Yeah, this would never happen!

…is what the anti-rights folks say of legal firearm possession appropriately used:

AZ:Armed Citizen Wins Gunfight in Yuma

SHHH! It’s a Conspiracy!

I admit it.  I tend to believe in conspiracy theories.  Not ALL of them.  But, I do believe many times the ‘powers that be’ shield us from all the facts.  For our own good.  Because, after all, we are children.

JFK, RFK, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, George Wallace shootings don’t pass my smell test.  There’s more there.

911 does.  Sandy Hook, maybe not – the jury is still out.

I ran into this video courtesy of Miss Cellania.  While I may disagree with some of it’s content, I still found it hilarious.

Sometimes, you just gotta laugh! 

How Sad

One of the things I’ve enjoyed about blogging is finding out persons from all over The United States, in fact, The World have clicked on a posting or a Google/Bing response and found their way here.  I’ve stated many times before that I’m continually amazed anyone stops by – so anyone doing so makes me happy.  Or used to.

I monitor the (meaningless) statistics about the blog – Where are readers located?  How many?  Total views for a 24 hour period.  Then I compare that to what posts I did that given day in an effort to find more titles/subjects appealing to more readers.  It really doesn’t affect my titles or content.  I’m compulsive.  It’s not as if I make any money doing this!

But, the other day, I quickly inserted a blog post blurb regarding the horrific tragedy in Connecticut, as the reports were coming in.  Just the name of the town, Newtown Connecticut was the title.

And I was deeply saddened to see 333 search views in 24 hours!  My average is 163 over the previous 28 days!

Are people so ghoulish that this is what drives them?  Even worse is so-called ‘news’ organizations are so thirsty to ‘get the story first’ they report anything without verifying facts or sources!

It used to be there was a twenty-four hour news cycle, many times longer.  Now it’s minutes; seconds.  No time to verify anything, just get ‘it’ out there!  If it’s wrong, we’ll submit a correction – or not.

And the people who just can’t wait to hear about the latest exploits of Lindsay Lohan or Honey Boo-Boo are waiting like vultures to lap it up.  Or search for it on the Internet.

How sad.

Wall Street Journal: Should High-Capacity Rifle Magazines Be Banned?

Join the fun!  The Wall Street Journal asks this question today in it’s poll.

Of course, I don’t see any polls regarding BANNING of other inherent rights?  (But, I’m silly that way!)

If you wish, visit the link and give your $00.02 worth.  As of this writing, it looks as if rights are winning – by a nose.

WSJ Magazine Ban Poll

h/t Tam et al

PS – Per the WSJ, this link no longer works after December 17!

This Just In…

The United States WILL NOT SIGN the United Nations Small Arms Treaty, at least in this go around…

The Citizen’s Committee for The Right To Keep and Bear Arms credits grassroots pressure from the citizenry in this reversal, announced Friday morning.  After all, it’s not as if the President and Secretary of State had a change of heart.

LETS KEEP UP THE MOMENTUM WITH PRESSURE ON SENATOR SCHUMER’S LATEST BILL.

THEY’RE GONNA KEEP TRYING, PEOPLE! – Guffaw

h/t CCRKBA, GunMag, SAF

THIS is why the non-gun public is so ill informed…

Bullet explodes inside woman’s purse, shoots her leg

If one actually reads the poorly-worded article, it explains:

“Something must of hit the primer of one of the bullets,” Bentley said. “The bullet stayed in the purse, but its casing put a hole in the purse and caused a minor leg wound.”

Which is what anyone with a passing familiarity with ammunition long suspected.  And is why we keep seeing ‘news’ stories with almost all rifles being AK-47s, and all pistols being Glocks.

And small collections being referred to as arsenals.

Not to mention a political agenda.

(personal to my friends in the news biz – this is not an indictment of all news people, just the uneducated – Guffaw)

h/t Yahoo News

Queenie

There are a number news stories addressing the fact that ‘The Queen’ (Elizabeth of Britain) is celebrating 60 years on the throne this year.  There are also a number of blog posts regarding this fact, and the fact that the Britain of 60 years ago is hardly the equivalent of the current state.  In short, she is no longer Great.

My family genealogy takes me back to British History, in fact the family Coat-of-Arms shows three crosses, delineating (I’m told), the Guffaw family was in service of the Church in three Crusades.  But much of this side of the family emanates from Ireland.  (The other from Germany).

And my maternal side of the family is D.A.R. material, having fought against the British in The American Revolution.  As previously recounted in these pages:  Sybil Ludington

While I’m proud of my family’s heritage and history, proud of being of Irish, German and English stock, however, I am an American.  Much to the dismay of a number of my friends who are anglophiles who are reveling in the current 60 year celebration of the Queen.

While perusing all the hubbub about this matter, I remembered an event years ago, when I was first working at TMCCC.

A female co-worker was quite emotional regarding the shocking loss of Princess Diana, and was going on-and-on about how sad the event was.  The Princess was beautiful, she helped so many charities, yatta, yatta, yatta.  While I recognized the loss, it was not as if she were an American icon, a Jackie Kennedy for example?

But, we read to our young children fairy tales about princesses, and set ourselves up for this anglomania, especially in our women, who remember the princess fantasies of childhood.  And this attachment seems especially strong in our connection to Britain, rather than Monaco or some other European duchy.

I’m (in)famous in my small circle for opening my mouth and inserting my foot both feet up to my knees.  Repeatedly.  I did not disappoint in this circumstance.

After seemingly endless hours of adulation for the Princess, I’d had enough.  And I said, “I thought we fought a war to get away from those a$$7372s!”   Which, of course, was true.

My timing might have been a bit off.

I was treated with icy silence the rest of the day by the person whom I offended.  It was rude of me.

But I still don’t get the fascination with ‘The Royals’.  In a Nation born of fighting them; to divorce ourselves of the class warfare embedded in Europe.

To be here, in the United States, 236 years after the Declaration of Independence, after freedom from the oppression of the ‘upper classes’ only to have it remanufactured by the so-called 99%, to promote Marxism and anarchy.  Because that worked so well in Europe.

Looks like I put my feet in my mouth again…

The ‘News’, Internet Style

No more this kind of guy

I’m old enough to remember when the ‘news’ was The News.  By that I mean one opened the morning newspaper, the front section was national and international news stories, the second section State and local stories, the third human interest and the fourth sports/weather.
Television was largely a similar format.  Top stories up front, followed by lesser stories, perhaps one human interest story, sports and weather.  And the newscasters were mostly skilled reporters – who kept their political views private.  And we liked it that way.
NOW, more-and-more folks get their news via the Internet, newspapers are rapidly going the way of the buggy whip and television ‘news’ is more and more infotainment, more human interest (or sub-human interest) and less hard news.  And the newscasters are pretty people with scant reporting skills.  And they don’t hide their views.
A few months back, I changed the homepage on my computer from Yahoo.  Even though it allowed for some editing of content (I’m not a sports fan, so I don’t care) the ‘news’ content that came through was still largely politically slanted.  With views with which I disagreed.  And I tired of seeing it.
SO, I changed to Google News.  Not the most libertarian or Constitution-loving of the media outlets, but as compared to Yahoo, it was Reason magazine.
And it was still content-editable, to weed out sports stories and other stuff in which I had little interest.
But, here’s a selection of recent ‘news’ content.  (To be fair, there was hard news, too!)

Arizona Diamondbacks bats come alive in win over Los Angeles Dodgers (AZ Republic)

Welcome to the world’s nicest prison (CNN)

Orthodox Jews Rally to Keep the Internet Kosher (Wired News)

American Idol 2012: Jennifer Lopez busts out of a VERY low cut top for ..(Daily Mail)

Ace Young proposes to Diana DeGarmo on “American Idol” finale (CBS News)

Now I know that it’s unreasonable to think a news page be “Just the facts”, and they had no stories about Jersey Shore or the Kardashian idiots, but, I’m still annoyed…

Judge Does The Right Thing…

A New York FEDERAL Judge!!!

Military Detention Law Blocked by New York Judge
A federal judge temporarily blocked enforcement of a part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that opponents claim could subject them to indefinite military detention for activities including news reporting and political activism.
U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan today ruled in favor of a group of writers and activists who sued President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the Defense Department, claiming a provision of the act, signed into law Dec. 31, puts them in fear that they could be arrested and held by U.S. armed forces. ~

~Hedges, who testified he has been a foreign news correspondent for 20 years, said he has reported on 17 groups that are on a State Department list of terrorist groups. Hedges testified that after the law was passed, he changed his dealings with groups he had reported on, Forrest said.

“I think the ruling was not only correct, but courageous and important,” Hedges said in a telephone interview yesterday.~

Go and read the specifics.

h/t Knuckledraggin’ My Life Away and Bloomberg.com news (seriously?)

The Ghost(s) of Union Station

The fans of Old Phoenix out there have been asking for additional tales of pre-urban-renewal Phoenix.  My apologies, my mind has been elsewhere.
However, in today’s Arizona Repulsive Republic, there is a story regarding our main train station, not used for passenger traffic in many years.  (Passenger traffic now connects through Flagstaff.)
Apparently, there is a ghost (or are ghosts) resident therein!

An excerpt of the article, linked below…

On the evening of Oct. 16, 1931, a Phoenix secretary named Winnie Ruth Judd got into a tussle with two of her best friends. All three were seeking the affections of the same man, who happened to be married to someone else. That night, prosecutors said Judd shot both women, hacked one of them into pieces and placed both bodies in steamer trunks — which she brought with her to Union Station and checked as baggage, bound for LA.

When Judd arrived in Los Angeles — her hand bandaged and crusted with dried blood — she went to claim her trunks. The porter had flagged them and demanded a key to have a look inside.

Winnie Ruth Judd’s trunks were leaking, oozing blood.

Phoenix’s “trunk murderess” was caught, convicted and served nearly 39 years in prisons and insane asylums. (By the by, she also became friends with Rose Mofford, who thought Judd was a kind little peach.)

The bodies of Judd’s friends were sent back to Phoenix on the Golden State Limited. According to historical reports, they arrived Oct. 24 on the 7:20a.m. train and came home to Union Station.

(PS – Rose Mofford was a long time Arizona Secretary of State who became a beloved Governor.)

Who knows if these are the resident ghosts?

The Ghost(s) of Union Station

h/t The Arizona Republic