AZ No-Permit Concealed Gun Carry

Greetings:

This is the dumbest move that I’ve seen yet. No background checks? No protection from totally insane people carrying a concealed weapon. Snopes doesn’t have anything on it. CBS and other news agencies have reported it as being true. The bill has been signed and will be in effect by July or August of 2010.

Everyone knows that I’m kind of right-wing, Second-Amendment-supporting kind of guy. But this is NUTS! Today’s laws in at least 36 states require 12 hours of training in gun safety to be sure that you know how to handle your pistol, they check almost ALL law-enforcement agencies to be sure that you are not some kind of felon or generally nasty guy, and – about 8 weeks later – you get a four year permit. To renew it for another four years you just attend a four-hour course to bring you up-to-date on changes to the laws.

Personally, this will shut down any reciprocity agreements with other states and label AZ as the nuttiest state in the USA. Other nutty states can now say, “Yeah, we’re a little crazy out here BUT have you heard what AZ is doing?”  VT and Alaska are the only states (maybe VA as well) that don’t require a concealed permit for concealed carry.  Honestly, this is just NUTS.  I firmly believe in the Second Amendment, but I also believe that to carry a concealed (or out in the open) weapon of ANY kind you should have been checked out and have passed a minimum course of training of SOME kind!  Alaska is a long way away and VT is a tiny piece of real estate on the northeast – not quite as big as the DFW area.

Well, those are my feelings.  I think we got it right in Texas.  You can’t carry in a bar (where bar is defined as any establishment that gets more than 50% of its income from the sale of alcoholic beverages), government office building, schools (any school), churches / synagogues / temples / mosques, hospitals, drug stores, etc.  AND, a business can put up a sign (in a very specific way and language) that says even permit holders can not carry guns / weapons in their place of business.  (I don’t go to those places and I leave them a note telling they why.)  Personally, I think that if you have a permit, you probably should be allowed to carry IF THE OWNER / PASTOR / PRIEST / WHATEVER gives you permission even in a bar, church or even a school.  Faculty in a university (or even a grade school) should be allowed (required?) to carry.  Naaaahhh – just allow it.  If they don’t want to carry let them be the victim along with the students the next time some nut comes in (without a permit, of course) and shoots up the place.

Back to AZ.  Think about it.  They are right on the border with Mexico and the Mexican drug wars can now spill over across the border and the people of AZ can’t do a bloody thing about it.  Me?  If I ever have to go to AZ it will be to drive through without stopping and carry a much firepower as I can – just in case.  I think I would rather get in the rattlesnake pit during the Rattlesnake Roundup here (Sweetwater) than to spend a night in AZ.  And all of this coming from a right-wing, independent, gun-toting Texan.

SDG

Yaakov

Obama “snubs” England’s PM

Greetings:

According to the (London) Telegraph Obama snubbed the UK PM because he was “too tired” to show proper respect. Hmmm… Our CLOSEST ally in the world, the “home country” to most of the USA, that England of Shakespeare who said, “This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, …”

Why? He was tired from wrestling with the worries of the depression in the USA. (There! Someone has finally called it what it is!) See

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/4953523/Barack-Obama-too-tired-to-give-proper-welcome-to-Gordon-Brown.html

for the complete review. Mostly, the Telegraph is saying that maybe we have the wrong man in the wrong place when he is “too tired” to meed the head of his closest ally in the world. Maybe he would have had more time if Gordon Brown was a the “right” color or represented an African nation or one of the Muslim nations. Maybe… Or maybe Michelle is just keeping him too busy. Who knows?

Whatever the reason, he needs to straighten out his priorities and show the proper respect for a Prime Minister from a nation who has always supported the USA. Maybe we DID get the wrong man in office here….

SDG
Yaakov

SDG
Yaakov
Proud Member of
The Republic of Texas

Obama and “Change”

Greetings:

Sorry, Charlie. (Or should I say, “Sorry, Barack.”?) I just do NOT see a “change” in the way things are being done in congress, the senate nor the white house. Same-o, same-o. Only the bankers are getting “bailed out” and the auto makers are getting “bailed out” and the flakes that got mortgages that they could not afford are getting “bailed out.”

What about Ordinary Joe?? You know, the guy who pays his bills even when he doesn’t have the money? Who pays his mortgage on time? And teaches his children that you should always repay a loan? What a fool he is!!

Answer? Well, it will be four years before we can vote for someone who is NOT an Obama, who is NOT a George Bush, who is NOT a rock star of some kind, but a “real” business man or woman who actually knows something about economics. Someone for whom straight answers are NOT ” out of my pay grade.”

SDG
Yaakov
Proud Member of
The Republic of Texas

First 2008 Presidential Debate

OK, it wasn’t exactly a debate – but personally I liked it much better than a debate.  They had the same questions that they had to answer from the Southern Baptist pastor at Saddleback church in California, one of the few SBC Mega-Churches with more than 22,000 members.  Just in case you missed it, here is just a sampling of the questions, answers and comments by another Texas Jewish Cowboy (me).  

I have always discounted John McCain as another Hillary Clinton but wearing a Republican arm band. Obama I haven’t trusted since he said that he could no more desert his pastor than he could desert the black community nor his white grandmother – and then promptly deserted his pastor two weeks later. What a wimp! I had said during the preliminaries that if it was McCain versus Clinton in the presidential vote, I wouldn’t even bother going to the polls because they were cut out of the same piece of cloth. OK, here are just a few of the questions and answers from last night:

To whom would you go for counseling?  (name three):  Obama names his wife, then his mother, then said that there were many others someone outside of the “family.”  McCain names General Patraeus, then John Lewis (D.Ga) – civil rights leader – and then Meg Whitten, the CEO of EBay.  Sorry, but I read Michelle’s thesis – I certainly would not trust her as the First Counsel for the President of the United States. General Patraeus, while not my first choice, did have the knowledge to straighten up the armed forces in Iraq so that we have a chance.

Does evil exist and if so how would you deal with it? Obama said that Americans must have humility when confronting evil. McCain said, “Defeat it! If I have follow him to the gates of Hell I will get Osama Bin Laden.” He also stated that the Al Queda is now in both Iraq and Afghanistan and that we need to put the pressure on him there rather than here. I rather like that much more than the namby-pamby, politically correct answer that Obama gave.

When does life begin? Consider that we have had 40 Million abortions in the USA since Roe versus Wade Supreme Court decision. Obama said that he was not in a high enough pay grade to answer that one. (Not only a duck and dodge, but a really wimpy duck and dodge.) Obama then stressed that because he was Pro Choice did not mean that he was Pro Abortion. (Sorry, Charlie – they’re one and the same.) McCain immediately said, “At conception.”

When asked about their darkest moments and toughest decisions, McCain responded with the, by now, well-know episode in the Hanoi Hilton (North Korean prison camp) where he had to decide to follow the code of conduct when he was offered release before prisoners who had been there longer than himself. He declined and spent another three years in the Hanoi Hilton. I don’t even remember what Obama said but it was not notable. What McCain did NOT say was that the North Koreans broke his already broken arms (he broke both arms when he bailed out and crashed) again in prison. He also told of the Christian prison guard who relieved his pain once when his elbows were pulled up behind his back and his head was forced down between his knees and he had been left there for the night. Later that year, on Christmas Day, the guard wandered up to McCain and with his boot drew a cross in the dirt.

I didn’t know it before, but now I KNOW the man that I want leading my country for the next four (or eight) years – and it is not a wimp from Chicago; it’s the man of iron, the REAL man of iron, that I saw last night. I was wrong last year and most of this year about McCain – he is decisive, clear, articulate and a strong right-wing Christian. If he picks a Jew for a running mate, who can stop him? You can find some of talk scattered around the internet – my left wing newspaper ran only a 1/4 page on the inside back of the main section.

SDG
Yaakov

George, George, George

George, George, George!! Why, oh why, did we ever vote for you in the first place? We thought that you would do so much good and on 9-11 we thought that you were a real President. But you have SO disappointed us. By “us” I mean all of the conservative (read, Orthodox) Jews, (read, Baptists and Charismatic) Christians and others of faith who thought that you had repented from your foolish boyhood transgressions and would lead a moral life.

True, you didn’t diddle with the interns in the Oval Office as did your predecessor. Worse. You diddled the American voter. Afghanistan I could see – almost. Iraq? Well I think you lied to us on that one. (Just one man’s opinion, not a fact.) But NOW you seem to have gone behind closed doors with a major real estate agent (a former logger) and negotiated to sell off 1.2 MILLION Acres of National Forest for home development. And (so said the article in today’s paper) it “could” lead to paving of the logging trails – not that it “would” but that it “could” – do you guys really believe that we (the voters) are THAT dumb?

If selling off National Forest land was a good thing, then it should have been open for bid to anyone who wanted to buy it. If it was not a good thing the no one should have been allowed to buy it. George, we hardly knew ya – but we got to know more about you that we wanted to know.

For more details on what Georgie Boy has been up to the past few years see

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/george_w_bush/index.html?query=LOGGING%20INDUSTRY&field=des&match=exact

SDG
Yaakov