The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
Since I work in the Pharmaceutical Industry, I found Glenn’s quote on this bogus Harvard study that was bought and payed for by the Joyce Foundation to be pretty amusing:
If a drug company were as cavalier about science as these people are, its executives would all be in jail.
Ain’t that the truth.
I got my copy of Dave Hardy’s documentary, In Search of the Second Amendment in the mail today. I didn’t expect it to come so quickly. I will have to watch it sometime this weekend.
Much like many other bloggers, my posting rate will probably be a bit slow on the weekends. This weekend I need to finish up my painting in the bedroom loft. This is all part of my debearification process, which is much like debathification, except it involves stenciled bears and a lot of paint, instead of Iraqi Sunnis and a lot of ammunition.
You can see the bears which were once my enemy. Fortunately, they’ve been rubbed out by several gallons of off Behr (oh, the irony) off white paint, but I still have one last corner to up in the room’s loft. After all the painting is gone, the next project will be depinkification, which involves getting rid of the carpet and replacing it with something, anything.
With the rifle. Not the dude holding it. I caught a glimpse of this post from Ordnance-Corner. He posts a picture of a new .308 bullpup Kel-Tec is coming out with and exhibiting at SHOT 2007:
Click on the pic to get a close up view. There’s more good stuff in the post. Read the whole thing.
My friend Andrew brings me this sad but vaguely amusing story from his home town of Helena, MT.
A young mulie buck survived a jump from the I-15 overpass above Helena’s Sixth Ward train depot onto a boxcar last week, but had to be destroyed after being further injured by a leap from the boxcar to the ground.
This is where it gets amusing:
“We decided that the only way to get him off of it was for it to jump on its own,†he noted. “We wanted to give it a chance.â€
Loewen climbed atop the boxcar and the deer took a flying leap.
“He landed on all four feet,†Arnold said. “But then we could see that he also had a broken back leg, too.â€
They decided that the buck stopped here, and shot it. The wardens transported the carcass to the wildlife center, where it was fed to the few bears that hadn’t yet gone into hibernation.
Gotta love Montana.
I was going to write about the history of backup quarterbacks winning the Super Bowl, how it relates to what Jeff Garcia is doing now, and why Eagles fans and coaches would be wise to hand the job right back to Donovan McNabb when he is fully healed from his knee injury.
Then I caught this brilliant quote from Eagles President and COO Joe Banner in a story about team owner Jeff Lurie. In describing how fans never really embraced Lurie, Banner said “I have to tell you, that’s personally frustrating to me in a public-relations sense… I know this is controversial, but I don’t think there’s another owner who would have kept this team in Philadelphia for the economic deal we got on our stadium. I’m not trying to belittle public contribution, but as it relates to what other cities did and other offers we had from other cities, I can’t imagine many owners that would have come from someplace else and had the kind of loyalty that he demonstrated to these football fans and to the history of this franchise. I don’t think anybody recognizes that.”
In short, Joe Banner is saying “Eagles fans should be grateful that Jeff Lurie owns the team. We could have moved the team because deal we got on our publicly financed $500,000,000 stadium wasn’t exactly great.” He’s wrong on two counts:
First, publicly financed stadiums are always ever a great deal for owners, so he shouldn’t complain about getting the shaft. The city and state taxpayers subsidize your loan, and you get to pimp the stadium name out to Lincoln Financial. You get to make all of these television and licensing deals and keep all of the profits. And the benefit to the taxpayers? The privilege of paying through the nose to watch the team while eating cold hot dogs and drinking warm beer.
Jeffery Lurie made out like a bandit with this deal. The Eagles are now worth, as estimated by Forbes Magazine, $1 Billion. So, even if Jeff had to dump $500,000,000 of his own money into building the stadium, he gets to make twice that much if he ever sells the team. Where else can you get a 100% return on investment? Sign me up!
The second place where Banner is wrong when he says “No other owner…” Robert Kraft of the New England Patriots found his own financing when building the $320,000,000 Gillette Stadium. Yes, the state ponied up money to make infrastructure improvements like upgrading the roads, constructing parking facilities, and running commuter services to the stadium, but it’s hardly the burden to taxpayers that $320 million would be. Previous owners of the Patriots threatened to move the team to St. Louis, and while Kraft did actually have a deal with the state of Connecticut to finance a new downtown Hartford stadium, he ended up keeping the team in Foxboro, MA. So before Joe Banner holds the all-caring, ever loyal Jeffery Lurie up on a pedestal for all to admire, he should look at an owner who is worthy of an ounce of admiration.
Banner said that he wasn’t trying to belittle the public contribution, but he did anyway. Banner got it backwards. It isn’t the fans that should be glad at the kindness and loyalty displayed by Lurie. He and Lurie should be honored that the city and state were willing to subsidize his arena despite ever-increasing evidence that stadiums never leads to the kind of urban revitalization espoused by proponents.
Despite Banner’s idiotic comment, I still hope the Eagles win on Saturday. May the football gods forgive their COO’s idiocy.
Andrew: What up Seb?
Sebastian: Not much, I’ve been blogging
Andrew: Havent you been already?
Sebastian: No
Sebastian: Real blogging
Sebastian: Not a LiveJournal blogging, which is wannabe blogging.
Sebastian: I even have a blogger chick helping me pimp my blog
Andrew: So youre like Andrew Sullivan!
Andrew: Are you gonna write a book now?
Sebastian: I’m like Andrew Sullivan, except I’m not a whiny, ficklely opinionated poofter ;)
Andrew: I’d be afraid to blog, I always imagine Bush secretly abducting people who dont like him
Sebastian: That’s what AR-15s are for
The Canadian Wildlife Service conducts experiments by exposing the common wood spider to various psychoactive substances to see the effect on web building. A must see:
** Video Removed by YouTube **
UPDATE: Link was broken to YouTube. Now fixed.
Chris King (D-142), my newly elected state rep who defeated incumbent Matt Wright, is so green he doesn’t even have an e-mail address yet. But when he does, I plan to forward this along to him in regards to the subject of the legislation that Dwight Evans has introduced into the PA house.
Hon. Christopher King
Room 101A East Wing
Harrisburg, PA 17120-2142Dear Representative King,
First, I would like to congratulate you on winning the seat to be representative of Pennsylvania’s 142nd Legislative District. Winning a seat held by such a long time incumbent is quite an achievement, and I look forward to having you represent us.
I’m writing you today about an article, appearing in the Philadelphia Inquirer on January 11th, revealing Representative Dwight Evans’ intention to reintroduce measures to revise the Commonwealth’s gun laws, considered and defeated in last September’s Committee of the Whole session of the General Assembly. I attended this meeting and had a productive conversation with Representative Wright on the issue, but since Representative Evans has announced his intentions to reintroduce these bills, I wanted to take time to discuss my views on this with you.
As I’m sure you are aware, the Pennsylvania Constitution, which you no doubt have recently taken an oath to uphold, recognizes an individual right to keep and bear arms in defense of one’s self and the state. While I share everyone’s concerns about the violence in the City of Philadelphia, as a gun collector and sport shooter, I urge you to oppose any of Representative Evans’ bills which place further burdens on our rights as Pennsylvanians.
While some of the proposals may seem reasonable, such as “one gun per month”, these types of laws do affect collectors, and will do very little or nothing to address the violence we’re seeing in Philadelphia. The City of Reading, which shares the same gun laws that the City of Philadelphia claims to be woefully inadequate, has experienced a sharp drop in violent crime this year after having a record year previously. The City of Pittsburgh, I understand, has also experienced falling crime rates. Philadelphia’s claims that our gun laws are inadequate would not seem to stand up to evidence, and I think The City would be better served focusing on effective solutions, such as putting more police officers on the streets, locking up violent criminals, and aggressively targeting gangs, rather than focusing on symbolic measures which won’t really address the problem.
Thank you for your consideration in this matter. I am happy to see that you were rated A- by the NRA in the last elections. Reading over your campaign materials, it seems we agree on many issues, so I hope your legislative record will give me cause to support you in future elections.
Sincerely,
Sebastian
Langhorne, PA
I’m sickeningly nice when I want to influence them. I don’t even mind stroking their ego a little. What I won’t mention now, but might, if he starts buying into Evans’ and Rendell’s crap, is that I’ll do everything I can to make sure he’s a one termer if he pisses me off.
This one almost flew under my radar screen, but fortunately, David Codrea picked it up before I missed it:
Hoping that the new Democratic state House will be more receptive to gun-control legislation, state Rep. Dwight Evans yesterday said he will reintroduce a series of gun bills that previously failed.“We have 50 new members in the House who are not entrenched, who can listen to reason,” Evans, a Democratic candidate for mayor, said at a City Hall news conference attended by a crowd of state and local leaders.“What we want is common-sense gun policies that can stop the flow of illegal guns on our streets,” said Evans.The package of 13 bills, which he said he’d introduce on Feb. 22, includes proposals to limit gun purchases to one a month, to ban assault weapons statewide and to allow cities to enact their own gun laws.