Odds and ends

Jay G comments on a large man's rampage and the inability of "less-than-lethal" weapons to subdue him.

He was pepper-sprayed twice, grappled with multiple officers, *and* Tasered, and yet still remained combatitive. Remember this when it's just you against him, with your young children at risk... Now, certainly, a firearm is not a magic talisman. Pointing at the deranged drug addict very well may not scare him off; heck, even shooting him might not stop him immediately. But it beats the hell out of watching him do freaking jumping jacks after being pepper-sprayed. Something tells me that 9 rounds of .45 ACP +P will have a significantly better chance of slowing him down than a chemical deterrent.

And in other news, the Firearmblog has the puzzle-gun

Inside the puzzle there are a handful of objects what when combined with some of the puzzle pieces produce a .45 caliber muzzleloading pistol!

A very impressive peice. Not anything more than a curio but still neat.


Also from the same blog, an interactive demo/cutaway/ exploded view of a 1911

Silence Seft!

It seems that the first reaction of the ruling class is to shut down, shut up, and shut out any views they don't like.

For example:

Andrew Klavan wrote a book called Empire of Lies. It was slated to be published in France by Seuil Policiers, but the editor who bought the book left that firm, and the new editor decided not to publish Klavan's book. This wasn't because she thought it wouldn't sell; it wasn't an economic decision at all, as Klavan had already been paid. Rather, the editor explained that "she can not publish . . . because of the political and religious aspects of the story." That is, the book's protagonist is a conservative Christian. Not only that, the liberal media is a sort of collective villain.

Klavan ponders

Take the e-mails that the Daily Caller obtained from the now-defunct lefty Web service Journolist. Never mind the personal or psychological implications of a radio producer who lovingly imagines Rush Limbaugh’s death or a law professor who doesn’t know that the FCC has no power to deprive Fox News of a license or a reporter who wants to smear Fred Barnes and other right-wing commentators as racist in order to distract the public from the hateful radicalism of Jeremiah Wright, then Obama’s pastor. The point is not these people’s animus or ignorance or wickedness. The point is that what they desired was not victory in open debate but silence—the silence of censorship, intimidation, or the grave.


...

Old-media pooh-bahs like former ABC anchor Ted Koppel lament the “good old days,” when three government-licensed networks served as gatekeepers to what the public could and couldn’t know. Breitbart, meanwhile, exhorts crowds of citizens to shoot videos and gather information, telling them, “You are the media now!” Breitbart only wants more information, while the left-wing media too often operate through obscurantism and suppression.

Back to John Hinderaker:

It's an interesting question: do liberals try to silence their opponents because of an inherent authoritarian tendency, or merely because they are losing the argument? I think it's a combination of the two.

If they're telling you to shut up, then you're doing something right.

Via Rand.

Helpless Anarchy

Legal Insurrection on the decision to neuter Arizona's attempts to enforce federal law.

States have been left helpless to deal with the anarchy created by the failure of the federal government to enforce border security. Whereas yesterday it was unclear how far states (such as Rhode Island) could go, today states are powerless.

...

As a reader to my prior post points out, states already routinely run searches for a variety of statuses, including outstanding warrants, child support orders, and non-immigration identity checks. Each of these checks potentially could delay release of an innocent person or burden some federal agency.

The Judge's reasoning, particularly that the status check provision violated the 4th Amendment even as to persons already under arrest, applies just as easily to these other status checks.

With a federal government which refuses to take action at the border until there is a deal on "comprehensive" immigration reform, meaning rewarding lawbreakers with a path to citizenship, this decision will insure a sense of anarchy. The law breakers have been emboldened today, for sure.

As it stands this afternoon, it is perfectly rational for someone faced with the choice of obeying the immigration laws or not, to choose not to do so. The choice of lawlessness makes a lot more sense than spending years winding through the byzantine legal immigration system, because the end result will be the same but lawlessness gets
you here more quickly.

When the law and the federal government reward lawlessness, something
is very wrong.

The federal goverment is rewarding lawlessness, and preventing states
from as part of a plan to force " 'comprehensive' immigration reform".

And more thoughts from the "other" McCain.

Professor William Jacobson has a legal analysis, but the key point is that the interests of Arizona’s citizens (70% of whom favored the law) and the actions of Arizona legislators count for nothing in the 21st-century American regime, which is a de facto oligarchy where federal judges exercise unlimited authority. The interests of the elites who benefit from unrestricted immigration are the only interests that count. When Judge Susan Bolton was appointed by Bill Clinton 10 years ago, it was with the implicit understanding that Bolton would never thwart the interests of the Ruling Class.

A Ruling Class that ignores the will of the populace. Hmm... sounds familiar.

Goldberg ponders.

Just curious, what would Bolton's reasoning do to "sanctuary cities," "nuclear-free zones" and the like?

Well, that's different. Those subversions of Federal law are for the greater good.

Shiny

Tam Speaks on True custom 1911's and has a link to a wonderful if big weapon

Understand this: By comparison to a true custom 1911, even the nicest Kimber is a mass-produced gat that is only distinguished from its more plebeian brethren by its price tag.

Speaking as a Kimber fan: this is Very, very true. Kimbers *are* mass produced and thus the quality will suffer. And they are overprice, but if you are patient you can pick one up used for a good price with little wear (my full-size really only had break-in wear, but it was sold because the previous owner tried to put a buffer in it and gave up).

However, a true custom is worlds apart. Both in quality and price (but that level of quality and customization is exactly what you're paying for).

It makes me happy that pistols like this exist at all. It makes me even happier to see them beat to hell from hard use on the range. No sword, no matter how perfect, is much use if it just hangs over the mantelpiece looking pretty.

Indeed. The weapon is a tool; it should be used. Otherwise it's just a piece of art.

And now you're putting bad thoughts in my head... and there is a Brownells catalog on the kitchen table.

They told me that if I voted for McCain...

... heartless beancounters would takeover the healthcare industry and deny coverage of life-extending drugs because they cost too much.
And they were right!

Appologies to the Blogfather.

Standard practice for evaluating drugs is to use data-driven objective endpoints to evaluate effectiveness and safety. In the case of Avastin, the FDA has arbitrarily and unilaterally stopped using this objective criterion and are applying a highly subjective criterion of “clinically significant”—to cut costs.

No one disputes that the drug helps extends life for terminal patients. The FDA is arguing that it just doesn’t do it for long enough to be worth the cost. So now the FDA is deciding how much life is “significant” and what it is worth? This should be a decision for patients, doctors and family members and the FDA should not be replacing their own value judgments about how much time is significant. While six months might not be significant to a statistician or a bureaucrat, for the families of a loved one or a dying patient, it’s a lifetime.

Emphasis added. The FDA is no longer content with determining if a drug is safe, now they want to know if it's "cost effective." Oh the dark irony of "Free" Healthcare being even more bottom-line oriented, then again it's also more expensive and tyranical, so dark irony abounds.

Modern Serfdom

So Rep. Frank didn't get his senior discount and he freaks out over a dollar.
Tam has the snark.

I find it mildly ironic that Rep. Frank, generally a big fan of rules and regulations, got all bent out of shape when some got applied to him, as though he were some... some... commoner or something.

On the plus side, he's been pretty foursquare against various national ID proposals, so maybe he was just being ideologically consistent.

And, seriously, Barney... a dollar? All this fuss for a buck? How come you never raise this kind of a stink when it's my money you're spending like a drunken sailor on shore leave in Bangkok?

It's the commoner part.

Victor Davis Hanson has some related thoughts. Specifically on Kerry's tax haven boat.

Second, there is a disturbing pattern here: Those who are most adamant in pressing for higher taxes, rather than emphasizing spending cuts, themselves seem to be the most ready to cheat on their own taxes — think of a Dodd, Geithner, Kerry, or Rangel. That narrative of hypocrisy ties into a larger and disturbing trend: Could it be that leftist populists who rail against the unfairness of the system and activists who call for radical political and lifestyle changes are motivated by a need for psychological exemptions for their very concrete indulgences?

Surely if one were to collate what John Edwards has said about two Americas, what Al Gore has said about frivolous consumption and its effect on the environment, and Tom Friedman’s eloquent warnings about unsustainable Western lifestyles, one would never imagine the thousands of square footage in living space that each sees as essential to his own existence.

Not only do you get to save the world, but you get to be well-compensated and have your position secured.

More Tricksy Math

Oh dear....

Let me see if I can type this right: $1,470,000,000,000.00 — and that is just the part of the bill that we do not know how to pay. The actual bill for government spending this year is more than twice that. We are borrowing 41 cents of every dollar we spend. We are spending $36,000 per household.

Okay, here is the ritual denunciation: That is the biggest deficit in the history of the United States of America, in gross dollars. For Pete’s sake.

And here is the reality: That is the biggest deficit in the history of the United States of America since World War II, as a portion of GDP. That deficit is about 10 percent of GDP; the Bush-era deficits were typically about 3 percent of GDP.

36k per household per year. Well... looks like big government is going for broke. And way to make Bush look fiscally sane.

Speaking of going for broke.

How do you get 86k applicants for .gov money out of a pool of less than 40k...

That means that the U.S. may be recompensing at least 86,000 African-American farmers for past racial discrimination. But how could that possibly be true if there are only 39,697 African-American farmers in existence nationwide? And if only some subset of them ever applied for a loan and were then unfairly denied a loan?

If someone can explain this to me, I’ll add it in an update to this post. Could it be that there is a constant turnover of African-Americans trying out farming for a few years, and then quickly giving it up, so that although there may be only 40,000 farmers at
any one time, over the years, the total number of different people involved in farming is much larger? If so, is there any evidence for this? Or could there be another explanation?

Clearly, math is racist.

And so there is reluctance to fork over the money. But there also seems to be a reluctance on the part of the Senate to admit why they won’t fund the settlement, because the issue is just too racially charged.

It is a tragedy that victims of institutional discrimination like the legitimately wronged African-American farmers could be denied their payout due to scammers trying to undeservedly grab a piece of the pie. Instead of getting angry at the Senate for hesitating with the funds, we should be angry at the swindlers (and their lawyers) who contaminated an otherwise valid case

Clearly, the solution to all these problems is to give the government more power.

Meh.