Sebastian – Page 487 – Shall Not Be Questioned

It Is Done. Welcome to “Shall Not Be Questioned.”

Welcome to “Shall Not Be Questioned.” It is our new brand. A few moments ago, I loaded up Snowflakes in Hell for the last time, did anÂ ‘/etc/init.d/apache2 reload’ and we shan’t be looking back. I wanted a name that directly related to our topic, to where we live, and what we talk about. So, what about the newness?

Well, as you can see there are ads. I’ve tried to make them relatively unobtrusive. Currently most of them are placeholders, because we are just starting selling ads. They should fill up once I get approved by AdSense, and once we start selling on blogads.
Comments are now threaded, and you can edit comments for a brief, fixed period of time, or delete them.
Obviously the look and feel is different. I wanted kind of an old document look, so I tried to achieve that.
Otherwise, as you can see, the content is the same as Snowflakes in Hell. This quite literally was just a rebranding.

I hope you’ll all keep coming by. I will continue to tweak the look and feel as time wears on. If you have me on your blogroll, the old domain will work fine, but the new domain name is pagunblog.com. Shorter to type. Even I got sick of typing snowflakesinhell.com all the time. Now on to fix a few issues.

UPDATE on Ads:

You should be able to get a pretty good idea of where the ads will be going once I start getting the approvals I need. The index pages are more heavily loaded with ads, because most of them aren’t’ being used by regular readers. But we have the 728×90 leader board banner, the 300×250 side banner, and between the post and comments section a 300×250 banner. I also put some Amazon recommendations on the sidebar. We don’t get cash for those, but we get some Amazon credit every once in a while if people click through and then buy anything (even if it’s not what I recommended). The index pages are populated with 300×250 ads between posts that have more than 200 words. All are available for sale through blogads. When ads are not being sold, they will default to Google ads, or the top will be Lucky Gunner. We should receive money from these ads through sales, or through the affiliate relationship through Google and LG.

Your big money making ads are the leaderboard 728×90 and 300×250. From advice from a friend, and through my own research, I have found this to be the case. So I have opted for fewer, higher revenue ads, rather than many lower revenue ones. I will try to keep them tasteful, but I won’t have full control.

On 301 Redirects

We are nearly ready to switch to our new brand. This is a difficult thing for me, because in order to do the transition, I essentially have to put a bullet into snowflakesinhell.com, which I’ve spent the better part of 5 years building up, and never look back.

Not that the domain will stop working. I’ll configure my web server to send out a 301 redirect to the new domain name, which will make it completely transparent to end users, and Google will figure it all out and move the domain internally too. But I will take some hit in page rank, from what I’m seeing. Something like 5 to 10 percent, which may or may not even be noticeable.

The real nail biter is that once I do it, it’ll cost me even more to go back. No finding out something didn’t work as well, and just switch everything back to the way it was. Once we move into SIH 2.0, soon to have a different name and domain, that’ll be it. No turning back.

Of course, I could get cold feet and back out. But I’ve put two weeks of work into experimenting with new looks and new feels, have gone through three different themes, and had woes signing up with the standard advertising outfits. We are going to proceed forward. Very soon. After I’ve had enough to drink :)

An Interview with Josh Horwitz

If you’re “Fundraising Success Magazine,” and you’re interviewing Josh Horwitz, unless the topic is called “How to Suckle at the Teat of a Large Foundational Donor,” you must be really hard up for material. But nonetheless, they talk to Josh at some length.

Quickly in the interview, Horwitz dives right into his strengths, mentioning “the Ed Fund is an incredibly lean organization,” and that, “[w]e were able to cut overhead expenses drastically over the past few years, and we successfully run a wide range of violence prevention programs on a tight budget.” He naturally does not reveal that some of the “violence prevention programs” involve berating second stringers in the gun rights movement, and then going so far overboard that they were suspended by Twitter for violations of terms of use. But either way, I’m sure they saved a lot of money during the period their Twitter account was suspended, so it does fit with the narrative, I suppose.

The folks at CSGV are at least in good spirits right? Well, maybe not so much. “[T]he gun violence prevention issue can be demoralizing,” Horwitz notes, though he is clearly proud of his, “strong social-media presence that is growing every day.” Fortunately for him, the readers of Fundraising Success Magazine will never know that Josh’s cadre of New Media allies are among the best lunatics and whakjobs the left has to offer, most of whom are likely too busy pooping in Zuccotti Park to think much about donating to EFSGV or CSGV.

One advantage of not having much in the way of real donors, is that you can give them personal attention,. “[W]e have had some significant success in inspiring longtime direct-mail donors to increase their giving through this more individualized approach. Personal attention to donors and connecting with prospective donors in person or on the phone has been the key.” So NRA members, when was the last time you got a call from Wayne for sending a few bucks NRA’s way? Any SAF members get a call from Alan Gottlieb lately?

And of course, you can’t talk to Josh Horwitz without at least one of their standard propaganda bits slipping out. “Another fundraising difficulty is the obvious resource disparity between the gun violence prevention movement and the industry-funded gun lobby.” NRA doesn’t have this “personal touch” philosophy when it comes to fundraising, because there’s no way they could do this over millions of members, which accounts for the vast majority of their fundraising. But Josh has to be the David fighting the Goliath. It’s probably a lot easier to sleep at night if you think you’re fighting evil corporations, rather than merely being a sour busybody inserting your nose into the personal business of millions and millions of fellow Americans.

New Look, New Feel, New Era

I’m going try to do a cutover this weekend, and get started with the all new blog. I’ve already spent way too much time on this than I should have, but I’m picky about getting the look and feel right, and striking a balance between running ads that have a reasonable return on space investment, and ad placement that’s not annoying. I also need to work on how to cut the tables from here over that contain all the new posts and comments, without blowing away the new configuration on my copy. If it doesn’t happen, it means I ran into problems. If I do this right, you shouldn’t notice anything. If I really do it right, you could be reading, click to the next post, and bang… new blog.

HR822 Replaced

HR822 has been replaced by the Franks Amendment. It’s a bit different than the original bill, but I’m not sure the practical effect of this bill is any different than the last version. Here’s the meat:

(b) The possession or carrying of a concealed handgun in a State under this section shall be subject to the same conditions and limitations, except as to eligibility to possess or carry, imposed by or under Federal or State law or the law of a political subdivision of a State, that apply to the possession or carrying of a concealed handgun by residents of the State or political subdivision who are licensed by the State or political subdivision to do so, or not prohibited by the State from doing so.

The Brady folks are getting hysterical about this change:

But the Franks Amendment forces states to recognize the concealed carry licenses of non-residents, even if they are ineligible to possess a handgun in the state where the carrying occurs.

For example, under Tennessee law, Tennessee residents with concealed weapons permits may be prosecuted for violating the Stateâ€™s law prohibiting handgun possession by persons â€˜while under the influence of alcohol.â€™

The Franks Amendment would make that prohibition unenforceable against someone with a concealed carry permit visiting from another state, who is caught in possession of a gun in Tennessee while intoxicated.

I seriously don’t understand how this can be the case. Not being intoxicated while carrying is among the “conditions and limitations” that are “apply to the possession or carrying of a concealed handgun by residents of the State.” So Dennis is either bad at reading legislation, or being deliberately deceitful. As best I can tell, this is the same bill as it was before, just worded a bit differently. The language for this version is just a little more solid, I think, rather than different.

Schultz Subpoenaed as Well

He was the White House staffer that was screaming at Sharyl Attkisson, and apparently Issa subpoenaed his butt too.

Drug Tests for Buying a Gun?

This idea would now seem to be endorsed by the Brady Campaign, as there is a White House petition for it as well. You can see the kind of juice the Brady Campaign has by the numbers appearing there. I’m wondering what other fundamental constitutional right requires you to pee pee in a cup before you can exercise it. It’s certainly interesting to see what new and strange ideas the Brady Campaign is supporting.

An additional 200 signatures have been added to the anti-HR822 petition since this morning. I’m becoming more convinced the White House may be using the e-mails they are collecting to get people to sign that petition. An intrepid reader has noted many of these folks track to individuals who are just generic lefties.

If you get anything from the White House, or anyone else, asking you to sign that petition, please forward it along to me. This could be a critical piece of evidence that could be used as a political club when the elections roll around. This is especially true if the e-mail is deceptive.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers. Just FYI, the pro-HR822 petition, which is the bill that create a national recognition scheme for concealed carry licenses, meaning states will recognize licenses from other states universally, can be found here. Please take some time to sign your name to it, so we can beat the forces of Obama and Mayor Bloomberg who are attempting to defeat it.

Recycling News?

I was surprised to come across this articleÂ about Wal-Mart caving to the gun control groups on “default proceeds”, because I thought most dealers had stopped doing that a while ago. Then I noticed this:

The new Wal-Mart policy on gun sale background checks has won praise from Michael D. Barnes, president of the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence. He said the decision to err on the side of caution puts safety before profit — a policy that should be emulated by other gun dealers.

Barnes hasn’t been President since 2006. So is the media so hard up for news stories that they are recycling news now? For the curious, a “default proceed” is where the background check doesn’t come back. The law says in that case, after a three day waiting period, if the check still has not come back, you can proceed with the sale. Most dealers won’t process sales under these terms these days, so reading, I was surprised Wal-Mart hadn’t changed that policy long ago. Well, turns out they probably did.

More Restaurant Carry Hysteria Fail

Our opponents tried to argue that the “guns in bars” bill would hurt tourism in Tennessee. Turns out tourism there actually has gone up, and predictions of alcohol fueled shootouts has failed to materialize. It’s a good thing none of our favorite gun control advocates are in the fortune telling business. I don’t think they’d last very long.

Some Guerrilla Tactics to Use Against MAIG

For those of you familiar with the Wikipedia culture, it occurs to me that MAIG’s Wikipedia page is pretty poor. Wikipedia pages are supposed to be factual, not promotion material for the organization. Some changes I would suggest:

It should be clear they are an organization that advocates gun control. Don’t let them get away with the “common sense” bullshit. What they propose is little different from the Brady Campaign or the other gun control groups.
Is should have a criticism section, rather than just “Opposition from the NRA,” with NRA’s criticism included in that, but I’d also mention some of their members criminal tendencies.
When it comes to what they advocate for, there should be a good mix of what they say, what we say, and what the facts are. They are not entitled to their own sets of facts. Be sure to find citations. For instance, it should be more clearly noted that police groups, including the ATF, oppose repealing Tiahrt.

Don’t let them turn their Wikipedia page into a propaganda tool. Wikipedia actually frowns on that, and if you keep things balanced, and factual, you can win. At the least, it forces MAIG to spend resources fighting with us and Wikipedia. Even if HR822 ultimately fails (given the makeup of the Senate, and the occupant of the White House, it probably will in this Congress), it’s forcing our opponents to spend significant resources. The more fronts we can engage them on, the less resources they will have when the final push comes. This is a clash of wills, and ours must be stronger for longer if we’re going to prevail in the end.