(Late) Happy Birthday, Lincoln!

America's first dictator was born 202 years and one day ago! In his honor, let's take a look at the results of his reign.

His legacy includes introducing the police state and martial law to America, as well as the tradition of declaring war under false pretenses. Without him, we may have actually stuck to the Constitution, and later presidents would not have a hero to justify their illegal actions. In fact, without him, the Confederate States of America just might still be a free nation, and slavery would have been abolished peacefully, as in every other country in the world, without 600,000 soldiers and countless civilians dead, without razing entire towns to the ground, without depriving innocents of much-needed medicines and supplies. Let us not forget, Lincoln single-handedly introduced the concept of the powerful executive.

Where would we be had he not happened? Well, we'd be much freer, the government would be far more sane, we would still keep within the Constitution to some degree, and the racial tensions resulting from Reconstruction would have been dramatically mitigated by a peaceful abolition of slavery. Presidents would have had no Great Hero to justify their obscene power grabs. The world would be a horrifying place indeed.

The United Police States of Amerika

Nice. Superbowl 2011 gives us a gigantic show of force from our Benign and Almighty Protectors. Just read the article.

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Robots, guns, horses highlight Super Bowl security demonstration
Parking lot A at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington was a bad guy's nightmare on Friday, as officers from 12 law enforcement agencies -- including the FBI, ATF and ICE -- showed off the equipment they will use to secure Cowboys Stadium on Super Bowl Sunday.

The event, billed as the Super Bowl XLV Joint Information Center Public Safety Media Day, drew everything from bomb dogs and robots to mounted patrol officers to haz-mat teams.

The coolest demonstration I saw was the Arlington Fire Department's bomb robot, which has a long official name but which I -- as a technology fan -- would like to call Awesome.

Arlington firefighters remotely helped the robot pick up a "suspicious backpack" and stuff it into a container that can withstand a pretty big bomb blast. (See short video below.)

The equipment will on site Super Bowl Sunday, just in case.

Special Agent Matthew Segedy, senior SWAT team leader for the Dallas field office of the FBI, had some high-powered weapons and sniper scopes on display. Segedy said FBI agents will be stationed inside Cowboys Stadium for the Super Bowl, in case of emergency.
He said agents from the Houston field office are helping out, just as Dallas agents helped out in 2004 when the Super Bowl was in Houston.

The Arlington Fire Department folks were also on site during the NBA All-Star Game at Cowboys Stadium and the World Series at Rangers Ballpark. (It's been a rather big year for sports in Arlington, huh?)

But Segedy said the FBI was not involved in those events because they were not at the same security threat level as a Super Bowl -- which is a Level 1 national security event.

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And he calls it awesome. I call it creepy. The fact is, if a terrorist sneaks in with a bomb, all the snipers in the world won't do any good. In fact, come to think of it, what idiot would try to snipe an individual in such a crowded place?! Then there's the massive amounts of security personnel decked out like the United States' freaking Army. Personally, I'm not a football fan, but if I were, I sure wouldn't want to walk past a few rows of faceless paramilitary goons with riot shields and M-4s.

The Arizona Massacre

Has anyone else noticed anything REALLY odd about the reporting on it? Every single article I've read on the subject from a major news outlet makes no mention of the fact that at least two of the people who stopped the shooter were armed. They felt confident in going after him because they had their guns with them, and one opened fire. Why no mention of this fact?

Another issue - "right-wing rhetoric" is constantly blamed for this guy's rampage. That makes perfect sense, right? After all, he made videos about the gold standard! Of course, they were also completely incoherent ramblings that made no degree of sense, and there's the minor fact that most of those who knew him described him as left-wing. One of his favorite books is the Communist Manifesto, not exactly a right-wing staple. His target was a "blue-dog" Democrat who is opposed to gun regulation. BUT HE MADE VIDEOS IN FAVOR OF THE GOLD STANDARD!!! Well, I'm convinced. Who else here is willing to bet that even if he had never heard Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin he still would have gone ballistic? He was a deranged lunatic, and most of those who knew him KNEW that he was dangerous and violent.

Even better, they're now wanting to ban 33-round magazines for handguns. The fact is, he would have gone on a rampage ANYWAY, even with standard 10-round mags. It's called "reloading" - it actually doesn't take that long with a Glock. Speaking of which, sales of the Glock 19 have skyrocketed. Get 'em while they're available - and legal.

Some thoughts on WikiLeaks

I cannot believe that I haven't posted on this subject yet. We all know what the statists say - "WikiLeaks is a threat to national security! Julian Assange is a traitor!"

First of all, it is NOT a threat, in any way, to national security. The only thing that MIGHT be dangerous in some vague way are the documents listing "vital" locations across the world. They consist almost entirely of mines (palladium, cobalt, etc.) and undersea cables, with a few other locations that aren't in either category. My thoughts are:

#1: Just how do you expect terrorists to get to undersea cables?
#2: If terrorists thought strategically, most of these places would have been attacked already. Listing them isn't doing any damage.
#3: Terrorists DON'T think strategically. They want to kill as many people as possible, and visibly destroy as much as possible. Attacking a mine, no matter how important or how valuable, is not going to achieve the same effect on the public as bombing buildings, turning them into very visible ruins, which causes TERROR.

I'm also still curious as to how Assange could be a "traitor," considering that he's not a citizen of the United States.

Went shooting today

Thanks to our friend Landon (who can be seen prominently dissing the AK-47 in the comments of my previous posts), my dad and I had the opportunity to shoot the living daylights out of paper targets with a wide variety of weapons. I'm just going to run down the list and give my impressions of each one.

#1: 9mm Glock. Excellent, once I figured out how to hold it properly so that it doesn't jam after every shot. Fun to shoot.

#2: .357 Ruger revolver, 6-inch barrel. We tried this one with both .38 Special and .357 magnum rounds. Three words describe this thing: Simple and awesome. The magnum rounds just felt good to shoot, though the .38 Special rounds were extremely fun, as well.

#3: Mossberg tactical shotgun - not sure of the model: It's a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun. Do I really need to say anything else?

#4: Double-barrel shotgun: There's not really a lot to say about it, except that I managed to screw up loading it.

#5: Romanian WASR-10 AK-47: The performance was absolutely astounding - the rifle fired every shot accurately and without fail, despite the cheap, low-quality ammo and magazines we used. A perfect assault rifle if ever there was one.

Okay, so that was a lie. It literally jammed every second or third shot, in the end becoming a makeshift bolt-action rifle that ejected every other bullet. It consistently failed in a number of ways, despite being in apparently good condition for an AK-47. I was baffled. Landon, on the spot, disassembled the gun and found that there was a teeny-tiny piece of metal sticking out. Sorry for the poor terminology, but I don't remember the term that was used. Anyway, he filed it off with his knife, and the last 6 shots went perfectly. I am going to look for an opportunity to shoot a higher-quality AK, as the Romanian WASR-10s are not especially well-made, being some of the cheapest on the market. It was fun when it worked, though.

#6: Mosin-Nagant: Aaahh, the original Soviet weapon. It has a nasty kick, but it's fun as heck to shoot. Bolt-action. I somehow managed to jam it, as well as scraping my hand 5 times with the bolt before realizing that I was doing it the wrong way.

#7: K98 Mauser: Moving on from Commies to Nazis. The Mosin had a nasty kick - this was worse, sounded like a cannon, and was even more awesome. I somehow managed to jam this bolt rifle as well, but not as badly. Didn't scrape my hand, either. If I'm not mistaken, the specific rifle we fired was made in 1944, but it worked splendidly when we used it.

#8: AR-15: Along with the M-4, the current weapon of choice for the US armed forces. A fine weapon in its own right, this particular rifle was, for lack of a better term, very fancy, having enough add-ons and features that it is, in fact, superior to the ARs issued to the US Army. It looks cool as heck, and is pretty scary, though not quite to the level of terrifying as the AK-47. Sorry, Landon. Humorously nicknamed the EBR - Evil Black Rifle. Had a slightly odd grip, but it was actually rather nice once I got used to it. Having actually FIRED it, it's earned some more respect from me.

#9: Ruger 10/22: Yeah, I know. Anticlimactic. But it was fun to shoot, and a nice, light, low-recoil breather after the shoulder-breaking Mauser, the rather jumpy AR-15, and the AK-47, the barrel of which was nearly flying after the first shot. The 10/22 also provided relief for our ears, which had nearly been split by the Mosin and Mauser, which I assure you are extremely loud, despite earplugs.

Altogether, it was a pretty awesome day, and I now have a little experience in the guns most hated by liberals - semi-auto handguns, AR-15s, and AK-47s. So thanks, Landon, for giving me the opportunity to try some real power rifles!

Best Truck Salesman EVER.

Buy a truck, get a Kalashnikov. Does it get any better than that?

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Buy a Truck, Get a Free AK-47

AOL News (Nov. 15) -- A truck dealership in Florida is firing up sales with the promise of a rapid-fire machine gun.

Customers have been streaming into Nations Trucks in Sanford, near Orlando, purchasing two dozen vehicles since the sale campaign began on Veterans Day last week. Each new truck owner also walks out with a free AK-47.

"We've tripled our business," general sales manager Nick Ginetta told AOL News. "We knew it would be controversial, but it's been a phenomenal response."

An image of the semiautomatic rifle is taped to the showroom's window to lure shoppers.


Buyers receive a $400 voucher good for one Kalashnikov at Shoot Straight, a weapons dealer with several locations in the Sunshine State.

All prospective gun owners must meet state and federal gun-control laws, but Ginetta has still drawn fire from anti-gun activists and alarmed neighbors.

"I've had calls from mothers who say, 'You're giving my son a machine gun.' But once I explain exactly how it works, people are understanding," he said.

If drivers don't want to bear arms, Ginetta will apply the money to the price of the truck or give them cash back. But he said most people opted for the Romanian-made AK-47 model, famous for its durability in extreme environments.

Gun-control activists criticized the marketing ploy at Nations Trucks.

"These aren't deer rifles that he's giving away," said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "He's saying here's a gun that bank robbers use."

There's been a bit of a backlash for introducing the promotion for a weapon manufactured by a Cold War enemy of the United States on Veterans Day.


"There are a lot of veterans that would like to take him up on that deal. I'm not one of them," Dana Rouch, a veteran of World War II, Korea and Vietnam, told local news station Channel 13.

But Ginetta said the decision was strictly an economic one.

"They're so many made that the cost of the weapon is so cheap," Ginetta said. "We would have loved to offer an AR-15 made in this country, but the cost is tremendous."

American-made vehicles are the bread and butter of the dealership, he added.

A Missouri auto dealer also threw in a complimentary AK-47 to customers last year, Fox News reported.

The discount expires at the end of November.

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This is GREAT! More people get a great semi-auto weapon, the local economy improves, and the dealer gets more cash! What's not to love? Notice the hilarious cluelessness of the article. "Rapid-fire machine gun" they say. No, it's a semi-auto rifle. Notice the Brady Campaign guy's rant. "These aren't deer rifles" is what he says. Actually, they can be deer rifles. Very good ones, too. Roughly .30 caliber, very effecient at game-getting. Plus, ammo is cheap compared to other deer rounds. "Here's a gun that bank robbers use." So? Bank robbers also use knives, shotguns, Uzis, the occasional MP5 or AR-15, and a wide variety of handguns. What Mr. Gun Control is REALLY thinking is "Oh no! This is a Russian gun that looks scary and wet my pants! BANK ROBBERS!!!" It's big and scary, yes. But I know of a bunch of people who own these things and have never considered robbing a bank.

Anyway, I want one of these guns. Big, scary, reliable, relatively powerful, and cheap. Tough to beat.

Joe Biden's Apparent Election Strategy

That is, open mouth, insert foot. This HAS to be the most inane, historically inaccurate statement EVER. Just read the article.

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VPOTUS Joe Biden: Dems Will "Keep The Senate And Win The House" »
By Celeste Katz

Sorry for the delay -- had my hands a bit full with the meltdown at the NYC Board of Elections -- but here is the pool report filed by Newsday's Reid Epstein on Vice President Joe Biden's fundraising visit to Manhattan today:


.VPOTUS spoke Tuesday in a wood-paneled second-floor bar at the Helmsley Park Lane Hotel on Central Park South at a fundraiser for incumbent Democratic NY-1 Rep. Tim Bishop.

Wearing a blue suit and a bluer tie, VPOTUS reminded the 70 people who paid a minimum of $1,000 to hear VPOTUS's remarks and eat a menu of cold-cut sandwiches, salad and coffee that the nation’s economic malaise is the fault of the Bush Administration and is improving under Democratic stewardship.

“We’ve done a lot in the last 20 months,” VPOTUS said. “The economy has grown four quarters in a row, not what it needs to, but it’s growing, it’s not shrinking. Just since January, 860,000 private sector jobs, not nearly enough. But guess what? That’s more jobs than were created in the entire eight years of the Bush Administration. That’s factual.”

VPOTUS did not mention Bishop’s Republican opponent, businessman Randy Altschuler, by name, but predicted the federal government will grind to a halt if the House or Senate fall under GOP control. He predicted Democrats would “keep the Senate and win the House.”

“This is a real important election,” he said. “It’s more important than the one that got Barack and me elected, it literally is. Because there at least we would have continued to drift another four years, which would be bad. Now at least we’ve stopped the drift and are starting to head in the right direction. If we lose in the House or the Senate, we’re now in a position where we are in a stalemate and this thing is just going to go in reverse and our most powerful weapon will be a veto pen, and that’s bad.”

VPOTUS, who stood next to Bishop and grasped the four-term Democrat’s shoulder at several points during his remarks, waded into the audience as he discussed the nation’s need to compete with education and infrastructure investments made by nations like China and India, and Republican opposition to such spending.

“Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive,” he said. “In the middle of the Civil War you had a guy named Lincoln paying people $16,000 for every 40 miles of track they laid across the continental United States. … No private enterprise would have done that for another 35 years.”

Bishop, who represents the East End of Long Island, touted VPOTUS as “an adopted son of Southampton” - Bishop’s hometown - who spent time this summer at a home to which Bishop, as a teenager, delivered groceries.

VPOTUS replied: “When I die, I want to be reborn in Southampton… You’re the only Democrat I know in Southampton, well, that’s not quite true.”

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Well. Every great idea in the last 200 years, huh? So I guess the following ideas aren't great:

The airplane
Air conditioning
Google
Replaceable parts
Automation in industry
The telephone
Electricity
The MP3 player
Countless medical advances

And dozens upon dozens of other ideas that I was under the delusion of thinking were great and useful. What a goon. Now, notice his ignorant little statement about the trans-continental railroad. He says private industry wouldn't have done that for another 35 years. Apparently, we live in different universes, since in this universe one James Hill did it well within 35 years of it, completing it in 1893. Construction on the "official" Great Northern began in 1889 from existing railways. Construction of the preexisting tracks, of course, began long before that. Interesting fact - the famed transcontinental railway went BANKRUPT, and right after being completed had to be closed again due to crappy workmanship, causing it to easily be washed away by floods. Since when was that thing a "great idea?" The Great Northern out-competed all of its Federally-aided rivals, and was laid on far more effecient routes. Proof positive that great ideas typically are killed by government aid.