RNS Quote of the Day: 02/23/07

Posted on February 23, 2007 by Phil Kadath

Tolerance does not mean you agree with everything other people say, or that you subordinate your best instincts to the tyranny of mass opinion. It simply means you pretend not to know that everyone on the planet but you is a fucking moron.

Dennis Miller

Posted in Quote of the Day | Leave a comment

Hooray for Jim Zumbo

Posted on February 22, 2007 by Alaska

Yes, the man finally gets it. And despite having endured some really over-the-top comments from firebreathing 2A supporters, he is reacting with grace and class. My hat’s off to him. 

“The last few days have been an educational experience, to say the least. My ill-conceived inflammatory blog, as all of you now know, set off a firestorm that, I’m told, has never before been equaled. I’m not proud of that.
Let me say this at the outset. My words here are from the heart, and all mine. No one can censor me, and I answer to no one but myself. And I have no one to blame but myself. Outdoor Life, a magazine that I worked for full-time as Hunting Editor for almost 30 years, fired me yesterday. My TV show was cancelled yesterday. Many of my sponsors have issued statements on their website to sever all relationships. This may cause many of you to do backflips and dance in the streets, but, of course, I’m not laughing, nor am I looking for sympathy. I don’t want a pity party.

They say hindsight is golden. Looking back, I can’t believe I said the words “ban” and “terrorist” in the context that I did. I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote that. I can explain this as sheer ignorance and an irresponsible use of words. What I’ve learned over the last few days has enlightened and amazed me. As a guy who hunts 200 days a year, does seminars on hunting, wrote for six hunting magazines, had a hunting TV show, and wrote 20 books on hunting, how could I have been so ignorant and out of touch with reality in the world of hunting and shooting?

But I was. I really can’t explain it, maybe because I just summarily dismissed the firearms in question in my mind when I saw them in magazines and catalogs. I saw one “black” firearm in a hunting camp in all my 50 years of hunting, and I shot one last year off a boat when fishing in Alaska. To tell the truth, it was fun and I enjoyed it immensely, but I never considered one for use in hunting. I have to tell you that I have had a revelation. I’m learning that many of my pals own AR-15’s and similar firearms and indeed use them for hunting. I was totally unaware that they were being used for legitimate hunting purposes. That is the absolute truth.

My biggest regret is not the financial impact of all this. I’m almost 67 and retirement is an option. The dreadful impact here is that I inadvertently struck a spear into the hearts of the people I love most…America’s gun owners. And, even though this huge cadre of dedicated people have succeeded in stripping me of my career, I hold no grudges. I will continue to stand as firm on pro hunting as I’ve ever done. But what’s different now is that I’ll do all I can to educate others who are, or were, as ignorant as I was about “black” rifles and the controversy that surrounds them. My promise to you is that I’ll learn all I can about these firearms, and by the time this week is out, I’ll order one. The NUGE has invited me to hunt with him using AR-15’s, and I’m eager to go, and learn. I’ll do all I can to spread the word.

I understand that many of you will not accept this apology, believing that the damage has been done and there’s no way to repair it. You have that right. But let me say this. I mentioned this above, and I’ll repeat it. I’m willing to seize this opportunity to educate hunters and shooters who shared my ignorance. If you’re willing to allow me to do that, we can indeed, in my mind, form a stronger bond within our ranks. Maybe in a roundabout way we can bring something good out of this.”  – Jim Zumbo

h/t wetdogranch, where I first saw it. This may be taken from Ted Nugent’s board — at least Uncle thinks so.

I accept this apology. Had his first “apology” read like this, I think he’d still have his sponsors. It just happened too fast for him to react. According to Tom Gresham, Tom notified Jim of the fiery reaction to his initial post while Jim was still driving home from the .17-caliber tryout he mentioned. Jim (obviously) had no clue what he’d started. By the third hour of Tom’s radio program, Jim had reviewed some of the angry posts and responded with his initial apology, then went on Gresham’s show. As you can see from the transcript, neither one of them really understood at that time what was so offensive about the post.

It took a few days, but Gresham finally got it and wrote as much here. Now Zumbo as well. Good for them both, and good for the Second Amendment!

I sincerely hope there will be a strong expression of support for Jim Zumbo now from the 2A community. The above has all the words from him I could have wanted, and more. As Joe pointed out, he’s far too valuable an asset for the 2A community to lose.

Michael Bane has, as usual, excellent coverage of this whole thing, and some much-needed reflections on how the firearms industry may finally have realized that it’s shooters as well as hunters (if not more so), who pay their bills.

I hope Mr. Zumbo’s show returns within a month or so with some AR manufacturer as lead sponsor. I’m gonna guess it’ll be DPMS ’cause they sponsor the Nuge’s show. 

One last bit…I wonder who was really behind that supposed Brady blog post endorsing Zumbo’s remarks? Doesn’t seem like it was the Bradys….

Posted in Heroes, Comrades and Brothers, Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Cover That Hiney

Posted on February 22, 2007 by Phil Kadath

I’ve been remiss in talking about this as I was waiting for the next move in this low-speed chess game to happen. It finally did yesterday.

The Evergreen Freedom Foundation is a PacNW Conservative Think Tank and proponent for some very Reaganesque ideas. Their most current jousting match is against the public employees unions here in Washington State.

The EFF are the ones who got the case in front of the SCOTUS asking whether it is legal for the Washington Education Association (the state teacher’s union) to use the money taken from non-members (teachers do not have to be members of the WEA, but they have to pay dues if they want to keep their jobs) and put it towards political donations. Said case was heard by the SCOTUS on January 10th, 2007 and the decision will hopefully be handed down sooner than later.

The EFF have also recently asked for the notes of the negoatiations between the public employees union to be released to them so that they can be made public, and that is what we’re talking about today.

For those not in the know, government in Washington State employs more citizens of the state than Boeing (aka: the very large airplane manufacturer) and Microsoft (aka: the very large software company) combined.

This fact makes it very necessary that the notes, which ARE currently considered part of the public record, be shown to the citizens of this state, not only so that we can see exactly what we’re paying for, but who is negotiating for us and did they get us a fair deal.

Per usual, the pro-union, pro-nanny state, pro-tax ’em till they bleed and then tax them some more Democrats in this state are screaming bloody murder.

While I must say that I was nominally intrigued about what exactly goes on in these contract debates before EFF stepped up and asked for them, and that my interest was highly piqued when they actually did, but after what happened yesterday, you could say that my interest level literally went to 11.

HB-2326: Protecting the integrity of collective bargaining for public sector employees

Link found at Sound Politics

11 Dems and a single Repub sponsored this bill in the State House of Representative’s “To Do Book” in an attempt to try and keep the taxpaying citizens from finding out what they’re paying for and who is negotiating on their side. The current hearing in King County Superior Court is on March 9th, and if HB-2326 doesn’t get out of committee by then, we’ll look for the union’s lawyers to try a delaying tactic until it can be.

If your first though was “Those 12 Representatives must be getting a nice chuck of change in campaign contributions from the public employees unions”, go to the head of the class.

Posted in Order of the imperial upraised middle finger. | 1 Comment

The Soundboard: So Simple A Caveman Could Do It

Posted on February 22, 2007 by Phil Kadath

If, like The Wife and myself, you’re a fan of the Geico commercials with the offended cavemen.

One of her favorites is this 30 second spot.

There is a bit of tunage in that commercial and, with her not being so internet proficient, she sent me looking for it. I found it. She listened to it and had be buy it.

The tunage is from a Norwegian pair going by the name Royksopp and there are two versions of it. One that is very Kraftwerk and one that is more Joy Division. This is the Joy Division version, though if you look around a bit you’ll find the other one and can spin that up on your interweb home/work interface as well.

Royksopp – Remind Me (Radio Edit)

Enjoy!

Posted in Kewel! | 1 Comment

It’s Funny Cause It’s True

Posted on February 22, 2007 by Phil Kadath

While some, especially those in the other branches of service, deride the USMC as being “simpletons”, I do find it comforting that such “simpletons” can break an big idea down to a very “simple” point.

For an example, click the pic below for a more readable size

America+is+at+the+mall.jpg
Well, not all of America. Just the ones with big outlets for their voices.

Found at SWAC Girl via Some Poor Schmuck

Posted in Heroes, Comrades and Brothers | 2 Comments

How to lose an argument

Posted on February 22, 2007 by Phil Kadath

When you’re only debating yourself.

Class Instructor: Jabberin’ John Aravosis

Step One: Become outraged at something your usual political opposites care very little about.

Step Two: Invoke Godwin’s Law

Course Summary: There, you just lost. Have a nice day.

In the item I posted about on yesterday, the leftosphere is still whining about FOX hosting the first debate between the Democrat Presidential Cadidates taking place this year in Nevada.

Notice how this falls directly into place with Step One from above. I seriously doubt that anyone I know around here could care less about it.

So now Aravosis leads himself into Step Two.

FOX News to air first Democratic presidential debate

What? Joseph Goebbels wasn’t available?

There, he just lost.

Posted in Too Stupid to Live | 1 Comment

The Socialized Medicine Follies: Part 56784

Posted on February 21, 2007 by Phil Kadath

We’ve talked about this before here at RNS, but now it is just about official:

Deny Surgery to Obese and Smokers, Says UK Health Minister

As Britain grapples with what’s been called an obesity epidemic, a leading government minister here says grossly overweight people should be denied surgery.

Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt said in a newspaper interview this week she approved of doctors refusing overweight patients knee and hip surgery, until they lose weight.

They say that they are going to give overweight patients access to “programs” that will help them lose weight, but as I said before, how is a person who is in need of a new hip or knee supposed to work out enough to lose weight?

And what about downtime from work? Recovery from knee and hip surgury is already a time consuming process, and now this person is going to have to take an additional three-months off to drop 50lbs before the government will even put them under the knife? The person will be out of sick leave and on public assistance before they can re-start their gainful employment.

But wait! That isn’t all the UK National Health Service is doing to people!

Cancer patients told life-prolonging treatment is too expensive for NHS

PATIENTS with advanced kidney cancer in Scotland are to be denied a drug which could prolong their lives.

The Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) yesterday refused to recommend Sutent for use on the NHS, meaning patients who fail on current treatment will have no other drug options.

The decision was criticised by doctors and charities, which said around 300 patients a year in Scotland would benefit from the treatment.

Pat Hanlon, from Kidney Cancer UK, said:

“We know the NHS has limited resources, but for patients with kidney cancer there are not many other treatments they can try.

“When they stop responding to interferon, there is nothing else for them.”

Paul Nathan, a consultant medical oncologist, said data showed that Sutent doubled the length of time before kidney cancers started growing again.

Dr Nathan said, while it was not a cure, it could extend patients’ lives by eight months or more.

A consultant oncologist working in the NHS in Scotland, who asked not to be named, said he understood that the NHS had a limited pot of resources.

“But for my patients, if you are diagnosed with advanced kidney cancer your chances of responding to current treatment are minimal – four out of five will get no benefit,” he said.

“Then the NHS is saying to them, ‘Tough luck, there’s nothing we can give you’.

“But that is not the case. If you lived in North America you would get these drugs, but not in Scotland.”

What was that I heard? Us yokels across the pond could get the effective treatment, because of our capitalist medical community, but the wonderful socialized med program in the UK is saying “Just go die, why don’t ya!”?

That is what I thought I heard.

The pro-socialized med creeps are always whining about how “They don’t want a corporation to be making their medical decisions for them.” Well sorry, Charlie, at least you can sue a corporation. You just go trying to sue a government when they kill your family members.

All this is brought on by this bit of news from Washington’s Capital

Democrats pass unsustainable health care entitlement bill

Senate Bill 5093, which offers health care insurance to all children in Washington by 2010, passed in the Senate today despite Republican pleas that the bill is too expensive and will sink the state deeper in promises it can’t keep.

“This bill covers families at 300 percent of the federal poverty level,” said Sen. Cheryl Pflug, R-Maple Valley and ranking Republican on the Senate Health and Long-Term Care Committee. “That means a family of four making $62,000 a year would be eligible. That’s higher than the median income in 37 of Washington’s 39 counties – an enormous and unsustainable entitlement program.”

Sen. Joe Zarelli, R-Vancouver and ranking Republican on the Senate Ways and Means Committee, said that without the amendments offered by Senate Republicans, the bill won’t come close to its intended purpose.

“On one hand, we say we want to cover children in this state who don’t currently have health care coverage,” Zarelli said. “But we know, from in-depth analysis done by our budget staff, that 60 percent of the new enrollees on this plan will actually come from the private sector. These will be children who currently have private health care coverage but their parents will now qualify for the cheaper state-subsidized plan. Six out of 10 new enrollees will be from families who cancel their current private plans in favor of the taxpayers’ generosity and the heavily subsidized state plan.”

“Since 60 percent of new enrollees will come from private insurance, we’ll be even worse off,” said Pflug, “The state has such a low reimbursement rate for primary care doctors, more physicians will be refusing to see children on the state plan. So instead of being better for kids, it will be much worse. Many children could actually lose their primary care physician.”

Taking my tax money “For The Children” of families who don’t need it. Maybe it is time I start making the wife squirt out a multitude of little me’s so that I can catch up on some of this free shit?

I know that the tax refund I sent in for on Monday morning would have at least doubled, if not tripled, if I were blowing my money on diapers and shoes.

It is not the government’s job to give people incentives or reimburse them for birthing, or to cover the little yard ape’s bumbs, bruises and breaks.

And just wait until one Primary Care Pediatrician starts turning away kids who were previously under their care. You’re gonna see the state start suing doctors to make them accept the state-run plan, which will only lead more doctors to leave the state.

I think Idaho is going to have an influx of “child health care professionals” in the next five years. At least, that is where the smart ones will go. If Washington passes this, Oregon will soon follow.

And to just grind this deeper into my face, the State Republican’s tax-cut proposals that we spoke of here a few weeks back after the conference call with Mr. Completely and John Rothlin, the House Republican Communications Director, were recently shot down by the Dems.

In that post I made mention that the money was sitting there acting as a temptation to the Dems for their pet-projects. Well, I can think of a few people I know who vote Democrat and think of their children as pets.

So I guess that this fits nicely for them.

Posted in Freaks, Mutants, and Morons, The Left is Never Right | Leave a comment

Count Any Vote: 2007

Posted on February 21, 2007 by Phil Kadath

If you remember the 2004 Washington State Gubernatorial Election, decided by less than 129 votes, then you’ll remember the complaints from folks who supported candidate Dino Rossi about the crap-filled voter rolls.

And if you can remember that, then you’re sure to remember the Gregiore supporters who attempted to dismiss those claims.

I think we can positively say that the Rossi supporters were on the right side of that argument.

More than 176,000 names removed from voter rolls

More than 176,000 names were removed from the state’s voting rolls last year under a new statewide voter database that was developed to help counties find duplicate registrations and dead voters, Secretary of State Sam Reed said today.

The purge of illegal registrations is the result of the new system that has consolidated all 39 separate county systems into one database in January 2006.

Reed said that from Jan. 1, 2006 to Dec. 31, 176,373 names were removed from the state’s database of about 3.2 million registered voters:

So nearly 2% of all the voters on record in Washington State were deleted in 2006 for one or more of the following four reasons:

Reason #1 – 39,814 duplicate voter registrations, or
Reason #2 – 40,105 deceased voter registrations, or
Reason #3 – 4,500 felon voter registrations, or
Reason #4 – 91,954 active and inactive voter registrations, because voters move to other states or request cancellations of their voter registrations.

Yet, if you listen to people like Spokane’s Spokesman Review blogger, Jim Camden, or Andrew at the Northwest Progressive Institute’s Official Blog, or NW-Leftist Uber-Blogger, Goldy, at the HorsesAss blog, you’d think that there wasn’t any problem at all with having 2% of all registrations in Washington State being fraudulent.

You see, they are taking all the votes cast in the last election (2,107,370) and figured into that number the number of people caught voting fraudulently (one person) and have come up with a .00004% error rate.

Unfortunately for all of them, I live in what is called “The Real World”. In “The Real World” we have these things called facts. Such as “I know for a fact that there were six times as many cars stolen in Washington State as there were prosectuions for car theft. But just because there were no prosecutions for the other 83% of the car thefts doesn’t mean they didn’t happen”

But in the world of free cream pies for everyone and where the busses run on pixie dust (and on time), if no one was caught voting fraudulently, then it didn’t happen.

OK, RNS regulars, quit laughing at them. They are mentally disturbed and possibly a little bit retarded, but they’re humans too. Mmmm-kay?

They are willing to ignore the forwarding of absentee ballots by the USPS and Stefan Sharkansy’s documentation of double voting via absentee ballots (near the bottom of this post), so I guess we should too.

Again, unfortunately for them, we’re not going to.

What brings this all up again, besides the fact that 2% of the voter roles in Washington State being fraudulent, is that the State Dems have a plan for getting all those votes back!

HB 1363 – Making voter registration available at state agencies

HB-1363 started out as a statute declaring that all state offices would be available to sign up voters because it was “‘primary duty of government’ to actively encourage voter registration”.

The State Dems, however, changed the bill so that only Unemployment Offices and the Social and Health Services offices will be offering this.

No Department of Fish and Wildlife. No Department of Natural Resopurces. No nowhere where a potential non-Democrat might actually walk on into. Any amendments to this bill putting other state offices on the list were voted down on a party line vote.

From Stefan:

The House elections oversight committee passed, on a party-line vote, HB 1363, which would make voter registration services available to every person who “applies in person for public assistance, disability services, or makes an in-person report of an address change” at only certain state agencies.

From the House Republican Website

Legislation passed in the House State Government and Tribal Affairs Committee today has the potential to skew voter registrations, said Rep. Bruce Chandler, Republican leader on the committee.

“As it was passed today, House Bill 1363 sends the message that the state can’t afford to be fair,” said Chandler, R-Granger. “It doesn’t make sense that there’s money to designate the Department of Social and Health Services as an agency that is required to offer voter registration services to people who come in for other reasons, but not the Department of Fish and Wildlife, for example.

“If it is the ‘primary duty of government’ to actively encourage voter registration, as this legislation states, the only way to avoid targeting potential voters is to have all agencies involved.”

If Bush took away the “Motor Voter” program so that the only place the feds would pay for voter registrations was at the Game Management office, the left would go nuts. But HB-1363 currently sounds just right to them.

They reason it out that the poor don’t get many opportunities to register to vote. Gosh, with all that free time from being unemployed (or unemployable), you’d figure that those people would be able to accidently walk into a DMV or a Post Office once in a while.

Posted in Count ANY Vote | 4 Comments

They’re just too busy saving the world

Posted on February 21, 2007 by Phil Kadath

To read past the headlines.

Or to even read papers other than the ones that they agree with.

You may remember Joe Sudbay of AmericaBlog. He was the one who, after the SOTU speech, said that Condi and Bush “didn’t have a lot of brain power between them.”

Must be a gag at parties, that Joe Sudbay!

Once again, Joe fires away and blows off the foot he has stuck in his mouth. Check it out:

“New Conservative majority” on Supreme Court rules for Phillip Morris

He’s talking, of course, about the SCOTUS tossing out the $79.5 Million Oregon Supreme Court judgement against the Marlboro cigarette maker.

He got his opinion from the folks at the LA Times who used their superior intellect to divine that the court is heading towards a “Conservative Scalia-Led Majority”, which Joe Sudbay eats up like it was an Obama-pizza with Howard Dean sauce

Unfortunately for Joe Sudbay and the LA Times, Scalia voted with Thomas to give a thumbs-up to the Oregon judgement (along with Stevens and Ginsburg), while it was Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, Souter and Breyer who voted to vacate the judgement from Oregon.

So just to make sure we’re all on the same page here: According to the LA Times and Smokin’ Joe Sudbay, Scalia, Thomas, Stevens and Ginsburg are the new Conservative majority, who were in the minorty.

What is Smokin’ Joe smoking?

Posted in The Left is Never Right | Leave a comment

Come ona my house!

Posted on February 21, 2007 by Phil Kadath

I never get guests like this!

Police say political dispute with stranger got physical

A Fredericksburg man was arrested Saturday on charges he assaulted three strangers at their home during a dispute over politics, police said.

According to a Fredericksburg police report, the suspect went to a home in the 900 block of Marye Street about 5:30 p.m. after finding one of the resident’s name on a Republican Web site.

The resident and his two roommates engaged in a discussion with the suspect, though none of them had ever met or had contact with him before.

The argument got heated and the suspect learned that the young residents had not enlisted in the military and “put their all” behind the Republican-led war effort in Iraq, police spokeswoman Natatia Bledsoe said.

The suspect refused to leave the home after repeatedly being asked to do so, police said. The three roommates were hit multiple times each as they attempted to get the suspect out of the door, authorities said.

The suspect continued to be aggressive and disorderly even after a city police officer arrived, the report states.

Andrew Stone, 23, was charged with three counts of assault and battery. A magistrate released Stone on his own recognizance and he was ordered to have no further contact with the victims.

Ever since I started blogging, I’ve had leftards say that they want to kick my ass, including Brendolina who went through a serious check to try and find my address, for unknown purposes.

For the most part, I do a decent job of staying below the radar, except for those times when I host a public meetup with other bloggers and tell everyone when and where I’m going to be a week ahead of time.

I guess that pistol and rifle ranges just aren’t the sort of places a leftist with BDS wants to meet at?

When I used to visit the local Indymedia fever swamps, I couldn’t go a month without some chucklemonkey demanding I meet him for a showdown. I’m sure that Raging Dave remembers at least one or two of these. Strangely enough, not one of them ever showed at the designated time/place.

But oh well. If one of these assholes ever showed up at my house, let us just say that I’d play Norman Bates to their Marion Crane. You can’t let the roaches go home and give out your personal info to everyone.

Found @ LGF

Posted in Too Stupid to Live | Leave a comment