Reasons to Vote for Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide

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I don’t usually do book reviews but I got this one as a Father’s Day gift and was encouraged to blog about. The book is just so spot on that I agreed. The book is Reasons to Vote for Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide.

As I opened the package Jaime watched me closely with a slight smirk mostly hidden. I cautiously turned the book over and read the back cover:

“Thorough.” (Ben Shapiro, New York Times bestselling author of Bullies)

“Michael Knowles perfectly documents what’s inside the minds of Democrats. A real page-turner!” (Michelle Malkin, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Sold Out)

“I read it twice!” (Dennis Prager, New York Times bestselling author of The Ten Commandments)

“Brilliantly argued! You will not find a more enlightened defense of liberalism. Ever.” (Jason Mattera, New York Times bestselling author of Obama Zombies)

“Insightful, yet remarkably easy reading!” (Guy Benson, bestselling author of End of Discussion)

“The most efficient way to learn about the issues that Democrats really care about. This is a must read.” (Katie Pavlich, New York Times bestselling author of Assault and Flattery)

“The reasons to vote for Democrats can be subtle and complex, but Knowles boils them down to their essence.” (Andrew Klavan, New York Times bestselling author of The Great Good Thing)

Okay…. I know of and respect the opinions of some of these people and told Jaime as much. She told me she thought about getting the Audible version but was concerned a lot of the impact of the book would be lost. Her anticipation could barely be contained. I let the pages ripple past my thumb scanning for tables and graphics. There were none.

I burst into laughter and laughed until my stomach hurt and I was wiping tears from my eyes.

It’s a really, really good book. It has 245 pages, an extensive bibliography, and includes chapters on:

  1. Economics
  2. Foreign Policy
  3. Civil Rights
  4. Education
  5. Homeland Security
  6. Energy
  7. Jobs
  8. Crime
  9. Immigration
  10. Values and Principles

Read the reviews on Amazon.

Quote of the day—Brett

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Three weeks of utilities are all that separate us from savagery.

Brett
June 23, 2017
[Brett is a co-worker of mine.

I’m not sure it will take three weeks, but it’s in the ballpark.—Joe]

Resistance is futile

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I am in the process of renewing my ATF license to manufacture high explosives. For some reason I can’t find anywhere in the U.S. Constitution where the Federal government has been granted the power to regulate the manufacture and consumption of explosives entirely on my property, entirely within the state of Idaho.

So, in keeping with the current “resist” political theme of the last few months, I’m bravely sending the renewal form to the ATF with a “Freedom Forever” stamp.

WP_20170626_20_06_57_Pro

I suspect no one at the ATF will perceive the irony and my resistance will be futile.

USPSA status update

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As I have mentioned before (and here) on the weekend of June 3rd and 4th I took the USPSA Range Officer class. I procrastinated some on the take home test and turned it via email on Saturday June 17th. On Sunday, June 18th I participated in the USPSA match at Marysville Rifle Club. A few minutes before the match started I received an email from the instructor saying I had passed with a 96% and was once again a certified RO. There were lots of ROs on my squad and I didn’t exercise my newly acquired RO powers.

After having some misses in the first two stages I did do well enough in the classifier that I bumped my classification score up to just barely into B class again (60.2098%, B class is 60.0% to 75.0%) after turning in C class classifiers for several years.

When I was shooting matches regularly in the late 90s I had a classification as high as 68.5272% with occasional individual classifier scores above 75%. But I basically stopped shooting for several years. What is interesting to me is that my skill level, according to various drills I have kept records of, is now as high as it ever was but my classifier results are a much lower percentage than they were before.

When I took the Intensive Handgun Skills class in February of 2016 the instructor, Greg Hamilton, commented that USPSA classification levels have dropped about one full class in the last 15 or 20 years due to the increased skill level of the top shooters. Shooters are classified according to what percentage of the best shooters scores they achieve. So if the best shooters improve and you stay the same your classification level will drop.

<Heavy Sigh>

I was hoping to make A class someday but I should have put the effort in 20 years ago when I was younger, quicker, and it was easier. I’m now in a Red Queen’s Race to just hold on to my B class status.

Quote of the day—Redcap ReaverBait‏ @ReaverBait

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Yes, because nothing is more important than your manly phallic symbol and getting to murder someone. No way that could possibly go wrong…

Redcap ReaverBait‏ @ReaverBait
Tweeted on June 16, 2017
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

This is what they think of people who exercise their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.

Via a tweet from BFD‏ @BigFatDave.—Joe]

Update: ReaverBait replied on twitter to this blog post. Absolutely amazing! It is a classic response as predicted by SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police in less than 140 characters:

Replying to @JoeHuffman

Yes, you reeaally needed to @ me with your bullshit “waaah I need a gun to feel manly” nonsense. Grow the fuck up.

The three rules of SJWs are:

  1. SJWs always lie.
  2. SJWs always double down.
  3. SJWs always project.

The initial tweet quoted above was a lie. Then in the response she doubled down on the lie and projected her immaturity onto people exercising their specific enumerated rights.

Quote of the day—Daniel Greenfield

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The ritual is tribal. A lefty dons the mock wig of the hated enemy and is ritually humiliated for the entertainment of the tribes of Manhattan, Berkeley and Marin County. The foe is destroyed in effigy. The video of his destruction is virally spread with titles such as, “Saturday Night Live Destroys Trump”.

And yet Trump, like all the other viral subjects of destruction, is never destroyed. The tribal ritual lets lefties vent their anger on a totem that, unlike Trump, can actually be destroyed by liberal laughter.

Satire isn’t trying to save the Republic. It isn’t stopping Trump. It’s saving the left.

Daniel Greenfield
May 2017
The War of Two Americas
[Via Robert J. Avrech and email from Paul Koning.

Read the whole thing. I alternated between seeing it as a nearly unbelievable conspiracy theory and brilliant insight. Perhaps it is both.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Chelsey Gentry-Tipton

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Watching the congressman crying on live tv abt the trauma they experienced. Y is this so funny tho?

…

The very people that push pro NRA legislation in efforts to pad their pockets with complete disregard for human life. Yeah, having a hard time feeling bad for them.

Chelsey Gentry-Tipton
Nebraska Democratic Party Black Caucus Chair
June, 2017
Via Omaha World-Herald
[This is what they think of you.—Joe]

New short story / series

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Gotta keep writing. There is a long story I won’t bore you with as to the delays in getting sequel/prequel published properly, so in the meantime i thought I’d write a short story. Not in the same universe as “The Stars Came Back,” more Conan-esque. Young barbarian getting a start in life, etc. Not precisely YA, a bit gory, but not too gratuitous. He’s not grown up enough yet to have mighty thews and a crushing sword-stroke (yet).

Working title might be “Career Choice”, Part I. I’ll be posting there daily until it’s done, something around a thousand words per day. Start here.

Home page to see the whole series of posts start here.

Overheard at the office

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From the office today:

Greg: A woman asked me to kill a spider. I told her no. It was here first. She told me it was her or the spider.

Josh: The spider is still in his house. It has taken over the bathroom. The entire bathroom is filled with webs and it lives in the skylight.

Greg: I don’t respond well to ultimatums.

This story has been told more than once. Caity’s version is:

Josh: So, Greg was dating a woman. She found a spider in the bathroom and asked that Greg kill it. He said no.  She said, it’s me or the spider.


Greg: Well, the spider was there first.


Josh: Yea, I’ve met the spider. It lives in the skylight.


Greg: I don’t do well with ultimatums.

Brett’s version involves a discussion of the hotness of the woman and the attitude of the spider versus the attitude of woman. It turns out that the woman was “hot” but the attitude of the spider won out overall.

Prediction: Gimps, Dinosaurs, Crazies Are Next

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First, they came for the Jews.
Then, they came for the women.
Next, they came for the blacks.
Thereafter, they came for the queers.
Moving forward, they’ll come for the gimps.
After that, they’ll come for the dinosaurs.
Subsequently, they’ll come for the crazies.
In the end, they’ll come for the Commies — because, logically, that batch can’t last.

The self-defense movement’s coming for you, too. Yes, you.

Yesterday, Nicki Stallard of the gay gun group Pink Pistols had an op-ed featured in The New York Times. Yes, you heard me right, The NYT. The Gray Lady. The Lefty Rag.

Nicki nailed it. The L.G.B.T. Case for Guns is quite possibly the most crisp, concise, salient piece I’ve ever read about marginalized classes and their right to self-defense. I’m not exaggerating.

Says Stallard:

This is a call to L.G.B.T. people to take their own defense seriously, and to question the left-leaning institutions that tell them guns are bad, and should be left to the professionals. Become a professional. You’re allowed. That’s what the Second Amendment is for. We can fight back when our lives depend on it.

Big steps happen when gun packs branch out.

Prediction: The next specialty gun groups to mobilize will be, in descending order: disabled people, seniors, and “the mentally ill”. (The latter being all of us, except for the busybodies who define insanity, but those folks wouldn’t be reading this blog, unless they’re paranoid and planning to terrorize all of us gunfolk.)

Together, let’s see how this story unfolds. Send a thank you note to Nicki and the New York Times, while you’re at it.

Lastly, I’m not forgetting about the white guys. It goes unsaid: you’re already at the tippy-top of the endangered species list.

Quote of the day—Michael Tomasky

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Now, the next eight times some right-wing nut goes on a shooting spree, they’ll have “but James Hodgkinson!” at the ready.

So be it. I abhor this shooting, and I abhor all such shootings. And while I would agree that it was a damn good thing that the police were there, I would not agree that that just proves that more people should have guns so that more Hodgkinsons can be stopped before inflicting the maximum damage. Teachers and regular citizens aren’t cops. They don’t do repeated drills on taking down perps, and they shouldn’t.

Michael Tomasky
June 15, 2017
One Left-Wing Gunman Doesn’t Make a Movement
[I found it very telling that he went through a long list of political assassinations. He correctly labeled almost all the assassins as left-wing. He exempts John Wilkes Booth from the left-wing label even though he almost for certain was a Democrat and murdered a Republican. Not one of the assassins listed is “right-wing”, and I can’t think of any of the many mass shooters in our country one could call “right-wing”. In fact they almost all clearly identify as Democrat with some being apolitical.

Tomasky then predicts something about “the next eight times some right-wing nut goes on a shooting spree”… Well, if past performance is an indicator of future results then there will be about 500 left-wing mass shooters before we get eight right-wing shooters. And this doesn’t even get into the leftist governments who were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of people in the 20th century.

It’s true, teachers and regular citizens aren’t cops. But it is clearly false that we don’t do repeated drills shooting bad guys. There were 90 people doing essentially that at the match I was at last Sunday (I came in 9th out of 24 in my division). And the weekend before there were 26 people doing at the match I participated in (I came in 1st out of 10). Every weekend and many week days there are matches in my area where hundreds of people practice shooting bad guys. Some of us are very, very good at this.

So, why does he claim we shouldn’t be doing this? The only reason I can think of is that he wants us to feel, and be, defenseless against both the left-wing individuals and the left-wing governments.

At one level it amuses me to see someone relate a large body of substantially correct data and then have that person arrive at a conclusion completely at odds with their own data. But on another level it’s a very sad commentary on the irrationality of the ordinary human.—Joe]

Dr. Joe’s Cure boosts brain power

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The study is small and I’m concerned about which is cause and which is effect but one could conclude that Dr. Joe’s Cure for Everything boosts brain power:

Having lots of sex when you get older boosts brain power, scientists have discovered, with people who have regular sexual relations scoring better on verbal, visual and spatial perception tests.

A team of researchers from the universities of Oxford and Coventry, U.K., carried out a study on 28 men and 45 women aged between 50 and 83. The participants were asked about their sex lives, including how often, on average, they had had intercourse over the last 12 months. Answers included never, monthly and weekly.

They were also asked questions about their general health and lifestyle, and undertook a test that measured their brain function. This test assessed attention, memory, fluency, language and visual and special abilities. For example, for the verbal test they were asked to name as many animals possible in 60 seconds.

The original paper is Frequent Sexual Activity Predicts Specific Cognitive Abilities in Older Adults.

Posted in Sex

Gun cartoon of the day

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Via email from Oleg Volk we have this:

tumblr_obl7w1BcMI1rpw0zao1_1280

It’s a twofer! Markley’s Law and advocating violence against political opponents of the left.

It’s very telling that we have SCOTUS decisions and they have childish insults and advocates for violence.

Quote of the day—Chris Collins

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Capitol Police officers were heroes last week — their bravery and quick thinking probably saved the lives of Rep. Scalise and my other colleagues — but self-defense is my responsibility, too.

As Americans in my district and across the country know well, responsible, legal gun owners have every right to protect themselves, and that applies to members of Congress as well. I’ve worked to make sure these core values, preserved in the Constitution, are upheld. For my own protection, and for the protection of those around me, I’m putting these values into practice. Now, more than ever, I truly believe that the best place to be, during a terrible episode like the one in Alexandria, is next to a good guy with a gun.

Chris Collins
June 19, 2017
I’m a member of Congress. I’m going to start carrying a gun.
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

USPSA therapy

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There was a short article in the latest issue of Front Sight, the official USPSA magazine, about this video. It was made for a school project and is well done and might even persuade a few “soft-core” anti-gun people that gun owners aren’t inherently evil:

And their point is?

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From The Washington Post:

The gunman who opened fire on a GOP baseball team in Virginia had a local storage locker with more than 200 rounds of ammunition that he visited daily, including less than an hour before he shot more than 60 times at the team during a morning practice June 14.

I sometimes reload 200 rounds in the morning before I go to work. And then I shoot that many or more at the range at lunch time.

This explains why he got so few solid hits. He didn’t practice enough. But they don’t even suggest anything along those lines.

[sarcasm] I wonder what their intended point is? [/sarcasm]

To me this demonstrates their ignorance and/or maliciousness.

Quote of the day—Justice Anthony Kennedy

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A law found to discriminate based on viewpoint is an “egregious form of content discrimination,” which is “presumptively unconstitutional.” … A law that can be directed against speech found offensive to some portion of the public can be turned against minority and dissenting views to the detriment of all. The First Amendment does not entrust that power to the government’s benevolence. Instead, our reliance must be on the substantial safeguards of free and open discussion in a democratic society.

Justice Anthony Kennedy
June 19, 2017
MATAL, INTERIM DIRECTOR, UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE v. TAM
[H/T to Eugene Volokh and Say Uncle.

This should give gun owners protection against having their Second Amendment rights infringed upon because they belong to some extremist group such as the NRA or the Republican party.—Joe]

Maybe it’s not over yet

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Hillary Clinton’s email scandal is back in the news:

The State Department has opened a formal inquiry into whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her aides mishandled classified information while she was the nation’s top diplomat, Fox News has learned. Despite being under investigation, Clinton and her staffers still have security clearances to access sensitive government information.

The department’s investigation aims to determine whether Clinton and her closest aides violated government protocols by using her private server to receive, hold and transmit classified and top-secret government documents. The department declined to say when its inquiry began, but it follows the conclusion of the FBI’s probe into the matter, which did not result in any actions being taken against Clinton or any of her aides.

Depending on the outcome of the current State Department inquiry, Clinton and her aides could have their access to sensitive government documents terminated.

Read Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign. Hillary and Bill thought the email scandal was a literally a joke. They couldn’t believe people actually took the violation of the law seriously. Even their closest aides urging them to take it seriously was just ignored. I think they are so accustom to breaking the law, and getting away with it, that they can’t fathom why it was considered an issue.

They should be in jail (at least, a case might be made that the death penalty might be applicable). But it will be at least a minor vindication if they permanently lose their security clearances.

Overheard at the office

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From yesterday:

Joe: Actually, I always thought it would be more fun to be a girl scout.

Caity: Because of the cookies? (She knows about my sweet tooth).

Joe: No. Because of the girls.

Today our building was evacuated for some unknown reason for a few minutes. Via text messages:

Josh: I got coffee, is the building still quarantined?

Joe: Only for you. The rest of us are at our desks.

Brett: Greg decontaminated your workstation. Land mines have been removed. You can come in now.

You’ve Got 99 Problems And A Lobotomy Ain’t One: GoFundMe For Howard Dully’s Medical Expenses

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Think you’ve got problems? Think again.

Howard Dully is a son, father, husband, and author. He’s also a lobotomy survivor.

In 1960, Howard was 12 years young when his stepmother sought a transorbital (“ice-pick”) lobotomy for him. The reason? He was a difficult daydreamer who couldn’t sit still.

I first heard Howard’s story via radio broadcast in 2005. It broke my heart, and opened my eyes. Listen to the recording here.

Dr. Walter Freeman performing lobotomy on Howard Dully

Image courtesy: Howard Dully/George Washington University Gelman Library

Howard Dully didn’t have to come out of the lobotomy closet. In sharing his experience with the world, he bravely faced his uninvited demons, opened doors for other survivors, while closing the door on a dark chapter of his life. Photos from his childhood medical records speak a thousand words. And then some.

In 2006, when I was the conference organizer for the Eris Society, I invited Howard to speak. He accepted.

Howard’s presentation was so moving, someone from the crowd passed out. As the audience member was wheeled out of the room, Howard held his head high, and resumed his speech.

Howard Dully portrait

Howard Dully, the Gentle Giant. Photo courtesy: GoFundMe.com

Howard has every reason to be ferocious, vicious, and hateful towards the world. Instead, he chose to become a warm, personable, kind Gentle Giant.

Recently I found out that Howard is having some health challenges, and needs help with medical expenses.

A slice of this blog’s readership consists of freedomnistas, anarcho-capitalists, libertarians, and the like – folks who espouse that free markets, charity, and private enterprise will help lift those in demise.

I’m asking you to please put your money where your mouth is. Donate here, now. Then spread the word.

Chin up, Howard. We’re rooting for you. The world’s a better place with you in it.