Taxes? We don’t pay no stinkin’ taxes!

Taxes? We don't pay no stinkin taxes!
Taxes? We don’t pay no stinkin taxes!

Peggy Gilmour and I were both graduated from college in 1973 (it only took me three years).  She went on for a graduate degree in nursing and I went o nto the family coal business and then some.  Though Ms. Gilmour dropped off the radar screen for a period of time – at least according to the free bits at LinkedIn – at some point in our respective careers, we were both CEOs.  As such, I would like to think that each of us had a passing understanding of state and federal tax codes and the implication of same on our respective businesses; truth be told, it did not take a rocket scientist to understand that the short version is – they either paid taxes on the income they earned or they were exempt from paying taxes on the income they earned.

Read more

Feinstein lets the cat out of the bag: Progressives want to take away ALL semi-automatic firearms

I spent this afternoon at a gathering of good friends where the purpose was to get out of the house, have a chance to yak, consume some good comestibles – and shoot guns!  Handguns, long guns; small calibers and larger ones (not quite .50 cal, but long range); semiautomatics, revolvers, and bolt action.  I’ve shot steel before, but only at short range and indoors so having the ability to shoot multiple 8″X5″ steel plates with both my Sig P220 and Colt AR in .223 was a lot of fun.  In fact, this was only the second time I’ve shot outdoors and beyond an indoor range’s limitation – and it was a blast.  Still have to adjust the sights on P220 as it shoots left and low (or is it my right hand trigger motion while left eye dominant?) but what a thrill to finally be able to try the new Vertex red/green dot with a 3X magnifier on the AR and see if I measured up to the capability of the system.  Am happy to report that just after a few rounds downrange to “figure it out” a bit, that to hit that same size steel plate 5 out of 6 shots out at about 170 yards put a smile on my face!  Next time, I’ll put the iron sights back on and try to duplicate it (and yeah, just like with those who customize cars and trick out their PCs, the AR is the same type of platform for gun folks to do set ups the way they want without having to be a gunsmith).  It was a delight to “compete against myself” in trying to better my skills – and the freedom to do so as a law abiding citizen.

So after having a great day with my semiautomatic modern sporting rifle and handgun, when I heard US Senator Diane Feinstein, once again on today’s Fox News Sunday, tell me that “I don’t need that” simply because she can’t trust me with it, I get ticked:

 Yes, I get tired of these coastal Progressive elites having the temerity that they “know” what is best for me and what my needs are.  I also get mad when they torture the simple language of the Constitution when they say “my need” is only for hunting and self-defense and totally disregard what the Founders actually believe it is for (or worse, believe that human nature has “progressed” past the Founders concerns in just the past 200 odd years).  Here is the transcript (emphasis mine):

Read more

“Why Does Evil Make Liberals Stupid?”

A great question asked and anwered by the boys at Powerline.   “The reality of evil, a constant in human affairs for millennia, renders liberals not speechless–that would be too much to hope for–but incoherent.”

Abhor-Shun Clinic to Close

An abhor-shun (Abortion) clinic in Virigina Beach will be closing after 40 years of performing the Democrat parties master-race “eugenics as rights” policies. The Virginian-Pilot reports that the abortion clinic’s closure comes about a week after Virginia’s Board of health voted to implement a law requiring abortion facilities “to meet strict, hospital-style building codes.” It … Read more

HB 135 Deputy Dawg Shurtleff ‘Stand Your Ground Repeal’ – NH State Senate Hearing is Tomorrow

c/o Scott Smith / Facebook

New Hampshire: Shurtleff Criminal Protection Bill Scheduled for Senate Committee Hearing in Concord on Tuesday

On Tuesday, April 23, the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hear House Bill 135. Introduced by state Representative Stephen Shurtleff (D- Merrimack 11), HB 135 will render law-abiding citizens defenseless victims by removing consequences for criminal activity. The New Hampshire House of Representatives already undermined your inherent right to self-defense by passing the Shurtleff Criminal Protection Bill by a 189-184 vote on March 27.

HB 135 would repeal important self-defense provisions enacted in 2011, making the following changes to New Hampshire’s current self-defense laws:

Read more

Democrat State Rep. Janice Schmidt in the Hall of Shame, Taking Her Insipience and Going Home

Rep. Jan Schmidt (D) Nashua -Hills 27
Rep. Jan Schmidt (D) Nashua -Hills 27

Apparently, Rep Janice Schmidt does not like it when her words boomerang back wildly placing her on an embarrassingly exposed defense.

My post on Rep Schmidt’s stating “All murders aren’t the same” has gotten her unwanted attention and wedged her into a bind.

WMUR’s Political Director James Pindell picked up on it and added her into “…the long Hall of Shame for dumb comments by New Hampshire representatives over the years for comments…”.  Burn.

Oh, what to do, Jan?  Why, come up with a specious spot of strategery to get out of this miasma, of course!

Read more

This Week On GrokTALK! – the after edition Part II

We also talked about this post from Instapundit so I figured somebody might want the text / link (emphasis mine):

So, as tactical officers, 9 deep, hang off urban military assault vehicles, they feel great. I look at those things rumbling through empty streets and feel sick.

Bad guy #2 was bleeding for 20 hours outside the perimeter the cops and FBI had set. That was a miscalculation I wouldn’t dream of second guessing, but luckily for all of us, a regular guy noticed the torn and bloody tarp on the boat parked out back and called it in. They answered the 911 call and did what was required–excellent! But if Average Joe hadn’t noticed, how long would the officials have kept the city locked down? But I expect we’ll hear how important it is that they have more domestic P.D. paramilitary, oh yeah, and that CISPA that just passed under the radar was a must.

Law enforcement has been working very hard, but how about a little recognition that this was another instance when an alert citizen rose up, without official permission or sanction, to take reasonable, effective steps?

And my response this morning was “Gee, not to take anything away from the Boston PD (et lots of al), but once again, we see that it was NOT the apparatus of the Progressive State (and make no mistake, MA is a Progressive / Democrat dominated State) that “solved the problem”, but just a regular citizen”.  Glen Reynolds links to his book, An Army of Davids, at the end of the post.  The message he is trying to send by doing so is that ordinary  technology has so empowered  regular citizens, that crowd sourcing has outstripped the often outdated notions of how Business and Government should and can act.  Indeed –  just look how Twitter and Facebook are acting as the “first responders” of the news cycle simply due to the ubiquitous presence of  ordinary citizens than specialized “professionals”.  Often, there are domain specific experts “among the crowd” that can quickly relay highly detailed observations that are far beyond the pros – and then technology makes that knowledge widespread in just a few clicks.  Ah, the disruptive force, that Internet!

Read more

An observation: Does the Left now hate Muslims?

Quick observation: all week long, one Leftist / Progressive / Democrat has trotted out the meme that it had to be a white TEA Party extremist that set off the bombs – someone who loves a lo-cal Government struggling on a pittance.  Three examples: David Axelrod’s “hanging” innuendo of a tax day protest, Charles Pierce that it as a “patriot” because of the MA Patriot Day holiday, CNN, David Sirota – and that’s just from today’s quick run through my normal blog readings (there have been a LOT since Monday – here’s a better list).

Chalk it up to the Progressive politicization of everything where nothing is off limits. They just couldn’t wait to see what actually developed – after all, they traffic in emotion and not facts.  They were wailing before it was known if this tragedy was created by a lone wolf or an entire cell network behind this.  Yes, the Right reacted as well, but mostly AFTER the first few punches / tweets / quotes / op-eds had already been unleashed by the Left who just couldn’t constrain their hatred.  They were DYING that it be their opposition.  Not just any opposition, but those that keep them from achieving their goals.  You see, they believe they ARE the moral ground (and not just merely standing on it or holding it).  Their fevered minds believe if they can JUST show that their political opposition is as evil as they believe that are (re: that old saw that Conservatives think that Liberals are just wrong / misguided; Liberals believe Conservatives are EEEEEvil), they could convince the Middle to hate them as well.

Me?  I think it is just

Read more

‘Our belief in individual liberty makes us inconvenient…’

Happy face?
Is this a happy face?

Some things are so well written they should be read in their entirety.  Case in point is the piece via Ace.  We are faced with a President who seems to have no interest whatsoever in dissenting views and in the face of legislative defeat, gives those dissenting views a great big finger and a warning that he is not finished.. I’m one of the older Groksters and I cannot remember a president in my lifetime that – at least in public – could not contain his dislike of the very people he purports to lead.

Read more

All New GrokTALK! April 20th, 2013

This week on GrokTALK! – Dr. Julianne Cooper visits to talk about a Liberal education, Common Core, Teenage brains, surviving 25 years in the White Tower, Learning 9 to 5, and how those ‘new’ progressive ideas you keep hearing about are not as new as you think. – We talk with Josh Youssef about HB … Read more

This Week On GrokTALK! – the after edition

While creating today’s GrokTALK! podcast, we had Dean Dr. Julianne Cooper from Liberty Harbor Academy and Josh Youseff who ran for the NH State Senate this last cycle on to talk about education. We ended up talking on a number of issues concerning education and during that discussion, I remembered this post from 2009 about then retiring NEA General Counsel Bob Chanin and read some of his words:

Despite what some among us would like to believe it is not because of our creative ideas. It is not because of the merit of our positions. It is not because we care about children and it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power.

…And we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in dues each year, because they believe that we are the unions that can most effectively represent them, the unions that can protect their rights and advance their interests as education employees.

…This is not to say that the concern of NEA and its affiliates with closing achievement gaps, reducing dropout rates, improving teacher quality and the like are unimportant or inappropriate. To the contrary. These are the goals that guide the work we do. But they need not and must not be achieved at the expense of due process, employee rights and collective bargaining. That simply is too high a price to pay.

Here is the clip:

Read more

Palate Cleanser – two pictures

Two pics – one from the Hubble Telescope and the other is of 19 year old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the two Boston Marathon Bombers, when he was hiding in the boat in Watertown, MA just before he was apprehended.  This from Hubble is just gorgeous on its own:

Orion-hubble-620

This of Tsarnaev shows how good the quality of the IR camera of the police helicopter is:

Read more

The Respite

“If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”  —Dale Carnegie News, day and night is awash with the Boston Bomb tragedy. Three people, one of whom is a kid…perished…No need to rehash the whole sordid thing, its plain tragic and horrific. Nobody will come right … Read more

PETA To Use Drones to Track Hunters

“People should go to the store and buy the meat they make there, not kill animals for food.”  —PETA

drone-huntingPETA is actively looking into a drone program to surveil  hunters. PETA has taken notice of the ever- increasing use of drones for nonmilitary purposes. Drones are now used in  fighting wildfires and in search-and-rescue missions.  PETA is now planning and forming capital to purchase a drone to spy on hunters. PETA claims it will be

Read more

Er, back to the goose and gander again, Chuckie?

US Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is at the forefront of the “immigration reform” effort now going on in DC (and yes, Marco Rubio is trying to figure out how to slide into the “useful idiot” slot in being John “bring’em all in” McCain’s wingman)..  Already, what started as 844 pages earlier in the week is now 900+.  My main sticking points are:

  • Once again, we are stuck with yet another “comprehensive” solution to fix what ails us – that’s what Progressive Schumer tells us, anyways.  Remember, part of the Progressive “state of being” is the Government knows what’s best.  Yo, this is Attempt #3 by “Smart Progressive Government” to fix, ostensibly, what an earlier version of “Smart Progressive Government” already did to “fix the problem.

Yeah, emphasis on “smart”.

  • Comprehensive – let’s translate that shall we: “We have to pass the bill to see what is in it”.  This is especially true that, once again, the Left wants to express train this puppy to a final vote

And let NOTHING stand in its way – from the Daily Caller:

WASHINGTON — New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer admonished colleagues not to “try to conflate” the immigration reform bill that the Senate is considering with the bombings at the Boston Marathon, the perpetrators of which have been identified as immigrants.

“I’d like to ask that all of us not jump to conclusions regarding the events in Boston or try to conflate those events with this legislation,” Schumer said Friday at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the immigration bill.

Translation:

Read more

Ah yes, the IRS’s version of the Washington Monument Syndrome

When the Citizens decide to remove even a teeny tiny amount of their hard earned money from Government, the reaction is generally swift, vindictive, and done in a way to say “go ahead, and we will hurt you by taking away stuff that we really don’t have to – but we can, so we will”.  That is the Washington Monument Syndrome – let’s deprive all those families to whom a trip to DC might well be a once-in-a-lifetime moment, or a school year ending trip.  The Government turned into the Soup Nazi: no <interesting thing to visit> for you!

Now, on one hand, I don’t have ANY problem with this Washington Monument moment – or days!

The IRS will shut down entirely for five days this year in order to try to meet its slimmed-down budget under the sequesters, a labor union that represents Treasury Department employees said on Friday.

The IRS will close its doors on May 24, June 14, July 5, July 22 and Aug. 30, and employees are being told there could be two other days as well.

“On those days all public operations of the IRS will be shut down, leaving taxpayers without access to information and assistance from frontline workers,” the National Treasury Employees Union said.

Right – completely closed.  Waiting for a return?

Read more

Share to...
BufferCopyFlipboardHacker NewsLineLinkedInMastodonMessengerMixPinterestPrintRedditSMSTelegramTumblrVKWhatsAppXing