Author: Kevin

Quote of the Day – Registration Edition

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Via Oleg Volk:

From Boris Karpa, a man who was an American born elsewhere by accident: “Let me be clear about this: background checks for private transfers is gun registration.

“Not ‘could lead to gun registration’, it literally IS gun registration.

“It does not matter if they put in a little sentence that says ‘the government is not allowed to keep records’ – that sentence will go away at the next mass-shooting – and then the government will simply start hitting the SAVE button after it processes your next gun purchase. We’re in the world of computers now. Keeping terabytes of data only costs a few dollars.

“If Tom Coburn argues that putting a little proviso in there to say ‘you are not allowed to keep records’ makes it anything other but gun registration, that only helps us know who Tom Coburn is.

“What this will decide is nothing less but the answer to the question – is America a unique nation, that trusts its citizens to own weapons – not ‘hunting implements’, not ‘sporting firearms’, but weapons – or it is just another country, and jut like everywhere else, the gun control movement wins battle after battle, and the gun rights organizations are only fighting a delaying action.

“Because if this passes, it will never be repealed. The NRA is not capable of, and does not have the stomach for – attacking existing Federal gun laws. They will promise to work to repeal it. They will lie, just like they lied about the Hughes amendment, where they made some symbolic move to try and strike it down and then surrendered too. But they will not repeal it if it passes.

“If they win this fight, then the gun rights movement in America is over, and everything else is a long delaying action.”

I do not disagree with a single word there.

“The typhoon waves are starting to break over the bridge.”

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Interesting piece in The American Spectator, His Queeg Moment.  Excerpt:

In Herman Wouk’s classic World War II novel, The Caine Mutiny, there is a moment when a group of the ship’s officers are getting away from the increasingly eccentric Captain Queeg by relaxing ashore.

Suddenly the malcontent Lieutenant Keefer asks the others: “Does it occur to you that Captain Queeg may be insane?

In fact Queeg is not insane, at least not at that time. He is simply grappling, more and more disastrously, with a job too big for him. Come the crisis of a typhoon, he becomes paralyzed and nearly sinks the ship by failing to give the obvious orders. At the subsequent court-martial he appears quite normal until he breaks down under the pressure of cross-examination. Before this, the officers have searched the regulations for guidance, but the regulations refer only to a captain who is clearly and unmistakably insane, not one who is merely guilty of eccentricity and bad judgment. At a lower level of responsibility, Queeg might have performed adequately, but with Keefer’s question, the remaining respect for Queeg’s office has gone.

Obama’s second inauguration speech may be his Queeg moment — an undeniable demonstration that, in an emergency, he is incapable of grappling with reality.

RTWT.

Update on Those “No More Hesitation” Targets

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Reader David Turner has sent me a follow-up on those targets.  It seems that the manufacturer has taken them off their website and apologized:

We apologize for the offensive nature of our “No More Hesitation” products. These products have been taken offline due to the opinions expressed by so many, including members of the law enforcement community.

This product line was originally requested and designed by the law enforcement community to train police officers for unusually complex situations where split-second decisions could lead to unnecessary loss of life.

Consistent with our company mission as a training supplier (not a training methods company), we will continue to seek input from law enforcement professionals to better serve their training objectives and qualification needs. We sincerely appreciate law enforcement professionals for the risks they take in providing safety and defending freedom.

As InfoWars explains, though:

The company’s excuse that the targets were designed to help police prevent “unnecessary loss of life” is highly dubious given that the images were all of armed individuals termed “non-traditional threats,” designed to ensure “no more hesitation” from police officers encountering them.

As one respondent to the company explained, “Look, each of the supposed “threats” appeared to be in their own home settings. They were also all holding a weapon… It is obvious these paper targets were never intended to be decoy (don’t shoot targets). It is apparent this was designed to assist in desensitizing the trainee.”

In addition, the company had previously struck a different tone when it told Reason’s Mike Riggs that the targets were designed to combat, “hesitation on the part of cops when deadly force is required on subjects with atypical age, frailty or condition.”

Although the targets have been taken off the company’s website, it’s unclear whether or not they have been removed from sale entirely.

That’s a question I would like answered.

OK, WTF?

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I occasionally take a break at the office and do a little web-surfing (yeah, shocker, no?).  I have both Firefox 19.0 and IE 10.0 installed.  Both load pages glacially slow.  I’ve determined it’s because of Java scripts.  If I turn off Java, BOOM!  Pages load right now, but without much of the content.  For example, checking my personal email, I have to use gmail’s standard HTML version of the page.  The more versatile one doesn’t run w/o Java.

Anybody else have this experience?  I’m tired of waiting for pages to load, but I can’t just turn Java off – too many pages are dependent on Java scripts.  Suggestions?

Quote of the Day – Culture War Edition

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Publicola has written an excellent piece, Resolve, that I strongly recommend you read.  Today’s QotD comes from it:

We have to be more determined than our enemies, but our focus does not have to be on them exclusively, or rather not on who we think our enemies are. Bluntly, our enemy isn’t flesh and blood – that’s just a manifestation. Our enemy is the idea that our culture is not worth saving. Our enemy is the notion that our culture can compromise on its values. Our enemy is the practice of appeasement.

Quote of the Day – Disappearing Generals Edition

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From the Investor’s Business Daily article, The disturbing pattern: Obama rids America’s military of yet another top general:

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, a special ops veteran who was McKiernan’s successor. He resigned when his staff was quoted making derogatory comments to an embedded journalist about the administration in general and VP Joe Biden in particular. If mocking Megamind Biden is worthy of resignation, then most of America needs to step down by lunch today.

It’s a pretty serious piece, though, and I recommend you read the whole thing.