I've Gotta Say It;

     Let's be honest; Islam is a religion of nutjobs. Any organization that codifies, within its tenets, the ownership of another human being is, by definition, an immoral institution that needs to be eradicated. I don't care if it's The Caliphate or The Confederacy, it's got to go.

   If the reports out of Iraq, regarding the brutality of ISIS, are true, then they should be exterminated like a pack of mad dogs. Beheadings? Crucifixions? Women turned into chattel? Chase every swinging dick down and put a bullet in them. Allowing these assholes to run around unchecked is just asking for trouble to come to our shores.

    Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I have never held any love for Muslims. The best that I could muster was apathy. I can still remember watching the news coverage of the '72 Olympics when the Black September group attacked the Israeli team. I joined the Army in response to our embassy being taken in Iran. When the Marine Barracks in Beirut was bombed, we were put on alert. Every one of us was ready to go avenge our comrades in arms. I can see Robert Stethem being dumped on the tarmac like it happened yesterday. The horror of the events on the Achille Lauro, the bombing of La Belle Disco in West Berlin, Pan Am Flight 103, and on, and on, and on.

    That said, I don't think one more American boot should be on the ground in Iraq unless we go in with the intent of bringing them a taste of Total War, American Style. Like the man said, "War to the knife, and knife to the hilt!" After all, Germany and Japan were once our enemies, it took total war to bring them to their knees, and now they are staunch allies.

    Unfortunately, our current leaders don't have the stomach or the balls to deal with these people with the utter ruthlessness that would be necessary. Our government has this weird need for our enemies to like us. As far as I'm concerned, they can like us or hate us, as long as they fear us, it's all good.

It Seems That American Businesses Never Have The Money...

....to do something right, but they always have the money to do it twice. Seriously, it's like they took a page out of the US Government's manual on business management, and incorporated it into their own practices.

    Case in point: Remington Arms Company. Specifically, the R51 Semi-Automatic Pistol.

    On the surface, this thing should have been a winner. It had slim, sleek lines, good sights, a good trigger, and was touted as being one of the easiest semi-autos for women to manipulate. Based on a Remington design from the early 20th century, it promised to be The Next Big Thing in firearms.

    The gun rags featured it on their covers, raved about its ergonomics, beauty, and the novelty of making an old design new again. What they didn't talk about was how well it functioned. Those few writers that actually got to take it to the range couched their descriptions with such weasel words as "teething problems" and extolled the virtue of "only" a couple of jams.

    As with too many things these days, it was a good idea, but poorly executed.

    My own experience was limited to the three examples that came into my place of employment. All three had universally bad triggers, retracting the slide felt like dragging a railroad tie down a gravel road, and the grip safety required a vice-like grip to activate. All three sold, and all three came back for a refund.

    Now, Remington is re-releasing the R51. It's even featured on the cover of the August issue of Guns Magazine, a huge credibility risk for them. And, indeed, it seems that Remington is trying to undo the debacle; according to The Truth About Guns, they have worked out the bugs and it will be all better now. They're even willing to replace all of the substandard ones with the new version. Let's hope that the bugs are worked out, because, while the current iteration of the R51 won't do much damage to a target, it may have irreparably damaged Remington Arms reputation while simultaneously destroying the credibility of the dead tree gun rags.

Things I'd Like to See On Television

     I've given up on Hollywood. I mean, if you have to look to video games and comic books to supply you with a plot to a movie, I figure that you're pretty much out of ideas. The latest thing is to rewrite fairy tales to make them more violent. All in all, I'm convinced that Hollywood is breathing its last gasp. Hopefully, someone more imaginative will show up and make some real stories.

     To that end, I have some ideas:

     For an action comedy, I'd like to see Todd Palin show up on Bill Maher's show and kick the ever-loving shit out of him. I don't mean a couple of punches and done; I want to see Bill Maher crawling on the floor, clutching his balls while spitting teeth and vomiting blood. I mean, Maher has taken liberties with Sarah Palin that no husband would be able to tolerate if the perpetrator weren't surrounded by bodyguards. Personally, I think the look on Maher's face when Todd Palin showed up on the set of his show would be worth whatever came next. In any case, I'd give to any Defense Fund that Todd needed.

     For drama, nothing beats C-Span. However, I think that each Senator and Representative should be required to have all of their bank accounts connected directly to the economy, and have money added or subtracted by the same percentage that the economy grows or shrinks. That way they have some "skin" in the game. If the economy expands by 5%, they get a 5% bonus. If the economy takes a dive, so does their wealth. Oh, and an extra percentage point is deducted for every time they get caught in a lie.

     Romance? No problemo. Just follow the love life of S.E.Cupp . When you have that much intellectual horsepower contained in a package that attractive, well, the trail of broken men will be long but interesting. She regularly makes mincemeat of her adversaries on The Cycle, I suspect that she is equally formidable in her personal life.

     All in all, I'd say that those three things would be a good start to improving television and a damned sight better than any reality show.

     Next time: Real stories that would make better movies than Hollywood movies.

    

Civility and the Second Amendment

     By now, it has become obvious that the Washington DC overlords have decided to make another attempt at banning certain types of firearms. Adhering to Rahm Emmanuel's advice to "never let a crisis go to waste.", the Democrats have resurrected the Assault Weapons Ban on the heels of the Sandy Hook massacre. Make no mistake; the shooting of those children was the answer to the gun control crowd's prayers. Before the shooting, gun control, as a political issue, was dead. The Democrats knew that to submit any gun control legislation was a short path to the unemployment line. Considering the monumental failure of the original assault weapon ban in reducing crime, the citizens of this country weren't buying into the lies anymore.

     Enter Adam Lanza.

     His rampage gave the Democrats the impetus they needed to renew their efforts at gun control. The bodies weren't even cold yet, and the execrable Dianne Feinstein had her already-written legislation ready to go. The media, ever ready to support any and all attacks on liberty, bombarded us with perpetual coverage of the aftermath, including, in an unrivaled lack of decency, interviews of the surviving children. A month later, the talking heads were still dancing in the blood of the children in an effort to boost ratings and appear relevant. All of this served to make emotions run high, and it seems difficult to have a calm, rational discussion with anyone on the other side.

     The problem is, trying to cite facts to someone who deals only in emotion is much like trying to knock down a brick wall with a roll of paper towels. Telling an anti-gun person that violent crime has decreased by fifty percent in the last twenty years, or that the number of school shootings has declined, or that the cities with the most lenient gun laws have the lowest crime rates, is usually an invitation to a vitriolic attack on your character. You can't have a discussion when only one side wants to be civil.

     So, don't bother.

     If someone, that you know is vehemently anti-gun, brings the subject up, disengage and go find something productive to do. It's a trap; they have no desire to exchange ideas, they simply want to use you as a focal point for their anger. They have bought into the media narrative that guns are evil, and the NRA is a tool of arms merchants.

     If you find yourself the object of a reporter's attention, do your best to speak in calm, modulated tones. As soon as they start in with the usual hyperbole about 'paranoia', machine guns, or other ridiculous straw man arguments, walk away. Leave them there by themselves. Being that laziness and stupidity are the hallmarks of modern journalism, you can be assured that the interviewer has no desire to learn anything. Instead, they're searching for a 'gotcha' moment or comment that they can spin into making gun owners look like nutcases.

     If you're writing or speaking to a politician, tell them what you want them to do and leave it at that. Politicians aren't interested in your opinion, they just want to know how many of each opposing view there are, and will act in accordance with the wishes of the greater number. Your letter shouldn't be longer than a single paragraph. Your statement to them shouldn't be more than a couple of sentences. And TELL them, don't ask. Keep in mind that they work for you.

     Above all else, go armed. The media spin machine is upping their efforts to the point where it is likely that pro-gun people may find themselves threatened or even physically attacked. If attacked, do what you must, but be sure that you are absolutely in the right, and that you end the encounter decisively and with finality.

     Like the man said, "No more Mister Nice Guy."

    

Atrocities Great and Small

     I have held off from writing about the Sandy Hook shooter because I didn't want to be included in the herd of bloviating bullshit artists that have infested the airwaves and newspapers since about thirty seconds after the event happened. I also needed to sort out my own grief so that this didn't turn into one long, primal, scream of rage. Rage is, I think, an appropriate response to the actions of the defective soul that committed such a heinous act, but it isn't very effective for conveying ideas.

     As a parent, I am heartsick over the loss of the lives of the children. Wanton slaughter of anyone is bad enough, but it is additionally horrific when it's children. Children represent hope for our future; the untapped potential that could be the next Einstein, Fermi, Edison, or any of a million other possibilities. For their lives to be cut short is to see all of that potential snuffed out in a matter of nanoseconds, it rattles our worldview, our security in the belief that all will be well when we are gone. To see the photos of those smiling faces and to know they ended up as bloody heaps lying on the school room floor, well the heartbreak is audible to the naked ear.

     Of course, not everybody was as heartsick and saddened as John Q. Public was; some were damned near ecstatic that a slow news day had finally livened up. We know this because almost immediately, we were inundated with speculation from the contemptible horde of talking heads that would sell their souls to be seen as 'relevant' in today's world. Instantly there were the incessant parade of experts speculating on 'who', 'what', 'where', 'why', and most tantalizingly, 'how'.

     Unfortunately, when The Moment had arrived, instead of taking a candid look at the root causes of the 'why', they all, to a person, reverted to the inane, stupid, little minds that they have time and again revealed themselves to be. How? Simple. Instead of waiting a period of time for the police to sort out the facts, they attended the initial briefing by the Chief of Police, and then the frenzy of speculation and hypothesizing began.

     Oh yes, there were the feigned looks of sadness and sympathy, the mewlings of "what a tragedy" and "how horrible". But the truth is, in this day and age in which professional news agencies are quickly being replaced by The New Media, where corporate camera crews are upstaged by anyone with a cellphone camera, the very idea that a crisis had arisen that required them to do more than sit at a desk and read a prepared script was, no doubt, a satisfaction bordering on ecstasy. The problem is that their 'examination' of the incident and the surrounding circumstances has become nothing more than boilerplate. They trot out the same, tired, theory every time some nut job has a microchip slip into overdrive; too many guns.

    They speak in bold, outraged, tones, their voice appropriately emphatic when they utter the words "assault rifle" and "automatic weapon". They labor to compare the  current event to the other bright spots in their journalistic lives; Columbine and Aurora. They tick off the casualty count like the score at a basketball game, delighting in each bloody corpse, and excitedly describing how each corpse was "...shot multiple times...". They breathlessly relay each new detail, each titillating tidbit, as it becomes available. And when nothing is forthcoming, they make stuff up as they go along.

     But it always comes back to the guns.

     On the surface, it seems reasonable to assume that guns are the problem. And surface is what the media is all about. We know from their endless analysis that there were twelve people killed at Aurora, thirty-three at Virginia Tech, twenty-six at Sandy Hook, and thirteen at Columbine. Eighty-four people killed in four separate incidents in which some evil individuals picked up a gun and set about to inflict murder and mayhem upon people whose only crime was crossing their paths.

     They conveniently leave out cases like the Happy Land Fire and the Bath School bombing, either of which are at least as heinous as any of the aforementioned incidents. The Happy Land Fire was caused by an individual named Julio Gonzalez. Mr. Gonzalez had followed his ex-girlfriend to the Happy Land Nightclub where, after getting into an argument with her, he was ejected by the bouncers. He returned later, armed with about a dollar's worth of gasoline and a match, and burned the place down, killing eighty-seven people in the process. That's more than all of the deaths at Aurora, Virginia Tech, Columbine, and Sandy Hook combined.

     The Bath School bombing killed thirty eight children between the ages of seven to fourteen. The perpetrator was Andrew Kehoe, the school board treasurer who was angry about losing an election. His weapon? Dynamite and pyrotol; an incendiary substance that Mr. Kehoe had spent months planting throughout the school building. Get that? He had been planning this massacre for months!

     Timothy McVeigh used fertilizer and diesel fuel, the 9/11 terrorists took over the planes with box cutters, the point is this: Evil people do evil shit because they're evil. Period.

     The shooter at Sandy Hook didn't do what he did because the seductive power of a gun inspired him to do so, he did it because he was evil. The Columbine shooters did what they did because they were evil. Virginia Tech? Aurora? Happy Land? Bath Township? All committed by evil people.

     These were not people caught up in a crime of passion, nor were they soldiers suffering the fog of war. These people plotted, planned, and equipped themselves to do the maximum amount of damage in the shortest amount of time. Their whole plan was to murder as many people as possible so as to cause as much grief as possible, and then, as a final 'fuck you' they killed themselves, denying us the opportunity to see them brought to justice.

     On the other hand, they were the answer to the prayers of Democrat politicians all across the nation. Democrats had lost all of the momentum on gun control as a result of the monumental rejection of gun control as a crime control method. No one was buying into the tired, old, saw that gun control was a means of preventing crime, because the facts were proving otherwise; those cities and states where guns in the hands of the citizens were common enjoyed lower violent crime rates than those with restrictive gun control laws.

     Chicago was becoming a national joke due to the number of shootings they had every weekend, despite guns being completely illegal within the city limits. Outside of The Beltway, Washington D.C. is one of the most dangerous cities in the country. The crime in these cities was so rampant, that even the Mainstream Media couldn't avoid reporting it. So, when some evil piece of shit shoots up a movie theater or elementary school, there is a wave of delight throughout the DNC, because it means that they have a chance to become (there's that word again) relevant once more. Because in politics, you have to justify your existence by doing something. If you aren't in constant motion, the mundanes (that's you and me) might get the idea that government isn't really all that necessary. Once government is discovered to be unnecessary, the mundanes might get the idea to make government smaller. That means less money to play with. And money, despite political platitudes to the contrary, is truly what motivates politicians on either side of the aisle.

    As counter-intuitive as it is, the answer to evil people with guns is, good people with guns. Not the police or the military (although they certainly have their part) but Joe and Jane Average.

     One of the people at Sandy Hook that I will remember forever is one Victoria Soto, the teacher that hid her students in a closet and then put herself between the shooter and the kids.  I would rather that, upon seeing this vicious killer, Ms. Soto had blown his brains out with her legally concealed handgun and then led those children to safety. Instead, She was gunned down. Gunned down because of the refusal of the powers that be to acknowledge that evil people exist. They refuse because too much of their political power and too many careers depend on incidents like this for their continued prosperity. That is why, despite evidence to the contrary, despite the lessons of Israel and Thailand, those that shape and control the culture through legislation and media inflict institutional helplessness upon us all.

     Ms. Soto's blood is as much on their hands as it is on the shooter's.





    

Fiscal Fatigue

    All I hear about is the Fiscal Cliff and how this country is going over it. To that I say, "Good." We have invested way too much time and wealth in assisting those that would loot this nation of its resources so that they may either continue to wallow in their miserable existence, or continue their opulent lifestyle. And sometimes, it's difficult to determine who is who.

    We encourage, dependence on government to the point where there are families who have spent generations on welfare. We reward failure in school, in business and in life. Some executive invests his company in something that eventually brings the company to ruin and he is given millions of dollars as a bonus. A company starts up by manufacturing a product that nobody wants, and the government gives them a bailout, costing the taxpayer billions, and they go under anyway. Later, it's revealed that the "bailout" was a thinly disguised payoff to a campaign donor of one stripe or another.

    Congress ignores or ostracizes people who tell the truth. and embrace the liars, charlatans, and con men that tell them what they want to hear. Moreover, they use voodoo economics and outright lies to create an atmosphere of panic, all in order to amass more power and influence for themselves.
Mencken said it best, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamoring to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”

    The infuriating thing is that, when someone, who is demonstrably smarter than all of them combined on the subject of Economics, explains reality, they act as if they heard nothing. Even worse, they think we are stupid enough to believe their bullshit. They make the often fatal mistake of confusing powerlessness with ignorance.

     It's a dangerous game. Powerlessness is okay when it's shrouded in the cloak of prosperity. Joe Average doesn't mind the games government plays as long as his quality of life remains unchanged. It's sort of the same philosophy as those people that live in the same neighborhood as a notorious gangster: as long as our neighborhood is safe, we don't care what he does. The problem for those in government is, they have begun diminishing the quality of life of those that live on Main Street, and when the Middle Class feels threatened, they can become dangerous. And when they finally decide enough is enough, there might be a bunch of government types going over the cliff with the economy.

    Maybe if a few go over, the rest will see the error of their ways. Let's hope we don't ever need to find out.

The Burning Question Has Been Answered...

And the answer is, "Yes, my countrymen are that stupid." If there has ever been a president that has been a greater failure, and a greater menace to our liberty, that got re-elected, I don't know who it might be. Between his rampant spending, his obvious cronyism, the utter contempt for our Constitution, the complete lack of anything resembling a foreign policy, and his ineptitude in stimulating the economy, it boggles the mind to think that someone of this degree of incompetence would be anywhere but the ash heap of history.

Yet, in what can only be described as monumental  apathy on the part of the Republican Party, they trotted out another bland, whitebread, Beltway Insider to run on the GOP ticket. There were any number of viable alternatives; Bobby Jindal, Ron Paul, Rick Perry.... and they come up with someone that is distinguishable from Obama only by the melanin content of his skin. Yes, he made all of the right noises during the debates, but no one actually believed that he believed in what he was saying. Especially since his record was so glaringly opposite of what he said.

Still, one hopes that seeming insincerity would trump blatant incompetence.

The next four years, if the last four years are any indication, will see the United States of America slide even farther down the path to financial ruin, social instability, and international irrelevance. The GOP is at a crossroads; either they can return to the conservative values that gave rise to their place in the American political scene, or they can take the place on the ash heap of history that had been reserved for Obama. Democrat, and Democrat Lite aren't really a choice.