Tag: media

Last Post for a While

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This morning Instapundit linked to an editorial that complains about Newsrooms Under Siege. (Registration required, but Bugmenot works). I reworked an earlier piece and sent the author the following email:

Mr. Wasserman

I read with interest your column, available on the web at the Philadelphia Inquirer’s site
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/9613682.htm?1c

under the title “Newsrooms under siege”. For your information, it was linked by perhaps the largest of the “small slivers,” University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds at his site Instapundit.com. You seem upset that news sources are now being avidly fact-checked by “a loud and bullying sliver of the audience.” Well, apparently I’m part of that audience. And those sources are being fact-checked because of the bias you apparently embraced when you wrote:

“The attack doesn’t come from ideologically committed journalists and commentators who put together reports clearly selected and spun-dry to sell a political line. As long as such writers retain some minimal respect for fact, the transparency of their motives may even work to enrich the variety of information and interpretations available to all.”

Here are two examples of why this little “sliver of the audience” is “loud and bullying”, and please, explain to me how these two stories “enrich the variety of information and interpretation available to all.” If you can.

The Associated Press has put out two stories in the last week that are unadulterated, blatant, partisan hit pieces for the Democrats. The first was a report that, and I quote: “President Bush on Friday wished Bill Clinton “best wishes for a swift and speedy recovery.” “He’s is in our thoughts and prayers,” Bush said at a campaign rally. Bush’s audience of thousands in West Allis, Wis., booed. Bush did nothing to stop them. “ This was bullshit, and the AP yanked the offending lines – without initially issuing a retraction, and not before this lie had been picked up and spread by other news services. Links to this story in chronological order are:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/007712.php

http://spinswimming.blogspot.com/2004/09/ap-bias-strikes-again.html

http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article3765.html

http://galleyslaves.blogspot.com/2004/09/what-story-about-ap.html

Links to audio and video of the rally in question are here so you can fact check it yourself: http://instapundit.com/archives/017600.php

Second, the AP put out an article critical of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s RNC speech, accusing him of lying about the Russians in Austria during his childhood, and Austria having a socialist government.

The AP story can be read here: http://www.wstm.com/Global/story.asp?S=2257941

Unfortunately, again, it’s bullshit, as aptly detailed here: http://www.freewillblog.com/index.php/weblog/comments/4179/

These people have been, along with Reuters and UPI and other “news services,” the gatekeepers of the information the public gets. It’s supposed to be their job to INFORM the public, yet it’s obvious just from these two examples that they see their job is not to inform, but to MOLD public opinion. We must ask ourselves, what else are they lying to us about, and why should we trust ANYTHING coming from untrustworthy sources? People in the industry such as yourself who believe that slanting the news “enrich(es) the variety of information and interpretations available to all” are the reason for the backlash. So much for the much-vaunted neutrality of the media, eh?

You’ll appreciate this: James O’Shea, managing editor of the Chicago Tribune was quoted on the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth accusations in an August 24 column in Editor and Publisher magazine: “There are too many places for people to get information. I don’t think newspapers can be the gatekeepers anymore — to say this is wrong and we will ignore it. Now we have to say this is wrong, and here is why.”

(Link: http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000617053)

Or in the case of the AP and your “enriching the variety of information and interpretation,” newspapers and other media sources get to just make stuff up and pass it off as news, and it’s up to us, the “loud and bullying sliver of the audience” to say “this is wrong and here is why.”

As one blogger put it recently: “The Internet has detected the mainstream media as a form of censorship and simply routed around them.” Not quite yet. Not completely. But I intend to do my part in that routing.

Kevin

http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/

Part of that small sliver that’s stuck under your fingernail.

I doubt seriously that I’ll hear back from him.

UPDATE: Wasserman replied!

I See Mark Moron Morford Still Has a Job

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Seen his latest screed phillippic rant primal scream column?

An Uzi Up Your Liberal Nose
Who cares if the assault-weapons ban is
about to expire? The gun lobby can’t wait
to blow stuff away

Assault weapons. Aren’t they just the cutest things?

And isn’t it just so sweet and fall-down uproarious how the NRA and all its knuckle-draggin’ right-wing pals in the U.S. Senate are all cheering right this minute, as the much-loathed 10-year-old ban on assault weapons, the one outlawing Uzis and TEC-9 semiautomatics and AK-47s and all other way-cool manly guns that have no other purpose in this world than to annihilate crap at 200 rounds per minute, is about to expire?

Let’s see, that’s one insult, one lie, and one exaggeration in the mere first paragraph! (I’ll ignore the opening sentence and title.)

Because, get this: The ban will not be renewed. It’s true. Even if that commie liberal Feinstein somehow gets it passed in the Senate, the NRA lobby has promised to keep it from ever coming up for a vote in the House, and the law will just expire and they will all cheer and slather each other in gun-barrel polish and go off and shoot stuff, because that’s the only thing that seems to give life any meaning.

He seems perturbed, doesn’t he?

Isn’t that great? To hell with logic and to hell with your kids’ safety and to hell with even trying to prevent moron gangbangers and terrorist wanna-bes and imbecilic white supremacists from easily getting their hands on a nice AK-47 that can mow down a schoolyard full of tots in 10 seconds flat. Instead: Down with liberal scum who would take away our God-given right to bear nasty ultraviolent weaponry that no one anywhere can justify the existence of. Go, NRA!

Except even gun control groups like the VPC have admitted that the “Assault Weapon Ban” didn’t do any of the things Mr. Moron Morford attributes to it. Doesn’t he realize that you can buy an American-built AK-47 clone (without, of course, a folding stock or a bayonet lug) right now?

Of course he does. He’s just doing his job, trying to scare the poor idiot populace into doing what he wants, like all good Leftists do.

What, too sarcastic? Well, hold onto your sides, because it gets even funnier. Even little gun-lovin’ Bushie himself declared during the 2000 campaign that he actually supported an extension of the ban (pretty hard, even for Shrub, to defend Uzis in the wake of Columbine and 101 California, et al.), a law that outlaws 19 types of insidiously lethal weaponry, the very guns most highly prized by jittery meth-lab owners and killing-spree advocates and homophobic militia members deep in the Montana woods. Oh, and also by upstanding, white-bread NRA members. Oh my yes. They need assault weapons. Must have them. Or so they claim.

Well, thank you Mr. Moron Morford. You’ve done such a marvelous job of associating people like me (I own an AR-15) with homophobic meth-lab owning spree killers. But I live in Arizona. Such awesome literary skills floor me.

But Bush, he is just so happy. He won’t have to see that bill at all. He won’t have to sign a thing before the election and risk annoying the Bible-quotin’ gun lovers of America. The NRA lobby will kill it before he even has to try to pronounce the phrase “high school gun rampage.” Oh man is he ever relieved.

I bet he is. There’s a lot of us gun lovers. (I don’t happen to be a bible-toter, but if Bush signed an AWB renewal, I don’t believe he would be receiving my vote come November.) It is good that my NRA dues go, at least in part, towards goals that I support. That’s what representative government means! My lobby is stronger than your lobby!

Because to the NRA, the rule is absolute: No gun law is a good gun law, and any ban of any kind is a slippery slope (always, always a slippery slope) until the government stomps in and takes away all your rights to do anything fun at all, and so screw the painfully obvious, skull-crushingly sad fact that allowing assault weapons back into the culture is the equivalent of allowing, say, convicted rapists loose in a sorority house.

Once again, Mr. Moron Morford asserts that which is undeniably false – that the “Assault Weapon Ban” removed anything from “the culture” in the first place. This is most obviously not so. But since it doesn’t fit in his worldview, it simply is ignored. If he actually recognized reality, his head might explode.

What, too extreme? Bull. Even “normal,” responsible gun owners — and, yes, they do exist, in huge numbers — know there is zero justification for allowing Uzis and AK-47s and their ilk back onto the market, just as there is no validation for suddenly legalizing, say, bazookas and flamethrowers and a swell grenade launcher for the Hummer. Dude! Wouldn’t that be so cool! Imagine a flame-throwing grenade-launching badass H2 with roof-mounted machine guns, barreling down I-5 and shooting up those goddamn wimpy Priuses and Mini Coopers! Ha! High five! Goddamn liberals!

Hmm…Bazookas are actually legal – like machine-guns they’re Class III devices, and so are the individual rocket rounds. Flamethrowers, to my knowledge, are unrestricted. No thanks to the goddamn liberals. I think, if Mr. Moron Morford looked around, he would find that “Uzis and AK-47s and their ilk” are still available all over the country. (Hey, if he can repeat his lie, I can repeat the truth.)

But huge numbers of responsible gun owners happen to own “assault weapons” too. There have literally been millions sold in this country, and the overwhelming majority, like the overwhelming majority of all guns, have ended up in the hands of us (check the scare quotes) “normal” responsible gun owners. So we disagree with the assertion that there is “zero justification,” don’t we?

Whoops, sorry. Getting carried away again. Hard not to, really. Because you simply have to love that NRA logic. It is pure genius, their insidious small-minded one-note hunk of reasoning that says banning assault weapons is just one step away from the government breaking down the door and taking away their shotguns and their Cheez Puffs and their Guns & Ammo subscription and their secret stash of gay porn.

I’m not sure, but I think the “gay porn” comment is supposed to be insulting. Now, I don’t know the man personally, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Jeff of Alphecca had a bit of that laying around, and I don’t see it as an insult unless the person writing it has a problem with gays. (Isn’t Moron Morford outspokenly gay? Does this mean he hates himself?) Now, the “insidious small-minded” comment is another thing, as that’s precisely how I see the gun-control supporters. And since they’ve been using the “slippery slope” method to achieve gun bans (as the English did) pardon the hell out of us for seeing the “Assault Weapon Ban” as precisely what it is: one great big step down the Slippery Slope that Mr. Moron Morford doesn’t want to admit exists, but would obviously be more than happy to shove us knuckle-dragging, insidious, small-minded, CheezPuff-eating, G&A reading gun nuts down.

Fuck you very much, Mr. Moron Morford.

This is the thinking. And it applies to all aspects of the frightening NRA mind-set. What, damn libs make me wear a seat belt in the car? Won’t let me breed African killer bees in my backyard? Make homemade bombs out of weed killer and turpentine? Buy cop-killer bullets at Wal-Mart? What’s next, invading my home and making my kids read feminist lit and stealing my kidneys while I sleep? I knew it! Damn liberals!

Ah, yes. The infamous “cop killer” bullets. Can’t have a good anti-gun rant without that old bromide. And you make homemade bombs out of fertilizer and diesel fuel. Don’t you know anything?

It gets better. It gets funnier. It gets sadder. Let us note how the current, about-to-expire legislation is already full of loopholes and flaws of sufficient breadth that gun manufacturers can mostly skirt the ban by making simple cosmetic changes to their guns and then selling them as something else, completely legal, even though the gun is essentially the same, ha ha suckers.

So, even though Moron Morford has been claiming that the law “banned” some weapons and removed them from “the culture,” and that sunset will cause these banned and removed weapons to be available for consumption by meth-dealers, spree-killers, NRA members and the like, NOW he admits that the law was useless and did nothing that he claimed? Yet it is cruicial to him that this useless, ineffective law be renewed! So that the next incremental step down the slippery slope….

Don’t pay too close attention to his writing, folks. You might get whiplash.

And if you are at all sentient and aware and feel even the slightest twinge of humanitarian concern for the spiritual progress of the human animal, a bitter, uncontrolled, fall-down fit of pained hilarity would seem to be the only real reaction you can possibly have.

Here, let me translate that for you fellow NRA members: Anyone who supports the sunset of this stupid law is:

A) Not sentient (that means “thinking” and “self-aware” for you knuckle-draggers) – so Mr. Moron Morford was being redundant (that means “repetitive.”)

B) Uncaring about “spiritual progress of the human animal” – i.e. “we hate everybody!

I get the impression that he doesn’t like us very much.

Seems only fair as the feeling is mutual.

Because if you don’t laugh it off, right now, at the bloody cosmic circus of it all, you will tear out your hair and start popping Vicodin like candy and pound a large nail into your own skull to deflect the pain, and then move to Canada, where they look down at America’s bizarre right-wing macho inbred obsession with guns and just go, oh my freaking God what the hell is wrong with you people.

Please, Mr. Moron Morford, take option “B”!! Canada needs more self-inflicted lobotomy patients. You could run for a seat in Parliament!

And the kicker? The cutest aspect of all? There is no effort to hide it. The NRA is making not the slightest stab at concealing how their snide little lobby controls the right-wing side of the senate, nor are those same senators denying how they happily and with full enthusiastic intent suck at the bitter macho metallic tit of the gun lobby.

As opposed to the gun control movement that hides each and every new attempt to slide us down the slippery slope? We’re proud and unrepentant because we really believe that the Second Amendment means something, Mr. Moron Morford, and not what you think it means. We’re quite happy to live here with our guns. I recall once in a flamewar on the talk.politics.guns group a commenter who said something on the order of “Why don’t all of you gun-freaks go form your own country!” To which one quite bright respondent replied, “We did. Who the hell let YOU in?”

So? Who did let you in?

Simply put, they just do not care whether you know. Why? Because the Right, they still have majority control. They still make the rules, and, no matter how many Dems or progressives or commonsense Americans still think the assault-weapons ban is a good idea overall, they just don’t give a crap. The NRA is in charge. The sheer force of the gun lobby will make Uzis available again, just because they can. Don’t like it? Suck my shotgun barrel, commie liberal tree hugger. God bless America.

I believe Mr. Moron Morford just outed himself as being against democracy when it doesn’t happen to agree with his personal politics. I’m shocked, shocked I tell you!

Yes, Mr. Moron Morford, we have majority control. More than that, though, we live in a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC and not a democracy, so there are certain fundamental rules that no mere majority can overturn. And that galls you, doesn’t it? The Left is constantly thwarted by the great unwashed (but numerically superior) masses that just won’t do what you want. We who are so stupid and easily lead, but who you cannot seem to lead to anything. And you are further thwarted by that useless old peice of paper with words written by evil slave-owning rich white men that just can’t still mean what it says in this modern age.

And we will continue to thwart you.

Suck on that.

And, finally, here is NRA prez and noted ball of rancid cottage cheese Wayne LaPierre, talking up the sheer orgiastic joy of watching the ban expire: “I’m here to promise you that’s the end of [the ban]. It’s over. On Sept. 14, the sun will rise and it will never see the light of day again as long as we stay strong.” Yes, he’s actually comparing buying Uzis and AK-47s to a sunrise. And lo, the Earth shuddered, children everywhere felt suddenly soiled and defiled and lightning, sadly, did not strike LaPierre dead on the spot.

It’s gotta be tough when even God Gaia isn’t on your side, Mark.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to type this column.

It’s that nail in your skull, isn’t it?

Please?

I am now laughing so hard at the warped hypocritical savagery of it all, at so many Republicans wailing about, you know, the necessity of war on terror and war on drugs and war on gays and war on women’s rights and war on just about everything they don’t understand, and then how they turn right around and fall prostrate in front of Mr. NRA Lobbyist and say yes yes, what this country really needs goddammit is to get those Uzis back into the hands of angry Americans.

Those would be the Uzis that you admitted above that the law didn’t really remove or stop the manufacture of? Those Uzis? And what about that war on gays? I thought we knuckle-draggin’ NRA members had secret stashes of gay porn? Like it’s a bad thing?

I was going to suggest that you be consistent, but you’re a Leftist, and the two seem mutually exclusive.

Laughing. Laughing so very hard. Oh you poor, sad senators, lobbyists, NRA chiefs, stroking your Uzis and cheering your right to own multiple TEC-9s and not caring a whit for how anyone thinks. Or feels. Or intuits. Or loves.

Sure they do, Markie-boy! Sure they do! Say, that nail in your brain really is affecting you. Don’t you remember noting that the Right Wing is in the majority? Why else do politicians support anything? It’s the only way they get re-elected! And they know it.

Democracy. Ain’t it wonderful?

Do you really not see? Do you really not understand the sad dose of malevolence your agenda pumps into the cultural bloodstream? Do you not, finally, when you go to bed at night, get hit with a white-hot realization of what comical, bleak little clowns you are? No, I suppose you don’t.

And to that I have but this to say:

Pot? Meet Kettle.

Howell Raines as Gollum

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By now I’m sure almost everyone in the blogosphere has heard of, if not read the political phillipic by disgraced and ex-New York Times editor Howell Raines that was printed in Britain’s Guardian. Andrew Sullivan has commented, Dean Esmay, Dodd Harris, and of course, Glenn Reynolds. According to Technorati, there are fifty-three links to the story. Here’s number fifty-four.

I’ve not read all the links, but the few I have read have concentrated on the fact that Raines doesn’t seem to see John “Lurch” Kerry as much of a candidate. Dean Esmay’s latest post touches on the part of the piece I’m going to concentrate on here:

I particularly enjoyed these thoughts on former New York Times editor Howell Raines’ recent screen (I think he meant “screed”) in The Guardian from someone who used to work for the guy. These updates, too.

It’s all part and parcel with an elitism and a condescension I’ve mentioned many times before. It all goes like this: “We’re liberals. This means we’re broad-minded and have a tradition of being thoughtful. Thus the only explanation for people in disagreement with us on any important issue is that they are stupid, dishonest, or evil.”

I left a comment on Dean’s site this morning, but I want to expand on it here.

Hopefully if you’re one of my regular readers you’re familiar with Henry Louis Mencken, one of my favorite sources for pithy quotes. Henry wrote oh-so-many years ago,

“The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods”.

Let me concentrate on just that portion of “Howlin’ Mad’s” screed.

…which raises the question of what Kerry needs to do to win in a campaign that’s going to become the political equivalent of a street fight. I believe Kerry can do it, but I feel less sure of that now than I did in the primaries. Every time I talk to a reporter who has covered him, new doubts creep in about his ability to connect with voters.

—

The difference between him and Bush is that Kerry represents the liberal, charitable wing of the Privilege party and George W represents the conservative, greedy wing of the Privilege party.

—

Now for the hard part of the performance challenge – the economy. Two and a quarter centuries into its history as a nation, America has the most unfair tax system ever and the greatest gap ever between rich and poor. Even a real populist, however, would have trouble taking on these issues frontally. As Al From of the Democratic Leadership Council noted, Americans aren’t antagonistic toward the rules that protect the rich because they think that in the great crap-shoot of economic life in America, they might wind up rich themselves. It’s a mass delusion, of course, but one that has worked ever since Ronald Reagan got Republicans to start flaunting their wealth instead of apologising for it. Kerry has to understand that when a cure is impossible, the doctor must enter the world of the deluded.

What does this mean in terms of campaign message? It means that he must appeal to the same emotions that attract voters to Republicans – ie greed and the desire to fix the crap-shoot in their favour. That means that instead of talking about “fixing” social security, you talk about building a retirement system that makes middle-class voters believe they will be semi-rich someday. As matters now stand, Kerry has assured the DLC, “I am not a redistributionist Democrat.”

That’s actually a good start. Using that promise as disinformation, he must now figure out a creative way to become a redistributionist Democrat. As a corporation-bashing populist, I’d like to think he could do that by promising to make every person’s retirement as secure as Cheney’s investment in Halliburton. But that won’t sell with the sun-belt suburbanites. Not being a trained economist like, say, Arthur Laffer, I can’t figure out the exact legerdemain that Kerry ought to endorse. But greed will make folks vote for Democrats if it’s properly packaged, just as it now makes them vote Republican, and in terms of the kind of voters Kerry must win away from Bush, I think the pot-of-gold retirement strategy is a way to work. Forget a chicken in every pot. It’s time for a Winnebago in every driveway.

Well! The mask has obviously slipped off, being lubricated with the foam from his mouth.

Here we have the unabashed Leftist, unaware of his hypocrisy waving from his unzipped fly. As Mencken put it:

Democracy is the theory that the common man knows what he wants, and deserves to get it good and hard.

And he’d never met Raines. First, let me start at the top. Howell is concerned with Kerry’s ability to “connect with the voters,” though Kerry “represents the liberal, charitable wing of the Privilege Party.” So what is Howell’s suggestion?

LIE.

After all, Howell has so much experience at it as editor of the NYT. He should be an expert in crafting an image with a hidden agenda, right?

Let’s continue.

“Two and a quarter centuries into its history as a nation, America has the most unfair tax system ever and the greatest gap ever between rich and poor.” Really? The “Most unfair tax system ever?” I’d put that back at the passage of the 16th Amendment when “soak the rich” was the battle-cry. The tax originally ranged from a mere 1% on the first $20,000 of taxable income to only 7% on incomes above $500,000.

Remember, this was 1913. Twenty-thousand dollars a year would be an income of more than $360,000 today, adjusted for inflation.

Yeah, that’s “fair.” Raines wants to go right back to it, making the “rich” pay for everything again.

And “the greatest gap ever between rich and poor”? I suppose you could stretch the point by using Bill Gates as the upper end, but surely things were far worse during the Depression – when, according to this piece:

According to a study done by the Brookings Institute, in 1929 the top 0.1% of Americans had a combined income equal to the bottom 42%. That same top 0.1% of Americans in 1929 controlled 34% of all savings, while 80% of Americans had no savings at all.

Jane Galt made an interesting point in a 2002 post:

Has the qualitative life experience of the rich really increased, while the poor stayed stagnant? Since the 50’s? 60’s? 70’s? I would argue it’s the reverse. The head of GM’s life is not, qualitatively, much better than that of the head of GM in the 50’s. The poor, on the other hand, have more space, better food, more and better clothes, color televisions, VCR’s, automobiles. . . items that were beyond the wildest dreams of the poor in the 1950’s.

Or the 1930’s for that matter. The difference between a squatter’s shack and the Biltmore.

Why this concentration on the disparity in income? Because it’s a dividing line the Left wants to use, and cannot. Why? Because:


“…Americans aren’t antagonistic toward the rules that protect the rich because they think that in the great crap-shoot of economic life in America, they might wind up rich themselves. It’s a mass delusion, of course….”

The Left wants to fire up envy in order to engineer social change, and are unsuccessful because Americans believe it is possible to get rich – an idea Howell Raines causes “mass delusion.”

Really? The two men I work for were middle-income salarymen in the late 1970’s, and in 1980 they risked everything they had to start a business.

They’re pretty damned wealthy today. They won the crap-shoot, through hard work. Raines seems to think Americans believe it will just fall out of the sky into their laps. We know better. That’s why we know that we can end up, if not rich, then pretty damned well off if we’re willing to work to achieve it. That’s the tradition of America: Come here, work hard, sacrifice and you can be rich! And compared to most other nations in the world, our middle class is fabulously wealthy.

This seems beyond the Left’s ability to grasp. They seem to believe that everyone should receive an equal portion, handed out to the proles by the Party – who, of course, are “more equal,” and thus entitled to do the handing out. Keeping the best for themselves, of course, because they’re entitled.

But they don’t have that power, and cannot seem to understand why not. As Dean said, “…the only explanation for people in disagreement with us on any important issue is that they are stupid, dishonest, or evil.” So to achieve power they will do whatever is necessary, including – but not limited to – mass deception. Kerry must use “deception” and “legerdemain” to convince the populace that he’s not a “redistributionist Democrat,” so that he can achieve office where he will be a redistributionist Democrat.

And yet they revile Bush for lying?

The Democrats are the Doctor, you see. It won’t hurt, and anyway the pain is for our own good. We have to be cured of our delusions that being affluent is good, that keeping the money we earn is right. Just hold still, the frontal lobotomy won’t take a minute.

Here’s what I said in my comment to Dean’s piece:

They speak in terms of “Secret Agendas” and “Secret Plans” because that’s how THEY think. It’s projection – “If WE do it, they MUST.” One of the problems the left, both here and in Europe had early on in the Bush administration, was an inability to grasp that he said what he meant, and meant what he said. So simplisme.

We generally understand that politicans lie to us. As Mencken said, every election is an advance auction sale of stolen goods, with nine out of ten promises made by the candidates being merely hot air. The difference is, at least in my case, I believe the Republicans generally would like to make it easier for me to pull myself up by my bootstraps and work towards creating wealth for myself. I believe the Democrats want to take whatever wealth I’m able to acquire and redistribute it. And I believe that the Democrats will lie to me

and everyone else until they’ve acquired enough power to do so.

And they cannot understand why we oppose them. We must be evil and greedy as well as stupid, but we’re not so stupid that we don’t see through them, so they have to be even more “tricksy.”

Suddenly I see Howell Raines in the role of Gollum. And the Democrat Party as Orcs.And socialism is their Sauron.

This One’s a Must-Read

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Via Ipse Dixit comes this excellent piece. A taste:

A Movie Not Made

Let’s imagine it’s November, 1944. Allied troops are bogged down in Northern Europe and Italy. A film maker, disgusted by the progress of the war in Europe, American war strategy (“Europe first”) and American culture in general decides to make a movie to “speak truth to power” and counteract the propaganda coming from Hollywood.

Let’s call his movie Celsius 127, a scathing documentary suggesting that President Roosevelt lied about keeping America out of the European conflict and withheld vital intelligence from commanders in Hawaii in order that the Japanese attack would be all the more devastating. With that, he could do what he always wanted to do: commit American troops and America’s fortune against Germany.

Celsius 127 would relentlessly focus on every shortcoming of the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Corps. It would show that American troops were ill-trained, ill-equipped and ill-supplied, slaughtered in pointless attacks, guilty of atrocities against unarmed enemy troops that surrendered.

This piece makes the point perfectly that in this war, as in every war, bad things happen. How you see it is very much up to the people who produce our media.

Cathy Siepp has a related piece up on NRO that should also be read (via Instapundit). Hers is about the upcoming A&E movie Ike: Countdown to D-Day and its co-executive producer Lionel Chetwynd. Money quote:

Now in his early 60s, Chetwynd is a longtime naturalized American citizen who was born in England and raised in Montreal. He’d remembered from Canadian regimental history that of the 4,400-odd Canadians sent to Dieppe, about 3,600 were killed. Although they knew it was basically a suicide mission, not one man failed to report for duty. Chetwynd asked one of the old soldiers in his regiment, Sgt. Gordon Betts, why.

“My generation had to figure out what we were ready to die for,” Chetwynd recalled Betts telling him. “You kids don’t even know what to live for.”

Many years later, when Chetwynd was a successful Hollywood writer specializing in historical dramas, he told the Dieppe story during a Malibu dinner party — as a sort of tribute to the men who died there so people could sit around debating politics at Malibu dinner parties. One of the guests was a network head who asked Chetwynd to come in and pitch the story.

“So I went in,” Chetwynd told me, “and someone there said, ‘So these bloodthirsty generals sent these men to a certain death?’

“And I said, ‘Well, they weren’t bloodthirsty; they wept. But how else were we to know how Hitler could be toppled from Europe?’ And she said, ‘Well, who’s the enemy?’ I said, ‘Hitler. The Nazis.’ And she said, ‘Oh, no, no, no. I mean, who’s the real enemy?'”

“It was the first time I realized,” Chetwynd continued, “that for many people evil such as Nazism can only be understood as a cipher for evil within ourselves. They’ve become so persuaded of the essential ugliness of our society and its military, that to tell a war story is to tell the story of evil people.”

These people are not only producing our entertainment, they are producing our news.

Each evening on CNN we’re seeing – if not to the same intensity – Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11. It’s in the New York Times, the AP, Reuters, ABCNBCCBSMSNBCPBS et al. People in the news media wants us to lose, and they report the news in such a way as to convince us, as they did in Vietnam, that we cannot win. That we cannot define “winning.” That there is nothing good going on in Iraq. In early February there was a piece on ABC’s news blog The Note that I saved for posterity. From it comes this:

Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections.

They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that liberal political positions on social issues like gun control, homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more conservative positions are “conservative positions.”

They include a belief that government is a mechanism to solve the nation’s problems; that more taxes on corporations and the wealthy are good ways to cut the deficit and raise money for social spending and don’t have a negative affect on economic growth; and that emotional examples of suffering (provided by unions or consumer groups) are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories.

More systematically, the press believes that fluid narratives in coverage are better than static storylines; that new things are more interesting than old things; that close races are preferable to loose ones; and that incumbents are destined for dethroning, somehow.

The press, by and large, does not accept President Bush’s justifications for the Iraq war — in any of its WMD, imminent threat, or evil-doer formulations. It does not understand how educated, sensible people could possibly be wary of multilateral institutions or friendly, sophisticated European allies.

It does not accept the proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy by stimulating summer spending.

It remains fixated on the unemployment rate.

It believes President Bush is “walking a fine line” with regards to the gay marriage issue, choosing between “tolerance” and his “right-wing base.”

It still has a hard time understanding how, despite the drumbeat of conservative grass-top complaints about overspending and deficits, President Bush’s base remains extremely and loyally devoted to him — and it looks for every opportunity to find cracks in that base.

They’re not looking to find cracks in the base, they’re out there with hammers and chisels. And it’s not just the Washington press corps. If you believe, as I do, that political cartoonists reflect the general attitude of the press, go read the daily political cartoons on Slate, like this one, or this one, or this one, or this one. I find this one particularly disgusting.

Trust me, there are plenty more.

Now they’re hooking up jackhammers.

I’ve said it before, our opponent cannot win. But we can beat ourselves. And our media is hellbent, for whatever reason, to see that we do. If the media in 1943 had the same attitude it has now, we’d have lost WWII. This conflict is no less important. Are we destined, as a nation, to die with a whimper? Are we what the Russians accused us of, what the jihadis accuse us of? Weak-willed, soft, corrupt and unwilling to fight?

What the fuck happened to us?

UPDATE 5/27: Ann Coulter has a related piece up, Tit for Tet. Recommended.

The Definitive Micah Wright Post

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Via Michele

Kevin Parrot details his personal history with the lying Mr. Wright, with illustrations. Like this one:

Read the whole thing, but here’s the kicker:

So, what’s going to happen to Micah Wright now, you ask?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

As a matter of fact, I think Micah Wright will end up getting more work and making more money off his lies than before they were discovered.

And that’s the second reason I almost didn’t write this. I have the feeling Micah Wright already knows what I just stated, and is eating up every minute of what’s been going on. Micah wins.

Oh, sure, his new book of remixed WWII posters has been cancelled (for now), but no one I’ve read on the Net seems to have picked up on the hidden message in this sentence from the Seven Stories website:

The author’s introduction will be removed from any future printings of YOU BACK THE ATTACK.

and again, from the Washington Post article which exposed him:

It also will remove from future printings of the first book his detailed and wholly fictional account of parachuting into Panama under fire during Operation Just Cause.

Instead of leaving in the lie, and providing some extra editorial commentary to place the incident in proper context, they’re going to make it disappear. Just like it never happened at all.

—

Everyone loves and rewards a liar, it seems. Jayson Blair got a book contract; Stephen Glass got a book contract and ended up being played by Young Darth Vader on the silver screen. What will Micah get? Well, I’d be very surprised if one of the comic companies out there hadn’t already contacted him about writing a Graphic Novel or a Mini Series based on this event

Micah Wright passed himself off as an ex-Ranger, an organization built around the concepts of honor, duty, country.

Our nation seems no longer to recognize the ideal of honor, in its definition of “a keen sense of ethical conduct.” There is no public censure of dishonorable acts. The concept of shame is nonexistent. Bad behavior is rewarded. Infamy is equivalent to fame. Disgrace is treated as grace. Do something objectionable? That draws attention, and attention draws dollars. Besides, its always someone else’s fault, anyway. Victimizer as victim.

Moral equivalence at its worst.

They Never Ask ME

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Jointogether.org reports that Children in South (are) More Likely to Die from Gun Violence, commenting on a newspaper story in the Florence Times Daily (annoying registration required). Let’s fisk:

Gun violence more likely to kill kids in Alabama

By Emily Eisenberg
Medill News Service

WASHINGTON – In Alabama, a child is three times more likely to die from gun violence than a child in the Northeast, an expert at the Harvard School of Public Health says.

Decreasing this grim statistic is not just a matter of getting rid of guns, but it is treating them as a public health issue, said David Hemenway, director of Harvard’s Injury Control Research Center.

Oh, how nice. Not just a matter of getting rid of guns. No, instead we must innoculate against gun violence?

The Centers for Disease Control reported in January that most deaths under the age of 40 are caused by an accident.

The most common cause of accidental death in the United States is automobile accidents. The second most common cause of these deaths is firearms.

Really? And the name of the report is? A link to the report is provided, where? And now we’re defining “children” as “under the age of 40?“

Let’s check the CDC, shall we? They have this wonderful tool called WISQARS that allows anybody access to the CDC statistics in really useful ways. So, let’s check the most recent data, year 2001 for unintentional death, under the age of 40, entire U.S, all races, both sexes: 39,365. Now, what was the portion due to automobile? 23,663. Now, what was the portion of unintentional death by firearm? 470.

BUT, to be fair, the report does say “gun violence,” however I don’t think you’re supposed to really grasp the difference. (Edit: Screw it. I don’t want to be “fair.” This writer certainly didn’t intend to be.

Study carefully the construction of this story. You’re supposed to assume that the “second most common cause of death” is firearm accident. HORSESHIT! Note how carefully the writer juxtaposes “accident”, “automobile accident” and “firearms” – this time without the modifier, “accident.” End Edit.)

This is, after all, a story about children, remember? I’ll come back to this.

“Where there’s more guns, there’s more gun homicides; where there’s more guns, there’s more gun suicides,” said Hemenway.

Well! There’s a tautology for you. I guess it takes a Harvard doctorate to state something as obvious as that.

“I wouldn’t expect it any other way,” said Florence Police Chief Rick Singleton. He said the problem with weapons is the way “people handle and treat them.”

Hemenway, while presenting the findings of his new book, “Private Guns, Public Health,” said government should regulate guns the way it regulates traffic. Guns differ from almost all other consumer products because there is no regulatory agency in charge of managing their manufacture and distribution, he added.

Uhh…. What? “Government should regulate guns the way it regulates traffic??” I wasn’t aware that the Consumer Product Safety Commission was in charge of traffic control. Harvard, eh?

Just out of curiosity, what government agency is responsible for managing “manufacture and distribution” of automobiles? Isn’t that the purview of the manufacturers themselves? There’s a government agent in each manufacturing facility controlling the production lines and approving the distribution plans?

Since the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration was established several decades ago to make automobiles safer, automobile fatalities have decreased 80 percent. The Harvard School of Public Health reported a regulatory agency would have a similar impact on firearm deaths.

One problem with that. Automobiles are designed to transport passengers from point A to point B. Firearms are designed to hurl small metal projectiles at high velocity in the general direction they’re pointed when the trigger is pulled. How do you make them safe? Make them fire Nerf balls? Make them not fire when the trigger is pulled? Kinda defeats the purpose, no?

Another point: There are maybe 250 million vehicles on the roads today (I didn’t go look it up, it’s a wild-ass guess.) Most of them are less than 20 years old. They wear out. They’re replaced on a fairly regular basis. The safety improvements applied to vehicles were not statutorily required of older vehicles on the road. If you own a 1955 Chevy, it has seatbelts only if YOU put them in. There’s no law requiring it. No airbags, either. No third brake light. But there are (by several estimates) 250,000,000 firearms in private hands. New “safety requirements” would affect only the additional two million long guns and one million new handguns that enter the market each year. And those older guns aren’t built with “planned obsolescence” in the design. My 1917 Enfield still works perfectly. So does my 1896 Swedish Mauser, built in 1916. A Colt 1911 made in 1927 probably works just as well as the one I bought new in 1999.

The argument that guns need to be regulated so that they will be “made safer” is asinine. It is false on its face, yet reports like this one keep putting the idea out in front of the public as a “common-sense” proposal.

But keep reading, because this piece is just like all the others in inflating just what that “federal oversight” needs to encompass.

Because the trafficking of illegal firearms between states is such a large problem, Hemenway said that such a regulatory agency should be at the federal level rather than with the states.

Another bait-and-switch. First, the agency is supposed to regulate the design of firearms to ostensibly make them safer, but now the agency is supposed to be responsible for illegal trafficking? Isn’t that just a bit of a leap from the original “regulatory” function? I wasn’t aware that the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration was in charge of “regulating” automobile theft and chop shops.

“There are lots of things we could do, lots of policies that wouldn’t affect people’s ability to own guns for hunting,” Hemenway said.

However, the Second Amendment isn’t about hunting. I own at least a dozen firearms, and I don’t hunt. What about my guns?

Oh, right. “Decreasing this grim statistic is not just a matter of getting rid of guns.”

Gotta ban and confiscate those “non-hunting” weapons.

He said federal regulation of firearms licensing and childproofing are some possible ways to address gun danger from a public health standpoint.

More mission-creep, and we haven’t even established the regulatory agency! NOW the agency is responsible for: “safer” gun designs, illegal trafficking, and licensing!

And this is for public health, remember.

Alabama, like many other states in the South, is among the states with the highest levels of gun ownership in the country. The Rocky Mountain region also has high levels of gun ownership, while the northeastern part of the nation has a relatively small amount of guns.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence’s annual report card gave Alabama an “F” in keeping kids safe from guns.

“Alabama does not require child-safety locks to be sold with guns, does not hold adults responsible for leaving loaded guns around children and does not have any safety standards for handguns,” the Brady Campaign said recently. A spokesman at the organization said it strongly supports Hemenway’s suggestion for a federal handgun regulation agency.

And now we’re back to the supposed heart of the article: The Children™

You remember: “Gun violence more likely to kill kids in Alabama”? “In Alabama, a child is three times more likely to die from gun violence than a child in the Northeast”? Where “kids” is apparently defined as “under 40.” Read that paragraph carefully: Child–safety locks. Loaded guns around children.

So, how many accidental deaths of children were there in Alabama to justify a new federal regulatory agency with sweeping powers to control firearm design, illegal firearm trafficking, and gun owner licensing?

Well, if you define “children” as those 17 or younger, there were six in 2001.

Of course there’s the obligatory mention of the writer’s attempt to be “balanced:”

Organizations like the National Rifle Association argue that the regulations the Brady Campaign proposes would decrease gun-owners constitutional rights, but a spokesperson at the NRA was not available for comment about Hemenway’s findings.

Here you go, Ms. Eisenberg. All the commentary you’d ever want.

Not that you’d ever print it.

Dept. of Our Collapsing Schools – Homeschooling Starts to Hurt

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This month’s Time magazine has a three-page cover article on homeschooling entitled Seceding from School. It makes a passing attempt at “fairness,” with comments and quotations from both sides of the issue, but (IMHO) it leans towards public schooling with a near declaration that parents who homeschool are being elitist and shirking their civic duty by not making their children suffer through the same educational morass that less fortunate families cannot escape.

Thomas Jefferson and the other early American crusaders for public education believed the schools would help sustain democracy by bringing everyone together to share values and learn a common history. In the little red brick schoolhouse, we would pursue both “democracy in education and education in democracy,” as Stanford historian David Tyack gracefully puts it. Home schooling forsakes all that by defining education not as the pursuit of an entire community but as the work of one family and its chosen circle. Which can be great. Despite some drawbacks, there are signs that home-schooling parents are doing a better job than public schools at teaching their kids. But as the number of kids learning at home grows, we should pause to wonder: Better at teaching them what? Home schooling may turn out better students, but does it create better citizens?

That’s the fourth paragraph of the article.

That last sentence left my mouth agape.

I think that if Jefferson saw what passed for “education” in many if not most of today’s public schools, he’d be in favor of burning the existing “system” to the ground and starting over.

My stepdaughter graduated from high school in 1997. Her knowledge of American history, civics, and even geography is essentially nil. When the movie Pearl Harbor came out, I asked her if she knew what Pearl Harbor was. No clue.

She is hardly an exception to the rule.

Perhaps we should look to what the author might mean by “better citizens,” then. Founding Father Thomas Paine (whom my daughter has never studied) said “Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.”

Connie du Toit once wrote

The other day our Carpenter’s helper heard me say something along the lines of, “it is difficult to conclude that incompetence is the reason why our public schools have deteriorated. There comes a point where you have to suspect sabotage, or a conspiracy.”

He asked me if I really meant that. I gave him the five minute explanation of John Dewey’s known affiliation with communists, his frequent essays and articles about the wonders of the Soviet education system, and his quote, “You can’t make Socialists out of individualists. Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent.”

I then went on to tell him about how public schools changed at the turn of the last century. That there were others involved in turning Americans from free-thinking individualists to factory drones. I also added that many people probably went along with it because it seemed like a good idea, but there were certainly enough people behind the scenes, who knew that the goal posts had been moved. THAT is a conspiracy.

Yes. There does come that time when you are forced to don the tinfoil hat.

The incompetence excuse only works once. Incompetence this great is impossible to attribute to accident.

Count me in the tinfoil-hat brigade. Especially when I see peices like this Time one suggesting that it’s our civic duty to indoctrinate our children and make them better citizens.

In my opinion, the homeschooled are far more likely to be reasoning, free-thinking individualists, and that means better AMERICAN citizens – the kind willing to make decisions unpopular with the UN.

The Time article continues:

To see how home schooling threatens public schools, look at Maricopa County, Ariz. The county has approximately 7,000 home-schooled students. That’s only 1.4% of school-age kids, but it means $35 million less for the county in per-pupil funding. The state of Florida has 41,128 children (1.7%) learning at home this year, up from 10,039 in the 1991-92 school year; those kids represent a loss of nearly $130 million from school budgets in that state. Of course the schools have fewer children to teach, so it makes sense that they wouldn’t get as much money, but the districts lose much more than cash. “Home schooling is a social threat to public education,” says Chris Lubienski, who teaches at Iowa State University’s college of education. “It is taking some of the most affluent and articulate parents out of the system. These are the parents who know how to get things done with administrators.”

Get things done? Like what? They seem to be completely unable to alter curricula so that the kids get an actual education.

I’ve said before that my sister is a teacher, so I have a little bit of insight into just who has the ability to ‘get things done with administrators.’ It’s the ones who threaten lawsuits for not advancing little Johnny to the next grade, even though he’s illiterate, because not doing so will “hurt his self-esteem.” People are pulling their kids out of public schools because they can’t affect the system – it’s far too ingrained at this point. The Titanic doesn’t take course corrections any longer, even though it’s obvious the iceberg is dead ahead.

Look at this example of supposed balance in the Time story:

Despite its growing acceptance, there are nagging shortcomings to home schooling. If you spend time with home schoolers, you get a sense that some of them have missed out on whole swaths of childhood; the admirable efforts by their parents to ensure their education and safety sometimes seem to have gone too far. In 1992 psychotherapist Larry Shyers did a study while at the University of Florida in which he closely examined the behavior of 35 home schoolers and 35 public schoolers. He found that home schoolers were generally more patient and less competitive. They tended to introduce themselves to one another more; they didn’t fight as much. And the home schoolers were much more prone to exchange addresses and phone numbers. In short, they behaved like miniature adults.

Which is great, unless you believe that kids should be kids before they are adults. John McCallum, 20, of Wheaton, Ill., began learning at home after fourth grade. On the whole, he valued the experience. But if he could change anything about his teen years, he would want more interaction with people his age. “I don’t date, and that’s something I attribute to home schooling,” he says. Or consider Rachel Ahern, 21, of Grand Junction, Colo., who never set foot in a classroom until she went to Harvard at 18. As a child, she socialized with older kids and adults at church and in music classes at a nearby college. “I never once experienced peer pressure,” she says. But is that a good thing? Megan Wallace of Atlanta says if she had gone to high school, “I would have gotten into so much trouble.” One could argue that kids need to get into a certain amount of trouble to learn how to handle temptations and their consequences.”

They’re complaining that homeschooled kids aren’t little hooligans. One “could argue that kids need to get into a certain amount of trouble” but I’m not one of them. I prefer to let them mature and see the errors that they missed. I think that eighteen year-old mature adults are, by definition, good citizens, and something to strive for.

We used to get them out of the public school system, not all that long ago.

(Homework assignment: Read Francis Porretto’s most recent piece, The Assault on Accuracy for more illustration of the collapse of our schools.)

UPDATE, 3/24/04: Chris O’Donnell of O’DonnellWeb points out that this Time piece is actually a couple years old. I don’t know where I first ran across it, but I assumed it was current. All the better, as homeschooling has had a couple more years to irritate the Statists.

It’s Not a GUN CONTROL Problem

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Today’s Washington Post has this column by Courtland Milloy:

So Many Guns In the Hands Of Children

Police officers George Young and Sylvester Garvin III were on routine patrol last month in the District when they detained a juvenile who was driving without a seat belt. Asked for his driver’s license, the boy took off — only to be caught again.

“We asked him why he ran,” Young recalled. “He said, ‘I have a gun.’ ”

In fact, the boy, who is 14, had two guns: a Mac-11 semiautomatic handgun and a .380 semiautomatic pistol, both fully loaded.

First, he’s a 14 year-old boy driving a car. No comment about that?

Since the arrest Feb. 3, however, the case has virtually disappeared behind a shroud of official secrecy, behind one set of laws that protects the identity of juveniles and another that restricts the release of information about confiscated guns. But the questions remain: Who was that 14-year-old boy? How did he get those guns? Why did he have them?

According to a 2002 report by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, 57 percent of recovered “crime guns” in the District were taken from people 24 years old and younger.

Handguns accounted for 82 percent of the District’s crime guns, with the semiautomatic pistol being the weapon of choice — especially for those 17 years old and younger, according to the report.

“It’s a shock to sensibility,” said John P. Malone, the ATF special agent in charge of the Washington field office. “At 14, you’re supposed to be a freshman in high school, not driving around with guns.”

For one thing, it’s a perfect example of the fact that “gun control” doesn’t work. DC keeps trading places with that other “gun control” mecca, Chicago, for the highest homicide rate in cities larger than 500,000 population.

The ATF, it should be noted, is neither pro-gun nor anti-gun.

Really? You’ve obviously not been keeping up with the ATF’s actions, then.

Part of its mission is to trace guns that have been used in the commission of crimes and to keep firearms away from ineligible receivers.

Last year, 1,982 guns were confiscated in the District — where a ban on handgun ownership has been in place since 1979 — and turned over to the ATF for tracing. Moreover, 77 percent of the city’s 243 homicides last year were gun-related.

Then DC is significantly above the national average, because according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, firearms nationwide are used in only about 70% of homicides.

Boy those gun bans really make you safer, don’t they?

So far this year, D.C. police have seized 387 illegal weapons. The Mac-11 (which police initially said was a Mac-10 submachine gun) and the .380 semiautomatic were among them.

“I thought, ‘What is a 14-year-old doing with this kind of fighting power?’ ” recalled Young, who is 30 and has been a police officer for two years.

Shouldn’t you have asked “What has driven kids like this to create a market that supplies them these weapons?” Nobody just came up and handed the kid these guns. There aren’t gun manufacturers going around like drug pushers giving them their first gun for free just to get them hooked (though to hear the VPC, et. al you’d believe that.)

The boy was arrested in the 700 block of Yuma Street SE, in Washington Highlands, the neighborhood where Young grew up.

“We weren’t into guns when I was growing up, unless we were playing cowboys with cap guns,” Young said. “Firearms were off limits. Kids my age just didn’t see guns. But this younger generation is different. Every day that I’m on the street, I expect to face juveniles who are armed. And I know what a 14-year-old is capable of.”

When I was growing up, I was exposed to guns, and did see them. And I also played “cowboys” (the politically-correct term for “cowboys and indians“) with cap guns and other toy guns – a behavior that the PC crowd today wants to eliminate because it “breeds violent behavior.” I doubt this youngster ever played “cowboys” in his neighborhood. He played “gangsta.”

Young hastened to add that such youngsters also are capable of doing good and doubtlessly would do much more of it if given the chance.

“Hastened” because to do otherwise would be seen as un-PC.

This is the liberal “all people are inherently good” position, which I disagree with. People are not inherently good. They are inherently neutral, and develop behavior based on their environment. The poor, urban, welfare environment is what’s responsible for this, not the “easy availability of guns” – but it’s much easier to blame the guns than to face the failure of decades of well-meaning but (literally) homicidally flawed social policy and try to address that. It can’t be the fault of liberal social policies! It can’t be the result of conservative prohibitions! It must be because of those evil gun manufacturers who make Mac-11’s and “Saturday Night Special” .380’s!

“What I’m seeing is a lot of children raising children, parents allowing their children to do anything they want,” he said. “When you’re that young and facing adult situations, you’re going to make a lot of wrong decisions. You’re going to go for the simple and easy and fast, because you don’t see people working long and hard to make it.”

At least officer Young is willing to state, and the WaPo is willing to print, that the problem has to do with the fact that these kids aren’t being raised, but that avoids the underlying cause of that neglect.

The ATF report notes that 55 percent of the District’s traceable crime guns were purchased initially in Maryland or Virginia and that Bryco Arms and Lorcin Engineering 9mm semiautomatic pistols were the preferred weapons of most youths caught with firearms in the District.

Those models can cost as little as $100 if bought in, say, Georgia. But in the District, with its gun ban, they can fetch as much as $300.

See! It’s the gunmakers fault! It’s the fault of the loopholes in gun control laws! It’s the fault of unscrupulous gun dealers!

I’m sure this kid drove down to a gun shop in Virgina and slid past the NICS check when he bought that Mac-11, which sells for in excess of $350, according to GunsAmerica.com.

Anyone wonder where a 14 year-old comes up with, say, $300 to buy a Bryco .380?

Asked about the high demand for guns in D.C., Young said: “For many of these young people, a firearm is like money. It makes you powerful. You can use it to collect so many things the wrong way. A kid with a gun can take a vehicle. He can take someone’s livelihood or his manhood or his life. The person who gets violated may want to retaliate, but if he doesn’t have a gun, then he’s not capable. The one with the gun feels immortal, as if life is stopping for him.”

The 14-year-old’s mini-arsenal certainly made people stop and think, just not for very long.

And, like this article does, it made them think about the wrong questions.

Young, urban, black males are overwhelmingly the victims of homicide. It’s an epidemic among that specific population. Less than 13% of the population provides 47% of the victims of homicide, yet we’re told that guns are the root cause of the problem, and are the only vector for fighting this “public health concern.”

No, a combination of the misguided “War on (some) Drugs®” and the even more destructive “War on Poverty™” are the primary vectors here.

Unless and until we are willing to face the failures of both of these policies, young urban black males will continue to kill each other at epidemic levels – levels six times that of the general population. But instead, people like Courtland Milloy will continue to push for more “gun controls” that will inevitably fail to affect the slaughter.

And Another

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A Call (Or Recall) To Arms

Stan Hall is the Director of the Victim Witness Program for the Gwinnett County District Attorney’s Office. He is also the host of the Gwinnett County Communication Network’s television show “Behind the Badge.”

I have never met a conservative who did not support the constitutional rights that we, as Americans, have to bear arms. In fact, most conservatives will tell you very quickly that the right to bear arms is one of the foundations of our Constitution and it is just as important as any of our guaranteed rights.

This right has proved very beneficial on many documented cases when our forefathers were called to defend themselves from everything from tyranny to carpetbaggers and many other threats that were thwarted by fast moving projectiles from the muzzle of a gun.

Not just our forefathers. We’re still doing it today.

Our country’s history is steeped deeply in the fact that every American has the right to protect themselves, their family, and their homes. This defense has been most often performed by the use of a firearm. I am one of those conservatives that truly believe everything that I have alluded to thus far. If you are waiting for the “however” part; well here it comes!

Personally, I find myself in a position whereby I eschew anything that has to do with the weakening of the rights concerning firearm possession. On the other hand, I have been involved professionally as a law enforcement person who is sworn to do everything possible to protect life and property. An interesting dilemma; don’t you think? Is it possible to stand by the principles of your political beliefs and also believe in something that will be beneficial in your sworn duty at the same time? My Libertarian friends would answer that question with a very loud “no.” My liberal friends (I do actually have some) would answer just as quickly with, “of course.” Libertarians would like to see all waiting periods repealed, as well as, to do away with anything that prohibits an individual to carry a concealed firearm. Liberals think that we should extend the waiting period and that, most often; no one ever needs to carry a concealed weapon.

Hold on, here. What you’re saying is that as a “law enforcement person” you see beneficial aspects in weakening the rights concerning firearm possession? Well, then, I’m right with your Libertarian friends. What you’re advocating is statism – “big brother knows better.” That’s in direct opposition to what you state you believe politically. But to continue…

Personally, I find myself somewhere in the middle of all of them. But professionally, I have come to a conclusion that will probably make segments of both groups, not to mention my conservative friends upset. I cannot imagine a reason where there would be a need for a citizen to possess an assault type weapon.

You can’t? The Founders could. Legal scholars can. Sitting judges can. I feel for your inability to reason, but why should I allow you to affect my rights?

These weapons are not even issued to police officers with the exception of specialized units.

That is incorrect, Mr. Hall. AR-15 rifles are common equipment in many patrol cars, having replaced the ubiquitous riot shotgun in many jurisdictions. Perhaps not in Georgia, but in many municipalities. There is, for example, a minor brouhaha going on in the Calexico, California police department over whether their officers – all of them – should be allowed “assault rifles” that are denied to the general public. Calexico is hardly a major metropolis. New Jersey has an “assault weapon” exemption for police officers – one that recently bit officer Ken Moose, Jr. on the ass. If you’re a law-enforcement officer, you should be aware of this fact.

But, now we have armed robberies, home invasions, and assaults on police officers during the commission of a crime where assault weapons are commonplace.

Another lie. Blatant, unrepentant, out and out lie. The first one I can let go as a mere oversight. This one I cannot.

Long guns – all of them – are used in only about 13% of firearm-involved crime, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and if homicide is any indicator, about half those long-gun crimes are committed with shotguns. Violent crime involving firearms has been declining since 1991, not increasing. Hell, Diane Feinstein claims the “assault weapons ban” caused “assault weapon” usage to decline. You don’t get it both ways, Mr. Hall. The use of “assault weapons” in crime is a rarity – not “commonplace.”

It seems absurd that criminals are showing up better armed than police officers whose job it is to protect the public.

Why? It’s always been that way. It wasn’t that long ago that cops carried “service revolvers” in .38 Special, and people protested their “upgunning” to .357 Magnums. Now they carry “high-capacity” semi-auto pistols and “assault rifles” in their cruisers.

It is no longer uncommon for police officers to find themselves in a scenario where their body armor will not even stop the ammunition that is being fired on them.

If the are being shot at with a rifle, no standard soft vest is going to stop the round. But here you’re – quite intentionally – raising the specter (in the meaning of “phantom”) of the “cop-killer bullet” fantasy. Another deliberate mendacity?

Quite frankly, when someone buys an assault weapon, it should be assumed that it will be used for some type of an assault. Many gun enthusiasts will dispute this by countering that they maybe (sic) for assaults fro (sic) some, for them the weapons are for competitive shooting, collector series, and all of the other reasons that may be legitimate. Despite these legitimate reasons, the majority of these weapons are being used to kill people in a violent act. They are causing law enforcement agencies all over this country to upgrade their arsenals simply to be competitive with the bad guys.

Willful, blatant, inexcuseable LIE

Our good buddies at the Violence Policy Center have provided an accounting of firearms manufactured in the U.S. According to them, Armalite built 32,504 “assault rifles” between 1995 and 2000. Bushmaster built 150,589 during the same period. Colt built 185,693. DPMS: 18,211. Knight’s Manufacturing: 2,611. Olympic Arms: 24,045. Those are just manufacturers of AR-15 clones. That’s 413,653 AR-15 “assault rifles” built and sold after the 1994 “ban.” Note that this does not include manufacturing during the years 2001 to the present. This also does not include AK-47’s, H&K G3 clones, FN-FAL’s, or any other so-called “assault weapons.” If “the majority of these weapons are being used to kill people in a violent act” then at a minimum there would have been 206,827 homicides since 1994 attributable to AR-15 clones alone. According to the CDC there were 105,142 homicides by firearm for the period 1994-2001. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, handguns are used in about 80% of homicides by firearm.

You’re lying to us, Mr. Hall, deliberately and badly. Perhaps you have an agenda?

This problem has led to many law enforcement executives leading the cause to prevent the ownership of assault weapons from being sold across the counter.

I just illustrated that “this problem” doesn’t exist. It’s been blown to hysterical proportions by lies such as this.

It is not a position that they take lightly, but has become a position that they are forced to support based on the past and potential tragedies that have and will be caused by these weapons in the hands of thugs. It may go against constitutional merit, but stands tall in the common sense department.

“Forced to support”? Even you admit it “may go against constitutional merit.”

So how about a constitutional amendment? But you never hear that option bandied about. No, they’d rather strip us of a right because it’s too costly – but I just illustrated that the cost they proclaim is false.

So why is it they want to destroy the right to arms through subterfuge?

Every person in this country should have the right to bear arms. (For now.) Every hunter in this country should have the right to bear arms; as many as they like. (For now.) Every person in this country should have the right to use these weapons in an act of self-defense or protection of their properties.

Tell that to Ronald Dixon. Tell that to Hale DeMar. Tell that to Melvin B. Spaulding. Tell it to Lester Campbell.

I would never argue these premises. (Yet) However, in the atmosphere that we find ourselves in, where one horrific act of violence is topped by the next, we have to do something. Policies that would keep assault type weapons off of the streets and out of the hands of those intent on creating a chaotic (sic) is something that I feel necessary to support. Maybe this is a case where the personal and protective rights of the many have to override the rights of the few. It is not a perfect science or formula but what in this world is anymore?

William Pitt once said, “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” Here is but another example.

Are you afraid enough now to put your shackels on?

Or would you rather buy an “assault weapon” and tell them “Molon Labe!”?

Another Long List of Lies, Untruths, and Deliberate Mendacities

KevinLeave a comment

Here we go again.

Talking sense on gun laws

You know with a title like this, the only “sense” will be “non.”

By Dan K. Thomasson

Well, here we are again, in the throes of another election-year battle over how to keep guns out of the hands of all the modern Jesse Jameses while not trampling on the rights of the intrepid Elmer Fudds. Don’t expect Congress to do anything exceptionally courageous.

Well, they tried to pass the lawsuit exemption, but wussed out and allowed the bill to be contaminated, so I’ll give Mr. Thomasson a pass on that comment, but being one of the Elmer Fudds he refers to (those are my rights he’s talking about, after all) I’m offended by his belittling. He obviously doesn’t care about my feelings. I should sue for pain and suffering.

The vast majority of gun owners in the United States are law-abiding citizens who use their weapons in pursuit of honest activities like hunting or skeet shooting or as an inducement for sleeping easier knowing their trusty six-shooter is nearby. They are no threat to anyone except perhaps themselves, especially during hunting season, when the nation’s forests resound with the reports of thousands of rifles all seemingly firing at the same deer.

Largely true, but off by a couple orders of magnitude. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, there are an estimated 19 million active hunters in the U.S. The state of Washington alone issued 13,139 deer permits in 2002, 7,107 elk permits. In West Virginia, over 250,000 deer were taken in 2002. Just deer.

Not thousands of rifles, Mr. Thomasson. Not tens of thousands. Millions. Deer, elk, bear, cougar, bobcat, coyote, prarie dog, wild pig, and more. Trying to belittle us “Elmer Fudds” as being just a few thousand isn’t going to fly here.

Many of these citizens spend hours each weekend at one of the hundreds of gun shows staged for their benefits across the nation. They have every right to do so without being hassled by anti-gun forces, including law-enforcement officers at all levels, who increasingly see these events as a main source of the murder and mayhem that plagues our urban society.

And with his next breath:

While gun shows provide legitimate enterprise and entertainment for thousands of good citizens, they also have become a major marketplace for the trafficking in illegal weapons by criminals who can easily avoid the deterrent of a background check through a loophole in the federal law.

Wait just a damned minute here. Even the Bureau of Justice Statistics admits that gun shows are the source of less than 2% of guns acquired by criminals. Criminals can “easily avoid the deterrent of a background check” by stealing a gun, trading drugs for a gun, having a friend or relative buy a gun for them, or any number of different ways. Going to a gun show would be less convenient for most of these people.

But it gets better!

Very simply, dealers in used weapons are exempt from the statute that requires licensed dealers selling new weapons at these shows to put their customers through a record search. So why should a person intent on using a gun for illegitimate purposes buy from an honest, licensed dealer either in his shop or at one of these shows when the guy selling a used semi-automatic handgun from the next booth has no such restrictions?

Very simply, that’s a blatant lie.

Dealers in used weapons are required to be licensed just like dealers in new weapons are. If you’re a dealer, you’re making a living off of selling firearms for a profit. If you attempt to do so, it’s the BATF’s job to find you, arrest you, and see you’re put in jail. If, however, you’re a poor schmuck like me who simply wants to sell a gun out of your personal collection, that doesn’t require a license. If I want to sell everything in my collection, that doesn’t require a license. But if I try that three times a month, I should be expecting a visit from my friendly Federal agents. And licensed dealers are required to run the background check. I, on the other hand, am legally prohibited from running a background check. I’m not allowed to determine if the guy who wants to buy my .357 snubbie is a felon or not.

That’s the crux of the problem that has made these weekly events the second-largest source of weapons for criminal activity.

Blatant lie #2. Notice there is no attribution for this lie. I’ve given you a link to the Bureau of Justice Statistics that states that less than 2% of criminals get their guns from gun shows – yet Mr. Thomasson claims baldly that gun shows are the #2 source of crime guns. Why shouldn’t you believe him? He’s published in the Washington Times!

The first still is licensed dealers who either ignore the law or unwittingly sell to a straw buyer who can pass the background check.

Note again, no attribution for his claim that bad gun dealers and straw purchases are the #1 source for crime guns. He’s just making this stuff up. The inference is that a criminal buys a gun or has one purchased for him, then goes and commits a crime with it immediately. Undoubtedly that happens occasionally, but it’s the exception, not the rule. The California Department of Justice produced a report on the efficacy of implementing a “ballistic fingerprinting” database on all new handguns sold in California. In that report is this statement:

In the Crime Gun Trace Reports 2000 from the ATF, average TTC (Time to Crime – the time between the selling of a firearm and actually committing a crime with it.) are mentioned per age of the offender and type of firearm [X, p.30-40]. The following results are obtained for semiautomatic pistols (4.5 years), revolvers (12.3 years), rifles (7.0 years), shotguns (7.6 years) and other firearms (7.1 years). The nationwide average TTC for all firearms for all ages of offenders is 6.1 years.

The average time between a gun being sold and it being used in a crime is over six years. But unscrupulous gun dealers and “straw purchases” are the number one source of crime guns?

But he doesn’t stop there:

Congress clearly should deal with the first by closing the gun-show loophole and with the other by vastly improving its prosecution of federal gun-law offenders.

First, there is no “gun show loophole.” I just illustrated that fact. Second, I heartily agree that violators of federal gun laws aren’t being prosecuted enough. I can’t figure out, for example, how Brian Borgelt, the FFL holder who owned Bull’s Eye Shooter Supply in Tacoma Washington managed to hold on to his license for so long after “losing” over 200 firearms. What does it take?

Apparently a high-profile crime committed with one of the “lost” firearms.

Let’s get one thing straight here: I’m an advocate for the right to arms, but I believe that there is some appropriate regulation of arms sales. I also think the BATF has proven to be incompetent to do that job, and passing more gun laws – especially ones that address phantom issues – isn’t going to make them more effective.

At the same time, lawmakers ultimately should extend the ban on the manufacture and sale of assault weapons, which expires in September, and reject a gun-lobby effort to immunize the nation’s manufacturers of firearms from the legal responsibility for the rising toll of gun crimes – an act law-enforcement officials oppose as relieving the industry of any obligations to make their weapons safer.

Another blatant lie. The bill is dead, but it didn’t relieve the industry of “any obligations to make their weapons safer.” It didn’t address “making weapons safer.” This is bait-and-switch. The immunity bill was designed to protect gun manufacturers and dealers from frivolous lawsuits brought when they did nothing illegal, and a gun one made and the other sold was used criminally. For instance, in the DC Sniper shootings, Bull’s Eye and Bushmaster – the manufacturer of the rifle – are being sued. If it can be proven that Bull’s Eye sold the rifle illegally, then they would not have been protected by the bill, but how the hell can Bushmaster be held liable for criminal misuse of their product?

And, just out of curiosity, how do you make a device designed to hurl a small metal projectile at high velocity “safe?”

More:

While all three prongs of the attack on firearm misuse are important, tougher enforcement of existing laws probably outweighs the others because of the message it would send to casual violators. Federal prosecutors for years have been looking the other way when it comes to gun-law violations. Only 2 percent of federal gun crimes are ever prosecuted, according to the Americans for Gun Safety organization.

For instance, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives cited the Washington state dealer who sold the sniper rifle that killed so many in and around the District with six violations of federal law and recommended prosecution. But so far no charge has been filed, a disappointing contradiction to recent Justice Department pledges to go after gun violators.

Supporters of stronger enforcement also had hoped the Bush administration would give ATF the prosecutorial support when it was moved to the Justice Department. Somehow, that backing has been slow in emerging and anti-gun forces blame it on the fact Attorney General John Ashcroft has been a strong pro-gun advocate.

This predates Ashcroft by quite a bit. Actually, I view it as a two-edged sword. The BATF has proven to be a grand-standing out of control organization that Michigan Democratic Representative John Dingell called “jack booted thugs” in House testimony over BATF abuses which are many and egregious. Moving the Bureau to the Justice Department wasn’t, I think, an improvement.

The ban on assault weapons is regarded as essential in ensuring that the nation’s law officers aren’t outgunned, as they have been in a number of highly publicized instances recently. The gun-safety group, citing Justice Department figures, says that during the 10 years the ban has been in effect the proportion of assault weapons traced to crimes has dropped by 65.8 percent.

Yet other organizations bitch and complain that the law didn’t stop the manufacture of “assault weapons,” that more “assault weapons” are being sold today than in 1994, and that one in five officers killed with firearms were killed with “assault weapons.” Who do you believe?

Accomplishing anything in the direction of a more responsible national firearms policy during this election year will be difficult, if not impossible, with most politicians from both major parties terrified of the repercussions of supporting such action.

Note that “more responsible national firearms policy” means, well, more laws making it harder for people to acquire and keep firearms. That’s the only way these people measure the effectiveness of “gun control.” No mention of the fact that without any major “gun control” laws passed before or after the 1994 so-called “ban” that violent crime of all types was on the decline, that passage of the AWB didn’t accelerate or retard that decline, and that the level of violent crime now is lower than it’s been since the 1960’s. Yet we need more gun control laws.

The well-heeled National Rifle Association, despite the fact its membership is largely made up of those law-abiding citizens who use guns wisely, has never been supportive of responsible steps to protect the rights of those who don’t hunt, shoot skeet or targets or collect antiques or sleep with a gun under their pillows.

And what rights would those be?

The NRA (more or less) defends one right: the right to arms. And it protects that right even for those who don’t exercise it. The NRA leaves the defense of the other rights to other organizations.