Watching the whip count over at The Hill, and it’s looking like this is a done deal. Get ready for November. We have to teach the Democrats a lesson they will never forget. Cancel your newspaper subscriptions! Turn in the cable box! Don’t just be a passive consumer of the establishment’s news. It’s time for freedom loving people to give involved and become the establishment. That’s the only way to reverse this terrible thing that has been put into motion.
Year: 2010
First Day of Spring
What a Beautiful day it is, a perfect day to do some BBQing and restock on some Vitamin D. Got some pork back ribs on the smoker as we speak, and I’m outside in the back yard enjoying a snifter of bourbon. Lately I’ve really liked Blanton’s Bourbon. I like mine with just a splash of water in a snifter, in this case my Monticello snifter, which is a souvenir I picked up while visiting. But the really important part of the first day of spring is getting the smoker going. 
This is my first smoke in this one. It’s a Weber Smokey Mountain. This winter I was considering whether I wanted to get an offset smoker, but decided, after a bit of research, that a quality bullet smoker was closer to what I was looking for. I have three racks of back ribs in it now, which were rubbed down last night. My previous smoker had difficulty staying at the right temperature, and always wanted to get hotter. This one seems to struggle to stay at a higher temperature, but I will say it holds a much more consistent temperature. I can throw in extra coals without getting a wild temperature flucuation. In a few hours I’ll be able to judge whether the end product of this smoker is better than the previous El-Cheapo Brinkmann. In the mean time I’ll enjoy the sun, the bourbon, watch the woodpecker fly around to the various trees in the neighborhood, and try really really hard not to think about the cluster fuck going on in DC right now.
New Jersey Finally Wises Up
They are instituting a bear hunt in New Jersey for the first time in five years. This is badly needed. There are many groups, including HSUS, the Sierra Club, and the North Jersey based BEAR group. They are already filing a lawsuit to try to stop the hunt. This is going to be a doozy for the folks who decide to do the bear hunt. Animal rights activists are a lot battier than even the battiest anti-gun activists. Expect the PSH to be particularly flowing and smelly on this issue. So fierce we might have to suggest one of these to animal rights activists, along with this handy chart.
HSUS claims that people hunt bears for trophies and nothing more. This is false. Otherwise how do you explain bear recipes here, here, here, and here. This is just the tip of the iceberg. And the great part about bear is you get a nice rug when you’re done with all the bear recipes. How often do you get a free rug when you stock up on meat at the local Sam’s Club?
NRA Comes Out Against Obamacare
No, not that NRA, the other NRA.
Feuding over Dogs Results in Doggie Shooting
This is a really odd story. Neighbor buys a new dog Keira, doesn’t like Coco, one of the other neighborhood dogs. Accusations fly around about which dogs are mean to the other and neighbors stop taking to each other. Keira apparently mauls Coco once, leaving Coco’s owner with 3000 in vet bills. Keira escapes and charges at Coco and his owner  shoots Keira dead through the head, and ends up facing animal cruelty charges and disorderly conduct:
“Why didn’t you pick up a shovel, a stick or pepper spray?” Assistant District Attorney Shannon Crake asked Menichini.
I find the ADA’s attitude here more than a bit disconcerting. It is not her place to evaluate the man’s chosen means of self-defense. What he had available is a pistol, not pepper spray. I think pepper spray is a wise choice, but it’s a choice. Does she really expect him to carry a shovel with him? To search frantically on the ground for a stick big enough for self-defense? Sorry Ms. Crake the statute itself says “A person commits a misdemeanor of the second degree if he willfully and maliciously kills, maims or disfigures any domestic animal of another person or any domestic fowl of another person.” The key words here is “maliciously” which means the actor would need to be acting with malice. If this is a case of self-defense, that’s not a malicious act and not animal cruelty. There very well may be facts not reported here that would indicate malice on the part of the actor, but from this article, it looks like the ADA is more interested in second guessing the means of self-defense the actor had available and used, rather than making an argument for willful malice on the part of the actor.
Speaking of Classical Music
I promise not to bore my non-classical-music-loving readers with this part of my life often, but my post yesterday comparing skills and knowledge got me thinking about piano again, so I was thinking back to some old pieces that I had started on and never finished. I have CDs of many of them so I was going back for a listen. The real danger of iTunes is that you suddenly have a world of music at your fingertips, and can go find, download, and listen to anything immediately. This can be a problem for the credit card if you lack self-discipline. But you can tell the pieces I’ve always been in love with by how many different recordings I have of them. One thing I never got to do when I played was play a piano concerto. One of my great disappointments in life that I never had the discipline to complete one when I could play. One day, when I have a lot of free time, I might finally learn one and then go find a local amateur orchestral group to play it with. It’s an oversight I’d really like to fix someday.
I started, but never finished Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor. You could just as easily say the Grieg Piano Concerto, because he only ever wrote but one. It’s fairly well recognized even by non-classical music fans though, and most people are familiar with the first couple of measures of the piece. I have only one recording of it though, by Pianist Santiago Rodriguez. Rodriguez is an excellent Pianist, but his interpretation of these pieces is a bit too fast tempo for my liking. Excessive tempo is a common pet peeve of mine in classical recordings. I feel that often a slower, more deliberate pace allows more of the color in the piece to come out. One exception to this is the complete recording of Beethoven’s Symphonies by John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, which are at faster tempi than normally recorded, and on period instruments. In this case I believe the pieces are enhanced by the faster tempo, and the period instrumentation and orchestra size produces a very clean sound. It’s so good I have a hard time listening to a slower recording with a modern orchestra without thinking how much better this recording sounds.
But back to the Grieg. I was looking for a different take on his piano concerto, so I just downloaded, and am really enjoying Arthur Rubinstein’s recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy conducting. It’s a slower, more expressive pace than the Rodriguez recording, but hey, it’s also Rubinstein, who is regarded as one of the great pianists, if not the greatest pianists of the 20th century. Along with the recording of the Grieg Piano Concerto I get yet another recording of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto Number 2 in C Minor. I have two others, one by Earl Wild, and the other by Vladimir Ashkenazy. I’m probably more partial to the Ashkenazy performance than I am by the Earl Wild performance, but there’s much to be said for both of them. We’ll see how I end up liking Rubinstein’s take of the piece.
AWB Moving Again in Illinois
Daley and his Chicago machine are going to be eager to pass this to get back at gun owners. How dare we stand up for our rights! He’ll make the downstate rubes pay for this one! Todd Vandermyde is making the argument, and it’s a good argument, that the several firearms manufacturers that are located in Illinois will leave the state if this passes. It’ll also shut down high-power competition in the state. Hopefully this can be defeated, but it’s amazing to me the IL legislature is willing to ignore a seven thousand plus rally at the State Capitol. If we turned out those kinds of numbers at our Harrsiburg rally, our politicians would crap themselves in fear. I guess when you’ve been gaming the system as long as the Daley crew have, you get a certain amount of arrogant cockiness about you.
My Christmas Tree Might Be Illegal
The FDA released new rules for cigarette advertising. These things go so far that I swear, the next thing they will target will be my Christmas tree.
These restrictions are draconian – all in the name of the children.
1) No Sector Sixes. No manufacturer can use the name of a non-tobacco product in a tobacco product name, unless both products existed and shared the name prior to 1995.
2) No freedom to buy less than 20 cigarettes. This is kind of the like Pennsylvania’s beer laws. Bureaucrats want us to drink less, so we have to buy beer by the case at a distributer unless we buy it at a bar. FDA doesn’t want people smoking as much, so it’s only possible to buy cigarettes 20 or more at a time.
3) You may still buy cigarettes through mail-order, but you can’t use coupons or get any samples. (Damn coupon clipping kids!) Vending machines are now outlawed unless the premises bans kids at all times.
4) Free samples of cigarettes – even in a room full of adults – is banned. For smokeless tobacco, it’s severely limited and only about half an ounce per person per day provided that means they do it in a temporary facility surrounded by opaque material at least 7 feet high (and no more than one foot off the ground) where children and alcohol are banned and does not mention anything about tobacco on the outside. I guess that means they will have to start logging names if they hand out samples. Oh, and no samples to sports teams or entertainment groups. And none of these highly restricted non-advertising temporary structures may be set up at a football, basketball, baseball, soccer, or hockey event or any other sporting or entertainment event.
5) Any attempts to advertise outside of pre-defined limits (“in newspapers; in magazines; in periodicals or other publications [whether periodic or limited distribution]; on billboards, posters, and placards; in nonpoint-of sale promotional material [including direct mail]; in point-of-sale promotional material; and in audio or video formats delivered at a point-of sale”) must be be filed with the FDA at least 30 days in advance. Creativity and social media – damn you & your crazy innovation!
6) Declaring a war on color: all labeling or advertising for cigarettes or smokeless tobacco shall use only black text on a white background. Exceptions including the limited places where vending machines are allowed and porn magazines.
7) Declaring a war on music and sound effects: No audio advertisement can have anything other than a voice reading words. No video can have anything other than black text on white background and any associated audio cannot include music or sounds other than words.
8) Declaring a third theater of war on names, logos, and recognizable colors on non-tobacco products: No more hats, shirts, or products without tobacco can be released with the name of a brand, logo, motto, or even “recognizable color” of a brand.
9) Customer rewards are off the table. I remember people who used to clip the Marlboro Miles for random gifts – kind of like you credit card rewards. No more rewarding customer loyalty!
10) No more sponsorships of anything. Technically, the rule only says no sponsorships of any athletic, musical, artistic, or other social or cultural event, or any entry or team in any event. I know that UST has sponsored more than a few things in the gun/hunting world. Does these events qualify as athletic, social, or cultural? Well, we just lost a sponsor. Damn. They were good to our community for a long time. Technically, these companies can still sponsor, but only if they don’t tell anyone who they are or what they produce – which kind of takes the impact out of sponsorship.
So as you can see, it’s not completely a joke that my ornaments probably send the bureaucrats at the FDA into a tizzy. I just have to hope that the next round of rules doesn’t force me to keep the curtains closed while our tree is on display.
Locking Up Straw Purchasers
While  leading Democratic candidates for Governor in Pennsylvania are busy with the same old tired solutions to gun violence, namely passing more laws that restrict the law abiding, Tom Corbett is actually out there locking up straw purchasers using the laws we already have. We support Attorney General Corbett in this effort, and believe this is the way you fight straw purchasing.
Another L&S Ordinance
We had no warning of this one before it passed in Conshohocken. MAIG is getting very good at sneaking these things in before we have a chance to react. They are depending on that, in fact, because when we show up and make a case against the ordinances, and point out that they are unlawful, we’ve generally been winning. This round goes to Max Nacheman, Bloomberg’s hired gun, but it’s worth noting that he can only win by subverting the democratic process and trying to sneak these ordinances in under the radar before we have a chance to organize and respond. This is how these people operate. If they can’t beat us by using above board tactics, they’ll beat us by being sneaky weasels. If you live in Conshohocken, I’d be sure to give your elected officials trouble over this. Show up at the next meeting and demand to know why they passed an illegal ordinance without any public notice. You can find contact information here.
UPDATE: I’ve corrected the record. All pro-gun channels were silent on this town, and I heard nothing in the media about it. These are the traditional channels through which we find out. As it turns out, this was put on the agenda in the February Borough Council meeting, and we missed it. MAIG has paid resources to identify and target towns to try to pass this ordinance. We rely on volunteers to keep us abreast of happenings, and sometimes these kinds of things slip by without notice. So I apologize for the accusation that there was no public notice, but Max Nacheman and Bloomberg are still weasels ;)