How a Young Lawyer Saved the Second Amendment

According to Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria, Obama is the “conservative” when it comes to foreign policy, and McCain is the “liberal”:

Over the course of the campaign against Hillary Clinton and now McCain, Obama has elaborated more and more the ideas that would undergird his foreign policy as president. What emerges is a world view that is far from that of a typical liberal, much closer to that of a traditional realist. It is interesting to note that, at least in terms of the historical schools of foreign policy, Obama seems to be the cool conservative and McCain the exuberant idealist.

…snip…

Obama rarely speaks in the moralistic tones of the current Bush administration. He doesn’t divide the world into good and evil even when speaking about terrorism. He sees countries and even extremist groups as complex, motivated by power, greed and fear as much as by pure ideology. His interest in diplomacy seems motivated by the sense that one can probe, learn and possibly divide and influence countries and movements precisely because they are not monoliths. When speaking to me about Islamic extremism, for example, he repeatedly emphasized the diversity within the Islamic world, speaking of Arabs, Persians, Africans, Southeast Asians, Shiites and Sunnis, all of whom have their own interests and agendas.

Obama never uses the soaring language of Bush’s freedom agenda, preferring instead to talk about enhancing people’s economic prospects, civil society and—his key word—”dignity.” He rejects Bush’s obsession with elections and political rights, and argues that people’s aspirations are broader and more basic—including food, shelter, jobs. “Once these aspirations are met,” he told The New York Times’s James Traub, “it opens up space for the kind of democratic regimes we want.” This is a view of democratic development that is slow, organic and incremental, usually held by conservatives.

Obama talks admiringly of men like Dean Acheson, George Kennan and Reinhold Niebuhr, all of whom were imbued with a sense of the limits of idealism and American power to transform the world. “In his view of history, in his respect for tradition, in his skepticism that the world can be changed any way but very, very slowly, Obama is deeply conservative,” wrote Larissa MacFarquhar in her profile of him for The New Yorker. “There are moments when he sounds almost Burkean. He distrusts abstractions, generalizations, extrapolations, projections. It’s not just that he thinks revolutions are unlikely: he values continuity and stability for their own sake, sometimes even more than he values change for the good.”

…snip…

Ironically, the Republicans now seem to be the foreign-policy idealists, labeling countries as either good or evil, refusing to deal with nasty regimes, fixating on spreading democracy throughout the world and refusing to think in more historical and complex ways. “I don’t do nuance,” George W. Bush told many visitors to the White House in the years after 9/11. John McCain has had his differences with Bush, but not on this broad thrust of policy. Indeed it is McCain, the Republican, who has put forward some fanciful plans, arguing that America should establish a “League of Democracies,” expel Russia from the Group of Eight industrialized countries and exclude China from both groups as well.

The whole thing is worth the read. Cross-posted at Lean Left and TennesseeFree.

Is there a wireless TeeVee system?

Lemme ‘splain. Got a new treadmill. Due to a failure to plan on my part, it doesn’t fit through the basement door into the den. If it did, then I could watch TeeVee while running. But now that it’s assembled, I’m not taking it back. I’d like to get a small flat screen TeeVee that would receive the signal from my various DVR boxes so I can catch up on my shows while doing some cardio. Also, it would be handy to have for those nights I want to sit on the back porch with an adult beverage while the kids are playing. A quick search reveals mostly spam.

Anyone?

Thanks.

I did find a wireless video send thingy. But not sure about it.

‘Time’ Publishes Definitive Obama Puff Piece

In other news, the Onion is funny again?

A guy running for NRA Board says gun owners should not store ammo; supports microstamping and gun owner databases; and if you have a gun for disaster preparedness, you’re out of the mainstream. Meet Pat Wray.

Update: and in the past, he called owners of evil black rifles Vicious, vengeful, vitriolic jackals.

Breda: I do have a small purpose in my life, such as it is. I go to work, love my family and then, in my spare time, send some words out into the universe hoping that they will help a woman realize that yes, she is free – free enough to fight and be feminine at the same time. Free enough to choose to live.

7:33 PM Sebastian: Bitter is complaining about the 9mm not being pretty 🙂
7:34 PM me: so was ahab
’cause he’s a girl

Even the funny pages.

Reader Danno started a blog.

It looks like it took.

You’ll recall a reader submitted entry here about how someone’s gun was stolen. A few things:

Buy a damn safe – Ya know, I never had a safe until the Mrs. got pregnant.

Meanwhile, an idea for storing serial numbers. I keep a couple of electronic files with that info on them, though I haven’t updated in a while.

And the author emails:

– I’m know I’m not liable in a legal sense. I just feel partly responsible, which is a different thing. Even if it was a computer or stereo that got stolen, I’d still deserve an extra large dumbass award if it got stolen because I left the house unlocked.

– It’s not so much that someone stole my property, it’s that I made it a lot easier than it needed to be. I recognize that if somebody wants something badly enough, they’re going to get it. That doesn’t excuse leaving it unlocked, and in relatively plain sight.

– I have been in contact with the contractor, and he’s aware that I’ve notified the police that his helpers are suspects. He’s been very helpful on the issue, an absolute dream to work with, under the circumstances. One of the two helpers he brought was a trusted assistant that he’s willing to vouch for, but the other was new, and he’s pressuring that guy hard. I suspect that he’ll never use that assistant again. This actually gives me a bit of pause, because there is one other possible suspect — a satellite TV installer — although the latter suspect was pretty closely supervised the whole time. Still, I’m not 100% certain which one it was, so I’d hate for someone to lose his livelihood because of my mistake. The latter guy seemed much more like the type who would do it, he just didn’t have nearly as much opportunity.

Joe gets interviewed for a book.

Even in Alabama, a solid majority don’t support your right to own a machine gun. It’s a political reality. Deal with it.

Conversely, can Heller be used to challenge sporting purposes provisions?

Over at Jed’s.

careful out there.

John McCain says he doesn’t know if Obama is a socialist. That one should have been easy.

Get the bumper sticker!

I think you’re reading too much in to this white people business.

One of my more often referenced bits is Don’t Scare White People. 45Superman takes issue with the phrase and advocates scaring white people. First of all, in my original bit I described exactly who I meant by white people and that pretty much meant your average voter with 2.4 kids, etc. Additionally, advocating that anyone not on your side deserves to live in fear is a guaranteed way to lose.

However, he is correct that we can’t just sit back and do nothing. We should push boundaries when it’s helpful. But you can’t be all in your face all the time or you will lose. Getting more people on our side is, frankly, more important. I’m not saying you should be dishonest. I’m just saying you’re gonna convert more soccer moms by taking them to the range than by screaming SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED at them.

Sebastian has more on balance.

Morton Grove repealed its gun ban.

Squeak and Ahab have a blog to go along with their radio show.

Lots to do. Kinda tired. So, no blog. Not that I blog much on weekends anyway. But I do usually blog some.

Some gun porn: GSG 5P.

Barack mmmbop Obama coming to Nashville?

A potentially terminal case of teh st00pid:

If your child came across a gun, what do you think they would do with it? Tell an adult? Pick it up? Pull the trigger?

We wanted to try something. With a Northside ISD police officer’s help, we put a group of children in a room with a real, unloaded gun to see what they would do when they thought no one was watching.

We want to emphasize: News 4 and a police officer took every precaution to make sure these children were never in danger.

Except that part about leaving kids alone with a fucking gun.

Not much improved:

The only application received yesterday was from a woman who brought a revolver to the registration office under the amnesty program, officials said.

After the gun was test-fired and the woman completed registration paperwork and a written test, she went home with the gun to await a decision on her application.

By law, she must keep the gun in her home, unloaded and either disassembled or fitted with a trigger lock, and she is not allowed to use it, even for self-defense, unless her application is approved. The process involves a background check for disqualifying factors such as a felony record or history of mental illness.

There is but one dealer willing to do transfers in DC and his license is up for renewal.

And Dick Heller is running for office as a Libertarian against Eleanor Holmes Norton, who is stupid.

So, I made fun of some girls for picking a girl caliber to train with. Anyway, some good points have been made about both weapons. To wit:

The TAC-S in 45: Well, it’s 45. Slim and snag free design. And some folks love the LDA trigger. And some folks can’t stand the trigger. And I actually carry a 45.

The LTC in 9mm: It’s a 9mm but if we’re gonna fire 1,500 rounds, that may be easier to deal with. Also, I prefer a single action trigger. Just preference. So, which would you choose:

A must read:

However, the judgment in this case relates only to the provisions that were struck down, and the city appears to be complying with the literal command of the judgment.

Here ya go.

Looks like challenges of DC’s new law have already been promised.

Good.

And my sooper seekrit sources tell me that the first person to register a firearm in DC is a woman by the name of *redacted*. There are supposed to be two interviews with her, one from NRA News and one from the Washington Times. I haven’t found them yet.

Update: Due to reasons pointed out in comments, name is gone.

My state senator Finney done got his NRA endorsement. We got invited to some recent shindig for Finney. My wife asks if I want to go. I explained I was not a fan. He is good on guns though.

To TN House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh who recently got his handgun carry permit only three months after lying and saying he already had one.