Synonyms: craven, poltroon, dastard, recreant, milksop.

cow·ard (kou-erd)

1. a person who lacks courage in facing danger, difficulty, opposition, pain, etc.; a timid or easily intimidated person.

2. lacking courage; very fearful or timid.

The president (my god, how that title has been demeaned) asked the Iranian government/theocracy to return our drone.

Asked.

When you lose a valuable material asset to a hostile nation, you don't ask. You act.

That's why we have cruise missiles, you ass!


Would anyone care to join me in commissioning a bust of Neville Chamberlain for the POTUS's Christmas present this year?

Everything or Nothing

So there's a bit of controversy about a pledge of allegiance down in Texas.

I thought the instructor's statement about the Mexican pledge activity being "a cultural thing" is interesting. To a degree, she's right. It is cultural. And much more. It's a pledge,or in other words, a statement of fidelity, oath, or promise.

Which means for this individual teacher that either these words mean absolutely nothing, or if they do have meaning, she is directing students to pledge allegiance to a foreign nation. I think it's more likely it doesn't mean anything to her. Reciting an oath to the symbol of a sovereign nation is simply an exercise. Because they're just words, and words don't mean anything unless you believe what you're saying, right?

Unfortunately, I suspect there's a lot of people in the US that believe that. Personally, I won't recite an oath to another nation. It's not an exercise to me. Words have meaning, and consequences.

That's one young lady who has my respect.

Well, Duh.......

Everyone knows thugs prefer weapons over three feet long with a top-loading packet clip system.



Jackass.

Wieners O' Death

So, the experiment was undertaken. Can a ten year old MRE be eaten without ill effects? Especially one known as the "Four Fingers of Death"?

Let's open things up and find out!

First, the beans in tomato sauce:

Looks awful. Just like it did when it was freshly packaged. No odd scents......scratch that, no unexpected scents.

But what about the wieners (is that a great name for a film or what)?

True, they do look somewhat aged, but still no smell of decay. At least not similar to a deer in the ditch on a hot summer day, which is my personal reference standard.

So, into the pot (No, I didn't use the MRE heater; I just wanted to see if I'd get botulism, not torture myself).

End result?

It looked like Van Camp's Pork and Beans with Little Smokies cut up in them. But really, really salty. And you wouldn't have wanted to sleep in the same room with me. Draw your own conclusions there. But no stomach cramps, vomiting, or death. Again, much like when the pack was brand-new. So rest assured, if you have a decade-old Beef Frankfurter MRE in your basement, you can eat with a reasonable expectation that you may not become poisoned.

As long as you're not in an enclosed space without circulation.

Curtains for Criminals

One of the interns at the hospital recently had an early-morning home invasion. 5 AM on Black Friday, and someone came in through the back door uninvited. As he and his wife happened to be up, getting ready for shopping, the intruder was noticed, and ran as soon as he realized he had someone running down the stairs at him. He got away, and we now have a group of very nervous doctor's wives.

These walk-in attempted burglaries have become rather frequent in my town lately. We also have a large number of unemployed urban youth imported here from Illinois in the last year, which is a major change in our demographics. According to friends who circulate in law enforcement circles, a good number of them already have convictions and outstanding warrants, but Illinois won't spend the money to put them back in their system. Their our problem now. Just a coincidence, I'm sure.

So far, no one has been hurt; just missing cash, purses, and snatch-and-grab items. But what has been the response by the doc's wives to up security? New locks, and.....curtains. Apparently, if they can't see you, they won't bother you, is the current thinking. I'm thinking locks are good, as long as they don't want in very badly. It's a good start; but curtains? Curtains are good for making sure no one can see what's happening to you if something does happen, not for keeping burglars (or worse) away.

At least one of my docs has the right idea. A police-style shotgun is now on the shopping list, along with some buckshot practice to follow, which is more my idea of an appropriate dissuasion technique. At least there's one family around here that won't have to rely on wishful thinking for protection.

Oooooh, the Irony

We recently had a PC ruckus. One of our members, an Idealistic Young Man, thought he would help break the monotony of our daily routine by posting a "this day in history" in our e-mail during the working week. So, he suscribed to an internet service to get his daily information from. Which worked nicely for the past month. Until July 13th. Apparently not much has happened on the 13th, historically speaking. So there was a lot of filler. Including the birthday of Nathan Bedford Forrest. Which IYM didn't give much thought to. A lot of other people did. For noting the birthday of Gen. Forrest, IYM got a visit from the equal opportunity NCO, since she received many visits shortly after the post went up. Now, from a personal perspective, I don't see much point in getting riled on noting the birthday of someone who, from my point, isn't particulary admirable. There's a difference between noting an event, and approving of something the event led to later. Shall we airbrush all the picture of NBF out of textbooks next? How about R.E. Lee? Or the founding fathers, since many of them participated in a system the civil war ended? (disclaimer at end of post, in case you're one of those people just looking to be offended)

But this is the military. So after a long lecture on sensitivity, IYM was allowed to go on his way, suitably chastened.

But why is the ironic? IYM spent a week of his personal leave time campaigning for Obama. He can't tolerate any display of racism. And he's a hard-core leftwinger.

I wonder if he's learned anything about the price PC costs all of us. I doubt it.

(For the record, as we've come to this these days: I'm neither a racist nor a bigot. I DO NOT believe in inherent superiority/inferiority due to melanin content, continent of origin, or cultural background. I'm in favor of judging (yes, judging) individuals on the merits I find of value, such as honesty, fair play, integrity, and the desire to better one's self. And if you think that's wrong, I don't much give a damn about your opinion)

It Never Ends

From Health Beat Blog.


March 05, 2008

What Ever Happened to Gun Control?

We all know that guns can be hazardous to our health.

I certainly do. It hurt like hell when the bolt on my Garand slammed shut on the end of my index finger.

The number of children killed by guns in the United States each year is roughly three times greater than the number of servicemen and women killed annually in Iraq and Afghanistan. "In fact, more children -- children-- have been killed by guns in the past 25 years than the total number of American fatalities in all wars of the past five decades," Jonathan Safran Foer pointed out in a Washington Post Op-ed earlier this year.

By roughly, you must mean taking into account children in their early twenties, and children engaged in drug/territory/"respect" wars.

Yet, liberals no longer talk about gun control. As Liliana Segura pointed out on AlterNet recently, usually the subject doesn’t even come up.

You must read different liberal writers than I do. The ones I've read talk about it plenty. Oh wait, you mean liberal politicians.

So I was surprised, a week ago, when Ebony Senior Editor Sylvester Monroe brought up the question, point blank, in an interview with Barack Obama: "What about guns? In Chicago, for instance, 30-some schoolchildren died from gun violence during the last school year."

I'd be interested in knowing the social history of those individuals. I'd bet while there's some that were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, there were more that made a choice of associating with the wrong people.

"We’re not getting rid of handguns In this country," Obama replied flatly.

We'll just keep making it harder to have them legally.

I was somewhat taken aback—it seemed clear that, in Obama’s mind, the question isn’t even open for debate. Meanwhile violence continues to be the #1 cause of death among African-American men.

You may want to consider why a particular group is outstanding here.

Hillary Clinton, the other leading liberal presidential says she is against "illegal gun dealers." But she’s not talking about banning hand guns or assault weapons either--even though, following the shootings at Virginia Tech, she acknowledged "we now know that the background check system doesn’t work." Just two months ago, Clinton "backed off a national licensing registration plan on guns" and in January, during the Las Vegas debate she said: "I also am a political realist and I understand that the political winds are very powerful against doing enough to try to get guns off the street, get them out of the hands of young people."

I'm against people who knowingly sell guns to people with evil intentions. But I don't think that's what you're referring to. And I'd rather take guns out the hands of people who use them for violent criminal purposes. In fact, if it's a really violent crime, I'm OK with taking their gun and their hands.

Children’s lives are at stake. Since when do progressives pay more attention to "the political winds"? If health is a hot issue, why isn’t gun control on the liberal agenda?

Because my son's life was at stake, I made sure he knew exactly what my guns are capable of, and how to use them responsibly. There's no aspect of forbidden mystery about them, and he now finds his hoplophobic friends reactions to our gun cabinets amusing.

The answer, as we all know, is that on this issue, at least, liberals have decided to trade in principles for votes. "Gun control used to be one of those bread and butter issues" for liberals, Segura points out, "but in recent years...easing up on gun control has been critical" to politicians "courting voters in Western and Southwestern swing states...When the Clinton-era assault weapons ban passed expired three years back, few in Congress leaped to renew it. The results have been deadly: As the Brady Campaign's Paul Helmke points out: ‘One thing the Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University shooters had in common was that they both used high capacity ammunition magazines that would have been prohibited under the Federal Assault Weapons Ban that expired in 2004.’"

Well actually, it only made the manufacture of new magazines holding more than ten cartridges illegal for sale to individuals. Government organizations could still order new ones; I suppose due to the overwhelming violent attacks against government employees that are so widespread these days......

Liberal silence on this issue is deafening. "At the very least," Segura observes, "it's an issue that's ripe for debate."

Putting the word silence after liberal defies reality.

So let’s have that debate here. Why do we need handguns?

Because a shotgun won't fit in a purse.

Some libertarians might say that, as individuals, we have a right to protect ourselves, our families and our homes. All I can say that I have lived in New York City for some twenty-two years. During part of that time, I lived alone with two small children in a neighborhood that, when I first moved here, was considered only marginally "safe." At night, I sometimes find myself alone on a dark street, waiting for a cab. But I’ve never wished I had a gun.

"I haven't had anything bad happen to me. You must have done something wrong if something happened to you."

My feeling is that anyone fearless enough (or high enough) to break in, or try to mug me on the street could easily take the gun away from me—and then turn it on me.

The whole point of a gun is the ability to inflict damage from a distance. That's why people who could normally do lots of very unpleasant things to smaller, weaker people prefer victims without weapons. If you're not willing to fight for your or others well-being, your best hope is to keep within a large number of easy victims and play the odds. I'll pass on that strategy. It's morally repugnant.

It turns out that there are statistics to back up my surmise. Guns kept in the home for self-protection are 43 times more likely to kill a family member, friend or acquaintance than to kill an intruder, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. As for what’s happening on the streets, Foer quotes the FBI: "For every justifiable handgun homicide, there are more than 50 handgun murders. The expanding right to carry concealed guns make us even less safe."

See Cogito Ergo Geek for the answer to the "43 times" fallacy. And consider this: how many times have handguns dissuaded a violent act without resulting in the death of the potential attacker? Somehow I don't see you being happier if the ratio where 1:1.

Of course, those who fight gun control like to talk about the Constitution. The right to own a gun, they say, is a sacred part of our history. But if you remember, what the amendment actually says is that "a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." If you think that, in 2008, we need armed local militias roaming the countryside, raise your hand.

Thankfully we don't at the moment. Although they were needed during Katrina, the Los Angeles riots, and other sundry incidents in the recent past where the government was unable or unwilling to protect the lives and properties of citizens. Oops, forgot. It would be nice to have organized militia augment the border patrol. I'd think if one officer per who knows how many miles of border is good, dividing it up among more people is even better.

What about hunters? They need guns in order to enjoy their sport. Here Foer asks, "Let's just assume, for a moment, that hunting is good. Really, really good. (It must be, if militias and self-defense don't explain guns.) How many of the nearly 3,000 children who are killed by firearms in the United States each year does the good of hunting justify? All of them? A handful? How many of the students and faculty at Virginia Tech? And what's so good about hunting, anyway?"

Actually, you don't need guns to hunt. Native Americans did a fine job of killing buffalo and bear with stone age technology spears and arrows. And that should give a lot of the "if they'd get rid of those nuts with their military/hand guns, there wouldn't be a problem" crowd pause. Of the "3000" children, I again refer to C.E.G.'s fine article. And if you want to know what's good about hunting, ask your state Dept. of Wildlife. If you're willing to listen, you'll learn some things that don't come out of an animated Disney film about wildlife management, tax revenues, and conservation.

Foer is violently opposed to hunting. I’m not. It’s not a sport that interests me, but I have known seemingly rational men who enjoyed hunting. None of them hunt with a handgun, however---or with an automatic weapon. All I ask is that people who buy a hunting rifle register--and provide some sort of proof that they really do plan to hunt with it. A hunting license would be a good start.

"Seeming rational". No condescension there. We would be rational, if we just didn't have the undercurrent of blood lust. Especially those of us who do hunt with handguns. Not because it takes more patience and skill. No, it's getting close enough to smell the fear. Yeah, that's it.

Finally, I’m not convinced by the argument that liberals couldn’t be elected if they stood up to the NRA. Take a close look at "The Real History of Guns and the 2000 Election" and you’ll find a pretty persuasive argument that Gore made a mistake when he decided to follow the advice of his "brain trust" and duck the gun issue-"losing the ability to attack Bush for signing the law that allowed handguns to be carried in churches, nursing homes and amusement parks."

Because no one ever goes to places with a lot of unarmed people planning to kill as many as possible.

Talk about an easy target. But this is what liberals do all too often. They back away from an issue, even when common sense tells them that they’re right—and instead of leading, they pander to the tiny minority of voters who really believe that having handguns in our churches make us safer.

This would be the same common sense that dictates the sun rotates around the earth, as we can see it change position during the day. Also, the earth is flat.

With a tip of the hat to Kevin Baker at The Smallest Minority, who also points out how acting like an ignorant ass will succeed in convincing people that one is an ignorant ass. If you can't rise above prepubescent name-calling, please help out by not speaking up.

Moonbat Spotting

Found parked next to my gas-guzzling, environmentally unfriendly Jeep:




Not seen in this photo: The Prius hybrid logo on the side of the vehicle. I didn't wait around to see if the owner had Birkenstocks, hemp clothing, and a ponytail.

Copycats

I'm noticing a trend here. I've been seeing an unusual number of middle aged men coming through my area to have work done on their hearts. They have a variation on the above moustache, the same haircut, a couple of tats, and an exaggerated swagger. They bluster a lot, and try to intimidate the staff.

Until they get into the procedure room.

Then there's shaking, nausea, quivering voices asking if they can be "knocked out" before anything starts, hyperventilating, and vomiting.

Apparently all those biker "reality/builder" shows have really sucked in the guys with big egos and weak minds.

It's All Fun And Games Until Someone Gets Their Head Cut Off

It's clear to me now that if you really want the liberal media to respect your beliefs, all you need to do is riot and issue death threats (also known as fatwas) over anything that offends you.

Good luck, Berkeley. You've probably just become the Salman Rushdie of the Sunday funnies:

Note to Opus readers: The Opus strips for August 26 and September 2 have been withheld from publication by a large number of client newspapers across the country, including Opus' host paper The Washington Post. The strips may be viewed in a large format on their respective dates at Salon.com.

(h/t Ace of Spades )

Selling Out Your Own In The Name Of Tolerance

How do you wrap your head around espousing tolerance, diversity, respect, etc, then turning around and telling all the women on your team "Sorry, but the opposing team is religiously offended by your presence. Off you go!". Note this line:

Church of Norway spokesman Olav Fykse Tveit said the imams refused to play against a mixed-gender team of priests because it would have gone against their beliefs in avoiding close physical contact with strange women.

Yeah, right. How about this: Fairly young, athletic females wearing shorts, running (think tissue oscillation here), competing against males, and possibly winning. If any of these female pastors has an ounce of dignity, the response by the muslim team ought to give them serious pause about the long term chances of "inter faith dialogue", and about the value their compatriots place upon them compared to the fleeting approval of the opposition.

“If a black talk show host said it, there wouldn’t have been any controversy whatever.”

Racial remarks: Double standard?

Well hell no, I would've never guessed there's some kind of double standard unless the media had posed the question. Lord knows, I've never seen anyone who's not white use the term "nappy" ( except for it's use in the movie "Barbershop", where it's in the name of Ice Cube's main competitor, and mentioned frequently, by several non-Caucasian folks, without consequence, 'cause that's OK, since it's satire, blah blah blah..... ). An when it comes to the word "ho".....seriously, the impression I have from the media, especially in entertainment, "ho" is damn near a term of endearment, instead of an insult that should at least earn the issuer a five-fingered imprint on his/her face. I called an ex-girlfriend a dumbshit in a bar once, and got my head snapped around so fast I never saw it coming. If some guy, any color, called The Wife a "ho", he'd be a lot better off if I got to him first.

Yeah, Imus (who I managed to watch on MSNBC once for five minutes before turning it off, since I didn't see the point of watching what appeared to be a ninety year old woman in a cowboy hat mumble into a microphone with two sycophants nodding along with all the mumbling) did something stupid, rude, and offensive. I don't care if he gets fired. I do care about the fact that it's OK to be black and say crap like this, but nobody other than Bill Cosby thinks twice about it. If you think it's alright to denigrate your own ethnic group publicly, for entertainment, in music, movies, and personal actions, I could not care less if you're offended when someone outside your ethnic group does it. If you don't exhibit respect for yourself, you're sure as hell not going to get it from me, especially when it's a common behavior. Tough shit. Go cry to someone else.

Range Wimp

Oriented two new members at our range today. I thought I'd take the opportunity to take out one of the 1911A1s and get in some practice afterwards. Drove onto the range, and noticed that the west wind was extra pleasant today, as it tried snatch the door off my truck. Given that, practicality and an old case of frostbite made me decide to wait in the temporary clubhouse, aka the construction site trailer. Passing one of our storage sheds on the way up, I notice a strong smell of skunk. Very strong. Someone will have an interesting time trying to evict him, but since he's living under a shed less than ten feet behind the 50 yard firing line, upwind 90% of the time, I don't think we have much of a choice. But not today, and not me.

Finally got up to the trailer, and notice a significant crunchiness when I stepped in. Once my eyes adjusted, I could see the nice wall to wall carpet of dead flies. Wonderful. Between the cold and the flies, I chose the flies. The new members, one military recruiter and one obstetrician, showed up shortly thereafter, experiencing the joy of Springtime in Iowa. Got them through the paperwork, walked the range to familiarize them, and sent them on their way.

Looked around at the mud I was standing in, wind blowing through my coat, I considered running through a couple of boxes of .45 ACP that I brought with me. And decided that trying to hang targets in high winds, loading mags with numb hands, and picking up brass out of mud puddles (I'm a cheap bastardreloader, rendering me physically incapable of leaving usable brass on the ground) just didn't sound that fun. Weenieism wins today.

The UN: Bringing Peace & Security (to everywhere no one will hurt them).

Gunmen attempt to kidnap UN refugee mission chief in Gaza: Fox News is reporting that now the UN will withdraw from Gaza, as the locals apparently don't appreciate their efforts. Here is one of the fundamental reasons I laugh at people who think black helicopters and blue helmets will ever be a threat: the UN runs from conflict faster than a greasy burrito through a spastic colon.

C'mon. That's Super Lame. Really.

"Captain Euro"

Captain Euro has taken a difficult vow: "To use, wherever possible, intellect, culture and logic - not violence - to take control of difficult criminal situations." Captain Euro is a diplomatic hero - the symbol of European unity and values.

They forgot "Turning a blind eye or running away as the situation demands!"