thousands like it, never figure into the costs with which we are saddled by local, state and fed restrictions. 


Add things like minimum wage laws, which outlaw many entry-level jobs outright.  Add laws requiring handicapped access, which can amount to 100s of thousands of dollars for a small business, even if they have no handicapped customers.  The list of such requirements and restrictions would take more than your e-mail in-box could hold, and these all amount to increased cost of doing business.  Often, the reporting and compliance requirements necessitate the hiring of extra employees– people doing jobs for the government, paid by the business owner, producing nothing.  Ever see a WA state sales tax report?  Every city and county can have its own tax rate.  Since our music store does business in two states, and in many cities throughout WA state, we have a huge tax report for WA State (Idaho’s is about the size of a post card).  As a very small business, the WA reporting requirement costs us and our customers at least as much as the actual tax money paid.


And did I mention that property taxes and utilities prices are higher for businesses than for a residence?  How many people know that unless they’re in business?


Now add to the list of costs; the number of businesses that couldn’t bear these burdens, and just gave up and quit.  Then add the number of businesses that started up in other states because they had more freedom there (this is known as “brain drain” and it happens in all socialist societies– the creative and the productive want the hell out of there).


But that’s just the beginning.  Add the untold thousands of creative people who never went into business because the hurdles were just a little bit too much to bother with (business being a stressful and risky proposition in the best of situations) and/or they knew the “safety net” would take care of them anyway, or they could get a government job with full benefits.


And so the monster grows– fewer people paying taxes to support an ever-growing government sector.  Three trillion dollars annually and growing fast (it’s gone up almost 50% during this current “conservative” administration).  Divide 3 trillion by the total U.S. population, boys and girls, if your calculator can handle that many digits.


Many of these costs are impossible to measure.  They don’t show up on the spreadsheets or in the statistics, but I submit that they account for the greatest percentage of the total cost of socialist/statist systems.  But then, some would (and often do) applaud anything that shackles the creative, productive human mind and forces it to either serve their purposes, or just give up.  Everyone knows the score– business (peaceable, voluntary exchange) is greedy and deserves to be punished, whereas “public servants” are altogether selfless and benevolent, right?

Telling the ACLU to go to Hell(er)

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The ACLU blog post on the Heller decision has racked up 150 comments so far. Only one gives mild support of the ACLU position. Most are just as toxic as my comment (see also my blog post).


I wonder if they will get the message. I doubted it at first but now I’m beginning to wonder. Even incredibly bigoted newspaper editorials against gun owners get a small percentage of people supporting them.

VPC blog attacks the NYT

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Interesting stuff. The VPC blog author is really something special.


He/she must have borrowed Ronnie Barrett’s time machine to dig this one up.

Quote of the day–Chris Cox

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We look forward to showing him ‘bitter’. Our members understand how bad Barack Obama is on the Second Amendment. Apparently, he thinks gun owners are either fools or have short memories. I can assure him he’s wrong on both.


Chris Cox
NRA chief lobbyist.
July 1, 2008
NRA Plans $40M Campaign Blitz
[Even us a red-necked knuckle-dragging Neanderthals, can see Obama is the enemy of gun owners. Cox and company are just getting the facts out.–Joe]

Boomershoot 2009 is now full

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At 21:14 PDT the last open position for Boomershoot 2009 filled up. From the moment registration was wide open (2008 participants got a 24 hour head start) until it was full took eight days, four hours, and thirty seven minutes.


There will be people that can’t make it for health, work, family, and financial reasons so don’t give up. Read what is says here about the “waiting list”. There are also two positions that have been donated to the King County Friends of the NRA which will be auctioned off early next year sometime.


I also know some bloggers who have a “big tent” and might accept a few more people to share their shooting positions.

The ACLU clarifies

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The ACLU has a blog posting explaining their position on the 2nd Amendment in a post Heller world:



So, we’ve been getting a lot of comments about the ACLU’s stance on the Second Amendment. For those of you who didn’t catch our response in the blog comments, here it is again:

The ACLU interprets the Second Amendment as a collective right. Therefore, we disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision in D.C. v. Heller. While the decision is a significant and historic reinterpretation of the right to keep and bear arms, the decision leaves many important questions unanswered that will have to be resolved in future litigation, including what regulations are permissible, and which weapons are embraced by the Second Amendment right that the Court has now recognized.

As always, we welcome your comments.


My comment is awaiting moderation. I wonder just how welcome it will be. I give it to you here in case it doesn’t see the light of day:



Fortunately it is the Supreme Court and not organizations such as the KKK or the ACLU that is the binding interpreter of the U.S. Constitution.


We now have the ACLU explicitly denying what the Supreme courts calls a specific enumerated right. This is even more egregious than the KKK demanding segregated bus seating, water fountains, and restrooms since the Constitution doesn’t enumerate the right for integration of public and private accommodations.


I had supported the ACLU in their support of the KKK because I thought the issue was one of free speech. Perhaps I was wrong in my assumption. Perhaps the issue was the ACLU enjoys the company of similarly minded bigots.


Update: They posted my comment along with many others. The last time I looked all the comments were very critical of the postion the ACLU has taken.

One step at a time

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Via Sebastian we find out the deprivation of civil rights under the color of law angle is being used in the San Fransisco lawsuit.


I would rather the Federal Marshals showed up and arrested a bunch of them but I’m still smiling. It’s a step in the right direction.

Reports of their demise are exaggerated

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There is a certain amount of truth to this:

 

Partisans on both sides will argue about whether Mr. Obama’s equivocation represents a clarification or a reversal of his previous statements on the subject. But the truth is that it doesn’t matter. Far more important is that the gradual disintegration of the gun control movement that once drove Democratic politics is now pretty much complete. For decades, the true meaning of the Second Amendment has been the subject of wrenching public debate. But last Thursday, when the Court expressly and historically extended the right of gun ownership to private citizens, the Democratic Party’s nominee for president merely shrugged.

 

Compare what Obama has been saying about guns to what Chuck Schumer, Diane Feinstein, and many others were saying in the mid-90’s. We are winning. We have landed on the beach and are advancing but we have not won.

 

The bigots still need to be put in their place. And that place must be political extinction. They must share the same small and narrow-minded corner of history as the KKK. It’s up to us to make it happen. We do that by reminding the people in the middle that these bigots are trying to deny people “a specific enumerated right” (Scalia’s words and you should adopt them) in the Bill of Rights. This is stronger than the right to vote. This is the equivalent of someone attempting to deny someone free speech, the guarantee against double jeopardy or the right to counsel (again the courts specific examples which the 2nd Amendment is on par with). Just like the Democrats were the party of the KKK 80 years ago Democrats are now the party of gun control. Those bigots must be made to feel just as unwelcome in any major political party as the KKK is today.

Quote of the day–Alan Korwin

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The core issue of “judicial scrutiny” is now established — better than we had dreamed — in what will be known as Famous Footnote #27 (p56). Laws impinging on the Second Amendment can receive no lower level of review than any other “specific enumerated right” such as free speech, the guarantee against double jeopardy or the right to counsel (the Court’s list of examples).


This is a tremendous win, and overlooked in all initial reviews I’ve seen. Attorney Mike Anthony was the first to spot it, way to go Mike. “Strict scrutiny,” which many folks sought, is a term without formal definition that could prove problematic. I was hoping for a test of some sort and got more than I hoped for. By recognizing 2A as a “specific enumerated right” the majority ties 2A to the rigid standards and precedents of our most cherished rights. That’s as strong as there is. Very clever indeed.


Alan Korwin
June 30, 2008
Heller Decision — Deeper Analysis
[Korwin is a lawyer specializing in gun laws (www.gunlaws.com). Take what he has to say seriously.–Joe]