"With The Thoughts I'd Be Thinkin' ...

...I Could Be Another Lincoln!"Forgive me if this is old news to some of you but I got a chuckle out of this "Oz" parody.

Thanks to Rustmeister's Alehouse.

Captcha this!

VHS Is REALLY Dead

JVC stops making VHS players (finally!)

L.A. Times.

Dude Builds Lamborghini in His Basement With A TIG Welder

I don't know what to make of this.
From Jalopnik.com.

Jerusalem's Museum of Tolerance . . .

. . . to be built on site of ancient Muslim cemetery.

That spinning sound you hear is Simon Weisenthal.

However,

The museum's Muslim opponents found unexpected allies in their struggle: Ultra-Orthodox Jews, who aren't known for their sympathy for Arab causes but who care about preserving graves.

From Haaretz.com.

Ray-Gun Maestro Zaps Steampunk Convention

Weird and unearthly handguns. From Wired.

Geek-o'-Lanterns

A whole gallery! From Wired.

And In Summation . . .

Three hundred thirty-three years ago today, Gottfried Liebniz first wrote the integral symbol. The calculus notation which he introduced is still in use today.

From Wired.

Puns about his hair are hereby solicited; I got nothin'.

Sarah Palin's "Glass Ceiling" Speech

I watched the whole thing, about 25 minutes. She is a gifted public speaker.

From The Daily Beast.

Thanks to Breda for spotting this.

Pop Quiz

Q: Other than being musicians, what do Franz Liszt and Prince have in common?

Answer here.

Desperately Slamming Sarah

The siege guns of the New York Times were pounding over the weekend.

Frank Rich in "In Defense of White Americans" (the title is sarcastic) hammered Republicans, and McCain and Palin specifically, for catering to racism.

Maureen Dowd chimed in with "A Makeover With An Ugly Gloss", about how Palin has been transformed from "Caribou Barbie" to "Valentino Barbie".

Guest columnist Judith Warner fired a salvo in "No Ordinary Woman", asking if Palin was qualified to be Veep.

On Friday the editorial board endorsed Obama for President, calling McCain's choice of a running mate, "irresponsible."

Even Paul Krugman was dragged into the fray with an Op-Ed: "Americans were supposed to identify with a hockey mom who was just like them."

And the news division did their bit with "Emphasizing Frugal Tastes, Palin Addresses Clothing Issue".

UPDATE: Missed one - this morning reporter Adam Nagourney lobbed in "Second-Guessing The Vice-Presidential Pick", which ends like this: "Still, if nothing else, Ms. Palin does seem poised to do one thing for Mr. McCain: Deliver him the very Republican state of Alaska, and all three of its Electoral College votes." Pretty low-down snarky for a newspaper that likes to be called "America's Newspaper of Record."

Whew! Like I said, I don't believe the Gray Lady ever spent this much ink on Hitler and Mussolini combined.

As Palin said in the news article: “The double standard here,” she said. “Gosh, we don’t even want to waste our time.”

NRA Range Session

This afternoon after work I drove to the NRA range in Fairfax, VA to work on a few problems. I try to always have a goal in going to the range. Today I had two goals: 1) to investigate the cause of the many failures-to-feed by the EAA Witness at the bowling pin shoot in Indy last month, and 2) to sight in the little scope on my Marlin 70PSS 22-LR camping rifle.

Last week I cleaned the 10mm Witness and applied Brownell's "Action Magic II" to the feed ramp. This is a two-step process which involves heating the part (just warm to the touch) and applying a liquid from a bottle with a needle-applicator. The first application will be fully "cured" in 2 hours, then the second part is applied. This appears to be dry graphite powder. Oddly, the first step is called "Part B" and the second is "Part A". Today I fired 50 rounds of Double Tap and Remington ammo and had only one FTF. I think part of the problem is "limp-wristing" the gun, so I will concentrate on that in the future. At the bowling pin shoot last month I had half a dozen FTFs in a row, several times, so this is definitely an improvement.

The little scope is made by Leapers and it isn't much but it does have a mil-dot reticle. I would like to use this to play around with range-estimating, bullet-drop-compensation, etc. at short ranges appropriate to 22-LR. Way-cheap fun, compared to doing the same thing with .308 or .30-06. So I sighted it in at 25 feet, then 50, then 75. Maybe I can use this gun to shoot "pin-heads" at the next bowling pin shoot. This gun is also called the Marlin Papoose; it uses 10-rd magazines and disassembles into a cloth zip-up bag about 18" long.

After shooting I phoned-in my regrets to the Indy Gun Blogger Fest at the Broad Ripple Brewpub. Roberta X reports sixteen attendees, including so many of my favorites: Brigid, Tam, Red, Shermlock, RobD, Ahab, Old Grouch, Baby Troll Blog, James, Breda and Mike, and, of course Roberta herself. Damn, I wish I could have been there this weekend: bowling pins, gun show and blogfest! One damned fine weekend in Broad Ripple! Ah, well. Maybe next time.

Blahnik Meets Beretta

Actually they're not Blahniks and they're not Berettas, either. But this is for all of those gunnie gals who say, "If I don't get a pair of those shoes, I'm gonna shoot somebody!"

Via Boing-Boing.

"Sarah Palin Draws Large Crowd In Beaver"

Beaver, Pennsylvania, that is.

That's the headline at the KDKA-TV website.

Better hurry, before the Senior Editor gets back from lunch.

UPDATE: Got a screen grab:

OK, let's get with the puns; I'll start: "Man, Sarah Palin can do anything!"

UPDATE: Oh, come on, people, get with the program! Here's another:
"My ex-wife could do that."

UPDATE: Do I have to do everything myself? OK, last one:
"Well, if you help me find the keys to my Jeep, we'll drive out of here!"

UPDATE: OK, just one more:
"I'd like to see a male candidate do that!"

Good Newt!

Elsewhere, Roberta X laments the shortage of good newt. Well, that situation may be about to change, and for the better!
It's a corollary of Gresham's Law: "Bad newt drives good newt into hiding."

Xenophobia!

That's fear of xenos, innit?

Satirical posters and magazine covers - no one is spared:

Lots more here.

From the Panopticist.

Madeleine P. Cosman, Dead at 68

Quote: "Ms. Cosman also leaves behind a vast library of illuminated manuscripts and a large collection of handguns."

The bestest obit ever published by the New York Times; it's so good, in fact, that Ms. Cosman came back from the dead just to read it.

Here's the second-bestest:

Sheb Wooley, Who Sang of Purple People Eater, Dies at 82

Yeah, OK so they died a few years ago, that's not the point. The point is that their obits are still a scream, and you know how much the NYT loved to publish anything positive about (egad!) handguns, or about Purple People Eaters.

Deathstar Pumpkin

And lots more crazy pumpkin carving in the L.A. Times.

Funny As Hell!

From Breda.

That's More Like It!

Quote: "...overturning the D.C. gun ban was a clear example of principled judicial engagement."

That's much better!

More on Posner and Wilkinson, in The New Republic.

Those Idiots At The New York Times!

Much ado about nothing, but here's the article, and my comments in brackets:

The New York Times

October 21, 2008
Ruling on Guns Elicits Rebuke From the Right
By ADAM LIPTAK

WASHINGTON — Four months after the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess guns, its decision is under assault — from the right.

Two prominent federal appeals court judges say that Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion in the case, District of Columbia v. Heller, is illegitimate, activist, poorly reasoned and fueled by politics rather than principle. The 5-to-4 decision in Heller struck down parts of a District of Columbia gun control law.

[I've read several Second Amendment decisions in the last decade or so, and Scalia's was no better or worse than most. My favorite is Judge Sam Cummings' in the Emerson case: http://www.ejfi.org/PDF/emerson.pdf].

The judges used what in conservative legal circles are the ultimate fighting words: They said the gun ruling was a right-wing version of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that identified a constitutional right to abortion. Justice Scalia has said that Roe had no basis in the Constitution and amounted to a judicial imposition of a value judgment that should have been left to state legislatures.

Comparisons of the two decisions, then, seemed calculated to sting.

“The Roe and Heller courts are guilty of the same sins,” one of the two appeals court judges, J. Harvie Wilkinson III, wrote in an article to be published in the spring in The Virginia Law Review.

[Nonsense! There is no comparison between a specifically enumerated right and an implied right.]

Similarly, Judge Richard A. Posner, in an article in The New Republic in August, wrote that Heller’s failure to allow the political process to work out varying approaches to gun control that were suited to local conditions “was the mistake that the Supreme Court made when it nationalized abortion rights in Roe v. Wade.”

[Ridiculous. The judiciary was not created to facilitate legislatures passing laws which unmistakably violate the clear text of the Constitution. If the courts are going to give the legislature that much power, why have an appeals process at all? Why have a Constitution at all?]

Sharp criticism of a recent Supreme Court decision by federal appeals court judges is quite unusual, though these two judges — both Reagan appointees — are more outspoken than most.

Judge Wilkinson, who sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., was recently considered for a spot on the Supreme Court. Judge Posner, of the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, is perhaps the most influential judge not on the Supreme Court.

Not all conservatives agree with the critics, of course. Robert A. Levy, a libertarian lawyer who was a principal architect of the victorious strategy in the Heller case, rejected the comparison to Roe.

The two sides in the Heller case claimed to rely on the original meaning of the Second Amendment, based on analysis of its text in light of historical materials. The amendment says, “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.”

The more liberal justices said the amendment protected only a collective right tied to state militias, thus allowing most gun control laws. The more conservative justices found an individual right and struck down parts of a District of Columbia gun control law.

[To be more precise: all nine Supreme Court justices agreed that it was an individual right, they just disagreed on the extent to which the legislature could regulate that right.]

In Judge Wilkinson’s view, the upshot of the court’s extensive historical analysis was that “both sides fought into overtime to a draw.”

Others said the quality of the combat was low. “Neither of the two main opinions in Heller would pass muster as serious historical writing,” Jack Rakove, a historian at Stanford, wrote on the blog Balkinization soon after the decision was issued.

[The most persuasive historical work had already been done by Cummings, Levinson, Tribe, Silberman, et al.]

The strong reaction from the right after Heller was preceded, with a sort of symmetry, by liberal support for an individual-rights reading of the Second Amendment. For much of the 20th century, the conventional view of the amendment had been that it only protects a collective right. (Warren E. Burger, after retiring as chief justice in 1986, called the individual rights view “one of the greatest pieces of fraud — I repeat the word ‘fraud’ — on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen.”)

[Warren Burger made that comment in Parade Magazine, not the Yale Law Review.]

But some prominent liberal law professors, including Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard, Akhil Reed Amar of Yale and Sanford Levinson of the University of Texas, have concluded, sometimes reluctantly, that the amendment in fact protects an individual right. Professor Levinson’s seminal 1989 article in The Yale Law Journal captured the tone of the enterprise. It was called “The Embarrassing Second Amendment.”

In an interview, Professor Levinson said, “The result in Heller is eminently respectable.” But he added that he understood why some conservatives were upset. “People say the Roe court was too interventionist,” he said. “So is the Heller court from that perspective.”

Judge Wilkinson’s basic critique is that the majority, like that in Roe, used an ambiguous text to impose its policy preference on the nation, at great cost to the democratic process and to local values. He assumed, as most experts do, that the decision would apply to the states.

[The text is imprecise, but not ambiguous. The drafting and ratification processes left no doubt, however, of the meaning of the Second Amendment.]

“In both Roe and Heller,” Judge Wilkinson wrote, “the court claimed to find in the Constitution the authority to overrule the wishes of the people’s representatives. In both cases, the constitutional text did not clearly mandate the result, and the court had discretion to decide the case either way.”

[False! The text clearly establishes the authority.]

Judge Posner built on themes in his recent book “How Judges Think,” which argued that constitutional adjudication by the Supreme Court is largely and necessarily political. The Heller decision, he wrote in The New Republic, “is evidence that the Supreme Court, in deciding constitutional cases, exercises a freewheeling discretion strongly flavored with ideology.”

[Too many jurists rule in favor of Prudentialism, i.e. "Irrespective of the text of the Constitution, how can my decision in this case contribute to a better society?" The Scalia decision favored a strict textual analysis.]

Indeed, Judge Wilkinson wrote, “Some observers may be tempted to view Heller as a revenge of sorts for Roe” or “a sort of judicial tit-for-tat.” As Judge Posner put it, “The idea behind the decision” in Heller “may simply be that turnabout is fair play.”

Mr. Levy, who helped win Heller, said some conservatives wanted almost all decisions to be made by the political branches rather than the courts.

“But these are constitutional rights,” Mr. Levy, now chairman of the Cato Institute, a libertarian research group, said of the rights protected by the Second Amendment. “They are not rights consigned to the legislature.”

[Levy is my hero! No, wait, Gura is my hero! No, wait...]

The analogy to Roe, he went on, is misguided. There is no reference to abortion in the Constitution.

The Second Amendment, by contrast, indisputably protects a right to keep and bear arms, though there is sharp disagreement about the scope of the right. Mr. Levy said the natural reading of the amendment, one supported by historical materials, was that it protected an individual right.

[Spot on! The First Amendment is infringed every day. A witness can't lie under oath and then claim protection of the First Amendment; that's perjury. Lying in court, under oath, is a crime. But telling a lie just about anywhere else is not a crime; just look at the editorial page of the New York Times, for example! In the same way, Scalia wrote, laws may be passed regulating the Second Amendment provided that they are narrowly tailored. So, for example, a law forbidding a person from keeping a handgun in their home is unconstitutional, but a law prohibiting concealed carry in a courtroom or legislature or voting place would probably pass muster.]

In his article, Judge Wilkinson wrote that he “readily agreed” that Roe “involved the more brazen assertion of judicial authority.” But he added that the Roe and Heller cases shared a number of common flaws, including “a failure to respect legislative judgments,” “a rejection of the principles of federalism” and “a willingness to embark on a complex endeavor that will require fine-tuning over many years of litigation.”

[But the "legislative judgements" were unconstitutional on their face; there was no other rational choice for five honest, thoughtful men. It may take many years of litigation to sort out Second Amendment rights, but that is primarily the fault of the Federal courts, who refused for decades to hear Second Amendment cases and refused to acknowledge the "standing" of petitioners until Dick Heller came along.]

Judge Wilkinson saved particular scorn for a brief passage in Justice Scalia’s opinion that seemed to endorse a variety of restrictions on gun ownership. “Nothing in our opinion,” Justice Scalia wrote, “should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

[What's the problem? Acknowledging that the Second Amendment is not an absolute? What did they expect, that Scalia would allow prison inmates to possess firearms in their cells? This is just quibbling.]

Whatever else may be said about the Second Amendment, Judge Wilkinson wrote, those presumptions have no basis in the Constitution. “The Constitution’s text,” he wrote, “has as little to say about restrictions on firearm ownership by felons as it does about the trimesters of pregnancy.”

Mr. Levy, too, said he was not a fan of the passage. “I would have preferred that that not have been there,” he said. “It created more confusion than light.”

It is too soon to say much about the legacy of Heller. But Judge Wilkinson said that Heller, at a minimum, represented “the worst of missed opportunities — the chance to ground conservative jurisprudence in enduring and consistent principles of restraint.” At worst, he warned, “There is now a real risk that the Second Amendment will damage conservative judicial philosophy” as much as Roe “damaged its liberal counterpart.”

[That's why Levinson called it "The Embarrassing Second Amendment"! You judges are now going to have to clean up the mess you've made.]

[Incidentally, regarding the Emerson case, what has happened to Dr. Emerson in the last few years is shocking. You can read about it here: http://www.ejfi.org/emerson.htm]

Maybe if Scalia had thrown out GCA '68 and the NFA, bag and baggage, I might agree that he had committed "a brazen assertion of judicial authority", but the Heller decision? That's the way it should have been all along.

Gun Suicide Rate Said To Decline

"While firearms remain the most common method, the rate of gun suicides decreased while suicide by hanging or suffocation increased by 6.3 percent among men, and 2.3 percent among women."

From Reuters via Yahoo.

A Beautiful Gun

Xavier has a post on a dehorned and nickel-plated 1911 from Clark Custom.

Wow! Check it out.

The Story of Adele H

In 1851, Victor Hugo was forced to leave France and take refuge on the British island of Guernsey. While there, his daughter, Adele, fell in love with a British officer, Lieutenant Pinson, of the 16th Hussars.

In 1862, the American Civil War had led to blockades of southern ports, cutting off supplies of raw cotton to Britain's mills. Britain decided to rattle her sabre to show her displeasure, and the 16th Hussars were dispatched to Halifax, Nova Scotia. This was intended as a warning to Washington: allow shipments of cotton to resume, or Britain might intervene on the side of the Confederacy.

Adele pursues Lt. Pinson to Halifax, traveling under an assumed name, "Miss Lewly".

Adele is a very beautiful young lady. But she is also Bat. Shit. Crazy.

She explains to her new friends that the man she is looking for is, variously, the fiancé of her niece, her cousin, her sister's brother-in-law, or the son of their village clergyman.

One morning she passes a British officer. She spins around and follows him. She taps on his shoulder and he turns around. And look who it is! Yes, it's that French scientist-guy from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

When they finally do meet, she frantically, desperately begs him to love her.

Then she screams that she will ruin him and his military career.

Then she offers him money to love her. All in about thirty seconds. It's quite a scene.

Her condition deteriorates.

His unit is transferred to Barbados, and she follows him there.

But her deterioration is now so severe that when she meets him for the last time, she doesn't even recognize him.

Nearly destitute, she is taken in by an ex-slave, Madame Baa, who helps her return to France. Adele spent the last 40 years of her life in a private clinic in Saint-Mande.

Victor Hugo died in 1885. His last words were, "I see a black light." His body lay in state under the Arc d'Triomphe and the next day two million people lined the route of the cortège to the Panthéon. He shares a crypt with Emile Zola and Alexandre Dumas.

Adele died on April 25, 1915. Fifty years earlier, as she was about to leave Guernsey, she wrote in her journal, "This incredible thing, that a young girl should step over the ocean, leave the old world for the new world, to join her lover, this thing I will accomplish."

CQ NRA

Well, isn't this a near-perfect convergence for many of us?

According to American Rifleman:

The Yavapai Amateur Radio Club of Prescott, AZ will operate a special-events amateur radio station, K7NRA, from the 2,000-acre campus of Gunsite Academy on November 17, 2008. Commemorating the 137th birthday of the NRA, the station will operate between 0800 and 1600 MST on 7.250, 14.250 and 21.335 MHz. A unique QSL card will be forwarded to those stations contacted during the event.

More info at www.w7yrc.com.

What, no CW?! I'm crushed. That's all they had 137 years ago! Well, folks, get those SSB rigs ready. Roberta, I just know you must have an all-tube balanced-modulator sideband rig in your collection.

Why Do I Shoot?

Roberta X asked.

One of my early childhood memories is my first visit to the school library, in first grade. Most of us couldn't read, so we went right for the picture books.

Now, most of your guys, I guess, went right for the National Geographics. And, to tell the truth, as a six-year-old boy I had also taken comfort in the pages of those yellow-edged magazines. But on this particular occasion I was drawn to a book of high-speed photographs: balloons bursting, drops of milk spattering, and, most fascinating of all, bullets frozen in flight.

I could hardly believe what I was seeing: bullets, the fastest thing on earth, stopped midway through cutting a playing card in half. I had to find out more about those things.

Another influence was a now-long-forgotten TV show called "Yancy Derringer". This was in the late 1950's, I believe. The title character was an 1880's Mississippi Riverboat gambler, who was actually an undercover policeman. And whenever there was trouble, it seemed that a derringer just materialized in this guy's hand like magic. He must have had half a dozen miniature pistols hidden on him, and it's a wonder that he didn't "clank" when he walked. I thought that he was the epitome of cool. Explains my fascination with small, concealable handguns.

My dad had a little .32 pistol; I think it was Spanish. But I was forbidden to touch it. He let me watch him clean it and that's where I first encountered the ambrosia-like fragrance of Hoppe's #5 Nitro Solvent. It still brings back good memories. And got me interested in the beautiful inner workings of guns.

I was 13 years old when I fired a gun for the first time. It was at summer camp. My parents sent me to sailing camp in North Carolina for a month and they had a rifle range and a dozen .22 bolt-action rifles. I spent hours there and earned an NRA Marksmanship badge. I loved it.

When I got home I begged and pestered my parents unmercifully to get me a .22. I went over the Sears catalog again and again, drooling over their rifles. Finally they caved and bought me a nice little used Savage 20-gauge shotgun. Dad thought I might enjoy it more than a .22 rifle. Well, we went to the hardware store and bought a box of clay pigeons and a spring-loaded gadget to throw them with.

We went clay pigeon shooting a dozen times or so, but most of the utility from that gun was just the responsibility of owning it. I put a hasp on the lower shelf of my bureau and locked the disassembled gun in there. So I was a fourteen-year-old boy with a gun in my room. That was in 1965.

But clay pigeons had to compete with school, football and ham radio, and then college. The little 20-gauge stayed locked up for decades.

In 1990 a co-worker asked me, out of the blue, if I wanted to go skeet shooting. And I remembered the little shotgun. So I took it out into the light again and cleaned it. And when I shot it, I realized one of the reasons I had put it away: it doubled! It had two triggers, but pulling the first trigger fired both barrels; apparently the recoil released the sear and the second barrel fired within a millisecond of the first, virtually simultaneously.

But I adored skeet shooting and I made up my mind to get a gun that was appropriate for skeet. I ultimately bought a new Beretta 686, a 12-gauge over-under with 3-1/2 inch chambers. I got some custom chokes for it, and started shooting twice a week; I worked nights so I could go mid-week. There was just me and this guy who was training for Olympic skeet; he was amazing to watch. In spite of all of my practice I never shot better than 19 out of 25 and I felt that my vision just was not acute enough for moving targets. By that time I had accumulated several other shotguns, including a Benelli Super Black Eagle, a Parker Repro, two old A.H. Foxes and a Beretta 687 20-gauge O/U with a nickel-plated receiver and .410 tubes from Briley. I really miss shooting .410 at skeet; THAT was fun! You GOTTA reload if you shoot .410; you can save a fortune - 12 gauge, not so much.

I sold all of the guns in 2002 to pay my divorce lawyer. *sigh* Oh, well. In the years since I have accumulated a dozen new guns and not one of them is a shotgun! Go figure. I really miss the 687, though; THAT was a pretty gun!

Oh, WHY do I shoot? Sorry if I am rambling. When I was 25 I read Atlas Shrugged. That really spun me around. I became a libertarian and have remained one.

Many years later I read Boston's Gun Bible by Boston T. Party. That introduced me to the concept of an armed libertarian, and got me interested in the civic duty of gun ownership in a free society.

I carry concealed whenever I can; been licensed in Virginia since 1999. I'm a member of VCDL and I support their efforts to make open carry more accepted in Virginia, but open carry is not for me. Part of the protection from carrying a handgun is the ability to surprise a goblin by suddenly producing a gun from concealment. The surprise factor alone is probably enough to end most dangerous confrontations without a shot being fired.

So my interest in shooting is for individual self-defense, as an impediment to government tyranny, and the Swiss concept of a citizenry trained at arms. I also have this annoying streak of resistance to authority; I want to do whatever will annoy my masters. And owning guns, particularly handguns, does that quite well!

Here are the answers from:
Roberta X
Brigid
Hell In A Handbasket
Maddened Fowl
Rustmeister
Sharp As A Marble
William The Coroner
A Keyboard And A .45

Are You Now, Or Have You Ever Been ...

The Volokh Conspiracy has a fascinating post on Obama's links to the discredited ACORN voter registration effort. Here's an excerpt:

FURTHER UPDATE: Here are Obama's exact words about ACORN, from the debate transcript: "The only involvement I've had with ACORN was I represented them alongside the U.S. Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law that helped people get register (sic) at DMVs." It's all over the blogs, with links to sources, that Obama was a trainer for ACORN. The Obama campaign itself changed its "Fight the Smears" website from stating "Fact: Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity," to "Fact: ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee." That's an implicit acknowledgment that Obama worked for/with, but was never officially "hired" by, ACORN. It was a pretty brazen, and seemingly unnecessary, lie by Obama, but McCain didn't call him on it.

A very sneaky lie! He was a volunteer trainer for ACORN, but he was never "hired". Typical Harvard lawyer!

Like when Obama's spokesmen answer questions about guns:

"Barack Obama supports the Second Amendment and the right of hunters to own firearms."
"So, Obama's going to require a license to own a handgun?"
"Barack Obama is not going to take away a single rifle or shotgun from an American hunter."
"So he IS going to take away handguns, is that what you mean?"
"Barack Obama supports the Second Amendment."

And so forth and so on. Exactly what Gore and Lieberman tried in 2000, and Charleton Heston called 'em on it. But this year the Dems seem to be getting away with it.

Muskrat Love

From The L.A. Times.

I Swear This Is My Last Post On This Subject!

ABC News reports:

The Oral Sex Cancer Connection

Must be Sweeps Week.

"Why Don't You Pick One Up And Smoke It Sometime?"

Well, I would, but it's a little crowded right now.

Edie Adams, the TV pitchwoman for Muriel Cigars, dies at 81.

Obit in the NYT.

A post on Linda Lovelace and now Edie Adams? As Groucho Marx once said, "I like a cigar, but I do take it out of my mouth once in a while!"

Jerry Springer? Meet Linda Lovelace

Yes, it's a new opera based on the life of Linda Lovelace, the star of 1972's Deep Throat.

I saw the movie at the Biograph theater in Richmond, Virginia (!) in 1972. The audience was 75% female. For a lot of them I think it was a feminist thing. They checked everybody's driver's license on the way in. I was barely 21 years old, so it was a guilty thrill for me to hang out with the grown-ups.

A few days later a local judge swore out a complaint, heard it in his own courtroom, and issued an injunction on exhibitions of the movie.

The judge's order only mentioned Deep Throat, so the Biograph stood up for the First Amendment by saying that next Saturday night they would have a double feature of The Devil And Miss Jones and Beaver Valley. And admission was free! They thumbed their nose at the judge and said that as long as they didn't charge admission, the law couldn't touch them.

The place was packed that Saturday night, including dozens of police officers. But the first movie was a 1940's black and white romantic comedy, and the second was a Disney nature short.

The Devil In Miss Jones is the porno movie.

Palin Has Motorcade Pull Over To Buy Diapers

"Just the diapers, thanks. And each of these nice gentlemen would like a box of 40 Smith & Wesson."

At the Wal-Mart in Gallipolis, Ohio. Monday afternoon.

Defcon 15 - Basic Physical Security

This is a year old, but I just found it, thanks to The Clue Meter.

Hilarious and no-holds-barred seminar on firearms and self-defense. 49 minutes long. I'm not sure their advice is all good, but excellent panel discussion and Q&A.

Best part: Ex-cop describes how he introduced his wife to shooting. She was very recoil-sensitive so he started her out with a .22 revolver. Then one night while he was on duty a guy broke into their house, and the husband was the responding officer. He says that he found her in the bedroom, "clutching my Dirty Harry 44-magnum." Later he asked her about her sensitivity to recoil, and she replied, "Fuck him! I was gonna blow his fucking head off!"

Which LOLCat R U?

Your result for The Which Lolcat Are You? Test...

Lion Warning Cat

51% Affectionate, 55% Excitable, 36% Hungry

You are the good Samaritan of the lolcat world. Protecting others from danger by shouting observations and guidance in cases of imminent threat, you believe in the well-being of everyone.



To see all possible results, checka dis.

Take The Which Lolcat Are You? Test at HelloQuizzy

Gracias a Clue Meter.

Packing And The Friendly Skies

I blogged on this airline business back in June.

Here is some hilarious advice on transporting firearms on commercial airlines. All very good advice and conforms with my own limited experience. Very, very funny: he tells a story about a guy trying to check in an M249 SAW.


MP3 Audio file, about 20 minutes.

Thanks to Say Uncle.

Deconstructing Silverman

The video has been discussed widely in major American newspapers, with reporters usually quoting Silverman's stock-in-trade surprise barbs, such as: "If Barak Obama doesn't become the next president of the United States, I'm gonna blame the Jews."

In the Jerusalem Post.

I think Sarah Silverman is wonderful and hilarious, but sometimes she pushes the envelope.

That Does It!

I'm selling the widows and orphans and putting all my money into a leveraged supermarket coupon futures hedge fund.

"Let Me Sleep On It ..."

Meat Loaf hospitalized, released.
Dude is 57. Yeeeee!

Brigitte Bardot calls Sarah Palin a 'disgrace to women'

The London Telegraph.

(That's Bardot on the right.)

U.K.: Cats Protection charity faces losing £11.2 million in Icelandic banks

London Times.

Risky Business

Poor Joel is Home Alone.

So he checks the personals. "Submissive Sarah"?
Maybe some other time.

Jacki is not quite to his liking, but Jacki recommends Lana.

This is Lana. "Are you ready for me, Ralph?"



"That'll be $300."
"Can I send it to you?"
"Can you send it to me, Joel?!"

Meet Guido the Killer Pimp (Joe Pantoliano).

Great line: "I don't believe this. I have a Trig mid-term
tomorrow and I'm being chased by Guido the Killer Pimp."

"I like you, Joel. Don't you know that?"

"Let's get high and get some ice cream."

If I had to choose between ice cream and
grass I would choose the ice cream every time.

Shopping for mattresses.

The camera just loves her.

The face that sold a thousand Ray-Bans.

Marlena Dietrich lighting, a la Josef von Sternberg:
see the little shadow under her nose?
Brings out the cheekbones.

"Banquet On A Bun?" I'll say she is!

Ahhh... I remember when I was 25.

I had forgotten how hot the "Love on a Train" piece was.

These two are just blistering the paint off the walls.

And that music!

Soon it will be time to say goodbye.