Quote of the Day - Jonah Goldberg Edition

From Ringing Out the Year with Liberal Double Standards:

If you work from the dogmatic assumption that liberalism is morally infallible and that liberals are, by definition, pitted against sinister and -- more importantly -- powerful forces, then it's easy to explain away what seem like double standards. Any lapse, error or transgression by conservatives is evidence of their real nature, while similar lapses, errors and transgressions by liberals are trivial when balanced against the fact that their hearts are in the right place.

Which is basically a restating of Charles Krauthammer's observation from 2002:

To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.

Read both articles.

Have a Happy New Year

...and let's be careful out there.

Try Again. Or Rather, Don't.

I received this via email:

Good afternoon,

My name is Brooks Clifford, I’m part of the online marketing team at http://nationalcarryacademy.com/ We provide classes, training and information to certify over 15,000 citizens with their conceal to carry permit each year. The reason I’m e-mailing you today is that we did some research and found you to be a highly regarded criminal defense attorney.

We wanted to ask if you would be interested in providing insight to our readers in the form of a blog once a quarter and in return we are happy to provide you a backlink to your website and add you to our “Additional Resource” page for clients in your state.

The benefits of having you guest blog for our website include: building high quality links back to your own website, increase visibility to your website, and building an audience through a new channel. We’re looking for fresh faces to write with our team to help build new perspectives as well as provide different point of views on a variety of topics related self defense and firearms law.

While we have a long list of topics to cover ourselves, we’d be more than open to any ideas you’d have on your own. Please contact me at brooks@nationalcarryacademy.com if you'd be interested in working together. I look forward to hearing back.

Best,

Brooks Clifford
CMO National Carry Academy

(Bold emphasis mine.)  I think they need to restaff their research department.

Joe Huffman, Have You Been Experimenting Again?

Another mysterious explosion heard in Bingham County (ID); residents in Riverside say boom shook their homes

I know the next Boomershoot is coming up, but really?

I Have the Best Daughter

We have a Christmas tradition - she always gives me a Dilbert desk calendar for Christmas.  This year was no exception on that point, but she also gave me this T-shirt:


I'll have to wear it to the next Central Arizona blog shoot!

Merry Christmas to All

A repost from a couple of years ago. Seemed appropriate.

Beauty

Christmas turkey No. 2, about 15 lbs.  One hour and fifty minutes in a 475°F oven:


That's a pretty bird, folks.

Christmas turkey No. 1, about 14 lbs. has been delivered to my in-laws.  This one goes with us tomorrow to my parents' house.

Still have quite a bit of cooking left to do today....

Good Marketing

Today in the mail I received two gifts from LuckyGunner.com, plus a nice Christmas card with a handwritten note from Anthony Welch.  One gift was this coffee mug:


The other was a gift card.

Wow.  The last thing I did with/for Lucky Gunner was review some of the Fiocchi primers they sell back in 2010, and I attended the machine gun shoot they sponsored in 2011.  They've sponsored the last several Gun Blogger Rendezvous, but I haven't been deeply involved in that until this year.

Whoever they've got doing their internet marketing is not slacking.

Thank you, y'all.  And merry Christmas to you and yours.

Why Thomas Sowell is so Popular with Conservatives

Worth 50 minutes of your time:


Quote of the Day, from the end of the interview:

Peter Robinson: How’s my generation’s project of holding on to liberty coming along?

Thomas Sowell: Not well. One of the reasons I’m glad to be as old as I am is that it means I may be spared seeing what’s going to happen to this country, either internally or as the result of international complications.

Robinson: You think that America’s greatest days are gone? Full stop? That it’s irreversible?

Sowell: Nothing is irreversible. But I think that we’re like a team that is coming to bat in the bottom of the ninth, five runs behind. We can win it, but this is not… I wouldn’t bet the rent money on it.

Robinson: Last question. What would you say – talking about Milton (Friedman) talking to my generation – what would you say to the next generation, to your grandchildren’s generation about the America for which they should be preparing themselves?

Sowell: Since I don’t know what that America is going to be, I don’t want to say anything to them. By the time they get here I think the issue will have been settled one way or the other.

Robinson: By then it will be irreversible.

Sowell: Either we will have pulled out of the dive, as it were, or else it will be all over.

Yes, We on the Right are a Monolithic Group of Racists & Brainwashed Zombies

At least, that's what the Left keeps telling themselves.

Right Wing News has published its 7^th annual Poll of Conservative Websites Most Loved and Hated People on the Right.  Check out the results.

Non Sequitur of the Day

Non sequitur - (Latin) a conclusion or statement that does not logically follow from the previous argument or statement.

See if you can spot it in the following excerpt from this Modern Farmer article, Salad, Inc.:

After an earthquake and tsunami decimated northeast Japan in 2011 — an unexpected weather incident that scientists are still struggling to understand — the Japanese government built Sanriku Fukko National Park.

Quote of the Day, Tam Edition

The Empress of Snark does it again as only she can:

Meanwhile, we have Michael Tomasky, whose entire career arc has been one long angry atonement for the sin of having to move to Manhattan instead of being born there...

Were there any justice in the world, Tam's snark would leave scars.

Stories Liberals Tell

Bill's latest Afterburner.

The New Barbarism

Bill Whittle's latest Firewall:

A Beautiful Day for Schadenfreude

So the lefty publication The New Republic is...having problems.

Instapundit brings us the very best take on the issue:


UPDATE: Borepatch has something relevant to say on the topic.

Obama Diagnosed with Acid Reflux

Reuters says so.

Does that mean even HE throws up in his mouth a little every time he lies to us?

Yup, He Went There

Bill Whittle's latest Firewall:


Howls of outrage in 3, 2, ....

Holiday Wishes from the State

Got this in an email last night. I'm sure others have seen it before, but it was new to me:

Stocking Stuffer

The 20mm Vulcan Bottle Opener:

Just $19.95. Prime eligible.

Aaaand Another Example

Here I'll switch up just a little bit and talk about stuff other than guns.  Here's an interesting article about some REALLY heavy equipment: World’s Biggest Dump Truck Goes Electric. It's about a new vehicle (known in the mining industry as a "Haul Truck") with a payload of 500 metric tons. That's 1,102,000lbs. Say it Dr. Evil style, "Over one millllllion pounds!"

But I take exception to this bit from the "World's Biggest Dump Truck" story:

A massive vehicle that can haul loads weighing more than 500 metric tons—the equivalent of 350 VW Golfs—just hit the work site in Siberia, claiming the title of the world’s largest dump truck.

But it has another claim that makes it even more impressive: an electric drive motor. Electric-powered vehicles have been around to do heavy lifting in mines for years, but those trucks, known as trolley trucks, received their electricity from overhead power lines.

The Belarusian truck manufacturer BelAZ wanted the efficiency of the trolley trucks, but in a free-moving behemoth suitable for open pit mining.

Ah, no. Yes, in some mines overhead lines are used, but in every mine I do work at (all open-pit), the trucks are exclusively internally driven and they're just called "haul trucks." The biggest trucks I work around are the 360 short-ton (720,000lb) capacity Caterpillar 797, and 400 short-ton (800,000lb) capacity Liebherr T282, the first is a mechanical-drive truck with a huge diesel engine running the wheels through a 7-speed automatic transmission, but the second is a 3,700Hp diesel-electric. Big electric motors in haul trucks are not new. Not hardly.

But you don't get how BIG these things are until you're near one:


Awhile back I got a headhunter call looking for someone willing to be a Liebherr field service technician for their haul trucks.  I'm a bit old for that and told them so.  Maybe twenty years ago, but they didn't have the technology twenty years ago....

Layers of Editorial Oversight...

Via reader (and heroic comment-recoverer) John Hardin comes another example of how accurate the media is when reporting on StuffTheyKnowNothingAbout™ - in this case, guns:


Well, THAT one is "primarily plastic" because it's an Airsoft TOY.  My M&P9 has a completely steel slide and barrel, as does every other M&P model I'm aware of.

This is from a CNN story, The U.S. Army is seeking a new gun. Some excerpts:

The Beretta M9, used by the U.S. Army since 1985, is manufactured by a 500-year-old Italian company, which has a factory in Maryland. The Beretta was the "lethal weapon" in the 1987 box office hit action movie "Lethal Weapon."

No, Sparky. Detective Martin Riggs was the "Lethal Weapon" in the action movie "Lethal Weapon." He carried a Beretta, among other firearms.  (Mel Gibson also flinched uncontrollably when he fired it, ruining some of the suspension of disbelief, though he played crazy like it was an Oscar-worthy role.)

Here's an interesting admission, however:

Polymer pistols have become increasingly popular as lightweight and ergonomic, particularly among women, a fast-growing demographic among gun users.

A growing demographic even though, we're told, that there is declining gun ownership!  So once again we're "informed" by the supposed Gatekeepers of Information, again exercising their role as the clergy in the Church of State.

Yawn.

Thanks, John.  I'm not blogging much, but it's still nice to get pointers to interesting stuff.

UPDATE:  Fellow Tucson blogger David Hardy points out more errors.