Professor Ted Nugent - Concealed Carry 101

Any questions? Class dismissed.

HR 3200 - Bravo Sierra Abounds

Just a quick post to get some info out about what's really in the train wreck the liberals in Congress and the current occupant of the White House are attempting to ram down our throats.

The actual House bill (HR3200) is a natural predator to trees, weighing in at over 1000 pages. Right from the git-go I'm not comfortable with the short summary right at the top of the bill:

To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes [emphasis added].

Just what does "other purposes" entail? Holy blank check, Batman! This piece of crap legislation won't improve health care, cut medical costs, or promote liberty, but it may well prove to be an effective and non habit forming treatment for insomnia.

For those of us who don't speak Bureaucratese (or just want to make like a member of Congress and not read the bill), a "quick start guide" version is available, translated into plain English at a level understandable even by the average Obama voter by Professor John David Lewis of Duke University:

http://www.classicalideals.com/HR3200.htm

And finally, for liberals with low blood pressure who want to elevate it a bit, the transcript of Rush "The Mob Father" Limbaugh's take on Professor Lewis's piece from today's edition of Excellence in Broadcasting:

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_081209/content/01125108.guest.html

Get reading, get educated, and get prepared to direct some tough questions to our elected (or selected) representatives at their town hall meetings or at the State Fair later this month.

There is still hope to derail this train wreck by keeping the heat on the liberal clowns who are pushing this nonsense.

A textbook example of shoddy journalism

In the span of two days the Saint Paul Pioneer Press published a poorly researched, highly biased hatchet piece on New Brighton Council Member Gina Bauman and the following day (actually within hours in the on-line edition) had to publish a followup to report that the charges against Bauman had been dropped. The quick dropping of the charges is indicative of how bogus they were in the first place and demonstrates that the Pravda Press didn't bother with a lot of checking into the story before they ran it.

Anyone who knows Council Member Bauman could immediately see that the original story was a copious load of Bravo Sierra. If the reporters over at the Pravda Press had bothered asking around New Brighton they would have found many people, including many who strongly disagree with her politically, who would tell them that Gina Bauman is an honest, ethical, and caring person who would never do what she was accused of.

Had the paper done the proper checking the editor, if not the reporters, should have at the very least suspected that the charges were without merit and sat on the story until more facts were known. Unfortunately responsible journalism apparently doesn't sell papers, although the shoddy variety also isn't doing so hot these days as reflected by the plummeting circulation of dead tree media "news" publications. It didn't take the Ramsey County Attorney's office very long to conclude that the charges were without merit as indicated by how quickly they were dropped.

The original story essentially assumed that the accusations made by a relative were gospel and ignored Bauman's contention that the charges were completely without merit. In addition to spewing the charges in minute detail in a very pejorative tone, the reporters (or, to be fair, possibly the editor) also felt the need to pile on by concluding the story with the following specimen of shoddy journalism:

The owner of Cuppa Chiodo's coffee shop on Silver Lake Road ran on a platform of fixed property taxes and championed the idea of making New Brighton a retail destination. She has criticized the Northwest Quadrant, a 100-acre mixed-use project in the city.

Last year, a fellow city council member had a run-in with the law.

David Phillips took an Alford plea in November to hiring a prostitute, a misdemeanor. The plea means he acknowledged the prosecution likely had enough evidence to convict him but he didn't admit to specific acts outlined in the criminal complaint. He was placed on probation.

Just what the flaming hooty-hoo does Bauman's political positions or the reference to Council Member Phillips have to do with the story, other than to inject a further implication of guilt? To me it indicates that the intent of the story was primarily an attempt at "gotcha" journalism to call to attention the alleged wrong doing of an elected official (and a Conservative one at that - so much the better!) without regard to the newsworthiness of the underlying story. And the follow-up story to report that the charges had been dropped didn't exactly go out of its way to retract the innuendo of guilt suggested by the tone of the original story.

How many dozens of cases like these come up daily and never get reported (and with good reason) to the public? And how did the reporters just happen to pick out the one that just happened to involve a Conservative elected official practically before the ink was dry on the complaint? Perhaps a little investigation into these questions is in order.

Clearly, if Gina Bauman was not an elected official the story would not have been published in the first place. The Pioneer Press dragged a private family matter based on unsubstantiated accusations that did not pertain to Council Member Bauman's actions in office into the realm of public scrutiny instead of waiting for the result of the legal process to determine the newsworthiness of the story.

I would have less of a problem with a report on the story if the county attorney's actions and the subsequent court proceeding had validated the accusations. But unless and until this was the case this was a non-story. As it turns out it was a non-story, but the good name and reputation of an upstanding citizen who happens to be an elected office holder was questioned needlessly and without warrant.

Regardless of whether the story was run with the intent to sell more newspapers or as an attempt to besmirch the name and reputation of an elected official who holds views generally opposite of the political agenda of the paper, the Pioneer Press owes Council Member Bauman and their readers a big apology.

Comic Relief

Cartoon courtesy of Comics.com and Creator's Syndicate. All copyrights acknowledged and observed.

State of the Union is one of the few daily comics that generally looks at things from a conservative perspective. You can view it from the Comics.com site at http://www.comics.com/creators/union/index.html

Now this is true hope!

Forget the bogus "hope" Obummer and the Socialists (sounds like a schlock rock band, doesn't it?) foisted on the electorate. This is a real sign of hope that there are at least some young people who have their act together.



Lia, the 12 year old Canadian girl in the video, certainly has a lot more going for her than our pathetic Speaker of the US House of Representatives or perpetually confused Vice President "Slow" Joe Biden.

HT: Rose Tennent

Remember when we had a real President?

"Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business, frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite."

Ronald Reagan

January 20, 2013 cannot come soon enough.

HT: Liberty Quotes

A Second Amendment Refresher Course

From an anonymous e-mail going around the internet...

1. An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.


2. A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone.


3. Colt: The original point and click interface.


4. Gun control is not about guns. It's about control.


5. If guns are outlawed, can we use swords?


6. If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelled words.


7. Free men do not ask permission to bear arms.


8. If you don't know your rights, you don't have any.


9. Those who trade liberty for security have neither.


10. The United States Constitution (c) 1791. All Rights Reserved.


11. What part of "shall not be infringed" do you liberals not understand?


12. The Second Amendment is in place in case the politicians ignore the others.


13. 64,999,987 firearms owners killed no one yesterday.


14. Guns only have two enemies: rust and politicians.


15. Know guns, know peace, know safety. No guns, no peace, no safety.


16. You don't shoot to kill. You shoot to stay alive.


17. 911: Government sponsored Dial-a-Prayer.


18. Assault is a behavior, not a device.


19. Criminals love gun control. It makes their jobs easier and safer.


20. If guns cause crime, then matches cause arson.


21. Only a government that is afraid of its citizens tries to control them.


22. You have only the rights you are willing to fight for.


23. When you remove the people's right to bear arms, you create slaves.


24. The American Revolution would never have happened with gun control.


25. The only gun control that really works is to hit what you're shooting at.