|
|
||
|
Western
Missouri Shooters Alliance |
|
|
|
||
  via e-mail |
PAGE NINE -- No. 41 |
|
by Alan Korwin Feb 18, 2008 |
STARTERS:
Can you beat me in this global whining test?
Corrections: In committee, Durbin (D-Ill.) asked, "What about the circumstances where the information would save lives, many lives, would that justify it?" Mukasey replied, "Those circumstances have not been set out," dodging a harder answer. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in a BBC interview on 2/12, said, "it would be absurd to say you couldn't" include harsh methods if a bomb was about to go off and you held a person who knew the details. He mentioned "stick something under the fingernails" and face slapping, both of which meet the "inflict pain" aspect of torture that waterboarding does not.
The new 2008 Traveler's Guide to the Gun Laws of the 50 States
is now available!
----------
ALAN'S ON THE MOVE:
Feb. 23 - Mar. 2, 2008 Join author Chris Bird and me at a special event of the Second Amendment Academy at Lone Star College in Conroe, 2/25, 7 p.m., free admission. Send me an email if you'd like to try to hook up along the way, at the meetings, or at the bigger ranges and stores -- I plan to visit as many as I can.
March 18, 2008
----------
1- Heller Briefs Filed The lamestream media told you: Very little.
The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: The amicus brief for Dick Heller (the pro-gun-rights side) in the D.C. gun-ban case is some of the best 2A reading available today -- a brilliant, logical, thoroughly researched, easy-to-read 82 pages with every statement documented, largely to colonial-era sources. Dig this cite I had not seen before: "The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that . . . it is their right and duty to be at all times armed. . . ." Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Justice John Cartwright (June 5, 1824). The pro-rights brief cites to many original sources from 200+ years ago. In contrast, the anti-rights brief cites most of its sources from the last few decades, when the whole you-have-no-rights malarkey was being fabricated from thin air. What pure joy to have this out in the open at last. It brought a smile to my face when the anti-rights people made a tremendous point for their side by quoting Marbury v. Madison (1803), the ancient case that still controls many things today, and the pro-rights side said yes, but here's the other half of that quote... and tore their argument to shreds! Did the antis think they wouldn't get caught in the deception? All the words the antis like to bend and twist (keep, bear, militia, etc.) are carefully defined in their original context. The list of who proposed and signed which briefs are almost as interesting as the authorities cited and the arguments made. The states of NY, HI, MD, MA, NJ (and PR) filed to deny your rights. So did the American Bar Assn., the NAACP, some usual suspects and the city of Chicago -- because they know they're next. Lead by Texas, 32 states filed in support of the Second Amendment, in addition to 40 state gun-rights groups and general rights groups of every description, except for the conspicuously absent ACLU. Filed by Congress in support of 2A (with more signatories than
any other Congressional amicus in history): Filed by Congress against 2A: Links to all the briefs (47 pro, 19 anti): Short summaries of the Court's first 92 gun cases, from my
co-authored book Supreme Court Gun Cases:
----------
2- Superbowl Deception Detected The lamestream media told you: (Photo caption): Excited fans pour onto the Superbowl field for the Tom Petty halftime show.
The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: (Actual caption): Several thousand carefully pre-screened and rehearsed bused-in unpaid volunteers are ushered onto the field to give the impression of wildly exuberant fans at the Superbowl game. Paying fans, even at ten grand a seat, don't get to set foot on the field. The volunteers are bused-out as soon as the show ends, and do not get to see the game. But it helps create a fine cultural myth and the news media is complicit in the deception. Why let a little thing like honesty get in the way of a well-staged photo op. The only reason the Uninvited Ombudsman knows about this is because he was going to apply for the job, but ended up working at the SHOT Show in Las Vegas instead. It is unknown if he could have jumped and acted that excited for that long to pass the audition. Note that no one ever has as much fun in real life as actors on TV, especially the ones cleaning the kitchen and bathroom tile. In other news, it was one heck of a game.
----------
3- SHOT Show Spectacular The lamestream media told you: Nothing.
The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: Seven hundred thousand square feet of space, tens of thousands of attendees from all over the world, nearly two thousand exhibitors in five halls so big you can't see one end from the other, indoor exhibits built two stories high, mountains of weapons and arsenals of every description -- high powered, rapid fire, extended capacity -- assembled once again at the SHOT Show in Las Vegas, and no controversy of any kind was evident. No lamestream media was evident either, though trade press was abundant. Lamestream media could not cover the event, because it would show the shooting, hunting and outdoor trade (SHOT) industry as a regular business just like any other, which would violate news-media policy. It's a little smaller than the Consumer Electronics Show, and few items are as big ticket as the Barrett Jackson car auction, but it's a multibillion dollar business with multimillion dollar deals on the floor, and no news coverage, unlike other big-time annual shows. The most expensive item seen, aside from armored vehicles, helicopters, 18-wheeler self-contained ranges and stores, military miniguns and some of the women, were a set of four matched Perrazi shotguns for $440,000. The Uninvited Ombudsman actually held one in his hands. Carefully. Very carefully. Hey, it's just a shotgun, I'd rather buy a house with that kind of money. The most unusual exhibit was samples from a find in a Nepal
arsenal, remnants of the British East India Trading Company, with 55,000
firearms. They're now all in the U.S. after several years of effort,
including piles of original U.S. colonial-era Brown Bess muskets, all
available for sale. Among the most clever new products was Shock Knife, a combat-training tool shaped like a knife with a zapper for an edge. Blackwater Int'l., reviled in the "news" media but saving lives in Iraq and around the world, had a huge booth and recruitment videos on big screens, which switched over to the big game just in time when the beer kegs arrived. Artist Wayne McLoughlin offered to paint your name onto a poster for "America's Cheapest Ammunition -- It Usually Works." In the background, a bear is chewing on the remnants of a hunter's clothes. Here was American enterprise at its finest, new products of incredibly clever design and advancement, entrepreneurship in unbridled fine array, the buzz and hustle of free markets unlike anywhere else on Earth, and no news media. All these guns and there's no crime, no death, no controversy. It's just good healthy business, and after incessant media pounding, that was just plain weird. The picture painted by the media is so perverse, so negative, so deadly and crime ridden, that to see this show with so many fine upstanding people, from business suits to gilley suits, casual dress to corporate uniforms, babes bursting from show costumes to your basic bubbas shopping for their businesses, the disjoint between the publicly promoted image of guns and the reality was hard to reconcile. The bias and distortion of the media shined from a brightly lit pedestal. The show themes are familiar and pervasive -- law enforcement, personal safety, hunting for food, military protection, convenience in the outdoors, high performance for competitors, gear for everyone, every manufacturer's entire handgun and long gun line out in the open for touchy feely examination, and no media. That's probably a good thing. Because knowing their sorry
ways, they would use this show as a way to make everything look bad.
Despite the obvious reality to the contrary, they would immorally make
us seem evil instead of righteous, ignoring the fact that guns are why
America is still free.
----------
4- Media Bias Worsening The lamestream media told you: Literally nothing.
The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: The Media Research Center's latest analysis of network TV "news" finds that, for the first seven months of 2007, ABC, CBS and NBC ran 650 stories on homicides involving firearms. They balanced this with stories of guns saving people from crime -- twice -- for a ratio of 325 to one against the public. Criminologists have repeatedly found that guns are used to prevent crimes far more often than to commit crimes. Of 13 scholarly studies on the issue, depending on time frames and the set of respondents asked, guns stop crime between 700,000 and 3.4 million times every year. The networks' distortion of truth on the subject is reprehensible, especially as public stewards of government-monopoly licenses to broadcast. They could not be reached for comment. Efforts to have the Society of Professional Journalists address such ethical abuse have been fruitless -- and I've been trying for years. My latest article on the matter was turned down as "too controversial." Go figure. In other news, MRC's study revealed the networks give double
the time to Democrat candidates and promote the liberal agenda. See the
report, or add your name to the petition demanding equal time:
----------
5- Kucinich Announces Announcement The lamestream media told you: Dennis Kucinich announced on Jan. 24 that he would announce on Jan. 25 that he was quitting his bid for the White House, according to an unbylined article by the Associated Press, taken from an interview in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: The practice of announcing upcoming announcements should prompt ridicule, but is now reported with a straight face by "reporters" who quote each others' stories. It does allow media to run the same story twice, helping to fill space. Kucinich, viewed as a left-wing extremist by left-wing extremists but treated kindly by the left-wing press, used a page from mainstream politics by announcing his upcoming announcement. Leading experts suggest it may be better than the practice of asking friends to anonymously leak leaks, because it is less dishonest. Earlier in the week, AP reports "he made an urgent appeal on his Web site for funds for his reelection." How much he raised, or what happened to the money, went unreported.
----------
6- Natalee Holloway Again The lamestream media told you: New evidence has re-opened the Natalee Holloway case, the Alabama teen who disappeared three years ago during a high school graduation vacation in Aruba. The usual suspects, players, locations, fact-free details, blah blah blah and more after these messages.
The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: At last count, FBI figures indicated there are at least 51,000 active missing-person cases open in the United States. The public doesn't know this because it is concealed by "news" media that only has room for one missing teenager from 2005. By failing to cover real cases and focusing incessantly on a single, old, overworked, overseas, sensational, mysterious, unsolved case of an attractive blonde teenaged white girl, the media deceives the public about safety, and the threat abductions and disappearances pose to the average Page Nine reader (and the rest of the country). It is unknown whether increased public gun possession would help lower the alarming rate of disappearances. Tens of thousands of people go missing annually, some through foul play, some skipping out on debts, troubles, spouses, kids, parents, responsibility, and some from preventable accidents. Some are heinous murders with the bodies never found, so they end up listed simply as missing. Please drop a note to your local "news" outlet today, thanking them for keeping you informed. Permission to circulate this Page Nine news brief is, as always, gladly granted.
----------
7- Starving Fat People The lamestream media told you: Mississippi lawmakers have introduced a bill to prevent any state-licensed restaurant from serving food to obese people. News reporters uniformly mocked Mississippi, the legislators, called the bill dead on arrival, and used images to mock fat people.
The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: Reporters uniformly failed to call for charges against legislators who propose bills which they have absolutely no shred of legitimate authority to introduce. If the esteemed Fourth Estate doesn't hold officials accountable, who will? Meanwhile, in other news, New York is seeking to ban menus if state-required dietary information isn't included. Authority to regulate menus doesn't appear to be within the limited powers delegated to elected officials in the Big Apple any more than Mississippi can ban fat people from chowing down in public. No word yet on how fat you would have to be before the public eating ban would apply, or how on-site testing would be done.
----------
8- Primary Results Arriving The lamestream media told you: Sen. Barack Obama has just won the CNN poll shows that Hillary Clinton will not find but the three delegates from have now decided that Barack will Hillary blah blah blah and according to Dennis Kucinich, himself a former candidate might according to Republican strategist said John McCain who has infuriated the three networks are predicting blah blah gag.
The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: The Uninvited Ombudsman has noticed, as other intelligent observers have also noted, that once you read the primary results on the scroll at the bottom of the "news" channel screens, everything else the "news" channels present is meaningless drivel and unsubstantiated opinion that simply doesn't matter. Thirty-five seconds of reading the scroll is sufficient to garner any actual news. Viewership continues to drop for reasons which remain a mystery, according to People magazine and Variety. Whether America needs a partially Muslim-trained,
black-nationalist-church attending half Kenyan with a rich voice in the
White House has not been addressed in recent interviews with the
candidate, along with any other meaningful issues of the various
wannabees. For questions that ought to be asked, aside from those found
in any high school history text book prior to 1960, see The Liberty
Poll, The snopes.com website both confirms and denies that Barack Hussein Obama, son of Barack Hussein Obama, was a student of a somewhat Muslim school in predominantly Muslim Indonesia for four years.
----------
9- Global Whining Chilled The lamestream media told you: Violent snowstorms are blanketing the northeast again and have been blamed for at least 15 deaths. This follows snow and ice storms that have crippled the Midwest, the Pacific northwest, northern states and even the usually warm south, with power lost for hundreds of thousands, people trapped in their homes and roads impassable for days.
The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: For reasons that remain unclear, global whining has not been blamed for the unusually ferocious cold weather lasting quite late in the season. In other news, the hurricane season ended months ago (Nov. 30 is the official end date) with no news coverage of the missing but gleefully anticipated global-whining-related destruction and devastation. Experts had predicted unprecedented activity. In contrast, the 2006 season, also predicted to be massive, ended without a single hurricane touching U.S. shores, according to usually reliable sources at CNN.
----------
We should treat the president like the garbage
man Do we cheer the garbage man for doing his necessary but filthy job? Do we revere septic tank cleaners for doing their necessary but smelly work? Do we honor undertakers with statues in the public square for doing their necessary but creepy work? Of course not. Then why do we cheer, revere and honor politicians for doing their necessary but filthy, smelly and creepy work? Why is Washington D.C. cluttered with statues and monuments to them but not to the garbage man, the septic tank cleaner and the undertaker? You might answer that a monument like the Lincoln Memorial is important because it honors Lincoln for freeing the slaves and keeping the Union together. Good answer, if it were true. Actually, thousand of Americans died to free the slaves and keep the union together. Contrary to what we were brainwashed to believe as kids, Lincoln doesn't deserve a bigger monument than any of them. (Then there is the issue of whether the Civil War truly was unavoidable and whether the horror of slavery would have ended on its own without the tragedy of war and the subsequent tragedy of Jim Crow.) The garbage man, the septic tank cleaner and the undertaker are necessary to stop the spread of pestilence. Politicians are necessary to stop us from using clubs to resolve our differences, but, as history shows, they often stir our primitive passions to club other tribes over imagined differences. All of these occupations reflect the dark side of human existence, but only the job of politician requires deceit, hypocrisy and egomania. Is that something to celebrate and honor? The Founders understood that government is a necessary evil. That makes the representatives of government a necessary evil. As such, it's important to select them carefully, to keep a close eye on them, and to limit their job description to protecting life, liberty and property. But honor them? The best way to limit politicians' lust for power is to treat them like the garbage man. That means selecting mentally balanced people for the job, recognizing the necessity of their work, and firing them when they deviate from their job description. It doesn't mean erecting statues and monuments to them and crossing the street to gawk at them if they are in our neighborhood. Imagine how much better the nation would be if a president came to town and no one showed up to pay homage or to demonstrate subservience by playing "Hail to the Chief" when Air Force One arrives, as if this is a tribal chieftain and the subjects are in loin cloths with bones through their noses. After all, we don't play "Hail to the Garbage Man" when he exits the garbage truck. In such a nation, the job of president would attract people with humility and normal egos. It would not attract the likes of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or John McCain -- all of whom want to remake the world in their likeness instead of restricting themselves to protecting life, liberty and property. The closest I've come to such a nation was a business trip to Iceland years ago. As my host was driving around Reykjavik and showing me the sights, he pointed to a non-descript building that resembled a large suburban ranch house. "That's the office of the prime minister," he said. "Would you like to go in and meet him?" he asked as nonchalantly as if he were asking me to meet his garbage man. "Just walk in and meet him?" I responded incredulously. Like other Americans, I had gotten so used to treating politicians better than garbage men that I couldn't imagine such a thing. I've since placed my childhood notions about presidents and other politicians where they belong: in the garbage can of bad ideas. An author and columnist, Mr. Cantoni can be reached at ccan2@aol.com. |
|
|
Return
to the WMSA Home Page |
|
Copyright © 1997-2008
Western Missouri Shooters Alliance. All rights reserved, but all you
have to do is ask. |
| Please send suggestions, corrections, and comments to the Webmaster |
| Hosted by Suncoast Networks. |
| Last update: 18 February 2008 |