Is Fox a Hedgehog?

Is Fox Actually a Hedgehog? | Power Line:

Excellent little critique of Fox that I wholeheartedly agree with. I find a lot of Fox News very hard to watch for exactly the reasons that they point out.

I also very much miss Firing Line, and am utterly amazed at how quickly the censorship views of "liberals"  come out when they are faced with diversity of thought!

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Krauthammer, GOP Strategy

Charles Krauthammer: A new strategy for the GOP - The Washington Post

I think Charles calls this pretty well. My view is that the country is toast at this point for a good long while, if no permanently.  '14 is a likely Dem pickup in the House because the R's will still be "in blame range" for sure.

Likely odds, things are going to still suck in '14 -- Try to block, R fault, don't try to block, STILL R fault ... could have done MORE!!

Outside chance things get better, certainly "all BO, in spite of R's".

Bottom line is that you can't govern with just the House as Charles says.

The VERY best that can be done is to make it clear that D's haven't done so much as pass a budget out of the Senate since '09 which they are LEGALLY MANDATED TO DO. Ho hum, our MSM could care less about a D breaking the law.

Little tiny symbolic message things are about the best that can be accomplished. It is a sad state of affairs, but things have to get MUCH worse now before there is even a tiny prospect of them getting better!

Naturally the far right will see this as a betrayal and it will increase their desire to push candidates that won't win and fail to vote for what they see as the WAY too "RINIOish" R establishment.

In many ways I agree with their sentiments, I just don't see that strategy as doing anything helpful either short or long term except possibly making a few far righties "feel better". However I strongly doubt if even that is true. No matter what is done, they will see it as "not enough". They are like the "stimulus, spend / regulate" folks except from the opposite side!

A Lost Civilization

An Image of a Lost Civilization: Why? | Power Line:

When I was in school in the 60's, we also took our guns to school. To work on them in shop class, or as we got to driving age, because we were headed out hunting after school. School shooting? We had never even imagined such a thing.

My view of "why" is that in the interest of supposed "liberty", we destroyed that civilization and it is indeed lost. The book "The Closing of the American Mind" details it very well, but the simple version is that on every front -- from religion, to manners, to civility, to fidelity, decency, responsibility, propriety, decency, etc, we simply trashed our civilization.

We have continued our decline with a slight pause in the '8os, and now we are clearly the bankrupt and corrupt, dying husk of what was once a great civilization.


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AR Ban EXPIRATION 10x Better Than Australian Gun Ban!!

Should the U.S. adopt Australia's strict gun laws? | Intellectual Takeout (ITO)

Really? Well no, not factually, but only in the same sense that the MSM commonly uses to mislead Americans on gun crime.

Short, sweet, and the graph pretty much ends the gun debate for people that are thinkers vs feelers.

The murder rate in the US is higher than the Australian murder rate! Sure, banning guns cut down on GUN MURDERS, but do you REALLY find it preferable to just be murdered by another means?? (and not have the option to use a gun to protect yourself?)

And to the REPUBLIC!!

NRA's paranoid fantasy flouts democracy - CNN.com:

Why do we have a 2nd Amendment? Well, one reason is because some people live in a "paranoid fantasy".

These people talk a lot about liberty and freedom and love to call themselves patriots, but they seem to have a real problem with democracy. In a democracy, if people are proposing a law you don't like, you criticize it, you argue against it, you campaign against it, you vote against the politicians who support it. But if you believe in democracy, you don't threaten to start killing people if it passes. You don't say that if you don't like a new law, you'll start an insurrection to overthrow the government.

Uh, the US is a REPUBLIC, explicitly NOT a Democracy!! In a REPUBLIC, where there is rule of law rather than rule of mob. Things like the 2nd Amendment are ONLY to be changed via the CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT PROCESS!! "Voting on it" is NOT an option!!

This is on CNN. Don't these people have editors?? Before you start calling people "paranoid, extremist  etc", wouldn't it be wise to at least know the system of government of the country you live in??!!  If not, then how "paranoid" is it for someone to believe that they are going to need to use force to protect the rights that the REPUBLIC that they pledge allegiance to guarantees IN SPITE OF MAJORITY THINKING when a significant numer of our "elite" don't even have enough of a clue to know what our system of government actually is??


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Pumping In IA 2012

Being retired means not having any good excuses for being "late", so I won't offer any. I'm not late! I got to it when I got to it and that is just the way it is!

Here is a slideshow of the pictures I took during my 5 weeks of learning a lot more respect for the guys that make sure we can keep having bacon, ham, ribs and sausage for our pizza!




Here are a few movies of pumping and application operations shot during the fall.

Proudly Gun Free!

Not quite that proud… | Power Line:

Hmmm, OK, maybe not. Is it REALLY surprising that although the left wants to tell everyone else that THEY ought to be "gun free", they aren't so keen on the idea themselves??

I'm CERTAIN that criminals will obey the laws. Look how good a job they do on drugs, drunk driving, tax evasion, etc.

If Democrats demanded that their cabinet folks paid their taxes, a Democrat president could never field a cabinet at all!

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Why "Fake Founders Gun Quotes Matter"

Did Jefferson really say that? Why bogus quotations matter in gun debate - CNN.com

Why does the MSM do this type of a column? I can think of no other reason that to have the headline give the impression that many quotes from the Founders on guns are fake and DO matter.

However, if you actually read it, it only really tries to debunk a single quote, and even for that one it points out that there is conflicting information and that he quote is in fact in line with Jefferson's clear position on guns. It also points out:

Stephen Halbrook, an attorney and author of the book "The Founders' Second Amendment," said he doesn't understand why someone would want to use a fake quotation.
"For years I've seen bogus quotes on gun issues in the Internet," he said. "Since the Founding Fathers were so positive on Second Amendment rights, I couldn't understand why anyone would feel compelled to invent quotes."
Halbrook said Jefferson was a big supporter of the right to own firearms.

OK, so most of the "fake quotes" are in line with the Founders thinking, and for the supposed "many" fakes (one possible "fake" is listed), there are many more available than are real. 

So is the conclusion of the article that fake quotes don't really matter because they in  fact convey what the founders said, only in a shorter version? Maybe, that would be a logical conclusions of just reading the whole thing. They just don't say. 

So my view is that the purpose is to make it seem that there are a lot of REALLY fake quotes out there that mislead people on what the intent of the Founders actually was, when in fact by their own admission the supposed fakes are NOT misleading, and the ONE they point out is very accurate in actual meaning. 

So the article is simply a head fake. 

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"Assault Rifle" NOT used in Newtown Shooting!!!

TODAY: Investigation is very complex

OK, this has been known since the middle of December???!!!  Wouldn't one think that it might get just a BIT more coverage if there was ANY interest in FACTS vs PROPAGANDA???

Day by day I become more and more amazed at just how mislead we are as a people. Without some tiny shred of objective reporting, it is completely impossible for us to govern ourselves, and it becomes more and more clear that that is the agenda of the BO government and the MSM.

The Truth Is Eternal

We are raising a generation of deluded narcissists | Fox News

Good column, unfortunately it is RAISED, not "raising" -- we are neck and neck with Europe on kids living at home,  depression, suicide and general meaninglessness in life. There is plenty of research that shows that Western Culture had it right for at least 500 years, but we decided to blow it and "start over" in the 20th Century and especially post WWII.

The train to oblivion runs on -- but after the crash, as in after the Dark Ages, there will be a decent chance that the requirement for Religion, Philosophy, Dialectic, Rhetoric ... manners, culture, responsibility and actual vs imagined personal growth. Probably only a few hundred or at worst few thousand years of despair to get back on our feet. The next Ice Age will pretty much guarantee a "reset" on a lot of "modern wisdom".

Distractions, however, are temporary, and the truth is eternal. Watch for an epidemic of depression and suicidality, not to mention homicidality, as the real self-loathing and hatred of others that lies beneath all this narcissism rises to the surface. I see it happening and, no doubt, many of you do, too.

Frog of Freedom Boils On

We Are the 98 Percent — The American Magazine

Good article on the continuing slide to greater bankruptcy and socialism. The election is over, some folks from the left are starting to make noises that it is time to move to a wee bit more reality based approach. We are broke, taxing the rich won't do anything to fix it, and if you are a "Progressive", you don't believe that government can spend less -- thus, sharpen up those tax knives and start going after the rest of the folks!

Surprisingly, many progressive pundits are moving away from their traditional complaint that America’s tax code is too regressive, favoring the rich. They are starting to tell us, albeit only after an election mainly contested on these issues, the truth: to fund the European-style social welfare state which they advocate, we must tax everyone more.

I'd argue that we are already at the point discussed in the next paragraph -- people have been suitably brainwashed to believe that there is really no potential for anything but a european style socialist system in the "modern world". "Give us our STUFF!!". 

What happens historically when benefits are bestowed without a bill also coming due is that we get hooked on them. Then, even when they become disasters not worth their cost, people are terrified to change them, as giving something up is indeed quite frightening

Political Storms

Mona Charen: Democrat Hurricanes versus Republican Hurricanes | WashingtonExaminer.com

Why is everything so political? Mostly because the MSM makes it so -- each "event" is a chance to create the mood in the public that the MSM feels is "right".

It turns out that big storms are ALWAYS bad if you are in the path of the storm -- Katrina, Sandy, etc.  BUT, for those that don't experience the storm, how it is viewed is more a function of how it is reported that the reality that "storms always suck".

So, for Katrina .... in a city below sea level, hit with an ACTUAL Cat 5 hurricane, with terrible local and state preparedness, ANY level of problem was INSTANTLY "Bush's fault".  Fighting 2 wars after 9-11 didn't really take Bush down, it was actually the reporting of Katrina that did him in.

Sandy wasn't even a hurricane technically, it dropped below Cat 1 before it came ashore, and the Feds were no better than they were in Katrina -- staging foul ups, red tape, looting, etc. Same stuff as Katrina, **BUT** the reporting was all positive -- INSTANTLY. Bloomberg apparently believed the press and thought he would just run the NY Marathon anyway, until his folks let him know that bodies still needed to be recovered and millions were still without power, heat, water etc. Who knew??? Wasn't a story worthy to be reported.

So the vast majority of the people just listen to the MSM story and the country continues to sail to destruction while whistling happily.

Des Moines Register Threatens NRA, Republicans, Gun Owners

Kaul: Nation needs a new agenda on guns | The Des Moines Register | desmoinesregister.com

Let's call this what it is, a direct threat of violence. The Register decides who to publish and who not to publish. If these statements were made relative to Blacks, Gays, Muslims or Democrats, they would be PROSECUTABLE HATE SPEECH! Gun owners, white men, Republicans, "the rich", and Christians are groups in the US that can be attacked like this without legal action.

Here is one of his "proposals":

Declare the NRA a terrorist organization and make membership illegal. Hey! We did it to the Communist Party, and the NRA has led to the deaths of more of us than American Commies ever did. (I would also raze the organization’s headquarters, clear the rubble and salt the earth, but that’s optional.) Make ownership of unlicensed assault rifles a felony. If some people refused to give up their guns, that “prying the guns from their cold, dead hands” thing works for me.

Here is another:

Then I would tie Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, our esteemed Republican leaders, to the back of a Chevy pickup truck and drag them around a parking lot until they saw the light on gun control.

Oh yes, I'm sure it is "all in good fun". Right?  If Rush Limbaugh said this? If this was on Fox News? and the targets were any of those mentioned above?? Come on, we know the truth. 

If you are a member of any of the targeted groups ... white male, Christian, gun owner, NRA, Republican, etc. ARM YOURSELF!!! You are being warned sternly and directly by the Statists that they want to take you down and they are VERY willing to use violent means. Your ONLY small defense is to be armed, prepared, trained and hopefully organized. The time that this can be written and communicated openly in this country is fading VERY fast. The guy that did a video that was less critical of Islam then this column is of it's target groups IS IN JAIL! 

If you are an "undesirable" as I list above, how direct must threats and selective treatment of groups be before you ACT! 

Selective Justice

MILLER: Two systems of justice - Washington Times

This is how Totalarian Statist systems work. First countless laws are passed, then they are SELECTIVELY ENFORCED. If you "support the right people", "say the right things", then the laws won't be enforced on you. Get on the other side of "the ruling powers" though and you must be punished.

This is why it is nearly impossible to find a Democrat that has a clean record with the IRS. Today, that still counts before they are going to take a high ranking position in an administration (witness Daschle and Geitner), but it won't be long until the payment of tax and many other things will be optional for the  ruling Statists.

Hating the Constitution

A Liberal Comes Clean: We Hate the Constitution | Power Line

The PL summary is good. Lots of folks are ready to just throw Rule of Law away and go the way of the French Revolution or worse -- GIVE US OUR STUFF!!!

Once you try to take all the "rich" have via semi-legal means, why not just kill them and take ALL that have!!

When the golden goose is dead, it is dead -- and we are very intent on killing it COMPLETELY dead -- and eviscerating the body in search of "the secret".