2008 – Page 258 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Bitter Takes on Mudcat

John Edwards’ ~~snake oil salesman~~ rural liaison, Mudcat Saunders, agreed to answer reader questions, but I’m guessing wasn’t counting on Bitter entering the fray.Â She caught some interesting flack from an undecided voter, who apparently was mostly concerned over whether John Edwards hunted and had guns in his home.Â Bitter had this to say:

However, Sherri, I would consider that you look at previous Edwards statements to address your concerns. The number of guns he owns is irrelevant. John Kerry owns guns, but in his home state, the cost is so high to be approved for even a round of ammunition that many hunters who donâ€™t bring home large salaries have either given up their guns or risk owning them illegally while they use whatâ€™s left of their ammo. Gun ownership is still legal, but they have effectively made it impossible for anyone outside of the middle class and higher to do legally.

The folks who wish for a candidate who is sufficiently pure on the second amendment need to realize that there are a lot more of these types of ignorant voters out there than there are of us, and that’s exactly the kind of person that Mudcat Saunders is after.Â If we are not also evangelicals for the second amendment, we’re doomed.Â Ignorance is the brick wall we hit that limits what second amendment advocates can accomplish politically.

Bitter says she’ll let us know if Mudcat ever come back to answer the questions, but I’m guessing , like a snake oil salesmen who starts getting townspeople screaming at them that it gave them hives, he’s split town in a hurry.

Ted Kennedy To Endorse Obama

The endorsement will probably help Obama, as long as he doesn’t let Ted drive him home.

The Rendell Economy

Pennsylvania is third in the nation when it comes layoffs.Â Ed Rendell came into office with a promise to turn Pennsylvania around.Â What stellar results eh?Â Raising taxes and tolling our highways is generally not an effective way to promote economic growth.Â Nor is increasing regulations on businesses.

NRA Speaks on Philadelphia Preemption

John Hohenwarter, who is Pennsylvania’s NRA State Liaison and representative in Harrisburg, had this to say about Philadelphia attempting to enforce its own gun laws:

This morning John Hohenwarter, the NRA’s lobbyist and representative in Harrisburg, said Nutter would be squandering taxpayer dollars — which could be better used to put police officers on the street — if he mounts a futile legal challenge to established precedent that prevents local governments from enacting their own gun laws.

“We heard the same thing out of Mayor Streetâ€™s office the last couple of years,” Hohenwarter said. “The programs that the mayor is backing are nothing more than attempts to grab headlines,” he said. “Chances are, itâ€™s going to be thrown out immediately, and if they keep trying to appeal it, youâ€™re looking at a lot of cost to the city for nothing.”

I couldn’t agree more.

The Lion Slipper Murderer

Allentown police caught this guy, who is charged with two counts ofÂ murder:

Torres was driving on Turner Street Friday afternoon when he was pulled over by police and arrested. He was wearing a hooded sweartshirt with a skull-head pattern on it, pajama bottoms and fuzzy lion-faced slippers at the time. He was still wearing the get-up when he was arraigned after midnight at Lehigh County prison.

Follow the link for the picture.Â I’m going to be, probably not the first to say, that this whole wearing pajamas in public fashion has now officially gone way too far.

GSG-5

This is a pretty cool .22LR version of the H&K MP5, made by German Sports Guns.

“A President Like My Father”

Caroline Kennedy has endorsed Obama saying he’d be “A President like my father.” Except that her father wasn’t a socialist, and was a member of the NRA. I don’t know how to feel about Obama’s ~~victory over~~ rout of Hillary Clinton in South Carolina.

I tend to cheer him only because of my visceral disdain for Hillary Clinton and my admiration of Obama’s political talents. Hillary believed she was the anointed one, and I have to admit to taking great pleasure in her realization that this won’t be a cakewalk for her.

Bitter’s Pork Shoulder

Bitter made a fabulous crock pot meal of collard greens, pork shoulder, and dumplings, all slow cooked in the croc pot. I have to say that it was excellent. The smell of pork in the air is absolutely heavenly. It’s times like this I am very glad I’m not a Jew or a Muslim. They don’t know what they are missing.

UPDATE: Mmmmmm

Kinky Fetish Goes Horribly Awry

A Pennsylvania man finds himself suddenly faced with charges for killing his wife:

A kinky sex escapade ended this week with the electrocution death of a Pennsylvania woman and the arrest of her husband for manslaughter. According to cops, Toby Taylor, 37, first claimed that his wife Kirsten was shocked by her hair dryer. But he then admitted that the couple was “into weird sexual behaviors,” according to a probable cause affidavit. Taylor then explained that he hooks clips to his wife’s nipples and “plugs the cord into a electric strip” and shocks her. On Wednesday evening, Taylor said, Kirsten removed her clothes, attached the clips, and shocked herself. He then picked up the electric strip and shocked her several more times, adding that he had placed a piece of electric tape over her mouth during the jolts. After the last shock, Kirsten, 29, “fell over on to her face.” Taylor initially thought his wife was joking, but quickly realized she was unconscious. He then dressed her in preparation for driving to the hospital, but instead called 911 when she stopped breathing.

Ouch! He stands charged with involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment. This lead to a discussion with Bitter as to whether justice is really served by charges here. If I were the DA for York County, I’d probably offer a plea to reckless charge in exchange for dropping the manslaughter, but most normal human beings are aware that hooking up someone else’s nipples to a power strip in all its 120V 60Hz 20 amp glory runs a severe risk of killing that person.

If you’re into kinky electrocution sex, get yourself one of these. While I’m sure that use will invalidate the manufacturer’s warranty, it’s far less likely to kill, and it even seems to come in kinky sex toy-like colors.

Since it doesn’t appear this couple had any children (I’d hate to think of how you explain that “Daddy is hurting mommy” to a kid anyway), I think these two are great possibilities for 2008 Darwin Award winners.

UPDATE: Perhaps electrofetish people could use this peculiar antecedent of the taser.

The Puckle Gun

Clayton has discovered an 18th century antecedent of the machine gun:

Harold Leslie Peterson’s The Treasury of the Gun (1962), p. 205, indicates that 1722 London Journal accounts indicated that one fired 63 rounds in seven minutes in the rain. Okay, that’s not a machine gun, but nine rounds a minute is a major technological breakthrough compared to muskets that fired three rounds a minute, and not at all if it was raining.

It’s interesting, because we constantly hear “The founding fathers could never have imagined something like an Uzi.”Â It’s becoming more and more likely that they indeed could have imagined it.Â I seem to recall at some point, I think it might have been Dave Hardy, mentioning that if you had shown up at the constitutional convention with an M16, all the founding fathers would have recognized it as a firearm.Â They would have thought you were pretty cool, but they still would have recognized it as something protected by the second amendment.