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A tale of two fallen icons

Two icons have fallen today, one human and one a statue of a human. One event is good, the other is bad, and both represent the radical and opposing political forces pulling America apart.

Let’s start with the human icon, that being Wayne LaPierre, the now former executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (NRA). LaPierre became a human icon by his own hand, because for many years he placed pictures of himself everywhere he could in NRA literature, publications, TV programs etc. LaPierre did everything he could as the NRA’s senior executive to make his face and name synonymous with the NRA, and in many ways, superior to the NRA name and logo.

LaPierre did not rise to icon status by virtue of his own great skill and the resulting earned adulation by NRA membership and leaders. Rather, LaPierre artificially nurtured an almost Communist Party image of “Our Great Leader” by simply shoving his own face into everything he could that the NRA put out from 1991 until last month.

This high-visibility self-promotion activity picked up after LaPierre had ousted longtime NRA-ILA lobbyist Jim Baker in 1998, then brought him back in 2011, only to oust him again in 2012, and then it picked up more after LaPierre ousted longtime NRA-ILA lobbyist Chris Cox, and then the self promotion pretty much had maxed out when LaPierre ousted short-time NRA-ILA lobbyist Jason Ouimet, and installed a grandpa used car salesman-looking guy named Randy Kozuch in 2023. Kozuch looks like Father Time and has a fixed and perpetually unnerving entre nous wink. LaPierre’s truth is crazier than any fiction we could write; you can’t make this stuff up.

In other words, LaPierre has been in a constant power struggle and self-promotion mode since becoming executive vice president, with an iron fist that served his own personal power and not the NRA membership. Not only did LaPierre spend millions of NRA members dollars on himself, his family, his wardrobe, and other trappings of a self-indulgent communist party ranking official, he plastered his likeness everywhere he could to such laughably grotesque levels in recent years that no online hunting or gun-related chatboard was free of ridicule for LaPierre.

That emperor may have been dressed in the most expensive suits, but to NRA members he had no clothes. LaPierre may have long ruled the NRA headquarters like a cruel and petty tyrant, but a lot of his own members hated his guts. LaPierre represented everything wrong in Washington DC politics. So when LaPierre announced that he was stepping down yesterday in the face of a lawsuit over his illegally spendy habit, it came as a great sense of relief to those who have the most riding on the NRA – its members and donors.

The crashing of this (false) icon to the floor and shattering into pieces is a good thing.

Pivot to the City of Brotherly Love, the cradle of American freedom, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the National Park Service is removing the statue of William Penn from a riverfront park (ironically called Welcome Park) owned by the citizens of America and managed by the NPS. The removal of this iconic statue of the most tolerant and accepting man of the 1600s-1700s, William Penn, is destructive.

William Penn was not just some European guy, he penned the Penn Charter, which outlined many of the open minded individual rights and government duties that we find a hundred years later in America’s founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. William Penn was a broad minded, open minded, tolerant, kind, generous person. He sought to financially compensate the native Indians who lived and hunted in Pennsylvania, rather than use violent force to oust them and outright take their lands.

The reason why Pennsylvania had only one Indian reservation (which was eventually violently stolen from the Cornplanter Senecas by the US Army Corps of Engineers so the agency could make a new recreational impoundment lake for happy white people to drive their motorboats in the 1960s), was that most of Pennsylvania’s Indians were bought out and firmly moved westward as the frontier moved westward. Pacifist Quaker William Penn wanted to live in harmony with the Indians in his new colony, as much as he could, and his actions showed a humane approach that was unique in that period.

So removing the iconic William Penn statue from its position at Penn’s own home is a rejection of a tangible and meaningful symbol of peaceful coexistence and reconciliation. By people who claim to be all tolerant and peaceful. It is a bad thing.

(Thankfully, it was announced late today that the NPS had “prematurely” stated that it was going to remove the William Penn statue, which is going to stay in place for the foreseeable future. Apparently public resentment about this racist decision overwhelmed the NPS and the PA state government.)

As we can see, icons come in all shapes and sizes. Some are good, some are bad, some deserve a wrecking ball and others deserve flower garlands. One thing is certain about icons, as these two icons discussed here show, they bring out tremendous political and cultural passions because of what they represent. This is why they become such useful political tools, to the detriment of The People.

Josh and Wayne LaPierre of the NRA in 2016 at the Great American Outdoor Show. See? Wayne even showed up to argue about his tenure with me eight years ago.

 

Ellen Greenberg’s mysterious homicide

Ellen Greenberg was a sweet and happy teenager when I met her probably twenty years ago. She was first cousin to girls my own daughters were friends with, and while my path intersected with Ellen’s maybe a few times a year, usually at kid drop off or pickup, for ten years the one thing I remember about her is her joie de vive. The girl glowed with happiness and sheer joy at being alive.

Hi Mister First! How are you? Your girls have grown up so much, and they are so nice!” is the happy, positive report I would get from Ellen just about each time we saw each other. Nothing mopey or morose or unhappy about Ellen then. And nothing about her classroom teaching style ten years later was, either. Ellen was a positive, happy person.

Ellen has been in the news the past ten years because she was brutally murdered with a kitchen knife in her own home, and after initially reporting her death as an obvious murder, the Philadelphia Police Department then ruled her death a “suicide.”

In her kitchen, where Ellen lay stabbed multiple-multiple times and lying in a pool of her own blood, all kinds of crime scene protocols were run roughshod over. For example, her computer was taken from the house by a relative of her fiance, like just handed to him by the police on the scene. Crime scene photos show her initially found slumped over, and then again sitting straight up, or with a knife protruding one place but then in another in other photos. That someone first on the murder scene tampered with Ellen’s body and the murder weapon is actually preserved by the photos the police took.

So how could the Philadelphia Police so strongly resist investigating both the crime scene handling, and the murder? Why did the Philadelphia DA’s office recently hide testimony  by a physician that made it plain as day that Ellen was murdered with that knife?

Something is not just fishy here, something stinks to high Heaven of rotten corruption and cover-up. Somebody with a lot to lose is being protected by the Philadelphia Police and the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office. But why would the police and DA protect a murderer? It’s not like the sweet and happy Ellen I knew was a threat to anyone or anything, like, say, Jeffrey Epstein was. She was not politically active; she had no “dirt” on anyone. So why she was murdered like she had to be shut up and must remain shut up is a huge and very public mystery now.

Making the resolution of this blatant crime even more mind boggling is the indefensible way that PA AG Josh Shapiro has handled it. Shapiro is someone with a lot of skeletons in his closet. He is someone with a lot of wrongdoing to hide. He is allied closely with the Philadelphia Police and the city’s District Attorney. And although he has been presented with the latest evidence about how Ellen was stabbed after her heart had stopped beating (someone committing suicide cannot stab themselves after they are dead), as well as with the incredible picture below, he still will not open an investigation into the Philadelphia Police or the DA’s office or this murder.

Is Ellen Greenberg’s murder a case of “What happens in Philly stays in Philly“? A corrupt town with corrupt officials connected to other corrupt officials and unsolved murders because someone important has money and some allied politician somewhere can’t be questioned?

See this artist’s drawing of how Ellen was stabbed multiple times, the worst being from directly behind (the human arm does not bend this way), and ask yourself how on earth anyone could ever rule these wounds or her death a “suicide.”

Ellen Greenberg deserves justice, her family deserves justice, and frankly, no citizen can ever again trust any criminal investigation in Philadelphia if this blatant murder is not solved.

Philadelphia’s police say these severe bruises and stab wounds to Ellen’s body were self-inflicted. Does that make any sense to your eyes?

 

How To Steal A Whole Nation While in Plain Sight

Biden’s otherwise lame campaign already had all the votes before a single vote was cast on Election Day.

For those normal people in both political parties who sat and watched, bewildered, openly wondering about senile Joe Biden barely sleep walking and gaffing his way through only a campaign for President of the United States, where his “rallies” drew more reporters than participants, we now know why he was in no hurry:

Biden already had all of the “votes” he would need to declare victory. And he had the help of Big Tech and Big Media to suppress criticism, hide the crime, and falsely proclaim him the winner.

We are talking here about fake votes, cast on fake ballots, by no legal citizen voter anywhere.

The shockingly audacious voting fraud under way in Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and my home state of Pennsylvania is the biggest political crime in the history of democracy. In every critical swing state run by a Democrat Party governor, or in a major city run by a Democrat Party mayor, obvious and unapologetic voting fraud is taking place in the wide open. Philadelphia is the worst example.

America is being hijacked.

The entire nation is about to be stolen and pocketed by a political party that is already so rife and riven and boiling over with major corruption that this open theft is the only option that remained to its leaders. Because if Donald Trump wins re-election, he will finally bring the administrative state to heel and will begin bringing justice to bear on the incredible wrongdoing that is the shameful hallmark of the late Obama Administration and its senior people. Put in fewer syllables, in a second Trump term, criminals will finally be held accountable and will go to jail. Think Hillary Clinton, James Comey, John Brennan, Peter Stzrok, Lisa Page, James Clapper, Andrew McCabe, and a host of others who used their public office for political goals or personal gain through influence peddling. These people literally sold America to China and Russia for money in their pockets.

What is the big fuss, you ask? Why not just let these scoundrels have their win and just walk away?

The answer is simple – we cannot afford it because America as we have known it will cease to exist as soon as Biden is sworn in to office. Once in control of the entire government apparatus, the Democrat Party will assert and solidify absolute control over everything else downstream of the federal government, just like the 1940s communists did in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland etc. All opposition to them will become either officially illegal, or de facto illegal. They will use Big Tech and Big Media to censor and control all information flow, just as they are attempting to do now, except that they will use the force of new “law” to implement the draconian controls, so that no matter what they do, no one but a small handful will actually know what is going on.

The American people will be blissfully in the dark about the true state of their nation, and elections ever after will be mere shows to entertain the masses. After each sham election, the Democrat Party will be the sole winner, though some symbolic minority toadies will be left for appearance’s sake. It will be a real-life “Matrix,” where the Democrat Party machine is running everything in lieu of an actual robotic machine with artificial intelligence, like the movie.

If you are reading this and wondering what. the. hell. is he talking about, then you must take the red pill and begin getting information at breitbart.com, the gatewaypundit.com, zerohedge.com, and listen to Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and other AM talk radio shows. This is because the toxic crap you are being fed through the mainstream media (NPRABCCBSNBCMSNBCNYTetc) is a one-dimensional politically partisan construct being spoon fed to you by an outfit named Media Matters.

When a fabulous guy who I admire so, so much says that he “despises Trump,” I know he is suffering from exposure to mainstream media’s dangerous toxicity. It is the only reason anyone solid in America is a) filled with hate for a brand new politician, and b) stewing constantly over imaginary problems.

So here we sit, two days after the close of the Election Day polls, and vote counters in Democrat Party-run Allegheny County just took the day off…so they can figure out how many votes they need to magically “find” in order to make sure their crooked candidate Joe Biden “wins” Pennsylvania. And vote counters in Philly won’t allow any opposition poll watchers in, they remain in defiance of a court order to do so, and they have people coming and going with satchels of ballots. They run the risk of having all of the votes counted in these locations wholesale disqualified, and yet they persist illegally manufacturing fake votes for Biden.

Pennsylvania’s shameful attorney general Josh Shapiro fully approves of all of this illegal activity. So much for upholding the law, Josh, both Pennsylvania’s law and the majestic law of your ancestors – Justice, justice shall you pursue! You will be punished for this crime, either in this world or the world to come.

Where Attorney General Bill Barr and the Dept. of Justice is on any of this is a huge mystery. Federal marshals should have swooped in at the first sign of vote tampering and brought integrity to the process. But the DOJ and its law enforcers are AWOL, nowhere to be heard of or seen. It is almost as if AG Barr was in on the game from the beginning, wink wink nudge nudge. If he wasn’t involved in the coup d’etat against Trump, then he was the only guy in Washington, DC.

In the mean time, dear readers, you must take action. You must go out into the streets and proclaim liberty throughout the land. Peaceful protests only, but go armed, if you are allowed by law. You must also band together with fellow pro-America patriots and form plans for defending the Constitution and your own homes by force of arms. That time is at hand, and when the pending chaos suddenly unfolds and engulfs America, your breath will be taken away. But because you are reading this, you will be prepared.

God save America. God save Donald Trump and the office of the President of the United States.

Will Democrat Media Declare Corrupt Biden the Winner when Trump Wins?

The American media seem poised to declare corrupt Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 election, even if he is the loser. So openly dishonest and partisan are these political activists that it will not surprise many voters if they come out at 9:00 PM on Election Day and simply declare Biden the winner, even if he is way behind in the electoral college.

Depending upon how President Donald Trump’s body processes his exposure to CCP-covid, the president may be walking around shaking hands and encouraging people to vote for him, or he may be in the hospital, unable to campaign in person in public. This weakened state would encourage the great revolt against democracy that has been brewing for the past five years among the Democrat Party, their media wing, and their street activists.

Just look how brazen the Democrat Party is here in Pennsylvania, where they physically block Republican poll judges from inspecting voting places. Sure, PA Lieutenant Governor Forehead is out there declaring that poll judges can only be in some places and not in others, but what has he got to hide? What are the Democrat Party people hiding?

Why wouldn’t Democrat Party employees simply welcome everyone in to every voting place and say “See? We are transparent and accountable. See for yourself and have a cup of coffee”?

A lot of secret, illegal fake cheating voting skulduggery is afoot, and just like Facebook is blocking Trump ads for vague reasons, these efforts in Philadelphia to block the public’s view into how people are voting there send a strong message that the Democrat Party intends to declare itself the winner of the election, no matter what the actual truth is.

America is in big trouble, because the Democrat Party cannot simply play by the rules, win, lose, or draw, and instead they are using every bit of possible uncertainty to cast a pall over the election outcome, so they can declare themselves the winner.

“And no, you can’t see how we won, either. You must just take our word for it.”

America is in big, big trouble.

Rural & Urban People Experience the Virus Differently

Rural and urban people are experiencing the covid19 CCP virus differently. And this means they each experience the various governors’ approaches to it differently, too. Chinese Flu policies impact rural and urban people differently.

In rural America, like Clinton County and Lycoming County here in Pennsylvania, life is still pretty much going on, not quite like normal, but fairly close to normal. The perceived risk from Wuhan covid19 Flu is low. This is because the rural peoples’ observations are not squaring up with what they are being told from their state capital. Rural people are not seeing up close and personal the disruptive chaos and death that is so pervasive in places like New York City and Philadelphia. So their behavior is different.

For weeks the Lowes in Mill Hall, PA, has been standing-room-only parking on the weekends, as local people shop for gardening supplies. Likewise the other nearby big box stores and small hardware stores are also full of people attending to their needs. Life is going on, albeit with some face masks and people clearly trying to steer clear of one another in shopping aisles. The Wegmans in Williamsport, PA, was full of shoppers the last time I was there, and the shelves were mostly well stocked. Notes about limits per customer are placed in all the usual places – TP, canned tuna, milk, bread. Ladies at the checkout are quite tough and firm about shoppers abiding by these limits, and everyone seems to be getting along just fine.

Elsewhere in rural PA are drive-in church services, food takeout, maybe some bonfires with chairs set apart, but still lots of chairs, nonetheless.

Actual Risk vs. Perceived Risk vs. Government Policy

At the heart of this lifestyle difference between rural and urban people is the difference they have over perceived risk, actual risk, and what the government policy says.

When rural people look around and see none of the catastrophic chaos engulfing New York City, they begin to ask simple and necessary questions about the actual risk of the China Flu to them. The actual risk, not the suggested hype or irrational fear stay-the-f#k-at-home perceived risk that is being breathlessly communicated by the cable outlets every minute. Without bodies stacked high, without lots of people becoming obviously sick from the CCP Chinese Flu, and with local health providers like hospitals and clinics operating as normal, rural people begin to question the value and necessity of the government policy that tells them their Constitutional rights must be suspended.

They then begin to question the value and purpose of their own government.

When we hear about the over-reach in places like Kentucky and Michigan, whose governors are literally demanding that people cower in their homes or else face huge overwhelming coercive force and jail time, it is natural for Americans to ask not just what is the value of these policies, but why can’t we have real policies that are tailored to the realities that each community faces. The potential risks of Wuhan Flu are just not the same everywhere.

Rural areas have more room and space between people, fewer people, less congestion, and a lot lot lot less exposure AND a lot less actual risk. Government policies need to reflect these realities. Blanket one-size-does-not-fit-all policies serve no real health purpose. Instead, no matter how well intentioned the governor may be, these blanket policies that are the same in Philadelphia as they are in Lock Haven, PA, make everyone equally miserable, damage all businesses equally, regardless of the health outcomes.

At the end of the day, government action must both balance risks with costs and benefits, while also safeguarding the citizenry’s sacred Constitutional rights. To date, very few states have done this. Instead, almost every state has treated low-risk rural areas the same as high-risk congested urban areas, and hit them all with the same heavy hammer. This makes the whole covid19 reaction thing seem awfully fishy.

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

“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.

The McCain in my soup

What seems like a hundred years ago, in the summer of 2000 I served as a volunteer at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.

Staying with my old Philly friends Mark and Bill in their back bedroom, I was able to easily access the convention center by foot.

Being a burly lad, I was put on “security,” which involved wearing a special yellow or red shirt, standing at certain choke points and doorways in the convention center, checking credentials before allowing people to pass to some next destination, and answering questions about the location of bathrooms.

Most of my security role was done at the entrance to the main stage, where speakers and media activists (“reporters”) entered and exited. From this doorway, the speakers walked out onto the stage to speak from the main podium, and the media things sauntered, pranced, sashayed their ways to nearby desks set up to look at the podium and speaker.

Cameras were set up to capture both the speaker and the media commenters looking at the speaker.  Sitting en banc like a panel of judges, the media personalities were represented as a real-time source of expert analysis and useful commentary. Of course, that is exactly the role the mainstream media plays at a Republican convention: Judge, jury, and executioner, heavy-duty criticism. At Democrat conventions the same media people are giddy cheerleaders.

Why anyone thinks that these celebrity personalities add anything useful or valuable to the experience is beyond reckoning, except that the mainstream media have done a very good job of arranging their own roles at these conventions. The political parties do not necessarily need them there. The Republicans would do well to not have them at their conventions.

Anyhow, three distinct memories of that 2000 Philadelphia convention stand out in my head, all of them from my unique VIP security role at the entrance on to the main stage.

The first memory was NPR activist Cokie Roberts. Like all the other VIPs at that stage entrance, my job was to walk from the stage entrance and get her at the far end of the tunnel where a temporary FBI office was located in a small room. Police officers and FBI agents populated this end of the tunnel, providing heavy protection for the VIPs. From there I would then accompany her back down the tunnel to the stage entrance. Once there, the protocol was to look around and make sure everything was clear, no unpermitted people around, and then point the VIP toward their destination: the main podium, or, with Cokie Roberts, the press desk ahead and slightly off to the left.

Sharing the same physical space as Cokie Roberts is unpleasant. Her smug self-importance sucks up all the energy in the immediate vicinity. Cokie was like a saucy queen, and the air was full of expectation. I felt diminished in her presence. Yet I stayed close to her, walked her to the doorway, pointed her to the media desk, and there she sat, lips pursed, looking feline, watching her prey through slitted eyes.

OK, that is one memory.

The second memory is of that same exact location and security role. I walked Bob Dole down the tunnel to the stage entrance, looked around, and sent him out to the podium. I had never been in Dole’s immediate space before, but true to form he was clutching a pen in his damaged hand. Dole took a bit extra direction, and I had to step out onto the stage apron and take him by the elbow so that he was fully oriented toward the podium.

Dole spoke, and began walking back toward the doorway. I took a step forward and extended my hand to help him feel comfortable, and out of the corner of my right eye I saw a strange looking man slowly and very carefully edging his way toward us. I have no idea how this guy previously evaded my view, or how he even got there, given how well secured the back stage was. I am a keen hunter and my eyes miss almost nothing around me.

And yet here was this white haired but not terribly older man suddenly materializing out of nowhere and now bearing down on a frail Bob Dole. Dole was now a couple steps into the tunnel and heading back up toward the FBI office, where he would get an armed police escort to his next stop.

Like out of a movie, the white haired guy’s arm shot out toward Dole and the guy was suddenly hurtling through the air in a complete and very athletic dive towards Dole that did not match his somewhat older appearance.

Well, the old wrestler automatically took over in me, and just as the guy’s hand was about to grab Dole’s arm, literally just a few inches away, I was all over the guy. He was strong, but I was stronger, and within a couple seconds I body slammed him flat onto the concrete floor, his outstretched arm locked painfully sideways by my left arm, my legs intertwined with his and his struggling body splayed out and largely immobilized in a classic wrestling move.

The FBI guys came flying down the hallway and covered me in what is now called a dog pile. I was immediately suffocated beneath a steaming pile of heavy bodies smelling of dry cleaned suits and shoe polish. Whatever people may think about FBI agents today as a result of the corruption by Comey, McCabe, and Stzrok, those agents were super physical and aggressive. I loved it and hated it all at the same time. Loved it because the bad guy was stopped dead, hated it because I could not breathe, and then again happy to know the weird son-of-a-bitch underneath me was being turned into a pretzel by all the hands reaching around me. Within about twenty seconds I was pulled off by three FBI guys, while a uniformed cop and two other agents were cuffing the weirdo hand and foot.

The white-haired weirdo guy was trussed like a hog and quickly carried up to the FBI office. I, too, was hustled up there, pushed from behind as a wall of guys swarmed the tunnel and then pushed the weirdo and I into the little FBI room.

Once in the room, the guy was cuffed to a chair and the questions started flying. Within a minute or so he was identified as a Polish national who had a long history of stalking Bob Dole and trying to assault him, all around the world. The guy was an obsessive kook and already known to law enforcement.

I was asked my version of events, congratulated on stopping the weird guy, with one of the big Irish cops giving me a big smile and saying how much he enjoyed watching me slam the guy down so hard. A couple of the FBI agents said they didn’t know anything was amiss until they heard the guy’s body smack the concrete so hard.

During the melee just a couple feet away, Dole had shrunk back against the tunnel wall, still clutching his pen, looking scared (why not) and two agents took him by the arms and hustled him back up the tunnel. That was the last I saw of Bob Dole.

From the little FBI room, I was accompanied back down to my spot at the stage entrance, patted on the back, and instructed to stay vigilant. Hey, I was never so important before or again!

The third and last distinct memory I have of that convention also involved the VIP entrance, because it was from there that I got to watch Senator John McCain deliver an emotional speech about wanting the presidential nomination so badly, and yet being denied it.

McCain delivered an interesting and very personal speech. He had just been through hell, with the Bush team pulling a lot of dirty tricks to eventually stop McCain’s momentum late in that hard-fought primary race.

From my view at the edge of the stage, I could see in McCain’s adam’s apple a huge lump had appeared while he spoke. I actually watched it grow. I had never before seen such an enormous lump in someone’s adam’s apple. This moment was obviously much more emotional for McCain than I would have expected from such a battle-hardened candidate, and I doubt that the many TV cameras there captured it.

What that huge lump in his throat brought home to me was how heavily and personally invested McCain was in his pursuit of the presidency. As opposed to Senator Bob Dole, who had torpedoed the 1996 Republican challenge to Bill Clinton by insisting that it was “his turn” to run, despite his lack of emotion, lack of energy, lack of passion.

John McCain is now dead, and with him goes a large part of strange era in Republican politics.

Like a lot of American conservatives, I retain mixed feelings about McCain. He was good and bad. He was both patriot and sell-out, warrior against and enabler of our domestic enemies, and so on. I had supported him in 2000 and 2008, but in recent times I had really disliked the guy for his policy sell-outs. He was the fly in my policy soup.

But when I think back to that huge emotional lump in his throat at the 2000 Republican Convention, I think of a man passionate about America and his cause to protect and improve it. Whatever his reasons for taking such strangely contrarian, incongruent positions in the past couple years, McCain remains in my mind as a once-principled all-American who at one time had my strong support.

Rest in piece, Warrior McCain.

A Father’s Pride

I admit that I am feeling mighty proud this morning. It cannot be helped.

A big milestone in Central Pennsylvania life was achieved last night when my son passed his Hunter & Trapper Safety Education course and received his orange certificate.  He’s now permitted to purchase a hunting license and begin hunting and trapping as his own self-directed person.  Yes, he is young and he must be accompanied by other, older hunters for some years to come, which makes sense.  Nevertheless, he studied hard, attended the classes after school, and passed the exam with a 100% on his first try.

Along with my boy were 70 other students at the Milton Grove Sportsmen’s Club, which is standing room only.  Thank you to the club for providing the venue and thank you to the educators who donate their time to help recruit the next generation of hunters, trappers, and safe gun owners.  Lowell and Tracy Graybill did an especially fine job, which should not be a big surprise given that Lowell is presently president of the PA Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs and the two of them have been a major power couple on conservation and sporting issues for decades.

Honestly, there were a couple of awkward moments in the two nights of training, some opportunities for improvement.  There’s got to be more hands-on and more demonstration of how the different firearms work.  I recall when I was a ten-year-old kid taking the same exam, we all got called up to the front of the room so we could handle the different actions and see for ourselves how they operated.  In a room as big as Milton Grove Sportsmen’s Club’s main meeting room, it must be impossible to see the guns much less imagine how the unfamiliar actions work from the middle and back of the room.

Another awkward time was at the very beginning, when a very nice local Deputy WCO made the opening remarks.  He had a pleasant demeanor and seemed easy to talk with, so he elicited a lot of audience questions and back and forth on the PGC regulations book handed out with all licenses.  He referred to WCOs as “game wardens,” an appellation every WCO I know has tried hard to shed.  He also seemed unfamiliar with basic regulations, like shooting above roadways and public trails.  To his credit, his lack of familiarity seemed to stem from the fact that he appears to pursue charges for serious wildlife crimes and not penny ante, picayune mistakes.

The winner of awkward moments, however, was when one of the educators, Tim, stated that semi-automatic shotguns can only be used for small game and waterfowl hunting, and not for deer hunting.  When it was pointed out by an audience member that semi-auto shotguns can be used for deer in the Special Regulations area around Philadelphia, Tim demurred, openly irritated.  When the audience member tried to hand Tim the regulations book, opened to the page stating that semi-auto shotguns are allowed for deer in that one area, Tim snapped “I don’t care, and I don’t hunt in the Special Regulations area.”

That was in front of the whole class, early on the first night.  It undermined Tim’s credibility and made him look foolish.  He never went back to correct his mistake that night or the second.  It raised the question about qualifications for teaching these courses, not just knowledge, but personality.  Nearly all of the audience members and students were from the southeastern region and quite a few probably do hunt in the Special Regulations area around Philly.  They are entitled to an expectation that they will be provided only accurate information, and that their teachers will have the strength of character to admit when they have mis-spoken or made a mistake.

And no student or audience member should be treated disrespectfully or belittled by a teacher.  It damages the entire purpose of the course.

All that said, it was a wonderful experience for me and my son.  We sat together both nights, and watching him soak up the knowledge was pleasing.  Only forty years have lapsed since I was in his seat….and to me, his rite of passage was much sweeter than my own.

It was also pleasing to see more girls than boys in the student body, as well as many single women and married mothers.  Women are the largest and fastest growing demographic in hunting and firearms ownership.  Now, what would really be exciting would be to see a class like this in downtown Philadelphia, filled with young African American kids and their fellow citizens.  Who will take up that gauntlet, men?

Pennsylvania Society: If not then, why now?

Pennsylvania Society: Great idea, wrong time, wrong place

Every year in early December, Pennsylvania’s glitterati and politicos hobnob in Manhattan.

This gathering is known as the Pennsylvania Society, and it’s mostly invitation – only, or you can pay big bucks to throw your own event.

As fun and as useful as this gathering is, and yes, a lot of political sounding boards get twanged, plucked, drummed, and thumped here, it is still at the wrong time and the wrong place.

If you’re a Pennsylvanian, by God, you’re out deer hunting the second week of December. You’ve got no time for more chit-chat in black tie and bow tie inside yet another building (and with due respect to those people who spend their time indoors: Get outside. It’ll do you and everyone else a world of good). You’d prefer to be stalking some steep mountain ledge or sitting overlooking an oak flat, waiting for a deer to jump up or stroll through.

And Manhattan at Christmas time is great. Our family goes every year. Our kids have been raised on Fifth Avenue window shopping and everything that goes with it. Heck, movies have been made about this, it’s so special. It’s a fantastic time for anyone, and if the gathering was fit in to that experience, it’d make sense.

But that best time is at Christmas time. The week before and the week after. Not weeks before. So the Pennsylvania Society is missing the boat there, too, with timing that just doesn’t make sense.

But more to the point, aren’t Philadelphia and Pittsburgh pretty great cities, too? Why can’t we keep the Pennsylvania Society in Pennsylvania? Rotate it around the state, or at least switch between east and west.

I know the folks who really made the Pennsylvania Society take off, and I’m not picking on them. They’re good people, with great ideas. This is just a question of timing, if not venue. And if the venue stays, then change the timing, so our politicians conduct their off-line business in the atmosphere of holiday cheer, giving, forgiveness, and merriment.

Merry Christmas, everyone.