Washington Post: Hey, The Problem Is All The Guns

By William Teach May 22, 2018 – 6:54 am

The funny part here is that the same paper, along with most others, was utterly uninterested in investigating the Obama/Holder gun running scheme Operation Fast and Furious, which resulted in scores being killed and wounded in America and Mexico, including children and two federal agents. At least one of those same guns that were lost was reported to have shown up in Paris during an Islamic jihadi attack

America paves the way to the next tragedy

TOO MANY doors. Abortion. Video games. Ritalin. Those are some of the explanations trotted out by Republicans and the National Rifle Association in the wake of Friday’s mass shooting at a high school in Santa Fe, Tex. The willingness to say anything — no matter how ludicrous — would be laughable if not for the fact that 10 people are dead and that refusing to acknowledge the role played by this country’s lax gun laws only paves the way for the next tragedy. (snip)

Friday’s school shooting underscores that there are no simple solutions. There seem to have been no clear warning signs about the suspected shooter, a 17-year-old who had made the honor roll and once played on the school football team. The weapons he allegedly used were a shotgun loaded with buckshot and a .38-caliber revolver his father had legally obtained, not a semiautomatic rifle. Opponents of gun control have seized on these factors as evidence of the futility of expanded background checks or an assault weapons ban. But it has always been understood that no single measure will be the answer for every crime.

Well, Democrats have said it it very easy: ban “assault rifles”, ban magazines that hold more than 10 bullets, and close the so-called gun show loophole, and everything will be fine. Perhaps some red flag laws and a few other minor things.

The next step is to acknowledge this reality: What sets America apart from the rest of the civilized world is not Ritalin or school entrances or violent video games but the astronomical number of guns and the easy access to them.

That’s the final line of editorial: is anyone else deducing that what they mean is to ban all guns? If you’re going to blamestorm something, you obviously have a plan. Why won’t they just come out and say it?

37,461 were killed in automobile accidents in 2016. 10,497 were from drunk drivers. No one is calling to get rid of autos nor alcohol. In fact, the CDC reports that alcohol use causes 88,000 deaths a year. Why no calls to ban alcohol?

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Green Nags Look To Ban Parents From Driving Their Kids To School

By William Teach May 21, 2018 – 3:06 pm

While there’s certainly something to be said for fossil fueled vehicles putting out actual pollutants which does not include carbon dioxide, as typical, the nags are out in force, and everything you need to know is in the UK Guardian subhead. And remember, this is in the UK

Clean-air campaigners call for ban on school run to cut pollution
Government urged to take steps to reduce the impact of toxic air on vulnerable children

Clean-air campaigners have written to the government calling for a ban on parents driving their children to school in an attempt to cut down on toxic levels of air pollution.

Environmental groups and medics warn that pollution from the school run is having a serious impact on young people’s health.

Last year, the Guardian revealed that hundreds of thousands of children were being exposed to dangerous levels of air pollution outside schools, colleges and nurseries.

Now new figures from the Department of Transport show that that one in four cars on the road at peak times are on the school run.

The gas they’re focusing on is NO2, particularly as it emenates from the use of diesel fuel, which, if you remember, was pushed hard as a means of reducing “carbon pollution.” It’s funny, though, how they always want to use government force on behavior, though, eh?

Jenni Wiggle from the charity Living Streets, which has written to the transport minister, Jesse Norman, said more children walking meant fewer vehicles on the road and improved air quality for everyone.

“We would like to see more local authorities working with schools to ban people from driving up to the school gate – adding to air pollution, congestion and road danger during drop off and pick-up.

“Walking to school not only improves our air quality but is a great way for children to build more exercise into their daily lives, helping them to arrive to school healthier, happier and ready to learn.”

All they’ll have to worry about, at least in certain parts of the UK, is getting stabbed by all the “refugees”. Or sexually harassed by the same. Cause, it’s also funny that the Progressive push to go soft on crime had made it too dangerous for kids to actually walk or ride their bikes to school, like they did in my time. Oh, and the integration push, whether it be for race or economics, forces kids to go to schools too far away to walk or ride their bikes.

And restricting parents from using their cars and getting kids on buses is also a great way for the Government to control people. Sounds like we’re in tin-foil hat territory, but, this is what they have said they want to do.

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If All You See…

By William Teach May 21, 2018 – 1:00 pm

…is sunlight made brighter due to carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Jihad Watch, with a post on a man facing hate speech charges for satirizing Sharia punishments.

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Netherlands Green Police To Be Used To Protect Trash Collectors As They Hand Out Penalties

By William Teach May 21, 2018 – 10:37 am

Government scolds are worried that their government nagging is causing problems

(UK Guardian) Refuse collectors in the Netherlands are being followed by close protection officers after getting the power to issue red and yellow cards to force householders to properly recycle.

The new football-style card system has led to a series of rubbish rage incidents in the south of the country, with collectors threatened, abused and one bin lorry hemmed in to a street by furious householders who had not had their waste taken away.

The Netherlands has been a pioneer in household recycling with some municipalities charging for the collection of bin bags which contain non-recyclable rubbish, and asking householders to separate refuse into up to seven different categories.

However officers known as the buitengewoon opsporingsambtenaar (BOA), who are not police but have the power to arrest suspects and issue fines, had to be brought in to protect the refuse collectors of Best, a town near Eindhoven, after they became responsible for not only collecting the rubbish but inspecting it and dishing out cards to recalcitrant households.

Yellow cards are issued to warn people if they have wrongly separated their waste. Red cards are given to repeat offenders, and their rubbish is left to rot on the side of the road, leading to angry confrontations.

The ultimate in greenie weenie insanity. Recycling is good. But, Government Force, turning trash collecters into government enforcement agents, then having to protect them with special officers because this whole thing is over the top, is insane.

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Hot Take: The Founding Fathers Wouldn’t Want Us To Follow The Document They Wrote, Because Guns

By William Teach May 21, 2018 – 7:43 am

Of course, we shouldn’t forget that there were only a handful of Founding Fathers who attended and were even involved in writing the Constitution, and that those who wrote the Constitution are referred to as the Framers. But, hey, facts are problematic for gun grabbers, and it’s really difficult to look up information, you know, at least for USA Today’s Jill Lawrence, who’s attempting to Make A Point

Would the Founders want our kids to die in school shootings like Santa Fe? I doubt it.

Amid all we know about the Founding Fathers, two things stand out in the wake of yet another mass shooting that underscores the desperate need for action and the depth of our paralysis.

The first is that nearly a third of the 39 delegates who signed the Constitution endured the tragedy of losing children. By one count, 24 sons and daughters born to a dozen signers died before adulthood. The second is that these and the other Founders were among the greatest change-makers in history. They were America’s first #Resist movement, and they fought an actual war to create a future unbound from the past.

Does anyone think they would expect us to live by a 230-year-old document? Would they stand by, reciting the centuries-old Second Amendment, if their own children were endangered — in school, at malls, in movie theaters, on city streets — by easy access to guns? Or would they start us on the road to universal background checks, mandatory waiting periods and other steps most Americans say they want?

Actually, yes, I do think the Framers would want us to live by that 230 year old document, and they also gave America the ability to change the Constitution, if they can get it done. But, if Jill is unhappy about it, she should drag out her quill pen and write to her Congressperson, sending the letter by horse. Or, maybe use the same type of manual printing presses available in the late 1700’s. Or perhaps we can start stationing troops at Jill’s house, having done away with the 3rd Amendment. The Framers thought that was pretty darned important to restrict government. And are those warrant thingies really necessary?

We abolished slavery long ago, militias have turned into the National Guard, and estimates suggest Americans own millions of AR-15s that are modeled on M-16s. It’s a world light years beyond the ken of the Founders.

As brilliant as they were, they’d be the first to say that they and their blueprint for America were imperfect — limited by their experiences, their era, their differences, the difficult compromises they had to make. They bequeathed us infinite complications, not because they wanted to but because they could not see the future and because they had to in order to get the job done.

In other words, ban guns, abolish the 2nd Amendment. Remember, they aren’t coming for your guns, they just want some common sense reforms.

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TDS: “No One Is An Animal” Or Something

By William Teach May 21, 2018 – 7:18 am

It takes a special kind of stupid, a special brand of Trump Derangement Syndrome, to declare that absolutely no one is an animal, as we see from the Washington Post’s E. J. Dionne finally jumping in

No one is an ‘animal’

It’s never right to call other human beings “animals.” It’s not something we should even have to debate. No matter how debased the behavior of a given individual or group, no matter how much legitimate anger that genuinely evil actions might inspire, dehumanizing others always leads us down a dangerous path.

This is why we need to reflect on the controversy over exactly whom President Trump was referring to as “animals” during a roundtable discussion last week at the White House with state and local officials from California on so-called sanctuary laws.

On its face — and this is certainly how Trump wants us to view things — this is an argument about whether the media distorted his intent by reporting what he said out of context.

It’s never right? How about when we call people “party animals” or “political animals”? Not OK? Or how someone is an animal in bed? Or, how about “A person without human attributes or civilizing influences, especially someone who is very cruel, violent, or repulsive.” Would it be wrong to call these people animals?

  • Osama bin Laden (and the rest of al Qaeda)
  • Joseph Stalin
  • Adolph Hitler
  • Joseph Mengele
  • Vladimir Lenin
  • Mao Zedong
  • Pol Pot
  • Idi Amin
  • Albert Fish
  • People who saw other people’s heads off
  • Members of ISIS
  • People who burn other people alive
  • People who commit mass shootings

That’s just a short list. Feel free to add your own. Though E.J. is saying it’s wrong to call them animals, because it’s “dehumanizing.”

No one wants to be put in a position of seeming to say anything good about gang members. Yet Trump’s strategy of dehumanization must be resisted across the board. We cannot shy away from what history teaches. Pronouncing whole categories of people as subhuman numbs a nation’s moral sense and, in extreme but, unfortunately, too many cases, becomes a rationale for collective cruelty.

I have no trouble branding people, such as the ones in the above list, as animals. How about you? Are you good with it? Dionne seriously provides one of the best examples of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

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If All You See…

By William Teach May 20, 2018 – 1:55 pm

…is a sea that is encroaching on inland areas because Someone Else ate a cheeseburger, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Bizzy Blog, with a post on the NY Times making lots and lots of corrections.

It’s sundresses week!

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Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup

By William Teach May 20, 2018 – 9:16 am

Patriotic Pinup Al Buell

Happy Sunday! Another fantastic day in America. The Sun is shining, the frogs are frogging, and summer is just around the corner. This pinup is by Al Buell, with a wee bit of help (doing something I have almost never had to do, because super allergic to cut grass).

What’s happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? The Fine 15

  1. Moonbattery notes that blacks in power don’t empower blacks
  2. neo-neocon features another false racism accusation
  3. Noisy Room has a flashback to when bad names were cool with Dems (vis a vis “animals”)
  4. Pacific Pundit features a stupid media headline on the spy spying on Trump
  5. Powerline discusses why Trump tweets
  6. The Daley Gator covers what the Dems new reality show should be named
  7. The First Street Journal notes the success of socialism
  8. The Lid wonders if Dems are finally driving Dem states off the fiscal cliff
  9. The Powers That Be notes that Deplorables should rejoice
  10. This ain’t Hell… features awesome new pics of nearby galaxies
  11. Watts Up With That discusses 2 years of global cooling
  12. No Frakking Consensus notes how much plastic is in the oceans
  13. Climate Change Dispatch wonders why renewables are destroying the environment
  14. 357 Magnum can’t wait to have socialized medicine like Canada
  15. And last, but not least, A View From The Beach wonders what’s the point of tenure if it doesn’t protect unpopular opinions

As always, the full set of pinups can be seen in the Patriotic Pinup category, or over at my Gallery page. While we are on pinups, since it is that time of year, have you gotten your “Pinups for Vets” calendar yet? And don’t forget to check out what I declare to be our War on Women Rule 5 and linky luv posts and things that interest me

Don’t forget to check out all the other great material all the linked blogs have!

Anyone else have a link or hotty-fest going on? Let me know so I can add you to the list.

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Remember, Democrats Totally Aren’t Trying To Take Your Guns Away (Part Lots)

By William Teach May 20, 2018 – 7:57 am

As Glenn Beck points out

We know what’s behind the Democrat talking points, so when they call for ‘common sense gun control”, we won’t allow things that even we think are good ideas, as they will then be expanded, Dems will want more and more and more. Because you see plenty of Dems responding to Lauren like

https://twitter.com/elinorgray/status/997896153206214656

Then there’s

Isn’t it nice that a person who took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States (with Democrats, you have to specify, as they might think you’re talking about the Constitution of a different country) is saying “nah, let’s get rid of what I don’t like”? I say we do away with all armed protect for Congress. While in session, at the Capital building, at the Congressional office buildings, when they’re traveling, heck, restrict them from even hiring private security or carrying their own firearm while in elected position. See how they like that.

Then there’s this from Esquire’s Dave Holmes

Okay, Now I Actually Do Want To Take Your Guns

Hey there, NRA:

Listen, I know the moments after a gunman opens fire in a school are hectic for you. You have to get your talking points together, you have to mentally prepare to debate a traumatized yet sensible child, you have to look at yourself in the mirror and practice saying that more guns would have made the situation less deadly. It’s a busy time! And since we are always either in the moments after or the moments before a mass shooting, you’re pretty much always busy, I have noticed!

Anyway, I just wanted to drop you a line and let you know that I now actually do want to take your guns.

All of your guns.

Right now.

Go ahead and try, chump.

And Vox’s always nutty German Lopez

I’ve covered gun violence for years. The solutions aren’t a big mystery.
America can prevent shootings. But it has to come to grips with the problem.

The problem? Well, German tries to be subtle, but finally gets around to say that the problem is guns, not mental illness, and goes on to tell us how great the Australian gun ban and forced confiscation was and still is. And that this has to be applied nationally, not just at the state and local level (because no one could possibly smuggle anything across our borders, you know). And that “America needs to go much further than anyone admits,” even further than the solution imposed in Australia

If the fundamental problem is that America has far too many guns, then policies need to cut the number of guns in circulation right now to seriously reduce the number of gun deaths. Background checks and other restrictions on who can buy a gun can’t achieve that in the short term. What America likely needs, then, is something more like Australia’s mandatory buyback program — essentially, a gun confiscation scheme — paired with a serious ban on specific firearms (including, potentially, all semiautomatic weapons).

But, wait, there’s more

Part of the holdup is the Second Amendment. While there is reasonable scholarly debate about whether the Second Amendment actually protects all Americans’ individual right to bear arms and prohibits stricter forms of gun control, the reality is the Supreme Court and US lawmakers — backed by the powerful gun lobby, particularly the NRA — widely agree that the Second Amendment does put barriers on how far restrictions can go. That would likely rule out anything like the Australian policy response short of a court reinterpretation or a repeal of the Second Amendment, neither of which seems likely.

Now, does that seem like they’re pushing for the repeal of the 2nd Amendment? Sure does. I say, go for it. Give it a shot. As Stephen Miller responded to Chris Murphy, “”Your rights aren’t absolute” Sure. Run on that one guys.” Yeah, run on attempting to take Constitutional Rights away, Dems. And try to take our guns away. You won’t like the results if you manage to do it. Which you won’t.

Read: Remember, Democrats Totally Aren’t Trying To Take Your Guns Away (Part Lots) »

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Irony: Nation Complaining About ‘Climate Change’ Allowing Hotel For The Uber-Rich To Be Built

By William Teach May 19, 2018 – 4:08 pm

I don’t think Mother Jones considered this when they reprinted a Slate screed

A $50,000-a-Night Underwater Hotel Room in the Maldives Shows How Oblivious We Are to Climate Change

In a tiny nation that will likely be underwater due to sea level rise within the next century, an American luxury hotel chain is constructing an underwater hotel roomthat the world’s wealthiest will be able to reserve for $50,000 a night. No one seems to have noticed the irony. But it’s hard to imagine a more perfect example of the way we think about climate change: a scary thing that will happen at some point in the future but not a problem worth mentioning in the present.

When you search for the Maldives, a country composed of 1,192 islands that speckle the Indian Ocean southwest of Sri Lanka, on Google Maps, the names of the biggest islands appear in a blank sea. You have to zoom in to identify the minute slivers of land that are home to a population of 400,000. Soon even these slivers will be gone. With an average elevation of about 4 feet, and with literally zero hills or mountains, the Maldives is the world’s lowest-lying country. It will not survive the sea level rise caused by anthropogenic climate change.

In 2009, then-President Mohamed Nasheed tried to broadcast the plight of the Maldives by holding what he called the world’s first underwater Cabinet meeting. Nasheed and several high-ranking government officials donned wetsuits and scuba gear, dove down 20 feet to the ocean floor, and, using hand signals and white boards to communicate, signed a document urging all of the world’s countries to cut carbon emissions. Should the world fail to control climate change, they implied, the Maldives would only be able to conduct its business underwater. This piece of political theater served as a metonym for the problem of climate change, a small and globally weak nation trying to publicize its environmental trauma in universally comprehensible terms.

What the Maldives want is some of that sweet, sweet, redistributed climate cash. Also, lots of tourists taking long fossil fueled trips to their 4 international airports and 8 domestic ones. They’re upgrading their international airports and constructing new runways to accommodate bigger passenger jets. And a new seaplane terminal. Does this look like a nation concerned about ‘climate change’ from fossil fuels?

Reading the article more, we see what a massive construction this hotel will be. Most of the material will have to be brought in by fossil fueled cargo ship. Why is the government allowing this? Some data suggests that the waters around the Maldives are rising at 3.5mm per year tide gauge/3.2 satellite. That’s .1377 inches per year. Other data shows 2.2mm per year. Some data shows no change. None are particularly long term to make a proper judgement.

What is known is that some of those pushing this issue the hardest are hypocrites. If the government of the Maldives really cared, they wouldn’t allow mega hotels to be built, nor new runways, and, really would shut down their airports and only allow sailing ships to bring people and stuff.

Read: Irony: Nation Complaining About ‘Climate Change’ Allowing Hotel For The Uber-Rich To Be Built »

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