flabbergasted

We need a public plan to keep the private plans honest

/ hsoi / 7 Comments

From John Stossel:

George Newman in the Wall Street Journal today does a good job with some health care reform myths. I especially like this perspective on a “public” plan:

“We need a public plan to keep the private plans honest.”

But then why stop there? Eating is even more important than health care, so shouldn’t we have government-run supermarkets “to keep the private ones honest”? After all, supermarkets clearly put profits ahead of feeding people. And we can’t run around naked, so we should have government-run clothing stores to keep the private ones honest. And shelter is just as important, so we should start public housing to keep private builders honest. Oops, we already have that. And that is exactly the point. Think of everything you know about public housing, the image the term conjures up in your mind. If you like public housing you will love public health care.

Give the Newman piece a read. It does quite well at gutting the arguments for the proposed health care reforms.

“I didn’t fight to protect this shit”

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

Read the heart-warming story of Danny Hurley, and how he got held at gunpoint and handcuffed, for taking a picture of a B-24 Liberator.

My article title comes from this part of the article:

But according to one of the crew, they had ID’d me as one of theirs, and the tower knew and tried to call it off. But once the wheels were set in motion, it could not be stopped. The pilots were pretty much cool and laughed at me and were even willing to escort me to take more shots. One old-timer gruffed under his breath, “It’s the U.S.A., not U.S.S.R. — I didn’t fight to protect this shit.” One even offered me his seat on a ride.

Don’t we all feel safer now?

Protesting is terrorism?

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Whoa. (h/t SayUncle)

I used to be a “card carrying member” of the ACLU, and while I am no longer I am still thankful they are around because while I don’t always agree with them they are certainly a vital force in keeping our country free.

Antiterrorism training materials used by the Department of Defense teach that public protests should be regarded as “low level terrorism,” according to a letter of complaint sent to the department today by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.

“Teaching employees that dissent on issues of public concern is something to be feared, rather than encouraged, is a dangerously counterproductive use of scarce security resources, making us less safe as a democracy,” Northern California ACLU Staff Attorney Ann Brick and ACLU Washington National Security Policy Council Michael German wrote in the letter to Gail McGinn, Acting Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness.

“DoD employees cannot accomplish their mission of protecting our nation and its values unless they understand that those values encompass the right to criticize our government through protest activities,” they wrote. “It is imperative that they are taught the difference between political, religious or social activism and terrorism.”

Future Darwin Award winner?

/ hsoi / 5 Comments

Unfortunately I cannot embed the video, but go watch this video. If the video disappears (updated: it did. Here’s a YouTube link), it’s a video of a shooting drill in a handgun class. Large number of students up at the line, about 3 yards from targets. Instructor is actually up in line with the targets, kneeling down facing the students. Instructor has a camera and wants to shoot the students shooting at him! He gives the command to fire 5 rounds, all the students kneel and begin to fire… again, the instructor is downrange and the bullets are flying in his basic direction. The one student he is shooting with his camera doesn’t fire at first, I assume so the instructor can get a few pictures taken. Instructor then tells the student to start shooting (the instructor is kneeling immediately next to the target being shot at), more pictures taken, then before the student finishes shooting the student has a malfunction. I’m to understand sometimes this instructor has students load dummy rounds to practice malfunctions, so hard to say if this was a real malfunction or not but I suspect dummy rounds (you’ll note others in the video have malfunctions too). Nevertheless, the instructor drops his camera down and instructs the student on how to clear the malfunction and continue, again all done with the instructor downrange. Video ends.

The instructor appears to be James Yeager of Tactical Response. Even with all that training and résumé, he still violates the rules, has his students violate the rules. I’d love to hear his explanation for this one.

Yeah yeah, technically it’s OK because bullets only fly in straight lines and so long as you’re “off the X” and you trust all these students will fire directly in front of them well yeah… strictly speaking you won’t get hit. That doesn’t mean this isn’t stupid and doesn’t violate every damn safety rule. These are students. Note the one that turns around in “Full Sabrina” with his finger on the trigger. No doubt as well that the instructor got muzzle flashed during the one student’s clearing of the malfunction.

The instructor is either really trusting, really crazy, really stupid, or a combination. To me this comes across as irresponsible and reckless. But hey, if he’s been doing it for years and there are people that wish to train that way, I guess so be it. Not for me.

Updated: Ry weighs in.  Robb Allen too.

Updated: ToddG as well. I’m still waiting for someone to say “Wow, what a great idea!” and certainly curious what the justification for such behavior is. And all those people that come out of the class…. what do they think about that behavior?

Updated again: This video of course has been making the rounds and has been subject of much discussion. It has been confirmed by Yeager himself that this is video of one of his classes, but the guy taking pictures is “Jay” not Yeager.

My main beef here is, at least from what you can tell in the video, this is not a class of advanced students. If the one shooter has to be told by Jay how to clear a malfunction, this is certainly a beginner/intermediate-level class.

Furthermore, shit happens. Maybe the students are well and good enough and the “pucker factor” of a person downrange makes sure you keep all your rounds on target. But people screw up, shit happens, and while maybe you haven’t gotten shot yet all it takes is once. If we do all this training so we can preserve our lives, why willingly put yourself in such a potentially terminal situation? What end does this serve? It doesn’t make a lot of sense. But I guess it just means I’m not “man” enough or “warrior” enough to train with Yeager. Fair enough.

He’s gotten his 15 minutes and mountains of free P.R.. We don’t need to give him any more.

Act now to defend knife rights

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

It’s unreal to think that simple pocket knives are being worked to be made illegal, but yes, it’s true. So much for useful tools.

The trouble is, the comment period for this is very narrow so we must act now. For information check here.

Take a few moments to read the information and send in your comments both to CBP and to your US Congressman and Senators. You can probably email your Congresscritters (and there’s no excuse not to). But the CBP is refusing to accept electronic communication. They only want snail-mailed stuff — seems like someone doesn’t want to be bombarded by comments that they know are inevitable, and they are counting on you to be a lazy, apathetic citizen. So which are you? And that you can’t take 5 minutes to download, fill out, and print and mail a letter that could help to preserve your rights instead of allowing our freedoms to be slowly chipped away? If you can’t take 5 minutes to do this, how lazy and how (a)pathetic are you?

Do it now.

Lissa’s crude analogy

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

The problem with Lissa’s crude analogy is that it makes sense. That’s precisely why it falls upon deaf ears and so many people think big(ger) government is the way to solve our problems. *sigh*

Oh NOW you realize this

/ hsoi

First news story I read this morning is about Waco Dodge protesting the closure of Chrysler dealerships.

“This is mostly to say that the bailout didn’t work and there’s still people losing their jobs,” Waco Dodge General Manager Holly Dunham said.

It didn’t work? People are still losing jobs? That’s unpossible! Those “good” folks in Washington told us this wouldn’t happen if we just allowed them to flush everything down the toilet.

Though some in attendance say they don’t doubt the government had good intentions, the bailout didn’t work.

Hell is paved with good intentions.

“The taxation of the youth that’s coming up, they’re going to be paying for this big bill,” [Protester Wes] Hardin said.

This wasn’t realized months ago when all this bailout fiasco first raised up?

But for dealership employees, their dissatisfaction stems from government intervention.

“The government is involved in as much as there is a task force, the automotive task force who’s dictating the terms of Chrysler’s bankruptcy and telling them what they need to do and how they need to do it,” Dunham said.

She said Chrysler was told by the task force to cut back on their dealerships.

The government sticking their noses into everything. Yes, it’s always the positive and fruitful solution. What happened to “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” being the scariest words in the English language?

Dunham said before the bailout money got involved, a better alternative would have been for Chrysler to leave it up to the dealerships to stay open because naturally the economy would have forced some doors to close, and profitable dealers could have stayed open.

You mean let the free markets work things out? Gosh, what a concept.

To be fair, I do get the feeling those directly involved in this (the particular dealership owners, employees, etc.) actually have a clue that this bailout stuff was a sham from the get go. But to those that thought bailouts would solve things, that the government is the answer (not the cause) of all our problems, I offer up Exhibit A.

Gun buy-backs exposed

/ hsoi

You know the drill… gun “buy-back” programs, where you trade in a gun and in return get something (e.g. a gift card). It’s all an effort to get guns off the streets and keep children safe.

Want to know the truth?

Basically, it’s worthless. Sure it collects a lot of guns, but almost all the guns collected are junk, inoperable, rusted out buckets of worthlessness. That is, it cost the collectors (ultimately you, the taxpayer) a lot of money to dish out these gift cards, and in return nothing of use was done. It makes someone in the PR department feel good, but that’s all we are now… about feeling good, not about actually accomplishing anything.

I also find it highly amusing. What do they think they’re going to get? Do they really thing the drug dealers and the gang members are going to go “Golly! I can trade in my gun and get a $100 gift card. Gee, Beav, what a deal! I think I’ll go do that right now! Golly!”

An Open Letter to President Obama

/ hsoi

 
The author, Lou Pritchett, is a well-known public speaker who retired after a successful 36-year career as the VP World Sales for Proctor and Gamble.

Lou Pritchett
Foremost Leader in Change Management

Lou Pritchett is one of corporate America ‘s true living legends- an acclaimed author, dynamic teacher and one of the world’s highest rated speakers. Successful corporate executives everywhere recognize him as the foremost leader in change management. Lou changed the way America does business by creating an audacious concept that came to be known as “partnering.” Pritchett rose from soap salesman to Vice-President, Sales and Customer Development for Procter and Gamble and over the course of 36 years, made corporate history.

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

Dear President Obama:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me..

You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don’t understand it at its core.

You scare me because you lack humility and ‘class’, always blaming others.

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the ‘blame America ‘ crowd and deliver this message abroad.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector..

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

You scare me because you prefer ‘wind mills’ to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

You scare me because you have begun to use ‘extortion’ tactics against certain banks and corporations.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do..

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O’Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

Lou Pritchett

And apparently, it’s legit.