This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Poetrooper

  • Captain Kelly’s Hypocrisy

    Recently, former astronaut Mark Kelly, husband of former congresswoman and shooting victim, Gabby Giffords, was seen making firearms purchases in an Arizona gun shop. That would not be a newsworthy event except for the fact that Giffords and Kelly have been much in the public eye lately, even setting up their own organization and a slickly done website for promoting stricter regulation of firearms.

    On that site is a link to a Kelly video which shows Kelly driving from their home to a Tucson gun shop to purchase a handgun and to surreptitiously film the event to demonstrate the ease with which one can purchase a handgun. With his concealed camera recording Kelly goes through the procedure, reciting for his hidden camera the various statements to which he must swear under penalty of law to be eligible for the completion of the purchase. With the transaction successfully completed, Kelly returns to his home and shows his wife their new handgun, emphasizing for her and the videographer the ease of purchase.

    Now I have no problem with any of that. Kelly thinks he’s showing that the process is too simple and the rules need to be tightened. I happen to think he reinforces the position of the NRA and most lawful gun owners that sufficient safeguards already exist if they are enforced. Here’s the pdf version of the form, Firearms Transaction Record Part I, Over-the-Counter, that Kelly and all the rest of us must fill out when making a firearms purchase. Note the repeated warnings in bold-face that the purchaser is certifying the truth, correctness and completeness of his document under penalty of law.

    And what about Kelly’s second purchase that day, the details of which he apparently has not been so forthcoming to the public. According to the gun shop proprietor and operator, Kelly also bought a semi-automatic, AR-15 style rifle, the very weapon the gun-grabbers are wetting their pants over. It was only when Kelly’s presence in the gun shop was noticed by other customers and subsequently revealed to the media that Kelly reported he was purchasing the “assault rifle” purely for the purpose of demonstrating the ease with which it could be done. He claimed to have no intention of keeping the weapon but planned to turn it over to the Tucson police.

    The gun shop proprietor ultimately decided to void the sale and refund Kelly’s $1,295 payment. He noted that Kelly would have had to fill out the federal form before taking possession. I have information from a reliable source that Kelly filled out the paperwork at the time of purchase. The question in my mind is, did or would have, Kelly knowingly mislead the seller on that form? While he may in fact have been the actual buyer, and could truthfully so attest, if he was not planning to retain ownership, he was actually making a straw purchase for another owner, the Tucson police. So he was willing to put misleading information on the federal form in order to complete the transaction, a necessity to prove his point about the ease of buying an assault rifle.

    And the question begs, if that was the true purpose, why didn’t Kelly video record the actual purchase itself, so he’d have video proof of the transaction from start to finish, as he did with the handgun? Which handgun, by the way, he and Giffords apparently planned to keep as the posted video clearly shows. That seems strange as the video’s first moments reveal that Kelly has other handguns but no semi-automatic rifle. Why then keep the handgun but not the rifle? Kelly’s a retired navy captain so he surely knows the essential difference between an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a true, fully automatic assault weapon. He knows the former is a civilian weapon of self-defense while the latter is a weapon of war.

    Sorry, but I’m just not buying it. I think Kelly meant to keep that rifle but got caught in a hypocritical embarrassment contradictory to his professed public pronouncements, assuredly not unusual in Democrat politics. Once exposed, he concocted the police ploy for cover. No one I know among gun owners begrudges the Kelly’s having an AR-15. Frankly we believe they should be well-armed. Who knows what kook out there might decide his path to glory lies in the finishing of Jared Loughner’s dirty work. It’s the hypocrisy that is troublesome. Rather than making questionable purchases to prove how easy it is, Kelly and Giffords might better serve the cause of improved public protection from the likes of Loughner by working with police and mental health agencies to assure Jared’s kind are in the federal no-purchase database.

    I admired Mark Kelly prior to this episode. He’s a former combat naval aviator. I’ve known several and they’re a stalwart breed. I particularly respect anyone who will strap a dangerously volatile, shuttle launching, rocket booster to his butt and blast off into space. I admire the way he has been so strongly supportive of his wife and her recovery. To see the two of them together and interacting would be heartwarming were it not for their nefarious political mission of aiding the gun-grabbing Democrats. And I most assuredly do not like Kelly’s self-serving, hypocritical, political duplicity. For me, the question begging is this:

    Captain, did you sell all that good currency of your national service for the cheap rewards of shoddy Democrat politics?

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • The Silence of the Shams

    We have an entire industry in this country that is nothing more than a sham, pretending to be one thing while in fact, being something utterly different. That industry is, of course, the liberal media, who daily vow to bring you all the news while in fact sifting the worth of any story through a liberal sieve that has been perfected to block the passage of any story that might reflect well on the conservative view. A glaring example has come to be in the past week.

    Remember a little more than a year ago when a tattooed black thug, whose claim to thuggery, well documented by his own words and photographic submissions to the social media websites, was shot dead by a neighborhood watch volunteer in a confrontation that drew and held the liberal media in thrall for weeks. Every outraged broadcast perpetuating the liberal myth that an innocent young black child had been murdered by a white racist was accompanied by a photo of the black thug when he was still a bright, smiling innocent of approximately twelve years of age. The Hispanic who killed him fared worse: his photographic introduction to the world was a post-arrest mug shot.

    Even though the web media quickly surfaced an accurate depiction of both, the liberal media refused to replace their images with those that more correctly depicted the two participants because it didn’t fit their narrative of evil white man guns down innocent black youth. To hell with reality, this is the story we’re pushing so we’ll use the pics that carry our story line. Recall the outrage, the crusading black rabble-rousers who quickly flew to the scene so as to be seen. Recall the illegal offers of a bounty on the head of the defendant by a militant black organization.

    OK, surely you have the picture by now. Let us then compare and contrast those events with last week’s vicious shooting down in coastal Georgia of a white infant in its stroller by an angry, young, black thug who accosted the infant’s mother in a failed robbery attempt. Frustrated that the baby’s mother had no money on her person, this brute, frustrated that he’d been so stupid as to pick such an unlikely target, casually and vindictively shot her tiny baby in the face, snuffing out the fledgling existence of a totally, helpless innocent.

    Here’s your challenge: Google that incident using any number of search terms and see how many network news reports you turn up. Unlike the non-stop, hand-wringing anguish over the death of that poor innocent black child in Florida, the senselessly savage execution of a truly helpless innocent at the hands of a surly black thug isn’t newsworthy in the new politically-correct America. Here we have a horrific crime that, should the races be reversed, would be dominating the network airways. Yet most of America hasn’t even heard of this abominable act.

    That, folks, is because a bunch of liberal network producers in New York and Los Angeles don’t want you to hear any news that does not support their liberal narrative. White on black homicide fits their views thus it’s news. Black killing white gets no light. Think about that: in every single day that passes, these few liberal overlords decide what you shall hear. And if any news event does not support their leftist agenda, you are assured of not hearing about it. To call themselves news networks is the most laughable lie one can imagine. Wait, listen, can’t you just hear it?

    The Silence of the Shams

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Jim Carrey, America’s only Male Dixie Chick

    An infrequently funny but toothy and foul-mouthed Hollywood moron shot his career right between the eyes this week. Rubber-faced Jim Carrey administered a video coup de grás to his already lagging film future, with a last gasping breath, all to promote the Hollywood liberalism that has infected that culture for decades.

    Stupidly, Mr. Carrey chose to immolate image and career with a poorly-produced, amateurish, video venture to attack an icon of the American conservative movement, Charleton Heston. Mr. Heston, an actor of exceptional accomplishments that a third-rater like Carrey could only dream of, famously defended the constitutional right of Americans to keep and bear arms. Foolishly, Carrey chose to mock Heston’s impassioned defense and to completely alienate forever all those Americans who revere that speech. A bit of advice Jimbo:

    Don’t fool with Moses…

    As should be expected, when a third-rate talent savages a talent of the first order, the attacker’s puerile yappings come as those of some frustrated little lap-dog terrier beloved of an old, out of touch, Hollywood dowager, who has lost her vision of the nation that made her wealthy. That’s understandable because Carrey, an equally out of touch Hollywood liberal with a personal armed bodyguard, doesn’t see any need for you or me, or any of those tens of millions of live-alones, including all our old widows and grandmothers across America, to share the necessary protections he so comfortably and constantly pays for to insure his personal safety. He can lay out hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to secure his safety, but you, you peasant, and your grandma, can’t spend $400.00 on a pistol for self-protection?

    It’s the old limousine liberal double standard: lots of gun protection for me but not for thee.

    Carrey’s views will no doubt be popular with the unicorn contingent in Europe, where a career that was already flat lining in his home country, may be minimally resurrected. He might be able to star in porn movies but I somehow doubt he lacks the requisite equipment. But hey, Europeans loved Jerry Louis and his similar rubberized facial antics didn’t they? Enjoy your stay there, Jim, while you wonder for the rest of your life what colossal stupidity swept through your brain to allow you to declare yourself a hated enemy of the movie-viewing public in America. The only Hollywood producer who will touch you now has to be dumber than you are.

    Imagine the movie title: Dumb and Dumbest.

    Jim Carrey you have achieved a unique status: America’s only male Dixie Chick.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Coulter to Bloomberg: Sodas? What about bathhouses?

    Ann Coulter raised an excellent issue on Geraldo at Large when, in a debate with a liberal supporter of New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s self-declared war on personal bad health habits, she asked in so many words, “Why doesn’t he close down the gay bathhouses?”

    For those of you out here in flyover country who may be unfamiliar with bi-coastal sexual practices, gay bathhouses are gathering places for men who are seeking anonymous, promiscuous, and frequently public sex with like-minded men. Such facilities first became more widely known to unsophisticated provincials back in the eighties with the rise of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. As it turned out, these bathhouses were the primary incubators for HIV. Following that discovery, many of them closed down when fearful gays quit patronizing them and government health departments increased their oversight. Within the gay community there was even a term for the relationship between bathhouses and AIDS: the Bathhouse Phenomenon.

    Apparently, as treatment regimens for HIV infection became more efficacious, and a diagnosis of being HIV-positive was no longer a sentence of certain death, gay men began reverting to old habits, and the bathhouses returned in even greater numbers. A quick Google search shows fourteen operating in New York City, and that’s only the ones willing to be advertised on that particular gay website.

    So, to get back to Ann’s question, just why is Mayor Bloomberg so hell-bent on protecting his constituents from their bad sugar consumption habits and potential obesity and diabetes, while apparently allowing these bathhouses to operate openly? Why, indeed, when they are known to be incubators of the deadly HIV and many of their patrons to be carriers of not just that virus, but also many other sexually transmitted diseases that are of significant public concern? Just this past week, the NYC Health Department issued a warning about a potential meningitis epidemic where gay men and promiscuous sexual activities appear to be the vectors.

    So Ann’s question is legitimate to ask of Bloomberg. It is neither anti-gay nor unfair. It is recognition of a simple truth: liberalism tends to target disfavored practices while ignoring others possibly more injurious, even though those ignored may result in grievous illness and even death for their favored liberal adherents. Mayor Bloomberg is a glaring example of such biased selection even at a critical time when the rate of infection of the dreaded HIV virus appears to be on the rise among gay men. Where is Nanny Bloomberg’s stern admonition to those gay men whose behaviors spread deadly disease? Where’s the ban on the bathhouses where such behaviors take place? Where’s his concern for the costs of their very expensive, possibly lifelong treatments to the rest of us?

    An epidemic to concern us all is the growing rate of delusional hypocrisy among liberals.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Embracing the Viper

    President Obama is on his Middle East tour and has thus far offered an arm of support to Israel that those who are ultimately responsible for the very survival of that nation and their people must surely be examining at arm’s length. In spite of Obama’s declaration that Israel’s future is “bound to ours,” he notably did not say that Israel’s survival is bound to ours. That’s a significant distinction if you happen to be a home-based Israeli living under perpetual threat of annihilation.

    Of further significant concern was Obama’s apparent willingness to appear on a speaking platform in the Ramallah with a huge depiction of that despicable terrorist, Yasser Arafat, hovering overhead. Good grief! Is Obama’s advance team so inept as to allow the President of the United States of America to stand and expound under the image of one of the founding fathers of Islamic terrorism with its bombings, shootings and multitudinous other forms of assassination and death? Arafat was a sleazy embezzler and a sexual deviate who raped not only little Arab boys but the very cause he professed to represent. Yet there stood our entirely clueless president under Arafat’s blown-up photo lending immeasurable American presidential support to the memory of this despicable man and the fools who still worship and follow this false idol.

    One can only wonder as to whether this was a colossal screw-up by Obama’s advance team or a calculated move to show the solidarity of America’s suspected Muslim-sympathizing president with the militant, anti-Jewish factions all over the Middle East. Either way, Barack has alienated a huge segment of society, either West or Middle East.

    Perhaps Obama ultimately hopes to emulate the widow of Arafat who lives ever so comfortably in France, her comfort insured by the hundreds of millions she and her corrupt husband looted. Our affirmative action president does so much appear to enjoy the trappings of wealth, and who could possibly know if he will not be comfortably retired in similar manner by those who hold immense wealth in the Middle East?

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • The Losing Left is Beneath Contempt

    The little, liberal, gun-grabbing weasels are running scared. Here’s a copy of a MoveOn.org email a friend forwarded to me:

    Dear MoveOn member,

    This is the nightmare scenario:

    “Reid guts Senate gun control bill.”1

    “Tuesday’s developments are a major win for the powerful National Rifle Association.”2

    “[Assault weapons] ban’s chances of survival now are all but hopeless.”3

    “[A]nother major element of the president’s gun policy proposal could be joining the assault weapons ban in the scrap heap.”4

    After months of promises that, in the wake of Newtown, this time would be different, congressional Democrats, led by Majority Leader Harry Reid, are on the verge of caving on the three most critical gun violence prevention proposals: universal background checks, a ban on assault weapons, and a ban on high-capacity magazines.

    What’s looking most likely to end up in the final bill? A provision encouraging guns in schools. (Emphasis theirs)

    You just have to love it when the leftist fringe like MoveOn is wetting their pants because their big gun-grabbing opportunity, built on the graves of those poor child victims at Sandy Hook, has vanished into thin, Washington D.C. air, gaining them nothing. These people are beyond the point of ever being shamed by their ghoulish willingness to use the deaths of innocent children to further their left-wing causes. And of course the primary purpose of the email was to solicit donations.

    The term, “Beneath contempt,” comes to mind.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • It Was Games More than Guns

    The New York Daily News has an article up by reporter, Mike Lupica, which makes the case that it was an obsession with violent video gaming and past mass killings that drove Adam Lanza to commit the Newtown slaughter. Guns were just the means to an end, means apparently facilitated by a fatally unwitting mother. According to an unnamed cop who attended a police conference in New Orleans back in December, one of the conference speakers, Col. Danny Stebbins of the Connecticut State Police, revealed that Lanza had long been planning a cold-blooded massacre and had an extensive spreadsheet of previous mass killings in which he apparently was tracking the high-scorers, as in video gaming. The unidentified source is quoted:

    “They don’t believe this was just a spreadsheet. They believe it was a score sheet,” he continued. “This was the work of a video gamer, and that it was his intent to put his own name at the very top of that list. They believe that he picked an elementary school because he felt it was a point of least resistance, where he could rack up the greatest number of kills. That’s what (the Connecticut police) believe.”

    The man paused and said, “They believe that (Lanza) believed that it was the way to pick up the easiest points. It’s why he didn’t want to be killed by law enforcement. In the code of a gamer, even a deranged gamer like this little bastard, if somebody else kills you, they get your points. They believe that’s why he killed himself.

    “They have pictures from two years before, with the guy all strapped with weapons, posing with a pistol to his head. That’s the thing you have to understand: He had this laid out for years before.”

    As we responsible gun owners have been saying since this tragedy occurred and the gun-grabbing Democrats began using it as an emotional driver for their campaigns, the shooter picked an elementary school precisely because it was a liberal-declared, gun-free zone where he had the best chance of racking up a higher score. Go read the article then email a copy to your gun-grabbing state legislators, congressmen and senators.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Quack, Quack, Boom, Boom, Diane

    Dianne Feinstein is the absolute, living demonstration in support of the concept of term limits for Congress. No pol has been more aggressive than Old Dame Feinstein in seizing on the recent school shooting tragedy in Connecticut to advance her über liberal, gun-grabbing agenda. This old Left Coast tool has recently advanced her silliness to the point of making herself the subject of outright ridicule. Here’s a comment from her ongoing efforts to push through illegal and unconstitutional gun control laws in the Senate:

    We have federal regulations and state laws that prohibit hunting ducks with more than three rounds. And yet it’s legal to hunt humans with 15-round, 30-round, even 150-round magazines.

    Obviously the senator has never spent any time in a duck blind or she would know the logical fallacy of her argument. Unlike home invaders and drug-fueled criminal crazies of every description whom homeowners may need heavy firepower to contend with, ducks usually aren’t armed and even if they should be, the ones I’ve encountered have always restrained their impulses to shoot back. I’d really like to hear from any occupant of a duck blind who’s had to duck incoming rounds from their aerial adversaries. Not to say that there’s not a certain appeal to the thought that armed, aggressive ducks might help to eliminate a whole bunch of city dudes and testosterone-deficient liberal wienies from the sport.

    Of course, I’m unfamiliar with California ducks, which if they are as weird as their politicians, may be, and quite possibly are, armed to the very tips of their vicious, yellowed, homicidal beaks. That’s an alarming thought when you consider the reality that those malicious mallards may have brains only slightly larger than their elected representatives.
    Quack, quack, boom, boom; they’re coming for you, Diane…

    Crossposted at American Thinker