Bitter – Page 99 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Jewelry & Guns

If you’re in the mood for an interesting read on why making jewelry is like reloading or shooting, check out this article on NRA past president Sandy Froman’s artistic hobby. The first several pages are closeups of her work.

What’s amazing is that she didn’t plan to get into the shooting sports or Second Amendment fight – it all started with a night that someone tried to break into her home while she was alone. She also didn’t plan on taking a jewelry-making class – she happened to see it starting as she walked by a bead store after dropping off some business papers at a copy shop. Yet, it turns out that she’s got a talent & passion for both endeavors.

Bloomberg’s Fraud – Signing a Dead Man’s Name

Did you know that Freeland Borough, PA’s Mayor Tim Martin died from esophageal cancer on September 2, 2010? Yet, amazingly, Mike Bloomberg’s anti-gun coalition still claims him as a member on their website as of November 8, 2011.

In fact, not only do they claim him as a member, but the deceased mayor has signed his name to at least two advertisements, three letters to Congress, and one letter to the President sent by Michael Bloomberg’s office. Now, just how on earth is Bloomberg getting a dead man to sign his letters? And why are media outlets running advertisements that are clearly fraudulent?

In a miracle, Tim Martin’s name appears on this letter to the US Senate on December 10, 2010 – 3 months and 8 days after his death.

Magically, Mayor Martin signed this Washington Post advertisement on January 25, 2011 – 4 months and 23 days after he passed.

Amazingly, Bloomberg snagged Martin’s signature on this letter to the US Congress on May 11, 2011 – 8 months and 9 days after his last breath.

Bringing him back to life again, Bloomberg placed the Mayor’s John Hancock on this letter to the US Congress on July 6, 2011 – 10 months and 4 days after he died.

Two days later, Bloomberg used the dead man’s name in a letter to the President – 10 months and 6 days after he passed.

Not stopping there, Mayor Martin’s name turned up on this USA Today ad on October 20, 2011 – 1 year, 1 month, and 18 days after Martin was declared dead.

How are Bloomberg’s PA Mayors Holding Up?

Most of tonight’s elections in Pennsylvania are municipal races, and many of the county governments don’t do any form of electronic reporting for their election results. Regardless, this is my attempt to keep up with those races where we can find information online. I’ll update this post regularly as we add more races.

Keep checking in for updates to this post.

Good News for Gun Owners

Aliquippa Bloomberg Buddy Anthony Battalini lost his primary handily 2-1 earlier this year. So, clearly he’s out today. Aliquippa residents should let mayor-elect Dwan Walker to support their rights.
Reading‘s Tom McMahon who welcomed Bloomberg’s bus tour is stepping down and did not run for re-election.

Bad News for Freedom & Liberty

Parker City‘s Bloomberg-backed mayor William McCall was unchallenged today. He is a Republican who is standing against our rights.
Whitehall‘s Edward Hozza managed to win both the GOP & Democratic ballot earlier this year, so he didn’t have any competition today.
In Wilkes Barre, Tom Leighton who takes pride in his anti-gun credentials won re-election tonight. On the upside, his anti-freedom efforts are limited to MAIG activities since his failed campaign for a seat in the state legislature a couple of years ago.
As mayor of Farrell, Ollie McKeithan, was unchallenged and will serve another term.
Results in Montour County aren’t actually available right now, but since Bloomberg supporter Ester Cotner won her primary unchallenged on both sides with a whopping 13 votes – total cast – she will win again tonight in Washingtonville.
Easton‘s mayor Sal Panto handily won re-election to continue advancing his anti-gun agenda.

We’re Not Sure

In Freeland Borough, MAIG still lists a mayor who died more than a year ago on their website. In fact, they’ve been signing his name to ads & letters as recently as last month. More on this in a minute. In regards to the election, his wife was running and took the lead with 50% of the precincts reporting.

Election Day 2011 NRA Endorsements

Tuesday is Election Day! We’ll be heading out to vote tomorrow, and I hope you folks will be as well. (If you don’t live in PA, this post doesn’t really relate to you, but you can visit the PVF page for endorsements in your state.)

Did you know the NRA has issued endorsements in several of the judicial races? Yeah, you’d think as EVCs, we would have been told before Cam mentioned it on NRA News last week… Oh well, we know now.

For the Supreme Court, NRA supports J. Michael Eakin.

At the Superior Court level, NRA supports Vic Stabile.

For Commonwealth Court, NRA supports Anne Covey.

Polls open at 7am and close at 8pm. There will likely be absolutely no wait, so don’t tell me you don’t have time to go vote.

It’s Time to Fire Joe Paterno

For those of you who don’t follow Pennsylvania sports, there’s really only one team that doesn’t completely suck and plays in something close to what the rest of the country considers real college football. It’s Penn State, and their head coach has been there since 1950 (though only as head coach since 1966). The man is revered in Pennsylvania. I don’t understand why, either. Joe Paterno has only got such a high number of wins because he’s been doing the job so long. He doesn’t have the highest percentage of wins, and earlier this decade, he led the team in a severe losing streak.

This weekend, conveniently on an off week for Penn State & released on a Saturday, the state AG’s office announced that one of Paterno’s now-retired coaches has been sexually assaulting very young boys for years. The charges aren’t just for minors, but for minors under the age of 13. The guy also had a charity set up for troubled young boys that served as his easy source of victims.

To make the news for Penn State even worse? Paterno knew and decided to simply tell the school’s athletic director once he heard from an eyewitness that his coaching staff was raping a boy who appeared to be about 10 in the stadium’s showers. The athletic director & a school vice president are now being charged with perjury and not reporting the incident to police. Yet, prosecutors seem to be ignoring the fact that Paterno and a graduate assistant in the football program also knew and did not report it to police, instead only reported it to college officials. (Granted, not reporting the crime seem to be only a summary offense. In that case, I believe that’s actually a better reason to use the charge – it won’t end someone’s life, but it will reiterate that they should have reported it.)

Of course, this is not the first time that Paterno has ignored the consequences of sexual assault allegations. When a player from another team was alleged to have sexually assaulted a woman, here was Paterno’s response:

â€œThereâ€™s some tough â€” thereâ€™s so many people gravitating to these kids. He may not have even known what he was getting into, Nicholson. They knock on the door; somebody may knock on the door; a cute girl knocks on the door. What do you do?â€

Here’s a hint: If a cute girl knocks on a door, don’t sexually assault her. (Though, it would seem the case against the player ultimately didn’t go anywhere, the accusations were fresh at the time he was asked.)

So, what do you do when someone tells you your former staffer who you allow to access your stadium & allow to attend games & coaching meetings with these young boys is seen raping them in the showers? Here’s a hint, Paterno: You don’t go to your boss and then leave it alone. You call the police. If your boss won’t do it, you do it. You follow up every damn day. You encourage the guy who actually witnessed the assault to go to the police.

I find this most appalling because I’ve seen local media & commentary applauding Paterno for his great response of not calling the police when he hears that young children are being raped by his coaching staff in his team’s showers. WTF?

I look back to my memories of the most popular coach I can recall in Oklahoma – Barry Switzer. (Please keep in mind that I was 9 years old when the guy resigned, so I’m having to go off news reports I’m finding now.) Switzer had to resign from OU (with a higher percentage of wins than Paterno, thankyouverymuch) after several players were arrested for various crimes and the NCAA launched an investigation into the program. Yet, Paterno is still at Penn State with full support after ESPN reported that in a six year period, 46 of his players managed to find themselves with 163 criminal charges. That comes out to more than three criminal charges per player in trouble in a few short years.

I don’t understand how this guy still has the support of the school, support in the media, and support of alumni. According to media reports, the Board of Trustees didn’t even entertain the question of whether Paterno should be forced to resign or retire. I come from a state that is far more serious about their college football, and I’m pretty sure that after this kind of record, we would be calling for the heads of everyone who knew and didn’t report it to law enforcement.

Joe Paterno’s career should end, and he should not be revered as some amazing football coach. He should be remembered as a guy who looked the other way while children were raped and assaulted on his watch. Of course, should he leave on his own terms, Pennsylvania taxpayers will likely be on the hook for a very generous retirement package to reward his behavior of looking the other way for criminals in his program.

UPDATE 11/8: The NYT reports that inside sources say Paterno’s time is up at Penn State. They are supposedly working on an exit plan now.

Food for Gunnies

For those of us who did not win the NRA toasters this year, we can’t enjoy pro-gun food at our fingertips. That is, unless, someone hadn’t inspired me to search for gun-related foods. Did you know there’s a gunpowder tea? Yeah, not a big tea drinker here, so it was news to me. More below, including a video on how to use a clam gun – another item I’ve never heard of before now.

The clam gun intrigued me. I had to look it up. Fortunately, there’s an example on YouTube to help those born in the landlocked states understand.

I heard that the NRA toaster at the Kona (Big Island of Hawaii) Friends of NRA dinner went for $650 this week. I told someone at NRA that the average rate of return on that thing has got to be huge, even if it doesn’t bring in the highest dollar amount. Clearly, there is a market for devices that can make one’s food express the maker’s pro-gun nature. I don’t know what else they could offer that would be just as novel, but I’d love to sit in on a meeting to try and think up new ideas. Something to add the NRA brand to pats of butter? The NRA loaf pan that makes sure all of your holiday bread treats have the NRA logo emblazoned on the side? The NRA bundt-like pan that allows you to bake cakes in the form of your three favorite letters?

Is Rohrer Really the Best GOP (Potential) Candidate Against Casey?

I disagree with Sebastian that Sam Rohrer’s potential entry into the Senate race against Bob Casey makes him the best candidate the GOP has to run. My issues with him all center around his ability to run a viable statewide campaign. We had a preview of his attempts in the gubernatorial race last year, and I think his decisions proved that he doesn’t know how to prioritize how to spend money or turn out the actual votes needed to win. Some of this is rehashed from previous comments around the blog and emails with readers.

Why Sam Shouldn’t Run
His primary campaign proved that he wasn’t capable of running in a serious statewide race. Considering a race against Casey would be even tougher than a primary against Corbett, I think these issues are even more important to consider. His campaign did a lot of local events that often turned out 50-200 people. That normally sounds like a great grassroots campaign strategy. In some ways, it can get voters talking to their friends and neighbors more than a larger typical political rally. But what many campaign observers noticed is that he kept talking to the same groups over and over. He never branched out beyond typical Tea Party-type events. In politics, you have to build a coalition of voters to win. In a purple state that will see a strong influx of Democratic money for the presidential election, the Tea Party support won’t cut it. It won’t even come close. Without solid existing relationships with a variety of coalition groups, he may not even pull together quite a bit of the traditional Republican vote. If he could not or would not reach out to the coalitions during a GOP primary, we can’t trust that he’ll try to reach them or independents in 2012.

The other big red flag for Sam Rohrer is how he prioritized his spending during the last race. His gubernatorial fundraising account had a whooping $272.25 left in it. (This statement was true at the time I wrote the original comment in winter of 2010.) Oh, and that’s only if he decides to ignore the $10,000 loan he made to his own campaign that is still outstanding. Considering the average cost to win a Senate seat in 2010 was $8.28 million (and down ticket races will be competing with presidential candidates in 2012 for airtime expenses), starting off $9,727.75 in the hole isn’t exactly the best place to be a little over a year out from the primary.

Rohrer didn’t have a lot of money to work with, so he really needed to use it wisely. Instead, he paid Aaron Tippin $10,000. A concert? Really? Three days before an election it’s time to get out the vote, not goof off in Harrisburg. He paid $2,000 directly to Joe the Plumber for his support. (There’s an additional listing for his services combined with some robocalls for $17,429. It’s not clear just how much of that went to Joe the Plumber.) Joe the Plumber’s 15 minutes were up by then, and he certainly doesn’t have any serious connections to groups of voters in Pennsylvania.

Unfortunately, Rohrer’s campaign tried to rely on political stunts to get media coverage. That’s no way to run a statewide campaign, something I think is accurately reflected in the results of the election (more than 2-1 loss). The other issue that Rohrer has working against him are his own supporters. I realize that’s not his fault, but some of them have left a very bad impression with other coalition groups. Many took that attitude that if their guy didn’t win, they would take their ball back home and sit out completely. That’s not the way to build a serious coalition to support your current or future favored candidates.

If Rohrer could learn to raise money in a heartbeat, teach his most vocal supporters how to play well with others so they can successfully recruit into the cause, make an effort to actually reach out to non-Tea Party groups, and demonstrate he’s learned how to effectively spend money on getting out the vote, then he could have potential. I don’t think he’s done that in the last year.

Who is the Best GOP Candidate?
Let me just say that I don’t know if there’s a fantastic candidate who will absolutely have a great chance against Casey. Bob Casey has made his reputation by avoiding the spotlight and hoping people think he is his father. Consider that Pat Toomey just barely squeaked out a win in 2010, and that was against a far left liberal. Casey has the perception of being a moderate. Hell, he barely has the perception of having a pulse, so he’s hardly making waves with people in a negative way. Not to mention, Joe Sestak had a nice & dirty primary before his general campaign against Toomey. We won’t have that to bring down Casey’s reputation in 2012.

There’s at least one candidate who already has a bit of a federal profile & fundraising network. Tim Burns launched a campaign against John Murtha and ended up having to run in both a special election and a general against a replacement candidate who had all of the contacts without all of the personal baggage and negative name recognition of Murtha. Even with the special circumstances, Burns managed to pull off 45% of the vote in the special and 49% of the vote in the general election. Considering how much of the district’s economy depended on the pork that only Murtha and his staff (his successor Mark Critz was his Chief of Staff) could deliver, it’s amazing that Burns managed to perform so well in a time of economic uncertainty. Because it started as a campaign against Murtha, it means that Burns could tap into nationwide fundraising resources for that campaign. He presumably still has that kind of reach.

Another candidate with serious potential, but less of a track record in the campaign department, is Steve Welch from the Philly suburbs. He was in the race for Congress until Pat Meehan bumped him out. Then, he was recruited to run in the neighboring district since the next district is nearby and incumbent Rep. Gerlach was leaving the seat to run for governor – until Gerlach changed his mind and essentially booted Welch from the race. The fact that so many Republicans in the area want him to run to represent them speaks well of him, and he has recruited a campaign team with experience running successful statewide races with strong independent support. He’s wealthy, so that also gives him a head start in the fundraising game.

Those are just my two cents about the current crop of serious potential candidates.

Words I Never Expected to Hear out of Northampton: Smithies Protest for More Meat

I know that many of you won’t get the headline, but for those who do, well, you understand. For those who don’t, I’ll just let the article sum up why I’m shocked.

All last week, students at Smith College were buzzing over a rumor that the school was going completely vegetarian and locavore. There were protests and counter-protests, with slogans chalked on walkways. There was a Twitter feed that caught the attention of VegNews, â€œAmericaâ€™s premier vegan lifestyle magazine.â€™â€™ At a student government meeting, the dining services manager came under attack: How did she expect students to pass their midterms without coffee?

The rumor was started on purpose by two professors teaching a logic class. Half the class was to drum up support for a ban on meat and non-local goods while the other half was to demonstrate against it. Suddenly, it made sense. There’s no way that Smith students would actually protest in favor of meat unless it was an assignment.

What amazes me is that the rumor managed to get serious traction even though there were clear signs that it was fake. A fake student group was speaking out on favor of it, and yet the rumor spread. Did no one look the group up? On top of that, even the college staff pointed out that the campus would at least demand a committee to come to a decision like this.

For those of you not in the know about why this is newsworthy regarding Smith, there was one rumor that they could not get to catch on: grassroots support for an ROTC program.

Gun Shops in Big Boxes

Most of the time when one thinks of a gun shop, they imagine a fairly small and cramped space. At least, that’s been my experience with a majority of shops I’ve visited. Even the larger spaces I’ve seen (outside of the big box retailers themselves) aren’t actually terribly big. So, it’s rather amusing to read about a guy who wanted to open a gun range and gun shop who found an empty big box store to buy.

Perhaps the most unusual use of a former big-box store is William James’s Arms Room gun shop and shooting range, which opened last year in a former Circuit City store south of Houston. Mr. James spent nearly $5 million to buy the 20,000-square-foot space and convert it into a shooting range, a price he considered a bargain compared with building from scratch. The Arms Room offers handgun training courses in addition to traditional shooting practice, all in a popular shopping center anchored by Target Corp. and Home Depot Inc. stores.

“It was sort of providential,” Mr. James said in his Arms Room office, surrounded by antique swords and modern firearms. “I never dreamed of a place like this.”

The local PetSmart & Mattress Giant have both recognized the gun range for bringing in new customers. The Home Depot was willing to go on record before he opened that they had no problem with a gun range in the shopping center.

The only Pennsylvania example cited for a non-traditional use of retail space was a community theater in Harrisburg mall. It’s too bad. There’s an empty anchor store at one of our local malls that could use a gun range. :)

Lawlessness & Segregation?

Things you should know about Philly are best summed up in this tweet by Wyatt:

And it continues. The murder count in #Philly is now at 273. #armyourselves

That was from Monday. One more day on the books means four more murders on the tally, according to the PD’s website. The number is now 277.

Anytime Philadelphia needs to make budget cuts, they look to public safety first. I mean who cares if a few more people die in fires each year? And that murder count doesn’t really matter since the Police Department’s leadership is cooking the books in terms of how they compare crime statistics anyway. Slashing these departments has been the favored policy of Democrats ever since I moved to the area. But now an independent candidate for Mayor wants to take it to a new extreme, as well as divide up the city’s services based on race.

Philadelphia voters who go to the polls next month will find an independent candidate on the ballot for mayor – Wali “Diop” Rahman, a 34-year-old activist pushing for a major shift in city spending priorities, taking dollars away from law enforcement to spend more on education and community development.

“Right now the city’s fundamental policy is that of police containment,” said Rahman, an organizer for the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, which promotes efforts by the African American community to control its own institutions, including schools, police, health care, and housing.

His platform doesn’t explain how much he will cut from police and court budgets, but it does include a few other gems like mandatory hiring for convicts. It’s not clear what force he will use for businesses to make the hires, but it will be mandatory. In theory, he could make it a stipulation of the taxpayer-funded handouts he’ll give to businesses based on the race of their owners, but he doesn’t actually tie the two policies together. He will also free “political prisoners” which just happen to be those who have killed police officers.

It will be interesting to see how many votes this guy gets on Election Day. Given that the city is headed towards one of the highest murder counts in years, will some voters really support someone who wants to cut back on police and release more murderers from prison?