Category: Uncategorized

4^th Annual National Ammo Day.

The 2006 edition of Kim du Toit’s National Ammo Day is again November 19 (or the week thereof). Last year the guys at AR15.com all attempted to make their Ammo Day purchases at their local Walmarts at precisely 3:30PM CST. Over 1,400 members stated that they would join in. The final tally reported that we bought 103,135 rounds that day, and that was just AR15.com members. Other gun boards, bloggers, and readers joined in, too.

Join us again, won’t you? On or near Nov. 19, buy at least 100 rounds of ammo from any source; local gun shop, big-box store, or mail-order.

Plainly and Clearly Stated.

(Via Insty.)

Orson Scott Card explains precisely why the Democrat Party should not win a majority in either house of Congress.

Excerpt:

Wherever Islamicism has been tried, the result has been identical to Communism’s miserable track record. The people are oppressed; the worst sort of vigilantes and thugs terrorize the population; the new power elite, regardless of their supposed piety and dedication to a holy cause, is quickly corrupted and comes to love the wealth and privileges of power.

When there is no hope of deliverance, the people have no choice but to bow under the tyrant’s lash, pretending to be true believers while yearning for relief. In Russia it came … after more than seventy years. China and Cuba are still waiting — but then, they started later.

So it would be in the Muslim world — if Islamicism were ever able to come to seem inevitable and irresistible.

You know: If America withdrew from Iraq and Afghanistan and exposed everyone who had cooperated with us to reprisals.

As happened in South Vietnam. The negotiated peace was more or less holding after American withdrawal. But then a Democratic Congress refused to authorize any further support for the South Vietnamese government. No more armaments. No more budget.

In other words, we forcibly disarmed our allies, while their enemies continued to be supplied by the great Communist powers. The message was clear: Those who rely on America are fools. We didn’t even have the decency to arrange for the evacuation of the people who had trusted us and risked the most in supporting what they thought was our mutual cause.

We did it again, this time in the Muslim world, in 1991, when Bush Senior encouraged a revolt against Saddam. He meant for the senior military officers to get rid of him in a coup; instead, the common people in the Shiite south rose up against Saddam.

Bush Senior did nothing as Saddam moved in and slaughtered them. The tragedy is that all it would have taken is a show of force on our part in support of the rebels, and Saddam’s officers would have toppled him. Only when it became clear that we would do nothing did it become impossible for any high-ranking officials to take action. For the price of the relatively easy military action that would have made Saddam turn his troops around and leave the Shiite south, we could have gotten rid of him then — and had grateful friends, perhaps, in the Shiite south.

That’s just a taste. Read the whole thing, and pass it around the watercooler on Monday.

The election on Tuesday will affect a lot more people around the world than just us here in America. We must remember that.

Russians Jihadis.

In Europe and America, there’s a growing feeling of hysteria
Conditioned to respond to all the threats
In the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets
Mr. Krushchev said ‘we will bury you’
I don’t subscribe to this point of view
It would be such an ignorant thing to do
If the Russians love their children too

How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer’s deadly toy?
There is no monopoly in common sense
On either side of the political fence
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too

There is no historical precedent
To put the words in the mouth of the President
There’s no such thing as a winnable war
It’s a lie that we don’t believe anymore
Mr. Reagan says ‘we will protect you’
I don’t subscribe to this point of view
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too

We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
What might save us, me, and you
Is that the Russians love their children too

Gordon Sumner, aka “Sting,” put that on his 1985 album Dream of the Blue Turtles. This was at the height of the Cold War and Reagan’s presidency, after his 1982 “Evil Empire” speech.

I suggest strongly that you go watch the video linked at The View from North Central Idaho, the short version of the film Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.

Radical Islamists don’t love their children. They’re making weapons out of them. It’s a chilling thing to watch. It’s something we dare not deny is happening. It is something we dare not ignore.

“America is thumos”.
Or: “They have guns, you know.”

On a slightly more serious note, persuing my archive of stored articles I ran across one pertinent to that “metric” question, one reminiscent of That Sumbitch Ain’t Been BORN! It’s an OpinionJournal column from July of 2004 entitled Go Ahead, Call Us Cowboys, and I enthusiastically recomend you take a few minutes and read it.

A teaser:

We made this trip in the first week of July. The “Canada Day” celebrations that took place in Stewart on July 1 were very vanilla. They included a “jaws of life” rescue equipment demonstration, a Name the Babies Contest, and the Annual Community Potluck Dinner in the early evening.

Three days later on July 4, Hyder spiced its national celebration with dashes of politically incorrect cayenne. There was an Ugly Vehicle Contest featuring pickups held together with duct tape and decorated with moose antlers (unlike the shiny ones in the driveways). There were parades of children with pets, toy guns and cowboy costumes. There was a Wilderness Woman Contest. Contestants raced to split wood, wash clothes, shoot a bear, flip pancakes, change a baby, and put on lipstick. The winner did it all barefoot.

Even Hyderites recognize their limits–in an earlier year’s self-staged July 4 fireworks display, they had accidentally burned down their fire hall with the fire engine inside. So this year Hyder hired Canadian experts to stage the pyrotechnics. The show started around midnight, during the late evening barbecue. Stewart residents courteously joined in the fun, bringing new government trucks and a poodle.

The telling bit, though, is in the comments on the piece:

Running With the Right Team
Andrew de Villiers – Denver, Colo.

Thank you for such a well written article on a subject I hold dear to my heart. I immigrated to the U.S. 18 years ago, and your words painted a picture of all the reasons why I was so drawn to America.

There was no other country I wanted to live in, to be a part of, to create a family, to serve, to work and to promote. Growing up in Zimbabwe, I was a product of British colonialism and all its awkward stiffness.

How liberating it was for me, a bull-headed and confident 18 year old when I landed on these shores, alone but bold, totally unfamiliar with American society but confident I would be accepted.

I love this country, my country, where your attitude and desire to better yourself is rewarded. We don’t care where you came from, or where you started, we care where you finish. If life is a race, I’m on the right team!

Damned straight. Note the emphatic we. Cowboy up!

The best part? The authors of the piece are Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Justice Andrew Kleinfeld and his wife. Justice Kleinfeld wrote one of the excellent dissents in the Silveira v. Lockyer decision that I’m so fond of quoting.

Definitive Proof of the Superiority of Western Culture.

According to Ian Hamet.

He said it, I didn’t.

(Personally, I’m convinced the Chinese did something to his brain.)

Here We Go Again!.
And Something Tells Me This One’s NOT a Fan!

I’ve had another visitor from a British University server. Thirteen page views in about 18 minutes. Either a speed-reader or someone who was only skimming. Methinks this visitor wasn’t a friendly. Check the out-click:

Buh-bye! Come back and visit again when you have more time!

In a comment to Oh, I Thought I’d Answered That, Joe Huffman misunderstands the point of the post:

Then your measure of how our ideals are better is, in essence, a vote of sorts. That so many want to be here, that our armies were not feared when they marched into a conquered city.

And my devils advocate response is, “What makes you think voting proves anything?”

Joe had asked by what scale I measured the superiority of the Western, particularly American philosophy. Err, no, Joe. It’s not voting that’s the metric, it’s the pursuit of happyness.

Joe says:

I want a number or set of numbers. I want science to answer the question of what type of society is best. Using this measure we can more easily compare and perhaps explore new society types that have not yet been tried.

The best number I can come up with is a measurement of the ability of of individuals to pursue their happiness.

I remember seeing a sentence carefully painted in large blue block letters on the white wall of an Assemblies of God church building: “Happiness is Submission to God”. Here in America, if that’s what floats your boat… On the vacuous side, “He who dies with the most toys – WINS!” America is the place where you get to pursue your happiness, and its success – spiritual, material, financial, medical, and all other metrics – is all related to that. People achieve the most when free to pursue their personal desires. I thought the quote from Dinesh D’Souza’s piece was the key, which is why I put it first.

It’s not what people vote to come to, it’s what they do once they’re here. Check the numbers.

My 2¢ On the Kerry Kerfuffle.

Everyone else has had something to say, and on top of that, everyone is entitled to my opinion, so here goes:

Initially, all I saw was the YouTube video clip of Kerry’s idiotic statement. My immediate response was the same as pretty much everyone who was not an apparatchik of the Democrat Party – he was insulting the intelligence and education of the troops serving in Iraq.

It was not until later that I heard the context of the comment, specifically what he had said immediately prior to the insertion of his foot into his mouth past the knee. I’ve searched the interweb high and low for the sentences that preceeded those words,and haven’t found them, which I find fascinating in itself. However, this afternoon on the way home I was listening to the local Christian radio station – they carry the Hugh Hewitt show. Their newscast, which I have no reason to doubt, related that just prior, Kerry had made comments about having just been in Texas, and other comments about Bush having lived there. Given that preface, I can believe that he unintentionally left out one, critical word: “us.” As in:

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get us stuck in Iraq.”

Arrogant as he is, I don’t think even Kerry would deliberately say something that stupid in a speech, in front of cameras.

It was, I think, a Freudian slip. I’m convinced that he thinks that way, and that’s what caused the slip. Given what he’s said in the past, I don’t think he respects military personnel at all.

On top of that, the intended joke was the height of lame. The thing that came immediately to mind after his first protestations of meaning the joke as an insult to Bush was, “So, if you don’t study hard, do your homework, and make an effort to be smart, you get to be a two-term President?” Who’s he insulting there?

No, either way John Kerry is merely exhibiting what I see as the overwhelming condescension the Democrat party holds towards those who disagree with it:

“So VOTE FOR US!”

UPDATE: Via Dr. Sanity:

Don’t Look Now…

…or you’ll miss it.

I saw the link to this story on Instapundit (yes, again) this morning, but an email from reader Lee made me read the story a bit closer. I admit I missed it the first time, too.

Prof. Reynold’s excerpt goes:

On one wall of the plaza is a sculpture of a lunch counter with several people sitting at it. It’s so very life-like that in nice weather people routinely sit down on the empty stools to eat their lunches at the counter. There is no plaque to explain the sculpture.

It’s a story about the Wichita, Kansas drugstore lunch counter where, in 1958, groups of black youths sat in protest, day after day waiting to be served. It’s an excellent article.

But Lee notes this as the important part:

The store tried to wait them out by ignoring them. They kept coming back and sitting there, silently, day after day, waiting to be served. On one occasion three police officers tried to coerce and intimidate the teenagers to leave, and succeeded. But they came back, and the police did not return. They were breaking no law, only a store policy, and the store was not willing to challenge them directly.

A group of local white toughs came by trying to intimidate them. The police were called to break it up but left immediately without challenging the whites, saying they had instructions to keep their hands off. After an emergency phone call a group of local black men arrived, armed, to defend the protesters. The white youths retreated, leaving the store.

As Lee said in his email, “Buried near the end of the fifth paragraph is the single word “armed” that is so very important here.” Amen.

“Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle.”

Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most cherished principles and beliefs questioned and in some cases mocked. That psychic discomfort is the price we pay for basic civic peace. It’s worth it.

It’s a pragmatic principle. Defend everyone else’s rights, because if you don’t there is no one to defend yours. – MaxedOutMama

Via Instapundit, Six Meat Buffet brings you It’s Jihad, Charlie Brown.

My favorite line:

“It really isn’t such a bad little bomb. It just needs a little hate.”

Fatwah to follow, I’m sure.