Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Snark of the Century

...maybe the Millennium!

Newt Gingrich:

"As an American, I am not so shocked that Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize without any accomplishments to his name, but that America gave him the White House based on the same credentials"

Emailed to me by yet another Grumpy Major.

The victimology of the Ft. Hood attack

They were soldiers.

Does anything more need to be said, MSM?

I think not, so STFU with sobby victim stories.

The most dangerous thought about Ft. Hood

...comes from Roberta X's blog, as outlined by Say Uncle.

I cannot imagine a more dangerous thought than to try to put a smiley face on the Ft. Hood tragedy by saying that we must think also of the thousands of military Muslims who did NOT develop "Sudden Jihad Syndrome" (a Say Uncle invention, and a good one!).

In fact, Roberta X may have just brought us closer to the truth without trying: Those 3,999 to 13,999 Muslims she cites have long ago made a conscious decision NOT to eject the Jihadists from their midst, so they are guilty of concealing the Jihadists in their midst.

Is it morally just for us to cite our right of self-defense and kill every Muslim we can find, just to get at the tiny fraction of them who are Jihadists?

Probably not.

Is it morally right for the vast majority of Muslims to declare their innocence of the Jihad atrocities just because individually, THEY didn't pick up weapons to use on non-believers?

Definitely not.

The history of religion is replete with instances of minority sects hijacking the main religion, whatever it's flavor. If you study that history, you will note that most of these religious uprisings are soon put down, and the religion restored to it's mainstream course. Islam is different, in that the religion has ALWAYS tolerated the Jihadists amongst them, and in fact, there are great periods of it's 1,200-year existence where the minority Jihadists have forcibly controlled the entire religion. I wouldn't say that's the case now, but it's headed in that direction, and has gone far enough in that direction to where no Muslim can be trusted, without fail, to end the threat of a Jihadist either personally, or with the aid of outside assistance.

Sorry, Roberta X, you are wrong, and you could be DEAD WRONG if you allow your actions to mimic your published thought.

Bunker in

Time for the Grumpy Major's Club to bunker in, I guess.

Just out: the "Primary Shooter" at Ft Hood was one MAJ Malik Nadal Hassan, a life-long Muslim convert. The same report seems to say that the Major took the point and made the initial attack with two pistols, but had two soldier-accomplices who ambushed SWAT officers who came to the scene following the Active Shooter Doctrine. One civilian police officer was killed and four wounded. Any bets as to whether the two accomplices were also Muslim converts?

Stay tuned. Fox News says now: LONE SHOOTER! For a shrink, that's deadly work!

While you are tuned, open a new tab over at Say Uncle's, where a lively discussion of the incident ensues.

Now that the details are mostly out (great job on ComSec, Army! You kept the press buffaloed for the better part of 4 hours), let's get one thing straight:

The Second Amendment is hardly involved in this, so let's NOT turn it into a 2A bunker-in session.

THE ISSUE IS RADICAL ISLAM, PEOPLE!

Let's keep this in perspective.

The Scozzafava lessons

It was the only thing the (D)onks could crow about after Tuesday's elections, their slim victory in the by-election in New York district 23, where their man barely beat out a Conservative Party candidate.

What are the lessons for the GOP out of that unique election?

First lesson: The National GOP MUST pay closer attention to candidate selections by local party apparatchiks. Dede Scozzafava is a well-known VERY liberal Republican in those parts, and has flirted more than once with the idea of switching parties. Scozzafava should have never gotten to the ballot as a Republican candidate.

Second Lesson: When a third-party candidate such as Conservative Party Doug Hoffman begins to outpoll the GOP candidate, why didn't the GOP have a plan in place to deal with it? That plan could have included options such as dumping Scozzafava and supporting Hoffman with enough money to allow him to win the election over Demoratic Party candidate Bill Owens. Is it possible that the entire NY State GOP party machine (I may be overusing the word "machine" here) is weak enough so that they didn't recognize what was was happening? If so, the National RNC should have stepped in.

Third Lesson: When Fox News asked Dede Scozzafava last week if she would switch parties after the election, and she REFUSED TO ANSWER, that should have set off every alarm bell at RNC HQ, but it didn't. Michael Steele and Co sat on their hands. At that point, they had five days to send some high-powered people up there, talk to Hoffman, get him on board, and start helping him with some last-minute TV ads, but they sat on their hands, Scozzafava dropped out and asked her supporters to vote Democrat. Somehow, I see that as having been perfectly predictable, and if I can see that from here, why couldn't the RNC?

The questions from this Congressional election debacle just keep cropping up, like mushrooms in the lawn in Oregon during November.

The GOP needs to examine EVERY State party apparatus, and invite GOP voters to send in evaluations of whether that apparatus can actually handle the job at hand. If they had done this in New York, Dede Scozzafava would still be just another crossover voter, not the national spoiler she turned into.

IN NY23, the GOP had an opportunity to ally themselves with the upcoming Conservative Party and use mutual strengths to take a seat that had been a "safe" Democrat seat since the Civil War. They blew that opportunity.

With Speaker Pelosi trying to force an unpopular, early, ill-advised vote on socialized medicine this week, the GOP has a great opportunity to gain visibility as saviors of the culture (it WOULD help, though, if they advanced their own Bill). After the Scozzafava debacle, I wonder if anyone is home at RNC?

While Democrats lie.......

The US Dollar circles the drain of worthlessness.

It's now at $1095 against gold, up about $30 from yesterday, which was up about $20 from the day before.

The pattern of trading gold has changed, and gold is back trading strictly as a safe haven, and is not being traded, as it had been for over a year, as a commodity.

Now all the previous gold-trading adages come to mind, and are verifiable.

The one I like the best is "Gold never gets more valuable, the currencies measured against it get less valuable." Give my father, who taught me the value of owning gold, the credit for that one.

Taking my late Dad at his word, the US Dollar is in a flushed toilet, circling the drain now, but it inevitably will go down the hole into oblivion.

What I don't get is the stock market, which traders keep pumping up to huge inflationary heights. These are the people that business and private investors trust with their hard-earned money, and they are still buying GM, Chrysler and Citi?

It's fun to fire up my calculator and see what the value of my gold would be if I sold it, almost like the feeling I get on those rare days when I buy a lottery ticket.

Then, it always hits me, and I get angry at these leftists who have so thoroughly trashed the US economy that it will never recover in my lifetime.

I cry for my children.

Ducks, classified

I'm a Duck fan. GO DUCKS!

I've hunted ducks, eaten ducks, plucked a lot of ducks (my Mom refused to pluck the ducks I shot before college classes).

I know ducks.

As of last night, Obama and the Democratic Party are Lame ducks.

That is all.

Rough ride

...coming for your blogger.

The National Weather Service has started hoisting watches and warnings for the first severe coastal storm of the season. We'll have winds of 50-60 mph locally, although they will exceed hurricane force farther out to sea, 25-foot breakers on the beaches and coastal bars, and feet of snow in the Cascade Mountains.

Preceding this storm, which arrives Thursday night, will be increasing offshore winds through the Columbia River Gorge, and I sit at the mouth of said Gorge. I'm already semi-battened, did some fence repair today, may throw another couple of dead batteries on the BBQ so it doesn't skate off my patio. Oh, and I'll have to be standing tall in less than 6 hours when the garbage convoy arrives, because my rolling carts will want to hit top gear as soon as they are tipped into the truck and emptied.

I've been going through this evolution since 1972, when I first moved to this part of the Portland area.

Adding to this weather excitement, a family member announced that she possibly has the flu, unknown which variety. I am exposed, since we sat down to a family steak BBQ with her just two days ago.

Here's my initial flu-fighting regimen:

• Increase water intake by 100%
• Begin Airborne and continue at 8-hour intervals
• Lower household temperature to 65 degrees and layer up the clothing.
• Break out my spirometer (lung capacity meter) and take a baseline reading of my lung capacity (the better to tell if I'm getting pneumonia if I do contract the flu). check, I maxed it at 2500 cc on 3 consecutive breaths.
• Begin regular body temperature reading/recording.
• Cancel all but emergency logistics.
• Think positive thoughts (where did I put that Jenna Jamison video).

I could self-quarantine here for at least 3 months with zero outside resources, but I should know in 2 or 3 days if I'm going to get sick.

It's good to have a plan.

A statistical aberration, I'm sure

This story tells us that all the Congresscritters currently being investigated by the Ethics panel are black.

Really?

Then the article gets into the Mark One Mod Zero pushback of the Black Caucus (deny, deny, deny, counter-accuse).

Actually, I'm going to do the Black Caucus a favor. First, I'm going to take their side, then I'm going to point out that this is nothing more than a statistical aberration.

If you start with the proposition that ALL Congresscritters have ethics issues, which is VERY easy to demonstrate, it is just the Black Caucus' bad luck that the current crop of investigatees are all black.

Oh, by the way, they are all Democrats, also. That fact is of FAR greater importance than the color of their skin.

BTW, my comments here are about a Liberal Congress, reported on by a Liberal news organization (Yahoo!).

Make a note of it.

NPR get it's bias on

...with a poll on the White House - Fox News feud, which to date, has boosted Fox's ratings into the stratosphere (where they are contributing to glow-bull warmening, undoubtedly, heh).

The Left must be blog-storming the poll, since it has well over a million votes so far.

Here's what we on the right need to do. Go to this site, and write NPR a short message telling them that since they have become such an obvious tool of the White House and the left, you will work with your congresscritter to defund them. They can't make it without their snout in the public trough, and they also can't make it without the donations of the Right, which contributes during their many Pledge Weeks for things like their subsidiary classical music stations, for example.

NPR needs to get the message that since they exist from the public dole and the public's charitable donations, blatant political interference of this sort will not be tolerated.

Ger 'er done, here's what I sent:

"Dear NPR,

There are few folks in the world who do not know of your leftward political bias.

Bias is one thing, but interfering in the political process, which is what the "poll" on Fox News does, is quite another.

I seriously doubt that the conditions under which you receive taxpayer dollars to continue operations legally allows this level of tinkering with the political machine.

I also doubt that you and all your subsidiary stations can make it financially without the support of conservative members of society who donate to your operations funding for some of your better programming.

When you depart from simply being left-leaning to being an out-and-out shill for President Obama's idiotic feud with Fox News, you have crossed the line.

I suggest that you remove the poll, and refuse the White House's requests to use it to further their idiotic war with Fox News.

Up to now, I've been a fence-sitter with regard to your operations at taxpayer expense.

This one event has put me in the trenches with conservatives in their move to end your political hegemony.

When the Congress changes hands next year, and the White House two years later, your very existence will be in serious jeopardy.

It is VERY shortsighted of you to climb into Obama's political pigpen and get all that pig-slime on you.

What were you thinking?

signed, a former donee."

...and THAT's what's known as activism. My good deed for the day is done.

*****************************************************************************

UPDATE: Commenter Gerry N correctly points out my poor use of English. I am a DONOR (or have been in the past) to NPR, not a DONEE. Thank you Sir, may I have another?

Lines in the Sand, revisited

In the past two posts I have suggested a subject, then cajoled readers into replying. Sorry if I stepped on your toes, but this is not only the most important subject we will ever consider as citizens, it may be the most important subject to affect our lives as individuals.

There is a huge force in the world to promote and install ever more collectivism. That's the facts, ma'am, and it can't be ignored. In the US of A we gave in ever so incrementally over the past 60 years to this force, but always held it at bay, and all the great accomplishments of this nation (and a couple of it's worst mistakes) were due to the pervading individualist spirit upon which this Nation was founded.

The days of incrementalism are over, and the current leadership of our nation wants to finish the job of turning us into a totally collectivist nation within the next few years. All of this is fact, written in the screeds of those same leaders, not a one of whom has ever beat the drum for individualism, except as to how the individual might improve him/herself to make collectivism work better.

Folks, collectivism works poorly as a base for society, and the only scale it works in at all is the smallest scale, the family. When individuals are allowed and encouraged to let their ideas and contributions flourish (yes, for profit!), the results enrich and improve the society of individuals and small groupings. When individuals are discouraged or prohibited from using their intelligence to originate new ideas and contributions, except to hand the fruit of those efforts over to the government, which they then CAN'T trust to fairly distribute those fruits, then chaos reigns, as we have now.

Most of us recognize this, but I have to preach it on the off-chance that a new reader might have his/her eyes opened in time to become a self-sufficient individual.

Now we get to the difficult part, for most of we individuals have no desire or intent to harm our neighbors, no matter how misguided they may be in their personal contribution or outlook towards society.

At some point, we are going to have to reverse the effects of the misguided government which is rapidly ramming the full measure of collectivism down our individualist throats, using force to accomplish their end.

At some point, we are going to have to "throw the bums out", as my late father would say.

The difficult part is though, that simply throwing the bums out doesn't accomplish the goal of putting the Nation back on the track that leads towards an individualist-based society. For THAT correction to be made, first the bums have to be thrown out, but then, all their misguided policy and law has to be thrown out with them, and we have to get back to the original law and intent of the Framers of our Constitution.

It's the second part of this action plan which requires a "Line in the Sand".

The first part is easy, and is now quite likely to occur during the next two election cycles (explains the rush of the collectivists, doesn't it? They ALSO know that their time as leaders is nearing an end).

So, our action plan has to be, first, the "un-do", getting rid of the collectivists, and second, a "re-do", striking the collectivist policy and law forever from the statute-books. If we do the first, the "un-do" of the Democratic Party, without doing the second, the "re-do" of our law-based society, we have accomplished nothing, absolutely nothing.

Working hard to elect Republican Party candidates by itself accomplishes nothing, because it's unlikely that the Republicans, given the reins of power suddenly, like they were in 1994, will do much about stripping the lawbooks clear of collectivist dogma and policy. Simply not enacting any MORE collectivist law will not do, because enough of that societal poison has already been crammed into governmental policy and law that any attempt of a resurgent Republican Party to run the country on a conservative, individualist basis is doomed to failure.

There is not only collectivist dogma pervading our rule of law, there is a  collectivist judiciary to endorse and enforce it. That judiciary has to be changed out also, or there will be zero effect to a change of leadership.

Now, can any of you "I'll draw my line in private" folks see just how drawing that line privately is going to further the "re-do", complete with new law striking the lifetime appointments of Federal judges?

Your "Private Lines in the Sand" aren't going to do a damn thing. The nation may indeed throw the bums out next November, and throw the Big Bum out two years later, but at the rate of accumulating damage to the individualist aspect of our society, just how are the new conservative leaders supposed to be effective? Every piece of legislation which comes down the collectivist pipeline from Reid and Pelosi to Obama has language in it designed to make it's effect permanent.

It will NOT be enough to change the leadership, dump the Czars and (maybe) re-balance the Federal budget.

The very idea of the collectivist society started by President Roosevelt and made more intrusive by every Democratic Party President since has to be excised from the body politic, and the laws that guide our existence as a nation of individuals.

You probably DIDN'T hear it here first, but "Throwing the bums out" doesn't get that done, not in the least.

We need NOTHING LESS than the closing of the First American Republic and the start of the Second American Republic, complete with a new Constitution.

That's MY Line in the Sand, and it's out there for all to see, and think about.

The rest of MY life will be spent in working for the COMPLETE dissolution of our present government, and it's COMPLETE replacement with leaders who are sworn to uphold the idea that the individual, not the collective, is supreme, as well as laws to effect that idea.

Any of you who are working for a lesser goal are simply wasting your time, and your actions play right into the hands of the collectivists. By being nothing more than the "loyal opposition", you have failed in your duty to the Framers' original idea that this was to be a Nation of individuals, banded together ONLY for the purpose of the Common Defense.

Let's get back to that ideal. Let's get to work on the Second Republic.

The most important question is ignored

I'm getting a little frustrated here, to put it mildly.

I ask the most important question I've ever asked of readers, to define their "line in the sand", and I get zero replies. Zero, zilch, nada, rien.

Folks, if you can't be bothered to answer this important question, either I am irrelevant, you are irrelevant, or both.

People, this is why our nation is in the hands of idiots now, and why it is about to be made irrelevant among nations: no one wants to step up and say the words.

I'm probably not going to keep at this quest much longer myself.

Lines in the sand

We've all heard the term, "Line in the sand", and we all suppose that it is a point, once crossed, that a definitive action will be taken, and there will be no retreat from that definitive action once it is initiated.

Almost every gun blog, and a few political blogs as well, have referred at one point or another to "Lines in the Sand".

The problem is that once declared, these lines in the sand tend to be forgotten, and once forgotten, well, they aren't lines in the sand any longer, are they?

A Line in the Sand is supposed to work both ways: it is supposed to remind you (the drawer of that Line) that it exists, and maybe you will have to cross it, and it is supposed to remind the party on the other side of it that there is always the possibility of you coming across the Line and having a set-to.

So, to get to the point of this post, maybe we should have a "Line in the Sand" blogstorm, and all pick a date, and write up our Lines in the Sand on that date, and publish them.

My vote for the Line in the Sand Day is the night President Obama gives his State of the Union address.

Comments?

Suggestions?

Loaded-chamber indicators

For the life of me, I can't figure out why this discussion keeps popping up.

Now it seems that respected gun-blogger Tam (I'm not a reader) has opined, and that started a chain of responses, including a blogger I DO read every day, PawPaw.

I commented over at PawPaw's, but it seems to me that this is a non-fruit-bearing discussion.

Let's take it one step at a time.

First, all guns are loaded, all the time. That's Rule One, and if you fail to heed it, you WILL have an unintentional discharge, which could be anywhere from embarrassing to fatal, depending only on luck, which you DON'T want to have to depend on.

Second, all of us gun people, as well as the gun manufacturers, can read, and we keep reading about unintentional discharges with bad results. All of us want to stop those issues, so we preach the Four Rules, and we re-preach the Four Rules, etc. Some of us (Joe Huffman is an example), even compose new language for the four rules, but always, THE FOUR RULES.

It doesn't stop there. If we were perfect students, it COULD  stop there, but we're not, so it doesn't.

Enter the manufacturers. It doesn't stop there with them, either, thanks to product liability lawsuits, so they HAVE to continue to find ways of improving product to avoid these lawsuits.

Years ago, probably at the dawn of Browning's era, came the Loaded Chamber Indicator for semi-auto pistols. I have an early example, a pre-war Walther PP.

Loaded chamber indicators make sense, not only to help protect manufacturers from lawsuits, not only to protect dummies who can't or won't learn the Four Rules and apply them, but for other reasons as well.

My Walther, being a blowback action, gets dirty. The main way I tell that it is dirty is the Loaded Chamber Indicator, which starts to get sticky. When it starts to get sticky, so does the firing pin in it's channel. Then the pistol needs detailed stripping and cleaning.

That's a bennie of LCIs that no one else seems to have noticed, helping you know when your pistol needs detailed stripping and cleaning.

It's like this, boys and girls: you have a manual safety on your firearm (unless it's a Glock or clone). That safety doesn't need "Safe" and "Fire" designations to function, but most have them. You accept them, right?

'Nuff said. Go with the flow. Find something else to vent about, this isn't a real issue. Nothing to see here, move along.

Capiche?

DEA agents killed in the 'Stan?

So says Fox News, just now.

Ummm.

Something got left out.

Why are DEA agents in the 'Stan, and how much permission did they obtain before going in?

Yes, I know all about the heroin thing. Learned that in my first police academy in '73, thank you.

However, I learned well before that, there is NO such a thing as "international law enforcement". ANY Law enforcement operation from one nation needs the permission of the target nation before such operation can begin, and my guess is that the DEA didn't ask first.

Also, from my International Studies classes in college, I learned that all operations of the US Government in foreign lands are subject to Congressional review, and I have heard of exactly NONE on this operation.

This is NOT about interdicting heroin at it's source, this is ALL about this nation believing that it can inject it's police forces anywhere, do anything with them, and all because some of that poppy gum winds up in our worthless citizens who abuse it.

This is ALSO all about the current administration's idea that everything is a law enforcement problem, and we don't need the stinkin' military there, we can solve all the problems with Federal Agents.

Sorry to harsh your mellow, my DEA and FBI friends, those Taliban don't give a rip about your government's policy, you're just another target to them, another blip on top of the front sight of an AK.

To my Government: Pull the idiot Federal Agents out of the theater of war, and use soldiers to do what work needs to be done. Soldiers ARE war-fighters, and Federal Agents are about bringing lawbreakers to justice. There is ZERO compatibility of those two missions in Afghanistan.