Bitter – Page 74 – Shall Not Be Questioned

A Gift to the Birthers

Oh, the joys of Pennsylvania politics already picking up steam so soon after the election:

Ok, Birthers, listen up: You now have a Democrat seeking high office who admits to being born in Kenya.

As far as we know he’s not Muslim or a socialist, but he is, as of Wednesday, running to unseat Republican Gov. Corbett in 2014.

Interestingly, he can’t use the office as a stepping stone to be president since he wasn’t just born in Kenya to American parents. He was born to British parents and only became a US citizen in 1977.

Today is the day for the vote in the Senate for the Sportsmen’s Act, a bill that pulls together many issues that NSSF and NRA have been pushing lately. According what I saw on C-SPAN earlier, it looks like the vote will come around 5:30pm. However, there’s already been a vote on cloture.

Assuming the vote follows the same lines, it should pass pretty handily. The cloture vote was 84 yeas, 12 nays, and 4 no votes.

Cyber Monday Shopping for Gun Nuts

I may have been perusing a few gift ideas for Sebastian when I happened upon some gunnie goodness that I thought was worth sharing for any of you who have stockings to stuff or gifts to give to fellow fans of the Second Amendment.

Perhaps you know someone in need of something practical like soap or a bottle opener:

Or maybe there’s someone on your list who likes a little bling with their gun goodies:

If none of those are quite right, there’s always decor for the walls:

All images link to the stores where you can purchase your gun-related gifts. If you really want to go all out in the gun theme, you can always borrow an idea from Sebastian and use extra targets for wrapping paper.

Animal Rights Fly Camera in Front of Firing Gun

Let’s see, there’s an event happening on private property that requires shooters to fire at flying targets. So what do animal rights activists decide to do? Fly a camera into the shooting field where guns are going off. The results are predictable.

Police say a protester’s remote control helicopter was damaged by gunfire at a Pennsylvania pigeon shoot.

(h/t @bergerjd)

Another Member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns Convicted

Last week, another member of Bloomberg’s Illegal Mayors Against Guns group was convicted & sentenced for his crimes. Michael Pembleton of Sunflower, MS was caught in March loading $7,100 of designer purses he stole from his employer in the back of his vehicle. Yet, amazingly, Bloomberg featured Pembleton’s name on this ad asking Congress to do more to keep criminals from getting guns.

It Failed to Meet Our Goals, So Let’s Do It Again!

One of the running jokes I’ve always heard about the left is that when they see one of their favorite programs utterly and completely fails to fix whatever problem they identified, they say that they just need to do the exact thing again – only harder! I don’t think I’ve ever seen that joke so plainly stated like I did today in this post from a Philly site.

It used to be that cities responded to [wildly swinging rents] with hard rent control, actually preventing price increases, but now virtually all economists on both the left and the right think rent control is a horrible policy that leads to housing shortages. Rent control was great at halting price increases for the small number of people lucky enough to get rent controlled apartments, but for the majority of people it meant higher market rents in all the other buildings.

See, we have the concession that the idea to control the problem was a total and utter failure that actually made the problems they were trying to solve much worse and invited new problems. So what’s the solution they want to see? A newly branded rent control program that’s slightly softer and given a new name – rent stabilization.

The immediate impacts that I can see in the specific policies they cite, even as a person who knows next to nothing about real estate or property management other than having rented with several different property owners, are that buildings would never be improved because rents could not increase beyond a set percentage to pay for it, building owners would have a harder time selling buildings because of mandatory longer term leases that would have to be honored by the next owner, and landlords would be less likely to take risks on renters who don’t come with a perfect background because of a mandatory guarantee right to renew from tenants.

Calling a “bullshit policy” a “manure-infested idea” doesn’t change the fact that it will ultimately hurt people seeking nice and reasonable accommodations that fit their budgets.

I realize that this is way off topic for this blog, but it was just too funny not to share.

Another Misbehaving Bloomberg Mayor Against Guns

This New Jersey mayor might not be considered an official member of the “Illegal Mayors Against Guns” club yet, but he’s on his way since Borough Council & the Borough Attorney investigating which laws he may have broken.

North Haledon, NJ Mayor Randy George decided to help himself to a city generator in order to chill the freezers at his personal business (an ice cream shop) while the rest of his city went without power following Sandy. He also gave another city generator to his buddy Police Chief Robert Bracco for purely personal use at home.

The defense the Mayor gave to this decision he now admits was unwise (as he’s being investigated for the misuse of city equipment for his personal profits) is that he was working hard and the Police Chief was working hard, so he just assumed that he had the authority to hijack city equipment for their own personal benefit.

As a member of Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns, I guess that Mayor George really does believe he’s more deserving of these taxpayer-funded perks than all of his little constituents who went without heat, light, and lost food when their personal freezers went unpowered.

Gun Owner Votes Count

I get so damn sick of the message that individual votes don’t matter. Last election, we had a local state house race that was decided by around 100 votes. That’s so close that it’s painful. Well, this year, we have an even more painful vote – and that’s even with the numbers working in favor of the pro-gun candidate and against the anti-rights guy.

For those who don’t follow Pennsylvania politics closely, we had this legislator named Levdansky. He was the American Hunters & Shooters Association of lawmakers. He proclaims to be a sportsman, but he actively sought to screw all gun owners and even ruin everything for hunters in Pennsylvania by pushing HSUS-dream type bills. He cozied up to anti-rights groups and CeaseFire PA made his attempt to reclaim the office he lost in 2010 their priority House race this year.

Meanwhile, the current incumbent, Rep. Rick Saccone, actually supports Second Amendment and hunting rights.

This year, they are in a rematch. I say are and not were because the race is still to be determined. For a while, Levdansky was up by a few votes, but a more thorough count of all of the ballots in every precinct now puts Saccone up by 36 votes. Three dozen voters.

Because it’s such a close call, it’s going to hearings by the election board which is 2-1 Democratic control. The hearing isn’t until Friday, and the final count isn’t expected until next week, according to various news outlets.

If you happen to know any gun owners who didn’t vote in that race, you might want to give them a piece of your mind. Every vote will matter, and this razor thin margin makes it too close for comfort for any gun owner in the state.

Philadelphia to be Sued

The lawsuit against the City of Philadelphia for publishing gun owner details in violation of state law is moving forward:

Attorney Joshua Prince filed a motion this week in Common Pleas Court, requesting that the suit be sealed to avoid revealing the names of his five clients – and potentially hundreds of others if the case is granted class-action status.

In August, the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections introduced a revamped website, featuring a map that allowed users to view the names and addresses of some gun owners in the city, and the specific reasons why they wanted a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

When the information was initially posted, Mayor Michael Nutter actually defended the posted information by saying that once gun owners appealed their license denials, they lost any right to privacy provided by state law and that the information could be obtained like any other public record. However, now Nutter’s office isn’t willing to make such an argument.

In fact, Prince actually went to test the theory by sending someone to the office that published the information with a written request earlier this fall. Not surprisingly, the request was denied because now the City acknowledges that it isn’t public information at all. So, Mr. Nutter, was your spokesman lying then or are your city workers lying now? I guess we’ll find out what the courts think soon.

A Former Bloomberg Gun Control Ally Breaks Probation

One of Mike Bloomberg’s allies in Mayors Against Illegal Guns who only left the coalition when she had to resign from office when convicted of multiple crimes is in the court system again. After reaching a deal with prosecutors, she’s already in violation of her probation.

Court records show former Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon has been charged with violating her probation on theft and perjury charges.

Dixon, a Democrat, resigned in 2010 after she pleaded guilty to lying about gifts from her former boyfriend, a developer who received tax breaks from the city. She was also convicted of stealing about $500 in gift cards donated to the city for needy families.

That’s right, Bloomberg’s gun control project had him working with a mayor who stole gifts for families in poverty, and even when the court allowed her probation, she still couldn’t keep herself out of trouble. I guess this means we need to give his project a new nickname – Illegaler Mayors Against Guns.

Author: Bitter