Grumble, Grumble

It’s never fun to admit you’re wrong. It’s really not fun when the outcome of admitting you’re wrong means another tough political battle to fight. My Election Day prediction:

We need to send [Patrick Murphy] home. (Actually, he probably won’t return to the district. He’s been a very good fundraiser for bringing in money outside of the district, so I assume he’ll relocate to DC if he loses & become part of the professional political class.)

At the beginning of the year, we learned that anti-gun former Rep. Patrick Murphy was, in fact, going to stick around the district.

My displaced Congress Critter, Patrick Murphy, has taken a job with an area law firm with ties to DC. Probably helps that the Murphy Campaign finance chairman is a partner at that firm. This hints to me that Murphy may be Fitzpatrick’s next challenger in 2012.

Now, he’s speaking to Democratic groups around the state:

Former U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy, a prominent Bucks County Democrat, will speak April 1 in Centre County at a county Democratic Committee gathering, the committee announced.

Venturing about 200 miles outside of your home turf after you just lost an election isn’t usually something done out of the goodness of your heart. It usually means you’re trying to find new donors and raise your profile around the state.

It’s redistricting season here in Pennsylvania. Might I suggest that we cut out a little circle around Patrick Murphy’s house & instead of assigning it to another Pennsylvania district, we just give the property to New Jersey? He’d fit in far better on that side of the river.

Don’t Take the Election Results for Granted

Inspired by an ongoing general email conversation with reader Adam Z., I was inspired to look at the challenges we could still face here in Pennsylvania to pass a clean Castle Doctrine bill this term. I’ve seen more than a few comments from gun owners that assume pro-gun legislation is in the bag & anti-gun bills are no threat at all simply because the Republicans have control of the House, Senate, & Governor’s office.

The fact is that we ran out of time on the bill because opponents were building up support among Republican leaders for anti-gun amendments while the bill was in a Senate committee. The committee chair voted for one of those amendments out on the Senate floor. Guess what gun owners? That guy is still in charge. A new member of the committee had this to say about Castle Doctrine last year:

Yeah, we still have hurdles, folks. If you live in Pennsylvania & your Senator’s name isn’t on this page, then get on the phone. If your Senator’s name is on that page, make sure he/she knows that you want a clean bill & no anti-gun or anti-hunting amendments added to it. It’s time to get Castle Doctrine passed.

UPDATE: Well, that didn’t take long. Here’s the news from NRA on this final evening before the hearing:

Anti-gun groups are working to attach a laundry-list of bad amendments to SB 273 tomorrow. We already know F-rated state Senator Daylin Leach (D-17) will be offering the so-called “Florida Loophole” amendment which would prohibit the use of out of state Right-to-Carry permits by Pennsylvania residents while inside the Commonwealth. Once again this is an attempt by anti-gun zealots to torpedo this much-needed reform and we cannot allow that to happen.

Daley’s Legacy

It’s pretty clear what he’d like it to be:

Chicagoans will hear from Mayor Richard Daley Monday for the first time since the election of his successor.

Daley and Congressman Mike Quigley were expected at a joint news conference about gun laws on the city’s West Side Monday morning.

Worried Rahm won’t be anti-gun enough? Doesn’t strike me as much of a worry, but pretty clearly Daley, even in retirement, still wants to make this an issue.

We Still Welcome Her

Jacob covers a sad story of Jeanne Assam’s church, many of whom she saved after taking down a mass shooter, rejecting her because she came out of the closet. Heroics don’t know any sexual orientation. It’s certainly within her church’s prerogative to reject her views, but we’d like her to know she’s still a hero to many of us.

The End

I was quite a fan of Battlestar Galactica when it was running, but stopped watching early in Season 3 because I was on my way to DC every other week to see Bitter and couldn’t keep up. This weekend, I finally finished out the series. Now I see why the ending was controversial. I did not really hate the ending, because frankly, after Lost, it didn’t seem that bad. There were far fewer loose ends at the end of BSG than there were at the end of Lost.

I should issue a spoiler warning right here. If you don’t want to know, don’t keep reading.

The ending was pretty classic Deus ex Machina. The entire thing was wrapped up too quickly, and the ending created a number of plot issues. For one, the names of the Greek gods, and the names of constellations, being the same as we have today. No language or culture survived from 150,000 years ago. The creators of BSG have suggested that information was transmitted through a “collective unconscious,” or more Deus ex Machina, in other words. This seems weak as a way to connect the colonials to ourselves.

The colonials said they would pass on the best of themselves, but we know for a fact nothing survives from 150,000 years ago. Everything was lost; their art, their culture, technology and language. Hera we know died as a young woman, after having enough female offspring to become mother to all mankind, which suggests that she and the other colonials probably lived a short, brutal existence as primitives. It’s hard to see how this is a happy ending.

What the hell was Kara Thrace? We know the Hybrids said she was the harbinger of death, and would lead the human race to its end. I can sort of live with this plot resolution, since it can be taken to mean she was a harbinger of death to the Cylons, and did, in fact, lead the human race to its end, in a manner of speaking. But she was supposedly some kind of Angel sent by God? More Deus ex Machina.

Now let’s talk about the whole giving up technology thing. What’s shocking is that everyone agreed with it. Lee said “Yeah, let’s just forget this whole technology thing and fling the fleet into the sun,” and everyone just goes along? This was a fleet that argued about everything. It would seem to me if you landed in Middle Pleistocene Tanzania, complete with large saber tooth predatory cats, man eating wild pigs, and giant hyaenas, you’d think at least someone might pipe up “Have you lost your frakkin mind, Lee?” when he suggests living as primitives. As much as the thought of facing a large cat armed only with a Beretta Storm doesn’t thrill me, it sure as hell beats chucking a spear at it. At the very least, after weeks of eating algae, I’d be up for shooting a few grass eating herbivores before we buried the guns. Now I accept it’s quite possible that the colonials thought the planet was all gazelles, flamingos and rainbow farting unicorns, and then only after they destroyed the guns did they find the man eating wild boars, and giant hyenas. “Thanks a lot Lee, frakker!”

The show’s producers have suggested that the reason for abandoning the technology is because the natives would worship them as gods, and the whole cycle would start anew. I think that’s a chance I’m going to be willing to take if my alternative is wiping my ass with leaves. “This is my boomstick! Now chop down that tree so I can make some frakkin toilet paper.” I mean seriously, what do you think that natives are going to do when you show up in their village and inform them that, in the name of your god(s), you need to interbreed with their women?

There’s no way the ending really works as a happy one if you think about it. Not even really for us. What is our connection to them? Greek gods, names of constellations, and a propensity to make a race of killer robots? Sounds great to me.

Real Trouble in Massachusetts

By my reading of this bill, if this passes, Kahr and Smith & Wesson are going to have to leave the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Massachusetts has generally been careful to avoid passing anything so onerous it would cause problems for the flagship gun company. It’s not easy to just pick up a manufacturing operation and move it, but I don’t see that they’d have a choice, since the mandated technology doesn’t effectively exist. California, which as far as I know is the only other state to mandate this, left the decision to implement the law in the hands of state officials. So far, to my knowledge, there’s been no actual implementation of any of these laws. The Massachusetts bill doesn’t seem to have this type of clause, so it would effectively ban sale, manufacturing and distribution of all firearms within the Bay State.

1993 Called …

… and they want their gun control article back. You almost have to believe they were short on articles to run, so they resurrected one from the 90s and changed a few names around. The article is textbook, with utter confusion about what a machine gun is and isn’t, careless improper use of the term assault rifle, a police gun layout that doesn’t contain any of the weapons mentioned in the article, cops being outgunned, and, the icing on the cake?

“[A] 2009 bid by President Obama to reinstate a national ban has stalled.”

What 2009 bid? In order for this analogy to work, it would require you to place the keys in the ignition, start the engine, and try to take it somewhere. Barry’s been afraid to even look in the garage, let alone look for the keys to the car.