I've Moved

Update your bookmarks if you've got them.
- posted by Phelps @ 7/31/2003 05:42:00 PM

Gun report's worth at issue

Using government statistics, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence this month released a list of licensed gun sellers it regards as "the worst players in the gun industry - gun sellers that recklessly operate their businesses and allow criminals to get guns."

The group cited Southern Police Equipment at 7609 Midlothian Turnpike as the third-worst in the nation.

A high percentage (I remember it as the majority, but I am not certain) of police killed in the line of duty are killed with thier own weapons. I wonder if those crimes are included in these numbers? That certainly isn't beyond the Brady Bunch. After, they are the ones who make their own defintion of what an "assault weapon" is regardless of what the law says, and count 20 year old drug dealers murdering each other as "child handgun deaths."
- posted by Phelps @ 7/29/2003 01:38:00 PM

Revealed Libertarianism
Minaret of Freedom tries to square the Quran with the free market. A Reason interview

I think the positive potential far exceeds the negative potential. The problem is not that there isn't a pro-freedom trend in Islam. The problem is that western liberals—and I'm using "liberal" in the European sense—have alienated themselves from their potential Muslim counterparts by abandoning the anti-imperialism that is rightly part of the liberal tradition. When I was at a free market economics conference in Turkey recently, the students never, not once, challenged any of the economic views that were presented by the speakers. But they were turned off by the speakers' seeming indifference that the tyrants ruling most of the Muslim world were backed by one or more of the Western powers. We are confusing the issue because our actions don't match up with our words. And from their point of view it's very hard for them to see beyond whatever's currently in their faces.

The Smoking Gun 2003 Legal Document of the Year

LT SMASH - "God Willing"

Three servicemen had just finished dinner at a restaurant in Kuwait, when they were approached by a group of local women.

"Excuse me, Mister," one of the younger women said, "My Mother does not speak very good English, but she would like to say thank you for killing Uday and Qusay."

The men were taken aback both by the uncharacteristically forward nature of these Kuwaiti women, and by the sentiment that was expressed. But they nodded politely and smiled.

The youngest of the three servicemen grinned, and replied, "Tell her Saddam is next!"

She did so, and the older woman smiled, held up her hands, and cried "Inshallah!"

I get weird referrals

DaGoddess: Letter From The Front

I rarely pass up a letter from the front, but I usually don't link them. There are just too many. Some of the best are on Sgt. Stryker's blog (look left) but this one stands out.

The day did pick up when I found that the chow hall was serving porkchops for the third time in 4 days. Normally this would have been cause for complaint, but I truly believe that you should never EVER pass up the opportunity to eat pork in a muslim country. Especially one that you have defeated in battle and are currently occuppying, fuck em...

After finishing my overcooked greasy pork slab, I wandered over to the smoking area to indulge in the only vice still allowed to us here in this hellhole and fired up my customary after dinner stogie. Surveying the lay of the land I noticed two young soon-to-be sergeants talking about what they were going to do when they pinned on their stripes. Faintly amused and slightly curious, I listened in on their conversation, fully expecting that I would have to step in and straighten their young asses out on a thing or three. Much to their credit, my eavesdropping produced nothing but newfound respect for those two young soldiers. They talked of taking care of soldiers and accomplishing the mission. They talked of Duty, Honor and Country. They talked about the things that really matter in a soldiers life, not of the heat, not of recent casualty figures, not of how good they were going to have it now that they were becoming NCO's. These kids not only read the NCO Creed and The Code of Conduct, they understood them and were doing their best to LIVE them.

Finishing my stogie with a smile, I knew that things were going to be all right. The changing of the guard will go on as it has for centuries and these new centurions will keep the world safe for all decent folk. Humbled by these young warriors I smiled and thought that these past twenty years of blood and sweat were indeed well spent, not squandered. As long as young troopers like these follow in my footsteps, my daughter will be allowed to go to school and learn to read, my wife will be allowed to drive a car, my cousin will be allowed to bad mouth the president and call me a fascist pig, and old glory will still fly over the courthouse.

Michael Moore, Humbug

Let's begin with his bold-faced lies. In an appearance on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" in March 2002, Mr. Moore announced that during the period that planes were grounded for two days after the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration allowed a Saudi jet to whisk away bin Laden family members over FBI objections. As Snopes.com, an Internet site devoted to tracking down urban legends, points out, the planes did pick up bin Laden family members--on Sept. 18 and 19, days after commercial flights had already begun flying again--and they did so only after the FBI had questioned the departing Saudis. At the college talk, I witnessed another stunner, when Mr. Moore announced--without so much as a blip on the polygraph line--that even though the media report that children in intact families are better off, "every study shows that's a big lie. Children of single mothers do better in life."

I was going to blog along these lines anyways. Idiotarians are a puzzling lot. I saw a bumper sticker on the way in to work. It said, "America's Problems Won't Be Solved In Iraq". Here is what puzzles me. I can understand someone seeing things this way before and during the shooting war. I don't agree, but it isn't something out of the realm of reason.

With the war over now, though, what is the point of this sticker? Does this person want us to just up and abandon Iraq? Are they saying that they would rather Saddam be put back in power? What is the reasoning for keeping with this stance after the fact? The facts are that a murderer has been deposed. The fact is that the Iraqi people have already started to gain a democratic vote. The fact is that huge amounts of terrorist funding have been cut off from Hezbolah and Hamas. The fact is that a lot of Americas problems have been solved in Iraq already, and more are on the way.

Saudi Arabia has lost the carrot they could use to keep us at bay diplomatically. We don't need their air bases or for them to keep their oil wells running. They have nothing left to hold over our head, and now they are cracking down on terrorists and antagonistic mullahs in their country. Iranian students have an example to point at just across the border that shows that Arabs can handle freedom. Syria sees that Stalanism is no longer viable, and the Ba'ath party is no longer the official state party.

The Michael Moore brand idiotarians don't like to think about that. They like to stick to the battle they know -- even when that battle has long been lost:

In "Downsize This!," Mr. Moore attempted to elaborate on the theme of the downsized economy where "Roger and Me" left off, but the book's description of a rust-belt dystopia of pink slips and unemployment checks was out of date long before it hit the bookstores. By 1996, the number of jobs and heft of paychecks in the Midwest had improved markedly. In 1998, the Department of Commerce was writing that "more flexible, market-oriented companies have generated hundreds of thousands of jobs" in Michigan. A 2001 Michigan Economic Development Corp. report noted that with the exception of still-depressed Flint, the state's metropolitan areas saw an increase in personal income between 1989 and 1998, with income rising more than 20% in places like Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids.

Stuck in the Walter Reuther past, Mr. Moore can make no sense of this. A while back, he was appalled when The Nation asked him to be part of a lecture cruise, "to hold seminars during the day and then dock at Saint Kitts at night!" he hissed derisively, as if it were still the era when plutocrats in tuxedos and women in gowns and diamonds dined on caviar and champagne with the ship's captain, while workingmen scrimped for a week's vacation at a dank lake bungalow. He seems not to know that plumbers from Milwaukee and secretaries from Akron fill Caribbean cruise ships these days (though probably not those sponsored by The Nation), and that factory workers often sport two cars--and a boat on a trailer--in their driveways. Our economic system has "got to go," he told Industry Central, before admitting, "Now don't ask me what to replace it with because I don't know." How convenient. He can dwell in his mythical land of Flint and never face the manifest truth that the system that downsized and restructured with such turmoil ultimately improved living standards for millions, while at the same time absorbing huge numbers of poor immigrants.