By naming Greg Nickels as an alternate representative at the UN President Obama has essentially told America’s 85 million gun owners that their firearm civil rights are in jeopardy. Nickels cannot be counted on to defend the Second Amendment because he would like to see it erased from the Constitution.
We got rid of him after he messed up in Seattle so badly that he lost in the primary. Now he is given the opportunity to mess up on a global scale. He should have been sent to Federal prison where he couldn’t do so much harm to everyone.—Joe]
The UK’s tax collection agency is putting forth a proposal that all employers send employee paychecks to the government, after which the government would deduct what it deems as the appropriate tax and pay the employees by bank transfer.
What’s next?
I think I can guess.
First, total control of the money. You will no longer need cash because all the financial transaction will go through the government via your ID card.
After that you will no longer need money because the government will just take care of everything in their database. The government can assign you your living space and will have food other things delivered (or not) as the government thinks you need it.
They should have shot a bunch of politicians while they still had the tools to do it.
In response to Joe’s recent post here, I want to get this on record;
The communists both here and abroad are becoming increasingly disappointed in Obama because he’s not doing enough to wreck this country fast enough.
In other news; look for the old guard Republicans to embark on a scorched Earth policy as the Teaparty begins to wrest control away from them. As the Smarter-Than-Thou (Progressive-leaning) Republicans are forced to retreat in shame, or switch parties in pride, they will attempt to burn the Republican Party and loot its treasuries. We may now have the rich entertainment of watching the communists’ and the capitalists’ final disillusionment with their respective parties. We may get a straight up contest of ideologies yet, in which of course the American Principles of Liberty would win.
The current parties, desperate to maintain power, will do everything possible to avoid such honesty.
I recently heard a communist radio talk show host calling, hysterically of course, for the Dems to get busy with the mud slinging already, and with abandon, ’cause they weren’t taking this contest seriously. Cool, except that the Republicans have been doing their evil work for them of late.
Via Roberta I discovered Obama’s popularity is still quite high—in China.
Click on the first picture to see the text “The revolution isn’t success comrades, we must continue to be studious.”
In that last picture I had to look up “RMB”. It refers to the Chinese currency.
I find it “interesting” that under the Obama administration many Chinese believe U.S.A. stands for “United Socialists All”.
Obama and his friends should be aware there are such things as counter-revolutionaries. And the body counts (via Alan) might end up a little different if the gulags, famine, and torture start being implemented in this country.
I know that the members of the Gun Club at Microsoft picked up over 100,000 rounds of ammunition just yesterday. And how many of those rounds do you think went to capitalistic freedom loving people? And I wonder how many the Socialists at Microsoft picked up.
I would like for the Socialists to do the math before they engage in a purge. Math lessons can be “difficult”.
Those who steal from private individuals spend their lives in stocks and chains; those who steal from the public treasure go dressed in gold and purple.
Marcus Porcius Cato (The Elder) Roman statesman (234-149 B.C.) From The Great Thoughts (link is to the 2nd Edition, mine is the 1st Edition–1985) [At least this part of politics has not changed much in the last 2200 years or so.—Joe]
There was a call-in to one of the Marks that fill in for Limbaugh, responding to the Mark’s favorable comments on the “Fair Tax” today. The Mark repeated Steve Forbes’ call for a flat 17% income tax.
The caller tried to make the point that, although 17% would represent a large tax cut to the rich, which isn’t a bad thing, it would represent an undue hardship for those with the lowest incomes. The Mark’s reply was that at least this makes everyone a taxpayer, and therefore we’d all have a stake in things. True, but the major point was missed, in my opinion, by the host.
The correct reply to the caller’s concern is; “Perfect! Now you’ve started down the road to understanding, Little Grasshopper! If 17% percent is too much for the poor, it is too much for everyone else. If 17% will restrict the poor, it will restrict everyone else.
Let’s refer to the poor as our canaries in the income tax coal mine. If 17% makes the canary sick, we’re all being slowly poisoned, and whether we notice it right away or not, we’re all inhibited or restricted because of it.
Reduce taxes and investment and employment increase. Raise taxes and investment and employment decrease. Even if all you care about is revenue to the fed gov, and the issue of personal liberty is meaningless to you; do you want 17% of 14 trillion, or say, 8.5% of 28 trillion? That’s the sort of question we’re asking here. I say if there’s going to be an income tax it should be constitutionally limited to 5%. Any more than that not only cuts into charity in a big way, it encourages a black market, and stifles liberty and economic growth. If the fed gov can’t make it on a 5% flat tax, they’re either doing too much or wasting too much, and they need to be replaced with someone who can do the job right.
There’s another mechanism working here, that is at the same time obvious and proven, largely unreported, and almost never discussed. That is; America once was, and can be again, a haven for creativity, productivity, wealth creation, and a haven for wealth in general. Make it a safe bet that your property rights will be protected, and capital will flock to America, while at the same time wealth creation will be, once again, popping and scintillating across the fruited plains.
Let the enemies of Mankind go off and bang their heads against a concrete wall someplace. It doesn’t matter, so long as they’re ignored and powerless here.
Alright guys, just got confirmation from Wholesale Sports Outdoor Outfitters in Federal Way that we are cleared to run another open house up there this weekend. Our hours are going to be Saturday from 9-8 and Sunday from 10-6; if you’re free to help out recruit volunteers and get the word out, please let me know by replying to this email! Also, feel free to tell friends and anyone you know to stop by on Sat-Sun; feel free to post this to forums, blogs, wherever you like.
Let me know if you’re free to help, even if it’s just for an hour!
Regards, Caleb N Giddings NRA ILA Campaign Field Rep 317-445-9332
Federal Way is a few miles south of Seattle and north of Tacoma. The address of Wholesale Sports 1405 S 348th St, Federal Way.
Update: As noted in the comments, Federal Way is a city, not a street. Outsiders might be confused by that name. Other common confusions of outsiders exist over the pronunciation of several of the local cities rivers and mountains. All this is provides a great deal of amusement for the locals. Locations of particular note include Issaquah, Nisqually, Puyallup, and Snohomish (not to be confused with Sammamish or Stillaguamish).
Извините, что не по теме, но из России трудно оценивать различные американские явления.
Например, не ясно, что представляет из себя движение Militias.
Его часто описывают как экстремистское, но относится ли это ко всем , кто входит в различные негосударственные ополчения?
И второй вопрос:
Не способствует ли появлению Militias тот факт, что Национальная Гвардия фактически перестала быть “домашней армией”, объединяющей живущих по соседству людей, которые готовы к мгновенной мобилизации для защиты именно своих дворов и улиц?
Не слишком ли бюрократизировалась и оторвалась от улиц Национальная Гвардия?
Не потому ли удается так легко “обрабатывать” людей самозванным Militias?
Извините за беспокойство
Apparently he got his view of America from ABC/NBC/CBS, AKA the Old Media, AKA the Lamestream Media. I stepped in with the following comment, trying to set the record straight. I wanted to keep it short and to the point, hopefully without over-simplification. If I’m mistaken in any of this, let me know;
Traditionally, and by the intent of the American founders, the militia in this country consists of regular citizens with their own arms and equipment. They receive no pay, as the intent was to keep government influence upon the society to a minimum, thereby keeping government power from growing out of control and becoming destructive to liberty.
Some militias gather in groups of various sizes to train, while most either train on their own or not at all. Some militia groups are organized, with a headquarters and a command structure, and others are very informal, but have a common interest in fostering marksmanship among the population generally. Many years ago, our Congress formed a Civilian Marksmanship Program for that purpose. The CMP sells military surplus arms at very low prices to any regular citizen who can demonstrate that he or she has attended some number of organized marksmanship events.
Many militia members have no arms or equipment, but since they are citizens they are militia according to our nation’s founding principles. Some of them actively lobby for the restriction of the right to keep and bear arms. Hence they are citizens actively working against the citizenry.
This isn’t current news in any way shape or form. I just want it documented for my easy reference. I thought I had but I can’t find it.
I keep running into people that claim “there were no WMD found in Iraq”. Well, maybe in some strict sense that is true. The chemical weapons had already been used on his own people with the remainder smuggled to Syria prior to the 2003 invasion. And the yellow cake uranium was already known from the U.N. inspectors before the invasion.
Yellow cake uranium? Isn’t that what everyone said Bush lied about? There couldn’t have been any of that found or it would have been big news that all those people that said Bush lied would have been wrong!
The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program — a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium — reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.
The removal of 550 metric tons of “yellowcake” — the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment — was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam’s nuclear legacy.
550 metric tons isn’t just some samples for experiments at your local nuclear physics classes. It’s many, many nuclear bombs worth of material.
Here’s a story you may have missed over the long holiday weekend: 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium worth tens of millions of dollars were shipped out of Iraq to Canada. The material was transported in 37 military flights in 3,500 secure barrels, according to the Associated Press.
There hasn’t been much of a fuss about this material because it had been discovered already by United Nations inspectors after the first Gulf War. But it took a second American war in Iraq to move the material out of the Middle East. For all the talk about America’s failure to discover Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, this is a big deal. We’ve reported on claims by top Israeli officials speaking on the record that Iraq smuggled its chemical weapons to Syria before America invaded in 2003.
The uranium issue is not a trivial one, because Iraq, sitting on vast oil reserves, has no peaceful need for nuclear power. Saddam Hussein had already invaded Kuwait, launched missiles into Israeli cities, and harbored a terrorist group, the PKK, hostile to America’s NATO ally, Turkey. To leave this nuclear material sitting around the Middle East in the hands of Saddam and the same corrupt United Nations that failed to stop the genocide in Darfur and was guilty of the oil-for-food scandal would have been too big a risk.
The United States secretly shipped out of Iraq more than 500 tons of low-grade uranium dating back to the Saddam Hussein era, the Pentagon said Monday.
The U.S. military spent $70 million ensuring the safe transportation of 550 metric tons of the uranium from Iraq to Canada, said Pentagon spokesman Brian Whitman.
The shipment, which until recently was kept secret, involved a U.S. truck convoy, 37 cargo flights out of Baghdad to a transitional location, and then a transoceanic voyage on board a U.S.-government-owned ship designed to carry troops to a war zone, he said.
Think about that the next time someone says, “What WMDs?” Or they say, “What media bias?”
The invalidation of handgun bans throughout the country, accomplished in the space of two years, was sudden and surprising even to those who have spent decades laying the groundwork. Take Alan Gottlieb, founder and president of the Second Amendment Foundation, which began backing Gura’s various gun lawsuits after Heller. Since founding the SAF in 1974, Gottlieb has been hosting academic conferences, supporting legal scholars and historians, and filing carefully targeted lawsuits in defense of gun rights. Still, he says, “six years ago if you had said [the gun rights community would] see two cases get to the Supreme Court and two victories, I would have said, ‘Not in my lifetime. Maybe in someone else’s.’ ”
Gottlieb attributes the rapid turnaround in part to the brazen overconfidence of gun controllers. If Washington, D.C., had not challenged the March 2007 appeals court decision overturning its highly restrictive gun ban, the Supreme Court would not have had the opportunity to declare in Heller that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to arms. If Chicago had not insisted on maintaining its gun ban after the Heller decision, there would have been no McDonald, and the question of whether the Second Amendment binds states and cities would have remained unsettled. “We needed a little luck, and the other side gave us that luck,” says Gottlieb. “Our opponents are our biggest supporters.”
I had a long talk with Alan last November where he said essentially the same thing. My notes on that part of the conversation are:
We win because the other side screws up. All the big wins such as the 1997 I-676 in Washington state, Heller in D.C, and McDonald in Chicago could have been avoided if the other side “had been smart”. As soon as D.C. lost at the appeals court level they could have made a minor tweak in the law and we would have had to start over at ground zero and it would have decades, if ever because the court would have been stacked differently, before we could get it to the SC. Same thing in Chicago. I asked, “Do you really think they are stupid? If not then why are they screwing up?” “No. They aren’t really stupid”, he said. They have “true believers” who see things in black and white. He didn’t say it but I immediately thought of GOA on our side. “Politics is the art of the possible. Not the perfect”, he said. They haven’t been playing the game that way and they have been losing because of it. I didn’t ask but have been thinking that perhaps there is some way we can encourage them to keep screwing up.
Think about that.
They screw up and we win.
There are two lessons there. One is we need to encourage them to keep screwing up. And the other lesson is that we can screw up and lose. We can have too much overconfidence. We can be too aggressive. We can go for it all and they can win.
If you are a Washington State resident and NRA member please consider attending one of these events and helping win the battle for freedom (via email):
This November will be ground zero for the enemies of freedom trying to turn the tide against our gun rights in the Evergreen State, serving as a launching pad for their national gun ban crusade. Our opponents will be pulling out all the stops as the mid-term election nears, so it is more important than ever that we block their campaign against the Second Amendment.
To ensure we are prepared to meet the challenges and opportunities we will face this election season, NRA-ILA is hosting a free volunteer kick-off meeting on September 9, 2010 in Tacoma and a second event September 10th in Olympia!
Event 1:
Thursday, September 9th 7:00 p.m. Pacific Lutheran University University Center 12180 Park Avenue S. Tacoma, WA 98447-0001 (317) 445-9332 FREE PARKING!!!
Event 2:
Friday, September 10th 7:00 p.m. Evergreen Sportsmen’s Club 12736 Marksman Road SW Olympia, WA 98512-9200 (360) 357-9080
Each of these events is an opportunity to get involved, and is open to any NRA Member! Please invite your friends and family that belong to NRA so they can attend these great events and help us win the fight in November! I’ve attached copies of the invites to this email so you can forward them on to your friends!
Yours in Liberty,
Caleb N Giddings Campaign Field Representative National Rifle Association 317-445-9332
Unless something urgent comes up at work I plan to attend the event tonight. If you want to attend register by sending an email to caleb@gunnutsmedia.com. Here are the invites for the Tacoma and Olympia events.
Rossi lost the 2004 election for Washington State Governor after King County (Seattle and surrounding areas) waited until all the other counties had reported their results during the second hand recount then kept finding “lost ballots” and, according to a friend of mine, ended up reporting more total votes than there were registered voters in the county.
Rossi is A-rated by the NRA.
His opponent, Patty Murray, is F-rated by all gun groups.
Even though she has never seen a gun rights infringement she didn’t like she doesn’t mention it on her website. I wonder if she is ashamed of her involvement with those unconstitutional infringements. Or is like some other Democrats who would rather not let it be known of their involvement in the KKK but still support the agenda?
The current batch of Democrats is not a particularly liberal bunch.
…
[L]et’s examine what America would look like under the current Republican Party ideology:
Health care reform will be undone. At least 45 million Americans will lack health insurance. According to a Harvard School of Medicine study, the absence of health insurance leads to the deaths of 45,000 Americans a year.
…
Republicans will eliminate all gun control. We now suffer about 30,000 gun deaths per year.
…
The current batch of Republican candidates ignores the overall benefit to society of redistributing wealth from the haves to the have-nots through taxes. For Republican politicians, deaths from abortion are unacceptable, but deaths from pollution, gun violence and poverty are just background noise.
Few Republican voters would actually choose to live in the Republican ideological world. Most of them want good schools for all children, safe streets, a clean environment, fair treatment of the disadvantaged and Social Security benefits — all of which require taxes and regulation.
Steven Lachman September 7, 2010 A GOP-run nation would be barren [From the first to the last sentence of his opinion I was agape. I found it hard to believe he was serious. He had to be mocking the political left or something, right? Then I read his job title. He is a professor.
The guy yesterday that held people hostage at Discovery Channel making demands that they “save the planet” by having a programing agenda that advocated for the voluntary extinction of humans (thanks to Ry for sending me the link to his webpage) will be dismissed as a nut case. This is probably valid but perhaps further consideration should be given to the topic. Don’t forget that not only did this nut case base his philosophy on the work of Al Gore but so did Ted Kaczynski.
We have known for a long time that anti-gun activists have strong violence tendencies. And such things as John Cusack’s “I AM FOR A SATANIC DEATH CULT CENTER AT FOX NEWS HQ AND OUTSIDE THE OFFICES [OF DICK] ARMEY AND NEWT GINGRICH-and all the GOP WELFARE FREAKS” is not all that uncommon.
And of course all the great genocides of the last century were under leftist regimes.
My hypothesis is that at some level they know that is the only method by which they can achieve their goals. They, almost by definition, believe in the power of government to “do good” no matter what domain they enter into. They believe in central planning and “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” But as George Washington said, “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master.” Government is force. It is violence. Every dictate of the government is backed up with people with guns who job it is to force compliance.
Those who want to expand government, by definition, want to expand the use of force to achieve their goals. It should therefore come as no surprise that liberal individuals and groups are inclined to use violence to further their goals even outside the domain of government.
This also might explain why most liberals are opposed to the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. It explains why they keep insisting, long after the courts have ruled otherwise, that the Second Amendment only protects the power of a state to arm itself independent of the Federal government. The explanation is that they see the willingness inside themselves and those they associate with to use violence and they fear it. They believe they, and everyone else, might use violence in an unethical manner if allowed the tools and the opportunity. They believe in the wisdom of “the central committee” to temper the violent impulses they believe the individuals to have.
This might also explain why liberals accuse the others of violence tendencies. They are projecting the worst fears about themselves onto their opponents.
These violent tendencies can be dealt with at the individual and small group level via the police and the legal system and amount to noise in the big picture of things. It’s at the governmental level that we have genocides with millions dead in the span of a few years. It is at the government level that we must enforce strong restrictions on their power to deliver violence against individuals. This is why we have a constitution that (by design, not in practice) limits governments to a small set of enumerated powers and the Second Amendment to stop a runaway government from becoming tyrannical. One might even be able to make the case that the Second Amendment isn’t only not about hunting–it’s about protecting us from liberals.
Chet came by my office today and started talking about “When we were kids.” We are about double the age of most of our co-workers and have a little more in common with each other than we do some of the other people. We both grew up on farms. He in Kansas. And, of course, me in Idaho. It gives us a perspective that “some of the younger folk” don’t really appreciate. We remember when most of the homes had outhouses instead of indoor toilets. And our parents lived through the “Great Depression”. We remember what our parents told us about what they and others had to do to make it through. I keep wondering if that will someday be referred to as “GD I” and this go around “GD II” but that is another story.
We talk about economics quite a bit. “What is it going to be like this time?”, we ask each other. Back then it was a world-wide thing too. That was what enabled Hitler to gain power.
This time it wasn’t economics that Chet wanted to talk about.
“Remember those old movies about WW II when the Germans would stop someone on the train and demand their papers?”, he asked.
My officemate had stepped out for bit and I knew we were going to have “a session”. I leaned my chair back and put my feet up on my desk and said, “Yeah. I remember.”
He continued, “We used to think how scary that was. How terrible it was they would do something like that. Right?”
“Absolutely!”, I agreed.
“There is an article in the New York Times today about how our government is doing that today on trains that run between New York City and Detroit”, he said.
I told him I had just read a blog post about that same sort of thing this morning. We chatted a while about it. Neither of us knowing what we could really do about it. “But it sure ain’t right.” we agreed. We always used to believe it couldn’t happen here. We were “special”. We were a free country and that sort of thing just didn’t happen here. It couldn’t happen here.
My officemate returned and Chet left with us both shaking our heads in sadness.
I found the New York Times article and after I read it I went over the Chet’s office. “The government is claiming that if they are within 100 miles of an international border or the three mile limit off the coast they don’t need warrant or anything. They can just grab people they think are ‘of interest’ and demand they prove they are citizens”, I told him. “Right here in this office we are within 100 miles of the Canadian border.” I let it sink in for a couple seconds then continued, “Think of what 100 miles inland from both coasts, the Gulf, and both the north and south borders cover. I’ll bet 50% of the U.S. population is covered by that.”
Chet and I didn’t have much to say after that you wouldn’t have already concluded. We could be headed for some scary times. We talked about it for a couple minutes and went back to work. I think we just got used to it.
If it makes you feel any better about the whole thing–the agent in charge of the Rochester station told the New York Times, “Our mission is to defend the homeland.”
Yeah, I’m sure it is. I think I heard that line in a movie when I was a kid.
I sometimes wonder it it wouldn’t be better if the victims of a crime were to deliver the punishment. Or in the case of the victim being dead or otherwise physically unable to carry out the punishment their nearest living relatives or friends could be assigned the task.
The convicted criminal would be sole property of the victim for three days and would be presented to the victim in stocks with a wide variety of tools available for inflicting punishment or the victim could bring their own. The victim do anything from set them free, to sell off their organs, and torture and/or kill them. It would be all be recorded and made available to the public. This would put some social pressure on the victim to deliver a just punishment.
Of course this would totally violate the Eight Amendment so suspend that objection for now and consider this just some random thought. As the anti-gun people do, only consider the plausible benefits and not the adverse consequences.
We would save a lot of money by not having prisons.
Since child abusers get such a rough time in prisons I believe this means that child abusers are believed to be inadequately punished (it could also mean it is just part of some ranking system with them being at the bottom of the respect hierarchy). I suspect there would be a lot less child abuse in the world if it were the parents or other close relative delivering “justice”.
With the current system of fixed punishments for crimes criminals can easily make rational decisions to be criminals. As in, “I can do the time so why not commit the crime?” With the punishment being unknown the potential criminal does not know if they can “do the time”.
Pacifists would be forced to carry a greater burden of their convictions. Known pacifists would be much more likely to be selected as victims. Yes, I realize this system would also result in “baiting” by sadists who portrayed themselves as pacifists which would reduce the likelihood that the pacifist would carry their full burden.
If there were no victim there would be no punishment. It would mean the end of victim-less crimes.
The thing that brought this to the forefront of my consciousness today was this story. What sort of punishment is this guy going to get from ejaculating into his co-workers water bottle? A fine? Somehow that just doesn’t seem right.
If his victim were to decide the punishment I would expect him to be stripped naked in the hot sun for three days with one hand free to drink from the water bottles within his grasp. When he finished drinking all the bottle contents he could go free. I’m sure the male friends of the victim would be glad to provide the bottle contents. He could drink or die from dehydration. His choice.
The vote on Elena Kagan’s confirmation to the Court, along with the previous
year’s confirmation vote on Sonia Sotomayor, are critical for the future of the
Second Amendment. After careful consideration, the NRA-PVF announced today that
it will not be endorsing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for re-election in
the 2010 U.S. Senate race in Nevada.
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and
well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and
medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the
event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of
livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All
children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social
protection.
Hence it is not about someone depriving someone else of food, water, or air. This is about some government (people with guns) taking goods and services from some set of people and giving it to others.
And she “can’t believe anyone would argue” against that viewpoint? An “interesting” and totally naive perspective. I would like to remind anyone that believes such a thing that 100+ million people died in the last century because of attempts to create just that type of utopia. If she and others would like to volunteer themselves for the next experiment doomed to failure I only request they take it to some place where my family and friends don’t have to contend with defending our lives and property and disposing of the rotting flesh.
NRA Washington is doing an open house at the Norpoint Range in Arlington on the weekend of Sep 4th and 5th. I know that’s a holiday weekend, however if you could put the word out to your contacts that we need a few volunteers to help me staff the table that would be fantastic. I’ll be there all day Saturday and Sunday, ideally I’d like to have 4 people a day for 2 hours each, that way we can break the times up a bit.
If you know of anyone in that area (north of Seattle) that would be interested in hanging out in a gun shop all day, have them shoot me an email!
Regards,
Caleb N Giddings
NRA Campaign Field Representative
317-445-9332
caleb at gunnutsmedia.com
I actually will be driving through Arlington on the 4th (to here) but I’m pretty sure my wife has plans for me other than hanging out at a gun range for a couple hours. I will be pack’in in the park for the weekend though.
