↓ Archives ↓

Posts Tagged → gun

Somebody Primary RINO US Sen. Pat Toomey

Few personality types bother guys more than weak, weasely, whiny men, and US Senator Pat Toomey is all that in spades, and much more, or less. It stinks to have an elected “leader” like Toomey demonstrate so little leadership quality, and even worse, to publicly flout his less-than-manly characteristics. Always appearing in public with some kind of fakey senatorial bearing, Toomey’s speech is similarly a fake serious tone, a kind of deeply thoughtful grasshopper. What a show. He reminds us very much of another phony RINO, congressman Charlie Dent, now thankfully gone from public life where he also did so much damage to the American people.

Pat Toomey is one of the great RINOs of today’s Republican Party. For the uninitiated, RINO means “Republican In Name Only,” which really translates into a liberal. Not a conservative. In it for the money. Not committed to freedom or liberty or the US Constitution.

Toomey exhibits weak-kneed indecision and back-stabbing liberalism traits pretty much every day on the job. He does not have the president’s back, but much like another RINO senator, Mittens Romney, Toomey seeks to falsely burnish his credentials by actually blocking, damaging, or criticizing the one person who is trying to right the American ship, President Trump. As if Toomey is so, so thoughtful and carefully considerate.

Toomey has been a real go-getter on disarming law abiding citizens, hatching one gun-grabbing scheme after another, always punishing the law-abiding and never, ever being tough on actual crime and real criminals. The other day he was one of a few US Senate RINOs to vote with the anti-America Democrats against the president’s border emergency wall, as if there is no border crisis, no illegal invasion crisis.  Toomey might as well join AOC down at the border handing out taxpayer-funded sombreros and bottled water to illegals on their way into the taxpayer funded haven of America.

And on this new Trump-Ukraine phone call fake scandal, where a rogue spy within the American defense system filed a fake “whistleblower complaint,” Toomey says the President’s phone call may have been “inappropriate,” but not impeachable. Since when was the effort by the US President to bring to justice a treasonous and corrupt American, Joe Biden, inappropriate? America and Ukraine have an anti-corruption treaty that the president was implementing, as is his job. Toomey should have pointed to admittedly corrupt Joe Biden as the subject of this scandal. Biden used his previous Vice President position to blackmail Ukraine and to enrich his family.

Is Toomey against bringing Biden to justice?

Even worse, several US senators from the Democrat Party actually visited the Ukraine and wrote a letter, directly threatening Ukraine leaders, saying they would vote to withhold promised US defense funds if the Ukraine actually DID investigate Joe Biden’s son. How is that for hypocritical and bald-faced lying irony?

And yet, where is Pat Toomey on all of this? He says nothing about his senate colleagues blackmailing Ukraine and is ho-hum about the US President just doing his duty as president.

Like just about every other Washington, DC political hack, spineless career politician Pat Toomey remains purposefully and deeply insulated from reality, and yet he has so much negative impact on the real lives the rest of us lead. If there is one solid RINO candidate for a strong primary opponent, it is Pat Toomey. The guy has no fight in him, not for us, and it would be easy for a good primary opponent to simply tick off the laundry list of assaults Toomey has led against citizen rights and needs over the years he has inhabited this seat. Someone please primary this bad guy. You will get a lot of support from real Republicans. That is, patriots and conservatives.

Chief Weasel and RINO king, Pat Toomey, begging for a primary opponent

Arsonists burning down America accuse NRA + good gun owners

If you have any interest in what is happening in America, and no I do not mean the latest Hollywood family-rotting junk movie release or the latest sound-alike violent-thug rap song on iTunes, but rather the latest and most serious sociopolitical developments in the greatest and freest nation in the world, then you must watch the brief footage of last week’s Philly shoot-out (posted below).

Nothing captures what is happening in America, and why it is happening, better than the headline-grabbing shoot-out between ultra violent career criminal Maurice Hill and the Philadelphia police.

  • Despite facing scores of Philly police officers armed with AR15s and M4 automatic versions of the AR15 rifle, Hill was neither killed nor did he out-gun the police facing him, though he did lightly wound six officers who were brave enough to boldly charge into the building in which he held a hostage
  • Hill is a many-time convicted illegal drug and gun felon who was legally barred from owning any guns at all, including a sporting rifle like the AR15
  • Hill is a many-time convicted violent felon, whose many violent crimes with firearms landed him in court many times, but not doing any real jail time afterwards. As a result, Hill was a classic catch-and-release career criminal who should be in jail for decades but who is free among good law abiding people to purvey his happy life of crime, all gratis of liberal judges and district attorneys.
  • Hill did not have to commit his latest violent crime, but he was enabled by white liberals who hold that criminals like Hill are “victims” and law-abiding Americans are criminals
  • Hill was cheered on by dozens of local citizens, who also aggressively jeered the police officers there, threw trash on them, and challenged them to physical conflict
  • Philadelphia mayor Jim Kenney immediately showed up on the scene and blamed the police, blamed guns, blamed private ownership of guns, blamed the National Rifle Association, blamed the American voters and taxpayers. Kenney did not blame career criminal Maurice Hill for the situation, nor did he blame the culture of violence in which Hill grew up and which is reinforced daily by violent Hollywood movies, violent anti-police rap music, an activist media that blames American freedoms, and white liberals like Mayor Kenney

For decades white liberals like mayor Jim Kenney have performed arson on America, and now they are blaming law-abiding gun owners and the non-gun-owning citizens who support their rights for the resulting conflagration.

For many decades white liberals in politics, in the media, in academia, in public and private schools, in unions, in the destructive anti America groups like the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center, and especially in the corrupting Hollywood media-entertainment octopus complex have done their utmost to set fire to America and burn it to the ground.

White liberals’ singular goal appears to have been to eventually re-make America into some different new utopia polity with an all- powerful government at its center, instead of the sovereign citizen voter whose power has always been diffused across the country, as demonstrated by the genius Electoral College. Having a powerful centralized government and no individual rights will allow liberals to force Americans to live exactly the way liberals think they must live, to make the “correct” choices.

And part of this white liberal arson program is to then blame the victims of their arson. Which means that after destroying America’s cities, ruining the families and communities of American Blacks and turning them into part of the fake liberal grievance factory, creating lawlessness by willfully failing to enforce the law (immigration, gun laws) on the one hand and then breaking the law on the other, white liberals can turn around and demand more “gun control” and demonize innocent Americans who have done nothing wrong.

Disarming law-abiding citizens is the primary goal of white liberals. Liberals have no interest in controlling crime, as proven by their judges’ and DAs’ failure to enforce gun laws on the books across the nation. Rather, they seek to remove the one great barrier to their dreams of unfettered tyranny, an armed citizenry.

White liberals own the Philly shoot-out. Maurice Hill is a direct product of white liberals and the Democrat Party; Maurice Hill is the left’s latest and greatest creation. Because Hill both implements the violent chaos and bodies in the street that the left needs to blame their political enemies, and he embodies the fake grievance victim who is never responsible for his violent actions.

Maurice Hill enables the Democrat Party to blame guns, blame America, blame Americans, and so the Democrat Party will continue to produce as many Maurice Hills as they can. I think there were about 56 Maurice Hills in Chicago last week, and about 34 the week before, despite all of Chicago’s cutting-edge “gun control.”

Like Chicago, Philadelphia now burns, and the Democrat Party cheers.

You want to end violent crime, and help American Blacks? Stop voting for Liberal Democrats, and start voting for officials who promote old-fashioned values like following the law, making good choices, foregoing immediate gratification for eventual big success, self reliance, community, family.

Here is the Democrat Party’s Maurice Hill 1, 2, 3, 4

Liberals own every shooting in America

A dear old friend wrote me “You need to come down from your mountain and see the craziness that is taking over America!”

Hon, I am living on my mountain because of all the craziness that liberals have unleashed upon American society and Western Civilization. Liberals have just about ruined the best, freest, most incredible country in human history. Only in little remote pockets can we find peace of mind, peace and quiet, freedom and liberty, the ability to do as we need without having some government bureaucrat prying into our private lives or threatening us for growing a garden.

For decades liberals have been removing the wheels from the American car, and now that they have the wheels off, they demand that we voters turn over the car keys to them because they say the car is too dangerous for us to drive…

Professional criminal Maurice Hill’s shoot out in Philly yesterday left six officers injured. Maurice Hill had already committed a laundry list of violent crimes using firearms, and any one of those should have put him behind bars for decades.

But no, that did not happen despite many bites at the apple.  Instead, liberal judges, liberal mayors, liberal  prosecutors, liberal activists, liberal lawyers at the American Bar Association and the Pennsylvania Bar Association, liberal doctors at the American Medical Association, and so on, liberals everywhere have done their utmost to turn criminals like Hill into “victims,” who deserve our empathy and gentlest caresses, instead of being held accountable for their actions. Liberals blame society, not criminals, for the destructive behavior of criminals like Hill.

And now, having practically destroyed America’s criminal justice system and having unleashed a tidal wave of violent criminals like Hill upon us taxpayers, liberals stamp their feet and pout and yell and cry and do other forms of angry child behavior to shame Americans into giving up our firearms.

Ban guns? No way!

America needs to ban liberalism and ban the destructive liberals who purvey, force and sneak liberalism upon the normal people who keep America functioning. Liberals ought to pay a special federal tax for being liberal, to help defray the huge costs they impose on American society.

“Red flag” laws are just legalized “swatting” of neighbors we hate

All this talk about “red flag” laws is simple nonsense, addressed months ago in-depth here in an essay that was borrowed from by people who care. I put a lot of effort into researching the subject and then wrote extensively about it. But it won’t matter to the anti-gun prohibitionists, who are on a single-minded jihad against legal gun ownership.

Red flag laws don’t solve crime, they actually create crime, in particular official violence against innocent Americans. In the form of uninformed, misinformed, hyped up SWAT police kicking in the doors of innocent, unsuspecting citizens who then get shot while reaching to put down the book they were reading. To gun haters, this is all fine and dandy; anything they can do to hurt and intimidate law abiding gun owners is good. The more bloody bodies, the better.

“See, if he hadn’t had those old guns in the first place, he would not have been shot by the police,” they say, gleefully chuckling over the well-deserved misfortune of one of the many innocent law abiding gun owners to fall victim to red flag laws. This is called “swatting,” where someone calls the police and makes an anonymous complaint or warning about a supposedly violent or dangerous neighbor. Innocent people die, and that is OK to the anti gun jihadis.

Anti gun advocates do not care about solving crime. If they did, they would look at all of the failed gun control nonsense across America, particularly in the big urban areas, and reach for a different approach, a different set of policies. But dead black kids don’t mean anything to anti gun activists, if those kids were shot by other black kids. In fact, the perverse reverse is true: Dead black kids are welcomed and cultivated by anti gun advocates, because those bleeding bodies in the street give them more ammunition to complain about “guns” and how evil they are blah blah blah.

So here we go again. The careerist Republicans in congress appear to be ready to capitulate on this, just to get the Democrat press off their backs for a minute, even though they know that as soon as they give in on red flag laws, the anti-freedom crusaders will be right back with even more demands for our rights. Just look at how US Senate Democrats today threatened the US Supreme Court! ‘You had better stop voting for individual rights, or we are going to take you over.’

Which is really what the red flag junk is about: Political control, control of individuals, the desire to make American citizens just get in the damned PC line and stay there until we smart people tell you to take your next step.

The Democrat Party has become a lawless mafia, always trying to change the rules of the game if they lose by the old rules we all agreed to over the past two hundred and some odd years: Get rid of the Electoral College, get rid of the Supreme Court, get rid of guns, get rid of free speech, get rid of the US House of Representatives rules, give away your Social Security benefits to illegal aliens and make us taxpayers wait until we are 72 to start collecting what we put in, and so on…it boggles my mind that any intelligent adult can vote for this nonsense.

But then again, I am always amazed at how sadistic and cruel people can be, and now I recognize and accept that there is an American political party dedicated to just that kind of person. To paraphrase another former Democrat, I didn’t leave the Democrat Party, they left me.

But as I walk out the door, I am throwing the red flag at the Democrat Party – You are out of bounds and out of the game! Get out!

UPDATE! Even as I wrote this post last night, a long-time Philadelphia criminal, Maurice Hill, was engaged in a shoot-out that injured six police officers. Hill has been arrested at least a dozen times, most often for serious violent firearm laws violations. Hill had served jail time. The question is why was he out of jail at all, and why was he repeatedly allowed to get out of serious criminal situations that would end the career of any otherwise law-abiding citizen?

America has developed a two-tiered law enforcement system: Typical law-abiding citizens who make a mistake or a single bad decision and run afoul of some law get the whole book thrown at them; their lives and professional careers are over for all intents and purposes. But on the other hand, ultra violent career criminals like Hill are caught and released time and time again, despite violating all kinds of gun laws any one of which should have put him behind bars for decades.

No gun laws anywhere will stop dangerous people like Hill from committing bad crimes, and we see that gun control laws are not designed to end or stop crime. Gun control laws are only designed to remove guns from private ownership, especially from the hands of law abiding citizens. These laws are aimed at taking away guns from good people like you and me, and leaving them in the hands of hardened criminals like Maurice Hill.

Think about that.

PA Farm Bureau & PA Grange thieving property rights and gun rights

Who would think that two organizations I have always revered would turn out to be the absolute biggest threats to private property rights and our Second Amendment rights?

Sadly, it is true that the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau and the Pennsylvania Grange have gone on a crusade against private property rights, hunting, and gun rights that has shocked everyone to the bone, most especially the traditional opponents of these activities like the Humane Society and CeasefirePA, who have now joined with them.

When the PFB and the Grange shack up with the Humane Society, a group dedicated to ending farming and animal husbandry as we know it, and with CeasefirePA, and against the NRA, then you know both organizations have gone off the rails. But the fact is, both PFB and the Grange are in full crusade mode right now, and there is no end in sight.

It all started with their opposition to expanding Sunday hunting in Pennsylvania. Including small game, groundhogs, or big game in Sunday hunting (presently limited to coyotes, foxes, and crows), somehow ignited a firestorm of indignation among the octogenarians running both of these organizations. Canes were rattled, and the political war was on against anyone advocating for more hunting opportunities in Pennsylvania. Every bit of political and legislative capital these two groups can muster has been brought to bear in every avenue of political decision making. The net result is not just that they are on record being against other people hunting on Sunday, but that our existing hunting rights, gun rights, and property rights are now being diminished and in the case of Sunday target shooting, at real risk. Until now, no one outside of the anti-gun CeasefirePA had been opposed to target shooting, especially on private property.

Pennsylvania is one of just THREE states in America that has no big game hunting on Sunday. So it’s not like Pennsylvanians asking for expanded Sunday hunting are on the fringe of some crazy movement. The rest of the country is already doing it.

But PFB and the Grange have acted as if Sunday hunting will end civilization as we know it, and they went to war with a scorched earth approach. Both organizations are now on record trying to eliminate even target shooting on Sunday, even on private land, let alone archery hunting on private land on Sunday. This has been an all-out political assault on private property rights and on our Second Amendment rights. What private property owners do on their own land on any day of the week is of zero consequence to anyone else, but PFB and the Grange have made it their business to control what you do.

Didn’t Pennsylvania pass the right-to-farm laws so that farmers could do what they need to do, seven days a week, without interference? Turns out that the organizations dedicated to farming are not dedicated to the actual farmers and property owners themselves. Not really. Lots of farmers and farmland owners want to hunt and shoot on Sunday.

Take the Grange. Their motto is “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.”

Their mission is “Pennsylvania State Grange supports the local Granges to help members grow as individuals, unify their communities and create opportunity through legislation and community service.”

And yet the Grange is taking hard political positions exactly opposite of their motto and mission. There is no unity, liberty, or charity in their opposition to private property rights and to the Second Amendment. There is nothing helping members grow as individuals when the Grange stands in our way of hunting with our families and friends, on our own private land, when our complicated schedules allow for us to be together.

Beware these two organizations. They are prime examples of how a few people can hijack an organization and destroy its credibility in one swift and foolish move, and take our most sacred rights down the toilet with them.

“Red Flag” ERPOs are violent, dangerous, un-American

In the 2002 movie “Minority Report,” police identify and swiftly SWAT-team-style arrest potential criminals before they have committed a crime, even if they are not in the act of committing the crime. That lack of due process, the discarding of the American core value of the presumption of innocence, and the mis-use of quacky, uncertain technology to concretely deprive citizens of their liberties for crimes they did not yet commit, and possibly only imagined, is at the movie’s heart.

Like the 1949 book 1984, in Minority Report an an all-seeing, all-controlling government squashes individuality, individual rights, and free thought by criminalizing “thought crimes,” even thoughts that have not actually been implemented in the physical world. The gist of both the 1949 book and the 2002 movie being that coercive government power can be easily mis-used and that it is at the core of illegitimate governance that justifies civilian resistance and disobedience.

So, welcome to Minority Report and 1984 in your life, right now, in the form of “Red Flag,” “Extreme Risk Prevention Order” and the politically named “Gun Violence Restraining Order” (there is no such thing as ‘gun violence’). These risky programs are being slowly enacted and implemented in states across America in the name of safety.

Theoretically, both ERPOs and GRVOs are designed to get out ahead of a gun owner and send in the SWAT team before that gun owner possibly commits a crime with a gun. Like the ill-fated “No Fly List” bar to gun ownership, both ERPOs and GRVOs are designed to empower police to quickly bypass the natural due process safeguards our federal Constitution explicitly grants to each citizen, behind a screen of secrecy and unaccountable government employees, in the name of immediate if poorly defined security.

The problem with these programs is that they are failing everywhere for reasons that anyone with a shred of common sense had been and would normally employ when assessing the possible risk-benefit value of laws encouraging police to go all cowboy on people who have not actually committed a violent crime. In every place where ERPOs and GRVOs have been implemented, police have aggressively gunned down in cold blood totally innocent citizens, often in their own homes, and always in circumstances where the citizen was either not armed or was only armed because the police had acted like violent, illegal home invaders that an armed citizen would normally resist.

Their results have been exactly the opposite of stopping violence, as ERPOs and GRVOs actually encourage violence; but it’s by the government against the citizen, which ERPO proponents want.

These programs are the anti-gun activist’s dream come true, as the true purpose of ERPOs and GVROs is to generally stigmatize all gun ownership and all individual gun owners by creating an automatic suspect class. Almost all of these programs enable pretty much anyone to call the police and “SWAT” some gun owner the person doesn’t like, doesn’t agree with politically, has a property line dispute with, wants to make an example of etc. “SWATTING” is where someone calls in a bogus threat to a local police department, identifying someone who is actually innocent and unsuspecting that in mere minutes his door is about to come crashing in with a heavily armed SWAT team who thinks he is holding a hostage with a gun to the head.

  • ERPOs and GRVOs are the legalization and encouraging of SWATTING.
  • ERPOs and GRVOs are dangerous; they promote violence, especially against innocent people.
  • ERPOs and purposefully anti-gun-named GVROs are a direct threat to all American citizens, because due process is thrown out the door from the very beginning.
  • These are back door channels to criminalizing gun ownership, mass intimidation and big government control over peaceful, law abiding gun owners.
  • They are purposefully vague, potentially random, and are more than anything a NAZI Gestapo tactic to bully law abiding gun owners into relinquishing their guns out of fear of being dimed out for some imagined, fake crime.

Why are ERPOs and GRVOs happening? They are becoming popular because due process has gone out the window since Obama was elected in 2008. Obama ran an increasingly abusive government without a shred of respect for the rule of law or due process, and his big government admirers everywhere followed in his step. The result has been that any part of any government anywhere, at any level, that is controlled by Democrats has 360 degree unfettered reach and scope. And on the flip side, any part of government run by Republicans is automatically suspect and subject to endless questioning and investigation and blocking by over-reaching federal judges and bureaucrats.

It is how the Mueller investigation has worked, with its vague accusations of “obstruction” against people who had not and could not have committed any crime in the first place. Without a crime, there can be no obstruction. Roger Stone has been bankrupted for the ‘crime’ of being a political supporter of a president Mueller hates.

This is how the communists took control of Hungary and probably other European nations. They used unproven accusations, which became procedural abuses, to ensnare political opponents, who were then railroaded in the criminal justice system. Just as Mueller has done to his victims.

Democrats today are employing the same exact tactics as the European communists to gain political power the voters would never grant them at the ballot box. These tactics should be illegal and punishable by existing law, but the opposition party, the GOP, is spineless and weak, filled with self-dealing careerists. The culture change following in the wake of Obama’s anti-individual rights big government power grab has shifted in favor of anti-freedom control freaks. They like ERPOs and GVROs, because they suit their tactics, and the Republicans either enable them, empower them, or sit out the fight because there is no money to be made in it.

Do not allow ERPOs, GRVOs, or their derivations into your community or state, because these are undemocratic breaches of the public trust in a government that is supposed to serve its free people.

As a post script, the other big problem is what happens with someone’s legally owned guns when they are confiscated by police. Quite often they are stored under terrible conditions that either badly damage or destroy the firearms. And often the police refuse to honor the law and return the firearms to the citizen after he has been cleared. Moreover, the police often steal or sell confiscated guns, and there is little or no recourse for the citizen to be justly compensated for what has been essentially an unconstitutional taking of private property by government.

America should be going in the direction opposite of ERPOs, GRVOs, and their secret courts where accused people have no right to defend themselves and are presumed guilty. Our founding principles of limited government power, government transparency, and government accountability demand it.

Galileo before the Inquisition’s Secret Court. Is American due process really going backwards to the Dark Ages? 

About that New Zealand mosque massacre…

Once again, liberal ideas have resulted in terrible results, and yet, the people who promote those ideas blame everyone else for their failures. Now it is a mass shooting in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The massacre did not happen in a vacuum.

New Zealand has the same kind of stupid, ineffective “gun control” that anti-firearm activists have demanded for everyone everywhere: No handguns, mass registration with the goal of eventual mass confiscation for a gun-free society (except for the police and security services controlled by the liberals). Had the members of that mosque had access to handguns, like our concealed carry laws permit here in America, then they could have defended themselves against the lone attacker. But nope, anti-gun activists require these bodies and blood in the street in order to make the emotional case for yet more anti-freedom, anti-safety gun elimination.

Sorry, mosque members. I am sorry that you were martyred by the same leftists who have brought so much destruction to everyone else across the planet.

And then, so many questions come to mind, like:

Did that mosque serve as a launching point for public or private anti-Christian, anti-Jew hatred and bigotry, as so many other mosques do around the world?

Did that mosque have members who were actively engaged in denigrating and materially undermining Christianity and Western countries from within, as so many mosques do? Did they take advantage of New Zealand’s freedom and democracy to achieve non-democratic results?

Was that mosque a security risk for New Zealand? Does it harbor violent terrorists or proponents of Islamic terrorism?

Was the mosque officially silent about the non-stop bloodbath perpetrated by Islamic jihadists against innocent people around the world, notably Christians living peacefully in Paris and London and Antwerp?

Was the mosque officially silent about the obvious danger that Islamic jihad represents to the entire world?

Did that mosque serve as a center for spreading Islamic terrorism, as so many other mosques do around the world?

These questions and many similar ones must be asked, because if any of them are affirmative, then the massacre could be construed or even understood as an act of self-defense by the perpetrator, acting on behalf of his vulnerable countrymen who are paralyzed by leftist political correctness and an inactive government run by people willing to sacrifice the entire nation on the altar of “understanding” a fascist, totalitarian ideology that is mutually exclusive with the openness and tolerance New Zealand and every other Western nation stands for.

Here in America, Muslima Terrorista Suprema Linda Sarsour used the massacre to publicly explain exactly what is at the heart of this civilizational conflict. She explicitly blamed “white Christians” as the source of all evil on Earth and of being the biggest threat to all civilizations. In other words, when some mosque somewhere gets a taste of its own medicine, suddenly jihad against Christians and whites is openly justified. As if jihad against Christians and Christianity has not been ongoing for 1,300 years! No wonder Westerners are phobic of Islam; they are afraid for very good reasons.

Here in Harrisburg, the local JCC issued a Marxist screed about the shooting, decrying, among other ridiculous things, “Islamophobia” and “bigotry” (no, not the explicit anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, anti-Hindu bigotry of the Koran). One wonders if the regular, normal, hard working members of the many various JCCs and Jewish Federations around America will ever tire of underwriting the Marxist march of their institutional professionals, who seem to specialize in delivering sappy Yiddish entertainment to elderly  people and Marxist-everything-else for everyone else. In the past it was Margie Adelmann, now it is Jen Ross, the “professional Jews” who represent the very worst of secularism and controlling, destructive leftism. Neither of them was or is responsive to JCC members who want them to stop politicizing everything in the name of Marxism and political correctness.

They, too, are on a jihad, parallel with Linda Sarsour, the rest of us be damned.

How to properly pronounce “Lancaster” and why it matters, here

“Lan—Cas–Ter.”

When I heard the radio ad with that unnatural, long, drawn out pronunciation of the county and city just south of me, the endless chasm between the syllables felt years apart, so unnatural that my internal warning system flashed “outsider alert, outsider alert.”

This ear-grating goofball advertisement played for two days before being pulled and replaced with the same voice, but subsequently correctly saying “Lancaster” as almost one long syllable.

How many calls and emails did the radio station get about this? Evidently enough to make an impression on the people in charge of advertising. Running a radio advertisement that annoys the audience is counterproductive, and you’d have to hear from a large enough segment or sample of that audience to get the message that your message was not just falling flat, but actually bothering your target audience. People cared enough to contact the radio station and voice their opinion.

Why do Central Pennsylvanians care about how their locations are pronounced?

Probably for the same reason that Perry County has communities like Newport and Duncannon and New Bloomfield housing most of the county’s 30,000 citizens, and yet those same people will tell you they are from Perry County. Not from Newport, New Bloomfield, or Duncannon. This is because the identity of the locals in Perry County, and elsewhere around the Central Pennsylvania region, is one of community, togetherness, joined together in common interests and identity. Not separated from one another, as in most other places. The larger community, like the county, is the defining characteristic for the residents. We all belong here and we belong to each other, in common and shared purpose.

I recall reading a linguistics study of Central Pennsylvania years ago, and how the authors traced the unique accent here to Swiss and German immigrants in the 1700s. And in fact, if you talk to older old order Amish and some older old order Mennonites, you will indeed hear that very distinct English spoken with some sort of heavily foreign accent. Like all languages, including British English, Southern drawl American, Ebonics in the ‘hood, and so on, this common sound is the sound shared by a commonly identifying group of people. When they hear the familiar pronunciation of their own language, they know they are communicating with someone who is “one of us.”

One of the defining characteristics of Central Pennsylvania is its pretty resilient regional identity, including political views and political engagement, religiousness, and so on. Outside forces may be at work here, altering our beautiful landscape with criminally ugly warehouses and temporarily bombarding our ears with Flatlander-foolish pronunciations of our local places, but through it all, we still hold on to our common identity, our common purpose, our common interests.

Central Pennsylvania is still one big community with common identity. This is one of the reasons that the Obama Administration targeted Lancaster County (and rural Minnesota) for simply air-drop dumping huge numbers of fresh foreign immigrants, most of whom could neither speak nor read English, but who had been carefully instructed how to vote for the “(D)” on the ballot. Politicized efforts to disrupt traditional American sense of community and togetherness, and common purposes and commonly held interests and values, are increasing, as one political party in particular attempts to destroy and re-make America into an identity-less, gender-less, Constitution-less, all-powerful big government global nerve center for everyone on the planet and every cockamamie idea that will destroy “evil” capitalism etc.

And this is why people here so strenuously resist the improper pronunciation of “Lancaster.”

This mispronunciation concretely represents the outside evil forces arrayed against our traditional identity and lifestyle. When we reject that pronunciation, we are asserting our identity and rejecting outsiders, carpetbaggers who attempt to sell us snake oil without even taking the littlest amount of time to understand our closest held thoughts and beliefs. And they fail to do that because they simply don’t care about us or our religious redneck identity; and, in fact, they look down on us.

For all you outsiders, for the record, here in Central Pennsylvania we pronounce Lancaster as one long, fast, single syllable, Lancaster. Not like actor Burt Lan-cas-ter, who, as a Hollywood actor engaged in silly dress-up and fanciful make-believe his whole life, was the ultimate alien to our deal-in-real, natural, down-home, farming and mountain dweller environment here.

So say it again, quickly, Lancaster.

No time or spaces between what your head tells you are syllables. Say it again, fast, one quick word, Lancaster.

There, you said it, and we like you already. See? You fit right in, you hillbilly, you. Here’s a gun, and a Bible. Display them prominently in your home.

Great American Outdoor Show is here!

The Great American Outdoor Show is here all this week, and you owe it to yourself to see it.

Unlike “gun shows” and related flea markets full of rusty junk and Mabel’s old kitchen odds n’ ends, the Great American Outdoor Show is 100% pure beef sprawling across acres and acres of Pennsylvania Farm Show Building. It is a completely unadulterated gear-queer’s heaven-on-earth, with everything from classy side-by-side British shotguns to endless arrays and permutations of tactical gear and “Black Rifle” accoutrements.

Trop Gun Shop usually has some sort of modern “urban assault vehicle” parked there; several years ago it was a 1960s VW van re-designed to look like a Bat Mobile replete with a mini-Vulcan automatic belt-fed rotary cannon on top. Super cool stuff.

Just about every major gun manufacturer is here, except for Kimber, I think, which is sad, because Kimber makes top quality handguns and hunting rifles. The public would benefit from being able to fondle, errr, become acquainted with their fine creations. For example, a friend of mine took a 140-inch whitetail buck this past winter in the Adirondacks wilderness, miles from any roads. His rifle was….a Kimber Adirondack in .308, with which he gets quarter-inch groups at 100 yards. Now that is an accurate gun.

And so with all these gun manufacturers on location, you can pick up and handle just about any handgun made in America today, as well as the Italian revolvers used by Cowboy Action Shooting folks. Concealed carry is a big deal these days, and every serious concealed carry handgun is available to test out. Except the Kimbers.

There are custom knives, mass-produced knives, a Persian guy selling low-cost Damascus blades made in Pakistan and China with God-knows-what-metals in them, duck boats, bass boats, ultra-deluxe fishing kayaks by Hobie, the Portable Winch, animal calls of every sort, specialty ammunition, a gazillion hunting and fishing outfitters from around the world, and everything else you could possibly imagine or want.

Well, JRJ Knives is not there this year, as he has missed the past two years. John has more demand than he can keep up with, and I guess he don’t need no stinkin’ show. But his presence is always enjoyed, and I miss seeing him here.

My appearance at the GAOS is always closely tied to the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen & Conservationists, at whose booth I am an annual volunteer, holding down the fort with the likes of Grouchy Dennis, Happy Phil, Over-Mother Melody and many others who volunteer their time to help PFSC help sportsmen. And there is no other organization in Pennsylvania that helps sportsmen like the PFSC. In fact, right now the NRA does not have a representative working in Pennsylvania, and it is the PFSC lobbyist who is carrying the NRA’s load these days in the legislature.

Of course there is FOAC, and they do amazing work, but when it comes to conservation, science-based wildlife management, AND firearms rights, PFSC is it.

And so for me the GAOS is all about the PFSC, and serving the sportsmen.

The show goes on through Saturday, and you should see it to believe it. It is truly incredible.

 

Holocaust Remembrance Day. What do people remember, and why do they remember it?

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, and for the vast majority of Americans citizens, this day is vaguely associated with liberating WWII death camps in Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Germany. That is about it.

Maybe you watched Schindler’s List or Saving Private Ryan, or the 2008 movie Defiance, about the Belsky brothers, rural redneck Jews who knew how to use guns and live off the land, and who fought back effectively against their homicidal German neighbors. These movies and others keep alive a spirit of awareness that something went really wrong in WWII, but let’s face it, that distant past becomes murkier with every passing year.

In a bunch of American government schools, today is used to teach specifically about the costs of intolerance, broadly speaking, because history lessons are best applied to circumstances in a person’s own life, not to some ghost of the now-distant past. So one view of the history of racial relations in America features prominently; any positive aspects are discarded in the interest of heightening awareness by honing victims’ vulnerabilities. Agendas aside, teaching tolerance of others is generally a good thing. Some teachers probably draw upon more recent examples of genocide like Rwanda, or recently resurrected examples like Turkey’s attempt to ethnically cleanse the Armenian People from Earth.

Still, there is no question about it, Hitler’s Third Reich took an innate German genius for mechanical and physical science to a whole new level and then bent it for evil. A grotesque mis-use of God-given talent followed, devoting entire nationwide train systems and military assets to try to exterminate Europe’s Jews, and any Gypsies, Christians, and gays caught up in the dragnet, while Germany simultaneously and justifiably burned for its sins. And then the Russians walked in….but that is another story of revenge for another time.

Using the otherwise brilliant German creation of Zyklon B gas (which in 1947 spawned a family of super dangerous, super effective organophosphate insecticides used to keep American fruits and vegetables looking shiny and fine for market) to choke to death herds of naked humans in concrete death chambers is really the biggest take-away image of the Holocaust. This cruelty and savagery remains unimaginable, and those dedicated to remembering it the most are Jews from Europe, because they suffered the worst.

So why today do so many (mostly secular) American Jews practically worship the Holocaust, revel in the victimhood, and then simultaneously support political movements and policies that mirror all of the totalitarian behaviors that led up to the Holocaust?

A large majority of today’s American Jews are utterly devoted to the same kind of destructive, intolerant, vitriolic, hate-filled politics that resulted in the creation of Nazi Germany, the demonization of Jews there, and their final destruction. And of course, one of the key policies that enabled the Nazis to take power was their nation-wide civilian disarmament, the removal of all guns, even sporting arms, from private ownership. This is something that would be a dream come true to a majority of today’s American Jews, who also happen to be registered Democrats, which is today’s leading source of intolerance, dehumanizing demonization of political opponents, hate, violence, and political instability in America. The Democrat Party and many of its young Jews are also leading forces against Israel, the one place Jews could go, if they were under mass threat once again.

So one has to wonder: What do people today really, truly remember about the Holocaust? And did they really, truly learn any lessons from it?

The choices you face: