Our "Transparent" White House

Do you remember when candidate Obama promised a transparent administration?   Its okay if you don't remember - I have a clip right here of some of that audio.



Now, in a further example of  thumbing his nose at the American people,  "Obama's Justice Department has proposed a regulatory change that would weaken the Freedom of Information Act. Under the new rules, the government could falsely respond to those who file FOIA requests..."

Wait a miute !   What!    "...the government could falsely respond ..." ????      Beautiful!!!   Our beloved President (aka "Mr Transparency") doesn't seem to understand the purpose of the Freedom of Information Act.   It is designed so ordinary citizens can get information.   Not misinformation and not disinformation.

On the upside, Barack Obama's lack of transparency has brought the liberal American Civil Liberties Union and the conservative Judicial Watch into agreement.    You can find the entire article here .

As it stands now the government does have a "deniability" out in cases of National Security - "Under FOIA's current national security exemption, bureaucrats can already deny access to documents without acknowledging their existence. This was noted by the ACLU (joined by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and OpentheGovernment.com) in a comment on the proposal. In instances where there is a legitimate grounds for not confirming a document's existence, "the agency should simply respond that 'we interpret all or part of your request as a request for records which, if they exist, would not be subject to the disclosure requirements of FOIA pursuant to section 552(c), and we therefore will not process that portion of your request.' This response requires no change to the current FOIA regulation." Such a response would preserve a requestor's right to appeal to a federal court."

Our President wants a license to lie.

Freedom!

What is the freedom of 1 (one) Israeli sargeant worth?

Apparently the freedom of Israeli Sgt. Gilad Shalit is worth the freedom of 1,027 (one thousand twenty seven) Palestinians.   This number includes people who have been convicted of murder and others convicted of planning suicide attacks.   Click here for the article from the BBC.

This particular prisoner exchange worries me for two reasons :
1) This seems to imply that one Jew is 1000 times more valuable than one Palestinian (and no human's life is worth 1000 other human's lives)
2) Even the slowest member of Hamas (mentioned in the BBC article) can do the math on the benefits of kidnapping Israeli soldiers.

For those of you who might not be aware of it, HAMAS (Islamic Resistance Movement) is included in the U.S. State Departments list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.       Maybe I'm old fashioned, but making deals with terrorists strikes me as a BAD idea.  

So if you're looking for something to scare you on Halloween, ponder the implications of trading 1 soldier for 1000 terrorists.

Open Carry as FIRST Amendment Right

I think we should start pitching "Obvious Open Carry" as a 1st Amendment issue and get the ACLU to defend our "freedom of expression" on that one. Then we'd have ACLU lawyers arguing against ACLU lawyers and honest Americans could save money on legal fees and spend more on ammunition.

And doesn't this administration realize that the manufacturing of American made ammunition and firearms creates jobs?     Or maybe BHO is more concerned about "playing politics" than he is about saving and creating jobs for American citizens?     Naw - that couldn't be it. [sarcasm font]

And, though he makes it clear that it is a right guaranteed by the Second Amendment of the Constitution and open carry is supported by California state law.
"Under the California penal code, an individual is allowed to wear in a holster, unconcealed, essentially on his belt, a gun" and "...the open carry movement... they are lawfully conducting themselves.  They are not breaking the law."   But Morley Pitt, San Mateo County Assistant District Attorney also makes it clear in the video that he is against this particular Constitutional right and that he feels this makes people less safe.

Most of the citizens interviewed seemed to be just fine with it.  

Happy Birthday Universe!

James Ussher (1581-1656), was Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of All Ireland, and Vice-Chancellor of Trinity College in Dublin, was highly regarded in his day as a churchman and as a scholar. He is best known today for Annales Veteris Testamenti, a prima mundi origine deducti ("Annals of the Old Testament, deduced from the first origins of the world"), which appeared in 1650, and its continuation, Annalium pars postierior, published in 1654. These are the basis of the Annals of the World and the "Ussher chronology".  This chronology  was quite respected in its day and was incorporated into the authorized version of the King James Bible printed in 1701.       In this work he established the first day of creation as Sunday 23 October 4004 BC, which would make the universe 6015 years old today.

According to some, (reason #17 listed here) the amount of dust on the lunar surface backs up an age of 6,000-8,000 years old for the moon, which would jive with Ussher's calculations.   (Just for fun, here is the page listing reasons #32-58 for a young earth)

In what might be called a "wise move" by Wikipedia editors, their article on lunar soil makes no mention of the rate of accumulation.   I say thats a good thing for Wikipedia because according to others nobody really knows the rate of accumulation of lunar dust and all our efforts to clarify the problem have only exaserbated it.

Not everybody agrees with Ussher (not even all his contemporaries) and thankfully, this is an opinion opinion opinion opinion opinion blog (mostly politics and the 2nd Amendment), so if pretending that the universe is billions and billions of years old helps you sleep at night, so be it.    I have several learned friends of that opinion.    But you'll notice that there is no "young earth creation" label on this post because thats not what this blog is about.   Plenty of argument on both sides on the internet already.

This is just an interesting piece of historical information.

From the email

The following was sent to me in an email.    I get the humor of it - that Californians are paranoid (compared to the heartland of the US) when it comes to the subject of guns.    But while trying to "fact check" this email I made an alarming discovery.   Try this - type "california gun collector" into Google News (or your favorite search engine News feature) and see what you get.   I got less than 100 results.   The first test yielded twelve results (twelve) reslults.   A second search found fifty-six (56) results.

You might have heard on the news about a southern California man put under 72-hour psychiatric observation when it was found he owned 100 guns and allegedly had (by rough estimate) 1-million rounds of ammunition stored in his home. The house also featured a secret escape tunnel.
My favorite quote from the dimwit television reporter:
"Wow! He has about a million machine gun bullets." The headline referred to it as a "massive weapons cache".
By southern California standards, if someone even owning 100,000 rounds would be called "mentally unstable.

Just imagine if he lived elsewhere:
In Arizona, he'd be called "an avid gun collector".
In Arkansas, he'd be called "a novice gun collector".
In Utah, he'd be called "moderately well prepared", but they'd probably reserve judgment until they made sure that he had a corresponding quantity of stored food.
In Montana, he'd be called "The neighborhood 'Go-To' guy".
In Idaho, he'd be called "a likely gubernatorial candidate".
In Wyoming, he'd be called "an eligible bachelor".
And, in Texas, he'd be called "a deer hunting buddy".

CBS and Grenadewalker

It seems that, at about the same time the "Gunwalker" fiasco was happening, the ATF was also letting grenade parts walk across the border into the hands of Mexican drug cartels - "Grenadewalker".  Here's a link to an article on hotair.com with a video report from CBS
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/10/14/cbs-dont-forget-grenadewalker-too/

And you might not be aware of it but there is a bit of a YouTube phenomenom in the "Hitler Gets Angry" videos. These are videos with funny English subtitles on a clip of video from the film Downfall (2004).   This film depicts the last 10 days of Hitler's life and there is a scene where he gets some bad news and goes screaming mad at his generals.

The subtitled videos treat subject matter as diverse as iPhone, XBox, Lost, Twitter, Harry Potter, tipping, studying chemistry ... you get the idea ... and of course current politics.

This one struck me as really funny but BE WARNED - there is some offensive language in the subtitles

Ann Barnhardt - Rock Star!!!

Okay y'all - if you haven't run across this lady and her blog yet, do yourself a favor and check it out. (Hat tip to Scott - thank you sir!)

http://barnhardt.biz/

She has a great video on there right now where she takes Lindsey Graham to task for some assinine comments he made Sunday morning.

Ann goes on to take on Islam head on.   I know some politicians *say* they will confront something "head on" but not like this.   She states in one post "Frankly, I'm terribly disappointed that not a SINGLE musloid here in the United States has made ANY attempt to rape and behead me." and in one of her videos she shows that the bookmarks in her copy of the Koran are strips of raw bacon.    Ann Barnhardt doesn't pull her punches when she gets to Mitt Romney ( "Romney is about as much of a conservative as Barbara Streisand. Romney is prettier." ), Obamacare, (and the other myriad atrocities of this administration), Global Warming, etc.

If you have any doubts where she stands on the 2nd Amendment, she has posted some cool pictures of her pink AR and a hotlink to her duracoat guy in Wisconsin.

Finally!   Something that is politically sound, well thought out and not politically correct - if you need to find me at lunch I'll be reading http://barnhardt.biz/

October 22 2011 - Responsible Citizens of California Long Guns Coming Out Meetup (SoCal)

Sam (the guy in the video) does say "Please repost this video far and wide"

From the event description on Ammonland.com :

"By banning the open carry of handguns effective January 1, 2012, Governor Jerry Brown wants us to carry long guns for the defense of ourselves and our community, and we are happy to oblige. Get your rifles and shotguns out of the closet and polished up, It’s Coming Out Day October 22, 2011! Southern California event will be at high noon, October 22, in Pacific Beach at the end of Felspar Street on the bluff above the beach."

See http://www.responsiblecitizensofcalifornia.org/ for information on the northern California meetup on October 22
Or on Facebook look for "Long Guns Coming Out Meetup"



This Sam fellow has his legal ducks in a row!   Its worth the time to watch the video just for the "2nd Amendment legal defense for everyman" information!