UK Under a Beer Shortage

There appears to be a beer shortage in England, and it is being blamed on a shortage of CO2, caused by the limiting of the manufacture of fertilizer form fossil fuels.  Oh, cry me a river will you.

Of course, this is a funny consequence, and it brings out the "smallest violins" from among those who understand the whole thing as a hoax, designed not to save the climate, which is doing fine, thank you, but to extract trillions of dollars out  of the wallets of working Americans.  As far as the hoax is concerned, Jack Hellner has the story over at the American Thinker today entitled Remember How Hot It Used To Get Before Global Warming?. You have to be an old fart to remember back then, but then, I am an old fart who grew up in Ohio, and I can remember. The climate has been changing since the earth was formed. It has been much hotter than now, and much colder than now. Both extremes are no good for mankind, but cold is far worse than warm. We can survive a warm environment better than a cold environment. Go read Mr. Hellner's article, as it is both informative and entertaining.

Meanwhile, I would note that the brewing industry does not have to depend on artificially produced CO2.  The yeast used to ferment the mash into beer produces CO2.  When I used to make my own beer, it was common to add a small amount of malt sugar to the now flat beer before siphoning the beer into the bottle and putting on the crown caps.  In a day you had a nice CO2 cap on the beer which prevented bacteria and oxygen from spoiling the beer.  It also made a nice head on the beer, and gave the beer a liveliness that soft drinks can never duplicate.  Brewers could return to this older technology.

Or they can whine about a beer shortage. 

Thank You, Justice Kennedy. You Have Imposed Upon Us Long Enough

The case of Anthony Kennedy's retirement is troubling to me.  It is troubling because the search for his replacement is being framed as a case of the Right (conservative) Court versus the Left (Marxist, Progressive) Court going forward.  But it should be a case of a Court that respects the Constitution.  The Leftist Court is the one promoting the idea of a "living Constitution."  That is, the Constitution means whatever the Leftists want it to mean at any given moment.  .

But the Constitution is neither Right nor Left.  It is rather a set of procedures for us to work out our differences.  What has happened is that the Court has taken it upon itself to determine the outcomes despite the clear meaning of the words written by the Founders.  The great Justice Antonin Scalia highlighted the necessity of going back to the Constitution and making a determined effort to seek out the meaning of the words of the Constitution, then apply those words to the issue before the Court.  This doctrine, not always followed, but held up as a principle none the less, was known as "Originalism."

Originalism is often hard work.  One has to refer back to the original document.  One has to look at the context in which is was written, of which there is no shortage of material to consult.  The Founders were literate men who wrote a great deal, and reading these other sources helps to flesh out the original meanings.  It also requires great restraint.  There are many issues that simply are not in the scope of the Constitution.  Abortion and gay marriage are two items that should be decided not at the Federal level, but State by State by the voters, the legislatures and governors, and the State courts.  The is no reason why we should have a nationwide consensus on everything, and in fact, it is clear we do not, despite 100 years of the "living Constitution" fiction.

Jonah Goldberg, over at Townhall.com today has an article entitled 'Living Constitution' Faces a Mercy Killing on the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kennedy's famous mercurial nature might one day accidentally affirm a Constitutional provision, as in Heller and the next day manufacture rights out of whole cloth as in Obergefell. It is not Kennedy's alleged conservatism, or his liberalism that I find disagreeable, but his failure to do his job. The Constitution was not merely the product of a few men, but in fact is the culmination of centuries of Christian, philosophical, and political thought, millennia of recorded history, combined with the extraordinary experiences of the men themselves, to create what I consider an inspired document. It is the height of arrogance to believe that oneself is more intelligent than all those combined individuals, and can perceive, as they did not, what they SHOULD have written but for their utter stupidity.

 Goldberg:

This gnashing of teeth and rending of cloth is a symptom of the dysfunction and corruption of the constitutional order. The reason Kennedy's retirement matters so much is that he was the swing vote -- the justice who could bequeath victory or defeat to the liberal or conservative bloc in any important case that divided the court.

And the reason the swing vote matters so much is that we've made the Supreme Court far too important in our lives. By being the deciding vote on so many issues, Kennedy in effect became the court itself, making him the de facto incarnation of the judicial branch, the way the president is the physical personification of the executive branch. This became all the more problematic because Kennedy's philosophy of judicial review all too often took the form of a deep personal inventory of his feelings rather than of the Constitution's text.

At this point, if falls to President Trump to appoint his replacement. Trump's pick of Neil Gorsuch was a brilliant move. We can only hope that this pick will be similarly inspired. Mitch McConnell has promised a Senate vote on the confirmation of the appointee by this fall. We'll see. The Democrats (read Progressives) have promised to oppose whoever is appointed. That sounds unreasonable, but should play well to their base. This summer will thus be filled with sound and fury, not to mention riots and street action.

Keep your powder dry, and make some popcorn. 

An illustrated Guide to Liberal Gun Control

A good illustrated guide to "compromise" in the gun control debate.

Actually, the "promise" offered to give up our guns each time was that somehow giving up our guns would make us safer.  Each time they lied.  They are lying now.

Fascism Takes Root in America

So, over at Cold Fury, Mike has done an excellent job of putting a number of posts together which all tell the same story, namely that the Left seems to have painted itself into a corner, and they really have no place to go but to more and more violence. And of course, if anyone responds in kind, he or she will be painted as the aggressor, and the aggressors will be painted as the victim in this sick war. Mikes post can be found at Fascism Finally Descends on America.  What's more, I will let it stand as he captures the essence of these posts.

Interestingly, Jonah Goldberg wrote about Fascism coming to America with a smiling face in his excellent book Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. It remains a good history, and is still worth reading. Mussolini organized his stormtroopers into squads called "Blackshirts." However, these are really no different than the obviously falsely named Antifa, or indeed to the screaming mobs Maxine Waters wants to whip up. They have no valid arguments to make, so the only thing they can do is act out in hopes to intimidate those of us, the ones Kurt Schlichter calls Normals, into not voting.

 The Democrats are running this year on a platform of: "We want to raise your taxes, replace you with some third world people, give MS-13 free reign to rape and kill your children, take your guns, and, oh yeah, make America a third world hell hole." Such a platform can't lose, right? But to ensure its success, they are also trying to intimidate you and me into not voting.

The Left is screaming about the fact that we are separating children from the adults who brought them across the border.  It has been the policy since the Clinton administration, and nobody had any problem with it until now.  Now, its apparently a hill to die on (or rather to kill you and me on.)  But, the Left separates children all the time from their parents for good reasons and for bad.  The truth is they do not care about the children, or anything else other than they want to be in power.  Everything else is secondary to that.

There was a Batman movie called The Dark Knight in which one of the characters, called the Joker, just wants to burn the place down. For many of the modern Blackshirts, the same seems to be true. They have no other motive than to just burn the place to the ground.  So, buy ammunition, practice often, and keep a smile on your face.  There seems to be nothing like a smile to irritate a Leftists, and it makes you feel good too.

Kurt Schlichter Warns: Liberal Hatred Will Inevitable Turn Into Violence

Kurt Schlichter is again hoping, against hope, that the Left will finally return to:

... a society where disputes are resolved via the processes outlined in the Constitution and the individual rights set forth within it are respected.

in a piece entitle Liberal Hatred Will Inevitably Turn Into Violence.  Schlichter has been warning us, and he should know whereof he speaks. He spent time in Kosovo when those people could not settle their differences peacefully.  He sees the same things happening here.

But there’s no sign of sanity. This week they turned the hate up to “11,” then cranked it to “17.” There are not many places to go once you reach “You are real live Nazis murdering children by not letting aspiring Democrat voters flow into the country at will!” At some point, instead of a few wild-eyed randos with crummy aim trying to off libs’ political/cultural opponents, they are going to start collectively going to go for the throat.

Our collective throat. Which I do not anticipate us Normals responding to in a huggy, loving kind of way.

,,,snip...

When people tell you they want to hurt you, you should believe them. And we Normals are starting to listen to what liberals say.

There’s really nowhere else for the liberals to go but towards embracing widespread violence. The logic of their twisted mindset is such that Normals are not merely wrong and not merely evil, but that normal Americans and those who represent them are the evilest evildoers in evil history.

This does not leave much room for reasoned debate. In fact, it makes reasoned debate impossible. So, since they’ve taken reasoned debate off the table, there are not a lot of options left for resolving political and cultural differences. There are lies, intimidation, and violence. That’s about it. And the first two have stopped working.

Go read the whole thing. I am sure you have all the guns you need, but one can always use more ammo. I have never heard of anyone who felt he had too much ammo.

I Hope Our Leftist Friends Know What They are Doing

Derek Hunter is pushing his new book, entitled Outrage Inc.. Note, I have not read it yet. Never the less, the subject of this weeks column seems to fit with the title of the book. This week's column is entitled Liberals Are Pushing the Country to the Edge. He wonders if, in fact, they are pushing the country out onto a ledge from which there is no return.

The ability to agree to disagree is dead, murdered by leftists who demand absolute adherence to their political will or they declare you an enemy of the people and seek to destroy you. As long suspected, those “coexist” stickers on their Priuses were for show, they should read “obey” because obedience, in absolute terms, is the only acceptable way to “coexist” with the liberal mob.

Make no mistake, this mob is not the majority, or even anywhere close to plurality, but history is littered with examples of small, committed and violent gangs of thugs obtaining power through a willingness to do anything to get it. That’s what Democrats are becoming – American Castros, Khmer Rouge, Gestapo, or whatever example you like. These are all different sides of the same “progressive” dice and liberals are gearing up to roll them.

When the leadership of the party does not condemn mob action against a Cabinet Secretary while she’s having a meal or is at home, disrupting her entire neighborhood, the next steps are only more dangerous. And when the media willingly lies to advance the mob to those next steps, how do you pump the brakes on this runaway train?

This is the question I have been asking for a while now. Civil discussion, and agreeing to disagree in some instances, or compromising on a middle ground has become impossible. They have taken the "by any means necessary" to the ultimate extreme. In the process, they have shown themselves to be without a moral compass, bereft of any class and indeed, unable to see their own hypocrisy, so lost in the darkness are they.

Go read Hunter's article, because despite the self promotion, he makes some excellent points. Oh, and watch your backs and deep the powder dry. As Kurt Schlichter pointed out, you may yet need that ammunition.

Meanwhile, also at Townhall.com, Kevin McCullough has a similarly themed article entitled Dear America, The Left Has Declared War on You. McCullough then goes on to write about the many ways the Left is attempting to overturn the Constitutional order and replace it with a totalitarian dictatorship. Again, go read the whole article.

At this point, you ask, or you should, why are these people so convinced that Marxism or some variant such as socialism, despite all evidence to the contrary, is better than the Constitutional order established?  People like Soros, for example, made their billions not be distributing the wealth to the poor, but by using capitalistic principles.  Indeed, Soros employs armies of lawyers to avoid paying taxes, which according to Joe Biden is our patriotic duty. What explains why people who ostensibly believe in Marxist theory none the less become wealthy, do not distribute their wealth as the theory says, and instead use their wealth to undermine America?

I think the answers can be found in early injustices either wreaked upon a close person or family  member, or else told to the person as a child so frequently that they came to believe they themselves were a victim of the injustice.  Just as most so called atheists actually believe in God, but hate him for the injustice of which they perceive he has done to them, so these people hate America for the injustices real and imagined it has supposedly done to them.  It is the only thing I can think of that explains the cognitive dissonance that these people live with every day.

The Solution to Hate Speech is More Speech That Tells the Truth

You will notice that the subtitle to this blog is "The Truth Has No Agenda," a quote from the always remarkable Glenn Beck.  While I have believed that that there is something called absolute truth, even if man may not know it in its entirety, I also have believed that if one seeks the truth assiduously, one will get closer to finding it.

Yesterday, Don Fisher, Jr. published a piece at the American Thinker entitled The Time I Got Punished for Hate Speech. The article describes Fisher's being put in what he calls Facebook Jail for not using the correct pronouns to describe a transgendered individual. I can sympathize.  But to do so, let me tell you a story.

As a kid, we moved into a large house that would accommodate our large family.  But the house had been owned by something of a recluse, and was surrounded by 10 foot high Floribunda Rose bushes on all sides.  Slowly my father got the roses cut down, and burned (yes, back then you could burn excess vegetation...the horror.)  Now, my Dad was immune to poison ivy.  To this day, I get small rashes that itch, but go away within a week or two.  So, my Dad had no idea that my sister was deathly allergic to the lectin in poison ivy.  He had cut down a number of bushes which also contained a fair amount of poison ivy.  My sister, as were all of us kids, was out playing when he set it on fire.  Within an hour of the small amount of smoke to which she was exposed, her entire body was blown up, her eyes shut, and it even invaded her esophagus.  Now, she survived, but has been very careful to avoid poison ivy her entire life.

Was it my sister's  job to protect herself, or was it everyone else's job to protect her?  Let me tell you another story.

As a child, very few children had peanut allergies.  A number of us brought peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to school every day.  Peanut butter was cheap, compared to other things.  My mother made strawberry jam every year, so that was fairly cheap also.  Indeed, for a number of years, my mother also made bread for our sandwiches.  I have seen a statistic that something like 0.6 % of children may have been allergic to peanuts. Currently, only 4% of people apparently have any kind of food allergy whatsoever.  And yet, we can not have peanuts on a plane because someone somewhere may possibly be allergic.  In other words, it has now become society's problem, in this case the airlines, to protect people with peanut allergies, rather than the people who have these allergies.

Is it society's job to protect these people, or is it up to those who have a peanut allergy to protect themselves by speaking up?  If someone on a given flight indicates an allergy, out come the pretzels.  Otherwise, passengers can have a variety of snacks.

When we met, Mrs. Polykahr had a friend, a coworker, who was married to an Air Force careerist.  Upon retiring from the Air Force, he began to exhibit a desire to "become" a woman.  He indicated he had always felt like a woman, and was sure there was a woman inside, waiting to come out.  Naturally, he had no female characteristics, and in fact, when dressed as a woman, simply looked like a man in drag, exhibiting masculine mannerisms.  I refused to call him by his adopted female name, instead calling him by his birth name, and I refused to refer to him as a "she."  Clearly this guy was confused, and I did not see any reason to go along with the charade.  Giving in to his delusion would not help him in any way.

Is it my duty to call an individual who is confused about himself or herself by that person's preferred pronoun?   I don't think so, and it is not "hate speech" to tell the truth.  There are two genders, and we have a set of pronouns to describe each within the English language.  No need to make up any new ones.

In fact, what all these and, indeed, the entire PC movement have in common is the notion that we would rather protect individuals from the sometimes painful truth, so we are going to play along with them.  It is even now considered unchristian to tell the emperor he has no clothes.  Social media has reinforced the notion.  But, and Christians take notice, kindness, is a virtue only when you can be kind and tell the truth.  Telling the truth may be the kinder thing to do though. It is not "hate speech" to tell the truth.

We all recognize hate speech, or we used to.  Indeed, people who advocate for abortion are demonstrating hate, because the original purpose of abortions was to eliminate the people Mrs. Sanger believed were undesirables: blacks, the Irish, the Italians...well...Sanger had a long list.  She and the KKK would find a lot of common ground.   I doubt the motives of pro-abortionists has changed much either.  Leftists, who want desperately to change society, want government to enforce their ever changing notions of what hate speech is, or lacking that, have a big brother corporation like Facebook do it for them.  Either way, it is censorship, and we can not have that.  Here's the truth:

The truth is that the solution to bad speech, even to hate speech, is more speech.  Cut the PC crap.    .   

Gun Rights are Women's Rights

Katie Pavlich has a video over at Prager University entitled Gun Rights are Women's Rights. Go see the video.

The best line is when she points out that: "...if no one owned a gun, every one would be safer.  Yes.  And it would be nice if cheese cake was a diet food."  Heh.

A sharp young woman is Katie Pavlich.

Deerfield "Assault Weapon" Ban Temporarily Blocked

A judge has blocked the Chicago suburb of Deerfield, IL from enforcing its new "assault weapon ban," at least temporarily.  Over at Townhall.com, Matt Vespa has a rather hopeful post entitled You Can't Take 'Em: Judge Blocks Chicago Gun Ban Hours Before Going Into Effect   The Ban covers so-called "assault weapons."  But clearly there are no such weapons.  A weapon can be used for either aggression or defense.  So, and AR-15 is an "assault weapon" in the public's hands, and a "patrol rifle" in the police's hands.  This is just blatant hypocrisy.  Oh, and according to the new ordinance, handguns carrying more than 10 rounds are also "assault weapons."

The title is of course overly hopeful.   The Judge has issued a temporary restraining order, which means that later he can change his mind, and allow Deerfield to go ahead with its unconstitutional ordinance.  Still, I will take it, for now.  It seems to me that the judge could have, and should have found the ordinance grossly unconstitutional and simply thrown it out.

I have to run, but go read the whole thing.

Confessions of a Former Smoker

I smoked a pipe for about 20 years.  I enjoyed smoking a pipe.  I found relaxation in it as well as time to think.  I had largely stopped smoking the pipe when we moved to Raleigh, NC, but I still attended a pipe club meeting once a month until the restaurant that hosted the meetings went non smoking as well.  While I enjoyed the company, the idea that I can not smoke at a pipe club meeting, or at a tobacconist shop, is irritating to me.  This smoking ban took place ironically in a state where tobacco is grown in huge fields. 

Now, I can not defend smoking as an activity, and therefore I will not.  Nor will I claim that the anti smokers do not have a point that smoking leaves a lot of debris and detritus that no longer seems to pollute the streetscape.  Rather, let me state that just as anti marijuana laws are reviled because, after all, shouldn't an adult be allowed to consume what he or she wishes, so one must be consistent and revile anti smoking laws.  Except anti smokers are not consistent.  While condemning the cigarette smoker as a low class, trailer trash types, will themselves smoke a joint as if that were any better.  It is not.  Then of course, because the people doing the banning know little of what they ban, pipes and cigars, which are not inhaled, get thrown into the ban as well.  Remind you of anything?  Read on.

Today, at the American Thinker, Robert Hoffman asks whether  Smoking Bans and Mirrors. Is it about Health? Or Control?. Back when smoking bans were being enacted, each state trying to one up the last state that had enacted a ban, and even localities seemed to be getting into the act with even more stringent bans of their own, I read a number of articles citing studies that showed no actual causation between second hand smoke and lung cancer. These were roundly ingored. As note at Slate.com in their article Second Hand Smoke Isn't As Bad As You Thought:

Early arguments for smoking bans at least paid lip service to the idea that restrictions were necessary to protect unwilling bystanders’ health. But as bans have grown ever more intrusive even as the case for expanding them has withered, that justification has been revealed as a polite fiction by which nonsmokers shunted smokers to the fringes of society. It was never just about saving lives.

Indeed, I have always believed that to many, such as Stanton Glantz, who enjoyed a hey day during the tobacco wars performing biased research, smoking is a vile habit, and in his mind, and it turns out, many others, the habit must be stamped out by any means necessary. From the start, the war on tobacco used Alinsky's rules for radicals, naming the "enemy" freezing it, and attacking it from all sides. Of course, smokers, always a minority, were caught in the middle. But the anti smokers learned valuable lessons which they are using today on gun owners.  It isn't about health, it is about control.

The argument for smoking bans fell of deaf ears until the anti smoking zealots hit on just the right thing: second hand smoke.  Many smokers who were married to non smokers realized they would have to give up smoking for their spouses sake, if what they said about second hand smoke was true.  But as it turns out, it wasn't true.  Glantz and others had been doing biased research in an effort to make the public believe it was true.  Anti smoking groups exaggerated the claims even further.  Now, the Left thinks it has found the formula for getting rid of guns: school shootings.  While no one can defend the indefensible, like smoking, we can certainly  point out that banning guns is not the solution to school shootings.  We don't have a right to smoke, but we do have a right to bear arms for our protection and the protection of those we love. 

Buy Ammunition. You never know ho much you will need

Here's a post from 2016 by Kurt Schlichter entitled Buy Ammo. Schlichter gives a number of reasons to buy ammunition, not the least of which is because:

Buying ammo is a no-lose proposition. Look, the worst thing that happens if you buy more ammo is that you have more ammo. Plus, much of our consumer ammo is made by hardworking Americans, and many of those ammo makers are located in red states where the right to keep and bear arms is celebrated and respected. So you’re helping fellow conservative Americans, which is good. And you’re infuriating people like that sanctimonious, Second Amendment-hating incompetent infesting the White House, which is great.

Remember that Schlichter was writing this during the Obama years. But, you should always keep on hand a number of rounds that you rotate as you use them up. In other words, as you use up the rounds in your stash, you buy more. Or, if you are a reloader, you make more, and then buy more components. The Obama years were a time of shortages of ammunition, which then spurred panic buying. I remember seeing men coming out of the gun show carrying big boxes filled with .223 Remington on their shoulders, that probably amounted to 1000 rounds each. I did not have to panic buy because I had sufficient rounds on hand, and sufficient components on hand, to weather 8 years of Obama.  I could buy strategically.

Schlichter does not give us a fixed number of rounds we should have per gun.  I am reluctant to as well, because each person must evaluate his or her own situation.  In the final analysis, the number of rounds on maintains is an arbitrary number.  You may need exactly 0 rounds, or the end of the world as we know it (abbreviated TEOTWAWKI) may happen, and you will be scrounging for anything you can throw at your enemies.  But start buying now, in whatever amount you think you might need.

I am cognizant of the fact that during the last election, the Democrats expected to win big, and they became over self confident.  Today, we are hearing everywhere that the "blue wave" will not materialize, and that the Republicans will actually take more seats.  Between you and me, I don't believe it.  I may be wrong, but if the Democrats win, even by a small margin, they will consider it a landslide, and the gun grabbers will be out in force.  If the elections turn out as the polls say they will, well, see above..

It doesn't work unless you work it

It seems to always come down to the fault of a human being.  Today we learn from Mairead Mcardle at NRO that Florida skipped background checks on concealed carry applications for a year. I have been guilty of pointing out that concealed carriers were some of the most vetted people in the country, certainly more than a certain former President.  Now we find that:

Over a month after Lisa Wilde, the employee in charge of conducting background checks, found that she could not log into the NICBC system, she reported it to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, but did not follow up or fix the problem. Another employee finally noticed that the department was not receiving any denial notices and reached out to the FDLE to get to the bottom of the mystery, according to the June 5, 2017 state investigation report obtained by the Times.

Wilde, who said claimed she worked in the FDACS mail room until 2013, said she “didn’t understand why I was put in charge of” conducting the background checks. She has since been fired.

How does the saying go? It works if you work it. Contrarily, it doesn't work if nobody inquires of the system whether an applicant might have a disqualifying record.

Note that I am not a supporter of either requiring a permit to concealed carry, or of the NICS.  Anyone is allowed to walk around at large in society should be allowed to carry a weapon, and if a person can not be trusted with a weapon, he should not be allowed to walk around at large.  The Leftist idea that prisoners are there for political reasons, while the citizenry should at all times be treated like prisoners is balderdash.  But since we find ourselves in this situation, we have to make the best of it, and the permit system combined with NICS seems to be the best we can currently do.  We need, however, to do better.

Hogg SWATed

From Mike at Cold Fury we learn that someone has called in to authorities SWATing the Hogg...that's David Hogg, the loudmouthed know nothing of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School fame, who goes about the country accusing NRA and the millions of legal gun owners who had nothing to do with the shooting of being somehow complicit in the murders there.  How this is supposed to work is not entirely clear, but never mind for Hogg goes for evoking emotion rather than logic.  No one will accuse this gun grabber of using logic.

On the one hand, we don't like it when one of us gets SWATed.  It is dangerous, and at least one person has been killed after being SWATed.  It is also illegal.  On the other hand, it is hard not to harbor a sense of schadenfreude over it.  Well, I am a Christian, not a saint.  It could not happen to a nicer guy after all, and its nice to see it happen to someone on the left for a change.

I am glad nobody was hurt.

The Boy Scouts Did Not Live Up To Their Own Principles

The recent announcement that the Boy Scouts will shortly change the name of the organization to "Scouts BSA", and with the change will now come the admission of girls to the ranks brought a bit of sadness to me. The Boy Scouts have taught generations of boys how to grow up to become gentlemen. How to be a man is simple enough.  Biology takes care of that.  But to become a gentleman is a different matter entirely, and the old Scout Oath and Scout Law embodied these ideals. Scout programs then taught these boys how to live these ideals in everyday life through doing. Many scout activities involved enduring pain, hardship and  frustration, and forced a boy to face himself and decide who he was going to become. It also taught responsibility. I remember one year I was the "logistics officer" for our Scout Troop and had charge of the camping equipment. Besides keeping an inventory of the camping equipment, I also had to clean everything up, dry it out, and pack it up after every use so it would be ready for the next trip. It was a big responsibility for a boy of 12.

With these thoughts in mind, I read Paul Kengor's piece over at The American Spectator entitled The Marxist Progressive War on the Boy Scouts. Kengor shows, through links to original sources that the Communists have had a goal of destroying the Boy Scouts of America since at least a year after its founding. The first article against scouting appeared in The Young Socialist Magazine in 1911! You need to read the whole article, and follow the links to the original sources. Even Kengor admits that this story will sound like the old red scare stuff of the 1950s, but the original sources prove its all true. Finally, the Marxist have marched through the institution of the Boy Scouts and as they always do, have left their trash thrown about, have shat on the carpets, and urinated in the corners. What is left of a fine organization is not worth joining.

The Boy Scouts of America thus points out once again the folly of any organization giving an inch to the left.  Just as gun owners have said "not one inch" so should every American institution do.  Yes, the Boy Scouts were under near constant attack from so called "gay rights" and "transgendered" groups, and the cost was no doubt expensive.  But appeasement is not an option.  The idea that if you throw a bit of flesh to the jackals that they will be satisfied and go away is not reality.  From the start, they want it all, and a bit of flesh will just encourage them.  The Boy Scouts, being a private organization, could have withstood the onslaught, but they didn't live up to their own principles.  The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has done the same thing, by not living up to Martin Luther's theology, they have soiled the name of Lutheranism, and become a shell of what they were.  Do not give an inch. 

The Specter of Global Cooling Returns

So, the first article in decades I have seen now warning that Global Cooling is in the offing. This comes from the American Thinker so the emphasis is on the foolish attempt by greenies to halt the supposed Global Warming...er...Global Climate Change. Still, we have been through this before. Back on April 28, 1975, News Week published an article entitled The Cooling World. Of course, News Week has since recanted the story. After all, there can be no deviation from orthodox thought.

Of course, along with speculation that we may be entering a new ice age, comes the concern that millions of us will starve to death due to famine.  One doesn't want to make light of this, though, because famine has haunted the human race since the first man walked the earth.  While most of us could stand to miss a meal or two, the fact is that it would not take long to die of starvation in a true famine.  Viv Forbes has the goods on what happens if we let the greenies have their way in Are We Fostering Food or Famine. Forbes:

The fierce dog of famine is tethered outside the city gate. Our abundant supplies of reliable energy for the production, harvesting, transport, processing, storage and distribution of food have kept him at bay. But still he waits patiently for foolish politicians or dreadful weather to let him loose.

Just one decent regional blackout will empty supermarket shelves and create long queues at every service station; two frigid winters will see food prices soar; and a return of the Little Ice Age or worse will see starvation stalking the cities.

Greens are inviting famine, humanity’s ancient enemy, into our cities via the green door.

But go read the whole piece.

Gun Control: It Doesn't Work...Unless Your Goal is Tyranny. Then It Works Great

I have been too busy to post lately, but I am taking just a little time to post some gun control items that have come up lately.

The first item is an article by Eileen F. Toplansky at the American Thinker yesterday entitled Does gun Control Lead to Genocide? Ms. Toplansky's point is that while all gun control efforts have not led to genocides, all genocides have first been preceded by disarming the target society. She then spends a lot of electrons telling us about the genocides in the twentieth century alone. The number of such is appalling, not to mention the reasons for them.  As to the latter, let us just say that people are murdered industrially because a politician gets it into his head that he has the right to tell others how they should live their lives.  When people don't listen, these politicians tend to turn murderous to get their way.

Go read Toplanksy's article.  Most longtime readers of this blog will be familiar with most of the genocides that occurred in the twentieth century, but it is good to remind yourself of these facts as armor against the emotional arguments of the gun grabbers.

The next article comes from Alan Korwin's blog, The Uninvited Ombudsman and is entitled Background Checks--Just Like Red Flag Laws Korwin's point here is that Background Checks, so beloved of the gun grabbing left, have not stopped a single killer from getting a gun. Not one. Just as laws against illegal drugs do not stop people who want drugs from getting them, so people who want guns are going to get them. What background checks do is collect the names of innocent, law abiding people who have guns. Its a scam, pure and simple.

Of course the law says that dealers are to keep the books with the form 4473s private to keep the government from finding out (wink wink), but do you really believe that, given what we now know about government lawlessness?  If you do, I've got a bridge I can sell you real cheap.

So, where do so called "Red Flag" laws come in, because Korwin doesn't address these.  Red Flag laws give anti gun family members and acquaintances carte blanche to report people they disagree with to the police, who will obligingly come and take their guns without due process.  In some cases, gun owners may be notified later that they can petition the court for a hearing, but of course the damage has been done.  And good luck getting your property back.  Oh, and the penalty for lying to the court about the reasons for seeking the so called "protection" of a Red Flag law?  A small fine. Why, its practically Les Miserabe-esqu

If you live in a state where the news papers have published the names and addresses of concealed permit holders, you can go down the list, find out who lives in your neighborhood, and begin a Red Flag proceding against him in total secrecy, and lying about any face, including whether you actually know the person, brings just a slap on the wrist.  Gun grabbers should just love these new laws that violate the 4th and 5th Amendment rights of gun owners and provide a way for vindictive gun grabbers to "stick it to" gun owners who have done nothing wrong.  Meanwhile, the laws will not affect the truly guilty gang banger or psychotic killer.  Nobody will know these individuals have guns because they are not on anybody's list.