Author: Kevin

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

Rules are for the proles.

If you’re Charlie Rangel or Tim Geithner, you can cheat on your taxes without consequences.

If you’re Bill Clinton or Ted Kennedy, you can treat women in the most beastly fashion with impunity.

If you’re Al Gore or RFK Jr, you can pontificate about global warming while living in a mansion and flying around the world in private jets.

If you’re Nancy Pelosi, you can staff your vineyard with non-unionized illegal aliens living in squalor.

Welcome to Animal Farm, Democratic Party style.

Posted by: John Skookum at August 30, 2009 10:59 AM

Falling Down On the Job

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Falling Down On the Job

As mentioned, the first rule of blogging is to try to post something every day. Rule #2 is to try to make your posts topical and interesting, or at least interesting.

Fail.

It’s been a busy week, and next week looks much the same. The following week is, of course, the Gun Blogger Rendezvous, so things should pick up quite bit. Oh, and I’ve heard from Joe Rothstein:

Kevin:
On vacation now. I’ll get back to you after Labor Day.

We’ll see, I suppose.

Anyway, there’ll be more content soon, I promise.

Post for Thursday

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I guess I’m supposed to say something about Ted Kennedy’s passing. The only thing that comes to mind is that he indeed got to skip out of the party without paying his portion of the check. From Peggy Noonan’s WSJ piece a few years ago, A Separate Peace:

Do people fear the wheels are coming off the trolley? Is this fear widespread? A few weeks ago I was reading Christopher Lawford’s lovely, candid and affectionate remembrance of growing up in a particular time and place with a particular family, the Kennedys, circa roughly 1950-2000. It’s called “Symptoms of Withdrawal.” At the end he quotes his Uncle Teddy. Christopher, Ted Kennedy and a few family members had gathered one night and were having a drink in Mr. Lawford’s mother’s apartment in Manhattan. Teddy was expansive. If he hadn’t gone into politics he would have been an opera singer, he told them, and visited small Italian villages and had pasta every day for lunch. “Singing at la Scala in front of three thousand people throwing flowers at you. Then going out for dinner and having more pasta.” Everyone was laughing. Then, writes Mr. Lawford, Teddy “took a long, slow gulp of his vodka and tonic, thought for a moment, and changed tack. ‘I’m glad I’m not going to be around when you guys are my age.’ I asked him why, and he said, ‘Because when you guys are my age, the whole thing is going to fall apart.’ “
Mr. Lawford continued, “The statement hung there, suspended in the realm of ‘maybe we shouldn’t go there.’ Nobody wanted to touch it. After a few moments of heavy silence, my uncle moved on.”
Lawford thought his uncle might be referring to their family–that it might “fall apart.” But reading, one gets the strong impression Teddy Kennedy was not talking about his family but about . . . the whole ball of wax, the impossible nature of everything, the realities so daunting it seems the very system is off the tracks.
And–forgive me–I thought: If even Teddy knows . . .

I think there’s a real good chance “the whole thing is going to fall apart” in just the next few years.

I’m really curious to know just how old Teddy was when he said that.

You REALLY Want to Come to the Rendezvous

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Mr. Completely has put up a schedule of the activities planned for this year’s Gun Blogger Rendezvous:

Thursday, September 10th

2:30 pm. Leave the Hospitality Room to car pool to Scheel’s Sports Store in nearby Sparks.

3:00 pm – 5:00 pm. Guided tour at Scheel’s Sports and browsing/shopping. Pick up munchies and soft drinks on way back to hotel.

6:00pm. Leave the Hospitality Room to go to dinner. Location to be determined later.

Thursday Evening until midnight: Refreshments and conversation at the Silver Legacy Hospitality room. Bring your own refreshments and munchies.

Friday, September 11th.

8:00am. Leave the Silver Legacy Hospitality room, then downstairs to one of the restaurants for breakfast.

8:45am. Leave the Silver Legacy Hospitality room to car pool up and head out to the Washoe County Shooting Facility, the Pyramid range for rifle and pistol target shooting out to 900 yards.

9:30am – 2:00pm. At the range.

3:00 pm. – 5:45pm. Show-N-Tell at the Silver Legacy Hospitality room.

6:00pm. Leave the Silver Legacy Hospitality room to go to the ground floor to Gecko’s BBQ Restaurant for dinner.

Friday Evening until midnight: Refreshments and conversation at the Silver Legacy Hospitality room. Bring your own refreshments and munchies.

Saturday, September 12th.


8:00am. Leave the Silver Legacy Hospitality room, then downstairs to one of the restaurants for breakfast.

8:45am. Leave the Silver Legacy Hospitality room to car pool up and head out to the Washoe County Shooting Facility, the Pyramid range for an introduction to Steel Challenge Action Pistol shooting.

9:30am – 2:00pm. At the range.

4:30 – 5:15pm. Rachel Parsons of the NRA

5:15 – 6pm. Bill Brassard of the National Shooting Sports Foundation

6:00 pm. NSSF all you can eat pizza feed at the Silver Legacy Hospitality room. After dinner will be the fund raiser raffle for Project Valour-IT and the drawings for the door prizes.

Saturday Evening until Midnight: Refreshments and conversation at the Silver Legacy Hospitality room. Bring your own refreshments and munchies.

Sunday, September 13th.

7:30am. Leave the Silver Legacy Hospitality room, then head downstairs to one of the restaurants for breakfast.

8:15am. Leave for the Virginia City Camel Races Festival and Cowboy Fast Draw Blogger Match.

9:00am – 10:00am. Cowboy Fast Draw Shooting.

The Cowboy Fast Draw shooting is the last scheduled event for the Gun Blogger Rendezvous, but many attendees will be staying Sunday night and returning home on Monday. The Camel Races Festival, The Reno Car Museum, the Downtown River Walk, the new Reno Museum, and a number of other things should be considered for the rest of the day on Sunday.

Note that many of the times shown are departure times. Plan on being there a little earlier than the departure time.

OK, that’s what’s planned. There’s also a FAQ post if you need some more info.

Now, on Saturday night we’re going to have the raffle drawings, and as you should know by now, we’re giving away the Para GI Expert that I’m donating and a $2,000 value training certificate to Front Sight that YOU NEED NOT BE PRESENT TO WIN. (The prizes are separate – two prizes, two winners.) So far we have sold about 175 tickets for these two prizes, and we still have a bit over two weeks to go before those sales stop.

BUT IF YOU ATTEND, there are a myriad of other prizes you can win. (Attendees also have a shot at the GI Expert and the training certificate.) Hi-Point has donated their new 9mm Carbine, and Para USA had promised to donate a pistol as well.

Today they revealed what that pistol will be, their Gun Rights Edition high-capacity PXT P14:

The specs are:

Product Code: PX1445S GR
Caliber: .45 ACP
Rounds: 14+1
Barrel: 5″
Weight: 40 oz.
Length: 8.5″
Height: 5.75″
Hammer: Spurred
Sights: Fiber-Optic Front/2-Dot Rear
Receiver: Stainless
Finish: Stainless
Magazine: PNM45
MSRP: $1,149.00

I’m (obviously) not eligible to win the GI Expert, but I’d LOVE to win this pistol!

So far the attendee’s list is about 34 names long, so your odds will be pretty good!

READ THIS

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READ THIS:

You don’t really “arrive” in Germany, as much as you are born there: naked, bleeding, in pain, unsure of your surroundings, not knowing anyone and wondering what in the hell just happened.

— Maj. Chuck Zeigenfuss, From My Position… On the Way!: “He has no personal effects…”

Then read this:

British officers in his unit, 2 Rifles, wanted to track their man every step of the way, and to ensure that his family was informed and supported in this time of high stress. Yet having their soldier suddenly in the American system caused a temporary glitch in communications with folks in Germany. The British leadership in Sangin could have worked through the glitch within some hours, but that would have been hours wasted, and they wanted to know the status of their soldier now. So a British officer in Sangin – thinking creatively –asked if I knew any shortcuts to open communications. The right people were only an email away: Soldiers Angels. And so within about two minutes, these fingers typed an email with this subject heading: CALLING ALL ANGELS.

Soldiers’ Angels Shelle Michaels and MaryAnn Phillips moved into action. Day by day British officers mentioned how Soldiers Angels were proving to be incredibly helpful. The soldiers expressed deep and sincere appreciation. Yet again, the Angels arrived during a time of need.

— Michael Yon, Do Americans Care about British Soldiers?

Maj. Zeigenfuss concludes his piece with this:

If you’ve not joined soldiers angels yet, please do so. There are many ways you can help, either through time, monetarily, visiting, writing a letter, or adopting one of over a thousand soldiers who have asked

* Donate a backpack
* Donate items for a backpack
* Make a Blanket of Hope

See why the Gun Blogger Rendezvous supports Soldiers’ Angels and Project Valour IT? And why you should, too?

Quote of the WEEK

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Quote of the WEEK

From this YouTube video taken at a Washington Town Hall with Rep. Brian “Brownshirt” Baird:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rRE5UK6NQU&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&w=640&h=505]

As a Marine, as a disabled veteran that served this country, I’ve kept my oath. Do you ever intend to keep yours?

David from Camas, WA

His Nancy Pelosi line was a close second.

I LOVE FedEx

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I LOVE FedEx!

I’m writing this post from my new EeePC which was delivered to me this afternoon by the guy that owns the local FedEx Home Delivery franchise! For whatever reason, Woot! shipped this thing “home delivery,” and FedEx tried to deliver it to my place of work at 7:50 AM. Of course, no one was there.

I called the FedEx toll-free number and explained that they’d tried to deliver to my office, could I pick it up at their local main office? She put me on hold and contacted that office. When she returned she told me that they would try to deliver it again. I asked “when?” and was told “During business hours.”

Marvelous.

So I went down to the office for a while this morning. To no avail, of course. I left a note on the front door: “FedEx, Sorry I Missed You.” I then went on about my day.

I’d just gotten back from the grocery store and was putting the stuff away when my cell phone rang. It was about 4:30PM. “Mr Baker? This is the FedEx Home Delivery guy. I’m at your office.”

Thankfully I live about five minutes from the office. He waited until I got there. He’d gotten an email from Corporate, and wanted to make sure I was happy.

He succeeded!