While the U.S. Supreme Court and our freedoms hang in the balance don’t forget that we are all just pawns the political elite play with for their own amusement:
Author Archives: Joe
Bring it on
From a NRA tweet:
This fight is for the Supreme Court. Almost nothing else matters. This is the “hill” gun rights, and freedom, lives or dies on.
Grip safety issue
The picture on the left is a new STI 2011 grip safety. The one on the right is the one out of my STI DVC Limited.
See a difference?
Yeah. The one on the right is missing some material. I don’t know if it came from the factory that way or it broke and I just now noticed. Part of the edge is very clean and part is ragged. It’s ambiguous from looking at it with the naked eye whether this is as intended or a failure of some sort.
I contacted STI via email and within minutes they said to return the gun and they would fix it.
Quote of the day—Langer Research Associates
Overall, economic inequality and student loans top this issues list with 21 percent each, followed by protecting gun rights, equal pay for women and preserving access to abortion, at 11 percent apiece. Remaining issues tested – lowering taxes and strengthening the military – are in the single digits.
Langer Research Associates
April 2016
ABC News/Refinery29 Poll: Millennial Women
[The wording of questions is critical in polls so I looked it up for this case:
Apart from big issues like terrorism, the economy, health care and immigration, there are other issues that may come up in the presidential campaign. Of the ones I list, please tell me which one is the most important issue to you: protecting gun rights, economic inequality, equal pay for women, preserving access to abortion, student loan debt, strengthening the military, lowering taxes, or something else?
The question appears to be well worded. The answers were:
3/22/16
Protecting gun rights 11
Economic inequality 21
Equal pay for women 11
Preserving access to abortion 11
Student loan debt 21
Strengthening the military 4
Lowering taxes 8
Other (vol.) 11
No opinion 2
Right there is 11% of the young women who will not be voting for Hillary!
Also note that this was in March of this year. Since then, with all the terrors attacks on defenseless private citizens, I would expect the gun rights category would have increased some. Every terrorist attack between now and November is another few percentage points Hillary loses in the election and women are where many of those are going to come from.—Joe]
More guns, less crime
To those for whom principles and specific enumerated rights are irrelevant we have this which may make an impression:
Via a tweet from the NRA:
First woman nominated for U.S. president
Hillary says she is the first woman nominated by a major party for U.S. president. Some news sources leave out some important words and say things which are completely false:
One hundred and nine nominees have been selected by their party to run for the nation’s highest office. And each and every one of them had been a man.
But Hillary is correct, this is a historic milestone. But there are some things left out that make the whole “first woman…” a lot more interesting.
What other women have run for U.S. president? WomensHistory.about.com has the answers (I don’t include all of them, some were publicity stunts and other unserious attempts). I have also included some from Wikipedia:
Victoria Woodhull
Equal Rights Party: 1872
Humanitarian Party: 1892
Belva Lockwood
National Equal Rights Party: 1884, 1888
Laura Clay
Democratic Party, 1920
Like many Southern suffragists she saw women’s suffrage as reinforcing white supremacy and power.Margaret Chase Smith
Republican Party: 1964
She was the first woman to have her name placed in nomination, but not nominated, for president at a major political party’s convention. She received 227,007 votes in the Republican Primary and won 27 delegates at the 1964 Republican Convention losing out to Barry Goldwater.Fay T. Carpenter Swain
Democratic Party: 1964
7,140 votes in Indiana primary losing out to Lyndon B. Johnson.Charlene Mitchell
Communist Party: 1968
She was also the first African American woman nominated for president in the United States.Shirley Chisholm
Democratic Party: 1972
Placed in nomination, but not nominated. One of three women to seek the Democratic Party nomination for president in 1972 along with Mink and Abzug.Patsy Takemoto Mink
Democratic Party: 1972
She was the first Asian American to seek nomination as president by a major political party and one of three in 1972 along with Chisholm and Abzug.Bella Abzug
Democratic Party: 1972
One of three women to seek the Democratic Party nomination for president in 1972 along with Chisholm and Mink.
Linda Osteen Jenness
Socialist Workers Party: 1972
Evelyn Reed
Socialist Workers Party: 1972In states where SWP candidate Linda Jenness was not accepted for the ballot because she was under the Constitutional age for qualifying for the presidency, Evelyn Reed ran in her place.
Ellen McCormack
Democratic Party: 1976; Right to Life Party: 1980
McCormack ran against legalized abortion and won 238,000 votes in 18 primaries in the Democratic campaign, winning 22 delegates in 5 states.
Deidre Griswold
Workers World Party: 1980
Maureen Smith
Peace and Freedom Party: 1980
Sonia Johnson
Citizens Party: 1984
Gavrielle Holmes
Workers World Party: 1984
Isabelle Masters
Looking Back Party, etc.: 1984, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004
Patricia Schroeder
Democratic Party: 1988
Lenora Fulani
American New Alliance Party: 1988, 1992
Willa Kenoyer
Socialist Party: 1988
Gloria E. LaRiva
Workers World Party / Party for Socialism and Liberation: 1992
Helen Halyard
Worker’s League: 1992
Millie Howard
Republican: 1992, 1996; Independent: 2000; Republican: 2004, 2008
Monica Moorehead
Workers World Party: 1996, 2000
Marsha Feinland
Peace and Freedom Party: 1996
Mary Cal Hollis
Socialist Party: 1996
Heather Anne Harder
Democratic Party: 1996
Elvena E. Lloyd-Duffie
Democratic Party: 1996
Georgina H. Doerschuck
Republican Party: 1996
Susan Gail Ducey
Republican Party: 1996
Ann Jennings
Republican Party: 1996
Diane Beall Templin
American Party: 1996
Joanne Jorgensen
Libertarian Party: 1996
She did get the VP nomination, with Harry Browne getting the Presidential nomination of the party.Elizabeth Dole
Republican Party: 2000
Cathy Gordon Brown
Independent: 2000
Monica Moorehead
Workers World Party: 2000Carol Moseley Braun
Democratic Party: 2004
Diane Beall Templin
The American Party: 2004Hillary Rodham Clinton
Democratic Party: 2008
Cynthia McKinney
Green Party: 2008
Gloria La Riva
Party for Socialism and Liberation: 2008Michele Bachmann
Republican, 2012
Peta Lindsay
Party for Socialism and Liberation, 2012
Jill Stein
Green Party, 2012
Roseanne Barr
Peace and Freedom Party, 2012
Hillary Clinton
Democratic Party: 2012, 2016
One of the things I found interesting was that while there was a white supremacist Democrat in 1920 running for president it was a Republican woman who “was the first woman to have her name placed in nomination for president at a major political party’s convention.”
The other thing I found interesting was that so many of the women were/are socialists and communists. Of course these days the Democratic Party has taken essentially all of the Socialist and Communists party platforms so Clinton is just as comfortable as a Democratic as she would have been with so many of the others who ran on other tickets in the past.
Gun cartoon of the day
Via email from John H.
Quote of the day—Rae Witte
More women should have guns. And since it’s abundantly clear that they’ll commit less violence than men and be vulnerable to violence committed by men, let’s take all the guns away from men and give them to women. In fact, let’s only give guns to women.
Rae Witte
July 21, 2016
Here’s An Idea: Only Women Should Have Guns
[Here’s an idea: never let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]
Incoherent nonsense
Anti-gun people must live in some sort of incoherent alternate universe. The most recent example Clinton, Dems Put Gun Control at Center of Convention Stage:
Democrats were to hear Tuesday night from the “Mothers of the Movement,” a group of women who have traveled the country to promote gun control and reforms to make police officers more accountable.
The group includes the mothers of Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, victims of high-profile police-involved killings. They have campaigned with Clinton, who often refers to them as members of “a club no one wants to be a part of.”
…
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said the shifting landscape is the result of several factors: Shootings such as the Sandy Hook school massacre in 2012, renewed concerns over terrorism and high-profile killings of black men in several cities.
“For the first time, this is a winning issue in the general election,” Murphy said.
So… The police killed Eric Garner with a chokehold, Trayvon Martin was killed with the justified (perhaps even praiseworthy) use of a gun by a private citizen (not a police officer as reported here), and Michael Brown was killed with the certainly praiseworthy use of a gun by a police officer, and somehow this changes the “landscape” such that gun control for private citizens is a winning issue?
This is like someone holding their hands over both eyes and when you ask them why they answer, “The sky is blue and I don’t want to eat.”
These people should be in a psych ward instead of government employees. But then, given the current state of the government and the projected trajectory one could make a convincing case the Federal government is a psych ward with the inmates running the place.
Quote of the day—Mary Bayer @marybayer3
You have to take that sort of moderate, “We just wanna have commmon sense legislation so our children are safe!”
You say shit like that, and then people will buy into it.
Mary Bayer @marybayer3
DNC delegate
July 25, 2016
[See also a shorter version at Say Uncle. I chose this one because it shows her stealing the sign of the people who made the video (the police recovered it from her and returned it to the owners). This demonstrates private property means nothing to her, the First Amendment means nothing to her, and, obviously, the Second Amendment is nothing more than a minor obstacle.
From PVertias Action who made the video:
After being included in a tweet about the video she then contacted the police saying that she is being harassed.
Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.
As the video says at the end:
Now we know what Hillary Clinton and the Democrats mean when they say, “Common Sense Gun Legislation”…
We’ve known this for decades, but it’s nice to have them saying it on video.—Joe]
La Push day 2
We planned to leave the cabin at 10:00 and were very close to on schedule. We drove the short distance to the parking lot for the trail head for Second Beach and walked through the woods to the beach. Barb and I walked from one end of the beach to the other as did several others.
I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.
La Push day 1
We left home about 11:00 AM, 15 minutes earlier than planned. We arrived at the Seattle ferry dock at 11:30 and were about car number five in line for the 12:20 ferry to Bainbridge Island. Had we arrived perhaps 10 minutes earlier we probably have been on the earlier ferry. No matter. There were no hard deadlines we had to meet.
We had a pleasant ferry ride and continued our drive. We arrived at our cabin in La Push at about 5:00 PM. We settled in and had supper then started finding other people.
Barb called it a snowball as we found more and more people and our group grew. Here is what it looked like when we had a little more than half of our group:
Bob and family came in about 9:00. We stood around and talked with them for a while then Barb and I got a little chilled and tired of standing and snuck off to the cabin about 9:45. Max drifted off his cousins to the RV spot where Steve and family were parked. They had a fire pit and food so people hung out there until late.
Mass killing in gun free Tokyo
At least 15 people were killed, and up to 45 injured when a knife-wielding man went on a rampage early Tuesday at a facility for the disabled in the Japanese city of Sagmihara, broadcaster NHK reported.
I can’t wrap my mind around this stuff
I just finished this book over the weekend and while there are many aspects that I am skeptical about some things resonated well. One thing was that struck me was that the psychology of progressives (r selected populations in his terminology) is in a large part about “equality”. Gun control can be interpreted as government mandated equality of victimization. Everyone must be equally vulnerable. It is “unfair/unjust” that some people be able to protect themselves better than others. It is better than victims of violent crimes be selected at, essentially, random than for some people to be able to avoid and/or defend against criminals. If you are successful in defending your self you must be punished.
The case below via the author, Anonymous Conservative, could be a case in point:
A homeowner in Finland has been sentenced to four years in jail and a hefty fine after fighting off three intruders who attempted to rob his house. The thieves, meanwhile, got lesser prison terms and are to be paid damages by their victim.
In April, a 35-year-old man from Hyvinkää, a town just 50km north of the Finnish capital, Helsinki, heard a knock on the front door of his suburban house and rushed to open it. As soon as he unlocked it, three strangers rushed in and launched at him, toting baseball bats and a gun. The man retreated to the kitchen, where he found a knife and with it was able to overpower the intruders, two men and one woman.
…
The homeowner has been convicted of “excessive self-defense and attempted manslaughter,” Helsinki news reports. He will serve an unconditional sentence for four years and two months, which he has to spend in prison. The man also has to pay damages to his attackers, with the fine totaling €21,000 (US$23,000). The newspaper does not provide information on the severity of injuries sustained by the home-invaders, however, it is known that they survived the event.
…
All three received one-year-and-two-month conditional sentences, which is similar to probation or house arrest in Finland, depending on the case. The offender serves the sentence outside of jail, but has to follow strict jail-like rules.
The trio was also ordered to pay the homeowner damages, but their combined fine was ruled to be €3,000 (US$3,300).
A friend from the U.K. once explained to me that over there you were allowed to defend yourself as long as you used proportional force. If your attacker was using their fists you couldn’t use a knife. If they were using a knife you couldn’t use a gun, that sort of thing. I asked about a large man attacking a much smaller or weaker person. What then? Well, “It depends…”
I totally reject such thinking.
In the free areas of the U.S. if someone is using deadly force against an innocent person then you are allowed to use deadly force, of whatever type, against your attacker. The attacker could have both hands cuffed behind his back but if he has your kid on the ground and kicking them in the head and you would be justified in using a .50 BMG on full auto against him (take care not to hurt innocents yourself).
In my book the home intruders in the case above should have been made to pay for not only the damages done to the home or people, the lost time spent cutting up the bad guys and dealing with the police, and replaced the knife.
The bias is blatant
Technically, 2,000 can be expressed correctly as “hundreds”. But this was blatant bias to minimize the number of good guys who showed up to protest:
Quote of the day—Michael Daly
Micah Johnson waited for his lawyer to work out some kind of deal with the Army. Family friend Myrtle Booker noted that along with becoming withdrawn, Johnson had developed an increased interest in firearms, as might befit a onetime panty stealer who found himself lacking.
Michael Daly
July 9, 2016
Micah Johnson Was Kicked Out of the Army for Stealing Panties
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]
Lying is what they do
This is more confirmation of what we already knew. They have to lie to get traction. From the DNC email leak (email from Brina Milikowsky, Chief Strategy Officer, Everytown for Gun Safety to Shannon Watts, forwarded to grambuilder@yahoo.com):
Donald Trump has made a lot of promises, but most voters haven’t heard this one yet: He has publicly vowed that on day one of a Donald Trump presidency, he will force every elementary and high school in America to allow guns… [1]
…
1. “Donald Trump: ‘I will get rid of gun-free zones on schools’,” Jenna Johnson. The Washington Post, January 8 2016.
Getting rid of the Federal law mandating “gun free zones” around schools cannot be construed as forcing “every elementary and high school in America to allow guns”. Have they ever heard of the difference between state law and Federal law?
Quote of the day—David Kopel
Gun control laws are dangerous because they don’t do a very good job of taking guns away from people who shouldn’t have them. They’re more effective at taking guns out of the hands of people who can and should use them, if they chose to, for lawful protection. And gun control laws are most dangerous because they provide such political distraction from much more important issues on reducing crime, particularly reducing the illegitimacy rate. And as long as the president is up there yakking about the Brady bill and assault weapons, that’s all the less time he’s going to be putting into welfare reform and other things to rebuild the family, and that’s the heart of any real solution to crime.
David Kopel
1995
Does Gun Control Work?
[Don’t ever let anyone tell you we haven’t been having a conversation on gun control or that we haven’t been saying for decades it doesn’t work and in fact it is counter productive. We have also been saying it is also a violation of specific enumerated and natural rights. It’s time for those people to grow up, accept the facts and stop wasting their, and our, money, time, and human resources.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Ed Driscoll
Hillary’s entire career has been dedicated to taking things away from you “on behalf of the common good,” to borrow from her rare moment of candor in 2004. It’s the intellectual milieu she’s been steeped in for her entire adult life.
Ed Driscoll
July 18, 2016
HILLARY EMBRACES LIBERAL EXTREMISM
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
Sunset
Friday evening.
