Year: 2009

The 'Hey, that's a pretty new gun!' posting of the month

I’m a bit overdue.

I had an interesting morning today. I went down to pick up a few new arrivals and saw a blue gun case, instantly tagging it as a Sig. So I thought to myself, “Why are we getting our third 556 in the past three weeks?” I opened the box and realized…this isn’t a 556, this is an AR! I ran up to the offices grabbed the Rifleman crew who assured me I wasn’t going insane. The Sig 516 is the new AR. Here’s a picture for you, but don’t tell anyone because it doesn’t exist.

Since we’re talking about a new gun, here’s what you need to know:

1. It’s piston operated and has an adjustable gas regulator similar to the Ruger 556.

2. It has an ambidextrous safety.

3. Comes with Yankee Hill folding rear and front sights.

4. It’s an AR.

via This is my Job: The SIG 516.

Ain’t it purdy? 😉

I must admit; that is a bit much for fire power for me personally. I’d be happy with a .357 glock or something of that nature. I mean, I want self defense; not start a war! 😛 😆

Anyhow, she is pretty. 😀

Does President Obama want to impose a VAT tax?

Great, that is all we need. 🙄

(H/T to Reason)

Does President Obama have a secret plan to raise taxes on middle-class Americans — and,well, pretty much everybody else — with a European-style, value-added tax? Actually, it’s not such a big secret. Connect the dots:

1) The joint statement from the just-concluded G20 Summit in Pittsburgh called for balanced global growth — which means Americans must spend less and save more and reduce its budget deficit.

2) That same weekend, John Podesta, co-chairman of Obama’s presidential transition team and an outside White House adviser, tells a Bloomberg reporter that a value-added tax is “more plausible today” than ever, adding that “there’s going to have to be revenue in this budget.” A VAT is a kind of consumption tax.

3) Yesterday, the Center for American Progress, the liberal think tank with close White House ties, holds a conference on the rising national debt. While speaker after speaker — Paul Krugman, Roger Altman, CAP President Podesta (again), Laura Tyson — admits entitlement spending must be reduced, they also agree that taxes must be raised. Altman suggests $400 billion in new tax revenue is needed almost immediately to calm financial market fears, and a VAT would be a great way of doing it. That’s $400 billion a year, by the way, not over ten years.

4) Also, yesterday was the first meeting of President Obama’s tax reform panel led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. In a two-part interview with Charlie Rose airing yesterday and today, Volcker says that if Washington can’t get spending under control, either a VAT or a carbon tax would be effective revenue raisers. “Those are two big ones,” he says.

5) As they used to say in the Soviet Union, “It’s no coincidence.” This is also the conclusion of one Washington insider with ties to the White House economic team: “Does this all add up to a trial balloon? Of course, it’s a trial balloon. And I expect the administration will propose major tax reform, including a VAT.”

via James Pethokoukis – Obama’s not-so-secret plan to raise taxes

Terrific. First Obama wants to shove healthcare down our throats and then he wants to tax the living hell out of us; to pay for it. Fantastic. 🙄

Somewhere, John McCain is smiling. Because he warned America, that if they elected Obama to be President; that this would be the result. Did America listen? Of course not. Because of mean ol’ Bush; people wanted change. While I can understand the desire for change. But did America want this sort of change? Of course not. However, elections have consequences; and this is one of them.

Realistically however, I doubt that the White House would be able to get something of this nature. It just does not seem feasible. The reason being that Congress knows that they are on borrowed time.  The midterms are coming; and I highly doubt that anyone in Congress would be that crazy to try and pass anything of this nature. Heck, there already is great infighting over the “Public Option” in that healthcare bill. So, this would even lead to more that.

So, while it would not hurt to be vigil for something of this nature. I highly doubt that the Democrats are going to attempt to do something this hair-brained.

Robert Stacy McCain comes out of the closet

Sometimes you read some of the funniest stuff on Blogs:

She’s not a bitter, angry man-hater, though. As she said, she just likes more feminine-type personalities. Which was kind of weird, in that she seemed to like me a lot. But we don’t want to contemplate that sort of complex geometric distortion in the gaydar bounce-back pattern, do we?

No, we don’t. I’m a happily married father of six, and anyone who suggests that this is some sort of overcompensation should be warned that my Samoan attorney is notoriously sensitive about potentially libelous defamation. It’s OK for me to call myself a “neo-Confederate lesbian” — that’s just self-referential humor — but woe unto any Little Green Loser who doesn’t get the joke.

via The Other McCain: Attention: Rule 5 fans of Kelsee Brown.

I remember reading somewhere once, that Mr. McCain was a really nice guy —- except for that little gay twang to his voice. Now I totally understand why. 😆

Happily married father of six. Ha! That’s what he wants us to believe. 😛 😉

End of the line for G.M. Saturn

Truly a sad story:

General Motors Co. will shut down Saturn now that a deal with former race car driver and auto dealer magnate Roger Penske has collapsed, marking the end of a brand that was supposed to revolutionize the way small cars were built and sold in America.

The deal with Penske was supposed to be finalized Wednesday. But the unexpected end came when his company, Penske Automotive Group Inc., was unable to find a manufacturer to supply vehicles for the brand’s dealerships. GM had agreed to keep building Saturn models like the Aura, Outlook and Vue through at least 2011, but after that, Saturn would have to come up with its own products.

Penske’s tentative deal buy Saturn was announced in early June.

“This is very disappointing news and comes after months of hard work by hundreds of dedicated employees and Saturn retailers who tried to make the new Saturn a reality,” GM CEO Fritz Henderson said. He said Saturn and its dealership network will be phased out.

via GM to Shut Down Saturn as Penske Walks  WXYZ-TV / Detroit

I remember when G.M. introduced this line of vehicles back in 1990. My parents almost bought one of those ugly cars; I personally could not stand them. I thought they were just plain ugly. I see that they have improved the look of them; quite a bit. But, more importantly, I remember thinking if G.M. ever hit hard times that these cars would be the first to go. Tragically, it turns out that I was correct.  My father also had the chance to go to Spring Hill, TN to the plant down there. Luckily instead, my Dad chose to go to the Detroit/Hamtramck assembly plant instead. I feel for all of those people who went down there; to make a better life for themselves and now they find themselves out of work. Some Conservatives may want to mock this; I am not one of them. I do not believe in mocking anyone’s misfortune.

Some Conservative bloggers would use this opportunity to bash the unions and the Democrats and Obama for their politics and policies; I am just not going to do it. There is a time and a place for that; and quite frankly, this just is not one of them. As a Son of an autoworker; I know the feeling of Dad being laid off, not knowing if he was going to be working again or not. I have been there. So, I am just not going to politicize this at all. I will leave that the other heartless bloggers, who get their kicks on trashing those who actually work for a living; unlike some of the bloggers who trash them. I could name names, but I think you know who I mean.

My Prayers are with the people of Spring Hill, Tennessee and the people working for Saturn. May God be with them, during this extremely difficult time.

Guest Voice: A TIMELINE OF 20TH CENTURY APOSTASY by David Cloud

September 30, 2009 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) –

The following is excerpted from the book The Modern Bible Version Hall of Shame, which is available from Way of Life Literature in both book and ebook formats. (292 pages)

Having looked at the late 18th and the 19th centuries and seen the apostasy that swept into Christian churches in the same era that produced modern textual criticism, we will now show a timeline of 20th century apostasy to document what has happened within Christianity at large as the modern critical texts and modern English versions have become dominant. We will begin at the very end of the 19th century after the publication of the English Revised Version and the Westcott-Hort Greek New Testament and move through the 20th. We will see that the unbelief that had begun as a stream in the late 18th century and had become a river in the 19th century became “a veritable ocean of unbelief” in the 20th. Like ivy, the modernism that had slept in the late 18th century and crept in the 19th, leapt in the 20th.

1900 — As a predecessor of the Pentecostal movement, John Alexander Dowie proclaimed that he was “Elijah the Restorer” who was to precede the Lord’s coming and that he was the first apostle of the renewed end time church. Dowie established Zion City north of Chicago, “where doctors, drugs, and devils were not allowed.” His own daughter died of serious burns when he refused medical assistance.
1901 — The modern tongues movement was launched when on New Year’s day Agnes Ozman, a student at Charles Parham’s Bethel Bible School in Topeka, Kansas, allegedly began to speak in a language she had never learned.

1904 — Sigmund Freud published his Psychopathology of Everyday Life, launching the movement of psychoanalysis that has brought such untold moral, spiritual, and psychological injury to modern society and that has permeated Christianity since the latter half of the century.

1906 — The strange and unscriptural “Azusa Street Revival,” with its gibberish “tongues,” false promise of healing, and women preachers, began in Los Angeles, inaugurating the Pentecostal movement.

——— Albert Schweitzer published The Quest for the Historical Jesus, claiming that Jesus was not the supernatural Messiah, the eternal Son of God, but a mere man who, thinking that the destruction of the world was imminent, attempted to usher it in by his death.

1907 — Walter Rauschenbusch published Christianity and the Social Crisis, popularizing the unscriptural Social Gospel. Other influential names in the Social Gospel movement were Washington Gladden and Charles Sheldon, author of In His Footsteps.

Continue reading “Guest Voice: A TIMELINE OF 20TH CENTURY APOSTASY by David Cloud” →

Updated: Why do Conservatives do stupid stuff like this??? Article pulled

Can anyone tell me?

Go read. Update #2: Newsmax has pulled the article. Good on them for doing this; as there is no place for this sort of talk amongst sane folks in the public discourse.

Good Lord. 🙄

Update: My Buddy Ed Morrissey; who’s much more dignified writer than me, (But don’t tell him I said that!) writes:

Newsmax actually ran this as a column, not a blog post.  It’s a lunatic fantasy straight out of Greek theater.  In those days, when mediocre tragedians wrote plots so complicated that they couldn’t resolve them through character interaction, the Deus ex machina (loosely, the Flying God Machine) would deposit a new actor portraying one of the Greek pantheon onto the stage to sort out the mess.  Perry fantasizes about a military takeover that would be the world’s most powerful Deus ex machina, mainly out of political laziness.

[….]

The alternative, non-violent solution is the one we’ve been using for 220 years: elections.  We have another coming in 2010.  If the American people get fed up with the direction of this government, then we will change it in the midterms.  We do not need our military to rescue us from ourselves, thank you very much.

One might excuse this kind of nihilism if it came from a college freshman who had no sense of his own nation’s history, but this comes from a man who served two White House administrations.  There is simply no excuse for this hankering for a banana republic in America from someone who should know much, much better.

To this I will simply add this. If anyone and I do mean anyone believes that any sort of a coup would be “Bloodless”, they are kidding themselves and are living in some sort of fantasy world. The secret service is just not going to stand idly by and allow the Military to overthrow the President.  They are sworn to protect the President; to the death and believe me, they will do it.

I will also say this; anyone that writes this sort of crap; should be fired from their job. I mean, it is one thing to be some sort of Far-right wing Blogger. But to be a writer at a magazine, like Newsmax and to write something like this; is just inexcusable. Shame on Newsmax for allowing this sort of nonsense into their publication. Rupert needs to take stock here and get rid of the garbage on his staff at Newsmax. Because quite frankly, it is starting to make the rest of us sane Conservatives look bad. 😡

Others: Right Wing Nut House, The Jawa Report, Scholars and Rogues, Confederate Yankee,

The Obligatory 'Why aren't Christians like superheros and taking America over' Posting

I have been putting this posting off for a while; mainly because I am a Christian myself and Because I was not sure where I wanted to go with it. But, I think this will suffice.

WorldNetDaily Laments in a article:

The commonly referenced “God gap” between Republicans and Democrats is disappearing.

Polls released before the 2008 election demonstrated America’s Christian voters are no longer synonymous with the political right: a George Barna survey showed born-again Christians evenly split between John McCain and Barack Obama, and a Public Religion Research study found that even among white Evangelicals, touchstone issues like abortion and same-sex marriage weren’t in their top five voting considerations.

If Christian voters share common morals and values, how is it that their voting patterns and priorities aren’t more unified?

According to a new study, the answer is that Christians don’t share a common worldview, their morals and values sprayed across the spectrum by differing views in a handful of key areas.

The 2009 Religious Activists Surveys – conducted by Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron in partnership

with Public Religion Research – focused on religious activists working on both “conservative” and “progressive” causes, and found that while the majority of both types called themselves Christian, they are driven apart by disagreements over social responsibility, biblical authority and the role of government.

The statistics reflect that Christians who differ in defining these key areas also differ in political and moral conviction.

One of the most troubling part of this article was this:

090926activistsstudybible

That last one is what bothers me and stands out as the reason why. 36% of Conservative activists do NOT consider the Bible to be the Literal word of God.  I know why that is; it is because Pastor’s themselves do not believe that; because Christian Colleges are not teaching that the Bible is the LITERAL Word of God anymore. Not only this, Pastors are not being Pastors anymore and are not Preaching the Word of God; but rather are preaching a “User friendly” version of Jesus Christ and trying to make him in to one’s “Homie” and making him a type of a God that “Winks at” sin. Further more, Holiness and separation from the World are not Preached any either.

I also believe it has to do with Bible Versions. I am a King James Bible advocate. I believe that the Church’s departure from the King James Bible; along with many other compromises have caused this.

This is confirmed in this article from The Christian Post:

A minister who preaches on the authority and infallibility of Scripture is often accused of being arrogant, said one pastor. Such criticism, however, is withheld from someone who sits on a stool in a cardigan and chats with the congregation, telling personal stories.

Criticizing the latter form, Doug Wilson, pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, made the case for the preacher who declares “thus saith the Lord.”

“A minister should ascend into the pulpit in order to declare what would have been true had he never been born. He is there to preach what was written in the Word before all ages and is utterly disconnected from his personal dreams, hopes and aspirations,” Wilson said at the Desiring God Ministries’ national conference in Minneapolis on Saturday. “A minister is not up there to develop a relationship with everybody individually.”

Ministers are not supposed to be extemporaneous actors trying to figure out their lines from everything other than the Bible, he noted. They may maintain that their scripts are better, their plot lines are grittier or that their shows make more money, but a minister’s script is Scripture, Wilson stressed.

“He is there to declare something that is outside of his control. What God has revealed to us in the Bible is the message. That’s the script.”

Wilson, who describes himself as a biblical absolutist, gave a nearly 60-minute talk on Calvin, the Bible and the Western world during the three-day conference themed “With Calvin in the Theater of God.”

The Moscow pastor, who also helped to establish the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches, sees ongoing battles today on the infallibility and inerrancy of the Word of God. But believers, he said, are neglecting the battle over the place of the Bible.

“Conservative evangelicals believe the Bible has no mistakes in it … but who today believes as Calvin did? Who treats the Bible as Calvin did?”

Now, I will give a bit of disclosure here; I totally disagree with this man’s Calvinist doctrine. But he does have a very valid point about Pastor’s today. Pastors have become more like motivational speakers; instead of preachers of the Word of God. They have become more like Priests, and not the kind of Pastors that you had in the 1940’s and 1950’s whop spoke out loudly against the sins of mankind. Instead they are interested in a “feel good” user friendly, type of Christianity; like that promoted by Rick Warren.

Now, I will admit; I have serious issues with the “Evangelical” and “Fundamentalist” Churches. I basically have been involved in both and I have seen the Good, Bad, and the Ugly of both. Hence the reason why I do not attend Church any longer. Do not misunderstand me; I believe the Gospel and I am a Christian, I have been for 26 years. But I feel that in this day of apostasy, that it is impossible to find a Church that is truly preaching the Word of God or to find a Pastor that does not insert himself into that preaching. Further more, I happen to know that most Pastors do not live what they preach. There are those that do. But the good majority do not.

Movie: The Cream Farewell Concert – 1968

Seeing that I am not interesting in writing about the Healthcare debacle or whether some child molesting Jew is brought to justice or not; or interested in blogging about how some whack jobs are praying to President Obama or not.

I figure I will post a video. This is Robert Stigwood’s Movie, that was released in 1977. It is a Movie about the Farewell concert of the rock group Cream. This is one of my favorite groups.

Enjoy.