Massachusetts is posting the names of tax delinquents on its Department of Revenue website. There’s a reason the state is called Taxachusetts.

. . . you other brothers can’t deny . . .

Spoons takes the Chicago Tribune to task for a misleading gun story. This is apparently becoming a weekly feature.

Jeff has a link to an article on guns that implies arming oneself is a choice (ala abortion). Now, while I don’t think that’s a good comparison because abortion is about more than choice, it does represent a trend in reporting lately that isn’t anti-gun:

Million Mom founder Donna Dees-Thomases has issued the dire warning that if the ban expires, “terrorists, drug lords and the mentally unstable will be able to stock up on assault weapons that can wipe out a schoolyard full of kids in a matter of minutes.”

True, perhaps, in theory. But practically speaking, most criminals use guns against one another. Assault weapons rarely figure in domestic violence or other forms of violence against women or children. Guns of any kind (primarily handguns) are used in only 4% of rapes/sexual assaults. Abusers are more likely to stab, strangle or bludgeon their female victims to death than to shoot them. Gun accidents happen, and every one of them is a tragedy, but data consistently show that far greater threats to children exist: automobiles, improperly stored household chemicals, even unattended swimming pools.

The Friends finale sucked. It was an hour of short snips from the past followed by just about the most predictable ending ever. It’s like they put every Ross/Rachel cliché in one episode. Quite disappointing.

Gov. Bredesen is planning on wasting the surplus:

Proposals to restore money to buy wetlands and parklands and to launch a pilot project to track sex offenders with Global Positioning System technology landed yesterday on Gov. Phil Bredesen’s list of priorities for spending unexpected tax collections.

The list was presented to the Senate Finance Committee, some of whose members groused because state employees didn’t get more money this year after having to forgo a raise last year.

There were hints from lawmakers that those employees could see bigger raises this year than what Bredesen has budgeted.

And yet, he wants to raise taxes. Bill Hobbs has been covering this for a while. Here’s his latest on the spending.

I voted for Bredesen. I actually have been impressed with him until recently. His recent tax/spend philosophy is very disappointing.

Update: And in a related note, the brand spanking new lottery is already projected to have a shortfall. Who the hell is doing our budgeting?

The LA Times:

“We are here only because we want to bring order and stability to this area,” said Maj. Brandon McGowan, executive officer of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Regiment of the 1st Marine Division.

[snip]

“For the future of Fallujah, we believe we must rid the area of guns so that everyone can live a peaceful life,” McGowan says. “This is my only desire.”

I don’t think disarming the Iraqis is going to win their hearts and minds.

I’m going to be visiting an undisclosed secure location this weekend. Well, no, actually it’s Madison, WI, and we’re going to a wedding.

Have a good weekend, y’all!

Sadly, I don’t know if many bloggers will make it past multiple presidencies because I’d bet one cold beer that it will be Dubya in 2004 and a lot of bloggers will quit between now and 2008. There is a part of me that hopes Dubya doesn’t win (not for political reasons, though there are some of those too). The reason is that certain factions of the blogosphere will be called to task for their inconsistency and will have to admit that they are partisan hacks. Or, more likely, engage in some sort of but it’s different now meanderings. So, let’s assume Kerry wins.

Note a couple of things about Kerry winning: nothing will change in the economy and nothing will change in Iraq. On that, I’d bet another cold beer.

If an issue and subsequent reaction by Bush caused a blogger to be critical of Bush, then a similar issue and similar subsequent reaction by Kerry should warrant the same level of criticism. But it won’t. The stuff we bloggers have written will still be there regardless of who is in power. There’s a record of it. A change in power will cause a lot of hypocrisy in the blogosphere.

I wonder if any blog archives will disappear if Kerry wins?

And I realize it will go the other way too: People who were not critical of Bush for certain things will become critical of Kerry for those same certain things.

Update: No, I’m not talking about you, I’m talking about the other guy.

A common misconception we all have (other than that we’re good drivers) is that we’re moderate. We all think we are. After all, we usually associate ourselves with similar minded folks and since those folks are all around us, we must be middle of the road.

I’ve seen this phenomenon quite a bit recently, mostly from the left. It seems that some folks who are pretty far to the left (in my book) refer to Bush as an extremist. In actuality, I’d say the people referring to Bush as the extremist are actually the extremists. I should point out that I don’t find Bush to be an extremist and I don’t think Kerry is an extremist. The two are actually more similar than different.

Now, it has the periodic crossover into mainstream (Lautenberg’s chickenhawk picture on Capitol Hill – note that referring to someone as a chickenhawk is an extremist labeling another person as an extremist in my book). And it seems to come more from the left (Bush is an abortion extremist, etc.) lately.

Why am I rambling about it? Because, it seems to me, the left is engaging in the same labeling strategy that the right engaged in starting in the 1980s and continuing more severely through the 1990s (you know, back when the L word was an insult). This heated up considerably during the Clinton presidency because the right was losing.

What is the purpose of this labeling? I suppose it energizes the base. However, it doesn’t seem to win over anyone who is on the fence. Case in point: Howard Dean. He really had the Democrats riled up for a while. Good coming out of the gate but no long haul potential.

The left is losing a lot of its hold on politics and their language shows it. It’s like the mid 1990s in reverse.

I covered the basic recipe for beer butt chicken here, but Steve’s sauce sounds amazing. I would not have thought to inject it into the bird. Gonna have to try that.

A while back I wrote about an ordinance that would classify all dogs over 30 pounds as potentially dangerous, Robert Douglas reports that common sense has prevailed:

[The ordinance] defines a potentially dangerous dog as one that, when unprovoked, bites, chases or threatens a person or domestic animal, or is known to have bitten a person or domestic animal.

While I take a slight issue with the unprovoked inclusion (after all, a poodle jumping on a mastiff is provoking but controllable), it’s a positive step.

Seems the Democrats will give bloggers press credentials. That is awesome!

The AKC is reporting:

Despite opposition from concerned dog owners and fanciers at a public hearing in Boston on Thursday, April 29th, legislators appear resolute in their support of a breed-specific ordinance. The proposal now heads to committee for further consideration.

What can you do?

Immediate help is needed to fight this proposal. Boston dog owners are strongly urged to contact the City Council and express their opposition to the ordinance. The measure may come up for a vote later this month, so there is no time to lose!

Boston City Council
1 City Hall Plaza
5th Floor
Boston, MA 02201
Phone: 617-635-3040
Fax: 617-635-4203

Publicola addresses Moran’s assertion that a 50 cal can down an airplane from up to a mile away with a fairly lengthy and complex discussion of ballistics calculations. The short version is that it’s almost inconceivable.

I saw a link to this article from Parameters that has an amusing, albeit frightening, anecdote from the L.A. Riot:

Police officers responded to a domestic dispute, accompanied by marines. They had just gone up to the door when two shotgun birdshot rounds were fired through the door, hitting the officers. One yelled `cover me!’ to the marines, who then laid down a heavy base of fire. . . . The police officer had not meant `shoot’ when he yelled `cover me’ to the marines. [He] meant . . . point your weapons and be prepared to respond if necessary. However, the marines responded instantly in the precise way they had been trained, where `cover me’ means provide me with cover using firepower. . . . over two hundred bullets [were] fired into that house.

Reminds me of this joke:

The reason the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marines bicker amongst themselves is that they don’t speak the same language. For instance, take the simple phrase “secure the building”.

The Marines will kill everybody inside and set up a headquarters.
The Army will post guards around the place.
The Navy will turn out the lights and lock the doors.
The Air Force will take out a 5 year lease with an option to buy.

Les has his weekly gun links up, which include how to buy on GunBroker (like Ebay but for guns).

I will be doing next week’s gun links so if you have any goodies, send them to me.

This week, Rhea County will be busy. On Friday, there will be a march against same sex marriage. On Saturday, there will be a picnic called Gay Day. Make sure you watch the news, it will likely get interesting.

Six Bulgarian medics injected the HIV virus into over 400 children in an attempt to find a cure for AIDS. A Libyan court sentenced the medics to die.

Update: Link fixed. Sorry about that.

Earlier I mentioned Earl Shorris’s Clemente Course in Humanities. One of the results of the course was that the students developed “notably more appreciation for the concepts of benevolence, spirituality, universalism, and collectivism.”

Now obviously the list may not be complete, but I found it interesting that individualism wasn’t on it. IMHO, individualism is one of the crown jewels of Western Thought (and I’m not saying Western Civ has a monopoly on individualism, or anything like that). Unfortunately, I think individualism has been eclipsed by collectivism.

Ahhh, maybe I’m making too much out of this one quote. I still hope to blog about humanities and public schools someday soon.

I had hoped, when I used the phrase “too early to shoot the bastards,” that more readers would be familiar with the Claire Wolfe quote:

America is at that awkward stage. It’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.

More on this later.

What I was aiming for in my admittedly elliptical (and obviously confusing) rambling was a search for a common thread in several scenarios. Furthermore, I intended it to be speculation, not some sort of proclamation of Gospel Truth, as I thought would be obvious from my use of phrases as “seems to me,” and “assuming my formulation is more-or-less congruent with reality.” While I’m certainly willing to hear discussion and correction on these assumptions, I was hoping that wouldn’t be the main focus. Granted, the onus is on me, the blogger, to make this clear.

Item: The violence in Iraq seems to me (N.B., seems to me) to be the work of mainly two groups: those longing for the Good Old Days of Saddam, and those wishing to establish an Islamic theocracy. Since Islamic Theocracy as practiced by the Iranians and Saudis (and presumably as would be practiced in Iraq) is, from where I’m sitting, no more or less preferable than plain old secular tyranny (c.f. Communism vs. Fascism), I think it’s quibbling not to lump these groups together as preferring some sort of despotism instead of American “occupation.” This is puzzling to me, given that we’re trying our damnedest (I think) to setup a liberal system modeled somewhat on our own. Still, this preference for despotism is strong enough for some, that it’s worth killing over.

Item: Now, I may be way off, but I just can’t imagine that UK’s government is that much different from the Republic of Ireland’s. Historically, yes, I’m sure there was repression and established religions and so forth, but are these really problems today? Of course, I could be way off; maybe the two governments are as far apart on certain things as, say, the USA’s and Canada’s when it comes to gun rights. I’ll grant that, although I wonder why immigration wouldn’t be an option. At any rate, to some people, it’s worth killing over.

Item: In the American colonies, ca. 1775, were ruled by a government that, while certainly not perfect, probably wasn’t too bad as governments went in that day and age. Still, at some point, enough people decided that getting rid of said government was worth killing over.

Item: Our modern-day government (at the federal and state level) are constantly pushing the limits of their power. Sometimes we push back, with varying degrees of success. Personally, I disagree with Claire Wolfe, in that I think it’s NOT too late to work within the system, and hopefully it never will be (and therefore I DO NOT advocate either the violent overthrow of our government or acts of terrorism or violence in general). The problem is knowing when her words come true.

So…is there a common thread? A thin one, perhaps. From our point of view, as Americans, we have been on both sides. In 1776, the challenge was identifying a “cusp,” if you will, and getting a critical mass of people convinced that it was indeed time to “shoot the bastards.” Today, we’re on the other side, and our challenge—in Iraq and the War on Terror in general—is to convince them that while it may be time to for the bastards to go, we aren’t the bastards; the bastards are the despots among them. And as I said originally, I have no solution to this challenge. That’s where you, the loyal reader, comes in!

The wife bought me the first season of Mail Call on DVD. I love this guy!

The first episode features the .30 machine gun (M1919 I think?) and several watermelons. Hoo-ah!

Well, quote of yesterday really since I TiVoed it. And not so much a quote really since I’m paraphrasing it from memory. Jon Stewart on The Daily Show:

Why is it Kerry sounds more dickish telling the truth than Bush does when he’s lying?

Once again I engage in the blogging equivalent of thinking out loud. It seems to me that we might state the problem we face in Iraq, and the problem that Israel has, in the following way:

There exists a certain number of Arabs who would rather live in under an Arab despot than under the tutelage of non-Arab Republics. Furthermore, said Arabs are willing to visit violence upon just about anybody, even themselves, to avoid living under said tutelage.

Now, having brilliantly posed the problem in these terms, and assuming my formulation is more-or-less congruent with reality, I still have no idea how to solve it. I can’t even explain it. Certainly I don’t think ALL members of this group desire to live under despots, although some may (thinking they can work their way up the hierarchy of enforcers that a despotism inevitably brings). Perhaps they just can’t stand the idea of their nations being subordinated to infidel nations.

Also, I certainly don’t think this formulation describes all, or even a majority, of Arabs. In fact, just thinking about it, it’s not unique to Arabs; you could apply it to other situations—say, for example, the terrorism in Northern Ireland. I mean, is the government of the UK really that much worse for Northern Ireland than the government of the Republic of Ireland would be? Yes, in the past, I’m sure His/Her Majesty’s government was pretty brutal to the Irish, but I think things have gotten a little better; surely it’s not so bad that car bombs and such are called for.

Of course, as a red-white-and-blue-blooded American Patriot, I recognize that there DOES come a time when “it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another,” and that this can require bloodshed.

So maybe the ultimate question here is: when is it not too early to shoot the bastards?

UPDATE: Phelps has a much deeper analysis of the roots of Arab suicide terrorism, as well as a modest proposal for a solution.

If you’re new to blogging, there is plenty of good stuff on building your blog readership here, here, here and here.

If you’re a marketing retard (like me), there’s plenty there to get you going in the right direction.

I’d also recommend blasts from the past located here, here, and here.

CNS:

Police have confiscated more than 700 guns in the District of Columbia so far this year — and they confiscated more than 2,000 last year — in a city where it is illegal to own handguns, WUSA-TV, the local CBS affiliate, reported.

“Eighty percent of our homicides involve the use of handguns,” Chief Ramsey told the TV station. “Now, we have very good gun control laws. But it’s not difficult to go someplace and buy a gun outside the District,” he said.

A good read on a variety of gun issues.

The 15 year old ban on politically incorrect dogs in Denver has been suspended. The city still plans on suing the state to uphold the breed specific legislation.

Here is a rather informative article on the assault weapons ban. More telling is this particular quote:

Assault weapon or not? Advocates on all sides of the issue confess to being confused. To many, the correct answer darts like a moving target somewhere between “depends on how it’s used” and “whatever the law says.”

Such questions have compelled the most ardent gun-control groups to argue against extending the assault weapons ban — at least in its present form.

“The public believes there is an assault weapons ban when there isn’t,” said Kristen Rand, legislative director for the Washington-based Violence Policy Center. “You can’t argue with a straight face that the ban has been effective.”

Even the anti-gunners are admitting the current ban is pointless.