Category Archives: Politics

Agenda

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It’s as if the NY Times had a conclusion, tried to find evidence to support it, failed, but published it anyway:

Beyond Guns: N.R.A. Expands Agenda

The N.R.A., long a powerful lobby on gun rights issues, has in recent months
also weighed in on such varied issues as health care, campaign finance, credit
card regulations and Supreme
Court nominees

In the health care debate this year, for instance, the N.R.A.’s lobbyists
worked with the Senate majority leader, Harry
Reid, to include a little-noticed provision banning insurance companies from
charging higher premiums for people with guns in their homes.

The N.R.A. worked out a deal last month exempting itself from a proposal
requiring groups active in political spending to disclose their financial
donors. Its push this spring for greater gun rights in the District of Columbia
served to effectively kill a measure — once seemingly assured of passage — to
give the district a voting seat in Congress.

With a push from the N.R.A., a popular bill last year restricting credit card
lenders came with an odd add-on: It also allowed people to carry loaded guns in
national parks. And the gun lobby put potential supporters of the Supreme Court
nominee Elena
Kagan on notice this month that a vote for her would be remembered at the
ballot boxes in November.

The N.R.A.’s expanding portfolio is an outgrowth of its success in the
courts, Congressional officials and political analysts said. With the Supreme
Court ruling last month for the second time since 2008 that the Second Amendment
guarantees an individual the right to have a gun, the N.R.A. now finds that its
defining battle is a matter of settled law, and it has the resources to expand
into other areas.

The NRA had success in the courts? What national level gun rights cases has the NRA won recently? Neither Heller nor McDonald were NRA cases. I suggest you ask the lead attorney for both those cases, Alan Gura, what he thinks of the NRA getting credit for those wins–I would advise that you be prepared to treat your ears for blisters afterward. The NRA certainly supported the decisions (as far as they went). But the organizations that deserve the credit in those cases are the Cato Institute and the Second Amendment Foundation.

The NRA’s defining battle is settled law? The right to keep a handgun in your home for self-defense was the defining battle for the NRA? Not even the GOA sell the NRA that short.

Would it be considered “expanding their agenda” if the NAACP or the ADL pushed through laws that prohibited their members from being discriminated by insurance companies, enabled them to visit National Parks, opposed Supreme Court nominees hostile to them, and fought laws that inhibited their lobbying?

The reporter claims the NRA is expanding their agenda but only supplies facts that support the conclusion they are pursuing their agenda–protecting the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. As we all know, being a bigot means the facts don’t matter when they conflict with your agenda. And here the NY Times clear shows they have an agenda and they are bigots.

Update: Sebastian has similar thoughts.

Quote of the day–Lee Harris

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The same thing is happening today — and that is our true enemy. The poison of the radical Islamic fantasy ideology is being spread all over the Muslim world through schools and through the media, through mosques and through the demagoguery of the Arab street. In fact, there is no better way to grasp the full horror of the poison than to listen as a Palestinian mother offers her four-year-old son up to be yet another victim of this ghastly fantasy.

Once we understand this, many of our current perplexities will find themselves resolved. Pseudo-issues such as debates over the legitimacy of “racial profiling” would disappear: Does anyone in his right mind object to screening someone entering his country for signs of plague? Or quarantining those who have contracted it? Or closely monitoring precisely those populations within his country that are most at risk?

Let there be no doubt about it. The fantasy ideologies of the twentieth century were plagues, killing millions and millions of innocent men, women, and children. The only difference was that the victims and targets of such fantasy ideologies so frequently refused to see them for what they were, interpreting them as something quite different — as normal politics, as reasonable aspirations, as merely variations on the well-known theme of realpolitik, behaving — tragically enough — no differently from Montezuma when he attempted to decipher the inexplicable enigma posed by the appearance of the Spanish conquistadors. Nor did the fact that his response was entirely human make his fate any less terrible.

Lee Harris
Al Qaeda’s Fantasy Ideology
[It is a bit long (Kevin Baker excepted) if you think of it as a blog post but as Tamara said it is fascinating.

It can be applied to so many things–gun control, government run health care (probably government run almost anything!), “global warming”, recycling, and probably a thousand other things.–Joe]

Update: The broken link has been fixed.

Those Racist Lefties

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Michelle Malkin gets mail.


She has obviously struck a nerve.


I’ll keep reminding people that the KKK were virtually all Democrats, until it is taught in public schools nationwide, and Bill Clinton with Obama get together for a national public service ad and apologize to the world for the KKK/Democrat association.


I wanted make a bigger point about the slinging of insults, often including some rather well contemplated sexual insults, when you have no argument, but I just don’t have the energy.  Then there’s the even bigger point of that against which we are fighting.  It doesn’t reason and it doesn’t have empathy or compassion.  It doesn’t even want to be seen as reasonable, if spending the energy to appear reasonable isn’t necessary.  It longs for a situation in which all pretense of reason and compassion become unnecessary.  It’s hate with a life of its own, and it will flow from one person or group to another.  As such we should understand that this isn’t personal.  You can defeat this person or that group of people, and the monster lives on.  Hell, am I starting to sound religious?  You may call it that if it makes you feel better.

Experts Surprised…

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…again.  One wonders how often an “expert” can express surprise at an outcome and still qualify as an expert.


Breaking news!  Apparently it can get hot in New York in the summer.  Amazing.

Quote of the day–Robert Bork

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In a constitutional democracy the moral content of law must be given by the morality of the framer or legislator, never by the morality of the judge.


Robert Bork
Speech
American Enterprise Institute, 1984
[The dissent in the McDonald case does not seem to have adhered to this principal or if they did they were living in an alternate reality.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Fred Hoyle

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I concluded, unhappily, I had been born into a world dominated by a rampaging monster called ‘law’ that was both all powerful and all stupid.

Fred Hoyle
[The most recent info about the TSA is what reminded me of this. But every waking minute of any day would also qualify.–Joe]

Judge Faces Death Threats

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We learn from Bayoubuzz, via Michelle Malkin that U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman, who told Obama his power is limited, is now receiving death threats;



“Last night, Feldman served as a celebrity judge at a cooking contest at a school gymnasium in Uptown New Orleans. Due to the threats, Feldman was accompanied by a federal marshal security team.

It is a sad indictment of our society today that a judge with such a sterling record of integrity and service to his country would be subject to such threats. Feldman was appointed to the federal bench by President Reagan in 1983. Today, he is in the eye of a political hurricane unlike anything he has ever experienced.”


A sad indictment of our society today?  Not my society, thank you.  Leave me out of this.  This is about the Left.  And it’s not an “indictment” of the left so much as another in a very long string of verifications of the left’s mindset.  It’s also a vindication of the American Founders’ ideas.  See; they knew our government would try to seize power unconstitutionally.  That’s what happens as a matter of course.  That’s why they took steps trying to prevent it.  After having taken these steps, they also knew things would come to blows once in a while.  Those who lust for power simply cannot help themselves, and they routinely resort to threats and violence.  That’s what political power is at its fundamental level, after all– threats and violence for the purpose of taking our treasure and trampling our liberty.


That being said; an actual death threat most likely means that the person making the threat isn’t going to act.  Otherwise they’d just go for it without all the talk.


Judge Feldman; I hope you’re packing heat, and know how to use it.


He’s accused of being a tool for the oil industry.  I suppose anyone who favors liberty and human rights (asuming the judge does– I don’t know) is a “tool” for this, a “tool” for that, and a “tool” for any worthwhile activity, so long as that activity doesn’t violate anyone’s rights.  We’ll see if the good judge can make that argument with such clarity, or if he’ll cough, splutter and squirm like a Republican.

Quote of the day–Adolf Hitler

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We are freeing men from the responsibilities of freedom, which only a few men can bear.

Adolf Hitler
[This is attributed to Adolf Hitler by a few people but I am of the opinion that this might be “too good to be true”. I cannot find it in a speech or writing of his. But then my reference materials are limited to English and mostly on the web.

Still it could easily be the slogan of politicians in this country for the last 80 years. The so called “freedom” from want and and “freedom” from fear are the classic examples. The many others which have followed such as the welfare state, government run health care, bans on recreational drugs, and repressive firearms laws are mostly just details of the implementation.

But once the politicians come to the realization some people resist the Utopian vision through their own “selfish desires” and that the ultimate freedom from responsibility is achieved in death we then find ourselves back to Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Pol Pot.–Joe]

Fifty Caliber Institute on the NRA and H.R. 5175

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What John C. Sigler of the Fifty Caliber Institute has to say is worthwhile reading. Particularily since his organization is one of those that the NRA “threw under the bus”.


A snippet:



To those who are claiming H.R. 5175 as an “NRA sell out”: Simply put, there was no sell out. And to suggest that there was a “sell out” is to either deny the facts or not be aware of the facts.

On the contrary, NRA does not and will not actively support H.R. 5175, in any form. “But that’s just more political semantics”, you say? Well, if you are a checker player maybe it is. But, if you are a “Spock-level” chess player, it is far from simple semantics.

Chris Cox and his staff have but one loyalty and that is to protect and defend the rights of law-abiding Americans to keep and bear arms, and to position NRA so as to be an effective advocate for firearms freedom in America. Neither they nor NRA are allowed to be partisans or to tie NRA’s ability to successfully execute its mission to any other group, organization or cause. NRA is and remains a single issue organization – its Bylaws require absolute fealty to that principle.

Before you criticize NRA for understanding that this isn’t your grandpa’s checker game or even your college dean’s chess game, you need to thank them for treating this as an extremely complex exercise more akin to Mister Spock’s three dimensional chess. A chess game demanding a very sophisticated and highly intellectual approach to the very serious problem at hand. We ask you to examine the facts and watch what happens in Congress over the next several weeks and months. Don’t be fooled or misled. Wait until all of the facts are in; watch how NRA’s “Mister Spock” (Chris Cox) moves the various pieces on the political game board we call Congress; and understand that if NRA wins, all gun owners and all those who believe in the entire Bill of Rights – including the First Amendment, will ultimately win.

The stakes are high – nothing less than the ultimate survival of American freedom is at stake.


Update: In the comments Boyd points out something I had totally forgotten about. Sigler was president of the NRA from 2007 through 2009.


A source with less potential for bias but in a near identical situation would be Alan Gottlieb of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms:



This week’s highly-publicized effort to exempt the National Rifle Association from the effects of the “Disclose Act,” H.R. 5175 shows how fundamentally bankrupt the legislation and its underlying philosophy is, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.


“The attempt by Democrats to essentially buy off the NRA with a tailor-made exemption should be proof enough that the entire measure is morally, if not legally, repugnant and should be rejected by Congress,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “The exemption clause, if it were to be formally adopted as an amendment to the bill, is probably unconstitutional. We think that is reason enough for Congress to stop H.R. 5175 in its tracks.”


The proposed exemption would only apply to the NRA, while essentially sascrificing the First Amendment rights of other effective grassroots gun rights organizations due to their smaller membership numbers.


“This proposed exemption is unconscionable,” Gottlieb said, “but it reveals the desperation of its sponsors to pass legislation that would still silence organizations critical of how the Democrat leadership has mismanaged things on Capitol Hill. We are today urging our 650,000 members and supporters to tell their congressional representatives to derail the Disclose Act altogether.


“Congressional anti-gunners like nothing better than to drive wedges between effective gun rights organizations,” he continued, “and this week’s events prove they can still accomplish that. We are astonished that anybody on Capitol Hill would imagine for a heartbeat that they could buy off one gun rights group at the expense of all the others. To think they could actually get away with such smarmy Chicago-style politics suggests that the Democrat leadership in Congress has not only lost its moral compass, they’ve lost their minds.


“While it is disappointing that the NRA might have accepted the exemption,” Gottlieb said, “it is despicable that the offer was ever made in the first place. If pro-gun Democrats want to shield the NRA from the effects of H.R. 5175, they should simply vote against the entire bill instead of trying to carve out a special exemption. They have insulted and infuriated millions of gun owners who are represented by smaller grassroots organizations, and they need to hear that loud and clear.”


GOA has said something also:



Tuesday, June 17, 2010


“[T]he NRA — on whose board of directors I serve — rather than holding steadfastly to its historic principles of defending the Constitution and continuing its noble fight against government regulation of political speech instead opted for a political deal borne of self-interest in exchange for ‘neutrality’ from the legislation’s requirements.”


— NRA Director Cleta Mitchell, June 17, 2010


The above quote — part of an editorial authored by NRA Director Cleta Mitchell — ran in The Washington Post today.


Like Mitchell, bloggers and editorial writers around the country have lit up the Internet with the story that we have been alerting you to over the past 48 hours. Here are just some of the headlines:


* “The NRA sells out to Democrats on the First Amendment,” The Wall Street Journal


* “Conservatives take on the NRA over deal on disclosure bill,” The Washington Post


* “The National Rifle Association’s Excuse Holds No Water,” RedState.org


The conservative movement (and to be honest, many liberal organizations as well) are coming together to loudly protest the DISCLOSE Act — legislation that threatens to gag our ability to effectively hold individual congressmen accountable in the days and weeks leading up to an election.


It is imperative that we continue hammering the Congress. But rather than cry “uncle,” liberal Democrats are now trying to buy off more groups with an exemption for those that have at least 500,000 members (rather than the higher threshold of one million, which would have applied to few groups other than the NRA).


Of course, how is the government going to know how many members an organization has? According to the legislation, each organization will have to certify to a government commission how many members they have. But what if the commission wants documentation; will the organization have to “disclose” the names of their members?


GOA, of course, will never do this. Furthermore, you should know that your Gun Owners of America can NOT be bought off. We will continue opposing this bill on principle, urging all gun groups to stick together in this fight. As we stated yesterday, we realize that: “We must all hang together, or we will all hang separately.”


GOA applauds NRA Director Cleta Mitchell for the courageous stand she took today. (You can read her editorial here.) We hope that the NRA leadership will heed her wisdom and take a stand against this bill. If they don’t, we wouldn’t be surprised if NRA members start demanding a change in their leadership. After all, the NRA has engaged in many good fights over the years, and it would be a shame to lose this VERY IMPORTANT battle because high-ranking staff led the NRA down the wrong path.

Quote of the day–Carneades

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There is absolutely no criterion for truth. For reason, senses, ideas, or whatever else may exist are all deceptive.

Even if such criterion were at hand, it could not stand apart from the feelings which sense impressions produce. It is the faculty of feeling that distinguishes the living creature from inanimate things. By means of that feeling, the living creature becomes perceptive of both itself and the external world. There is no sensation or perception of anything unless the sense is irritated, agitated, or perturbed. When an object is indicated, then the senses become irritated and somewhat disturbed. It is impossible that there be an unperturbed presentation of external things.

The subject is more or less persuaded by the image it perceives. The strength of that persuasion depends on the disposition of the subject and on the degree of irritation produced by the image. It is not the distinctness of the image that constitutes its credibility.

The only way we can ever obtain certitude is by the difficult process of examination. We cannot be satisfied with evidence that is incomplete and only probable. Our certitude is always a precarious one. Science relies on probability, not on certitude.

Carneades
Greek philosopher 214-129 B.C.
The Fallacy of the Criterion of Truth
[As near as I can tell a very high percentage of the population subscribe to the first sentence and then their subscription ran out or they turned on the T.V. to have their brains sucked dry. My discussions with many anti-gun people provides a large base of evidence to support this conclusion.

A vastly smaller percentage thought through things enough to arrive at the conclusion articulated in the first paragraph.

It is but a very small percentage of the population that make the difficult journey to the finish the last paragraph. And even those that do sometimes still conclude that because science is not certain it must be wrong and hence their certainty of something at odds with the evidence is just as valid as the science on the same topic which says else is very probable.

As son James learned, people will literally say and believe, “Because something is irrational doesn’t mean you don’t have to believe in it.”

This insistence on certainty of belief in the absence of, or in spite of, evidence drives politics and enables politicians to herd the masses like cattle. I wish there were a cure for this terrible disease. But I fear that at best there will, someday, be an adjustment in the percentages when Darwin laughs as billions struggle and fail to learn the lesson before they inevitably fail the pop-quiz of some global catastrophe.–Joe]

So I’ll Quote Myself…

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…It’s not against the law yet, is it?



Imagine a gun club shooting range that’s set up so the shooters are pointed in opposite directions– one shooter sitting or standing right next to a target, while a second shooter is also standing right next to the first shooter’s target. They shoot in opposite directions, at targets right next to the other shooter.


That’s the analogy for a common, two-lane highway.  Vehicles of up to 80,000 pounds or more, travel at up to 70 MPH (often faster as a lot of people exceed the limit) in opposite directions, mere feet apart with nothing in between but a painted line, day or night, in nearly all conditions.


Could someone do a nice graphic on that?  Joe’s been on a gun cartoon kick.  Maybe we can get this one published herein.

Gun cartoon of the day

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History has shown it was not just Present Clinton, it’s now obvious it is Democrats in general, that want to suppress free speech. It just so happens that at this moment the NRA has enough power to resist for a while.

Dealing with the devil

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As you probably already know the NRA made a deal with the devil:

On June 14, 2010, Democratic leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives
pledged that H.R. 5175 would be amended to exempt groups like the NRA, that meet
certain criteria, from its onerous restrictions on political speech. As a
result, and as long as that remains the case, the NRA will not be involved in
final consideration of the House bill.

The “certain criteria” are:

  1. The organization must have more than 1 million members
  2. The organization must have been in existence for more than 15 years
  3. The organization must have members in all 50 states
  4. The organization must raise 15 percent or less of their funds from corporations

Some say this set of criteria can be met by only one organization–the NRA.

There are lots of ways to read this and as good as the NRA is at backroom deals and reading the political winds I still wonder if they got this one right.

If you read things from the NRA point of view in the literal sense it comes out something like this:

The NRA is looking out for the best interests of it’s members and the organization. If the proposed law does not apply to the NRA then the NRA has no business spending political capital on it.

If you read things from the point of view of the devil it comes out something like this:

Get what we can now and we’ll get the rest later. Once it passes those poor souls in Hell will scream so loudly about the NRA exemption that we will collect the souls of the NRA on our next pass through town without any difficulty.

In this scenario the devil wins and goes home with our souls. It may have been delayed for a few months or a year, but the devil wins.

If the NRA is good, really good, they can play with the devil and win the game for everyone without even trying. That goes something like this:

The NRA gets it’s exemption then either with or without some back channel urging by the NRA the exemption stirs up such a storm that the entire bill becomes impossibly toxic with or without the exemption.

I know the NRA is good. But are they good enough to take a 1000 yard shot with the proper windage such that the political winds push the bullet into the X-ring once it has left the barrel?

I hope the NRA knows what they are doing because they are playing a game where (mixing my metaphors because there has been a Charlie Daniels earworm of The Devil Went Down to Georgia going on for the last twenty minutes) the devil deals the cards. And it’s more than just a fiddle of gold against a soul at stake.

Your Safety and the Rights of People You Hate

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This started as a comment to this post of Joe’s, but Joe has told me not to bury so much in comments.


Getting to basics; rights (or equal rights) have a long history of being extremely unpopular.  The American Founders knew this. They knew our rights would be constantly under attack, and tried as they could to protect them.


I spent some time, during the Cold War, listening to Radio Moscow, Radio Havana, and several other English broadcasts from not-so-friendly countries.  These programs were aimed at Americans, and attempted to malign, impugn, and smear the capitalist, libertarian ideals upon which the U.S. is founded.  The people they had as speakers were extremely good at sounding like your favorite, American-born uncle.  Very nice, well spoken, friendly, and (drum roll) they sounded exactly like today’s more reasonable sounding pundits of the American Left.


The posted quote instantly reminded me of listening to Radio Moscow back in the day, except that it is much more vitriolic than the Soviet broadcasts.


Yes; the protection of rights makes many more things possible, however, a potentiality is not actuality.  One of those things made possible by rights protection is a prosperous, dynamic society in which people can live their lives and pursue their dreams without looking over their shoulders all the time wondering when and why they might get arrested, fined, audited, stopped at a checkpoint, harassed with no recourse, et al.  Without rights protection, that vibrant society is impossible, mainly because doing less makes you safer from the above harassment, doing more makes you a target, and doing far more, and being good at it makes you the target…at some point Atlas shrugs.


As for the safety that the left pretends it wants to force on all of us;
Just as a matter of general practicality, are you safer with your rights protected, or without?  “Safe from what” would be the next question, or “from whom”?  As we’re discussing “safety” in the public arena, keep in mind the question of whether your and your neighbor’s rights are safe.


Human rights protection means that, no matter who you are, a lot of people are going to be doing a things that you absolutely hate, but are perfectly legal anyway.  A lot of other people are going to hate what you’re doing too, but they won’t be able to stop you without committing a crime of some sort.  That’s what it means, People.  It means all the good things that go along with liberty, but it also means you have to actually be tolerant, along with being tolerated, and not just talk about tolerance to make yourself look good in public forums.


Try this mind experiment, next time you see or think of someone or some activity that you hate, or that someone else hates.  Ask yourself; “who’s rights are they violating, or trying to violate?”  That’s a very clarifying and even liberating question.  If the answer is “no one’s” then move along.  Nothing to see there.  It’s time to dig in and start minding your own business, and hopefully you’ll have the freedom to mind your own business without someone trying to mind it for you.


ETA; I was once in a very long debate with my communist brother-in-law.  He was reciting the litany [as he saw it] of horrible, evil things that Wal Mart [a big target because they do so much so well] had done over the years.  When I asked that magic question; “Who’s rights are they violating?” he shut right the hell up.  In his mind I was just “tricking” him with clever rhetoric, but in fact he had never considered rights in his extensive evaluations of Wal Mart [or, presumably, in most other areas of consideration].  Again, I blame education [or what used to be referred to as Soviet propaganda] for the mass ignorance with regard to America’s Promise.

Do people really believe this?

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From the Rachel Maddow show transcript (H/T to Warthog’s Rachel Maddow compares NRA mission to Prohibition):

[T]he NRA is focused like a laser-guided scope on gun rights. They want people
on the terrorist watch list to have un-impinged gun rights.

They want
felons to have gun rights. They want crazy people to have gun rights. If you
want an assault rifle with a magazine that holds enough ammo to take out a whole
American school yard or a 50-caliber gun that shoots a bullet as big as a carrot
and can take down a pretty good-sized aircraft, if you want the right to carry
weapons like that and you don’t want a background check and you want to wear
those weapons to your neighborhood bar, the NRA has got your cold, dead back.

What is the basis for saying the NRA wants felons and crazy people to have gun rights? Has she even read the NRA web site? Or does she get all her NRA policy information via the rants of lunatics? Or is she one of those lunatics? I have to conclude the later because she implies the NRA is ineffective in it’s goals, should change it’s strategy, and furthermore goes on to compare the NRA to the prohibition movement.

What?

The VPC would be the analog to the prohibition movement. The NRA is closer to the NAACP (in the early days) or the ACLU.

Gun cartoon of the day

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The anti-gun people frequently claim this but that is grossly inaccurate and is actually nothing but projection.

Look at the responses to Just One Question, “What color is orange? True or false?” What kind of a response is that? It is totally nonsensical and people claim it is some sort of brilliant insight.

Or MikeB302000 who recently proposed the VPC report on the low “gun
deaths” in Hawaii, while ignoring violent crime and murder in general,
was an adequate response to my question. I responded in his comments by
pointing out the question is concerned with safety, not the total
number of deaths (including justifiable and praiseworthy homicide)
inflicted with the use of a firearm. This sort of thing has been
pointed out to him so many times and his ass handed to him so many times
that this morning when he came back with another post claiming my
response made him wonder if my response was “an elaborate con job” it
reminded me of a joke:

A man goes hunting with his buddies, although he’d never been hunting and barely knew how to hold a rifle.

On the first day out of camp he’s walking through the woods and he comes upon a big ass bear. “Great!” he thinks to himself. But he’s so excited and nervous that when he raises his gun and fires he misses the bear by 10 feet. The bear looks at him and stands up, and shockingly speaks. “Excuse me, but you just shot at me and missed. I’m afraid I’m going to have to rip your throat out.” says the bear as he takes out his claws and ambles towards our hero.

“You’re a talking bear! Wow! I’m really sorry for shooting at you, please don’t kill me.” The bear looks at him and says, “You know I should kill you, but I’ll tell you what, if you perform oral sex on me I’ll let you live.”

Now our hero was torn between life and death, so he chose the only option he could. That night, as he sat in camp, he heard the bear walking around jawing about how he got a human to give him a mouth hug.

So the next morning he woke up knowing that he had to kill the talking bear. He walked through the woods, and suddenly came upon the bear. This time he was very tense, the adrenalin coursing through his veins. He shot, and once again missed.

The bear looked up, stood up and walked over to him. “This is the second day you’ve tried to kill me. I’m afraid I’m going to have to tear your throat out.” said the bear in a kindly fashion.

“Please Mr. Bear, I didn’t mean to do it, please don’t kill me.” our hero whimpered. “Tell you what, you bend over and let me get Gentle Ben on your buttocks and I’ll let you live.” said the bear.

Having no choice our hero did as instructed. Later on that night as he drank himself silly in camp he heard the bear walking around chanting, “Now this human took it bear style. Once you go black bear you never go back bear.”

Thus the next morning our man woke up and knew only one thing; he had to kill the talking bear. So once again he trod out to the woods. Low and behold he came upon the bear sitting on a log. He was terrified this time, more so than before. He raised his gun and BANG!!! He missed.

The bear stood up and walked slowly over to him. And when he spoke he seemed to have gotten a French accent. “Ah, it is you again.” At this point he took out a cigarette and began smoking. “But alas, do not fear me. For I think we both realize that you are not here for the hunting.”

And so it is with MikeB302000. He is so incompetent with his apparent goal of being an advocate for gun restrictions there are only three possibilities that I can think of to explain his actions:

  1. He really is that stupid.
  2. He is on our side and wants to make anti-gun people look stupid.
  3. He is a troll that enjoys sucking up our time.

But although sticking it to him a few times is entertaining there comes a point when getting your rocks off at his expense just isn’t that much fun and is a waste of time. (Again) I have reached that point in time.

Quote of the day–Charlton Heston

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A war put off is not a war avoided.

Charlton Heston
[I don’t know the context of when this was said but it probably wasn’t meant to be the one I am thinking of.

For decades there have been gun owners who were willing to “give them what they wanted” so they could keep their hunting rifles or shotguns or some other firearm not currently under attack by the bigots. Every concession with the enemies of freedom emboldened them. Every inch of territory they owned gave them more legitimacy. Just look at California, Chicago, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York City, and Washington D.C.

How many lives have been lost or ruined with the rampant crime enabled by disarming those victims? And the enablers make no effort to hide the fact they are nothing but petty tyrants ready to shoot those that question their decisions. They should have been slapped down 70+ years ago and countless lives, billions of dollars, and millions of man hours could have been saved.

I understand that sometimes you have to retreat and give them a
little ground so that you don’t lose the entire war but we must do our best to prepare the
ground so that reclaiming it will be easier when we return with
greater forces. With the “assault weapon” ban of 1994 we did just that.
Our side insisted the legislation include funding on studies of the effectiveness of the ban and an expiration date. Both of those helped reclaim the territory in later years.

The battle over NFA34 was lost without much resistance put up by gun owners and gun organizations. We were completely unprepared–condition white.

With the political climate of 1968 the battle was tough, our preparedness was pathetic, and we lost. We must remember these losses and never let ourselves be unprepared. We now have the initiative and we should not drop it. The battle in the courts will last decades just as the battle in the legislatures has lasted decades.

But always remember putting off the battle does not mean that it is avoided. It may require a strategic and temporary retreat but just as there is no compromise between someone intent on raping or killing you there is no compromising with the enemies of liberty.–Joe]

It Bears Repeating

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A kind, compassionate, thoughtful, responsible, caring member of Congress, looking out for the rights of “the little guy” interacts with his beloved constituents;





Is it an isolated incident, or part of a culture that has metastasized throughout the halls of American government?  Little do we know that often we are actors in a grand play, the script being many thousands of years old.


All the guy had to do was answer the question; “Well, he is our president, but I can’t imagine I would “totally” support any administration.  That’s a bit of a stretch, son.  Now if you’ll excuse me…”


“Course then, the kid might have asked; “You don’t totally support Obama?  So you hate black people then, right?  You just can’t stand the thought of a black man in the Whitehouse?”  That’s probably what our good Congressweasel feared.


At a little over 400 thousand views on Youtube, last I checked, I figure it’s not near enough.


HT to Say Uncle and Snarkybites

Quote of the day–Sheriff Richard I. Mack

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Any right or freedom not worth fighting for is but a temporary privilege.

Sheriff Richard I. Mack
From My Cold Dead Fingers–Why America Needs Guns, Third Edition (“Final Chapter”), page 212.
[Not only must it be worth fighting for but people must actually go out and do the fighting and voting.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Ronald Reagan

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Of the four wars in my lifetime none came about because the U.S. was too strong.


Ronald Reagan
[This afternoon on my way back to my hidden underground bunker in the Seattle area I listened to A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles by Thomas Sowell.  Kevin gives a more complete review than I would ever consider but one thing in the book jumped out at me that reminded me of this Reagan quote. In the unconstrained vision nations enter into war because of misunderstandings many of which are because one side or both became convinced that their neighbor was preparing to go to war against them. Hence, in the eyes of those who adhere to the unconstrained vision, one of the ways to prevent war is to disarm.


As Kevin points out those of the unconstrained persuasion are as much or more interested in intent than in hard data. Does that remind you of any politicians you know?


In the unconstrained vision the definitions of the most basic words have different meanings from those of a constrained vision viewpoint. Some definitions are not merely different–they are the complete opposite (for example see the video I linked to here). This is why, for them, “freedom” and/or “economic justice” can entail forced redistribution of wealth without a hint of irony.


For them, criminals can be understood and reformed. It was the fault of society/poverty/”economic-injustice” which creates criminals and by fixing those problems and taking away the tools of their trade there will be less (or zero) crime. As an example just last month Paul Helmke said gun violence is one component of the total violence. This, of course, presumes that violent crime committed with firearms is totally independent of other types of violent crime. It assumes there will be no substitution of other weapons if firearms are less available (and with the victims disarmed firearms are less likely to be needed by large predators). In their minds people like Ted Bundy, Jeffery Dahmer, and Richard Kuklinski (now there was one scary SOB–Ted Bundy was a pussy cat compared to him) apparently would not come into being.


That line of thought brought me to gun control and back to Reagan’s quote. What Reagan said in regards to war also applies to gun ownership and criminals. No violent criminal or political tyrant committed his crimes because his victims were too strong.–Joe]