I'm Giving Them $125

Bumped. Time is running out to donate.



More information here: FrackNation

You can contribute there.

I was made aware of Kickstarter as a fundraising platform when cartoonist Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary fame used it to finance his upcoming board game project.

OK, we're tired of leftist propaganda, time to put our money where our mouths are. It worked with the Starbucks Buycott, Bill Whittle thinks it will work with Declaration Entertainment, I think it'll work here. We need fracking. I'm getting my wallet out.

I'm Not Certain it's THAT Good

Quote of the Day:

[T]oday's college degree is the equivalent of the 1950's high school diploma. -- Aaron Clarey, Worthless: The Indispensable Guide to Choosing the Right Major

(h/t: Instapundit)

Dear Troubador:

Right back atcha.

Oh, and I'm not going anywhere. You want me to leave? MAKE ME.

But I suspect you won't.

What happened to that new civility thing, anyway?

Quote of the Day

I believe it is now time for Western Christians and non-Christians alike to acknowledge that men such as Alexis de Tocqueville were correct and various concepts such as free expression, freedom of association, and other hallowed concepts of Western civilization simply do not translate outside of Western Christian culture. What was once theoretical is now empirical thanks to more than sixty years of evidence that strongly suggests conventional Western views of human liberty are simply not compatible with non-Christian, non-Western cultures. -- Vox Popoli, The chickens begin to roost

Once again, I'll point you to my October, 2006 post The United Federation of Planets.

Walt Kelly Was More Right Than He Knew

"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo
In the comments to Tam's Thursday post, The Truest Thing On The Internet, Tam said:

I know a bunch of people who seriously believe that we are on a collision course with Destiny. Unfortunately, they're only a plurality of the people I know.

I don't think that the people who don't know these things are "sheeple" or "useful idiots" (and I've been mulling a post on that topic, actually; I had planned to post it this morning) but I think that a large percentage of people are invested in one sector or another of the status quo.

Being too tightly focused on women's reproductive rights or racial injustice or the defense against Muslim terrorists or the protection of America's economy against immigrants, or whatever, can blind a smart and well-meaning person to broad and overarching trends...

To which Justthisguy asked:

"broad and overarching trends..." Oh, do you mean all those guys in positions of authority who get a charge out of minding other peoples' business and telling them what to do?

And Tam responded:

No.

I mean all those guys who want to fix the problems their constituents beg them to fix. The problem is from the bottom up, not the top down.

Yes, exactly.

And it's not a new problem. It's the reason our Founders set up our Federal government as a Representative Constitutional Republic of limited and defined powers - they looked at history and knew what democracies become.  My regular readers - an admittedly tiny, self-selected group of people who are by definition paying more attention to the world around them than the ordinary person - will be familiar with this quote:

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.  --  John Adams

And possibly this one:

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.    -- Plato

This one was new to me:

Our country's founders cherished liberty, not democracy.  -- Ron Paul

Can I get an "AMEN!"?

But here's the key quote:

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education. -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

That's a tall order, and one never yet met.

So our Founders designed a system to circumvent that particular weakness.

And failed.

By the time FDR ran for office, our government was essentially no longer a republic.  Passage of the Seventeenth Amendment (direct election of Senators) in 1913 destroyed the last vestiges of our republican form of government in favor of a representative democracy wherein "the people" elect representatives  to "fix the problems (their) constituents beg them to fix" in both houses.  The freedom to make "wise" (and therefore possibly unpopular) choices in the upper house of Congress had been removed by the 17^th Amendment.  Now running for Senate didn't mean you needed the respect of your peers in the House, it meant you needed to promise whatever it took to the populace to get their votes - just like every other politician.  Thus Mencken's observation:

A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.

And since then our government has been the battlefield between two completely incompatible philosophies, one of which has captured the halls of academe, and through that vector, the public education system and popular media, and through those vectors, the voting public - the "us" in Walt Kelly's classic line.

I've harped on the topic of philosophy before, too.  The best explanation of the importance of philosophy remains (IMHO) Ayn Rand's speech to the 1974 graduating class of West Point, Philosophy, Who Needs It?  Excerpt:

As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation -- or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears....

Philosophy is not a subject formally taught in American primary or secondary schools, it's something one can study on one's own or take as an elective in college.  Regardless, our system of education still teaches philosophy, producing subjects with "junk heap(s) of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears" that are reinforced by the popular media that surrounds us.

And we vote.

I don't believe that the big men, the politicians and the capitalists alone are guilty of the war. Oh, no, the little man is just as keen, otherwise the people of the world would have risen in revolt long ago! There is an urge and rage in people to destroy, to kill, to murder, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated and grown, will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again.  -- Anne Frank

And instead of penning another 5,000 words, I invite you to (re-)read The United Federation of Planets on the topic of philosophy.

Objective reality is coming, fast. The collision isn't going to be pretty.

Busy

Sorry about the lack of content. I've been a bit busy recently, and when I do get home blogging has not been high on the list of "things I want to do." I've had some nibbles from people wanting to go shooting (one of them being my niece), so I may be doing a range trip for that soon. My next Bowling Pin match is three weeks away, and I need to build some new tables, or at least one.

I did manage to get a chance to eat lunch in a sit-down restaurant today. I went to the local Cheesecake Factory, which as far as I can tell is never slow. I ate at the bar, since I was by myself and didn't want to wait for a table. While sitting at the bar, I noticed a sign propped up on one of the shelves, kind of off to the side. It was partially obscured by glare from a nearby window, but I could see it had the international "NO" symbol - circle with a slash - on it, but it was black. When the light changed, I saw it said "No Firearms Allowed pursuant to A.R.S. section 4-229" with the "NO" symbol over a pistol.

After lunch (I'd already ordered, and I wasn't carrying. I prefer to remain employed) I talked to the manager about it. I noted that while I normally do not patronize establishments that don't want me, the sign was not conspicuous and that had I not been sitting at the bar I'd have never seen it. He stated that he thought that the placement of the sign was per company policy, but he understood my concern. While there's a "No Smoking" notice on the front door, there is no "No Firearms" sign, and anyone coming in would not know that the establishment doesn't want its customers to be armed. When I got home, I checked the regulations:

4-229. Licenses; Handguns; Posting of Notice

A. A person with a permit issued pursuant to section 13-3112 may carry a concealed handgun on the premises of a licensee who is an on-sale retailer unless the licensee posts a sign that clearly prohibits the possession of weapons on the licensed premises. The sign shall conform to the following requirements:

1. Be posted in a conspicuous location (It wasn't.) accessible to the general public and immediately adjacent to the liquor license posted on the licensed premises. (It was.)

2. Contain a pictogram that shows a firearm within a red circle and a diagonal red line across the firearm. (It was a black & white photocopy. The circle with diagonal was black, not red.)

3. Contain the words, "no firearms allowed pursuant to A.R.S. section 4-229".

B. A person shall not carry a firearm on the licensed premises of an on-sale retailer if the licensee has posted the notice prescribed in subsection A of this section.

C. It is an affirmative defense to a violation of subsection B of this section if:

1. The person was not informed of the notice prescribed in subsection A of this section before the violation. (I wasn't.)

2. Any one or more of the following apply:

(a) At the time of the violation the notice prescribed in subsection A of this section had fallen down.

(b) At the time of the violation the person was not a resident of this state.

(c) The licensee had posted the notice prescribed in subsection A of this section not more than thirty days before the violation.

So the sign was posted next to the liquor license, but it failed the "conspicuous location" requirement, and it didn't have the mandated red circle-with-a-slash symbol, so it was an improper sign. As I explained to the manager, they can certainly invite anyone open carrying to leave, but no one carrying concealed would have any way of knowing that it was company policy to prohibit firearms on the premises, the Cheesecake Factory would have no way to know they were carrying, and they were not in compliance with the law anyway.

He thanked me for my input and said he'd be contacting Corporate. I harbor no illusions that this Cheesecake Factory in particular or the chain overall is going to change their policy (so I don't intend to eat there again), but if they're going to make a stupid decision, they ought to at least follow the damned law.

Hornady Ammo Recall - .500 S&W

If you've got one of these cannon, you might want to check your ammo stash:

Hornady Manufacturing Company is recalling seven (7) lots of Item#9249, 500 S&W 300gr. FTX Custom Pistol Ammunition. These lots were shipped between September 9, 2010, and October 17, 2011.

Item number 9249, Lot Numbers:
•3101327
•3110256
•3110683
•3110695
•3110945
•3111388
•3111885

Hornady Manufacturing Company ballisticians have determined that some cartridges from Lot #’s 3101327, 3110256, 3110683, 3110695, 3110945, 3111388, 3111885, may exhibit excessive chamber pressures. Use of this product may result in firearm damage and or personal injury.

DO NOT USE HORNADY CUSTOM PISTOL AMMUNITION
ITEM #9249, 500 S&W 300gr. FTX, FROM THE ABOVE LISTED LOT NUMBERS.

Quote of the Day - Joe Huffman Edition

It doesn't have to make sense. It's just a government rule.  --  The View from North Central Idaho

And the interpretation of those rules varies by .gov employee drone.

RTWT.

$134 Billion? Chicken Feed!

Back in June of 2009, I linked to reports that $134.5 billion in U.S. bearer-bonds were seized by Italian authorities from two Japanese men on a train from Italy to Switzerland. Another $116 billion were seized in August of that year. Now the Italians have found another $6 Trillion in bonds in safe-deposit boxes in Zurich, Switzerland.

The bonds in these cases are fakes (which means they're worth about as much as real ones today), but wow. It takes a lot of chutzpah to print six trillion dollars worth of counterfeits.

Almost as much as it takes to print sixteen trillion worth of real ones.

From the comments, if you want to take a fascinating trip down the rabbit hole, check out the Barking Moonbat Early Warning System post on the topic.  Fascinating.

Bill Whittle on Education

Hi!  Welcome to the Bill Whittle Fan Club!  Here's Bill on the latest in the world of Public Education (where, as Tam has noted, "public" modifies "education" the same way it does "transportation" and "bathrooms."):



tl;dw - "more tax dollars, less educating"

Too Many to Choose From

Today's Quote of the Day comes from Victor Davis Hansons's Works and Days column The New Commandments on the Barn Wall. There are too many to choose from in that short, pithy, depressing piece, but I'm going with this one:

8) Neanderthals need nerds. The cool gang banger who is knifed on Saturday night suddenly in extremis worships the surgeon who stiches up his liver and kidneys — a target whom he would otherwise have robbed earlier that Saturday afternoon. The thug who strips the copper wire from our streetlights nonetheless assumes a nerdish engineer will keep designing the wiring scheme that runs his car’s CD. For the good life to go on, each illiterate punk demands one corresponding graduate student at MIT to take care of him. When the former outnumber the latter, then civilization usually winds down.

"The worst thing about living in the declining era of a great civilization...is knowing that you are." - R.A. Heinlein

"Help us put construction workers back to work!"

Chinese construction workers.  Here, in the U.S.

Via ABC News, no less.

And in a nod to what Mike Rowe has been saying for quite a while now:

ABC's Chris Cuomo: "Why can't the Americans do it as quickly as the Chinese? What makes them so special?"

Tony Anziano, Cal DOT: "One issue that you will consistently hear every time you go to a fabrication site in this country is that they struggle at this point in time to obtain welders. That is an issue in this country."

So they're bringing them over from China? This makes economic sense?

THIS Might Make Me Want to Try Shotgunning

And it was invented by the Brits, no less!

The ATS Gnat has been hugely popular in the UK for many years, and has featured in events such as high profile celebrity charity shoots held at most of Britain's most famous shooting grounds, to private parties at country estates. The Gnat Shooting System is unique. Shotgun events normally involve the downing of conventional targets such as clay pigeons or game. We have perfected a high speed, maneuverable, radio controlled drone which takes the sport to the next level.

The aircraft flies at speeds of up to 80 mph, with extremely rapid directional changes and fighter like agility. Controlled by very experienced "pilots", the shooters prey is probably one of the hardest targets they will ever encounter.

My brother is an RC pilot and plane builder. Hey! We can finally share a hobby!

"...not even George Lucas, back when he was sane."

Bill Whittle explains the decline of Hollywood:




Damn, I love that man.

UPDATE:  I was reminded that I used "Han shot first!"  way back in 2004 when I wrote "(I)t's most important that all potential victims be as dangerous as they can".

Be Like Han.

Quote of the Day - Engineering Edition

When engineers find something interesting, it usually involves catastrophic failure....

Carl, Vexxarr's ship AI,  Vexxarr comic, 2/6/12

The System Worked as Designed

Another victim of domestic violence, "protected" by a piece of tissue paper.

Friend of domestic violence victim: "She was afraid of him and he killed her"

Reporter: Corinne Hautala

TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) – A 31-year-old mother of two was found dead inside her home in the 3800 block of South Kolb Road.

Tucson Police said it responded to a caller, who told the 911 dispatcher his friend called him and said her ex-boyfriend had just arrived at her home.

When police arrived, officers said they found Claudia Pascual dead and a male suffering from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Another case of "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away."

Pascual's co-workers said that Pascual had a restraining order against the gunman. They said after a domestic violence incident she broke up his him and that's when he started to stalk her.

"He was stalking her, followed her everywhere," said Dodge-Harrison. "She couldn't get away from him. She reported it. Nothing could be done. She was afraid of him and he killed her."

Her friends believe the system failed to protect her.

Well, DUH.

9OYS sat down with attorney Mike Piccarreta to ask him, how effective are protection orders?

"Well it's a piece of paper and if somebody doesn't want to follow the law and is bent on harming you a piece of paper isn't going to stop them," he said.

You'll note, it wasn't a cop who said that.

The details in the restraining order will also determine how much police can do.

Pascual's friends said they hope her story will encourage others to seek more protection if they too feel police aren't doing enough.

What can the police do? They're not responsible for protecting you. They can't be.

Pascual’s co-workers said they are determined to turn the tragedy into something good, they want her name to live on. They’re looking into planning fundraisers and raising awareness about domestic violence.

How about about raising awareness of self-defense and firearm training? Think that might help?  Think Pascual might have been willing to shoot the guy if she believed she was protecting her two kids?

Quote of the Day - Tam Edition

The internet has been a goose that has been laying economic golden eggs for an amazing amount of time, considering the continual ham-handed efforts of the government to try and serve itself up some foie gras.

from Wrong on so very many levels

As commenter Windy Wilson observes:

Tam has a lock on uttering pithy, humorous and trenchant one liners like no one since at least Mark Twain, and possibly Ralph Waldo Emerson (who lacked the humor).

Thankfully, the internet means that millions can get a chance to read them.

She Named Him...

"Dick"

The Decline of Violence

Instapundit links to an interesting Reason piece on the decline of violence throughout history, as chronicled by Harvard University cognitive neuroscientist Steven Pinker in his new book.

The book is entitled The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.  Ronald Bailey, the author of the piece writes:

Human nature did not change, but our institutions did, encouraging people to restrain their natural tendencies toward violence.

I am reminded of a Usenet sigline by one Trefor Thomas:

To be civilized is to restrain the ability to commit mayhem. To be incapable of committing mayhem is not the mark of the civilized, merely the domesticated.

I get the uncomfortable feeling that the decline of violence is due to that violence being banked away for a rainy day. As Bailey notes, human nature hasn't changed.

What has changed is that violence has largely gone from from personal, retail events to state-level wholesale slaughter. As Tam has noted,

Central governments have managed to turn murder from a hobby pursued at home by individual craftsmen into a wholesale industry churning out slipshod and substandard corpses in numbers that can't be read without sounding like Carl Sagan.

True, the overall percentages have declined, but when violence is really unleashed the casualties are overwhelming. And if there's one thing we've learned from economics, it's that past performance is no guarantee of future results.

If When Iran does go nuclear, for instance ....

Match Report - Bowling Pins, 2/12/12

Or:  How we do things in the Big City.

Attendance was better this month.  Seven people joined me to shoot the match.  A couple of regulars couldn't make it, but a couple of others managed to rejoin us and a couple I hope will become regulars.  Only two of us brought "minor" pistols, and one of us had function problems, so I managed to win minor for a change, essentially by default.  All eight of us brought Major pistols, almost uniformly .45's.  I had to be different, and brought my Witness in .40 for a change.  But I'll come back to that.

Seven of us brought .22's.  Jim Burnett took that class handily.  I just wasn't fast enough this time.  Five of us brought revolvers, two of them .44 Magnums with full-house loads.  Let's just say the pin damage this month was significant.  But I managed to win the Revolver class this time.  I have apparently learned how to hit with my S&W 327.  I even managed to clean a table with five shots, double-action once.  No one was more shocked than I was.

Jim Burnett also won Major with his Clark Custom pin gun, and beat me for overall pistol champion, but here was the highlight of the day:  The second set of the second round of Major, we had a little... "incident."  Watch:





Thanks to Jim Bertrand and his hat-cam for catching that. 

Quote of the Day - Education Edition

Via Dr. Pournell:

I teach at a community college, now. Kids tell me they have been taught how to think; they are no longer taught a lot of facts because they can just look stuff up. As a result, they don’t know anything. Some do, but some had more old-fashioned teachers. Most don’t and it is such a pity. All their days spent working on good classroom behavior and learning so little. What a waste.

Kate Pitrone

My emphasis.

"I was never taught that knowledge." No shit.

The Best Idea I've Seen So Far This Year

From Victor Davis Hanson:

A small suggestion: given that we have let in 11 million illegal aliens without legality, capital, education, or English, why not announce that we will fast-track into citizenship 100,000 Europeans a year who speak English, have a BA degree, and can come with $50,000 in capital? Set the immigration at exactly the same number we do for legal immigrants from Mexico — and then listen and watch what happens!

Discuss.

"I Was Never Taught That Knowledge"

Via Jaded Haven:

Daphne opines, "We're Doomed".

Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Open the Floodgates!

Primeval Papa is looking for advice in selecting his first AR-15.

Bill Whittle on Why Conservatives Suck

No, THIS is the Quote of the Day

(T)here is no such thing as "Anti-Government Phobia." It's not a 'phobia,' it's the natural instinct of self-preservation.

Weird and Pissed Off - Phobia?

RTWT.

Quote of the Day - New Gun-Grabber Phrase Edition

From the comments at Tam's post, Argumentum ad fabricatum: You're just making stuff up:

"Police-grade" firearms are far, far more dangerous to the user than average-Joe firearms; as a "police grade" Glock is the one that shoots you in the leg when you are the only one qualified enough to carry it

Proven on video, nonetheless.

Ancient Woodsman

Yup.

School Me on Lead Shot

A new reader emailed me a couple of days ago and sent along some photos.  Here's the background information:

Just came across your blog. I haven't had time to thoroughly go thru yet, sorry.

Hey, there's eight years worth of stuff. No biggie.

But here's what I'd like to say.

Attached photos disgust and upset me. But I know its not the guns fault, its the jackasses fault. I used to do a lot more target shooting myself, nothing like this though. And always took more back than I brought. I have a few firearms, and hunt. I'm not against firearms and hunting. I'm against stupidity, and jackasses. This frozen lake is home to salmon and nesting waterfowl, including trumpeter swans. Waterfowl die upon eating lead shot. Laws prohibit lead shot for hunting waterfowl, but no law prevents using lead shot to bust some clays over the lake. That's where personal responsibility comes hand in hand with personal liberty.

Here are the photos:

My reader adds:

These photos were taken at Mud Lake in the (Jim Creek area), near Palmer Alaska, on January 31, 2005. The photos show the results from maybe one day of clay pigeon target shooting over the lake. I have seen this on different occasions over the last couple of years. This time is the first time I’ve been out here in the winter, when the lake is frozen, which makes a good example of what’s going on. The amount of leads hot, and clay pigeon fragments on this day alone should alarm those of you who care about our water quality, and especially the survival of our living aquatic resources. Swans, loons, and just about all types of other water birds utilize this lake for feeding and nesting. The high toxicity of lead shot to these birds is very well documented in the literature. A mallard duck has a 20% chance of dying from ingesting just one lead shot. It is the reason, why hunting waterfowl with lead shot has been banned throughout the USA and Canada. The number of lead shot going into Mud Lake (and Jim Lake) from target shooting is astounding, and needs to be halted.

I would think that anybody cares about waterfowl, who even likes to hunt waterfowl would be absolutely 100% behind efforts to help end this disgrace to our environment.

On another instance I was standing there taking photos of swans, and a guy and his son show up with a pidgeon throwing. The kid says "dad look, can we shoot them?" of course dad says no. Then, at least dad said oh I'll wait until your done before I start shooting. Then I explain to him all the reasons why he should find a different place to shoot, and he just replies, "well, I am using steel shot." What am I going to say, I just left. We have good well-managed ranges, but they cost money, I understand that. But to shoot anything into a lake with salmon and waterfowls? Doesn't sit right.

I'm not a shotgunner. I own exactly one shotgun - a Mossberg 590 riot gun. I've shot some skeet and trap, and busted some clays for fun on private property, but I haven't followed the non-toxic shot saga much. I'm not a hunter, either, but the idea of banning lead bullets in varmint or big-game hunting is one that makes me want to get my wookie on.  I've seen the bullshit that the VPC has published on the horrible threat of lead poisoning from recreational shooting, thank you.

From the (limited) research I've done, it does seem that lead shot presented a poisoning hazard to waterfowl that ingested it from wetlands, and I know that clay pigeons are a hazard to pigs, which will apparently eat just about anything laying on the ground no matter how bad it tastes. I don't get the concern about the salmon, however.  They're not bottom feeders. 

What I see in this picture, though, leaves me with mixed feelings. One, leaving the shotshell hulls on the ground was just littering and not excusable. The clay pigeons on the ice? Unsightly, but when the lake thaws the pieces will end up on the bottom and not bother anything. The shot? Somehow I doubt it will represent much of a hazard to waterfowl unless that lake is VERY shallow, but I could be wrong. If I were to shoot out over a lake, non-toxic shot would be the way to go.

So educate me. Is my reader overreacting, justifiably pissed off, or somewhere in between?

Quote of the Day

From Adaptive Curmudgeon:

A Federation of 50 states has an inherent range of options.  It allows people to move from places they hate (see: gun buffs in California) to places they favor (see: gun buffs in Texas).  It allows each individual to seek their own habitat (see: hippies in California) and leave places where they’re unhappy (see: hippies in Texas).  It’s bad to lock people in a place from which there is no escape (see: most nations in most of history).

That part's serious.  The rest of the post is pretty humorous.  Because it, too is true.

Bill Whittle on Obama and the Muslim Brotherhood

Seen at Around O-Town:




Again, if Obama is out to destroy America, would he be doing anything differently?

Yes, It Really IS That Easy...

Quote of the Day - Electile Dysfunction Edition

This, from Lissa:

I look forward to pulling the lever for Not Obama in November, but until then, I’m going to sit back in disgust and rail at the skies for giving me such unpalatable candidates.

A pox on all their houses, say I . . .