The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is even noticing the trend, which I think is one of the major factors in the misfortunes of our opponents. The gender gap on this issue has been narrowing, and that’s despite our opponents branding themselves in terms more likely to appeal to women.
Month: April 2011
A Defense of Cuccinelli’s Ruling on Guns and Churches
I’m surprised that the Roanoke Times, of all papers, would say gun control advocates are too quick to criticize Virginia’s Attorney General for his ruling that self-defense was a sufficient reason to carry a firearm in a church. Virginia law prohibits carry in churches unless the person has “good and sufficient reason.” Cuccinelli’s ruling is a completely reasonable reading of the statute.
NH Going To Alaska Carry?
I don’t see why this wouldn’t work out for New Hampshire. Vermont is certainly no bastion of crime. New Hampshire would be the fourth state to repeal the permit requirement, bringing the number of states that do not require one to five.
Careful Who You Call Coward
Centrifugal Force
At least one other person shares my only major complain about Atlas Shrugged, the Movie:
I was uncomfortable with a train going 250 MPH on those curves with the passengers standing up. Sorry, but I don’t think they ran the numbers through the physics equations before they filmed those scenes. And the curves had better have some appropriate slope to them to keep the train from rolling over or pushing the tracks off the railway bed.
I think I annoy Bitter by being annoyed by such things, but high speed rail lines have to be pretty straight for a reason.
Wasting Taxpayer Money
I’m outraged that this gun buyback program is getting state funding:
The program was partly funded through the state’s Weed and Seed anti-crime initiative with matching funds paid by the city and assistance from the Hopewell Giant Eagle, Pallante said.
Here’s the state FAQ on the program. I think we need to get legislators to alter the Weed & Seed program to prevent money being used to buy back and destroy guns.
Egos Patting Their Backs
Some of the biggest egos in local politics are wasting time patting each other on the back. It’s a nauseating thing that’s not normally worth mentioning, except gun control is one of the things they congratulate each other on.
“Mayor Richard Daley and his wife, Maggie, took a bow for their stewardship of the city at an Art Institute of Chicago fundraiser held Friday night in their honor … New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg called Daley “the best damn mayor this country has ever seen†during post-dinner remarks … Bloomberg pointed to Daley initiatives on handguns, education, the environment and the arts that he said he has happily copied in New York …â€
Feel free to copy the Daley policies on handguns, Mayor Bloomberg. In case your staff forgot to tell you, we defeated those policies once.
Electrical Problems Fixed (For Now)
Busy weekend of home improvement. Actually, perhaps home improvement isn’t the right word. More like keeping the home from going to hell, which I spend enough time doing that I never seem to get around to any actual “improvement.” This house is now about 25 years old, was never properly constructed according to code (built by the first owner, who was an incompetent builder, according to neighbors.) This is the kind of incompetence I’m talking about:
Note the location of the electrical panel. I even uploaded it to Fail Blog (Please vote for my FAIL. The guy who built the house is dead, but it’ll at least make me feel like I exacted some karmic measure of revenge.) The basement is finished, so options for where appliances go is pretty much limited to this corner.
Since I can’t really reach the panel without contorting my body in ways it was never meant to, relocation is going to cost more in time, money, and aggravation than I’m willing to spend right now. I decided to see if I could work with what I have. First order of business is to map out where all the circuits go. No one ever did that. Any time I’ve done electrical work on this house it’s involved flipping breakers until the circuit I was working on went dead. So now I know where everything goes and have a chart of the breaker layout and what’s on those circuits.
The bus bar stab the two fried breakers were on I’m considering effectively dead, because I’m fairly certain the stab is heat damaged. But he bus bar itself looked OK. Took a trip to Lowes and got two new circuit breakers, and an infrared thermometer. I had a spare stab at the bottom of the bar, so I used that and moved one of the lighter circuits to it. The heavy loaded circuit with the dishwasher I moved to the top, and put a new breaker there too. That left the sump, which was connected to the other breaker. Sumps need a dedicated circuit, so I took two circuits that were pretty light weight and tied them together. That got me the sump back on its own circuit. Running the dishwasher, and a few other heavy appliances shows the box running at 75 degrees F, and the busbar at the same temp. No localized heating where the fried breakers were. Not much higher than ambient temperature. Only hotter spot is the GFI breaker at 81 degrees, which I would expect.
Took less time to do than I had on the UPS that powers the blog an Internet in the even of power failure. Long term I will replace the panel, but probably not until I’m close to selling. The solution I’ve thought up is to put in a tankless water heater, which would recover a lot of working room, and allow the panel to be shifted over a bit to get the 30 inches NEC requires.
Very Sad News
I am told that former Congressman Harold Volkmer (D-MO) died last night. He was primarily responsible for pushing the Firearms Owner’s Protection Act (FOPA) through the House back in the mid-1980s. I once had the pleasure of once sharing a table with Congressman Volkmer at an NRA lunch event. He was truly one of the giants of the movement to preserve the Second Amendment.
UPDATE: Dave Hardy has more information.
UPDATE: Obituary appears here:
Harold was busy literally in his last days reviewing a legal case for the NRA’s Civil Rights Defense Fund. Known to all simply as Harold, he was touched tremendously by the hundreds of greetings that came to him recently on his 80th birthday.
We have truly lost one of the great ones of this movement.
Buying Controversy
Morgan Spurlock needs to make a point about the proliferation of advertising in America. In order to make that point in a Hollywood film, he had to buy off a town in an area making massive budget cuts for $25,000.
Between April 27 and June 24, residents of Altoona will be living in “POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Pennsylvania.”
So he’s creating controversy in order to make a film about the controversy of advertising. Remember that next time you ever see his name attached to anything.