Month: August 2009

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

I have been more than a little discouraged and disgusted with those who purport to be my fellow countrymen. Everywhere you turn it seems that there is another street-corner evangelist preaching the gospel of government control, and they always seem to have a crowd around them.

It is human nature to seek the most gain from minimum effort, and nothing can be more minimum than having someone else do it for you. These are the people who turn to Mommy Government to solve all of their ills.

In 1865 the country climbed out from under a civil war. Freed slaves reveled in new found freedom.

They soon found out, however, that freedom has its cost. Slavery is safe, because someone takes care of you. It may be only a minimum level of care, barely enough for sustenance, but it is provided to you. Food, clothing and shelter, the first three items on the hierarchy of needs, are given free of monetary cost. The only thing you pay for these things is your soul.

Freedom, however, means that you are left to fend for yourself. Being responsible for yourself means that you must provide for your own food, clothing and shelter. No one is waiting to pick you up when you fall, you live or die by your own actions and decisions. You own yourself, body and soul.

Freedom is scary.

This is why so many people opt for any kind of soft slavery rather than hard freedom.

— Last Refuge of a Scoundrel – This Time the Union Can Keep the Slaves

If ye love wealth better than liberty,
the tranquility of servitude
better than the animating contest of freedom,
go home from us in peace.
We ask not your counsels or your arms.
Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.
May your chains set lightly upon you,
and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.

–Samuel Adams, 1776

CMP Update

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I’ve purchased a CMP Garand, a CMP M1 Carbine, and three or four cans of .30-06 on en-bloc clips from the CMP, so I’m on their mailing list. Things may be finally slowing down in the commercial manufacturing sector, but the CMP is still overwhelmed:

LATEST CMP SALES NEWS:

ORDER BACKLOG. For the past nine months, the number of orders received by CMP for rifles, ammunition, and all other products has been unprecedented.
As of today, 31 July 2009, our Sales Order Processing Dept is up to processing / shipping orders received at the end of Apr 2009, with several thousand orders still to go for May – July. The number of incoming orders has decreased enough so that customers should expect an acknowledgment of our receiving orders about 30 days after mailing the order. However, customers should not expect delivery for 90 – 120 days from date order was placed. We ask our customers to bear with us. We will eventually recover from this surge. The CMP staff thanks you for your support and patience.

COMMUNICATION RESPONSE DELAYS. CMP is still receiving hundreds of calls a day, as well as hundreds of emails. Each morning there are dozens of voicemails from the night before. Because of the large volume of constant calls in the daytime, it may take a few days for response. We have a state of the art phone system for a company our size, but the volume of calls is causing the system to do unexpected things. We apologize for any delay in responding to emails or telephone calls.

—

S&H INCREASE FOR 407-CAN. S&H for orders for 407-CAN received on or after 1 Sep 2009 will increase to $9.95 per can. Other S&H charges will remain as they are until further notice.

OVERPAYMENTS TO CMP. Effective immediately, we will consider customer overpayments of $9.99 or less as donations and will show that on the customer invoice / bill of sale. Any overpayment of $10 or more will be immediately refunded to the customer. The $10 figure was chosen because that is our estimate of how much it costs the CMP to process a refund check. This change will be added to our instructions and order forms at time of next printing.

BAVARIAN CARBINES. The Bavarian marked M1 carbines have all been inspected and graded. However, because of the current 90 day backlog of orders, we will not begin accepting orders for these carbines until 1 Oct, 2009.Prices will be posted on the website at the beginning of September.

CARBINE AMMO 438A. CMP continues to receive monthly shipments of carbine ammo, and are slowly reducing the number of backorders. As of 31 July, we have over 3,000 orders for carbine ammo on backorder. Anyone ordering carbine ammo now should expect a minimum of 120 days for delivery, and possibly much longer.

Thank you for your support of the CMP in these historic times.

Orest Michaels
Chief Operating Officer

“Historic times” indeed! 90-120 days for a firearm, over 120 days for .30 Carbine ammo. Wow.

I Would LOVE to Work for This Company

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I Would LOVE to Work for This Company

As most of my longtime readers know, I like T-shirts. Specifically, offensive T-shirts, but T-shirts in general. I ordered a new one today. This one. I intend to wear it at least one day at the upcoming Gun Blogger’s Rendezvous.

Here’s the acknowledgement email I just received:

Thank you for your recent order from Despair, Inc.

I’d like to personally welcome you to our growing body of Dissatisfied Customers™, but to do so might evidence some actual concern for service and protocol. This might then lead to customer satisfaction, which would defeat the purpose altogether. That is why you have received this generic, form-generated email, written by some nameless lackey in our marketing department.

Having established that any pretense of consideration for *your* needs would be counter-productive to our raison d’etre at Despair Inc, let us now ponder a subject of greater interest to those among us who are worthy of both of our collective attentions – that person being me.

While you sit there wincing in disbelief at these bons mots of authentic insincerity and vexed by the intrinsic contradictions, I find I am beside myself with awe at the specimen of unparalleled angst that is the Despair, Inc. Blog.

http://blog.despair.com

Hardly a man given to superlatives, I must nevertheless assert with David-Lee-Rothian boldness that we are demonstrably without peer in the Relentless Pursuit of Dejection. Do not the weekly whinings of this anonymous Peon is in the Marketing Department inspire YOU to new lows?

“But I’m unstable enough as it is- why would I want to read the grousings of some other malcontent who is unhappy with his job?”, you might ask.

Because that very malcontent is also providing attentive Despair customers with rare, super-steep discounts, exclusive products, and occasionally an amusing slice of behind-the-scenes life at Despair. (Or so I’m told – I can’t be bothered to read that junk…)

At long last, after this lengthy exploitation of your attention for purely selfish marketing purposes, let us move on to yet another advertisement for our company.

In anticipation of your next question- “How can I subject myself to even further marketing attempts by Despair?” Well, you’re in luck! Because Despair offers several additional opportunities to be on the receiving end on a steady stream of angst wrapped inside advertisements and covered in coupons. Those willing to endure the agony of it all will find themselves rewarded often with savings and freebies beyond belief.

The Wailing List – (The Official E-Mail Newsletter of Despair)
http://www.despair.com/subscribe1.html

The Wailing List Twitter Feed (An Unofficial Experiment by a Marketing Peon in the Limits of Your Endurance- with an occasional coupon code thrown in…)
http://twitter.com/wailinglist

Alas- if you find that even daily contact from the forces of Despair Marketing personnel is simply not enough to satisfy your needs, well… Seriously? You might need a hobby… The only people subjected to more frequent abuse at our hands are our employees- and take it from us, there is such a thing as too much of a bad thing…

If any of the information shown below is inaccurate, please notify us immediately using our Troubled Ticketing system.

http://www.despair.com/trti.html

We will rectify your error immediately, and on some occasions, without snickering.

It is the least we can do, which, as a matter of policy, is the most we can do.

Sincerely not really writing you this email,
E.L.

E.L.Kersten, Ph.D.
Founder & COO,
Despair, Inc.

I hope it really is as fun to work there as it appears.

Imagine a Life Without Wants

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Today’s Quote of the Day from EarnestThing at To Which I Replied…:

Imagine waking up in a bed you didn’t want, taking a cold shower you didn’t want, driving to a job you didn’t want, in a car you didn’t want, then returning to a home you didn’t want, to a family or roommate you didn’t want, eating a dinner you didn’t want, and going back to sleep in that bed you didn’t want knowing tomorrow was going to be exactly the same.

Imagine living a life you didn’t want, without the choice to change it.

That, my supposedly well educated friend, is socialism.

The Standard Responses of Markadelphia

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I’ve backdated this post so that it doesn’t appear on the front page of the blog, but it can be pulled up as a link at need. Reader DJ has kindly composed this list of my single leftish commenter Markadelphia’s “Standard Responses” which he has exhibited over the last two years or so:

#1 The “I can’t hear you” response. He behaves as if a request to respond or to answer a question was not made, or that he never read it. This seems to be his favorite.

#2 The “What’s the point” response. He complains that it is pointless to respond because he won’t be believed anyway. One often finds this on a playground during third grade recess.

#3 The “I’m not alone” response. He states his opinion, and then he points to the writings of other people who share his opinion, as if the request were about votes instead of verifiable facts, logic, and reasoned thought.

#4 The “How ’bout that anthrax, eh?” response. He simply tries to change the subject. This is also known as the “Hey, look! A pony!” response.

#5 The “I’m drowning in stupidity” response. He simply lays on the blather, slathering on one turgid catch-phrase, slogan, and cliché after another, and then declares, later, “I answered your question.”

#6 The “How ’bout a little fire, Scarecrow?” response. He deliberately misses the point, laying on one straw man after another.

#7 The “Who you gonna believe, me or your lyin’ camera?” response. Nothing is valid, no matter what the evidence for it is, unless it squares with the conclusions he’s already jumped to.

#8 The “Humpty Dumpty” response. He simply asserts that your words mean what he says they mean. Thus, no matter what you write, it means that he is correct. This is also known as the “We don’t need no stinking dictionary!” response.

#9 The “Nuh-uh! Am not! You are!” response. He simply asserts that the other side is what he doesn’t like his side being accused of. As with #2, one often finds this on a playground during third grade recess.

#10 The “Brave Sir Robin” response. When the monsters get too close, he disappears for a few days, only to reappear and treat everyone as if they didn’t see the monsters.

#11 The “You’re Not Smart Enough For Me To Converse With” response. Found for the first time in this thread from December ’09

#12 The “I’m a deliberate fuckwit!” response. When he discovers, yet again, that he cannot counter his opponent’s argument, he intentionally mischaracterizes his opponent’s argument, reasoning, meaning, and even the plain language of his statements, and then argues against his own mischaracterization as if it shows his opponent to be wrong. He does not care that this shows him to be fundamentally dishonest and/or unable to understand what his opponent actually wrote, but it gives him yet another opportunity to avoid admitting that he is wrong and/or that his opponent is correct. While this response often embodies one or more of his other Standard Responses, overall it is a distinct form that is easily recognized.
Numerous examples of many of these standard responses are to be found in the epic-length comment thread to this post.

I will probably update this post periodically with examples of each, such as this textbook example of Standard Response #1: An Investment in Failure

Not a peep out of him in the comments to that one.

Oh, and as of Sept. 23 2010 this is Rev. 8 of the list.

UPDATE:  12/18/12 – all of the links to JSKit or HaloScan are now defunct.  Unfortunately, when I was forced to switch from HaloScan (formerly JSKit) to Disqus, the 40,000+ comments did not come along, and in October of 2012 those comment threads ceased to exist online.  My deepest apologies.

Debate Invitation # Who Knows?

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Debate Invitation # Who Knows?

I sent this out yesterday:

Subject: Your recent column “Congress Stops an NRA-backed Gun Law?”

Mr. Rothstein:

I read with interest today your recent column, Congress Stops an NRA-Backed Gun Law? What’s This Country Coming To? As you can probably tell from my email address, I’m on the opposite side of this topic from yours. As you can imagine, I have a number of issues with things you stated as fact in your piece that are not so, and a number of questions about those statements.

I’d like to make you an offer: I’d love to discuss this article with you – in print – at my blog, The Smallest Minority. We can do this by email correspondence, or I will be more than happy to give you guest-posting privileges. I promise that I will not edit anything you say, other than for physical appearance and clarity.

I don’t expect to change your mind, nor you to change mine, but I want to have an honest public exchange between two people distinctly on opposite sides of this topic so that the undecided can read – and decide – based on the merits of the arguments.

I’ve made this offer on a number of occasions to a number of your colleagues and others. The acceptance rate has been disappointingly low. Not zero, but low.

Thank you for your attention.

Kevin Baker
Tucson, AZ

24 hours and no response yet, but hope springs eternal.

UPDATE, 8/10: Mr. Rothstein has responded! Via email:

Mr. Baker:

Sorry for the delay in responding to this. It’s August, and things are moving in slower motion than is usual. I received a large number of emails in response to my July 25 column, many of them rightly pointing to errors, and all of them well considered. Today I posted a follow up piece which you can find at:: http://uspolitics.einnews.com/article.php?nid=723681

I’d be happy to take you up on your offer to exchange views on your web site. What do you have in mind for a format?

Joe Rothstein

(Cue Mission: Impossible theme music . . .)

Deaths in the Family

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Deaths in the Family

Just . . . DAMN.

I’ve been reading Rachel Lucas since before I began blogging, and like everyone else, I laughed at her posts about her dogs Digger, Sunny, and lately Maggie. Digger died a while back, but Sunny passed just this Tuesday. Sunny holds a special place in my heart, for when I was selling the “F^*k It! McCain ’08” bumperstickers, Rachel said she’d pose Sunny with one on her head.

And she did:


I think that was good for at least 100 sales.

And today I found out that Chris Byrne and his family lost their companion Mac on Wednesday.

I had to put my dog down Feb. 14, 1996. I haven’t gotten another one. Still miss her.

Dammit.