April 2009 – Page 24 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Defining the Problem

Clayton Cramer talks about what Obama is and isn’t, and laments we do not have a functional Republican Party.Â Â I’m really worried about 2012, personally.Â I worry that Palin was largely ruined by the media and the McCain camp.Â I think Bobby Jindal won’t quite be ready for 2012, and his Jesus Juice might cause further Republican losses in places that aren’t The South.Â So that leaves us with our savior being… Mitt Romney?Â Â God help us.

One of the most insightful characterizations Kim du Toit ever came up with was saying that the Democrats are the “Evil Party” while the Republicans were the “Stupid Party.” which is really exactly what our troubles boil down to.Â The people ready for someone to lead them out of this nightmare, but who will step up?Â Who’s even out there?

Because You Su… Wait, We Suck!

Apparently H&K is having some trouble with reliability on the 416 under combat conditions.Â From today’s Tactical Wire:

The Tactical Wire has learned from very reliable sources that the US military has encountered significant problems with H&K Model 416s in combat conditions. HK has suspended production pending an internal investigation and inspection of that weapon system.

You know what would help work a lot of these kinks out?Â Selling your crap to the civilian market.Â No, we don’t shoot under “combat conditions” but enough of us shoot recreationally in enough conditions that a lot of the reliability problems will be found.Â Soldiers shouldn’t have to work out bugs in their weapons systems while other people are shooting at them.

But thanks to this country’s importation laws, and H&K’s lack of interest in exploring the U.S. civilian market for semi-automatic versions of their rifles, our soldiers are getting stuck with gear that hasn’t really been thoroughly tested and debugged.

Can We Use Pilot Stations to Fill Up Now?

Bill Haslam, Mayor of Knoxville, TN, soon to be candidate for Governor, and owner of the Pilot line of gas stations, has left Bloomberg’s Mayor’s Against Illegal Guns group.Â Does this mean the boycott is over?Â Haslam I think is the first one of Bloomberg’s Mayors for a while to leave by resigning, rather than by indictment.

Another Illinois Victory

Gun rationing is defeated in Illinois 54-61.

I Made the Same Mistake

Bruce made the same mistake I did.Â When I first read about Obama giving Queen Elizabeth II an iPod, I thought it was a funny April Fools Joke.Â Wrong.Â Now I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.Â Sounds like it was a video iPod, at least.

I’m wondering if they came up with this regal gift idea after Obama’s staff rejected what no doubt was the first suggestion for the Queen’s gift: A new upsampling region free DVD player so the Queen could enjoy the Obama’s last state gift with her Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.Â No, too tacky I suppose.

The Lobby That “Has No Equal”

I promise I’m not going to turn this blog into “all GOA criticism all the time,” but I think it’s important to point out to folks in our community just what charlatans they are.Â GOA is correct to raise alarm bells over the Federal Lands Bill, but then you see stuff like this, from their e-mail alert dated today:

The final attempt to protect the Second Amendment from NPS bureaucrats came on a procedural vote in the House that would have made in order an amendment, sponsored by pro-gun Reps. Doc Hastings (R-WA) and Rob Bishop (R-UT), to repeal the gun ban.Â That motion failed by a vote of 242-180.

What caught my attention was the fact that the Lands Act passed under a suspension of rules, which means there could be no amendments voted on.Â So how could it be there was a 242-180 vote on an amendment?Â Where is this mysterious vote?Â The answer is here.

This vote is on the resolution to consider the Senate amendments to the original House Bill 146, which tacked on the federal lands omnibus.Â It is not even the final vote that passed, not defeated the resolution which suspended the rules.

What did happen, however, was that there was a vote in the Committee on Rules that would have made an exception for the consideration of the pro-gun amendment by Rep. Hastings.Â You can find it here.Â The motion to create the exception for pro-gun amendments was defeated in the Rules Committee 2-9.Â The representatives who voted against it were:

James P. McGovern (D-MA)
Alcee L. Hastings (D-FL)
Doris O. Matsui (D-CA)
Dennis Cardoza (D-CA)
Michael Arcuri (D-NY)
Ed Perlmutter (D-CO)
Chellie Pingree (D-ME)
Jared Polis (D-CO)
Louise M. Slaughter (D-NY)

These are the villains.Â These are the people we need to, as GOA says, “remember in November.”Â This is where we lost the battle.Â We were not “sold out by compromisers this time,” as GOA claims in the same alert.Â If they want to play with the big boys, they need to get this stuff right.

The Democrats control the House and Senate.Â The leadership in the House, and the Rules Committee, are especially anti-gun.Â This has consequences.Â As much as GOA would like to look for demon “compromisers” they missed our real anti-gun enemies on the Rules Committee, and let them off the hook.

Gun Owners of America — sniping at other pro-gun groups and missing the real enemy since 1975!

It’s too Good to be True

Apparently the Philadelphia newspapers, both of whom take whatever chance they can get to smear gun owners and lawful gun ownership, will be out of money by July.Â It seems Chapter 11 didn’t help any.Â Whoever gave them DIP financing is going to take a bath.Â This could make it harder for other papers to get DIP funding to file for a Chapter 11.

Who will save Bryan Miller’s agenda now?

UPDATE: Looks like the DIP financing is still being negotiated, and that they may, in fact, run out of money in as little as a few weeks.

Will Corzine Sign?

He has some pro-hunting legislation sitting on his desk.Â Will he sign it?Â It’s time for a poll:

[poll 10]

“Guns in America”

Apparently National Geographic has a difficult time doing a story on guns and getting everything right.Â One thing I would note, that Ride Fast mentions as positive:

People shown shooting machine guns were all regular folks enjoying shooting machine guns. Lots of big smiles and fun.

It’s hard to say without some context whether this is positive or negative, but since he saw the show and I didn’t, I’ll take his word on that.Â There is a risk in presenting this issue to the public, in that if you don’t put it in context, you just help promote the Josh Sugarmann canard that public confusion over full auto and semi-auto can only help pass legislation restricting semi-autos.

Machine gun shoots are part of the American gun culture, and I think that story should be told, but it’s hard to trust the media to tell it, and give all the right context.Â I hope they did so in this case.

UPDATE: Looks this was originally aired last December.Â Goes to show how much attention I pay to National Geographic Explorer.

All Your Servers Are Belong to Obama

I’d say that this is the worst idea I’ve seen come out of the Obama Administration and Congress, but the list is so long by this point:

The Rockefeller-Snowe measure would create the Office of the National Cybersecurity Adviser, whose leader would report directly to the president and would coordinate defense efforts across government agencies. It would require the National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish “measurable and auditable cybersecurity standards” that would apply to private companies as well as the government. It also would require licensing and certification of cybersecurity professionals.

The proposal would also mandate an ongoing, quadrennial review of the nation’s cyberdefenses. “It’s not a problem that will ever be completely solved,” Rockefeller said. “You have to keep making higher walls.”

And the government knows less about making those walls than many in the industry do, and yet Obama is going to demand that I be certified with a license from the federal government?Â I’ll agree to that when Obama, and the politicians who are looking at passing this nonsense can explain to me how to harden a LAMP server with even a quarter of the understanding of the process.

Yes, there are a lot of folks out there running IT systems who don’t know what they are doing, and a lot of them work for Uncle Sam.Â There is no aspect of life in this nation that progressives like Obama don’t want to control.

Hat Tip to Volokh.