Didn't watch much of the Democrat debate. What a bunch of pooffs, I wouldn't trust them to guard an Ice Cream Stand in January.
Post debate analysis, bunch of Libs and semi-Libs yakking it up. How do you spell Echo Chamber.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Secret service profiling
No comments but worth a look
http://opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/?id=110009988
WONDER LAND
Blacksburg's Silver LiningMaybe this time the status quo will change.
BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Thursday, April 26, 2007 12:01 a.m.
In the wake of an event such as Virginia Tech, our system moves heaven and earth to figure out what went wrong and how to make sure it doesn't happen again. This of course is what we did after September 11 and after the botched response to Hurricane Katrina.
Here's what's really unnerving about this inevitable "process": In June 2000, the Bremer Report of the National Commission on Terrorism described virtually everything we needed to know about preparing for the kind of attack that occurred in September 2001. Similarly--and you can guess what you're about to read--in 2002 the Final Report and Findings of the Safe School Initiative, conducted by the Secret Service and the Department of Education, told us virtually everything we need to know to prevent a Virginia Tech.
The good news here is that we are not as stupid as we seem. We have it within our power to assign smart people to look at a manifest public problem and offer sensible fixes. (To be sure, not all commissions do.) Still one must ask: Why do we refuse to take our own best advice?
After the Blacksburg murders, one of the first words uttered in awful memory was "Columbine." Well, Columbine was among the main reasons for the Safe Schools effort. Also Springfield, Ore., West Paducah, Ky., and Jonesboro, Ark.--all sites of widely publicized school shootings. In all, the study investigated 37 such attacks in schools from 1974 to 2000.
Most interesting, the study was led by the Secret Service. Why? The study doesn't quite put it this way, but it was because the Secret Service's main job in life is preventing the nuts from killing someone. Simply, the study's goal was to try to figure out what is "knowable" before an attack.
One of the Safe School report's most relevant findings, for the purposes of stopping another Virginia Tech, is that the 37 school attacks weren't typically carried out by severely ill, unhinged psychotics like Cho Seung-Hui. This is not to say they were happy campers (the study interviewed 10 perpetrators in depth). Though few of them would get off by reason of insanity, they were all mentally very unhappy campers; and what is more, other people knew that. And in nearly every case, someone knew they were planning the attack: "In nearly two thirds of the incidents, more than one person had information about the attack before it occurred."
Among the reasons widely adduced for not doing something about Cho's violent proclivities are HIPAA and FERPA, the confidentiality laws for health records and college students' records. Well, there's no FERPA for high schools. There is merely the weird cultural refusal to turn in bad actors to adult authority. In one school attack, so many students knew it was coming that 24 were waiting on a mezzanine to watch, one with a camera. The enemy is us.
Prior to the studied assaults, some 93% of the attackers behaved in ways that caused concern to school officials, teachers, parents, the cops or other students. "In one case, the student's English teacher became concerned about several poems and essays that . . ." well, you know the rest.
Psychological flameouts were indeed present in virtually all the attacks--depression (61%), prior suicidal attempts or thoughts (78%), a sense of loss, feelings of being persecuted or in fact bullied.
A lot has been made of the police failure to apprehend Cho for two hours. Fair enough, but that's not typical. In the Safe Schools 37 incidents, most of the attacks were stopped by administrator or teachers, largely because half didn't last longer than 15 minutes. The cops stopped only 25% of the attacks--an argument for deputizing and arming someone in the schools. (In testimony this week to the Senate Homeland Security Committee, the head of the association for all campus cops explained the "safety issues" that mainly keeps them distracted: "At the top of the list are issues related to high-risk drinking and the use and abuse of illegal and prescription drugs.")
After September 11, we learned from the 9/11 Commission that the left hand of the CIA didn't know what the right hand of the FBI was doing, that they wouldn't talk to each other, or under Justice Department rules, couldn't talk to each other. But before all that, the Bremer anti-terror report in 2000 described "complex bureaucratic procedures" that hampered the CIA and an FBI suffering from "bureaucratic and cultural obstacles (my emphasis) to obtaining terrorism information."
Cultural indeed. Over time we have accreted a culture in the United States--of rules, laws, liability concerns and mindsets--that adds up to no-can-do. Or, Attorney may I?
After 9/11 the consensus that we had to do something sank quickly in the swamps of partisanship; wiretapping and incarcerating terrorists became mainly a debate game for politicians and newspaper writers. If there is a sliver of silver lining in the Virginia Tech aftermath, it is that there seems to be a willingness to look hard at the status quo--no matter what assumptions pre-existed about rights, privacy, stigma, coercion, security or whether we can blame it on Karl Rove. On Tuesday, for example, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a piece by a professor titled, "Why It's OK to Rat on Other Students." Here, as with the message screaming off the pages of the Safe School report, the exhortation is to do something, no matter what the intimidations of the law or received wisdom.
What this means is that some college presidents, and their lawyers, rather than rolling over before those confidentiality laws, should tell some aggrieved student who is refusing to take the medication prescribed for his psychosis: So sue! Let a judge decide whether 32 deaths warrant a reconsideration of these restrictions.
As well, there is no hope unless a light goes off in the collective socket of our elected politicians, which illumines just how much their oh-so-needed laws siphon time and energy out of the daily lives of institutional leaders who a long time ago had the common sense and personal authority to chuck out a Cho Seung-Hui.
At the Homeland Security Committee hearing this week, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I) remarked, "We want to respect the privacy of the individual, yet ultimately I think we have a greater responsibility to protect the safety of the community." Sound sensible? If embraced by our politics, that notion would overturn 40 years of jurisprudence and conventional wisdom that, of late, has turned deadly. After Blacksburg, it could happen. Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Thursdays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
Copyright © 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
http://opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/?id=110009988
WONDER LAND
Blacksburg's Silver LiningMaybe this time the status quo will change.
BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Thursday, April 26, 2007 12:01 a.m.
In the wake of an event such as Virginia Tech, our system moves heaven and earth to figure out what went wrong and how to make sure it doesn't happen again. This of course is what we did after September 11 and after the botched response to Hurricane Katrina.
Here's what's really unnerving about this inevitable "process": In June 2000, the Bremer Report of the National Commission on Terrorism described virtually everything we needed to know about preparing for the kind of attack that occurred in September 2001. Similarly--and you can guess what you're about to read--in 2002 the Final Report and Findings of the Safe School Initiative, conducted by the Secret Service and the Department of Education, told us virtually everything we need to know to prevent a Virginia Tech.
The good news here is that we are not as stupid as we seem. We have it within our power to assign smart people to look at a manifest public problem and offer sensible fixes. (To be sure, not all commissions do.) Still one must ask: Why do we refuse to take our own best advice?
After the Blacksburg murders, one of the first words uttered in awful memory was "Columbine." Well, Columbine was among the main reasons for the Safe Schools effort. Also Springfield, Ore., West Paducah, Ky., and Jonesboro, Ark.--all sites of widely publicized school shootings. In all, the study investigated 37 such attacks in schools from 1974 to 2000.
Most interesting, the study was led by the Secret Service. Why? The study doesn't quite put it this way, but it was because the Secret Service's main job in life is preventing the nuts from killing someone. Simply, the study's goal was to try to figure out what is "knowable" before an attack.
One of the Safe School report's most relevant findings, for the purposes of stopping another Virginia Tech, is that the 37 school attacks weren't typically carried out by severely ill, unhinged psychotics like Cho Seung-Hui. This is not to say they were happy campers (the study interviewed 10 perpetrators in depth). Though few of them would get off by reason of insanity, they were all mentally very unhappy campers; and what is more, other people knew that. And in nearly every case, someone knew they were planning the attack: "In nearly two thirds of the incidents, more than one person had information about the attack before it occurred."
Among the reasons widely adduced for not doing something about Cho's violent proclivities are HIPAA and FERPA, the confidentiality laws for health records and college students' records. Well, there's no FERPA for high schools. There is merely the weird cultural refusal to turn in bad actors to adult authority. In one school attack, so many students knew it was coming that 24 were waiting on a mezzanine to watch, one with a camera. The enemy is us.
Prior to the studied assaults, some 93% of the attackers behaved in ways that caused concern to school officials, teachers, parents, the cops or other students. "In one case, the student's English teacher became concerned about several poems and essays that . . ." well, you know the rest.
Psychological flameouts were indeed present in virtually all the attacks--depression (61%), prior suicidal attempts or thoughts (78%), a sense of loss, feelings of being persecuted or in fact bullied.
A lot has been made of the police failure to apprehend Cho for two hours. Fair enough, but that's not typical. In the Safe Schools 37 incidents, most of the attacks were stopped by administrator or teachers, largely because half didn't last longer than 15 minutes. The cops stopped only 25% of the attacks--an argument for deputizing and arming someone in the schools. (In testimony this week to the Senate Homeland Security Committee, the head of the association for all campus cops explained the "safety issues" that mainly keeps them distracted: "At the top of the list are issues related to high-risk drinking and the use and abuse of illegal and prescription drugs.")
After September 11, we learned from the 9/11 Commission that the left hand of the CIA didn't know what the right hand of the FBI was doing, that they wouldn't talk to each other, or under Justice Department rules, couldn't talk to each other. But before all that, the Bremer anti-terror report in 2000 described "complex bureaucratic procedures" that hampered the CIA and an FBI suffering from "bureaucratic and cultural obstacles (my emphasis) to obtaining terrorism information."
Cultural indeed. Over time we have accreted a culture in the United States--of rules, laws, liability concerns and mindsets--that adds up to no-can-do. Or, Attorney may I?
After 9/11 the consensus that we had to do something sank quickly in the swamps of partisanship; wiretapping and incarcerating terrorists became mainly a debate game for politicians and newspaper writers. If there is a sliver of silver lining in the Virginia Tech aftermath, it is that there seems to be a willingness to look hard at the status quo--no matter what assumptions pre-existed about rights, privacy, stigma, coercion, security or whether we can blame it on Karl Rove. On Tuesday, for example, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a piece by a professor titled, "Why It's OK to Rat on Other Students." Here, as with the message screaming off the pages of the Safe School report, the exhortation is to do something, no matter what the intimidations of the law or received wisdom.
What this means is that some college presidents, and their lawyers, rather than rolling over before those confidentiality laws, should tell some aggrieved student who is refusing to take the medication prescribed for his psychosis: So sue! Let a judge decide whether 32 deaths warrant a reconsideration of these restrictions.
As well, there is no hope unless a light goes off in the collective socket of our elected politicians, which illumines just how much their oh-so-needed laws siphon time and energy out of the daily lives of institutional leaders who a long time ago had the common sense and personal authority to chuck out a Cho Seung-Hui.
At the Homeland Security Committee hearing this week, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I) remarked, "We want to respect the privacy of the individual, yet ultimately I think we have a greater responsibility to protect the safety of the community." Sound sensible? If embraced by our politics, that notion would overturn 40 years of jurisprudence and conventional wisdom that, of late, has turned deadly. After Blacksburg, it could happen. Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Thursdays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
Copyright © 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Cary a concealed weapon-GUN! part2
Cary a concealed weapon-GUN! part2
Well....... which gun.
Rifles are almost always best but they do not conceal well, shotguns also, so.....(joke there...)..... we are at handguns.
Handle and test fire as many as possible. Don't worry about caliber as long as it is .380 or bigger or, for wheel gunners .38 Special, but find a gun you like and are comfortable with. But any gun is better than none. I carry a .32 ACP when a full size rig won't work for the way I'm dressed.
Don't let someone make this choice for you your firearm is a very personal item and decision.
Well....... which gun.
Rifles are almost always best but they do not conceal well, shotguns also, so.....(joke there...)..... we are at handguns.
Handle and test fire as many as possible. Don't worry about caliber as long as it is .380 or bigger or, for wheel gunners .38 Special, but find a gun you like and are comfortable with. But any gun is better than none. I carry a .32 ACP when a full size rig won't work for the way I'm dressed.
Don't let someone make this choice for you your firearm is a very personal item and decision.
Saudi's and firearms
This is rich for a society that condones ‘honor killings’. Sure haji man does not shoot the chick who dishonors his 'honor', but she is still dead non the less.
How come 'honor killings' only result in women's deaths?
From LGF
Our Friends the Saudis: Gun Rights = State-Sponsored Terrorism
In the wake of the Virginia Tech killings, the Saudi royal family’s English-speaking mouthpiece, ArabNews, published an editorial equating the right to bear arms with state-sponsored terrorism.
Most Americans simply do not see the falsity of their own position. So sure are they of their own moral rectitude that they utterly discount the standards and concerns of others as either irrelevant or wrong. This is all the easier for them because of the widespread ignorance of the outside world which, in the present administration, extends from the man in the street all the way to the president himself. This lack of international knowledge and awareness is the more remarkable given that America is such a rich mix of races and cultures. Yet once within the capacious US borders, immigrants sign up to a constitution which includes this obsolete right to carry guns whose sole purpose is to kill. Gangland murders and campus massacres by deluded youths armed with lethal firepower are the price Americans pay for this blindness. Though they may be terrified and deeply disturbed, they do not see such crimes as terrorism or indeed as constitutionally state-sponsored terrorism.
Notice how the voice of a religious totalitarian state is nearly indistinguishable from the viewpoints you’ll find on almost any left-wing blog.
How come 'honor killings' only result in women's deaths?
From LGF
Our Friends the Saudis: Gun Rights = State-Sponsored Terrorism
In the wake of the Virginia Tech killings, the Saudi royal family’s English-speaking mouthpiece, ArabNews, published an editorial equating the right to bear arms with state-sponsored terrorism.
Most Americans simply do not see the falsity of their own position. So sure are they of their own moral rectitude that they utterly discount the standards and concerns of others as either irrelevant or wrong. This is all the easier for them because of the widespread ignorance of the outside world which, in the present administration, extends from the man in the street all the way to the president himself. This lack of international knowledge and awareness is the more remarkable given that America is such a rich mix of races and cultures. Yet once within the capacious US borders, immigrants sign up to a constitution which includes this obsolete right to carry guns whose sole purpose is to kill. Gangland murders and campus massacres by deluded youths armed with lethal firepower are the price Americans pay for this blindness. Though they may be terrified and deeply disturbed, they do not see such crimes as terrorism or indeed as constitutionally state-sponsored terrorism.
Notice how the voice of a religious totalitarian state is nearly indistinguishable from the viewpoints you’ll find on almost any left-wing blog.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Carry a concealed weapon-GUN! Part 1
The first of a multi part series for citizens, not LE or military.
So skipping the intro..... here we go.
Guns are not a magic charm, they by themselves will not prevent bad things from happening to you. See the many hunter's who get lost and die while armed. Indeed, all one would need to do is wear a gun and no crime or bad things would ever occur in your vicinity. Riiiiiiiiight.............
So in order for a gun to be useful one must be ready to use it and have it with them. Don't think by flashing it around, it will save you. If the perp. (perpetrator) thinks you won't shoot he will attack. Granted 9 of 10 times just grabbing iron and being ready will end the incident, but there is that remainder where you have to shoot.
Mindset, if you can not shoot a perp to protect yourself or a loved one you should seek other solutions. A gun is not for you.
So skipping the intro..... here we go.
Guns are not a magic charm, they by themselves will not prevent bad things from happening to you. See the many hunter's who get lost and die while armed. Indeed, all one would need to do is wear a gun and no crime or bad things would ever occur in your vicinity. Riiiiiiiiight.............
So in order for a gun to be useful one must be ready to use it and have it with them. Don't think by flashing it around, it will save you. If the perp. (perpetrator) thinks you won't shoot he will attack. Granted 9 of 10 times just grabbing iron and being ready will end the incident, but there is that remainder where you have to shoot.
Mindset, if you can not shoot a perp to protect yourself or a loved one you should seek other solutions. A gun is not for you.
ROP?? stepping on the infidel
I think all moslems are wicked.
This is one of many examples. The below just rubs the wrong way.
Not all religions are considered the same I suppose. America and the West think through a Judeo-Christian-western mindset. Our enemy does not.
Didn't the big rhubarb in Shiite'ville(Sistanni?) call infidels the same as semen and feces?
Also what makes semen dirty like sh*t?
http://phibetacons.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2ViOTQ3MzAzZGQ3OTA2ZjM1Mjc5MGM2ZDZlMzBlY2Y=
On Muslims Praying for Non-Muslim Dead [Candace de Russy]
From the MEMRI blog:
Liberal Arab Website Reports: Debate on Virginia Tech Muslims Students' Mailing List Concerning Permissibility of Praying for Mercy for Non-Muslim Victims
The liberal Arabic-language website Aafaq reports that a Muslim student set off a debate when she sent an email to the mailing list of a Muslim students' association (rabitat al-tullab al-muslimin) at Virginia Tech asking the students to pray that Allah have mercy on those killed and wounded in the shooting attack at the university.
According to Aafaq, the dean of student affairs at American International University, Abu Hamza Hijji, responded, writing that Allah the Most Merciful forbids praying for mercy for the non-Muslim dead, or even for the non-Muslim living, and that it is only permitted to pray that they be rightly guided. He added that what happened was a sad occurrence, but that does not give Muslims the right to transgress the laws of Allah the Most Merciful.
...
Source: Aafaq.org, April 17, 2007
This is one of many examples. The below just rubs the wrong way.
Not all religions are considered the same I suppose. America and the West think through a Judeo-Christian-western mindset. Our enemy does not.
Didn't the big rhubarb in Shiite'ville(Sistanni?) call infidels the same as semen and feces?
Also what makes semen dirty like sh*t?
http://phibetacons.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2ViOTQ3MzAzZGQ3OTA2ZjM1Mjc5MGM2ZDZlMzBlY2Y=
On Muslims Praying for Non-Muslim Dead [Candace de Russy]
From the MEMRI blog:
Liberal Arab Website Reports: Debate on Virginia Tech Muslims Students' Mailing List Concerning Permissibility of Praying for Mercy for Non-Muslim Victims
The liberal Arabic-language website Aafaq reports that a Muslim student set off a debate when she sent an email to the mailing list of a Muslim students' association (rabitat al-tullab al-muslimin) at Virginia Tech asking the students to pray that Allah have mercy on those killed and wounded in the shooting attack at the university.
According to Aafaq, the dean of student affairs at American International University, Abu Hamza Hijji, responded, writing that Allah the Most Merciful forbids praying for mercy for the non-Muslim dead, or even for the non-Muslim living, and that it is only permitted to pray that they be rightly guided. He added that what happened was a sad occurrence, but that does not give Muslims the right to transgress the laws of Allah the Most Merciful.
...
Source: Aafaq.org, April 17, 2007
A certain NV Senator and Baghdad Bob
So is it true? Baghdad Bob ran around telling how the Americans would loose and they were no where near the BIA Airport. So now the Senate Majority leader is doing the same?
Since I'm not in politics, I can probably say this but Sen. Reid is sort of a pipsqueak pris. If we were caught up in a riot somewhere I would not hand the distinguished Senator a firearm, he would shoot me or himself, not the crazies roaming 'round.
http://tank.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OGM2M2RmYzg1MjkzYmNlNDVlNjZlMjg1Y2M3NTZlNmU=
Reid compared to Aziz [W. Thomas Smith Jr.]
Just got off the phone with a U.S. Naval officer in Baghdad, who tells me his fellow officers in Iraq are saying Sen. Harry Reid reminds them of Saddam's deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz.
.
Remember him — The U.S. Central Command's 'eight of spades' in the 'Iraq's most-wanted' card deck?
.
As U.S. and coalition forces in Kuwait began surging toward the Iraqi border in March 2003, Aziz desperately proclaimed Saddam's army was "certain of victory," and American soldiers "will be defeated."
.
Last week, as Gen. David Petraeus's new and ongoing "surge" continued to expand in Iraq, Reid desperately proclaimed the Iraq War "is lost."
Since I'm not in politics, I can probably say this but Sen. Reid is sort of a pipsqueak pris. If we were caught up in a riot somewhere I would not hand the distinguished Senator a firearm, he would shoot me or himself, not the crazies roaming 'round.
http://tank.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OGM2M2RmYzg1MjkzYmNlNDVlNjZlMjg1Y2M3NTZlNmU=
Reid compared to Aziz [W. Thomas Smith Jr.]
Just got off the phone with a U.S. Naval officer in Baghdad, who tells me his fellow officers in Iraq are saying Sen. Harry Reid reminds them of Saddam's deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz.
.
Remember him — The U.S. Central Command's 'eight of spades' in the 'Iraq's most-wanted' card deck?
.
As U.S. and coalition forces in Kuwait began surging toward the Iraqi border in March 2003, Aziz desperately proclaimed Saddam's army was "certain of victory," and American soldiers "will be defeated."
.
Last week, as Gen. David Petraeus's new and ongoing "surge" continued to expand in Iraq, Reid desperately proclaimed the Iraq War "is lost."
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Know your enemy
More from The Corner
It is unfortunate we don't take the gloves off with our moslem enemies.
They are busy sexing vegetables--see below.
Religious tolerance is the concept we are hammered with as Westerners. The problem is the tolerance is supposed to be between intra-Christian. Being tolerant of intolerant islam is silly, dangerous and will end in a humongous war in the next 50 years.
We have a religious war coming where both sides are taking part. Right now only one side is taking part(hint:isl.....) the other side is wringing their hankies out over Abu Grab............................
More Corner
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTQ2NjAwMjkwMjY3N2JiYTkzMDU0NDAyNWQ2YTMzOTQ=
How Crazy Is Al Qaeda? [Andy McCarthy]
From AP via the Houston Chronicle (h/t Wretchard at The Belmont Club):
American commanders cite al-Qaida's severe brand of Islam, which is so extreme that in Baqouba, al-Qaida has warned street vendors not to place tomatoes beside cucumbers because the vegetables are different genders, Col. David Sutherland said.
It is unfortunate we don't take the gloves off with our moslem enemies.
They are busy sexing vegetables--see below.
Religious tolerance is the concept we are hammered with as Westerners. The problem is the tolerance is supposed to be between intra-Christian. Being tolerant of intolerant islam is silly, dangerous and will end in a humongous war in the next 50 years.
We have a religious war coming where both sides are taking part. Right now only one side is taking part(hint:isl.....) the other side is wringing their hankies out over Abu Grab............................
More Corner
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTQ2NjAwMjkwMjY3N2JiYTkzMDU0NDAyNWQ2YTMzOTQ=
How Crazy Is Al Qaeda? [Andy McCarthy]
From AP via the Houston Chronicle (h/t Wretchard at The Belmont Club):
American commanders cite al-Qaida's severe brand of Islam, which is so extreme that in Baqouba, al-Qaida has warned street vendors not to place tomatoes beside cucumbers because the vegetables are different genders, Col. David Sutherland said.
british sheep
Well said--see below.
Remember the police generally show up afterwards and try to figure out who did the crime, not rush in at the nick of time to save YOU.
Anyone ever notice how all those cop shows would be like if the victim was armed?
Anyway you are responsible for yourself, get used to it.
From the Corner
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=N2IxZGNiN2YyYjUzNDllNWI1MTk2Nzg5MzQ0MWJmZjE=
Britain, America and Guns [Andrew Stuttaford]
Here's an interesting post from 'Tom Paine' blogging away in Moscow. Prompted by much of the British response (too often it was gleefully smug) to the V-Tech tragedy Paine (a Brit) concludes as follows:
To carry a licensed gun in America, you must - in every State - have a clean criminal record. Am I naive enough to expect American criminals to obey America's gun control laws? No. The naive ones are those who expect British criminals to abide by Britain's. They simply don't. While, by definition, no law-abiding citizen in Britain is armed; one-third of young criminals own or have access to a gun. There may be as many as four million illegal firearms in Britain. For most of my life, I shared the common British view that America's attitude to gun control was crazy. However, disarming the law-abiding has proved to be disastrous. The British State can't or won't protect us. We were stupid to let it disarm us. Can we please just shut up about V-Tech? We have no leg to stand on.
That's well said. Read the whole thing.
Remember the police generally show up afterwards and try to figure out who did the crime, not rush in at the nick of time to save YOU.
Anyone ever notice how all those cop shows would be like if the victim was armed?
Anyway you are responsible for yourself, get used to it.
From the Corner
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=N2IxZGNiN2YyYjUzNDllNWI1MTk2Nzg5MzQ0MWJmZjE=
Britain, America and Guns [Andrew Stuttaford]
Here's an interesting post from 'Tom Paine' blogging away in Moscow. Prompted by much of the British response (too often it was gleefully smug) to the V-Tech tragedy Paine (a Brit) concludes as follows:
To carry a licensed gun in America, you must - in every State - have a clean criminal record. Am I naive enough to expect American criminals to obey America's gun control laws? No. The naive ones are those who expect British criminals to abide by Britain's. They simply don't. While, by definition, no law-abiding citizen in Britain is armed; one-third of young criminals own or have access to a gun. There may be as many as four million illegal firearms in Britain. For most of my life, I shared the common British view that America's attitude to gun control was crazy. However, disarming the law-abiding has proved to be disastrous. The British State can't or won't protect us. We were stupid to let it disarm us. Can we please just shut up about V-Tech? We have no leg to stand on.
That's well said. Read the whole thing.
stoopid cultures
I'm going to piggy back on the below from The Corner.
Culture matters. Islamic culture is pathetic. It is backward.....let's see someone rapes your daughter or sister and the appropriate response is...........
A) kill her
B)kill the attacker.
Guess which choice most moslems choose, that is right, A) they kill their daughter or sister, which is 180 degrees out of sync with a normal though process.
If we go back to prehistoric times can you picture a caveman doing this?(no offence to the guy in the Geico adverts)
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWM0Y2Q5NjE4NGMzZDhhNzc4ZTg0OTAxMmE4M2ZjMGM=
You gotta read this [Michael Ledeen]
I love this blog
it's the best analysis of, and remedy for, liberal guilt i've read in a long long time.
Try this, for example:
We have bought into multiculturalism because we no longer have the fortitude, the honesty or the intelligence to look someone in the eye and tell them, “Look, you are humiliated because you do not have the culture or political leaders or the education to be otherwise. You really need to stop making such a big deal about feeling humiliated. Why not try some of these simple steps toward civilization instead:
1. Specifically outlaw honor killing
2. Stop beating your wife and/or kids.
3. Send your kids to a decent school where they won’t waste their time memorizing an entire “holy book” to the exclusion of learning critical thinking skills and studying arithmetic, science and geography.
4. Forget using Israel, Jews and America as the excuse for being a looser.
5. Understand that your leader (fill in one: Ahmadinejad, Assad, Kadafy, Mubarak, Abdullah etc…) is a tyrant of the worst sort and is actually working hard to keep you ignorant and filled with rage, that’s how your feudal system works.
6. For God’s sake stop thinking of anyone who believes (or doesn’t believe in him) in him (God that is) in a different way than you do as less than human. That only makes you feel worse when you see that those “unbelievers” live better than you do.
If you take care of all that, there would be no need for you to feel humiliated anymore.”
Read the whole thing. Please.
Culture matters. Islamic culture is pathetic. It is backward.....let's see someone rapes your daughter or sister and the appropriate response is...........
A) kill her
B)kill the attacker.
Guess which choice most moslems choose, that is right, A) they kill their daughter or sister, which is 180 degrees out of sync with a normal though process.
If we go back to prehistoric times can you picture a caveman doing this?(no offence to the guy in the Geico adverts)
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWM0Y2Q5NjE4NGMzZDhhNzc4ZTg0OTAxMmE4M2ZjMGM=
You gotta read this [Michael Ledeen]
I love this blog
it's the best analysis of, and remedy for, liberal guilt i've read in a long long time.
Try this, for example:
We have bought into multiculturalism because we no longer have the fortitude, the honesty or the intelligence to look someone in the eye and tell them, “Look, you are humiliated because you do not have the culture or political leaders or the education to be otherwise. You really need to stop making such a big deal about feeling humiliated. Why not try some of these simple steps toward civilization instead:
1. Specifically outlaw honor killing
2. Stop beating your wife and/or kids.
3. Send your kids to a decent school where they won’t waste their time memorizing an entire “holy book” to the exclusion of learning critical thinking skills and studying arithmetic, science and geography.
4. Forget using Israel, Jews and America as the excuse for being a looser.
5. Understand that your leader (fill in one: Ahmadinejad, Assad, Kadafy, Mubarak, Abdullah etc…) is a tyrant of the worst sort and is actually working hard to keep you ignorant and filled with rage, that’s how your feudal system works.
6. For God’s sake stop thinking of anyone who believes (or doesn’t believe in him) in him (God that is) in a different way than you do as less than human. That only makes you feel worse when you see that those “unbelievers” live better than you do.
If you take care of all that, there would be no need for you to feel humiliated anymore.”
Read the whole thing. Please.
The needs of a modern Man
The modern man must carry the following:
A side arm, preferably concealed, unless out in the sticks.
A locking folding knife.
A cell phone for obvious communication needs but, you shoot or draw on some perp, you need to call the police to get your story in first.
A good flashlight is also a good idea, but since I'm a family man, I'm not out after dark much.
A side arm, preferably concealed, unless out in the sticks.
A locking folding knife.
A cell phone for obvious communication needs but, you shoot or draw on some perp, you need to call the police to get your story in first.
A good flashlight is also a good idea, but since I'm a family man, I'm not out after dark much.
Starting out with some Steyn!
First post
My man Steyn is the bomb! Can't add much to this. I fear guns also if I'm in front of them. I really like them when I'm to the side or behind them.
Cheers all.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/351710,CST-EDT-STEYN22.article
April 22, 2007
BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist
Within hours of the Virginia Tech massacre, the New York Times had identified the problem: ''What is needed, urgently, is stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage and such unbearable loss.''
According to the Canadian blogger Kate MacMillan, a caller to her local radio station went further and said she was teaching her children to ''fear guns.''
Overseas, meanwhile, the German network NTV was first to identify the perpetrator: To accompany their report on the shootings, they flashed up a picture of Charlton Heston touting his rifle at an NRA confab.
And at Yale, the dean of student affairs, Betty Trachtenberg, reacted to the Virginia Tech murders by taking decisive action: She banned all stage weapons from plays performed on campus. After protests from the drama department, she modified her decisive action to "permit the use of obviously fake weapons" such as plastic swords.
But it's not just the danger of overly realistic plastic swords in college plays that we face today. In yet another of his not-ready-for-prime-time speeches, Barack Obama started out deploring the violence of Virginia Tech as yet another example of the pervasive violence of our society: the violence of Iraq, the violence of Darfur, the violence of . . . er, hang on, give him a minute. Ah, yes, outsourcing: ''the violence of men and women who . . . suddenly have the rug pulled out from under them because their job has moved to another country." And let's not forget the violence of radio hosts: ''There's also another kind of violence, though, that we're going to have to think about. It's not necessarily physical violence, but violence that we perpetrate on each other in other ways. Last week the big news, obviously, had to do with Imus and the verbal violence that was directed at young women who were role models for all of us, role models for my daughters.''
I've had some mail in recent days from people who claimed I'd insulted the dead of Virginia Tech. Obviously, I regret I didn't show the exquisite taste and sensitivity of Sen. Obama and compare getting shot in the head to an Imus one-liner. Does he mean it? I doubt whether even he knows. When something savage and unexpected happens, it's easiest to retreat to our tropes and bugbears or, in the senator's case, a speech on the previous week's "big news." Perhaps I'm guilty of the same. But then Yale University, one of the most prestigious institutes of learning on the planet, announces that it's no longer safe to expose twentysomething men and women to ''Henry V'' unless you cry God for Harry, England and St. George while brandishing a bright pink and purple plastic sword from the local kindergarten. Except, of course, that the local kindergarten long since banned plastic swords under its own "zero tolerance" policy.
I think we have a problem in our culture not with "realistic weapons" but with being realistic about reality. After all, we already "fear guns," at least in the hands of NRA members. Otherwise, why would we ban them from so many areas of life? Virginia Tech, remember, was a "gun-free zone," formally and proudly designated as such by the college administration. Yet the killer kept his guns and ammo on the campus. It was a "gun-free zone" except for those belonging to the guy who wanted to kill everybody. Had the Second Amendment not been in effect repealed by VT, someone might have been able to do as two students did five years ago at the Appalachian Law School: When a would-be mass murderer showed up, they rushed for their vehicles, grabbed their guns and pinned him down until the cops arrived.
But you can't do that at Virginia Tech. Instead, the administration has created a "Gun-Free School Zone." Or, to be more accurate, they've created a sign that says "Gun-Free School Zone." And, like a loopy medieval sultan, they thought that simply declaring it to be so would make it so. The "gun-free zone" turned out to be a fraud -- not just because there were at least two guns on the campus last Monday, but in the more important sense that the college was promoting to its students a profoundly deluded view of the world.
I live in northern New England, which has a very low crime rate, in part because it has a high rate of gun ownership. We do have the occasional murder, however. A few years back, a couple of alienated loser teens from a small Vermont town decided they were going to kill somebody, steal his ATM cards, and go to Australia. So they went to a remote house in the woods a couple of towns away, knocked on the door, and said their car had broken down. The guy thought their story smelled funny so he picked up his Glock and told 'em to get lost. So they concocted a better story, and pretended to be students doing an environmental survey. Unfortunately, the next old coot in the woods was sick of environmentalists and chased 'em away. Eventually they figured they could spend months knocking on doors in rural Vermont and New Hampshire and seeing nothing for their pains but cranky guys in plaid leveling both barrels through the screen door. So even these idiots worked it out: Where's the nearest place around here where you're most likely to encounter gullible defenseless types who have foresworn all means of resistance? Answer: Dartmouth College. So they drove over the Connecticut River, rang the doorbell, and brutally murdered a couple of well-meaning liberal professors. Two depraved misfits of crushing stupidity (to judge from their diaries) had nevertheless identified precisely the easiest murder victims in the twin-state area. To promote vulnerability as a moral virtue is not merely foolish. Like the new Yale props department policy, it signals to everyone that you're not in the real world.
The "gun-free zone" fraud isn't just about banning firearms or even a symptom of academia's distaste for an entire sensibility of which the Second Amendment is part and parcel but part of a deeper reluctance of critical segments of our culture to engage with reality. Michelle Malkin wrote a column a few days ago connecting the prohibition against physical self-defense with "the erosion of intellectual self-defense," and the retreat of college campuses into a smothering security blanket of speech codes and "safe spaces" that's the very opposite of the principles of honest enquiry and vigorous debate on which university life was founded. And so we "fear guns," and "verbal violence," and excessively realistic swashbuckling in the varsity production of ''The Three Musketeers.'' What kind of functioning society can emerge from such a cocoon?
©Mark Steyn, 2007
My man Steyn is the bomb! Can't add much to this. I fear guns also if I'm in front of them. I really like them when I'm to the side or behind them.
Cheers all.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/351710,CST-EDT-STEYN22.article
Let's be realistic about reality
April 22, 2007
BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist
Within hours of the Virginia Tech massacre, the New York Times had identified the problem: ''What is needed, urgently, is stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage and such unbearable loss.''
According to the Canadian blogger Kate MacMillan, a caller to her local radio station went further and said she was teaching her children to ''fear guns.''
Overseas, meanwhile, the German network NTV was first to identify the perpetrator: To accompany their report on the shootings, they flashed up a picture of Charlton Heston touting his rifle at an NRA confab.
And at Yale, the dean of student affairs, Betty Trachtenberg, reacted to the Virginia Tech murders by taking decisive action: She banned all stage weapons from plays performed on campus. After protests from the drama department, she modified her decisive action to "permit the use of obviously fake weapons" such as plastic swords.
But it's not just the danger of overly realistic plastic swords in college plays that we face today. In yet another of his not-ready-for-prime-time speeches, Barack Obama started out deploring the violence of Virginia Tech as yet another example of the pervasive violence of our society: the violence of Iraq, the violence of Darfur, the violence of . . . er, hang on, give him a minute. Ah, yes, outsourcing: ''the violence of men and women who . . . suddenly have the rug pulled out from under them because their job has moved to another country." And let's not forget the violence of radio hosts: ''There's also another kind of violence, though, that we're going to have to think about. It's not necessarily physical violence, but violence that we perpetrate on each other in other ways. Last week the big news, obviously, had to do with Imus and the verbal violence that was directed at young women who were role models for all of us, role models for my daughters.''
I've had some mail in recent days from people who claimed I'd insulted the dead of Virginia Tech. Obviously, I regret I didn't show the exquisite taste and sensitivity of Sen. Obama and compare getting shot in the head to an Imus one-liner. Does he mean it? I doubt whether even he knows. When something savage and unexpected happens, it's easiest to retreat to our tropes and bugbears or, in the senator's case, a speech on the previous week's "big news." Perhaps I'm guilty of the same. But then Yale University, one of the most prestigious institutes of learning on the planet, announces that it's no longer safe to expose twentysomething men and women to ''Henry V'' unless you cry God for Harry, England and St. George while brandishing a bright pink and purple plastic sword from the local kindergarten. Except, of course, that the local kindergarten long since banned plastic swords under its own "zero tolerance" policy.
I think we have a problem in our culture not with "realistic weapons" but with being realistic about reality. After all, we already "fear guns," at least in the hands of NRA members. Otherwise, why would we ban them from so many areas of life? Virginia Tech, remember, was a "gun-free zone," formally and proudly designated as such by the college administration. Yet the killer kept his guns and ammo on the campus. It was a "gun-free zone" except for those belonging to the guy who wanted to kill everybody. Had the Second Amendment not been in effect repealed by VT, someone might have been able to do as two students did five years ago at the Appalachian Law School: When a would-be mass murderer showed up, they rushed for their vehicles, grabbed their guns and pinned him down until the cops arrived.
But you can't do that at Virginia Tech. Instead, the administration has created a "Gun-Free School Zone." Or, to be more accurate, they've created a sign that says "Gun-Free School Zone." And, like a loopy medieval sultan, they thought that simply declaring it to be so would make it so. The "gun-free zone" turned out to be a fraud -- not just because there were at least two guns on the campus last Monday, but in the more important sense that the college was promoting to its students a profoundly deluded view of the world.
I live in northern New England, which has a very low crime rate, in part because it has a high rate of gun ownership. We do have the occasional murder, however. A few years back, a couple of alienated loser teens from a small Vermont town decided they were going to kill somebody, steal his ATM cards, and go to Australia. So they went to a remote house in the woods a couple of towns away, knocked on the door, and said their car had broken down. The guy thought their story smelled funny so he picked up his Glock and told 'em to get lost. So they concocted a better story, and pretended to be students doing an environmental survey. Unfortunately, the next old coot in the woods was sick of environmentalists and chased 'em away. Eventually they figured they could spend months knocking on doors in rural Vermont and New Hampshire and seeing nothing for their pains but cranky guys in plaid leveling both barrels through the screen door. So even these idiots worked it out: Where's the nearest place around here where you're most likely to encounter gullible defenseless types who have foresworn all means of resistance? Answer: Dartmouth College. So they drove over the Connecticut River, rang the doorbell, and brutally murdered a couple of well-meaning liberal professors. Two depraved misfits of crushing stupidity (to judge from their diaries) had nevertheless identified precisely the easiest murder victims in the twin-state area. To promote vulnerability as a moral virtue is not merely foolish. Like the new Yale props department policy, it signals to everyone that you're not in the real world.
The "gun-free zone" fraud isn't just about banning firearms or even a symptom of academia's distaste for an entire sensibility of which the Second Amendment is part and parcel but part of a deeper reluctance of critical segments of our culture to engage with reality. Michelle Malkin wrote a column a few days ago connecting the prohibition against physical self-defense with "the erosion of intellectual self-defense," and the retreat of college campuses into a smothering security blanket of speech codes and "safe spaces" that's the very opposite of the principles of honest enquiry and vigorous debate on which university life was founded. And so we "fear guns," and "verbal violence," and excessively realistic swashbuckling in the varsity production of ''The Three Musketeers.'' What kind of functioning society can emerge from such a cocoon?
©Mark Steyn, 2007
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