As the goal is admitted, let us have no more discussion of these ridiculous diversions.

The goal sought is disarmament, period. Accomplished bit by bit. But none of those bits are "reasonable" or "common sense" as they are admittedly simply elements of the intended goal, which is complete disarmament.

If the goal isn't worthy, then none of the steps towards it should be undertaken.

Posted by: Ace at 10:59 AM | Comments (284)
Post contains 88 words, total size 1 kb.

Obama claimed "I go shooting all the time."

Asked in a magazine interview whether he had ever fired a gun, Mr Obama said he did so with guests at the president's rural retreat.

"Up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time," he said. "And I have a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for generations.

"And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake".

He claimed this nonsense in order to appear Just Like You to those on the fence about gun restrictions. Just Like You is how the liberals sell their agenda and how the media helps them sell it. You'll give more credence to someone Just Like You to someone Not Like You.

The Tea Party very much got the Not Like You coverage -- look at all these angry old people!

Occupy Wall Street, on the other hand, got Just Like You coverage. Look at these earnest young patriots! Why, some are mothers. Some are even grandmothers. Some are accountants, some are plumbers, some are teachers, and some are just optimistic kids just worried about the future.

Whenever the media uses lots of specific examples, they're attempting the Just Like You con. They're naming every possible example in hopes of casting the widest possible net to name someone like the reader, and thus to elicit the reader's natural tribal sympathies for someone Just Like Him. They also use descriptors that people use for themselves -- positive descriptors. People generally think of themselves as well-intentioned, concerned, etc., and so calling a group these things makes them Just Like the Reader.

On the other hand, the Not Like You treatment focuses on the narrowest possible profile (such as claiming all Tea Partiers are white, despite there being plenty of minority Tea Partiers) and casts them in negative language. People don't usually think of themselves using negative descriptors-- so casting a group as these things, which the Reader is most assuredly not, makes them Not Like the Reader.

Well, Obama says he's Just Like You but he's not willing to release any photographs demonstrating his status as Just Like You.

I guess I'll just have to take his word for it. The man has never lied to me before, except for always.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:44 AM | Comments (386)
Post contains 433 words, total size 3 kb.

Where there's smoke, there's underaged Dominican prostitutes.

Underaged Dominican Prostitutes had a minor radio hit in 1983 with "Johnny Are You a John?" They're currently residing in the Where Are They Now file, with Spinal Tap.

Anyway, the investigation began August 1st, 2012. Documents show that people at CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a supposedly non-partisan watchdog group that only gets moist for stories involving Republicans) and ABCNews (a supposedly non-partisan news corporation that only gets moist for stories involving Republicans) were aware of the story even before that, in April and May respectively, but apparently did nothing further with it.

It's very easy for a news organization to not devote any resources to a story. Stories take time and manpower, and some require more time and manpower. Few in a company are ever disciplined for not spending money.

When dishonest political agitation is accomplished like this -- where it's not what the media is reporting, and it's not even what it's not reporting; it's about what it hasn't even bothered to devote the meagrest resources to find out what could be reported -- it's the journalistic equivalent of an undetectable poison.

Years ago, I mean decades ago, I read a quote about politicians performing quid pro quo favors for campaign cash, and whether or not we could prove it. The guy who was quoted opined that it was difficult to determine. He noted that in many cases, the payoff might not take the form of votes on legislative action -- those might be detectable, and so are avoided -- but could take subtler forms, like the question that is never asked at a hearing.

The media's doing a terrific job of not asking questions it doesn't want to know the answer to. It doesn't ask these questions in bulk, and the great volume of questions it doesn't ask makes it cheap to not ask questions.

And it passes these savings on to you, the customer.

[Update JohnE.]: Here is the search query for "Senator Menendez Dominican Prostitutes" on the ABC News website (abcnews.go.com).

You will see two matches. Both are only matches because someone mentioned it in the comments section of the respective articles.

Zero mentions otherwise.

Posted by: Ace at 09:08 AM | Comments (218)
Post contains 416 words, total size 3 kb.

I can't even think of anything to put here.

Read this impressive but by necessity incomplete account of how screwed up our federal government is.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:44 AM | Comments (127)
Post contains 31 words, total size 1 kb.

• Above The Law: Media Matters Thug David Brock Protected With Illegal Weapons
  
• CBS Runs Special Report Saying We Should Give Up On The Constitution
  
• At Least 232 Dead In Brazilian Nightclub Fire(autoplay video)
  
• Chuck Schumer Mad At Beyonce For Lip-synching The National Anthem
  
• Why Employment Is Dead In The Water
  
• Sandy Relief Bill Eats Up All The Revenue Gained From Obama's New Tax On The Rich
  
• Register Or Rebel? How Many New Yorkers Will Defy New Law
  
• Egyptian Path Darkens
  
• NRA Ally Could Win Jesse Jackson Jr's Seat
  
• Democrats Dream Of Permanent Dominance Is Unlikely
  
• US Steps Up Role In Mali
  
• Secret Service Dog Guarding Biden Falls To Its Death From Roof Of New Orleans Parking Garage
  
• Iran Shoots Monkey Into Space
  
• Israel Threatens Intervention In Syria If Rebels Get Chemical Weapons
  
• Former Italian PM Berlusconi: Aside From The Anti-Jewish Laws, Mussolini Was A Decent Guy
  
• Obama's Unconstitutional Executive Power Grab
  
• Feinstein's New Assault Weapons Ban, Read It And Sleep
  
• Man Kills Wife After 70 Years Of Marriage
  
• More New Tone From Democrats
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:33 AM | Comments (11)
Post contains 185 words, total size 3 kb.

Remain calm. Finding VIC-20 parts these days is challenging.

Update: they've been down long enough now to invoke Emergency Comment Protocol Alpha. Feel free to comment here.

Posted by: andy at 05:35 AM | Comments (3)
Post contains 36 words, total size 1 kb.

Non-assault rifles are easier for the dainty little delicate flowers Leon Panetta is sending to the front lines to use. Or something.

PIERS MORGAN: I have an interview coming up with two young women who wrote a piece in which they said they wanted the rights of the AR-15 weapon at home because they feared they would be attacked and they wanted a gun that would guarantee they would murder or would kill their attacker. How do you respond to that particular argument, which is they believe under their second amendment right they should be allowed an AR-15?

CAROLYN MCCARTHY: I will tell you, if you talk to professionals, hunters and certainly sportsmen, theyÂ’ll tell you thatÂ’s not the gun to use. A rifle is more accurate. ItÂ’s certainly easier for a woman to be able to do that.

You just can't make this stuff up, folks. I mean, we all know an AR-15 isn't an "assault rifle" within the real meaning of the term. Now super-genius Carolyn McCarthy does us one better and says it's not even a rifle?

Good to know.

Especially when a different branch of the government refers to select-fire ARs, which fit the textbook definition of "assault rifle", as a "personal defense weapon".

I guess DHS won't be issuing those scary black PDWs to the women.

Use this link for comments during the outage. UPDATE: Comments are back on line.

Posted by: andy at 06:40 AM | Comments (394)
Post contains 259 words, total size 2 kb.

Happy Monday.

It didn't get quite as much press as the decision finding Obama's "recess" NLRB appointments unconstitutional, but the same appeals court kicked the EPA in the teeth (again) on Friday, rejecting the agency's intent to punish petroleum refiners and importers for not producing the latest green boondoggle, cellulosic biofuel, in sufficient quantities.

Not just a rumor anymore: the FBI is investigating leaks about the development and deployment of the Stuxnet virus, which is probably as good an official admission that the U.S. created it (probably with the help of Israel) as we're likely to get.

The broad strokes of the immigration reform proposal being hashed out by Democrats Charles Schumer of New York, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Michael Bennet of Colorado; and Republicans John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Marco Rubio of Florida and Jeff Flake of Arizona: (1) a path to citizenship for illegals currently present; (2) border security; (3) advanced degree green cards; (4) employer verification program; and (5) an ag worker program.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:52 AM | Comments (65)
Post contains 184 words, total size 2 kb.

Hey all - I'm back after a week in Chicago at the Automate Show i.e. lots of robots, 0 degree weather and sampling various ethanol blends. Still recovering...

And mucho thanks to all the fill-in hosts who kept the USS ONT off the shoals for yet another week.

We Took a Car to the Moon - Three Times!

Sure the Lunar Roving Vehicle's top speed was only 8mph but that's exciting enough when you're in 1/6th Earth gravity.

124:58:52 Duke: The suspension system on that thing is fantastic!

124:58:54 England: That sounds good. We sound like we probably got enough of the Grand Prix. We're willing to let you go on from here. Call that a (complete) Grand Prix.

124:59:03 Duke: Okay. (Pause) Man, that was all four wheels off the ground, there. Okay. Max stop.

And took some dash cam footage along the way:

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:05 PM | Comments (730)
Post contains 1001 words, total size 12 kb.

Liberals are very good at casting their claims, dishonestly, as politically-neutral ones.

When people complain, for example, about the left's penchant for anti-semitic, anti-American, and pro-communist rhetoric, lefties will not defend the substance of such remarks, but make a case for absolute freedom to speak one's mind.

That's what they say. But then a dodgy filmmaker gets arrested for the crime of speaking his own mind and lefties cheer his incarceration.

Their claim was that their defense of (say) communist rhetoric was simply a neutral process defense -- they are championing a content-neutral process good (that of free expression untrammeled by blowback and boycott) which has nothing to do with their politics.

But that's a lie-- such defenses are only lodged in favor of speech they favor as a political matter.

And now, Barack Obama, as dishonest as leftist as has ever inhabited the White House, argues that all he wants is the neutral value of "compromise," and the neutral value of legislators freed of any obligation to support the values and preferences of their constituents.

Obama argues that Republicans ought to give in on their own political priorities for the sake of a vague "good of the nation." But this "good of the nation" turns out to be, fortuitously enough, closely aligned with his own leftist agenda.

No reporter ever asks him why, if it is a virtue for Republicans to forsake what they believe in, it would not also be a virtue for Barack Obama to forsake what he and his liberal allies believe in. You know, for the "good of the nation" and all.

His argument is insipid-- obviously, he doesn't do that because of an unstated assumption ("Because I'm right and they're wrong, so naturally my own advice doesn't apply to myself or my leftist Gramsciite radicals").

The moment this assumption is revealed, it puts lie to the idiotic claim he's arguing for a politically neutral value.

His argument doesn't survive first contact with the enemy -- but, fortunately for him, he has absolutely no enemies -- or even skeptics -- asking him questions.

The liberal press shares his assumptions so deeply they don't even realize they are assumptions in the first place. You cannot ever question that which you assume, without thinking, to be beyond question.

Posted by: Ace at 11:16 AM | Comments (259)
Post contains 402 words, total size 3 kb.