A Brief History of Mental Illness

Bill Whittle's latest:

Have You Made Your Gun Blogger Rendezvous Reservations?

The registration form is now available to print out, and the Silver Legacy is taking reservations!  The Group Rate Code is GBLOG14, and the number you must call to get the special room rate is (800) 687-7733.  I made my reservations tonight.  Get yours in soon!

Alan Gura is the MAN!

Another victory in Palmer v. D.C.

In light of Heller, McDonald, and their progeny, there is no longer any basis on which this Court can conclude that the District of Columbia’s total ban on the public carrying of ready-to-use handguns outside the home is constitutional under any level of scrutiny. Therefore, the Court finds that the District of Columbia’s complete ban on the carrying of handguns in public is unconstitutional. Accordingly, the Court grants Plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and enjoins Defendants from enforcing the home limitations of D.C. Code § 7-2502.02(a)(4) and enforcing D.C. Code § 22-4504(a) unless and until such time as the District of Columbia adopts a licensing mechanism consistent with constitutional standards enabling people to exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms.4 Furthermore, this injunction prohibits the District from completely banning the carrying of handguns in public for self-defense by otherwise qualified non-residents based solely on the fact that they are not residents of the District.

I guess I need to write another check to the Second Amendment Foundation.

I sincerely hope Alan can make a third appearance at this year's Gun Blogger Rendezvous so we call all bow towards him and chant "We're Not Worthy!!"

Gun Blogger Rendezvous IX Fast Approaches!

Another reminder:  If you haven't already, start making plans to attend the ninth annual Gun Blogger Rendezvous in Reno, NV September 4-7, 2014!



It's a lot of fun, and you can go home with some GREAT stuff!

Bill Whittle - The Case for Israel

Quote of the Day

Read the whole piece before it drops into the bit-bucket.  It was hard to select just an excerpt.  I'm going with the part Gerard Vanderleun picked:

Middle class America is no less violent than any other people. They seem passive because they're results oriented. They rise not out of blood frenzy but to solve the otherwise insoluble. Their methods of choice are good will, cooperation, forbearance, negotiation and finally, appeasement, roughly in that order. Only when these fail to end the abuse do they revert to blowback. And they do so irretrievably. Once the course is set and the outcome defined, doubt is put aside. The middle class is known, condemned actually, for carrying out violence with the efficiency of an industrial project where bloody destruction at any scale is not only in play, it's a metric. Remorse is left for the next generation, they'll have the leisure for it. We'd like to believe this is merely dark speculation. History says it isn't.

Seriously, read the whole thing.

"One Small Step for a Man..."

I posted this a couple of years ago. I thought I'd drag it out and update it.

On this day at 02:56 UTC 45 years ago, Neil Armstrong became the first human being to leave one of these on the surface of another astronomical body. Three years and five months later, Eugene Cernan became the last man to do so, so far.

The last Space Shuttle touched down for the last time on this day three years ago.

Elon Musk of PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX fame has said that the impetus behind the development of SpaceX came when his son asked him, "is it really true that they used to fly to the moon when you were a boy?"

Now there are two-dozen or more private space ventures around the world. There is a plan to capture and retrieve an asteroid for commercial purposes. At least two companies want to mine the moon. A proposal to colonize not Mars, but Venus has been proposed, and it actually makes better sense.

If we can just hold it together for a couple more decades, humanity might get off this rock, and we might do it in my lifetime.

But it's still not looking too good.

Read This

Ten Reasons Why I Am No Longer a Leftist by Danusha V. Goska at American Thinker. Excerpt:

How far left was I? So far left my beloved uncle was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party in a Communist country. When I returned to his Slovak village to buy him a mass card, the priest refused to sell me one. So far left that a self-identified terrorist proposed marriage to me. So far left I was a two-time Peace Corps volunteer and I have a degree from UC Berkeley. So far left that my Teamster mother used to tell anyone who would listen that she voted for Gus Hall, Communist Party chairman, for president. I wore a button saying "Eat the Rich." To me it wasn't a metaphor.

Also:

My favorite bumper sticker in ultra-liberal Berkeley, California: "Think Globally; Screw up Locally." In other words, "Love Humanity but Hate People."

Interesting read.  Pay particular attention to reason #1.

RIP Jim Garner

I've always enjoyed the film and television work of James Garner. He passed away yesterday.

Back in 2012, I posted this:

I watched an interesting interview of actor/producer James Garner from 1999 recently, and I've extracted three significant pieces from that interview that I wanted some feedback on.  Please watch the short (2:50) video, and give me your thoughts.  I'm really interested.

In the comments, TheGeekWithA.45 described it thus:

My initial thought was "cognitive dissonance". Giving it a little more consideration, I'm going to go with "the triumph of indoctrination over reason".

Aaaand Once Again Bill Whittle Does it Better

His latest Afterburner, Apogee:

Quote of the Day - Transformers Edition

Saw this one on Facebook.  It even got a laugh out of my wife, so I thought I'd pass it on:

My wife asked me why I carry a gun everywhere, even inside the house.

I answered, "Decepticons."

She laughed.  I laughed.  The toaster laughed.

I shot the toaster.

Bill Whittle: It Takes a Superhero

His latest:

5 Rounds of Full-House .454 in 3 seconds - On Target

Just... damn.


If you'd like to see the whole video, with some normal humans giving it a try, you can see it here.

Edumacation

So the New Yorker magazine does an article about the recent Atlanta school system standardized test cheating conspiracy:  Wrong Answer.  This used to be the thing that would inspire hours of research and writing to create an überpost, but I'm going to resist that.  Instead, I'm just going to quote this little excerpt:

"Without even reading the question, I could tell you just by the shape of the graph, 'Oh, my kids know that,' " (Damany Lewis, a math teacher at Parks Middle School, in Atlanta) told me. He put the test in his fireplace once he'd confirmed that he had taught the necessary concepts. But he worried that his students would struggle with questions that were delivered in paragraph form. Some of his seventh-grade students were still reading by sounding out the letters. It seemed unfair that the concepts were “buried in words.”

Seventh grade.  They're 12-13 years old, assuming none had been previously held back.

And some can barely read.

But the tests are at fault.

Bill Whittle - Where Do You Live, Mark Zuckerberg?

That's Funny, I Don't Care Who You Are

UPDATED TO ADD:

In reference to this comment below, is it really "bestiality" if both species are intelligent, self-aware and consenting?


Inquiring minds and all that....

Quote of the Day - Billy Beck Edition (Paraphrased)

It is training and doctrine that have stripped people of the power to reason to a moral conclusion on their own powers. They are forbidden to think, this is why they now exist on the same moral plane as abject animals.

From a Facebook comment to this story about police shooting dogs, but it's applicable pretty much to all "Zero Tolerance" and other "RESPECT MAH AUTHORITAH!" B.S. foisted on us by our "Civil Masters."  The Book says "Do X," so that's what they do.  They can't get in trouble for doing what the book says, and it's easier than thinking.

What HE Said

This year I didn't repost my usual (In)Dependence Day piece because of my parent's 60th anniversary.  However, Wirecutter wrote one that's much more in-depth and up to date.

What he said.

60 Years

Happy Independence Day!

But that's not the point of this post.  Today is the 60th wedding anniversary of my parents:


Here's wishing you and yours as much happiness as they have had.

Quote of the Day - Just Ain't Getting It Edition

From another discussion over at Quora.com:

The NRA seems to care about the constitution more than public safety and the future of the nation.

To which I responded:

Uh, wow. That single sentence contains so much that is descriptive of the issues that it's almost meta.

RAIN!!

It's raining!!  First time since... hell, I don't remember!  Temperature has dropped from 107° to 86° in less than an hour, and then the rain hit.



Small & quick.  Let's hope it takes another run at us.

Losing the Peace

Bill Whittle's latest:

The Philosophy Cannot Be Wrong!

Reason magazine reports:  LA Schools Realize Giving Every Kid an iPad Was a Costly Disaster, Will Give Every Kid a Laptop Instead

DO IT AGAIN, ONLY HARDER!! 

You can't make this stuff up, folks.

Quote of the Day - Damning with Faint Praise Edition

I'm actually considering the latest Transformers film. Howard Tayler, author of the webcomic Schlock Mercenary, says it "...fails to clear the Threshold of Disappointment."

But that's not the QotD. This, from the Road & Track magazine review of the film is:

The Wahlberg/Pelz/Reynor triangle, incidentally, is an exact clone of the Bruce Willis/Liv Tyler/Ben Affleck relationship from Bay’s Armageddon. He makes it work. At no point did I actively root for any of them to die as I did through three Shia LaBeouf Transformer movies.

Given that glowing recommendation, I think I may go see it!

Tidyville

Titusville, Florida is where I grew up.  My family moved there in 1966 when I was four, and we left in 1974 when I was 12, so if I'm asked, that's "where I'm from."  My father worked for IBM's Federal Systems Division as a quality engineer for the Saturn V Instrument Unit, the guidance system of the rocket.  We didn't see dad a lot during those eight years.  After the last Saturn V launch put Skylab in orbit IBM no longer had a contract, and Dad had to transfer back to the division that made commercial products - this time the first of the grocery store laser scanner cash register systems.  We relocated to North Carolina.

Titusville was a great place to grow up during that period, but since the manned space program has been shut down, it's fallen on pretty hard times, apparently.  I haven't been there since my wife and I honeymooned in Florida in 1995.  We stayed at the Holiday Inn there the evening of August 3 when Hurricane Erin came ashore just a few miles South of the hotel. 

Good times.