Video Bleg

Video Bleg

I'm looking for a good, preferably free, flash video editor. I've tried a couple so far that haven't been too impressive, and the final result of the second one I tried wouldn't upload properly to Photobucket - half of the video is 60fps, and half is 30fps. The 30fps stuff played perfectly, but the 60fps stuff played at double speed. Alvin and the chipmunks audio without video.

I'm willing to buy something, but (being unemployed) I don't want to spend much.

So, any recommendations?

Time for Another Moment of Zen

Time for Another Moment of Zen


Another one from DigitalBlasphemy.com. Click for the wallpaper size image.

What Could POSSIBLY Go Worng

What Could POSSIBLY Go Worng?

Police may scrap entrance exam

The Chicago Police Department is seriously considering scrapping the police entrance exam to bolster minority hiring, save millions on test preparation and avert costly legal battles that have dogged the exam process for decades, City Hall sources said Tuesday.

If the process is opened to everyone who applies and meets the minimum education and residency requirements, Chicago would be virtually alone among major cities. Most cities have police entrance exams -- and for good reason, experts say.

Then again, it's not like the CPD doesn't have a LOT of problems already.

Still, it is interesting to read their reasoning - "to bolster minority hiring...and avert costly legal battles...." Battles resulting, undoubtedly, from that "minority hiring" problem.

The Internet Detects Censorship as Damage . . .

The Internet Detects Censorship as Damage . . .

. . . and routes around it. From what I've seen, this video is getting yanked from YouTube and other sites, so I thought I'd host it until Photobucket gets pissy.


From what I've read recently 14 House Republicans, 10 House Democrats, six Senate Republicans and two Senate Democrats have announced that they will not be running for re-election. Who will be replacing them? And what about the Democrats who do run?

Of course, I'm going to repeat Ken's comment from this post:

Yeeeeaaaaaahhhh, but the idea of hangin' our hats on 2010/2012 puts me in mind of a comment from a post at Jaded Haven. Quoted in part: the subject of Daphne's post "...is prepared to learn that he must leave it to Republicans to move the progressive agenda at a pace at which it can be absorbed."

In your heart, you know he's right.

Voting out the Democrats does not equal "taking back the country." There's a reason the Stupid Party is called "Democrat-Lite," and the choice between the Evil Party and the Stupid Party a choice between castration and a wedgie.

Stolen Shamelessly from AR15.com

Stolen Shamelessly from AR15.com

14 terror suspects mistakenly kill themselves

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Fourteen suspected terrorists died Tuesday night when the bus they rigged with explosives blew up prematurely, police said.

The explosion occurred as the suspects were riding the bus in the province of Kunduz, said police chief Abdul Raziq Yaqobi.

Yaqobi said the suspects wanted to attack Afghan police or foreign soldiers.

NEW GUY!

Quote of the Day - Optimism Edition

Quote of the Day - Optimism Edition

From the GeekWithA.45, in comments referring to his post to Bill Whittle's latest Afterburner:

It wasn't the details of what the retrofuture contained, it was the unbridled optimism that we were going to totally p0wn the future, that nature was our bitch, that mankind was full of WIN, and that most of society shared in this bouyant enthusiasm.

I remember those days.

It's NOT "Dances with Smurfs"!

It's NOT "Dances with Smurfs"!

From AR15.com, the original treatment for Avatar:


Now that's funny right there, I don't care who you are.

Right-Wing Anti-Intellectualism

(I)ntellectuals are free from one of the most rigorous constraints facing other occupations: external standards. An engineer will ultimately be judged on whether the structures he designs hold up, a businessman on whether he makes money, and so on. By contrast, the ultimate test of an intellectual’s ideas is whether other intellectuals “find those ideas interesting, original, persuasive, elegant, or ingenious. There is no external test.” If the intellectuals are like-minded, as they often are, then the validity of an idea depends on what those intellectuals already believe. This means that an intellectual’s ideas are tested only by internal criteria and “become sealed off from feedback from the external world of reality.”

An intellectual’s reputation, then, depends not on whether his ideas are verifiable but on the plaudits of his fellow intellectuals. That the Corvair was as safe as any other car on the road has not cut into Ralph Nader’s speaking fees, nor has the failure of hundreds of millions of people to starve to death diminished Paul Ehrlich’s access to grant money. They only have to maintain the esteem of the intelligentsia to keep the gravy train running.

Intellectuals, of course, have expertise — highly specialized knowledge of a particular subject. The problem, according to Sowell, is that they think their superior knowledge in one area means they have superior knowledge in most other areas. Yet knowledge is so vast and dispersed that it is doubtful that any one person has even 1 percent of the knowledge available. Even the brightest intellectuals cannot possibly know all the needs, wants, and preferences of millions of people. Unfortunately, they have considerable incentive to behave as if they do.

- David Hogberg, National Review Online - The Divine Right of Intellectuals

--

Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.

- Robert Anson Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

--

Out here in the hinterlands, we're well aware that you and your Ivy League buddies believe that you are the only actual educated people on the planet, but you ought to have learned somewhere along the way that belief in an idea does not turn that idea into reality. Asserting as much, to borrow a line from the late John Hughes, just makes you look like an ass.

What (David) Brooks, with his touching faith in "pragmatic federal leaders with professional expertise" doesn't want to talk about, of course, is just how badly the Ivy League class has failed over the past couple of decades. All those rows of degrees from Harvard didn't keep a pack of Brooksian elites - mostly members of the Democratic Party - from running Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac straight into the toilet, and taking the private economy with them. Hiring out of the Ivies also didn't save Lehman Brothers or AIG from doing remarkably stupid things with other people's money. And as for "professional expertise…" just what profession does the Obama cabinet posses expertise in, other than hardball politics?

This president and his government are not only largely inexperienced when it comes to the private sector or even practical knowledge of middle America, they tend to view both in outright contempt. Recall Obama's famous "bitter clingers" speech and autobiographical aversion to "the suburbs," or his wife's admonitions against "joining corporate America." One with an overweening faith in "pragmatic federal leaders" probably hasn't been paying much attention to Ivy-accredited politicians like alleged geniuses (and TARP/Fannie Mae culprits) Barney Frank or Chris Dodd.

- Will Collier, More Arugula From David Brooks

It's not that those on the Right hate "intellectuals," it's that we hate that so many are so often wrong yet never seem to be penalized for the results of their failures. Instead, they are rewarded.

UPDATE: Thanks to the herculean efforts of reader John Hardin, the original JS-Kit/Echo comment thread for this post is available here.

It's Never Too Early To Start Planning

It's Never Too Early To Start Planning

Mr. Completely has set up the dates for the fifth annual Gun Blogger Rendezvous!

The official dates for Gun Blogger Rendezvous V are
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday,
September 9^th, 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th.

I've made every one so far, I intend to make this one.

Edited to add: True Blue Sam points to this YouTube video Derek did covering what you missed last year if you didn't attend:

Quote of the Day - Health Care Edition

Quote of the Day - Health Care Edition

From segment 1 of Peter Robinson's NRO Uncommon Knowledge interview of Paul Rahe about his book Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect.

Robinson: Paul let me ask you a question. You said that President Obama's underlying intention is to cut health care costs. Do you believe that, or do - not so much with regard to President Obama personally as to the entire political impetus behind the health care legislation - or do you believe that there actually is a statist impulse in Washington that wishes to see the State expand for the sake of State expansion? Are they simply stumbling into this mistakenly? Or do they know what they're doing and want it?

Rahe: They know what they're doing and they want it.

Let me see if I can put it this way. We are all in the grips of the meddling impulse. If I were to say to you that you were a busybody you might say to me "surely not." And I would say to you "ask your children." And everyone's children would say that the parent is a busybody because we all feel that impulse. That is to say that we all feel that we know better than other people. (Sometimes we really do!) The more educated people become - when you give them Ph.D's, the more expertise they have - the more you have inflated their sense of the right to interfere in the lives of other people. So the Progressive impulse goes back to the 1870's and the 1880's and the establishment of major research universities on the German model in the United States.

The function of these institutions is to produce people who can successfully meddle in other people's lives.

Robinson: And in Barack Obama we have . . .

Rahe: The representative of that class. The perfect representative of that class.

This is a fascinating interview.

Another excerpt:

Rahe: (Montesquieu) comes up with a political typology into republics, monarchies and despotisms, and monarchies are governments where you have a king, but his power is limited in one fashion or another - usually by a nobility. Despotism is unlimited power, and these operate on the basis of psychological principles. What drives a despotism is terror. What drives a monarchy is the sense of honor, the love of honor that elicits a certain kind of behavior from people. What's required in a republic is virtue. That's hard to achieve, because you have to train people in virtue and it doesn't come naturally or easy to us to prefer the public interest over the private interest.

No indeed. And when the system stops teaching honor and virtue? When it, in fact, denigrates them both?

Give 'Em Hell, Bill

Give 'Em Hell, Bill!

This t-shirt notwithstanding, Bill Whittle's latest Afterburner installment is an inspiring piece indeed.

Spread it around, would you?

UPDATE: However, reader Ken reminds us in the comments that simply throwing out the Democrats isn't going to fix anything:

Yeeeeaaaaaahhhh, but the idea of hangin' our hats on 2010/2012 puts me in mind of a comment from a post at Jaded Haven. Quoted in part: the subject of Daphne's post "...is prepared to learn that he must leave it to Republicans to move the progressive agenda at a pace at which it can be absorbed."

In your heart, you know he's right.

Yeah, I do.

Quote of the Day - Working Edition

Quote of the Day - Working Edition

We've declared war on work. As a society - all of us. It's a civil war, it's a cold war, really. We didn't set out to do it, and we didn't twist our mustache in some Machiavellian way, but we've done it. And we've waged this war on at least four fronts. Certainly in Hollywood. The way we portray working people on TV? It's laughable. If there's a plumber, he's 300 pounds and he has a giant butt-crack, admit it. You've seen it all the time, that's what plumbers look like, right? We turn 'em into heroes or we turn 'em into punchlines. That's what TV does. We try hard on Dirty Jobs not to do that, which is why I do the work and I don't cheat.

We've waged this war on Madison Avenue. So many of the commercials that come out there in the way of a message, what's really being said? Life would be better if you could work a little less. If you didn't have to work so hard. If you could get home a little earlier, if you could retire a little faster, if you could punch out a little sooner. It's all in there, over and over, again and again.

Washington? I can't even begin to talk about the deals and policies in place that affect the bottom-line reality of the available jobs 'cause I don't really know. I just know that that's a front in this war.

And right here, guys; Silicon Valley. How many people have an iPhone on 'em right now? How many people have their Blackberries? We're plugged in, we're connected. I would never suggest for a second that something bad has come out of the tech revolution. Good grief, not to this crowd. But I would suggest that innovation without imitation is a complete waste of time. And nobody celebrates imitation the way Dirty Jobs guys know it has to be done. Your iPhone without those people making the same interface, the same circuitry, the same board over and over - all that, that's what makes it equally as possible as the genius that goes inside of it.

And so we've got this new tool box. Our tools today don't look like shovels and picks, they look like the stuff we walk around with. And so the collective effect of all of that has been this marginalization of lots and lots of jobs.

Mike Rowe from his speech at TED.

And I'm reminded of this old, old joke:

5,000 years ago, Moses said:
"Load up your camels, pick up your shovels, mount your asses,
and I will lead you to the promised land."

5,000 years later, Franklin D. Roosevelt said:
"Lay down your shovels, sit on your asses, light up a Camel,
this IS the promised land."

Anagnorisis and Peripeteia

Perusing the archives at Jaded Haven I stumbled upon this TED video of Mike Rowe of the Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs. Not for the weak of stomach, but worth, as she says, your twenty minutes. Hang on through the first five.


I do believe Mike Rowe would kick Wolf Blitzer's ass in Jeopardy.

As a result of his work on Dirty Jobs, Rowe has become a "trade activist" - someone who is actively campaigning to restore the traditional trades to a position of respect in American culture. His site is MikeRoweWORKS.com. View his mission video here.

UPDATE:  9/30/13 - Mike Rowe gives the background story about this talk:

I Would Accuse Jeff Perrin of Plagiarism, But . . .

. . . his list has five more items than DJ's.

(Reader Ken H. sent me the link.)

My Favorite Living Philosopher: Thomas Sowell

Recently John Hawkins published his choices for the 40 Best Political Quotes of 2009. Of those 40, five were by Thomas Sowell. Nobody else came close. Just yesterday I was perusing my personal file of collected quotes and noticed that Dr. Sowell was heavily represented there as well. Here are some of my favorites:

One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.

--

What is wrong with America, in the eyes of the intelligentsia? The same things that are right with America in the eyes of others.

If one word rings out, and echoes around the world, when America is mentioned, that word is Freedom. But what does freedom mean?

It means that hundreds of millions of ordinary human beings live their lives as they see fit -- regardless of what their betters think. That is fine, unless you see yourself as one of their betters, as so many intellectuals do...

As we celebrate both our country's independence and our individual independence on the Fourth of July, we should never forget that this independence is galling to those who want us to be dependent on them.

--

If people are free to do as they wish, they are almost certain not to do as we wish. That is why Utopian planners end up as despots, whether at the national level or at the level of the local 'redevelopment' agency.

--

The fact that academics are overwhelmingly of the political left is perfectly consistent with their assumption that third parties -- especially third parties like themselves -- should be controlling the decisions of other people who have first-hand knowledge and experience.

--

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.

--

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.

--

The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.

--

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.

--

Liberals seem to assume that, if you don't believe in their particular political solutions, then you don't really care about the people that they claim to want to help.

--

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.

--

The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.

--

Mistakes can be corrected by those who pay attention to facts but dogmatism will not be corrected by those who are wedded to a vision.

--

A recently reprinted memoir by Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) has footnotes explaining what words like 'arraigned,' 'curried' and 'exculpate' meant, and explaining who Job was. In other words, this man who was born a slave and never went to school educated himself to the point where his words now have to be explained to today's expensively under-educated generation.

There is really nothing very mysterious about why our public schools are failures. When you select the poorest quality college students to be public school teachers, give them iron-clad tenure, a captive audience, and pay them according to seniority rather than performance, why should the results be surprising?

Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.

In a democracy, we have always had to worry about the ignorance of the uneducated. Today we have to worry about the ignorance of people with college degrees.

--

The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.

--

Too much of what is called "education" is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.

--

What 'multiculturalism' boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture - and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.

--

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

--

Stopping illegal immigration would mean that wages would have to rise to a level where Americans would want the jobs currently taken by illegal aliens.

--

The big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers. Talkers are usually more articulate than doers, since talk is their specialty.

--

Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.

--

Like a baseball game, wars are not over till they are over. Wars don't run on a clock like football. No previous generation was so hopelessly unrealistic that this had to be explained to them.

--

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long.

Not bad from someone who is trained to be an economist. And Dr. Sowell has a suggested reading list. My pile of "need to read" books just got taller.

Detroit has Been the Perfect Laboratory . . .

"Detroit has Been the Perfect Laboratory . . .

. . . for Leftist policies at work for nearly half a century. It's the perfect vision of the Left's Utopia that this administration sees."


Sweet bleeding jeebus. Detroit looks like a goddamned war zone.

It Ain't Kalashnikitty . . .

But I could go for one of these:


perlhaqr should get the profits, though.

You can buy one here.

Quote of the Day - Fine Rant Edition

My Boomershoot buddy emailed me a link to this one; Jaded Haven, The Cant of Thieves:

I do believe the remnant landscapes of true America, ones that still marginally graced my existence through a sixties childhood, are a thing of the past. The cant of thieves now dominates our times. Men and woman have forgotten their faces, the history of our people has been reduced to nothing, there is no pride in our forefather’s wisdom, sacrifice or common sense. We live like animals, succored on airwaves and tweets, disposable goods and the graft of elected vultures that we’ve elevated to iconic status. Historical ignorance has become a point of pride in the man on the street.

Our lives skim the surface, searching for depth in the fleeting adulation of our collection of goods, wives and bank balances. God lies in a Mercedes-Benz, a velvet Ivy league degree or a great set of tanned, plastic tits.

READ. IT. ALL. I am reminded of Alexander Solzhenitsyn:

In a state of psychological weakness, weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, then, but concessions, attempts to gain time and betrayal.

Damn, but I love a well-crafted rant. Daphne hits one out of the park.

Quote of the Day - New Year's Edition

I made it to 2010 and all I got from the SF books of my youth is the lousy dystopian government. - perlhaqr

Can I get an "amen"?

TSM: 2009 In Review

Time once again for the annual blogging retrospective. It has been an odd year, I'll give it that. I spent the first three months finishing up a project that was supposed to take six weeks, living out of town five nights out of seven and working 65+ hours a week. That ate into my free time pretty heavily, but the pay was good. Consequently, my blogging was a bit lighter than usual - more linky, less thinky. No Überpost for January. I spent some of that overtime on firearms, though. My Boomershoot pistol, for one, and my first pistol chambered in 9mm Europellet, an original early 70's Browning Hi Power.

February started off interestingly. I got to be the guest of a local radio talk show to discuss my blog and gunblogging in general, and was pleased that a reader from the UK, Phil R., called in. He was listening in Oxford, England to a radio station in Tucson, Arizona through the miracle of the internet. I got to meet Phil later in the year.

I did manage an Überpost in February - Confidence, Part III, a decidedly pessimistic look at the future of our nation. Upon re-reading it, I don't believe I'd retract a word. Perhaps as compensation for my pessimism I began the fairly regular posting of "Moment of Zen" images in February, as well.

In March, I reprinted a slightly altered version of Orlando Sentinel columnist Charley Reese's timeless piece, The 545 People Responsible for All of America's Woes. It's titled Rope, Trees, Some Assembly Required. Worth a re-read. I also got an Instalanche - once again for somebody else's work: The Debt Star.

March was also the month that our .gov tried to make once-fired milsurp brass unavailable to reloaders. An immediate, vociferous campaign got that idea quashed.

It was in March that the idea was floated to "invest" .gov money into the Big Three auto makers to bail them out of the hole they'd dug themselves. Now that GM stands for "Government Motors," a letter from Gregory Knox, President of Knox Machinery Co. and a supplier to GM on the subject of that "bailout" is good for another read as well.

In April we were introduced to "Scotgo" - Mr. James Kelly of Scotland who is wholly in favor of gun and knife bans in order to feel safer. I spent some time debunking him.

On a lighter note, I printed a series of cartoons that rag on engineers that month, too.

Tucson had its April 15^th TEA Party, and I got some time to attend and take some pictures. Pretty good crowd!

Also, in an event almost as misguided as the Rachel Corrie Memorial Pancake Breakfast, family members of the Virginia Tech massacre victims held a memorial run. Not the message I think they really wanted to promote.

In other news, we got to see the first "rightwing extremist" picked up and questioned: a Texan grandmother. Her crime? Sending the President and congresscritters the tabs from teabags.

In surprise of epic proportions, the NINTH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS found in favor of INCORPORATING THE INDIVIDUAL RIGHT TO ARMS UNDER THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT. I still have a hard time with that concept. The point is pretty much moot given that the Supreme Court will be taking up that question this year, but still, that was a shocker. Fifth Circuit, yes. Ninth Circuit? Who knew that you could get three intellectually honest judges on the same court at the same time?

Finally, Boomershoot was in April. My shooting partner and I drove up (two days each way) and had a helluva good time. All I have to say is: four four-inch square targets in a row at a laser-measured 640 yards.

May brought me more evidence (as if I needed it) that our public education system has pretty much entirely collapsed with Ballistic Deanimation's Dumbing Down.

Bill Whittle advocated for pitchforks and torches for the first time. In response, I wrote an open letter to Bill asking him to pen the current equivalent of Common Sense. He actually responded in comments.

I did manage an Überpost that month, on gun control no less! Entitled Cultures: Compare and Contrast, it was the concluding piece of my exchanges with Mr. James Kelly (first introduced in April).

TSM turned six on the opening day of the NRA convention, held this year just a couple of hours up the road in Phoenix. Much fun was had by all! I was introduced to Para USA's new GI Expert, a very slightly modified 1911 model, and arranged through Kerby Smith to get one as a raffle prize for the forth annual Gun Blogger Rendezvous. The opening teaser was announced in May.

The Überpost of the month was a fisking of a New England Journal of Medicine piece by a couple of lawyers - Ah, Yes, the "Guns as Disease Vector" Meme! In a fit of confession, I admit that Phil's link to the piece from Random Nuclear Strikes was an amusing ego boost.

June brought us solid evidence of Obama's promise that the Stimulus Bill would help keep unemployment down was like all political promises - bullshit. Now that I count myself among the unemployed, it has particular piquance.

I posted a comment by LabRat in its entirety as Quote-of-the-Day because of the sheer beauty and skill she brought to the use of the Clue-by-Four.

Something really weird happened in Italy that involved apparently counterfeit U.S. Bearer Bonds in the sum of $134.5 billion. There was some follow-up on the story, but all the questions have not been answered to my satisfaction.

I added another firearm to my collection, an EAA Witness Match in .38 Super.

Video of the first new Government Motors production automobile was released.

Arizona resident Janet Contreras sent a declaration to Glenn Beck. I don't think it represents the thinking of a majority of Americans, but it would be nice if a significant minority of us all shared her views. No Überpost this month.

In July Al Franken was finally sworn in as Minnesota's junior senator. Instapundit had the snark.

In a bit of follow-on to my exchange with James Kelly, the UK's Daily Mail reported in July that Britain is the most violent country in Europe. How's that gun- and knife-control working out for you?

We were also reminded that Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is once again selling like hotcakes. A lot of things she warned against in that novel are apparently coming to pass. Much mirth in the comments, though. Later in the month, someone came up with a graphic that was worth repeating.

Raffle ticket sales for the Para USA GI Expert opened, proceeds going to benefit Project Valour IT. Things would get bumpy, quickly. PayPal shut down all contributions to Soldier's Angels because of the raffle shortly after it began. I was not amused.

I issued yet another debate invitation to one Marc Rubin, an Examiner columnist who believes that the Second Amendment "has nothing to do with an individual right to own a gun." He emailed me a reply. My response was Überpost of the Month.

August brought us a piece of artwork that had the Left in a full-blown tizzy.

Thanks to new Rendezvous sponsor Luckygunner.com, ticket sales for the GI Expert raffle resumed.

I joined the EeePCArmy.

Ted Kennedy died. Brewers and distillers worldwide had massive layoffs in mourning.

I wrote Restoring the Lost Constitution. (Brief, for me, but still pessimistic!)

There was some response to that post which prompted the first post of September - Entropy Happens. Then I drove up to Reno for Gun Blogger Rendezvous IV. Damn, what a good time! Reader Phil R. from Oxford, England (remember, he called in when I was on the radio in February) traveled all the way to Reno to meet a bunch of gunbloggers and do some shooting. Alan Gura attended, and gave about a one-hour presentation. We raised $8,243.80 for Project Valour IT - about four times what we raised the previous year. Yea us!

September also brought us the ACORN scandal. Even Jon Stewart was embarrassed by the media's lack of coverage of this story. Someone else illustrated the media flow-chart used in determining how to classify opposition to President Obama.

I bought another Mustang. It's not a '67 big-block fastback, but it runs and I'm not afraid to drive it. I wreck this one, and I'm only out a couple grand.

I tried recipe blogging for the first time. People liked it! And the Supreme Court granted cert. on McDonald v. Chicago. Alan Gura will once again be arguing in front of the Supreme Court for our right to arms. Go Alan!

October brought us further evidence that Dan Ra^ther has lost his mind.

I recommended that the sane members of British society run like hell.

The Überpost of the Month was on the topic of whether health care is a right or not. (Hint: It's not.)

In sadder news, Melanie Hain, outspoken advocate for open carry, was killed by her husband in a murder-suicide. Gun ban proponents hailed Mr. Hain's actions, but it was just one more example of "how dare you leave me!" Mr. Hain was an "only one." "Gun control" would not have kept him from possessing a firearm.

Obama "won" the Nobel Peace Prize. The world's general reaction: "For WHAT?" In related news, a former speechwriter for Edwards, Clinton and Obama moves to Massachusetts - a state with mandated Universal Health Care - and finds that she can't afford it.

Further evidence is found that the bias of the New York Times goes back to at least 1898.

Reader Phil B., a UK expat now living in New Zealand (not to be confused with Phil R., a doctorate student studying in Oxford), wrote a helluva comment on the decline of (formerly) Great Britain that I had to make a post of its own.

I went to the 5^th Annual Big Sandy Machine Gun Shoot up near Wikieup, AZ. Just damn!

In the Überpost for October, I recommend that we nuke our education system and start over. It's too far gone to save. Unfortunately, we have the same problem there we have with our political system - nothing and no one to replace it with. The edumacation system has over the last 100 years or so ensured that we no longer have a population sufficiently well educated and moral to do the job.

British police announce that for the first time there would be armed foot patrols in certain sections of London. Not only would the officers be armed, they'd be carrying submachineguns. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The proposal was later rescinded, and denials that this was ever actually proposed were loudly made.

I did a little pro-CCW activism, and decried the number of people who decline my invitation to debate the topic of gun control.

In November, a jury decided that although the bat in question was not defective, the death of a young baseball pitcher might have been avoided had the manufacturer put a warning label on the bat and in compensation awarded the family of the deceased $792k. See what I mean about 100 years of our education system?

Reader Phil B. emailed me another piece too good not to publish, A Brilliant Bit of Analysis, which chronicles in greater detail the path the UK has been taking towards soft despotism.

Another case of right-wing extremism, er, terrorism, um man-made disaster occurred in November - the massacre of 12 and wounding of 31 people at Ft. Hood, Texas by an Army Psychiatrist and jihadi. But it wasn't an act of terrorism!. Even though the shooter had attempted to contact Al Qaeda.

The House under dominatrix Pelosi passed its version of "Health Care Reform" legislation, about 2,000 pages of unread text. And it was a bipartisan effort because ONE (1) Republican crossed the aisle and voted in favor. In related news, Rep. Eric Massa informed the public that they were stupid and he knew best. So much for being a representative.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright resurfaced at a celebration of the 60th anniversary of the socialist magazine Monthly Review, saying nothing all that surprising. Infuriating, yes. Surprising, no.

We got a rare look into the contents of an actual Can-o-Whoopass.

Obama's Justice Department announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other suspected terrorists would be tried in New York in civil court. I had something brief to say about that.

Der Spiegel magazine published an article stating that "average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years" and discussed how this fact is affecting the public's perception of Global Warming as a problem. Shortly after that, someone posted a sh!tload of emails, data files and programs from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, England - home of one of the centers for the promotion of the religion of Anthropogenic Global Warming. That information was not supportive of the faith. The fur began to fly - but only in the new media. The AP published a story just a few days later informing the public that "since 1997 . . . climate change has worsened and accelerated - beyond some of the grimmest of warnings made back then." Things have continued to unravel since.

I got to have dinner with Monster Hunter International author Larry Correia and Servant of a Dark God author John Brown.

TSM was named #102 in a list of the Top 133 Conservative Blogs. It's not a Nobel Peace Prize, but . . .

And, finally, the Supreme Court announced that oral arguments in McDonald v. Chicago would be heard on March 2, 2010. Go Alan!

That brings us to December. It wasn't an Instalanche, but I got hits from a number of Climate Skeptic sites for another piece of artwork not my own. Traffic was heavy for weeks.

I finally received notification that the LRB M25 rear-lugged receiver for the rifle I ordered last November had arrived. Apparently I'll have a super-accurate M14 rifle sometime in March or April.

A movie came out that I actually want to see, but apparently it's not being distributed in the US.

While there aren't enough of them, apparently there are still some people out there I'd be willing to vote for rather than against. Lieutenant Col. Allen West is one.

I picked up my last new firearm of the year. I traded in my (almost new) Taurus 605 paperweight on a Kel Tec PF9.

On December 7 I was notified that, due to lack of billable work, my services were no longer needed. I joined the ranks of the unemployed. Regardless, I went ahead with a little blogging/shooting get-together in central Arizona on the 12^th. We had a good time. I started looking for another job.

A bunch of people flew in private jets to Copenhagen to discuss how to keep the proles down control Global Warming. Lord Monckton illustrated the entire problem in ten minutes and thirty-eight seconds.

The Senate passed its version of "Health Care Reform" though it had to buy off a number of Democrats to do so. Voting was entirely along Party lines. Now the two bodies have to merge the two bills into one compromise version before buggering us with it. There's still hope to kill this thing, but not much.

No Überpost this month either. I've still got one in queue, I just can't work up the enthusiasm to finish it.

Here's to 2010, a year that by all appearances will be even more interesting than 2009. As Wash replied when Capt. Reynolds asked him to define "interesting" - "Oh God, oh God we're all gonna die?" Perhaps not, but I suggest you tighten your seat belt, put your seat back and tray table in their upright and locked position, and brace yourselves. We're in for a bumpy ride, and one or more passengers may be wearing Semtex Underoos. But rest assured, the remaining portions of the Constitution will surely carry us all the way to the scene of the crash.