11/05/2005
My Thoughts on the Rejection of the Online Freedom of Speech Act
My Congressman was one of the few Democrats to vote in favor of HR 1606. I'll be sending him a note thanking him for his vote, and urging him to introduce it as a bill in it's own right, so that it won't need the 2/3 majority.
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Partisan Seattle Media
The Seattle MSM (OK, hold on a second. Why the hell is it termed the "Main Stream Media?" There's nothing 'mainstream' about these people. The vast majority if what is termed the 'MSM' is a bunch of left-wing hacks who might as well be paid agents of the Democratic party. Therefore, from now on, I will no longer refer to them as the 'MSM.' They will be refered to as the Left Wing Legacy Media, or LWLM. It's shorter than Democratic Party Public Affairs Office.)
Back on topic: The Democrat apologists in the Seattle LWLM are really, really pissing me off. It's not about how they choose to write stories-although that's always good for a rant, it's so common that it's no longer worth the effort. It's about what they choose to report, when they choose to report it, and especially, what they choose not to report.
I woke up this morning to TV news report that "hundreds" of King County voters were in danger of not having their votes counted, due to a challenge to their registration by the King County GOP. Now, I knew about the challenge-having seen it reported last week, when the challenge was filed. But the Seattle LWLM took little notice then, preferring to wait until now, once they had found that some of the challenges were in fact in error (when over 1,900 registrations are challenged, some are going to be valid) so they could fill their stories with complaining stories of wronged voters. And of course, it was the errors, not the challenges, that made front page news in the Times and the P-I.
Now, what has the Seattle LWLM been ignoring? How about a small court case named Sharkansky v. King County? The case is a Public Disclosure Act lawsuit filed by blogger Stefan Sharkansky in order to get access to balloting records from last November's disputed election. The PDA request has been stonewalled by King County officials for 11 months so far. Why? Probably because what has been seen has indicated evidence of massive incompetence and/or malfeasance, and attempts to cover up same, in the King County Elections office, and office that ultimately reports to King County Executive Ron Sims. Oh, and did I mention that Sims is up for re-election next week?
Or how about thousands of duplicate voter registrations in King County? Or dozens, if not hundreds, of fraudulently counted ballots? There's strong evidence indicitive of the fact that King County elections officials "knowingly and unlawfully counted ballots from ineligible voters last November and then modified computer records to cover it up." And yet the Seattle LWLM for some unknown reason has decided that these things aren't worth inivestigating, and their editorial pages have yet to call for any form of investigation by the King County DA (who is actually involved in stonewalling the PDA requests) or the state AG.
Shouldn't massive incompetence, malfeasance, and cover-ups by elected officials (and officials appointed by those elected officials) be the kind of thing that investigative reporters can't wait to dig into? I would think a thorough investigation and series of stories on this would probably be an excellent candidate for a Pulitzer prize, and a potential springboard to a lucrative career and a juicy book deal. Of course, we have to remember that these unlawfully counted ballots almost undoubtedly effected the outcome of last year's gubernatorial election, and I'm sure the Seattle media don't want to cast any more doubt of the already extremely shaky legitimacy of Christine Gregoire's victory. And I'm equally sure they don't want to be seen as trying to influence next week's election, either, at least, not when such a story would make their favored candidate, Ron Sims, look incompetent and/or corrupt.
Anyone want to venture a guess as to what these same reporters would be doing if King County was run by Republicans?
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11/03/2005
So Long, XM8
HT: Murdoc Online
They haven't made much noise about it, but there has been an amendment to the OICW Increment 1 bid solicitation, which the XM8 and other rifles were competing for. The key part:
The purpose of this Amendment is to CANCEL Solicitation W15QKN-05-R-0449, OICW Increment One.
This action has been taken in order for the Army to reevaluate its priorites for small caliber weapons, and to incorporate emerging requirements identified during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. The Government will also incorporate studies looking into current capability gaps during said reevaluation.
I think the real key is the second paragraph. Hopefully, "reevaluate its priorities," "requirements identified during OEF and OIF" and "looking into current capabilities gaps" is bureaucrat-speak for taking a long hard look at what exactly our troops need their front line small arms and LMGs to do, what platform(s) can best perform those roles, and whether the 5.56x45 SS109, or any 5.56 round, or some other round (Bring back the .280 Brit!), can best accomplish the mission from that(those) platforms.
The downside to this is that it means that our troops will have to soldier on with what they've got for that much longer.
The original solicitation page here & amendment here.
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11/01/2005
Senate Democrat Stunt
I've been trying to stay out of the party sniping over Rove, Libby, Plame, et al. But the Rule 21 stunt pulled today by the Senate Democrat just plain pisses me off.
They claim that they want an investigation into 'pre-war intelligence.' Now, given how bad Saddam was able to spoof our intelligence on the WMD issue, I'd say that we definitely should be taking a good hard look at how we got fooled so badly. Of course, this is an examination that the British, French, Germans, Russians, and Israelis should all be doing, since they all thought that Saddam fooled them too.
The Democrats, however, aren't interested in trying to find out how our intelligence agencies failed to see through Saddam's charade. Having repeated the "Bush Lied" mantra so many times that I think they now honestly believe it (no matter how many quotes are produced from their own mouths during the Clinton administration stating that Saddam and his WMDs were a threat), they will only be satisfied by an investigation that proves that the Bush administration lied in order to start a war with Iraq.
Since I find this position to be stunningly illogical-why in heaven's name would President Bush engage in such machinations in order to start a war that was guaranteed to draw all sorts of political heat from the press, the Left, parts of his own party, and that would do serious damage to his political standing-I can only come to the conclusion that the Democratic party has gone off the deep end.
Now, pretty much the only reason I voted for President Bush in 2004 was because he was the only candidate who took national security seriously. After the recent displays by the Democrats, I'm not sure if I will ever be able to take any member of thier party seriously on that issue ever again.
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10/31/2005
I Want, I Want, I Want
Not all Black Rifles are AR variants. That's an M-14 in what I'm pretty sure is a Sage stock from Fulton Armory. (I tried to access Fulton's site but I couldn't. But as you can see, it's great looking stock.)
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10/30/2005
On Self Defense, Guns, and Scary Movies
So it's the day before All Hallow's Eve, and many of the stations on the TV are showing various horror/slasher type movies-Scream, Friday the 13th, etc. After flipping past a few of these, the thought occurs to me: why doesn't anyone in these movies have a friggin' gun?
Because a .45 in the right hands would have stopped Jason's reign of terror about 5 minutes into the movie.
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