Report from PIPs New Shooters

Those of you not interested in shooting -- I wanted to get this to the PIWPSC page and this was the thought that came to my mind. Consider it "Blog Abuse". 

Thanks for a great job by all, even if Marla and I were an hour late -- never believe FB! ;-)

I thought the outdoors experience was much improved from last year. Things I really liked:

1). The "line up" ... just going through the "Make ready; Are you ready; Stand-by; BEEP" a couple of times is INVALUABLE to people getting started.

2). Three stages is just perfect, don't add more for the starters or it will get to be too much.

3). I think the level of complexity on the 3rd stage was "maximum perfect" ... a little less would still be fine, more would be over the top.

Now suggestions -- and they are JUST that, it REALLY thought it was fantastic, so these are just in the interest of "perfection":

-- I'd cut the "super detail and the anecdotes" in the presentation (I just saw the end, which was likely long on that) ... how someone got DQed at some super match is as useless as pointers on a Space Shuttle landing to a guy just ready to take his first turn at the controls of a Cessna. Just focus on the REALLY REALLY basic. Which to me is (but you guys are way more experienced / smarter on this, and will do better at picking):

• Safety is primary and secondary. That is the one issue that your ROs, club helpers, etc will be "incessant" about, but that is OK. In my mind, the "biggies" are:
• Cold range: Go to a safety area to put your gun on. Next time you touch it is "Make Ready". You can load mags anywhere but in the safety area. This is one that is hard for me after shooting elsewhere. "unusual to USPSA"
• remember, you have at least 3 kinds of inexperienced. Folks that have never shot. Folks that have never shot USPSA. Both.
• Finger outside of trigger until actual shot, including moving in stage. I've taken a couple of people to the range in the last year -- this can take awhile.
• The 180, never sweep anyone with the barrel including yourself.
• "Make Ready" -- slam the mag home. Lots of people that don't shoot a lot with experienced people don't get this (I helped the lady next to me at lineup, Marla had trouble in stage). Not really safety ... but it causes flustering, which can lead to unsafe things.
• Talk to "your RO" about YOUR GUN -- I wouldn't even bother going through de-cockers, SAO/DAO, striker fired ... etc. DON'T CONFUSE THE NEW PEOPLE! Folks with Glocks and XDs don't even have to worry about any of this until they get a different gun, and by then they will know enough PIPs people so the biggest problem will be that "what do you think about shooting an XXXX?" will cost a major hunk of their lives, and they will know how to disassemble it, who designed it, who does speed packages on it, what the best grips for it are, where to buy,  ... how many versions of it Harmon owns, etc

Who is "Your RO"? I think it would be really cool to take "groups of 10" and match them up with an RO, RO in waiting, and a "minion or two". Then those groups STAY together for the outside session. The RO team takes their group to Safe Area ... maybe then brings each shooter in (or 2 or 3 each with a minion) ... look over the equipment. Talk about make ready procedure for that gun. Look at mags ... send them off to load if needed. Talk about only touch gun in safe area or "make ready", finger outside trigger, 180 ... whatever we want to stress.




Group goes to first stage -- RO and helpers focus on really new folks, either because they volunteered as new, or the RO/minions picked them out as needy.

RO has minion go to line, does a VERY deliberate run-through of the ENTIRE procedure that is coming up. (Both double taps). Focus on keys ... slam mag home, 180, finger outside trigger, holstering, clear, show empty, pull trigger down range ... cover any gun/holster safe issues, etc. I'd recommend putting up "ten" targets in some form on the "lineup" and shooting a couple of "double taps". Non USPSA shooters will likely have never done a DT. Clear the range. Have the minions go down and tape.

Group goes to 2nd stage -- AGAIN, have a minion go through exactly what will be done VERY deliberately. No attempts at speed. SLOW double taps, etc. Then take folks through based on volunteers or detected comfort level.

3rd stage ditto.

I think there was a big improvement from last year. We are looking like a "pro org" from what I see. My biggest criticisms revolve around too much "knowledge/experience/anecdote overload". We have core folks with bags and bags of knowledge, skill and experience. To a new person that is OBVIOUS -- and if it is overly expressed it becomes PAINFULLY obvious as in "how in the hell am I going to learn all this, and is the "barrier to fun" too high?  "Just the facts and slow" ... KISS.

I wrote on too much, didn't follow my own advice and gave the wrong impression. It was EXTREMELY well done. Looking forward to Wed night. THANKS.

BO on "Enough Money"

Exactly who ‘makes enough money’ in Obama’s eyes? | Kyle Wingfield

BO made $5.5 million last year, with a health plan that is beyond "Cadillac", security that is out of this world, multiple provided residences, free travel including the jet that no others complete with, multiple personal chefs, large staff, gym, personal theatre with any first run movies he desires, etc, etc, etc.

As the article points out, lots of his "close personal friends" and backers make in the $100s of millions.

Supposedly, Bush was "arrogant". Nothing even came close to this!

Doctors On BOcare

Why Physicians Oppose The Health Care Reform Bill - Forbes.com

Worth a read. My view:

I'd say the real reasons that Doctors oppose BOcare are:
1). They are intelligent
2). Their profession forces them to be reality based. Let's face it, they deal with mankind as it really is, not as some might wish it to be.

Life, intellect and all goods and services are scarce resources. Intelligence is very scarce, one wonders if wisdom even exists any more. The task is to allocate scarce resources, and I think deep down we all know that BOcare is not that way. Since Doctors are the ones closest to that reality on a day to day basis, they are faced with the cruel facts the soonest. Healthy people love government care. Sick people -- and doctors, hate it.

We learned in the '80s that there wasn't any "shortage" of gas in the '70's, only government controls on prices that prevented the market from allocating resources efficiently. The story is old -- the USSR was rife with it. The wrong products at the wrong places and "allocation" done by waiting in line (lowering productivity yet further). A cursory study of rent control shows the facts clearly -- it is often said that the only way to destroy housing faster is by bombing. Sadly, the N Vietnamese admitted that rent control in Hanoi was actually MORE effective at destroying housing than bombing, so liberals will take that as "economists wrong again".

Much like Democracy being really bad, but better than any other form of government (Churchill), we are already finding that while the market may be "bad", it has the saving grace of being better than anything else. One of the saddest aspects that we already see is that since everyone really knows in their gut that scarce resources must be allocated somehow, the knives are already being sharpened. We see that not only will they be allocated politically, but they will be allocated ruthlessly, by "51 votes", or whatever underhanded overbearing trick in the book can be used by the power mad left.

Markets are actually not "heartless" -- they are just a function of the hearts and minds of millions of people. While politicians may seem to be very friendly, they are certainly HEAVILY motivated by votes -- not to mention money, favors, power, greed, and all the other problems of being human. Since we have now decided to allocate one of the dearest scarce resources politically, the logical result is to decrease unity and increase political rancor.

As our government has continued to swell since the '30s, so has nastiness and division. The reason why is very simple. While the market is imperfect, at least we are all in that together. Once we move into political competition, the game becomes zero sum and the "rules" become less and less clear as the constitution, practices like the filibuster in the senate, the role of the supreme court, personal property, freedom of speech, and anything else that seems to stand in the way of the left is plowed down. BO indicated today that he supports congress acting to stop corporate freedom of speech. The issue of the court having the right to override congress was established when John Marshall was chief justice, it is called "Marbury vs Madison".

Being static isn't an option for a nation. I'd argue that we were in a "virtuous cycle" since '80, and in '06 we switched to a "death spiral". We've turned on the most productive among us. We've thrown the idea that we are a country of laws not of men away. The 20% that is driven by what they believe "ought to be" is firmly in control and they are blindly driving on the basis of their perceived ends rather on the basis of the known facts of man, the economy, law, morality, government nor anything else. They firmly believe that their ends justify any means -- but they lack understanding of what the known ends of their headlong rush for some ill defined dream of "equality, plenty, bliss" really are.

We may not survive until November.

A Conservative View of Deficits

Europe in Crisis - Walter Russell Mead's Blog - The American Interest

Here is a nice bookend to yesterdays HuffPo post. Just give it a read and then decide if you are a liberal or a conservative thinker.

The Greek meltdown is on the surface just another financial crisis: yet another delusional country pursuing the path of least resistance has made promises it can’t keep to public and private sector workers.  Now the bill must be paid and the IMF called in to reorganize the national finances.

It is as if the rest of the world has failed to read HuffPo. Why would Greece not follow one of their many worthy "myth-busters" of why massive government deficit spending is never a problem? Could it be that it is actually the "economists" quoted by HuffPo that have no clue about reality?

The euro was a glorious fudge.  The Latin countries plus Greece could enjoy the benefits of German discipline and virtue while carrying on with traditionally unsustainable public and private sector policies.  In the old, pre-euro days, the southern economies had to pay high interest rates on their debt; wary investors knew that inflation and devaluation were likely and so demanded interest rates that would compensate them for the risk.  The lira, the drachma: everyone knew they would lose value over time against the Deutsche mark and even the dollar, and interest rates reflected this understanding.  But as the southern countries moved into the euro, calculations changed.  For the last twenty years, countries like Greece and Italy were able to borrow money at essentially the same rate that Germany could.

Think of sub-prime mortgages getting stirred into the credit markets of the world by freddie and fannie and all the crooked lenders of sub-primes in the same role as the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain) and you get a good picture of how fallacy works. It doesn't take much rat feces to spoil a whole pot of soup -- especially once the clientele sees a video of the rat crapping in the pot.

Lousy leaders gave greedy civil servants fat raises; promises were cheap and the government scattered them far and wide.  In Italy as well, once the national debt was less painful to carry, there was less pressure to reduce the national debt.

Has anything ever sounded like current politics in America more? I actually think it does a disservice to lousy leaders to compare them with BO, but if the Gucci fits ...

Thinking Like a Liberal on Deficit

Lynn Parramore: The Deficit: Nine Myths We Can't Afford

I know this is from the HuffPo, so rational people don't even read it, BUT there are plenty of irrational people in the world, and I'll bet at least most of the 20% of folks that self-identify as liberal will buy SOME of this myth-busting.

I'm not going to bother to waste the time to refute of each of these on their own. If you even have any tendency to buy any of this, just consider that if it is really this rosy, every nation on earth as been a fool forever. Just spend spend spend with no constraint, cut taxes to zero, interest to zero, and the whole country can go on a lifetime bender and buy all they want on the proceeds -- at least if the "busting" hypothesis are true.

OTOH, if there IS such a thing as "fiscal gravity", we are still in grave peril, and even graver when you suspect that some of the idiots at the controls of our ship probably buy into this!

I Don't Skydive With Blacks

RealClearPolitics - Filtering History

Short, wise and entertaining. Just read it. One tease:

If the history of slavery ought to teach us anything, it is that human beings cannot be trusted with unbridled power over other human beings-- no matter what color or creed any of them are. The history of ancient despotism and modern totalitarianism practically shouts that same message from the blood-stained pages of history.

Learn it, live it, protect the 2nd amendment at ALL costs!!!

Tom Friedman's house

Next time you read something about how everything ought to be green by Tom, just remember where he lives. I assume that he just writes about the green stuff to make money -- I guess that is OK. The thing I never get about liberals is how once you say what they want to hear, they really could care less if you follow any of what the preach. As long as you are liberal, you can pollute all you want, own all you want, be as rich as you want, and treat "the little people" with complete disdain.

In this world, liberalism provides forgiveness of all that they might see as "sin", past, present and future, save the unforgivable sin. Turning conservative.

Something New in Jersey

George Will : The Thunder Roars in Trenton - Townhall.com

New Jersey has a Republican governor and he is already making a big difference.

Christie is using his power to remind New Jersey that wealth goes where it is welcome and stays where it is well-treated. Prosperous states are practicing, at the expense of slow learners like New Jersey, "entrepreneurial federalism" -- competing to have the most enticing business climate.

Imagine that. Wealthy people are liable to move away from states that tax them heavily to states that don't. How could they do such a thing?

In the state that has the nation's fourth-highest percentage (66) of public employees who are unionized, he has joined the struggle that will dominate the nation's domestic policymaking in this decade -- the struggle to break the ruinous collaboration between elected officials and unionized state and local workers whose affections the officials purchase with taxpayers' money.

Government workers now have the highest combination of wages and benefits in the nation. It is no longer "public service". The unholy alliance of unionized workers passing campaign money to Democrats in government so the Democrats can send more money back to unionized government workers has borne it's evil fruit.

Want to bet what BO would have to say about this? States ought not have any freedom to complete for business or wealth. All the money ought to just go into the feds so that the "wealthy" have no place to hide. "Freedom" to a Democrat is merely the ability to thumb your nose at any religious sorts of moral restrictions. The "right" to be bad. Free speech? Only if it agrees with them -- they constantly want Fox and Talk Radio muzzled. Right to bear arms? Guns are dangerous (to totalitarian politicians). Property? Maybe, as long as it is in exactly the quantity and quality that Democrats find to be "equal". Religion? Maybe -- if it is non-Christian, pretty much anything goes, but for Christians, only if you remain very very quiet.

Loss of Trust

RealClearPolitics - The Eradication of Trust

I like the honesty of this column, it provides a lot of insight into the liberal mind. 

Trust might as well be a four-letter word. American public opinion seems to have become an unguided Weapon of Mass Suspicion, and it's not hard to understand why. But those who would exploit distrust, dissatisfaction and anger for political gain had better worry about collateral damage.

I'm quite certain that Robinson looks back on Bush being "unelected", "blood for oil", "politics of Mass Deception", the HORRIBLE deficits of the early '00s, "Cheney and Haliburton", the supposed failure of the Bush admin at New Orleans, etc, etc as simply "factual" -- in his mind all those elements were NEEDED to give people the "TRUTH" about "the worst administration ever" ... loaded with incompetence, corruption, lies, cronyism, gross partisanship, and all manner of evil. I imagine he sees no irony whatsoever that now that the shoe is on the other foot, he finds "distrust of government" to be a very bad thing.

The overhyped tea party phenomenon is more about symbolism and screaming than anything else. A "movement" that encompasses gun nuts, tax protesters, devotees of the gold standard, Sarah Palin, insurance company lobbyists, "constitutionalists" who have not read the Constitution, Medicare recipients who oppose government-run health care, crazy "birthers" who claim President Obama was born in another country, a contingent of outright racists (come on, people, let's be real) and a bunch of fat-cat professional politicians pretending to be "outsiders" is not a coherent intellectual or political force.

Had there ever been a war protest that even accounted to 1/10th of the Tea Party movement, we would have never seen anything else on TV. When poor deranged Cindy Sheehan was pretty much sitting alone outside Bush's ranch in Aug '05, she was one person national news! Millions of common working Americans with lots better things to to spend their time on getting out and protesting deficits in the $1.5 Trillion range for as far as we have estimates are of course "racists" -- there is simply no other reason one could be against those numbers. $400 Billion under Bush though?? HORRIBLE -- I'm sure I could go find Robinson screeching "Armageddon" back then as I've done pointed out forKrugman. What a difference a change of party makes to a true partisan.

The liberals always want us to note how "uncivil" anyone that disagrees with them is -- I'm sure all the depictions in Robinson's paragraph above are just 100% facts ... like the Michael Moore movies and the "Truthers" during the Bush admin.

Another story that won't go away is the pedophilia scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. On Sunday, during a visit to Malta, Pope Benedict XVI prayed with eight adult victims of childhood sexual abuse by priests and reportedly expressed his "shame and sorrow." But practically every day, there are new revelations of pedophile priests having been transferred to other parishes rather than being defrocked and reported to authorities.

It seems just a little disjoint to bring in the old Priests and boys story. This is a problem that pretty much goes back to the Greeks, and I'm sure before. There have been plenty of REPORTED "page scandals" in our own hallowed congress. The usual situation is as per normal "If Democrat, then "boys will be boys" --- or in this case, "some types of men like boys". If Republican, then horror, hypocrisy, out of office, maybe we ought to prosecute". Catholics generally vote Democrat, apparently them being a religious organization means that they have to be treated like Republicans by Robinson.

Republicans have been actively encouraging this groundswell of distrust on the theory that it's bad for incumbents, meaning Democrats. Indeed, the approval rating for the Democratic Party has plunged to 38 percent. The problem is that approval of the Republican Party has also fallen -- to 37 percent.

The moral here, for giddy GOP strategists, is the one about people who live in glass houses.

Now, when it was Democrats encouraging the "groundswell of distrust", did they not live in a glass house? or is Robinson's assertion that Fox and a few Tea Partiers are more mighty than the Democrats, MoveOn, the whole MSM and the code pink sort of movements put together?  More likely, like many in the culturally dominant liberal 20%, he simply believes he is completely right and the 80% is completely wrong. Like a fish, he can't define "all wet".

The Dying RINO

Who Killed the Responsible Republican? Bill Kristol, of course. - By Jacob Weisberg - Slate Magazine

From the left, a "Republican In Name Only" RINO is of course a "Responsible Republican. An RR to them is "almost as good as a Democrat".

Now when it comes to a DINO "Democrat in Name Only" -- Say Joe Lieberman or Zell Miller, how is their attitude? Actually, both Joe and Zell are pretty much "Dems" on a lot of things -- taxing the rich, supporting unions, lots of public works, etc. It is just that they "left the reservation" on what they thought of as "American" vs "Partisan" issues -- Winning the War on Terror, killing the unborn.

Yet again, we see that a "Responsible Republican" is a Republican that essentially always votes with the Democrats. For the Democrats however, there is no leeway -- you either tow their line all the way, or you are no Democrat at all.

If one followed the logic of this column, would that mean that there are no "responsible Democrats"? Seems right to me.

NYT and CBS Services

RealClearPolitics - The Populism of the Privileged

The New York Times and CBS News thus performed a public service last week with a careful study of just who is in the tea party movement.

The media that EJ finds to be "moderate" are somehow always providing a "service". They do such "careful studies".

This must be the first "populist" movement driven by a television network: Sixty-three percent of the tea party folks say they most watch Fox News "for information about politics and current events," compared with 23 percent of the country as a whole.

As I had to explain to one liberal at length, "correlation is not causality". Ice cream sales and drownings are correlated, but there is no causality relationship. If 100% of Tea Party folks watch Fox News, that doesn't say Fox is driving the Tea Party. It is quite easy for there to be MANY factors -- as in conservatives tend to watch Fox, maybe all the Tea Party folks are conservatives?

Is there any interest in what percentage of the MSM or other groups would be "the privileged"? Somehow I really doubt that EJ is very close to "middle  class", and there seems to be no problem that organizations like say "MoveOn.org" are funded by multi-billionaire George Soros. Soros made billions by betting against the US economy and the US dollar, but since he funds left wing activity, he is a hero. Somehow, if you aren't completely dirt poor and have graduated from High School, once you have any conservative ideas, you are "privileged". If you support conservative ideals and you ARE dirt poor with less than a HS education, then you are a racist. According to the MSM though, conservatism is a "big tent" -- we may be a motley crew of the privileged and the racist, but we are all a bunch of idiots, so at least we have THAT in common!

A Pew Research Center study released Sunday is thus a better guide than the tea parties' rants to the real nature of this nation's discontent. It found that only 22 percent of Americans say they can trust the government almost always or most of the time, "among the lowest measures in more than half a century." This mistrust extends beyond government to banks, financial institutions and large corporations.

So while the Tea Party is a bunch of privileged angry white men, somehow nearly 80% of Americans aren't trusting the shining BO, Harry&Nancy government -- shocking. I assume that EJ and his other 20% that self-identify as liberal still trust the government. Sounds like the Tea Party (according to EJ) accounts for 20%, so now we only have 60% of the country that aren't trusting government or institutions and aren't in the Tea Party.

Suppose EJ can get them to be Democrats if he calls them some names as well?

Reporting On Concerned Americans

Experts: Angry rhetoric protected, but can be disturbing - CNN.com

Remember when anyone that wanted to protest anything about our troops in Afghanistan or Iraq was a "courageous voice standing up for what they believed in"? Remember when we got to hear over and over how "Bush's Wars were unfunded"? Remember "Code Pink" demonstrators being dragged out of the Republican National Convention on live TV during McCain's acceptance speech screaming hateful things about him being a "killer" at the top of their lungs?

The  MSM never reminded us that these things were "protected", because nobody in the MSM found them to be "disturbing" in the least. Last night I went to a Tea Party with around a thousand local men, women and children. The speeches often focused on how radically the deficits have skyrocketed in the last year -- 4-5x as high as in any previous administration. If you are speeding by 15MPH, that is fast, speeding by 60-80MPH, going 120-140MPH is completely different. 15MPH over is being in a big hurry, 70MPH over is a felony.

No doubt millions of folks nationwide did what I did. Went out because we now know for certain what we have really known for a long time. The entitlement society that has been created is unaffordable and we have just added a huge new entitlement that we can't afford. In a free country, people taking enough interest to stand up and  be noticed, extremely peacefully, is positive. What is actually quite dangerous and disturbing is to see the MSM treating that negatively as they possibly can without recognizing what really can't be denied as very legitimate concerns financially, independent of if you are in agreement of the direction or not. Caring so much we write bad checks isn't really helping anyone.

Best Tax Day of Our Life

April 15, 2010: The Best Tax Day of Your Life - Newsweek.com

Well, our future life. Some of us got to live through the good old days under Reagan. For the young today, this is probably as good as it gets. Well, at least they got to have the joy of voting in BO, now, much like that AM hangover, they get to pay the piper for the rest of their lives.

Why Times Change

RealClearPolitics - No (Political) Experience Required

Linda Greenhouse of The New York Times notes that when Stevens was nominated in 1975 to fill the first vacancy since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, he was asked no question about abortion during his confirmation hearing. He was confirmed 98-0, as was Antonin Scalia in 1986. Things changed the next year, when Ted Kennedy used a demagogic Senate speech to launch a successful liberal crusade against Robert Bork.

Liberals have very short memories on a lot of reasons for today's "incivility". Not doubt their memories will be every bit as short the first time a Republican Senate passes a major piece of legislation with 51 votes.

Some Frogs Starting to Notice?

Obama's disregard for media reaches new heights at nuclear summit

Note folks, this is DANA MILBANK -- who has traditionally been a highly reliable liberal shill.

World leaders arriving in Washington for President Obama's Nuclear Security Summit must have felt for a moment that they had instead been transported to Soviet-era Moscow.
They entered a capital that had become a military encampment, with camo-wearing military police in Humvees and enough Army vehicles to make it look like a May Day parade on New York Avenue, where a bicyclist was killed Monday by a National Guard truck.
In the middle of it all was Obama -- occupant of an office once informally known as "leader of the free world" -- putting on a clinic for some of the world's greatest dictators in how to circumvent a free press.