What She Said

A Girl And Her Gun:  An Open Letter To The Anti-Gun Folks.

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam

Thanks to a flush of spam comments, I have turned on moderation.  Never reward bad behavior.

Couldn't Have Said It Better

As the tenth anniversary of September 11 came and went, I felt more anger and disgust than anything else. Between Dear Leader stumping for yet another excuse to waste our money while accomplishing nothing, and the mandated-helplessness crowd bleating about FEEEEWINGS, I pretty much gave up on writing anything that didn't violate my language-quality policy.

Anyway, I couldn't have said it any better than Tam, LawDog, MattG, and of course Larry Correia.  Go read.

Sidesaddle For Sale

A friend is selling a restored Western-style sidesaddle, without a leaping pommel:

She's asking $350. Leave a comment if you're interested.

UPDATE 09/15:  The saddle has been sold.  Thanks.

If It Feels Hinky . . .

I was running errands last Saturday and had just left a specialty store in a small strip mall with my purchases.  A woman who looked, shall we say, out of place in that area approached me with some sob story about needing help.  She needed money, she needed to borrow (yeah, right) my cell phone, yada, yada, as she kept trying to get within arm's reach.  I maintained my distance, explaining politely but firmly that I could not help her.

Fortunately she finally got the message.  I then watched her go into the store I had just left, the only one in the vicinity with no customers inside, just a single late-teens-early-twenties female sales clerk with the situational awareness of a doorstop.

I pretended to have forgotten something and went back into the store.  The woman was regaling the young clerk with the same spiel as she edged closer to the open end of the counter.  I stood off to one side, where the woman could see I was watching her out of the corner of my eye.

Funny thing, she quickly left the store and was nowhere to be seen when I went out again to the parking lot.

Pay attention to that built-in hinky meter.

Oh, This Would NEVER Be Abused

By our Benevolent Overlords:

How The New "Protecting Children" Bill Puts You At Risk

HR1981 forces ISPs to retain customer names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and dynamic IP addresses for eighteen months. The information would be available to police and attorneys upon request. Even civil litigants would be able to access this data.

As ZDNet's Violet Blue states:

"This has nothing to do with porn. In case you’re like the Reps that passed this nightmare and you’ve forgotten: pornography is legal in the United States.


"It is pedophilia that is illegal. But for the sake of harnessing hysteria to get a bill passed, clearly these particular Republicans find it convenient to conflate “pornographers” as pedophiles. Last time I checked in on the matter, pedophiles did not operate within the laws surrounding adult pornography."

Gee, kinda like criminals do not operate withing the laws surrounding guns.

Just as with guns, there are plenty of ways to track down pedophiles without keeping 18 months' worth of highly confidential data on every single internet user in the country.  As a professional network engineer, I've worked on many investigations ranging from employees behaving badly to kidnappings and serial killers.  Not one of those investigations was impeded by lack of this legislation, or would have been advanced by its presence.

HR1981 (1984 would have been a more appropriate bill number) happens to be sponsored by a Republican ostensibly against Teh Ebil Pr0n, but it could just as easily been crafted by Democrats against Tea Party Terrorists.  One can't help but wonder whether there's some wink-wink-nudge-nudge going on across the aisle with this one.

As with criminals vs. law-abiding gun owners, the percentage of pedophiles vs. legitimate internet users is microscopic.  There is absolutely no justification to collect information on 272.1 million internet users to track down an estimated 10,000 sleazeballs.  Just like registering everyone's guns will have no effect at all on violent criminals, but will surely facilitate abuse of the law-abiding.

Well, Whaddaya Know?

There really IS a pony under all that hair.

Note the Labrador Retriever behind him for a full appreciation of Milton The EvilPony's™ size -- or lack thereof.

That's Erin, the oh-so-patient hoofcare professional trimming the little monster's feet, getting down to his level rather than ruining her back.

Believe it or not, Milton has actually lost some weight since his 24x7 corn-vacuuming adventure last winter.

Memorial Day 2011

Never forget.

Never forget the sacrifice of the warriors who defend our freedom, tenuous as that freedom may be these days.

And never forget, as Tolkien said, that "those without swords can still die upon them," whether those swords be held by a foreign enemy or one's own government gone to ruin.

The Brady Campaign Shows Us The Way

The Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Ownership Violence has handy "scorecards" that show us what deficiencies exist in each state's gun laws. By examining Nebraska's Brady scorecard, we see that Nebraska has 5 points for gun control out of a possible 100.

Obviously, a score of 5 is a problem. By examining the scoring detail, we find Nebraska earned 2 out of 2 possible points for "Employers not forced to allow firearms in parking lots," 2 out of 2 possible points for "Colleges are not forced to allow firearms on campus," and 1 out of 2 possible points for "Some local control of (firearm) regulations." Nebraska also earned 0 of a possible -2 points for requiring a permit for concealed carry.

That clearly shows us where we need to focus our efforts. Laws must be enacted in our state to prohibit employers from banning secured firearms in locked personal vehicles, remove the "spree killer empowerment zones" from our colleges and universities, enforce total statewide preemption of firearm regulations, and enact Constitutional carry.

Accomplishing all of those things would give Nebraska the coveted Perfect Brady Score of -2.

See? Who says we can't learn anything from the Brady Bunch?

Rewarding Bad Behavior

Recently a certain columnist at a certain Pittsburgh online newspaper wrote a sexist, misogynistic screed about women and the NRA. It was picked up by the blogosphere, driving lots of new traffic to that paper's website.

Online newspapers make their money from advertising, and in order to sell advertising their sites need lots of hits. They will be more than happy to hold their noses and keep the most disgusting so-called writers on staff if those writers' vile blatherings generate said hits.

Complaining to the authors of offensive articles, who are attention-whores anyway, accomplishes nothing. Like the dog who soils the carpet because being beaten is preferable to being ignored, any attention is better than none. And complaining to their bosses only confirms the "value" of the hit-generator.

So rather than link back to the crap itself, thus proving its value to the publisher, make one short visit to the newspaper's website. Take note of the biggest advertisers, and contact them. Explain exactly why you will never spend another dime with them if they continue to support such garbage. Copy the so-called writer and his bosses on that message so they understand precisely why their revenues are likely to decrease.

And just for the record, in case this so-called writer should blunder in here, "it's satire and you're too stupid to see that" isn't working for Scott Adams and it won't work for you.