Monday, July 31, 2006
If You Had Any Questions As To Whether Chavez Was Our Enemy or Not....
This oughta settle it for you.
Quote:
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Iran awarded Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez its highest state medal on Sunday for supporting Tehran in its nuclear standoff with the international community, while Chavez urged the world to rise up and defeat the U.S., state-run media in both countries reported.
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RISE UP AND DEFEAT THE US?
I don't think so, pal.
But, thanks for making it crystal clear who's side you're on.
There can be only one.
Here's the happy couple:
Commies aligning with Jihadists...and folks still don't get it, folks still don't understand that this WW IV, coming to you live and direct.
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Posted By: geekWithA.45  
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Free Speech and Hyperbolefrom Egregious Charles
It you think free speech is threatened, it's something to shout about. If you think America has already lost free speech, shut up; any comment will be self-refuting.
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Posted By: EgregiousCharles
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Rejoice!
Friend and Reader {classified}, to whom I've made occasional veiled reference, and his wife {classified} are now first time parents, having brought into the world a baby girl!
The {classified} family is all happy and in tip top shape!
Yay!
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Quick Egregious Charles comments
I recently saw this quote from Stephen Colbert:
Mentioning Jesus in your speech? That’s small government. Doing what Jesus asks? That’s big government.
I'd like to offer this more accurate alternative:
Doing what Jesus asks? That's small government. Making everyone else do what Jesus asks? That's big government.
Charity and chastity are both Christian virtues. I'll be as angry at the Religious Right as I am at the Left when every April 15th I have to turn in forms about my required participation in the Right's chastity programs.
I'll have to account to God for both, but that doesn't make it the .gov's business.
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Posted By: EgregiousCharles
We Briefly Interupt This Vacation...
To bring you news: Bill Whittle hath posted Chapter 1: The Web of Trust
{Which is good, because I've already ripped through 2 of the 3 books I brought}
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Bloggus Interruptus...
I'm off for a much needed vacation, before the final death march of the Great, Secret Project gets underway.
There will be much lounging around on beaches and near pools, consumption of umbrella drinks, and endlessly repeated feats of child flinging.
In the meantime, Freedom house is in good hands, being filled with giant dogs and preposterously well armed friends.
See y'all in a bit.
Update...
As the kids are trundling off to bed, they all spill into the lab for their nightly hug-n-kiss. "Daddy, will you fling me when we get to {redacted}?"
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Monday, July 17, 2006
Aw...POOP.
So, I'm in the middle of a class, teaching a young lady the fundamentals of handgun mechanics, when the safety on my little TPH breaks.
The safety on these things is pretty straightforward. The external lever rotates a cylinder that is perpendicular to the firing pin, which both blocks the pin from the hammer, and cam locks a nub on the pin into place. The cylinder itself cracked clean in half, plopping out in the middle of the demo.
Me: "So, when we finally get to the range, this is the gun you're really going to like. Chicks dig it. The safety operates thus..." {plop}
Her: "It's not supposed to do that, is it."
Gwa9: "Nope."
Me: "Well, trust me. You would have really like that gun..."
Fortunately, I've got a line on 3 reputable TPH 'smiths. One I learned only deals with the German made Walthers, I'm hoping the other guy will come through. Failing that, I'll have to see what S&W can do.
Sigh.
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Thursday, July 13, 2006
ROFLMAO...
A friend reviews Superman Returns:
Approximate Quote From Memory
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"Superman returns? It's more like Superman returns... as a pussy. I mean, he gets like killed twice, has to be saved a half a dozen times, and the film winds up with him in the hospital. I mean, I was totally not in the mood for Superman gets his ass kicked.
----------------------------------
OK, I'm still probably going to go see it, one of these days.
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Well, A Lot of Folks Are Talking About...
this article, wherein the Democrats show the beginning of awareness that gun control is a political loser, " ...as advocates of gun control increasingly find themselves marginalized and ignored.".
That's good. Gun control, or contravention of any other element of our traditional Rights SHOULD be a political third rail.
Nonetheless, one does not get any impression that the Dems are having a sincere change of heart on the topic, but rather that the Dems should lie low on the topic, especially when speaking in Red territory.
My opinion on the matter is fairly straightforward. The Democratic party has been the political champion of the forces of organized gun bigotry for a very long time, and habits like that aren't shed overnight. Their sins in this matter are many, outrageous, and long running.
We are prudent to be skeptical.
Accordingly, my position is that the onus of proving their sincerity rests squarely upon them, and until such evidence is forthcoming, the default judgement is that they are acting duplicitously.
Earlier today, Reader AL noted the article quoting Saul Cornell of Ohio State's deceptively named "Second Amendment Research Center", and asked a profoundly pertinent question. Remembering that Prof. Cornell* functions as a shill for the viciously antigun Joyce foundation, he wondered aloud if that might also be true of Daniel Webster and the "Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research".
A quick jump to (link intentionally left cold) http://www.jhsph.edu/gunpolicy/ confirms that this is indeed the case, and that this center is funded by an all star cast of the forces of organized gun bigotry's sugar daddies:
Quote:
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Past and present funders of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research include: The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The David Bohnett Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, The Funders' Collaborative for Gun Violence Prevention, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Joyce Foundation, The Overbrook Foundation, and The Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund.
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and that their M.O. matches that of the Joyce Foundation to a "T".
Once again, we find the Joyce Foundation and fellow travelers sitting as the spiders in the center of the web:
Of interest in this article is that the shills muted statements show evidence of adapting their strategy for these times, lest they "find themselves marginalized and ignored."
Update!
Just as I was about to go to bed, another thought struck me. Something about this quote stuck in my craw:
Quote:
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Saul Cornell of Ohio State's Second Amendment Research Center, says polls consistently show broad support for gun control. What gives the gun lobby strength, he says, is that supporters see gun control as a make-or-break issue. With that passion comes money. Gun-rights groups contributed nearly 14 times as much as gun-control groups in the 2004 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
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This paragraph is ripe with import. For starters, Prof. Cornell, like most of his ilk, does not attribute their failure to gain traction with their agenda to that agenda's shortcomings. He attributes it to funding, essentially saying "Boo hoo, the big bad NRA outspent us".
I consider, then that the NRA is funded $20 at a time by millions of individual people, wheras the forces of organized gun bigotry are funded in big whalloping grants by a small number of centralized and deeply pocketed foundations. (From what I remember of the spreadsheet I ran some time ago, Joyce funding typically comes in packets around $100K, and IIRC, there where more than a few in the 1/2 - 3/4 megabuck grants on the list.)
Foundations, I might add, are self contained and self perpetuating. In essence, they're kickstarted with seed capital, usually massive gifts or bequests of assets that are then invested. The grants given by foundation are essentially the earned interest of those assets, not the principal itself.
Without commenting on intention, I find that there is also a bit of misdirection in that quote. Accepting in good faith the Center for Responsive Politics figures, it measures only campaign contributions. What is not in that figure is the thirty some odd MILLION the Joyce Foundation ALONE spent over the last handful of years not on campaign contributions, but on social engineering projects through their proxies.
*Kevin Baker's Saul Cornell Posts.
Kevin's also dealt with John's Hopkins Here, here, and here.
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Monday, July 10, 2006
Alan Gottlieb's Interview
Alan Gottlieb on the United Nations: Q&A
Short and sweet, worth reading, with lots of nuggets like this:
Quote:
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GW: Were American anti-gun organizations there, and what were they up to?
AG: Oh yes. But they kept a very low profile because they were afraid that we could use their statements at the UN to prove to more Americans that this event was a gun control conference. Michael Beard from the gun ban group Coalition Against Gun Violence which changed their name from the National Coalition to Ban Handguns to hide the intent of the group was there. So was the Brady Center’s Million Mom March branch. The Massachusetts based Physicians Against Nuclear War were there lobbying for a ban on handguns.
One of the Million Mom March leaders from California, unaware that I was in the room, asked some of the anti-gun NGO delegates from Germany and Switzerland at the “Targeting Ammunition” session for help to pass new laws regulating ammo marking and tracing, as well as to limit purchases in the United States. One of their recommendations was to push for a law that would issue ammunition purchase control cards to gun owners limiting the kind, type and quantity of ammo one could buy.
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Mark Your Calendars...
The PA house will convene as a committee of the whole to discuss gunlaw on September 16.
Methinks early September will be a good time to send some reminders your legiscritter.
{h/t David Hardy, Arms and the Law}
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Shields Up.
Manhattan Building explodes, collapses.
Update!
Probably a gas explosion.
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Friday, July 07, 2006
UN Anti-Gun Conference Goes Down In Flames, Wreckage Sinks At Sea...
Says Dave Kopel
Quote:
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U.N. Conference Ending, Freedom Winning!!
As of 6 p.m. eastern time, the word from the United Nations small arms conference is that the conference is concluding with NO final document, and NO plans for any follow-up conference. It was the latter issue that prevented an agreement about a final document. The officials who had been charged by the conference chair with drafting the conference document presented a final take-it-or-leave it document a little while ago; that draft document eliminated various provisions that the U.S. delegation had found objectionable, but also declared that there would be at least two more conferences. The U.S. delegation refused to assent, and so the conference ended with no consensus agreement, and no plans for future conferences. The back-up plan of the international gun prohibition movement, and their many allies within the U.N. and national U.N. delegations, was to give up on significant progress in 2006, but to keep the game going with future conferences, when a more pliant U.S. administration might welcome an international gun control program.
If a few hundred votes had changed in Florida in 2000, or if 60,000 votes had changed in Ohio in 2004, the results of the 2001 and 2006 U.N. gun control conferences would have been entirely different. There would now be a legally binding international treaty creating an international legal norm against civilian gun ownership, a prohibition on the transfer of firearms to "non-state actors" (such as groups resisting tyrants), and a new newspeak international human rights standard requiring restrictive licensing of gun owners.
...
For now, everyone who cares about the right to arms has much to celebrate.
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Let Freedom Reign!
Battered and bruised as it is, our Second Amendment has deprived the forces of organized gun bigotry of a much desired tool with which they had planned to use against us.
A big thanks to everyone who worked to torpedo that mess, especially to the US delegation that held fast.
And to our enemies, well,
Fuck y'all, ya hear?
{h/t: thr::baz}
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Recipe For Disaster...
Read about NJ's fall from grace....
The Mob That Whacked Jersey,
Or, how to turn prosperity into steaming piles of shit, in a mere 40 years.
Ingredients include:
* Exanding State Government
* Urban Anti Poverty initiatives
* Wealth redistribution programs
* Governmental Corruption
* Union Corruption
* Corrupt Political Machinery
* Progressive Taxation
* Court mandated education spending boosts...with no results required..
Read the whole sickening story.
Update!
Reader Cindi wins quote of the interval right out of the gate in comments:
Quote:
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"Corzine unfortunately gives no sign of taking on the culture of political bosses and corruption that plagues the state."
-City Journal
"Why in the hell would he; he's one of them."
-Reader Cindi
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
NJ NICS Shutdown!
I just got off the phone with an NJ FFL, who confirmed that NJ NICS is shutdown along with the rest of the state's "nonessential" functions.
There are no firearms transfers happening in NJ at this time.
I also presume that the state police are not processing FID and PPP applications either.
Well, it seems like one tangential way Corzine has found to make good on his pledge to make "New Jersey The First Firearm Free State".
I'm wondering if there's a possibility for NRA legal action here? Perhaps something that pries open a whole can of worms? Maybe along the lines of "obstructing the excercise of a fundamental right?"
Up to this point, I'd been pretty blase' about the whole NJ shutdown thing.
Several Readers asked me if I'd any thoughts on the matter, and I replied
"I just having a hard time mustering any Schadenfreude over this bit of NJ, their problems are just too pedestrian, pathetic and predictable, and well deserved to pique my interest.
It's like after running around yelling that the train trestle is out, the actual event of a train piling into the gorge is so inevitable that when it happens, it's just sort of like..."well...duh...what else did you expect?"
As a Pennsylvanian, I'd like to remind my beleaguered NJ colleageues that longarms are still lawfully available from out of state FFLs to NJ FID holders, and that private longarm transactions between NJ residents does not require a NICS check so long as FIDS are shown, and a "certificate of eligibility" is filled out by the buyer and retained by the seller.
As an American, I'd like to ask my beleaguered NJ colleagues..."what in the hell are you still doing there?"
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Reclaiming Lost Frontiers...
Back in April, I had a short post wherein I pointed to Doc Russia's commentary on The Lost Frontier, and advised young folks to put down the X-Box and go build a tree fort.
The esquisite Wendy McElroy gives us some cause for hope. She speaks of a "New Book That Revives Lost Notions of Boyhood, that is holding #1 on Amazon UK, and doing well in America.
Quote:
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In celebrating old-fashioned boyhood and providing a blueprint on how to reclaim it, The Dangerous Book is revolutionary. It discards decades of social engineering that approaches children as being psychologically gender neutral. The book implicitly rebukes school texts that strip out gender references. Instead, it says 'boys will be boys'; they always have been, they always will be, and that's a good thing.
Thus The Dangerous Book achieves social revolution without preaching or politics; it does so in the name of fun.
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Heh.
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Here's A Star Spangled Sermon...
I didn't write it though.
It's the thoughts of an immigrant.
What's So Great About America?
Teaser Quote:
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...The point is that the United States is a country where the ordinary guy has a good life. This is what distinguishes America from so many other countries. Everywhere in the world, the rich person lives well. Indeed, a good case can be made that if you are rich, you live better in countries other than America, because you enjoy the pleasures of aristocracy. In India, where I grew up, the wealthy have innumerable servants and toadies groveling before them and attending to their every need.
In the United States, on the other hand, the social ethic is egalitarian, regardless of wealth. For all his riches, Bill Gates could not approach a homeless person and say, “Here’s a $100 bill. I’ll give it to you if you kiss my feet.” Most likely the homeless guy would tell Gates to go to hell. The American view is that the rich guy may have more money, but he isn’t in any fundamental sense better than you are. The American janitor or waiter sees himself as performing a service, but he doesn’t see himself as inferior to those he serves. And neither do the customers see him that way: They are generally happy to show him respect and appreciation on a plane of equality. America is the only country in the world where we call the waiter “Sir,” as if he were a knight.
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Monday, July 03, 2006
On This 230th Anniversary of The Founding...
I had thought to deliver a great, star spangled sermon, to paint an slice of the awe inspiring vision that initiated this great nation, lightning that illuminated the mind, thunder that echoed in the very fabric of the universe itself.
Suffice it to say that this fire burns as brightly now as it ever did, in these heady, amazing days.
These words have lost none of their power, a terror to the tyrant, a beacon of hope to those who would be free:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
We are Americans.
There is no task to which we are not equal.
Happy Independence Day, Gang!
For your reading enjoyment, a detailed, fascinating account of the goings on that kicked the whole thing off.
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Sigh.
With increasing frequency, I hate being "the computer guy".
By way of explanation, an analogy would be the guy who designed the hydroelectrics of the Hoover Dam being besieged by his relatives to help them plunge their toilets because they couldn't penetrate the mysteries of household plumbing.
Gah.
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
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