The More Things Don't Change . . .

Sometimes, after a bad experience leaves you burned, you can go back years later and patch things up. You can step back from what happened in the past and look at the situation with a fresh perspective.

Such was not the case when I watched CNN this morning for the first time in forever. I wouldn't normally bother tuning it in, but somebody had seen fit to put both TVs in the fitness center on the aforementioned channel. So for 15 minutes I trod on the treadmill and listened to reporters and guests popping on and off the morning show.

A British reporter said a lot of European capitals weren't buying the assertion in Bush's speech last night that the terrorists in Iraq are linked to other international terrorists and/or al Qaeda. Well, let me count the ways. Many of the Iraqi terrorists aren't from Iraq. They are from Pakistan, Syria, Iran, or other countries in the region. Al Qaeda-linked terrorists were the guys who bombed the trains in Spain, convincing the Spaniards to vote for a presidential candidate who had promised to pull their troops out of Iraq. Spanish officials arrested 11 terrorist linked to al-Zarqawi earlier this month. Al-Zarqawi has publicly pledged himself to bin Laden. Plus, Fillipino terrorists have been killed fighting U.S. troops in Iraq. Sounds like a pretty strong "link" to me.

Then the pretty little reporterette introduces Sen. John McCain (RINO, Ariz.), saying that he has some advice for Bush concerning what he should do to boost poll numbers for the war in Iraq. CNN wants us to believe McCain has credible opinions about how to increase popularity when he couldn't win his own party's presidential nomination? Please.

And all of the lib dem pundits were going on and on about how Bush was trying to link 911 and Saddam/Iraq. I watched the speech. He didn't do that. Bush was linking 911 and the beginning of the war on terror. The invasion of Iraq was very much a part of the war on terror. Say it with me: not the war on al-Qaeda or the war on Osama, but the war on terror. There were al-Qaeda members in Iraq before we invaded. They may or may not have been working with Saddam's government to facilitate their training and tactics. Saddam was in defiance of U.N. edicts, not that the U.N. really cared. Kofi and co. were getting their palms greased through the corrupted oil for food program.

Oh, and Rush had a great analogy about the WMDs, which went something like this. Are you sure Natalee Holloway was ever really in Aruba? Aruba is a small country, if she was really there, don't you think they would have found her by now? What if the people who said she was there were lying? How can so distinctive an individual go missing under so many watchful eyes? Are we sure she was there in the first place?

WMDs were in Iraq. Saddam used them against the Kurds and the Iranians. The U.N. inspectors were never able to fully account for his entire stockpile. The answer to where they went could be the same answer to the Natalee Holloway question. Perhaps someone had the foresight to take the query across the border.

Some Depressing Tidbits

We trundle on towards socialism in the U.S. in large ways and small.

Take for instance the recent 5-4 ruling of the Supreme Court which states you no longer have any right to your own property. The majority of the Court decided to redefine "public interest" and skewer the Fifth Amendment with one fell swoop. Now, instead of being limited to taking your land for highways, public parks, schools, etc., your friendly state and local governments can throw you out of your own house for building condominiums, apartments, shopping centers, etc.

The Fifth Amendment reads, ". . . nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." Somehow, "public use" has been twisted around to "public good" and the public is supposed to benefit more from the larger tax base which comes with a large money making operation like a Wal Mart Supercenter as opposed to a private dwelling. As many have pointed out, this makes churches huge targets for anti-Christian types since churches pay minimal taxes, if any.

Buy your scary-looking guns now, before Clinton's Crime Bill returns. Whichever party wins the White House in 2008 probably won't give a rip about the Second Amendment.

Although it's way early, the front runners in the 2008 election appear to be the Hildebeast and Rudy Giuliani. What a choice for gun owners. The devil or the deep blue sea? Decisions, decisions. Both feel that guns belong only in the hands of the government. Some pundits have been talking about Howard Dean and/or John McCain running as independents. It would truly suck if Hillary got in because weenie McCain siphoned GOP votes away from a decent candidate (or even Rudy G.). Me? I want George Allen and Condie vs. Hillary and John Edwards. I used to jokingly ask if liberals would vote for the first black female presidential candidate or the wife of the first black president. I have since learned that, for liberals, blackness is defined by one's politics, not the color of one's skin.

The price of oil continues to rise, Bush hasn't let Israel blow up Iran's nuclear reactors (must be more of that "new tone"), and China's military build-up continues. Its enought to make you hole up in your basement with a stockpile of arms, ammo, and enough Spam to feed a small army. That would last until the government came to raze your house for the new mall's parking lot. If you offer forceful resistance, you or your loved ones get shot by guys whose guns you helped buy with your tax dollars. Think I'm kidding? Go to http://www.wealth4freedom.com/truth/13/rubyridge.htm.

Go buy an AR-15, 1,000 rounds of 5.56, and a batch of 30-round magazines. If you should get pulled over for a traffic violation on your way home from the gun store and the cop notices your armament offer the following:

"What do I need with all this ammo and the gun, sir? Why, there's a big rock comin' and I gotta be ready."

"A big rock?"

"Yes, sir. There's a big rock comin' and it's gonna fall from the sky, wipe out the major cities and change the world as we know it. Only ones left will be the folks out in the country and it's gonna be dog-eat-dog and only the strong shall survive."

So long as you aren't transporting your AR with a loaded magazine locked in, you should be able to slip through most state and local firearms laws. Transporting a loaded weapon is a felony in some places, like Wisconsin. Remember that convicted felons can't own guns, but I will gladly hold them for you should you be so unlucky as to be brought up on charges and convicted. Your weapons will be safe with me. Promise.

If the Truth Doesn't Suit Your Purpose . . .

It appears lib dems are now saying the Downing Street memos are originals or verified copies or some such thing. They're not. The Associated Press, never a friend to W. or conservatives, published the following story.

Memos Show British Concern Over Iraq Plans
By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer Sat Jun 18, 5:55 PM ET
LONDON - When Prime Minister Tony Blair' chief foreign policy adviser dined with Condoleezza Rice six months after Sept. 11, the then-U.S. national security adviser didn't want to discuss Osama bin Laden or al-Qaida. She wanted to talk about "regime change" in Iraq, setting the stage for the U.S.-led invasion more than a year later.

President Bush wanted Blair's support, but British officials worried the White House was rushing to war, according to a series of leaked secret Downing Street memos that have renewed questions and debate about Washington's motives for ousting Saddam Hussein.

In one of the memos, British Foreign Office political director Peter Ricketts openly asks whether the Bush administration had a clear and compelling military reason for war.

"U.S. scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and al-Qaida is so far frankly unconvincing," Ricketts says in the memo. "For Iraq, `regime change' does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge between Bush and Saddam."

The documents confirm Blair was genuinely concerned about Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction, but also indicate he was determined to go to war as America's top ally, even though his government thought a pre-emptive attack may be illegal under international law.

"The truth is that what has changed is not the pace of Saddam Hussein's WMD programs, but our tolerance of them post-11 September," said a typed copy of a March 22, 2002 memo obtained Thursday by The Associated Press and written to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

"But even the best survey of Iraq's WMD programs will not show much advance in recent years on the nuclear, missile or CW/BW (chemical or biological weapons) fronts: the programs are extremely worrying but have not, as far as we know, been stepped up."

Details from Rice's dinner conversation also are included in one of the secret memos from 2002, which reveal British concerns about both the invasion and poor postwar planning by the Bush administration, which critics say has allowed the Iraqi insurgency to rage.

The eight memos — all labeled "secret" or "confidential" — were first obtained by British reporter Michael Smith, who has written about them in The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times.

Smith told AP he protected the identity of the source he had obtained the documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper and destroying the originals.

The AP obtained copies of six of the memos (the other two have circulated widely). A senior British official who reviewed the copies said their content appeared authentic. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secret nature of the material.

The eight documents total 36 pages and range from 10-page and eight-page studies on military and legal options in Iraq, to brief memorandums from British officials and the minutes of a private meeting held by Blair and his top advisers.

Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert who teaches at Queen Mary College, University of London, said the documents confirmed what post-invasion investigations have found.

"The documents show what official inquiries in Britain already have, that the case of weapons of mass destruction was based on thin intelligence and was used to inflate the evidence to the level of mendacity," Dodge said. "In going to war with Bush, Blair defended the special relationship between the two countries, like other British leaders have. But he knew he was taking a huge political risk at home. He knew the war's legality was questionable and its unpopularity was never in doubt."

Dodge said the memos also show Blair was aware of the postwar instability that was likely among Iraq's complex mix of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds once Saddam was defeated.
The British documents confirm, as well, that "soon after 9/11 happened, the starting gun was fired for the invasion of Iraq," Dodge said.

Speculation about if and when that would happen ran throughout 2002.

On Jan. 29, Bush called Iraq,
Iran and North Korea "an axis of evil." U.S. newspapers began reporting soon afterward that a U.S.-led war with Iraq was possible.

On Oct. 16, the U.S. Congress voted to authorize Bush to go to war against Iraq. On Feb. 5, 2003, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented the Bush administration's case about Iraq's weapons to the U.N. Security Council. On March 19-20, the U.S.-led invasion began.

Bush and Blair both have been criticized at home since their WMD claims about Iraq proved false. But both have been re-elected, defending the conflict for removing a brutal dictator and promoting democracy in Iraq. Both administrations have dismissed the memos as old news.

Details of the memos appeared in papers early last month but the news in Britain quickly turned to the election that returned Blair to power. In the United States, however, details of the memos' contents reignited a firestorm, especially among Democratic critics of Bush.

It was in a March 14, 2002, memo that Blair's chief foreign policy adviser, David Manning, told the prime minister about the dinner he had just had with Rice in Washington.

"We spent a long time at dinner on Iraq," wrote Manning, who's now British ambassador to the United States. Rice is now Bush's secretary of state.

"It is clear that Bush is grateful for your (Blair's) support and has registered that you are getting flak. I said that you would not budge in your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a Parliament and a public opinion that was very different than anything in the States. And you would not budge either in your insistence that, if we pursued regime change, it must be very carefully done and produce the right result. Failure was not an option."

Manning said, "Condi's enthusiasm for regime change is undimmed." But he also said there were signs of greater awareness of the practical difficulties and political risks.

Blair was to meet with Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, on April 8, and Manning told his boss: "No doubt we need to keep a sense of perspective. But my talks with Condi convinced me that Bush wants to hear your views on Iraq before taking decisions. He also wants your support. He is still smarting from the comments by other European leaders on his Iraq policy."

A July 21 briefing paper given to officials preparing for a July 23 meeting with Blair says officials must "ensure that the benefits of action outweigh the risks."

"In particular we need to be sure that the outcome of the military action would match our objective... A postwar occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise. As already made clear, the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point."

The British worried that, "Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden. Further work is required to define more precisely the means by which the desired end state would be created, in particular what form of government might replace Saddam Hussein's regime and the time scale within which it would be possible to identify a successor."

In the March 22 memo from Foreign Office political director Ricketts to Foreign Secretary Straw, Ricketts outlined how to win public and parliamentary support for a war in Britain: "We have to be convincing that: the threat is so serious/imminent that it is worth sending our troops to die for; it is qualitatively different from the threat posed by other proliferators who are closer to achieving nuclear capability (including Iran)."

Blair's government has been criticized for releasing an intelligence dossier on Iraq before the war that warned Saddam could launch chemical or biological weapons on 45 minutes' notice.

On March 25 Straw wrote a memo to Blair, saying he would have a tough time convincing the governing Labour Party that a pre-emptive strike against Iraq was legal under international law.

"If 11 September had not happened, it is doubtful that the U.S. would now be considering military action against Iraq," Straw wrote. "In addition, there has been no credible evidence to link Iraq with OBL (Osama bin Laden) and al-Qaida."

He also questioned stability in a post-Saddam Iraq: "We have also to answer the big question — what will this action achieve? There seems to be a larger hole in this than on anything."

Football, Anyone?

I just discovered littlegreenfootballs.com. Rush has mentioned it several times on his show, but today is the first time I have checked it out. Very interesting stuff.

What in the world is the point of the lib dems faux impeachment hearings? Wait, silly question. It was done to endear themselves further to the lunatic fringe, i.e., the current Democrat base. The Downing Street memos played an important role in the hearings. The memos assert that Bush was bound and determined to invade Iraq whether there were WMDs or not. The following excerpt is from a news story on yahoo.

The eight memos — all labeled “secret” or “confidential” — were first obtained by British reporter Michael Smith, who has written about them in The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times.
Smith told AP he protected the identity of the source he had obtained the documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper and destroying the originals.

Once again, we have documents which would hurt Bush but are unable to be proven true. You would think the Dems would get tired of the whole fake document thing, especially after Rathergate. I guess you just can't keep a bad idea down.

Odds, Ends, Etc.

There doesn't seem to be much new going on in the world. At least, nothing reaches out and captures my interest enough for me to waste many keystrokes on it.

The Terry Schiavo autopsy report is in. The chief medical examiner/egghead in charge said Schiavo's brain had atrophied and weighed about half of what the normal adult brain should. He said she could never have regained normal function no matter how much rehabilitative therapy she was given.

Neal Boortz (who I agree with most of the time, check out his site at http://www.boortz.com) said these findings prove wrong all of us who didn't want Schiavo killed. He said we were just trying to prevent her natural passing and shouldn't be worried about trying to sustain the "shell" that Terry Schiavo had become.

As with abortion, Libertarians often fail to grasp the gist of the conservative argument. Terry Schiavo, although brain damaged, was a living human. The judiciary sided with her husband to make her a dead human. Killing someone else, with or without the government's permission, is what we used to call murder. (This really is starting to sound similiar to an anti-abortion argument.) I don't have a problem with people having some kind of written document stating that they don't want to continue to live if they become brain dead, can't survive without life support, etc. I do have a problem with the gov't taking Michael Schiavo's word for what his wife wanted without any additional proof. For details on this case, do a google search.

Congressional Dems are comparing U.S. soldiers to Nazis. The Senate Judiciary Committee is looking into allegations of abuse at Guantanamo Bay, which makes about as much sense as an agriculture group looking into the Columbia shuttle disaster. (Check out Rush Limbaugh's Club Gitmo T-shirts at http://www.rushlimbaugh.com. They are hilarious.) Howard Dean called GOPers a bunch of white Christians who all think and act the same. Senate Dems are fillibustering John Bolton but refuse to call it a fillibuster.

In short, its the same stuff in different packaging. I hope the lib dems keep it up. They need to let the folks know what they stand for. So long as they keep acting like spoiled twits, their hopes of regaining the presidency or the Senate gets smaller and smaller. Now if only we could convince the Senate Republicans to get out of the fetal position and capitalize on the short sightedness of the lib dems, I could get around to writing about something less likely to polarize people - like whether or not people are predestined for Heaven or Hell, for instance.

The Dreaded .50 cal vs. a Loaded Blastocyst, Who Will Survive?

This is a long 'un. Kick your feet up.

Driving through my home town today on the way to a family reunion, I picked up a copy of the local newspaper for the first time in years. (I thought I might know the guy convicted of manslaughter on the front page. I didn't.) After we got back home, I sat reading it in my backyard - my wife asking why I kept bursting out laughing. The answer? Comedians masquerading as goofball liberal columnists in my own little small town news rag!

The main thrust of this chick's column was that Bush is a hypocrite for wanting to create a "culture of life" by threatening to veto more taxpayer-funded stem cell research. She said Bush has created a culture of death in Iraq by starting a war when he didn't have too, yada, yada, yada. She mentioned the Downing Street memo as well, something I just found out about recently at http://boortz.com/nuze/index.html.

These people have cried wolf so many times, if they ever find proof the Bush really is the devil, people wouldn't believe them. (Except for their fellow nutjobs.) Wait, isn't Karl Rove supposed to be the devil and Bush just a puppet? Or is Cheney the devil? But, what would that make Rove? Is it fair to the devil to compare him to GOP leaders? A good dem has to be sensitive to the religious differences of others, right? Except fundamentalist Christians and Catholics. They're fair game. These religions are supposed to put up with having Christ on the cross get dunked in urine in the name of art. But if a Gitmo guard pees by an air duct which blows some liquid onto a terrorist and his U.S.-supplied Koran, OH NO! Stop the presses and spread the news! Here comes the latest news from the gulag that IS Gitmo! Ugh. What a bunch of weiners. Yet . . . I digress.

This liberal columnist chick works her way into ranting about the gun lobby, cop-killer bullets, and the dreaded .50-caliber rifle. She obviously feels all of these things are far more frightening than most fantasy stories. (Some horror movies are just plain frightening. Take The Grudge for instance. It scared me so bad I crawled into bed with my wife and almost 3-year-old daughter after I got back from the theater.)

What the heck is a cop-killer bullet? Is it a bullet raised in a bad neighberhood, educated in government schools, nurtured by government social programs? Did it join a gang at an early age to gain some feeling of family? Explain yourself, lib dem femme chick! I'm an inquiring NRA member and I want to know.

You can't buy steel core bullets anymore, because they tend to penetrate things they shouldn't. I don't know if this includes your average Kevlar vest, but I suspect that that idea had something to do with their current hard-to-gettedness. The Winchester Black Talon hollow points were voluntarily withdrawn from the non-LEO market place by the manufacturer during the early 90s. The bullets' hollow points are designed to open up and fold back upon impact to form extended metal talons that slice as they penetrate tissue. I also hear they aren't really as effective as they should have been. BTW, I've been to a bunch of gun shows and haven't found a Teflon-coated bullet yet. You can get Teflon-coated cooking pans at Wal Mart, though. Maybe you could buy some full metal jacketed shells and melt the Teflon off the cook ware and drip it onto the bullets. Wouldn't recommend it, though. Burning Teflon smells terrible.

And the .50-caliber bullets Ms. Libby is talking about are .50 Browning Machine Gun cartridges. The civilian rifles they are used in aren't machine guns. The cartridge has the name because this particular .50 cal. is the one which has been used in the U.S. military's M2 machine gun since WW II if not slightly earlier. Don't confuse these rounds or the rifles designed to shoot them with your average .50-caliber black powder using, muzzle loading rifle. If you ask for a muzzle loader in .50 BMG at the local sporting goods store, you'll just look silly. Plus, you may frighten any liberals who may have wandered in in an effort to buy a stylish vest in John Kerry hunter orange.

She said these scary weapons can be used to shoot down planes. Well, .50-caliber BMGs were routinely used to shoot down Axis planes during WW II, since two or more of the things in machine gun form were commonly mounted on American fighter planes. The weapons she is talking about only fire one round per pull of the trigger. I'm sure a bullet or two from a .50 BMG rifle could be used to down an airliner if you put the shots in the right places, but surely there must be easier ways. Like using a surface-to-air missile, for instance. Hard to get? Illegal? Sure, but you have to go through a federal background check to buy a .50-caliber rifle or any other gun, for that matter. Funny how the lib dems leave out inconvenient facts like that when it suits their purpose.

She goes on to say how hunting rifles are okay, but the evil .50-caliber weapons of mass destruction should be limited only to the proper authorities - like the federal agents who took Ellian Gonzales from his uncle's house at gunpoint, for example. Know what the difference is between a scoped .308 bolt-action hunting rifle and a sniper rifle? From the perspective of a typical anti-gun Democrat, not a blessed thing. Read the Second Amendment folks. It's not about deer season, just the right for you and me to bear arms.

Oh, and she mentioned something about loopholes that allow dealers to sell firearms to criminals and terrorists. I suspect our columnist friend here is referring to the so-called "gun show loophole." Here is the first thing you need to know about the gun show loophole: it doesn't exist. A federally licensed firearms dealer has to have a Class 1 Federal Firearms License. For a holder of the license to sell a gun to an individual, the prospective buyer must undergo a federal back ground check. This check will be done every time the individual purchases a gun, except in some states with concealed carry laws. I don't know the rules by state, but in some of them, a concealed carry permit holder doesn't have to undergo a federal background check with each purchase because he or she has already been fingerprinted and background-checked to get the concealed carry license. Terrorists and criminals are not usually eager to be fingerprinted, much less have the feds check on their past criminal records. The prospective buyer also has to fill out a standardized form certifying he or she isn't a fugitive from justice, a wifebeater, illegal alien, drug addict, etc. It is a felonly to lie on the form.

Anyway, a federally-licensed dealer has to call in a background check on anyone who wants to buy a gun regardless of where they are. In other words, background checks ARE conducted at gunshows. When background checks aren't conducted at gunshows is when the sale is between two ordinary private citizens. The government hasn't gotten around to getting in your business if you want to sell your Dad's old 12-guage shotgun to a friend or acquaintance. And if you don't trust yourself not to sell a gun to potential criminal, keep the thing. Or ship it to me. I'll take it off your hands and pay the shipping fees to boot. (Wait, you can't ship it directly to me if you are out of state. You have to ship it to a licensed dealer in my state who then sells the gun to me ((background check)). Unless we both have Curio and Relic licenses. That's another federal background check ((pesky things)) and more paperwork.) Remember, our government says handguns are more dangerous than rifles, so you have to ship handguns next day air but long guns can go ground.

Modern machine guns are illegal for private citizens to buy and sell, so don't worry about somebody giving Abdul the terrorist an armload of fully-automatic AK-47s under the guise of a private transaction. Old machine guns are legal to purchase after you get a Curio and Relic license, undergo yet another federal background check (see a pattern?), and pay a really exorbitant fee for the gun itself. Don't let the thought of a frothing terrorist with a 50-year-old, fully-automatic weapon keep you up at night. Remember that bit about having to undergo a background check (at least twice, at this point).

Oh, and the lapse of the "Assault Weapons Ban" doesn't make machine guns available at the local five and dime or Wal Mart, for that matter. (The assault weapons ban didn't really affect assault weapons? Democrats and the press misleading the public? Say it ain't so, Irene.) If its fully automatic, i.e., capable of emptying its magazine after the trigger is pulled and held back, you still can't buy it off the shelf. Sorry. The Ak-47s and M16 lookalikes available to us civvie types are semi automatic only - one shot fired per each pull of the trigger. And the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives makes sure they aren't easily modified to become full auto.

So there you are. Liberals' favorite firearms myths debunked. The next time you come across these lies, just laugh at 'em and make fun of the writer. It's great fun at parties and will amuse your friends . . . well, most of your friends, anyway.

BTW, politicians think they don't have to listen to individuals unless the individuals are able to donate copious amounts of $$ to their campaign funds. If you want them to hear your views on gun control, go to http://www.nra.org or http://www.gunowners.org and sign up. Tell 'em I sent ya.