Author Archives: Joe

Quote of the day—Melissa Rooney

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For each firearm a “Genuine Reason” must be given, relating to pest control, hunting, target shooting, or collecting. Self-defense is not an acceptable reason.

…

If only America responded to our incessant shooting rampages with half this vigor and political consolidation.

Melissa Rooney
August 20, 2011
From Down Under
[Self-defense is not an acceptable reason? I almost made that the QOTD by itself. The most basic of all human rights, the right to defend your life, is “not an acceptable reason.”

Tell that to the people I pointed out here. Or tell Ms. Rooney, Molōn labe!—Joe]

It must be a conspiracy

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I don’t know who said it first but the phrase “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action” appears to be very popular. I’m sure that test provides accurate results in the vast majority of circumstances. But consider the following.

On our fifth year wedding anniversary we were broke. We had just barely qualified for the loan on our first home with both Barb and I working. We didn’t tell them that in three months Barb would quit her job to go enter physical therapy school. After two plus years (including her non paid “affiliations” with various medical facilities) of Barb being in school we didn’t have any money plus she was busy finishing things up. We didn’t have the time or the money to do anything special for that anniversary.

On our ten year anniversary daughter Kim was just one month old and we thought we could take her to a movie with us. She should sleep in the dark, right? Wrong. We didn’t get to see more than 30 minutes of it before Kim made it very clear that she needed our attention and the movie did not.

On our fifteenth anniversary Symantec had just purchased Zortech (who I worked for). They had a big meeting in their Boston office that everyone had to attend. Barb celebrated with her mom and the kids at Pizza Hut in Sandpoint Idaho. I “celebrated” with Symantec who told us how badly we were going to get screwed over (the person who received several million dollars in the purchase didn’t see what the problem was, those of us who had no job and found out they weren’t going to honor our contracts were rather pissed).

On our twenty anniversary we had a nice vacation planned in California and along the Oregon coast with Barb’s sister Susan. On our actually anniversary day we were supposed to leave the kids with Susan and Bob while we went off by ourselves for the evening. On the way from Idaho to California the van broke down in a little town in Oregon. We had to leave it there and we continued on with a rental that was too small for our family of five plus all the luggage for two weeks. On the actual day of our anniversary as we were traveling up the coast of Oregon, I drove a total of twelve hours to take the rental car back and return with our repaired van. Barb spent the day with five kids and sister Susan at a motel. I got back to the motel late at night and very tired.

On our twenty fifth anniversary I was unemployed during the dot com bust of 2001. At that time, we were taking turns choosing and making all the arrangements for our anniversary. With money tight we couldn’t go someplace far away and exotic like Bob and Sue who went to Hawaii or Barb’s brother Dow and his wife Katie who went to Ireland for their anniversary. I found a motel near Lake Coeur d’Alene which was about a 90-minute drive from our home in Moscow Idaho. It wasn’t the same name, but it was in about the right spot for the same place we had spent our honeymoon. They had recently remodeled, and their rooms had different themes. I chose the “Hawaiian Room”. It turned out it was the same motel. Our room had plastic vines, “jungle” wallpaper, funny carpet, and a hot tub decorated to look sort of like a pool in the middle of a jungle. Barb still laughs about that room.

On our thirtieth anniversary we went to Missouri. Barb mostly did genealogy stuff. We celebrated five days early with Dave and his family with a crab dinner and fireworks. The day of our anniversary I was traveling back to the Seattle area to go to work the next day while Barb stayed in Moscow to work. Actually, that was a pretty fair outcome. Perhaps we had broken the pattern!

Our thirty fifth anniversary was today. We planned to go to Mount. St. Helens for the day, spend the night in a nice motel and do lots of hiking. Yesterday morning as Barb was walking to the bus stop with me, she stepped on a rock, twisted her ankle we both heard a loud, “Pop”. She limped back to the Clock Tower by herself as I went on to work. Today instead of going hiking we spent it in Emergency Room at the hospital she worked at 20+ years ago. She has a small fracture of her fibula:

IMG_6309IMG_6320

IMG_6322FractureShownWebIMG_6350

According to the rule it must be enemy action or a conspiracy of some sort. Barb says she is afraid of what might happen on our fortieth. I asked if that meant she wanted a divorce.

Fighting the last war

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The Brady Campaign just sent out a fundraising letter:

I’m sorry, Gov. Perry, I didn’t quite catch what you said…
 
Dear Friend,

Is this the type of President the American public wants?

When asked if he was armed on the campaign trail, Texas Governor Rick Perry smiled and replied, “That’s why it’s called concealed.”

Stop this extremism before it reaches
the White House!

The Republican primary campaign has hardly begun and already it is being dominated by extremists. None as scary as Rick Perry who brazenly carries weapons — concealed and revealed. Even on the campaign trail!

Only an egotistical extremist would carry a loaded weapon into a crowd — encouraging others to do so.

Is this where America is headed? Is this the America you want for our nation’s children?

Polls prove over and over again that Americans support sensible gun laws and don’t want guns in public places. Our goal is for our elected officials to reflect the will of the American people, not the “guns everywhere” ideologues.

Please help us with a donation today to stop gun extremists before it is too late.

Sincerely,
 
Sarah Brady, Chair
Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
 

They keep using that word “extremist”. I don’t think it means what they think it means (from Princess Bride of course). There are about six million active concealed weapons licenses in this country. That doesn’t count all the people who legally carry concealed weapons in Vermont, Alaska, and Arizona without a license. Compare that to the number of Brady Campaign donors. 6,000,000 versus 50,000 is a ratio of 120:1. In other words the Brady Campaign donors number just 0.83% that of active concealed weapon licenses. Even if compared to the entire population of the U.S. there are active concealed weapons licenses for about 3% of the population eligible to legally carry. By any measure I can come up with the Brady Campaign is by far more extreme than those who possess concealed weapon licenses.

The problem for the Brady Campaign is they are fighting the last war with the same tactics they used then. And what makes it even worse is it was war they lost. That’s not too bright. But what do you expect from an organization that doesn’t know the meaning of the words they use?

Thirdpower and Lonely Machines have more.

Quote of the day—Janet Napolitano

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Let me be very clear: we monitor the risks of violent extremism taking root here in the United States. We don’t have the luxury of focusing our efforts on one group; we must protect the country from terrorism whether foreign or homegrown, and regardless of the ideology that motivates its violence.

We are on the lookout for criminal and terrorist activity but we do not – nor will we ever – monitor ideology or political beliefs. We take seriously our responsibility to protect the civil rights and liberties of the American people, including subjecting our activities to rigorous oversight from numerous internal and external sources.

Janet Napolitano
Head of Department of Homeland Security
April 16, 2009
Homeland Security chief responds to right-wing extremism report
[Really? I wonder what sort of action Ms. Napolitano and her organization have taken in response to those responsible for operation Fast and Furious. It involved criminal activities and arguably terrorist activities as well as strong hints that it was aimed at infringing upon the civil rights of American people.—Joe]

CCW population by state

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Ken G. uploaded a spreadsheet to the wa-ccw-Washington State Concealed Weapons Discussion Yahoo Group. It contains the number of CCWs issued by state along with various statistics related to CCW {CCWPopulationByState.xls (145 KB)}. I have uploaded it to here for better visibility.

There are a total of about six million CCW active licenses out there.

Traditional hunting ammo banned in Washington state

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Joe Waldron sent out an email with an alert from the NRA. Here are some important points (emphasis in original):

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) has imposed a ban on the use of traditional ammunition for all upland bird hunting on all WDFW pheasant release sites across the state.  This restriction was adopted by the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission two years ago but its implementation was delayed until this hunting season.  The Commission adopted the restriction during the course of its 2010-2012 hunting season-setting process.

With this in mind, it is critical that hunters and sportsmen participate in the 2012-2014 season-setting process, which is just getting underway.  The WDFW will be hosting a series of public meetings next week to take comments from the public as the first step in the process.  You can bet that the anti-hunting extremists will be represented at these meetings so the importance of hunters and sportsmen participating cannot be overstated!

…

…

No scientific studies have been cited showing population-level impacts on any species.  The WDFW seems to be acting on emotion and politics, citing the “potential” for problems associated with traditional ammunition as the basis for these far-reaching restrictions.

The NRA believes that the current push to ban the use of traditional ammunition in Washington is part of a new strategy being used by anti-hunting and anti-gun activists all over the country to attack our hunting traditions and firearm freedoms.  Traditional ammunition bans have a significant chilling effect on hunting by pricing hunters out of the market while hunters’ ranks are already in decline.  The opposition’s “next logical step” will be to propose a complete traditional ammunition ban throughout Washington.  This is the pattern in other states so don’t think “it won’t happen here!”

…

With that in mind, it is important for you to attend the WDFW meeting in your part of the state.  The following meetings will run from 7:00-9:00 p.m.:

–         August 22 – Federal Way Community Center (Alder & Birch rooms), 876 South 333rd St, Federal Way
–         August 23 – Edison Place Event Center (Edison Room), 201 North Rock St, Centralia
–         August 24 – The Lincoln Center (Monroe Ballroom), 1316 North Lincoln St, Spokane
–         August 25 – Clarion Hotel & Conference Center (Selah Wapato rooms), 1507 North First St, Yakima

In addition to attending one of the above meetings, please comment on the issues at the WDFW’s hunting website.  Your voice matters!  Comments must be submitted by Tuesday, September 20.

It’s another case of policies being implemented by a theocratic government of the self-anointed.

Leftist governments are theocracies

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I just started listening to Thomas Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy but already I have several ideas for blog posts from the material. Then this evening I read How the Academic Left Engages in Debate by John Lott. It could have been another case study done by Sowell. The academic left, aka “the self-anointed”, comes up with some idea for social policy and then when the results come in different than what was expected they make excuses, attack those that point out the policy is a failure, and in general show a complete disregard for factual data.

Here is a sample:

In a debate carried nationally on National Public Radio, Donohue claimed that Wilson not only was employed by the National Rifle Association, but had let his employment bias his academic findings:

The lone dissenter was someone who was not an econometrician, who admitted in his dissent that he wished he knew more econometrics, and who had previously testified as an expert witness on behalf of the execrable NRA.

When later called on to justify this claim after the debate, Mr. Donohue did not offer proof, but instead called on Wilson to prove that he had never gotten paid by the NRA. When asked for evidence, Donohue e-mailed me: “Do you have Wilson’s email address or not? I am going to assume you do and that you know he worked for the NRA since you could ask him via email to confirm or deny and cc me, and you are not doing so.” Even later in 2009, after Wilson had denied that he had ever worked for the NRA, Donohue refused to accept it: “On the issue of the NRA, somehow I suspect that the Ronald Reagan professor of public policy doesn’t think the NRA is a bad organization and therefore any affiliation would not be deemed problematic.” Even during the last couple of weeks, with repeated calls to publicly retract his claim, Donohue has yet to correct the record.

Their beliefs cannot be refuted because facts are irrelevant to them. The leftist ideology is faith based. They just worship government instead of god(s). I find this very depression. Theocracies of any flavor have a strong tendency toward bloody repression of dissent.

Quote of the day—Roy Denney

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And, if you anti-gun liberals don’t want law-abiding citizens to have the guns, then go to the auctions, buy the guns, and destroy them yourselves. This still provides money to the communities for education.

Roy Denney
Aug. 15, 2011
Sales would aid communities, and gun haters could help
[Great idea! And I would be okay if they expanded the program to buying guns, with their own money of course, brand new from their friendly nearby gun shop. Buy them all send them all to hell. For the children–of course.—Joe]

Quote of the day—John Milton

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Nations grown corrupt
Love bondage more than liberty;
Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty.

John Milton
[I think there is more than one way to bondage. But bondage is a form of corruption so it may be that the correlation is so strong that it is difficult to distinguish them under many circumstances.

The key lesson to be learned here is that bondage is easy and that liberty is strenuous. It would be so easy to let the government make all my decisions for me and to provide me with my basic necessities. Everything that I need and in return I give them the minimum of what I can make them think are my abilities. Wouldn’t life be much easier then? Shouldn’t everyone do that?

As a friend of mine explained, “Here. Have this piece of candy. It tastes really good. It causes cancer and it will kill you 20 years from now but for now it tastes really good.”—Joe]

Quote of the day—Diane S. Sykes

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The City considers live firing-range training so critical to responsible firearm ownership that it mandates this training as a condition of lawful firearm possession. At the same time, however, the City insists in this litigation that range training is categorically outside the scope of the Second Amendment and may be completely prohibited. There is an obvious contradiction here.

Diane S. Sykes
July 6, 2011
Circuit Judge
United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit
RHONDA EZELL, et al., v. CITY OF CHICAGO
[One never hears claims that the anti-gun people are too smart or that their logic is impeccable. It’s nice to see judges and the general public coming to the realization that these guys are mostly nuts and should be treated as such.—Joe]

Planting seeds in Canada

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About 1996 I was working as a contractor for Microsoft on DirectX video drivers. Some guys came from ATI (later purchased by AMD) in Toronto to learn how to write drivers for themselves. I was the guy they were assigned to.

In my office I had an USPSA and other targets with bullet holes in them. DeVerne expressed an interest in the targets and I offered to take him to the range. He quickly agreed and he shot my Ruger P-89 and a rented .22 pistol. I don’t remember a whole lot about it except I remember that as we were leaving he said something to the effect of, “That is the most fun I have ever had.” I was a little surprised and suppressed a snide remark about a guy as smart him having not discovered sex yet.

He checked into things and reported back that he could get a pistol if he went through some paperwork hoops. Hmmm… he might actually be serious about this.

I hadn’t thought much about it in a long time but then I got an email from him about a month ago:

Hey, Joe.

Set the Wayback Machine for 1996/97. Remember that dude DeVerne from ATI who was stuck in your cube at Microsoft “’cause Canadians don’t like guns”, but turned out to be OK with guns, and actually worked?

I see from your blog you are still enjoying the shootin’ sports. And you seem to spend part of your time in Seattle. I am going to be in Redmond for a (no doubt) enjoyable and illuminating conference/meeting on Windows 8, and I thought if you found it convenient, we could have a coffee and shoot a deadly paper target or two.

And then I’d ask you all about good area gun stores, since I have become a ISSF pistol shooter in the past 8 years.

DeVerne

In the following emails I discovered:

Went to the Canadian National Handgun Championships, got 1 gold, 2 silver and 3 bronze. Did not make the Paralympic team  🙁

http://www.aha.abshooters.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=70&Itemid=155

Uhhh…. Wow!

Paralympic? Hmmm… I wondered what that was about.

We got together last Thursday and went off to the range. He put a few magazines full through my STI. He said mostly he wanted to show me that he was a better shot than he was the first time we went to the range:

WP_000157

He was. And that was when he shot nothing but one handed Bull’s-eye style. But what impressed me more than his shooting was that he now owns about 40 guns! His collection includes rifles and handguns both very old and very new.

I asked about the prosthetic foot. He told me it was new since I had seen him last but the story was far less interesting than he would have liked it to have been for the price paid. It turns out the foot has an unexpected advantage to his shooting sports. It puts him in a different class of shooters and instead of being a middle of the road ordinary shooter he is a very good handicapped shooter. Hence the metals in the National Championship match.

I said would give him a link to Breda, the only other shooter I know with a detachable appendage.

I planted the seeds of a monster and now he is corrupting Canada from the inside. In Toronto even! Smile

Splash

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In case you ever wondered why, when shooting steel plates, bullet jackets sometimes come back but not the core of the bullet. Here, at 1,000,000 frames per second, is an explanation. Awesome video:

Via email from Erick P. at work.

Quote of the day—Solomon Friedman

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Those that voluntarily submit themselves to licensing and training requirements, register their firearms, store them legally, are in fact subject to, in some ways, to more strict regulation than individuals that are convicted of violent firearms offenses.

Solomon Friedman
August 12, 2011
Collector, Not Criminal
[This is in Canada, not the U.S., but some of the things he says apply to people who hold a Federal Firearms License. Is it too much to ask that firearms owners exercising their natural right to keep and bear arms be treated no worse than violent criminals and pedophiles?

If I have the time later today I have some interesting info to report about my efforts to defeat the anti-gun people in Canada.—Joe]

Security theater numbers

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Why do they even try to fool us? The numbers are overwhelming in support of the claim that TSA stands for A Security Theater:

More than 10 percent of the TSA’s identification badges have errors that could compromise airport security, a new audit has found.

Omissions and inaccuracies ranging from birthdates and birthplaces to incorrect assessments of security threats abound in identification badges assigned to the approximately 900,000 people who have unescorted access to secure areas of airports, according to a report from the Department of Homeland Security inspector general.

…

Each year, the Transportation Security Authority oversees the vetting of approximately 550,000 badge applications.

There are nearly 1,000,000 people with unescorted access to secure areas of airports. Once inside the secure area they can travel to the secure area any other public airport in the country without having their credentials checked. Is anyone going to seriously try to convince me that not one in a million people is susceptible to black-mail, extortion, and/or threats against themselves or their family such that people will ill intent could not use them to gain access?

How much time can background investigators spend to vet those 550,000 applications? As the report says, they aren’t doing a very good job and it’s not surprising.

TSA—It is A Security Theater.

Quote of the day—Rick Perry

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We don’t see the role of government as guaranteeing outcomes, but allowing free men and women to flourish based on their own vision, their hard work and their personal responsibility.

Rick Perry
Texas Governor
August 13, 2011
Texas Gov. Perry jumps into 2012 Republican race
[Those are the right words to get my vote. But I have a feeling those same words absolutely inflame some people. The same sentence that included the quote above completed with, “said Perry, who has never held a private sector job…”

How does what Perry said relate to a “private sector job”? It appears to me the reporter was just looking for some way to draw some blood from Perry. And, of course, like most people on the left the truth is of little importance if a falsehood serves their purpose better. It appears Perry was in the cotton farming business from 1977 until 1984.—Joe]

Of academic interest only

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This is of no practical use to me but it might be of interest to a few of my readers:

Penis length cannot be determined by how big his hands or feet are — those and other supposed indicators have been widely discredited for years. But now a team of Korean researchers has produced what may be a more reliable guide: the ratio of the length of his index finger to that of his ring finger. The lower that ratio, the longer the penis may be, the researchers wrote Monday in the Asian Journal of Andrology.

That is the shorter the index finger in relation to the ring finger the more likely the man’s penis will be longer.

There is something else that ratio supposedly indicates:

The ratio of length between a man’s second and fourth fingers (2D:4D) is thought to be linked to the amount of testosterone he received in the womb. According to new research, it also shows something else: How attractive a man’s face will be to women.

The research looked at the relationship between the 2D:4D ratio, how attractive women thought the face was, and other signs associated with attraction and testosterone production: body smell and voice.

Men with a lower 2D:4D ratio (shorter pointer and longer ring fingers) were thought by the subjects to be more attractive, have more “masculine” features, and have more symmetrical faces.

Posted in Sex

Quote of the day—Henry Mencken

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Every government is a scoundrel.

Henry Mencken
[Of course. What do you expect when people exercise the power to collect money at the point of a gun instead of earning it? Who but a scoundrel is attracted to a job like that?

Government is a necessary evil and as Jefferson (perhaps mistakenly—note 1), Thoreau, and Baker have said that government is best which governs less.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Violence Policy Center

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Although the majority of Americans favor stricter handgun controls, and a consistent 40 percent of Americans favor banning the private sale and possession of handguns, many Americans do believe that handguns are effective weapons for home self-defense and the majority of Americans mistakenly believe that the Second Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the individual right to keep and bear arms.

Violence Policy Center
1988
Conclusion to Assault Weapons & Accessories in America
[It wasn’t a majority of Americans that were mistaken in their beliefs about the Second Amendment. It was the bigoted minority—like those that supported the VPC and the Brady Campaign and would not believe us no matter how many times we told them and explained it to them.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Diane S. Sykes

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Both Heller and McDonald suggest that First Amendment analogues are more appropriate, see Heller, 554 U.S. at 582, 595, 635; McDonald, 130 S. Ct. at 3045, and on the strength of that suggestion, we and other circuits have already begun to adapt First Amendment doctrine to the Second Amendment context.

Diane S. Sykes
July 6, 2011
Circuit Judge
United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit
RHONDA EZELL, et al., v. CITY OF CHICAGO
[This occurred over a month ago but the taste is still incredibly sweet. The Second Amendment is to be treated like the First Amendment. Learn to use that analogy when you have discussion with the anti-gun people. If we learn to use it correctly I’ll bet it will have a great effect on them.

And to give yourself a nice warm glow read up on “chilling effect” and ponder those implications.—Joe]

Casting for New TV Show about Disaster Survival

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I can sort of figure out why this email was sent to me. But I’m not the person they are looking for:

Hello,

I’m currently casting for a pilot television show about preppers/survivalists. I think you may be a great resource for finding well prepared people, who would be open to appearing on camera. I’m wondering if you would be willing to post this info on your blog or website, or just pass this info along to anyone you think would be interested.

The gist:
It’s a 30 minute show, and we will feature two stories. We are mostly interested in seeing what the person has prepared or prepped, and right now we’re specifically looking for someone with a stocked bunker or extensive prep. The idea is to meet the person and see what they’ve prepared, then bring in a survivalist expert to evaluate how long you could actually live for if a catastrophe were to happen.

The purpose of the show is not to exploit beliefs, we actually want to cast people who the viewers will be able to relate to. We also want to feature someone who has prepped extensively, either in the home, or in a bunker. We really want something visually stunning.

This has been extremely hard to cast because of the secretive nature of the people who are preparing–which is completely understandable. I am contacting you because I think it’s important to get the word out about survivalists/preppers–that they aren’t all crazy people, that most of them are smart, well-informed people who we could take a lesson from. And I am hoping you will be able to pass this info along if you know someone who may be interested in participating.

We can provide full anonymity, and compensation is $1000 for the person who is chosen.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you for your time!

Michelle Reindal | producer | screaming flea productions |  mreindal AT sfpseattle.com

It’s not that I can’t keep the crazy away long enough or that I couldn’t pass for smart and or well-informed if I really wanted to. It’s that I finished my prep when I left the farm 35 years ago and then I moved out of my bunker and took up residence in the Clock Tower just last month.