Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) dies today – they’re already predicting a tough battle for his seat in the House of Representatives…
They’re dropping like flies on poison garbage, they are.
And I like it.
To anyone who says “That’s horrible! Don’t disrespect the dead!” I say “Fuck it, and fuck you. Those nanny statist bastards are stealing from us, robbing us at gunpoint and fucking up America to try to make it socialist.” I say “Good riddance to bad trash.”
He was revered among Democrats — and even some Republicans — for his skill over 19 terms in using the power of the federal purse to make kings and deals. A right-hand man of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he was considered one of the most influential lawmakers on Capitol Hill and credited with her ascension.
and
A hint of scandal lingered over much of Murtha’s career. The FBI named Murtha an “unindicted co-conspirator” in its ABSCAM sting operation in the late 1970s and early ‘80s. ABSCAM resulted in the conviction of five House members and one senator. The FBI recorded Murtha on videotape declining a $50,000 bribe from federal agents posing as Arab sheiks. But the Congressman did say he could be interested in future dealings.
This death couldn’t come at a worse time for the King George Obama-led administration. But you know what they say, “Coincidences are God’s way of staying anonymous.”
The most life-changing moments for me have always come by accident, it seems. When I was 15, I told a lie that ended up committing me to buying a drumset and started me on the path to becoming a musician. When I was 30, another flap of my big fat mouth put me in the gym and it’s kept me there, more or less, for the last 7 years. This bout of happenstance, however, was not my doing, at least, not directly, but it came about through my acquaintance with Michael W. Dean.
Michael and I met online at ConservativePunk.com, where our common love for music and passion of political discourse made us friends, at least online friends. When he was writing the first Right Arm of Wyoming album, I offered to send him some drum loops I had created in a program I have. Being a drummer for so long, I tend to try and make programmed drums sound as real as possible. Alas, I had no way of uploading the files to him, as none of the upload sites worked, but all of this was discussed openly on ConPunk.
After the RAW CD Cling to Our Guns was released, Michael would post reviews and comments on ConPunk, both positive and negative. One such post was a review posted on the Bridge Nine forums. The post, titled Fox News- The Band, was a scathing criticism of RAW’s music and themes. One user, however, seemed to have some inside knowledge, which could only have come from them being a lurker on ConPunk. They claimed that I was the drummer for RAW and that I was a “homosexual right-wing Odinist”. Sadly, the post has long since scrolled off the boards, but it did make me call out the person who posted such wrong information about me and RAW on the B9 boards. I also became a poster there as well.
It was shortly thereafter that I saw a post about organizing a compilation CD titled Enough is Enough, to benefit Freedom to Marry, an organization dedicated to promoting marriage equality and fighting anti-gay ballot initiatives. I contacted the organizer, Paul Blest, and offered a Frost Giant song, but none of the existing songs at the time fit topically except for Relic, which was just too long at 9 minutes to be included. So, I decided to record fresh. Initially, the plan was to do a 7 Seconds song called Regress No Way, which was arguably one of the first anti-homophobia songs out there, but the compilation started gaining ground, and soon, a lot of bigger names in punk & hardcore started signing on. I knew then that as much as I love that band, I couldn’t go out there with a 7 Seconds cover. I wanted to make my mark, so I decided to write a new song. It took me a long time to get a song in my head, as I do not do too well when I am forced up against a deadline, but soon enough I had something to work with and I went to my drum program and my trusty Les Paul and wrote it out. What came out of it was something I never imagined.
The song Not While I Draw Breath is probably the most angriest, pissed off, intense and in-your-face Frost Giant song to date. The lyrics deal with standing up to oppression and tyranny, of not caving in and backing down, and with being willing to hurt, suffer, and even die for the sake of your principles. It speaks of defending yourself and not going out meekly without a fight. On one hand, it could refer to the fight for marriage equality and is thus in line with the message of the compilation, but it’s written to be far more universal than that. Complacency, apathy, and willful ignorance abound in music and in pop culture in general. We are easily distracted by trivial things and made to focus on those as if they were important while we’re taken for a ride on the things that really matter. I intend this song to be a wake-up call to anyone that will hear it, but I leave it to the listener to apply it to their own lives however they see fit. I will not tell you what to think or what you should stand for, only that you should think, and that you should stand for something.
Not While I Draw Breath
by Matt Frost, January 2010. All rights reserved.
Will you stand with me
Fight and die if need be
Hold against the hordes until
The last man falls
Will you sacrifice all
You have gained in life
Reject your comfort
For a greater end
Stand together
And never waver
Brave in the face of
Overwhelming odds
For our future,
And our freedom
We unite in
Liberty or death
The evil stirs from its sleep
And no one will be safe from its reach
For we shall fight to be free
And never will we bend our knee
Forever clawing
Fight like a demon
Taking it to
The very bitter end
Swords are drawing
Battle lines forming
Storm clouds are churning
Soon there will be war
The earth will be fed
With blood
And the skies will weep
Unto the dead
Never give up,
Never back down,
We unite in
Liberty or death
Tonight, we lay down our lives
In the path of those who would oppress
And enslave us to their god
And trod us under until we are no more
Not while I draw breath
Will I submit, will I accept
Not while I draw breath
Will I bow down, nor will I live
With empty regrets
Now feel the sting of a thousand swords
Vanquish the hordes drive them away
To the darkness from whence they came
Obliterate they are no more
Overrun them all
Take what is ours.
Crush the wretched enemy
Bring victory
To our hearth and home
I love open carrying my revolver. The wife took these pix tonight at the WalMart here in Casper, Wyoming.
Open carry is legal here, but it is not common. In seven months of living here, the only people we’ve seen carrying are us, and a few members of the Free State Wyoming project.
We love Wyoming in ever way, and for every reason, and this is one more reason. If I’d tried this in Southern California, a cop would have pointed a gun at my head and I’d have been arrested, probably within minutes of leaving the house.
Gun is a Taurus model 605, .357 magnum snubbie. I’m also carrying two loaded speedloaders in the little pouches.
Photos by Debra Jean Dean. Photos and post covered by Creative Commons, Cc-by-sa 3.0.
So, I’ve decided that carrying my .380 Ruger LCP mouse gun ain’t enough firepower, should I ever need it. I may still carry it as a backup, but want to carry my Taurus model 605 .357 magnum snubbie revolver.
It really is the handgun I’m most comfortable with, and more powerful, by far, than my 9mm semi-auto.
I’ve gotten really good with the revolver, can hit a soda can at 25 feet, which is pretty damn good for a snubbie, and more than good enough enough for anything I might likely encounter. (And my wife is almost with me, and she carries a .40 cal Glock 23, which has 12 rounds in each mag, and she carries two extra mags.)
But the revolver only holds five shots, so I got two speedloaders
and a little belt pouch that holds two loaded speedloaders.
I recently asked my friends’ little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President some day. Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, ‘If you were President what would be the first thing you would do? ‘
She replied, ‘I’d give food and houses to all the homeless people.’
Her parents beamed with pride.
‘Wow…what a worthy goal.’ I told her, ‘But you don’t have to wait until you’re President to do that. You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I’ll pay you $50. Then I’ll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house. ‘
She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, ‘ Why doesn’t the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50? ‘
f I get inspired I may finish these five songs and release as a free download-only five-song EP.
I pressed 1000 of the first ten-song CD, sold about 100, which made me break even, but sales have gone down since I put it online. But I don’t want to NOT put it online, everything always gets more downloads than sales.
And it’s a lot of work to mail CDs around, and most people burn ‘em to MP3s these days anyway. And I like the immediacy of just doing it and getting it out there. And I’m not doing this for money. It’s a hobby and a mission.
I like the idea of doing EP-size releases from now on too….why wait nine or 12 months between releases…..just bang out a new EP every four or five months. Might work better from a promotional stance too, more chances to have people blog it….I’d rather release a five-song EP every five months than a ten-song LP-length batch every ten months.
So….some of the things I do, I do to make money. (Like the $30 School book series.) But some things I do just to get something good out there. Like my new band, RIGHT ARM OF WYOMING, or my libertarian self-help book:
The money projects pay for my living, and usually leave enough left over to make something great that I do not for money, but sell physical copies of (as well as giving away on BitTorrent), and usually make enough to break even.
I usually send out about 100 copies of everything for promo, to magazines, radio stations, blogs, etc. With my latest book, A User’s Manual for the Human Experience, I decided to send links to PDF copies for promo to save money, so I could send 100 paperback copies out to give to libraries.
I always liked libraries, and feel that having your book in a library is a nice thing…your book can be found by someone who would be unlikely to ever order it online or buy it in a book store. And I wrote this book to help people, not to make money.
So when the book came out in May of 2009, I sent out copies to 100 libraries all over America.
The fact that Wyoming libraries put it into their system is cool, it just proves more and more that we moved to the right place. This coming Thursday will be six months we’ve been here, and it feels more like home to both of us than anywhere we’ve ever lived.
Anyway, if you’re in Wyoming, here’s the libraries that have my book:
Michael W. Dean and Nunzio do another double-ender podcast over the miles and formulate and explain the idea of 4th Dimensional Politics.
Our grandparents had the one-dimensional left/right continuum. The Libertarian Party invented the two-dimensional x/y axis (see: World’s smallest political quiz:
Debra Jean Dean invented three-dimensional politics (points on a sphere to represent going beyond the two-dimensional, and allowing for nuances in stands on various issues among people who live on the same point on the x/y libertarian chart).
But Nunzio and Michael Dean explain 4th Dimensional Politics, which is the Debra Jean Dean sphere moving through time as we evolve. Because as ex-liberal Michael says, “Once you stop being teachable, you start being old.”
Then they talk about abortion, politics, the president, idiots, guns, dope, Robert Anton Wilson, The Guns and Dope Party, and a whole bunch of other cool shit.
Daniel Andreas San Diego (born February 9, 1978) is an American straight edge vegan, animal liberationist and fugitive wanted for his alleged association with the Animal Liberation Brigade cell responsible for two bombings in 2003. He is the first American, environmentalist and domestic terrorist added to the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list.….
I was opposed to this, as were many American’s who don’t tow the line and blindly follow what the gub’mint tells us. But I think the census folk have listened to the complaints from citizens (and Congresswoman Michelle Bachman) and made the census really short (ten not-very-obtrusive questions) and eliminated the practice of previous decades of having some people get a long-form version with a lot of questions, some obtrusive.
The Constitution only allows for counting of people, so really any questions more than “how many people live here” are overkill, but the ten questions they’re asking are just
name
number of people at residence
Did anyone here live anywhere else this year
Do you rent or own?
phone number
race
if Hispanic, what national derivation
sex
age
Is it a house or a trailer
Basically, any of these are all matters of public record for my household, or easy to find elsewhere. The gub’mint’s actually got all this info on me. So I guess I’ll send in the filled-out form when it arrives, mainly because I don’t want some idiot knocking on my door.
Intersting are some of the questions on the gub’mint FAQ for the census, apparently, they’ve been listening to people’s complaints:
I would like to point out that organizations like the SPLC stoke the fires of government officials and law enforcement that there is more of a threat than there truly is when it comes to militias. Some government agencies even ignorantly use the SPLC “Hate Groups List” and their bogus “reports” as legitimate. This causes law enforcement both at the local, state and federal level to overreact…..
…There is no mention in this report on the Black Muslim man who shot up a recruiting station killing one soldier and wounding another. There is no mention of the DC snipers, both who were black and influenced by information they had. No mention of the Black Panthers intimidating voters in Philadelphia in 2008. Those acts are no less tragic than the ones they do mention…..
…Potok automatically associates any American who identifies themselves as a “Patriot” as a potential terrorist militia member. Any information these self-declared patriots send out, whether it be forwarding an email about your disagreement with a piece of legislation or your outrage at some action by a member of congress, is propaganda in the SPLC’s eyes and not of a legitimate concern…..
…It’s also quite telling that Potok does not identify who the sources of the information and statements are from. He notes “authorities” and “says one”. According to section two of the report – which I address below – they didn’t want to be identified. How convenient. The real reason is that the SPLC is “cherry picking” who they listen to. They will quote only those whom they agree with and those who use their reports and information as in “Anonymous sources”……
…Keller states: “In the words of a February report from law enforcement officials in Missouri, a variety of factors have combined recently to create ‘a lush environment for militia activity.’”
The report caused outrage because it specifically targeted supporters of presidential candidates Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr as “militia” influenced terrorists and to watch out for citizens with bumper stickers regarding the Constitution, Campaign for Liberty and Libertarian parties.
The most amazing thing is that even after the retraction by the MIAC, Keller’s portion of this current militia report reads almost verbatim what “The Modern Militia Movement” report said. The MIAC report cites the SPLC as the source for a good portion of the report….
…On page 5 of the report Keller tries to play a game. In this game he sites a report which had information supplied to it by the SPLC. In other words he is trying to trick you by using the law enforcement agency’s name, but it is really their info that they had supplied to that agency. They are referencing their own statements….
Just a fun post for today. I’m going to visit my childhood and list a few movies that fostered my distrust of government and authority, with some brief reviews and comments. Some will be well-known and obvious, but others might be a little more obscure.
I saw this in theaters twice and I own it on VHS. Sadly, I don’t think that it’s been released on DVD, and Blu-Ray? Come on. Yet, this movie, based loosely on the legend of the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico UFO crash, made a huge impression on me as a kid. It fed my budding sense of outrage that our government would keep such a secret from the people, and that they would be willing to kill to keep the secret from getting out. I haven’t watched it in years so I have no idea if it holds up. Chances are it doesn’t, but if you can find it, it’s worth a viewing, especially if you were 10 to 13 years old in ‘83, it’ll bring back some memories.
I think I read this book too. Loosely based on a true story, this 1984 movie stars Scott Schwartz (A Christmas Story, The Toy, and several adult feature films in the 1990’s) as a young entrepreneur who starts a successful fertilizer/pest control business only to have the government come in and shut them down. As usual, the government ruins all the fun. In recent years, life imitates art as school bake sales become banned and don’t you even think of having a lemonade stand, or the Board of Health will land on you like a ten ton hammer.
I was angry from the minute the cop confiscated Wren’s Quiet Riot tape. I mean, yelling ‘No!’ at the screen. I was pissed. This movie, I have to give credit, it inoculated me against the bullshit that is organized religion, and for all the evangelical types like to bitch about Hollywood indoctrinating audiences against Christians, look, it wasn’t that far off the mark for what the evangelicals and Moral Majority members were actually doing. There were towns where dancing was not allowed. There was a big push to ban all kinds of popular music of the time. The Dead Kennedys were put on trial for their music (it was never about the H.R. Giger insert, the authorities had a hard-on for that band since they started). The infamous PMRC hearings followed a couple years after this movie. After failing to get record labels to censor their rock music, the censorship movement shifted to rap and hip-hop in the 90’s because it was easier to scare lily-white Christians with gangsta rap than it was to scare them with Twisted Sister (who had since jumped the shark). Looking back, the movie is a bit dated. OK, it’s really dated. Chris Penn is not only alive, he’s skinny. And Bacon’s solo dance number/montage is hysterical, but the emotion of it still resonates with me, the influence that a majority of religious people can have in a small town to the point of outlawing dancing (or anything else) is something we see repeated on a bigger scale when majorities vote for state constitutional amendments that strip gay & lesbian couples of their right to marry, for example.
This goes without saying. I mean, you have a kid who discovers an alien, a government that is spying on people trying to find said alien, and trying to capture the creature for their own designs. It’s classic kid vs. government, I loved those movies back in the day. Only watch the original, though, do NOT watch the altered and mutilated anniversary edition where the guns the government agents were pointing at the kids were replaced by hand-held radios. When the feds bust in your door they will NOT be carrying walkie-talkies. Plus, this movie got snubbed at the Oscars for Chariots of Fire. Chariots of Fire was fucking terrible.
This one was late 80’s, I was a little older. Goes like this. Government builds a cyborg prototype that for all outward appearances, is a teenage boy. Government decides to scrap the program, and that means that the robot-boy will be killed. A great tale that asks some good questions. When is a life a life? If a person creates a life artificially, through inventing a sentient, self-aware android, does that android then assume individual liberty by virtue of his own free will, or is he a disposable slave to his creator? It was a well-made movie and a good story as well, but it definitely made me think.
So… this is your homework assignment. If you haven’t seen these movies, you must watch them. See if they affect you the same way they affected me. And ask yourself, what modern movies out there portray government as the villain against the protagonist who wants to be free these days? Is there any film in the last 10 years or so where you feel incensed and angry with authority that steamrolls the individual, or do movies seem to be pushing the glory of the collective?
With the economy still in peril, troops still on the ground in two theaters, and rogue nations developing nuclear weapons, we would think that our federal government would have a lot to occupy their time. Apparently, nothing can be more important than getting involved in matters that should never be discussed by the Legislative or the Executive. The most pressing issue of the day is the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) for college football.
Of course we all hate the BCS. A playoff series would be more fair, and exponentially easier to understand. We shouldn’t have to have a degree in Statistics to understand the ranking system, but is this how senior members of the Senate and the Obama administration need to be spending their time? Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has requested a review by the Justice Department concerning the matter. Apparently he agrees with President Obama that the BCS ranking system is just too much to bear. Obama stated before his inauguration that he disagreed with the system in place for determining a National Champion football team. I believe the direct quote was “Throw my weight around” to nudge the BCS into a playoff system. Now we have the Justice Department reviewing whether an Anti-Trust investigation is needed. Now I suppose we must sit back and wait for the Justice Department to find a law that would invade into college football. Statist intervention at its finest.
On a positive note, when the issue is big enough, Republicans and Democrats can work together in a beautiful demonstration of bi-partisanship to accomplish far reaching goals. Economy, health care reform, and war are just trivial issues that should be politicized, but college football…
The simplest explanation I have of “I know there is a soul” (and this relates to “there is love and it’s more than chemical”), is very simple. It’s something that hit me when I was about 11, and I’ve believed it since. It’s this:
If you have a video camera filming something, and running a cable to a live monitor, the thing the camera is filming is “seen” by the video monitor.
But when the human eye sees something, what “sees” it inside you? I know that there’s a neural chemical reaction in sections of the brain, but what sees that? I believe that is the soul.
The mechanics of the body are largely understood. The mechanics of “consciousness” are more about the soul.
I believe that I am too alive for all that to stop simply because my heart will stop beating one day. I don’t know what sort of “afterlife” there will be, but I know in my heart of hearts there will be one, and that it will not be horrible. I don’t know that because someone told me, I know it because I can feel it.
JD Salinger, the reclusive author of The Catcher in the Rye, died yesterday. He was 91. Catcher has been my favorite book since I first read it in the 8th grade, he’s even why I started calling myself JD instead of Jeff. Well hey, maybe they can finally make Catcher into a movie, but if it sucks, I’m gonna kill a Beatle.
Paul Shirley, the former NBA player who still plays pro basketball, penned a long letter today about Haiti and the consequences of its earthquake, in which he seems to hold most Haitians accountable for the dire state of the nation.
He begins the letter by stating that he has not donated to relief efforts in Haiti and “probably will not… for the same reason that I don’t give money to homeless men on the street.” Shirley proceeds to criticize the country and its citizens, before pausing to ask, “Shouldn’t much of the responsibility for the disaster lie with the victims of that disaster?”
Later in the letter, Shirley dedicates a special address specifically to Haitians:
================================================== ==================================================
Dear Haitians -
First of all, kudos on developing the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Your commitment to human rights, infrastructure, and birth control should be applauded.
As we prepare to assist you in this difficult time, a polite request: If it’s possible, could you not re-build your island home in the image of its predecessor? Could you not resort to the creation of flimsy shanty- and shack-towns? And could some of you maybe use a condom once in a while?
Sincerely,
The Rest of the World
(Paul Shirley)
This is totally dickish.
I’m all for not putting all of Haiti on welfare forever, and I’m not personally flying there to volunteer. I haven’t even texted a ten-dollar donation. But passive-aggressively poking fun of them while they’re down (further down than most people will ever be) is a total dick move.
Fortunately, most of them will never see this letter. How many Haitians do you think had radio/TV/internet before the earthquake? And how many of them have it now, after the earthquake?
The per-capita income in Haiti before the earthquake was $790 per year.
If you were born into that, I don’t care how forward-thinking and visionary and smart you are, there isn’t much you could do to improve your personal station, let alone your country’s station.
Especially under an extremely corrupt government where if you made more money the soldiers and police would steal it at gunpoint. (And there is no legal ownership of guns for the citizens of Haiti. And the UN came in and took away most of the illegal ones a few years back.)
And if you made a lot of noise as any kind of activist to try to organize people to make things better, you’d likely disappear from the face of the Earth in the middle of the night.
I don’t think there’s any plausible “blaming the people of Haiti” for their country’s shitty situation, pre- or post-earthquake. At all.
You can make FAR more money than $790 per year in America picking up soda cans on the street and taking them to the recycling center. I used to know people who did that for a living. You can easily make $790 per month in America doing that.
America really is “the healthiest patient in the cancer ward.” I’m grateful I was born here.
Samson C01UCW Studio Condenser USB Microphone
Cakewalk Software
Mike Stand BL3
Microphone Pop Filter
SP01 Shock Mount
10 ft. USB 2.0 Extension
–Carpet remnants to nail up on walls: free (pulled out of dumpster behind carpet store)
If you have a room you can sacrifice, it would be good to nail up carpet remnants on the wall for the place you do your recording. An echoy room will make a shitty recording. You can always add reverb in your editing program, but you can’t take it away.
I did this to a room in our old house:
In our new house, I only did that in a small closet, because I’m only recording voice and guitar in there…not drums. I record bass direct into a tube preamp, and use drum loops.
It’s a lot less work to sound-condition a closet than a whole room:
If you’re recording live drums, There are lots of ways, partially depending on how many mics you have.
1 mic: hang it overhead.
2 mics: one overhead, one on the bass drum. Or two overhead, crossing each other in direction.
3 mics: one on bass drum, two overhead, crossing each other in direction.
4 mics: one on bass drum, one between the snare and high hat, two overhead, crossing each other in direction.
5 or more mics: one on each drum and cymbal, two overhead, crossing each other in direction.
If you wanna go old school (non-computer, non-digital), you could pick up a cassette 4-track Portastudio on eBay cheap. (Maybe 100 bucks?) That might be a good choice for if you’re not very computer literate.
Here’s a page with MP3 links: http://www.hitsofacid.com/SexKissCage/sex_kiss_cage.html
to the demo Bomb made that got us signed to Warner Brothers. Was recorded on a portastudio with an outboard compressor, two Sure sm58 microphones (about 80 bucks each…they’re the mics usually used for the vocal mics in clubs).
One of our guitar players engineered it, and I think it sounds pretty good for no-budget.
You could skip the outboard compressor if you were REALLY careful with all the levels.
We recorded the guitars, bass and drums live to two tracks with two SM58s hung from the ceiling, about ten feet apart, in the practice space. Then we overdubbed my vocals to one track, then added more guitars (both at the same time) to the last track.
You’d still want to hang up blankets or nail up carpet. A good dead-sounding room is important.
I don’t really have much of a problem with the Democratic Party. I have a problem with the so-called progressives, the far-Left, which usually lives these days in the Democratic Party (Pelosi, Obama, Reid, Frank, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Ted Kennedy, whom I want to congratulate on getting five months sober this week!) But there are progressives on the Right too. John McCain is one. Rudy Giuliani is another.
The only legitimate, Constitutional, moral role of government is to protect the borders and protect the Constitutional rights of the citizens. This is right-wing/libertarian ideology in a nutshell.
By definition, progressives are people who think that government should grow and should attempt to “solve” everyone’s problems (often the problems created by the government). Progressives are busybodies. They think they’re smarter than you. They tend to say “THERE OUGHTA BE A LAW!” and “THINK OF THE CHILDREN!” a lot. To which I say “You think of your children, I’ll think of mine.”
A good example of progressive thought in action is the financial crisis: progressives (like Obama, but also George W. Bush in his “lame duck” period) caused a problem. Then they try to solve the same problem, using the people who caused it (Ben Bernanke). Then they do exactly what should NOT be done (printing more money, going into debt).
Any eighth grader who’s good at math can tell you that’s the wrong way. The right way is to get out of the way, remove regulations, and let the economy flourish.
Here’s a good video explaining this. It’s sort of “School House Rock” for the new generation:
It is not the role of government to “create jobs.” At best, the role of government is to create an environment (low taxes, no nanny laws) where jobs are created by a free market.
There are tens of thousands of gun laws in America, at the federal, state and local level. Yet not one of them has ever prevented a crime. They only serve to make politicians look like they’re doing their job, and make law-abiding citizens into criminals.
Progressives want to outlaw guns to solve the problem of gun violence, a problem the progressives created!
Right-wing states like Utah and Wyoming have a very low incidence of gun violence. And guns are common, and treated with respect. People are also treated with respect. (The ironic thing is that less “redneck” places look at places like Utah and Wyoming as “primitive.” They laugh at us. They are wrong. We’re far more socialized and decent places to live. I know. I’ve lived in Los Angeles, and I’ve had a knife held to my throat in a mugging in New York City.)
Left-wing progressive places like New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C. have high rates of gun violence. Sure, part of this has to do with population, but a lot of it has to do with culture.
I’m not a Christian, but I believe that Christian upbringing ain’t a bad thing. Back when that was the norm, gun crime was much lower. Even the “Wild West”, often considered the go-to example of gun violence, didn’t have that much gun violence. That impression is the work of Hollywood. Which is filled with progressives. When is the last time you saw a person in a movie use a gun in a moral way, in pure self-defense? Almost never. Yet movies are filled with people using guns, almost always in an immoral way. Using a gun in a movie is “shorthand” for excitement. The prevalence of guns in movies is the result of lazy screenwriters, and gun-hating producers.
Right-wing places teach children to work for their goals. Left-wing places teach children that they are “entitled”, that they only have to “dream it, and they’ll get it.”….”I gots to get mine“….. Which place do you think produces more bitter, disappointed people willing to shoot up a crowd of innocents?
Progressives also downplay the role of family. Conservatives tend to have stronger families, and teach that “family is all”. Progressives teach that the family unit is an impediment, that you should “spread your wings and find your own way.”
Which group do you think has a better foundation for dealing with problems?
Progressives are revisionist with history. They downplay the role of guns in the founding of America, especially in the American Revolution. The whitewash the role of hard work in the foundation and strengthening of America. They consider wealth a bad thing, something that only exists to be stolen and redistributed to those who “deserve it” just for existing. This creates an angry underclass of people who not only think the world owes them a living, but reinforces it with a bi-monthly check.
Progressives support revolving-door prison systems, and are usually against the death penalty. Both of these put more violent people back on the street and don’t discourage violent behavior. Progressives generally consider violent felons to be a “victims of a bad upbringing” rather than simply broken machines. A good example is the ACLU, which has reams of writings on the rights of violent criminals in custody, but not one word on self-defense.
Progressives teach that any culture except American culture (including guns) is to be protected. Progressives teach that American culture is embarrassing, something to apologize for.
The progressive media also only ever reports immoral uses of guns. When was the last time you saw a news story about a little old lady using her gun to keep from being killed by some armed scumbag wanting to kill her to take her Social Security check for a fix? Yet it happens all the time.
Progressives teach their children not to have a Christian morality. They also teach their kids that “life is cheap” by telling them that abortion is a valid option if they “inconvenience” themselves with a pregnancy (due to their “fuck everything that moves” progressive morality).
I’m not making a case for anti-abortion or pro-Christianity or anti-”free love”, but I believe that “progressive” views on abortion, sex, family and religion, combined with Hollywood, have contributed heavily to gun violence seeming like a “solution” to many people. I am saying that the anti-Christian pro-abortion anti-family “I gots to get mine” agenda of progressives, and guns in Hollywood movies, are all the fault of the progressives, and contribute heavily to the prevalence of gun violence.
My brother was an Eagle Scout and participated in an after-school riflemanship program at his public school. When he was a high school senior in 1963 (back when America had a Christian morality), he used to bring his .22 rifle and ammo on the school bus and keep it in his locker for the after-school shooting classes. No one got shot, and no one cared. Whereas if you brought a boy scout pocket knife to school now, you’d be kicked out of school and likely arrested.
Obama’s DHS warns to look out for pro-American right-wing gun nuts. But almost all of the recent mass gun violence was done by people who were anti-American and left wing. The Ft. Hood shooter was anti-American. Even the shooter at the Holocaust Museum was a registered Democrat who hated Fox News.
Gun violence is the fault of the progressives. And it’s immoral that so-called progressives try to take away my guns just because they’ve wrecked so much of the world with their policies. Gun violence in secular New York City and Los Angeles has nothing to do with me in Christian Wyoming. So back the fuck off.
So, someone asked me today about “sensible” gun control. I maintain that no such thing exists.
First…
Most people who want to regulate guns don’t know much about them.
This comment on another post on this blog is typical:
I do believe that we do have the right to protect ourselves with a firearm like a shotgun or a rifle. The thing that I’m not convinced on is the need to own assault weapons like an AK-47 or an Uzi.
Here’s the thing: an AK-47 IS a rifle. And a pretty anemic one at that. Any .30 cal deer rifle has MUCH more destructive power. And range. And with a scope, it’s pretty much a sniper rifle that could kill a man at a quarter mile. (And most deer rifles are .30 cal, it’s pretty cruel to hunt deer with anything smaller, you need to kill deer in one shot, or they suffer.) An AK-47 cannot kill effectively at a quarter mile.
Not that any of that is reassuring to anyone who likes gun control, but you will NEVER get guns out of the hands of the millions of deer hunters in America. Never.
Gun control is immoral because all honest, free men have an innate right to self-defense, on a one-to-one level, like a violent mugger, but also on a larger, “opposing tyranny” level.
The Second Amendment has nothing to do with shooting deer. The right to shoot deer was a given in the rural community of early America. If you couldn’t shoot deer, you’d starve.
The Second Amendment has to do with being able to make sure that the government doesn’t get too large. To protect yourself from government. Though even uttering these words today gets you put on a watch list. Fedzilla has grown to the point that it wants to remove the Second Amendment. And they do it slowly, in bits and pieces. Give ‘em an inch and they take a mile.
Because of the Second Amendment, politicians cannot outright ban guns. So they go after them incrementally, and each bit of gun control (or ammo control, lately) legislation is a step toward the unstated goal of the government having all the guns and the people having none. Once that happens, they can cram anything down your throat, and there is nothing you can do about it.
America was founded by guys who were really pissed.
But if you quote the Founding Fathers now, you’re called a terrorist!
–”Liberty in Shards” by Right Arm of Wyoming
Most politicians who want to outlaw guns don’t do so for love of the public safety. They only do it for power: the power of having the government have the only guns, and the power of getting votes. Politicians love votes, and promising to be “tough on guns” (instead of being tough on actual crime, which is harder) usually gets a few votes with the “think of the children!” parrots.
Back to the original reason for the Second Amendment: you don’t have to use your guns to prevent encroaching tyranny, you only have to have them. And maybe be willing to use them if things get bad enough. And have the skill to do so.
By the way, you need rifles to oppose tyranny. No revolutions were ever won with pistols, and tyranny is not opposed with a shotgun.
“Progressive” leftists tend to be into banning guns, because leftists think that they know what’s best for everyone. People on the right have more trust in people. They don’t need to “nanny” everyone.
But most leftist gun grabbers have never held a gun, so why should they be in charge of regulating them? Here’s a typical gun grabbing leftist, trying to explain the random indicators that defined an “assault weapon” under the “assault weapon ban” that she helped create.
Would you trust someone who is that stupid about pharmaceuticals to regulate medicine? (Never mind, that’s what the Democrats are trying to do with health care.)
Note that she also uses the incorrect term “clip” (should be “mag” or “magazine”) Also, “assault weapon” is a made-up, meaningless term. As is the specious indicators that “defined” one under that law. A pistol grip on a rifle never killed anyone, nor does it help anyone kill anyone. There is something called an “assault rifle” (a full-auto, select fire AK-47 would qualify, so do the guns our boys carry in Iraq, but both of those are already illegal for private citizens in America), but gun grabboids’ definition of “assault weapon” often includes many shotguns and hand guns too. Basically, it banned anything that looked like a military weapon, was black, and looked scary. They banned some very underpowered guns, and didn’t ban some very powerful guns, based entirely on cosmetics. Some gun lovers even called the “assault weapons ban” the “scary looking ugly black gun ban.”
Obama’s boy Eric Holder tried to reinstate the “Assault Weapon” ban last year, and said it was to help Mexico in their War on Drugs! Trying to limit our Constitutional rights to help a foreign country is treasonous, in my opinion.
Gun control and gun registration does not prevent crime. There are thousands of gun laws on the books, and not one of them has made anyone safer. They have only made criminals out of law-abiding citizens. Gun control simply disarms citizens. If your daughter were being stalked, would you want her to have to wait ten days to get a gun, when the criminal stalking her likely already has a gun? And while we’re on the subject of waiting periods: if you think they’re a good idea, keep people from buying a gun when they’re enraged, why should there be a waiting periods on your second gun? And your third, fourth, fifth, etc. ?
A lot of places are going after ammo, since they think that’s more Constitutional than going after guns. But limiting the amount of ammo people can get, and requiring paperwork on ammo, will have some dark unintended consequences: criminals breaking into honest follks’ homes to get ammo, and honest folks not being able to practice much. I think people who shoot should practice often, and with a lot of rounds. If someone is having to use a gun in a self-defense situation, the more practice they’ve had, the less likely they are to hit an innocent bystander.
And when asked why I should be able to have a military-pattern semi-auto gun, I say why not? I’m an honest person. Should you be limited to a slow computer with little memory because hackers can work faster on fast computers? I have a military-pattern rifle because who the fuck knows what’s going to come to my door or my neighborhood? If there were an earthquake and people were looting and trying to kill me, en mass, a shotgun and a handgun (which I also have) wouldn’t save me.
Why should my handgun be limited to a ten-round mag? If a criminal (who, by definition, does not respect the law and does not follow it) tries to mug me, starts shooting, why should I have to stop to reload? That could get me killed. (And anyone who says “If ten rounds isn’t enough, you’re not a good shoot” knows nothing about guns or self-defense. Especially when trying to fend off more than one bad guy, and they’re not standing still.)
A common chirp of gun grabboids is “The Founding Fathers didn’t imagine Uzis and AK-47s when they wrote the Second Amendment.” Well, I can guarantee if they did, they would have included that. They had the cutting edge of battle technology at the time.
A good response I’ve heard to “The Founding Fathers didn’t imagine Uzis and AK-47s when they wrote the Second Amendment” is a response about the First Amendment: “I’m willing to only carry a brace of muskets if the New York Times is willing to only publish on hand-run presses and only deliver papers by horseback.”
A lot of people confuse Uzis and AK-47s with machine guns, because both are also available in full-auto (machine gun). Only criminals have those in America. I know people with AK-47s, but they’re legal semi-auto versions.
By the way, I have several semi-auto rifles that are FAR more powerful than an AK-47.
Which brings me to the “Why do you need so many guns?” question. Well, why do you need so many shoes? I have different guns for different things. Plus, I just like guns. I like the history of them (which is why I own a 1943 gun that was actually used to kill actual Nazis), I like the feel of them, the mechanics and the science of them. Why does a stamp collector have so many damn stamps?
My guns in Wyoming don’t effect you in your state. My guns don’t even affect you if you’re my next-door neighbor. Like most gun owners, I’m an honest person. Assault and murder are illegal, and rightfully so. I will not do those things, I wouldn’t do them even if they were legal. So lay off my guns.
Guns hurt far less people than cars and swimming pools. And you don’t need a gun to hurt people. You can kill someone with a rock or a hammer. So keep your immoral desire to control my guns to yourself, and go after actual criminals instead of trying to make me into a criminal.
Look upon this face. This is the face that will steal your liberty every single time. Do you know why? I’ll tell you.
Your freedom is harmful to children, therefore it must be curtailed. The ideal nanny state would reduce us all to this crying child, helpless to do anything without government help or better yet, permission.
About a year and a half ago, Colorado passed a law barring discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in such areas as employment, housing, credit, public accommodations, and so on. While I am opposed to anti-discrimination laws on principle and believe them to be relics, the response from the social conservatives on the right was to try and scare people by saying that their children would be preyed upon by cross-dressers in public bathrooms. Listen to this ad by Focus on the Family. Try not to laugh, because although it is comical and absurd, a lot of people fall for shit like this.
Here’s another spot by the lovely kooks at the National Organization for Marriage, the lovely bunch who brought you the hysterical “Gathering Storm” ads.
Notice how they use children to make parents afraid, scared that they will learn that gay people exist, that they’re even your neighbors and relatives, with the underlying, unstated threat being that acceptance of same-sex marriage will make your kids gay.
Lest you think I am a one-trick pony with this gay issue, look to other nanny-state laws that were put into effect initially to protect children, but were soon extended to all of us. Seat belt laws are a prime example. Used to be that if someone under 12 was in a car they had to be buckled in, but now we all have to wear them regardless. It doesn’t matter that seat belts can kill by trapping someone in a burning car, strangling a motorist or passenger in a wreck, or holding them firmly to a seat that careens into a tree whereas an impact without a seat belt may have knocked them aside, the government is going to force you for your alleged own good to wear a seat belt, and it all started with the grand, noble idea of protecting the children.
Video games are a favorite target of censors who claim that they make children violent, or turn them into lethargic slugs who shun fresh air and grow obese. Yes, it’s the video game, not the lack of parenting, that makes a child stay indoors on beautiful days. It’s Grand Theft Auto that makes a kid steal a car or shoot someone. Has to be, because the parents in these cases are all in utter denial that their special little zygote would do something so terrible. It’s the same kind of denial that allowed Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold to stockpile guns and grenades and pipe bombs and pull off the Columbine Massacre. Not my kids, not my fault, must be Marilyn Manson’s fault.
The most damaging instance, however, came following the halftime performance at the 2004 Super Bowl, when Justin Timberlake grabbed Janet Jackson’s blouse and tugged, exposing for a mere half a second, one saggy, flappy brown breast that had a gold star over the nipple. You would have thought that she was masturbating with a crucifix in front of Catholic school kindergartners by the outrage, but in reality it was so fast that few people even saw it. Cameras cut away and Janet quickly covered up her, ah, “wardrobe malfunction”. If I remember correctly, this was tame compared to some of the other performances where raunchy bump and grinds were being performed by Nelly and the suggestive lyrics coming from him and Sean Combs (I have no idea what the fuck he calls himself these days). In the aftermath of this event, the FCC increased their fines for indecency tenfold and began going after broadcasters in television and radio for things that wouldn’t have merited a second listen or look. Howard Stern was chased off of terrestrial radio, and many morning “shock jocks” either lost their gigs or were forced to water down their shows to the point where they weren’t funny or engaging anymore. The panic also had a chill factor on what networks and stations were willing to allow, and many programming decisions were now put in the hands of worrywart lawyers and middle management whose job was to insulate the company from fines and possible lawsuits. The television networks are dying dinosaurs, giant carcasses being strangled by regulation, while cable thrives. Terrestrial radio is a dead medium for all but political talk on the AM waves, satellite radio is ascendant. The internet is blowing them all away, it’s truly the last frontier of free speech.
If you think the government and the FCC don’t want to stick their noses into cable, satellite, and internet, think again. Bet you dollars to donuts the rationale they will use is “protecting the children”, because apparently, being a parent is hard and we need our government to help us out.
Think long and hard before you offer up everyone’s liberty as a sacrifice to protect your children. Those of us who are over 30 grew up with very little of these restrictions and protections and we’re just fine. You’re simply being groomed to accept more and more government intrusion into your everyday life, and they’re getting at you by preying on the fear that parents naturally have for their offspring. Don’t fall for it, whether it comes from a liberal or a conservative, the government does not have your best interests at heart. The leviathan is only after power and can never have enough.
Background: I don’t like the UN, but I have a lot of interest in the Freemasons, and it’s not negative. My dad was a Freemason. And so were many the Founding Fathers.
The Supreme Being and the Volume of Sacred Law
Candidates for regular Freemasonry are required to declare a belief in a Supreme Being. However, the candidate is not asked to expand on, or explain, his interpretation of Supreme Being. The discussion of politics and religion is forbidden within a Masonic Lodge, in part so a Mason will not be placed in the situation of having to justify his personal interpretation.[29] Thus, reference to the Supreme Being will mean the Christian Trinity to a Christian Mason, Allah to a Muslim Mason, Para Brahman to a Hindu Mason, etc. And while most Freemasons would take the view that the term Supreme Being equates to God, others may hold a more complex or philosophical interpretation of the term.
You know, the only other place I’ve heard this line of thought is Alcoholics Anonymous. the whole “create your own higher power”, “god of your own understanding” stuff. I’ve never heard of a connection of AA and Freemasonry. And as a still-sober former AA member, and while I was in AA, I’ve studied the hell out of the history of AA. But I think it’s possible.
I have seen a site that says that AA is a UN-sponsored New World Order plot to remove Christian influences in society and replace Christianity with Secular Humanism.
That’s somewhere on this sprawling site http://www.orange-papers.org/
written by a former AA member, still sober, but nuts and smart and waaaaay too much time on his hands…..all of it, for years, apparently devoted to debunking AA in a scholarly and heavily annotated fashion.
A new professional basketball league boasting rosters made up exclusively of white Americans has its eyes set on Augusta, but the team isn’t receiving a warm welcome.
I see no reason why they should not be able to do this, in a world where all other races have their own “our race only” coalitions and organizations. Can you imagine if someone started the “United Caucasian College Fund” or the “National Association for the Advancement of White People.”? They’d be crucified. Which is ironic, because while the United Negro College Fund” and the NAACP were started to foster a “leg up for people who are downtrodden”, at this point, they’ve accomplished their goals and then some.
For instance, it’s now far easier for a black or Asian student to get into a good university than it is for a white student with the same academic record and economic status.
However, back to the “White men CAN jump” B-ball league, they had to know going in that they’d get a shit storm, which is actually probably why they did it…to make a point.
Although I’m sure it’s guys who enjoy playing ball, and maybe don’t like playing with non-white players. In a libertarian paradise, there would be nothing wrong with this, nor would there be any reason to not have a black-only or Hispanic-only group. The only difference is, in the libertarian paradise, no group would get SPECIAL protections, just equal protections.
If you think anyone is welcome anywhere in today’s world, try being male and having a drink in a hardcore lesbian bar. I’ve tried that when I lived in San Francisco. It wasn’t pretty. Also try being white and having a drink in a bar in a black neighborhood. I’ve done that too. Wasn’t thrown out like in the lesbian bar, just ignored while simultaneously being “studied” like an strange insect.
I think racism is one of the most ridiculous aspects of humanity. But I also think there’s a lot of governmentally and socially protected “reverse racism” (i.e. actual racism, but against white people) in the world now, and I don’t mind calling it what it is.
My 68-year-old mother-in-law refuses to take a bath but once a week. Is this healthy or even legally acceptable? Please help.
Is it LEGALLY ACCEPTABLE? Holy fucking hell….liberals want to regulate EVERYTHING. Can you imagine this call?: “Hello…911? My mother-in-law doesn’t bathe as often as I’d like. Please come arrest her.”
Fuck. Fuck these people. They should never have any power, and should probably all be sent at gunpoint to libertarian re-education camps immediately. (Just kidding.)
I’m all for it. I think it will favor conservatives. Big Business has a lot more money than the labor unions, and big business leans conservative. (Look how hard Obama is spanking big business, how much he’s helping the unions, and how worried he is about this bill. And how much “progressives” hate it and are trying to stop it.)
I like corporations. I used to hate them, wrote whole books saying they were evil, but I’ve seen the light. I trust big business far more than big government. Big business doesn’t like people nannied, quite the opposite. Big business doesn’t want regulations on tobacco, trans fats, ammo or other things I like.
And the NRA has a lot more money than the Brady gun grabboids.
I think it’s a great move, a gift to the people by the conservative supreme court justices.
How did the wise Latina vote on this? She voted against it. There’s your answer.
The Radio Free Nestlandia Act was ratified by a unanimous vote of the First Continental Congress of Nestlandia on August 11, 2008. This provided funding for the formation and continued operation of Radio Free Nestlandia.
SO….I wanna turn our new fans here on to my other little hobby. My wife and I do a podcast called : RADIO FREE NESTLANDIA. Check it out, here.
RSS feed is here:
We bill it as “THE VOICE OF A TWO-PERSON LIBERTARIAN NATION IN WYOMING.” The content is smart and funny and the audio quality is higher and better produced than most podcasts. We talk about guns, cats, politics, shopping, shoes, liberty, science, movies, and marriage. It’s a nifty slice-o-life, and y’all oughta check it out.
NESTLANDIA is a two-person nation consisting entirely of blissfully married couple, Michael W. Dean and Debra Jean Dean. (And their “subjects”, lol…their three cats.)
There are 36 episodes up. Check out these recent ones:
She’s been on the news a lot doing commentary because she was Ted Kennedy’s adviser.
I am of the opinion that she sounds like she’s on sedatives, and her voice does sound like Harvey Fierstein.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Fierstein
How come women who go into news and politics mostly have slightly shrill voices (think: Palin). Is it because they developed that trying to be heard above men?
I just heard top Obama adviser David Axelrod on MSNBC basically apologizing for the Democrats being “arrogant.”, and conceding that their agendas might not work. He said in passing, “….if Obama chooses to run in 2012….”
Is that a Freudian slip? Does he know something we don’t know? Because I assumed Obama would certainly run in 2012.
I think the Democrats are finally figuring out that treating the American people like childeren to be nannied is not going to work.
Though now Howard Dean (no relation!) is on MSNBC saying people in Mass voted for Scott Brown to “show their disgust with not getting healthcare passed.” !!???!!!
BUY A GUN, LOSE ALL YOUR FRIENDS. (A true story of Republitarian redemption.)
Copyright 2009, Michael W. Dean
I’m a peace lovin’ guy. I’d never hurt anyone who did not try to hurt me.
Though I used to vote Democrat. But couldn’t really tell you why. I hated authority and I hated big government. I guess I just wasn’t paying attention. I was one of those folks who thought that following the issues was too much work. So I voted by clipping out the little voting guide from the leftie City Paper.
That’s how, many years ago, I ended up voting for Feinstein and Pelosi. (Don’t tell my friends at the NRA, the GOA and the JPFO. I’m now a card-carryin’ member of all three.)
A couple years ago I was awake late one night in my home in Los Angeles when someone outside tried to pry open our bedroom window. The guy wasn’t very badass. Unarmed, I chased him away just by going outside and confronting him.
But we were shaken. The next day I told my wife, Debra Jean, “Baby, we’re buying a shotgun.” She was very against it. She said, “Buying a gun is admitting that the world is a horrible place.” I said, “Baby, sometimes the world is a horrible place, and I love you, and we’re buying a gun.”
And being the one California Democrat with his balls intact, I bought a shotgun anyway, even though my wife hated the idea.
Turns out, we both really liked guns, and we loved our dates to the range. We soon added his ‘n’ hers 9mm pistols and a couple .22 rifles to our collection. Debra Jean became a good shot in weeks. Took me a little longer.
All of our friends were lefties, and most of them were concerned about the “new us.” But they still kept talking to us, and we even took one of them to the range. Once.
I started reading up on California and Federal gun laws. I’ve never been arrested and intended to keep it that way. Debra Jean (a paralegal) and I decided that the laws seemed designed not to protect people from violence, but rather they were structured to make honest folks into criminals.
Our new view of nanny-state gun laws made us look at California (and the USA) in a whole new way. And that made us both start paying attention to government and politics.
We became Republitarians almost overnight.
I got there from “punk rock anarchist” on one end and apolitical Democrat on the other. I loved the process, but it kinda hurt. Debra Jean didn’t have as far to go…..Turns out she was registered Republican. Which if I’d known years earlier, I probably wouldn’t have married her. But it never actually came up, which shows you how much attention I paid to politics, and shows you how much she loved me to marry me even though I’d made it clear I was “a compassionate liberal, not one of those stuffy old selfish Republicans like my dad.”
My wife really liked my political “spiritual transformation.” (Her dad, by the way, had given her Heinlein books to read as a child, and he’d stumped door to door for Goldwater.)
Debra Jean and I got itchy. Being around leftists suddenly gave us hives. So it was clear what we had to do: GET OUT OF CALIFORNIA AND MOVE TO WYOMING.
Our leftist friends got really worried. The “hipper” ones said, “OK, I guess I can “get” having a shotgun for protection, if you must. But I really don’t feel comfortable coming to a house with handguns in it, and…WAIT….YOU DON’T HAVE THEM WITH YOU NOW, in MY house, do you?!!…”
Or, “Who is this ‘Bob Barr’ person you say you’re voting for? Libertarian? What’s a ‘libertarian’?” And “Obama is so cool and hip and…Wait, WHAT? YOU’RE SELLING YOUR HOUSE AND MOVING TO WYOMING? And you wanna buy a BATTLE RIFLE? What the hell is a BATTLE RIFLE?!”
Let me just say this: our outgoing Christmas card list was a lot shorter this year. And I doubt we’ll get any cards from California, but if we do, the card will not likely have the word “Christmas” on it. And it will probably be colored green and say “Reduce! Reuse! Rejoice!”
I will promptly take that “Seasonal Holiday Greeting Card” at its word and toss it in the recycling bin. (See? We did import ONE of our hippie ways from California. But we would never in a billion years try to force our new friends and neighbors to do the same, out of respect for their liberty. And we love that our new friends and neighbors are far less “in other people’s business” than most everyone we met in California. Which is partly because our new friends and neighbors are nicer people, and partly because most of them own and carry guns, too. “An armed society is a polite society.”)
We’ve lived in Wyoming for almost six months and WE LOVE IT. The air is clean, the people are sweet and we can open carry a pistol, or have our loaded battle rifle on the car seat next to us. Talk about “breathing in the sweet air of liberty”!
Carrying a gun could literally get you killed by SWAT in California. Here, people just say, “Oh, my husband has that one! Is that the .357 or the .38 special?” or “Nice rifle! Getting in practice for antelope season?”
We feel like we left California and moved to AMERICA.
Our few remaining California leftie friends who still talked to us followed this ongoing transformation in words and pictures on my blog. One by one they STOPPED BEING OUR FRIENDS. Their comments ranged from a good friend of eight years saying “Michael, I love you, but I’m really worried about you” to a good friend of 23 years (a guy I was in a band with) saying, “Michael…..Once someone gets talked into these right-wing ideas very rarely can they be talked back…..This new-found cocky way of life is very wrong, very immoral and very dangerous. I’m older than you so consider my opinion, if you still can…I doubt you will. This makes me very sad. Good luck, dumb fuck.”
Another “friend” actually talked about organizing an intervention and driving out here to “save us.” Didn’t happen though. I guess it’s easier to take the bottle out of a passed-out drunk’s hand than it is to take guns away from people who are more awake and alive than they’ve ever been.
Even strangers chimed in. Typical of the many slams I received was a fan of my older books and music who said “I can’t believe how quickly you went from being a hip, artistic guy to being a fat WalMart redneck Red Lobster-eating NRA asshole.”
The comments from strangers made me laugh, in a dropped-jaw kind of way. The comments from the actual friends hurt. But I remembered what my dear sweet mother would have said: “If they say things like that sweetie, they’re not really your friends.” And my dad told me, “Better to find out now than further down the road.”
I do not cling to my “victimhood” and you’ll never catch me at a support group or on Oprah bitching about this, (nor would she likely have me). All in all it has really just reinforced my resolve to reject idiocy in all its forms.
I just cannot wrap my head around the fact that so many people, including ones I thought were “cool”, cannot wrap THEIR heads around the fact that “social justice” is always accomplished by muggery and thuggery. And they get freaked out if I say “Guns aren’t bad, guns are good….And guns make it harder to be a victim of muggery and thuggery.”
I now have a lot more to talk about with my dad and my father-in-law. I no longer think they’re “square”, and I really love yakking with them now. They “get it.” They get liberty.
Those other folks can just stay in California, me and my wife will be in AMERICA. If you need us, we’re probably on a date to the rifle range. After that we’ll be at Red Lobster, then WalMart.
Michael W. Dean sings in the “feisty libertarian punk rock band” RIGHT ARM OF WYOMING LibertarianPunk.com
I mean it that way- this election was Martha Coakley’s to lose. She was running for a seat that was held by a Democrat since 1962. She couldn’t have gotten a better chance if the ghost of Ted Kennedy had anointed her himself. Yet, she blew it. Scott Brown did not win as much as Martha Coakley lost, and the reason is because Coakley simply didn’t believe that any Republican could pose a serious challenge to her. Arrogance and pride have been the downfall of many people, and will continue to be so as long as we’re human.
Let me put one thing out there right now- I don’t like Scott Brown. I would not have voted for him if I were a resident of Massachusetts. Scott Brown is a man who posed as a moderate while having the National Organization for Marriage run his anti-gay stealth campaign by placing robocalls urging voters to “defeat “radical” Martha Coakley because of her support of same-sex marriage.” Scott Brown was not happy that same-sex marriage became the law in Massachusetts and voted for a state amendment to ban gays & lesbians from marrying their partners. The damage he can do in the Senate to the pursuit of true LGBT equality is palpable.
However, I tend to take a less fearful look at this, because Scott Brown does not have a full term coming up, he’s got three years. When he runs for re-election he will also be running during a presidential election year. The Democrats will regroup in Massachusetts and put forth a serious candidate- possibly even another Kennedy- in opposition, so Brown shouldn’t feel too comfortable with that prospect. It’s a shame, really, that he has such good positions on other issues that I completely agree with, such as his support for Second Amendment rights, sensible environment policies, and how we treat our veterans , but his support of anti-gay marriage amendments and his hobnobbing with the NOM is something I find personally offensive. This isn’t politics to me, Scott, this is my life, and my relationship that you’re saying should be held up and judged by mob rule. Martha Coakley, meanwhile, is fighting as the Massachusetts state attorney general against the Defense of Marriage Act that forbids the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages that are legitimate in any given state. You know, the case that the Obama administration is vigorously defending against even though it doesn’t really have to, but I digress.
The one thing I will say is that Scott Brown does know what the Obama healthcare plan will do to the country, because it’s very similar to the plan that Scott Brown voted for in 2006 while he was a Massachusetts state senator. Brown claims that the two programs are completely different, but both plans have at their core a giant giveaway to private insurance companies. Both plans force people without insurance to purchase it and penalize those who the government deems “able” to afford it with fines and higher taxes. To me, Brown’s semantics fall flat. He voted for the bill in Massachusetts because he’s a party-line guy. Regardless, he is right that Obama’s plan is a bad one, but I have the feeling that if McCain had been elected and he was pushing the same thing, we’d see a different song coming from Scott Brown.
I’ll also give the guy credit for running a campaign. Clearly he is a hard worker who was effective in communicating with voters and getting his message out. If you read his website he actually sounds reasonable. He wouldn’t be a bad candidate if he wasn’t such a homophobe and hypocrite, and he certainly looks better naked than Martha Coakley.
It looks as though the race for the vacant senate seat in Massachusetts has taken a turn against the Democratic Party. In a state as liberal as the Bay State, the election of a Republican by a solid margin cannot bode well for those that wish to experiment with socialism. This very well could be a gaze into the crystal ball concerning the 2010 Mid-term elections. At the very least, it will upset the “super majority” in the senate. Dick Durbin said that if Brown wins, that the Democrats will use reconciliation to force health care through the senate. Now that only 38% approve of the health care joke, and 56% oppose… Please Mr. Durbin, get desperate and send every moderate voter in the country away from your camp.
Chris “I felt this thrill going up my leg from Obama” Matthews is on TV right now covering the crucial Massachusetts Senate campaign…it’s looking like the Republican is winning, and Mathews is laughing about it all, and he’s criticizing Obama.
When MSNBC concedes defeat of their agenda, does that mean they are getting ready to just “back the winner” if the winner switches?
Reminds me of that Kent Brockman line on the Simpsons when he’s reporting about the alien invasion, “I for one welcome our new alien overlords….and as a seasoned broadcast professional, I could help them drum up support.”
Nothing political here, just some nice punk rock I did back in th’ 80s.
The Lost Beef People tracks. Recorded in 1985 at Inner Ear Studio, engineered by Don Zientara. I played guitar on this. (I’m the blond hippie punk on the right):
We recorded and mixed about 15 tracks in probably 8 hours. Some were released as the 1985 EP “Music for Men” (Catch Trout Records.) These remaining seven tracks were finally released last year by UK label Damaged Records” on vinyl, limited edition of 500, only went out as inserts in an issue of Artcore zine.
The vinyl EPs have all long sold out, so I can post MP3s now:
Well before his decision (apparently in 1955) to embrace Ghandian non-violence as the best tactic in the national showdown over civil rights, King had been a committed civil rights activist, but also a man who believed in protecting himself and his family against constant threats of racist violence (which included the bombing of his home).
Accordingly, the pre-Ghandian King had been armed to protect himself and his family — to the point where his home was described by one activist as “an arsenal“:
King would later admit that at the start of the boycott be was not firmly committed to Gandhian principles. He had initially advocated nonviolence not as a way of life but as a practical necessity for a racial minority. When his home was bombed at the end of January, he had cited Jesus– “He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword”– rather than Gandhi in urging angry black neighbors to remain nonviolent. At the time of the bombing, King was seeking a gun permit, and he was protected by armed bodyguards. Only after the bombing did King alter his views on the use of weapons for protection. His reconsideration was encouraged by the arrival in Montgomery of two pacifists who were far more aware than he of Gandhian principles.
My new little laptop (right) with my standard laptop (left)
If you want to change the world from anywhere, if you want to criticize Eric Holder while on the run from his silly new “hate crime laws“, if you’re one of the right-wing bloggers he’s unconstitutionally targeting, you need one of the new $228 netbook from eMachines.
They went on sale the day after Christmas, and each WalMart has only ten of them. (As of yesterday, the east-side WalMart in Casper, Wyoming still had four of them.) They’re only in-store, not available via mailorder.
This thing works great. It’s easy to type on, the keyboard is almost full sized. It’s got 10.1 inch display, 1GB of RAM, fast 1.6 GHz processor, 250 gig hard drive (!) WiFi and Windows 7 Starter Edition. Windows 7 Starter edition is pretty good, WAY better than the virus known as Vista. Windows 7 Starter has got a few things disabled, the shiny bullshit called Aero (which I would disable anyway), you cannot change the desktop, and you can only run three applications at a time (plus anti-virus). But for blogging, surfing, checking e-mail and such, it rocks.
Blogging at the sheeple
It’s fast enough to run Photoshop, Microsoft Office, even audio editing programs for podcasting while complaining about ironically named “Libertarian Paternalism” that is so loved by the Obama administration, and is destroying America.
The cute little lappie even has a built-in web cam, I used it to take these goofie pix of myself blogging:
So, this laptop is actually improving my already wonderful marriage, I don’t have to go into the other room to use a computer, I can hang out with my wife while she reads. That was hard to do with my larger laptop, but this little two-pound miracle makes it easy.
The pen is mightier than the swoard, but it never hurts to be good with both. The Second Amendment protects the First, so I have a little computer to go with my littlest gun now. Yay!
We took a drive today to Hell’s Half Acre, an hour from Casper. This place was the set for Klendathu in the movie “Starship Troopers.”
It’s cold, barren, weird, and some poacher asshole had left four deer heads by the gate we had to jump over. There was also a dead cat (with the head attached), but I didn’t want a photo of that.
MP3 podcast
Look upon this face. This is the face that will steal your liberty every single time. Do you know why? I’ll tell you.
I mean it that way- this election was Martha Coakley’s to lose. She was running for a seat that was held by a Democrat since 1962. She couldn’t have gotten a better chance if the ghost of Ted Kennedy had anointed her himself. Yet, she blew it. Scott Brown did not win as much as Martha Coakley lost, and the reason is because Coakley simply didn’t believe that any Republican could pose a serious challenge to her. Arrogance and pride have been the downfall of many people, and will continue to be so as long as we’re human. 
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