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Going where no Western man has gone before

Each day this past week I have waited for the other-other shoe to drop.  And sure enough, each day some new incomprehensible surprise greeted us.

Obama’s most endearing trait is his public persona.  His smoothness.  His likeability.  But what has come out more in the past week than in the past six years is how treacherous Obama is, how deliberately two-faced he is, how big of a blatant liar he is, how evil he is and how intent he is upon tearing down America and replacing it with…God knows what.

In his rapprochement with genocidal Iran and his war on Western Civilization Israel, Obama is dragging the United States into a place no Western human has ever gone before: Down.

Obama is dragging all of us into an abyss from which our nation will not climb out, if Iran gets to own nuclear bombs.  And it is clear that Obama wants Iran to have them, just as it is clear that he resents Israel having them (note the release of Israel’s deepest nuclear secrets by Obama’s Pentagon this week).

Odd as it is, Obama’s supporters still include most American Jews, whose recent brushes with genocide would under normal circumstances remind them to place their sympathies elsewhere.  However, political correctness is the new religion of the people formerly known as American Jews, and political correctness demands utter fealty to The Human One, whomever that may be at any given time, not The One who created Heaven and Earth.  This is a sad development because so much of America’s intelligentsia is represented by the people formerly known as American Jews, such as academia and the media.

In going Down, instead of on the Upward trajectory Western Civilization has carried all of us over the past thousand years, minorities are most likely to suffer badly, one way or the other.  One of the largest minorities in America today are Caucasians.  How will they fare under the new America?  Will there be a place for them?  Will faux “White Guilt” force them to become willing slaves? Are they becoming that already, working as they do to support a tax-heavy government intent on wiping away their free speech and self-defense rights?

So many have placed their trust in a Muslim Marxist, whose mask is beginning to fall away, and yet they hope, in vain, that the dirty deeds he does now will not really exist later on. That’s the hope they voted for.

Just as surely as you can keep your doctor and your health plan, you can bet on everything working out just fine, folks. That’s the change we got.

Gov. Wolf must pull Marcus Brown nomination

Governor Tom Wolf nominated Marcus Brown to be Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner.

Brown is a deeply, amazingly flawed candidate whose poor record literally involved recent malicious vandalism and theft. That is, the most basic, lowest form of law breaking. It’s behavior far beneath the dignity of any professional, and even farther, unimaginable, really, for someone representing the pinnacle of law enforcement. Brown is under investigation and will probably be charged soon with the crime. It’s an awkward scenario.

Brown’s many other flaws are notorious and even kind of crazy, like shutting down an entire highway and having Maryland state police go car-to-car with their guns drawn. That’s insane. It’s patently unconstitutional behavior and obviously tyrannical.

Brown is a man who has gotten away with all kinds infractions and law-breaking his entire career. He’s got a huge sense of entitlement. He is not cut out to be any sort of law enforcement officer, need we say the head of the PA State Police.

I know what it’s like to be a nominee running into an opposing state senator. I’ve been there and it can be an unfair fight, especially when the senator will tell no one what his objection is. Nevertheless, that same state senator is now joined by many others in formal opposition to Brown’s nomination, for good reasons that are a matter of the public record, not some personal vendetta.

Wolf doesn’t need this headache. There are going to be worthy disputes and tests with the legislature aplenty in the next four years. Wolf should choose his fights carefully, and in my experienced opinion, this is a bad one for him to stand on. He’s not going to win. And he’s promoting someone, Marcus Brown, who is unworthy of any support at all, much less a taxpayer-funded job, based on his historic and recent law breaking.

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?

Welcoming Mr. Scott Frederick, WCO

I would like to extend a hearty welcome to Dauphin County’s new Wildlife Conservation Officer, Mr. Scott Frederick.  He is a recent graduate of the PA Game Commission’s Ross Leffler School of Conservation and he will be dedicated to conserving wildlife in Dauphin County.  He joins Mike Doherty, Terry, Derek, and other hard-working conservation officers, and their deputies, in the pursuit of promoting sound wildlife management, fair wildlife laws, and recruiting new hunters and trappers.

Scott, you will find us and our friends to be law-abiding, good citizens, who share your passion for healthy wildlife and wildlife habitat.  We will be there to help you whenever we can, and we look forward to working with you.  Welcome to Dauphin County!

Obama Administration bears responsibility for ambush of two cops

In Ferguson Missouri late last night, two police officers were ambushed and shot.  Both are in critical condition.

Just last week the Obama Administration’s Department of Injustice issued an outrageous, cockamamie “report” that accused the Ferguson police force of racism, despite a lack of evidence to support such a claim.  This was outgoing radical Attorney General Eric Holder’s gift to racists everywhere, who have tried to leverage every single justified police shooting into a judgment of American society at large.

Holder’s report gives succor to those who blame everyone but themselves for their problems, and it provides political cover for the Black Panther-type militarism that is sweeping large segments of America’s urban populations.  The logic of Holder’s activism is this: If the police force is so racist, then it’s no crime to go out and shoot police.

We saw the same exact dynamic and result when New York City Mayor DeBlasio accused the NYCPD of being a bunch of racists, and then two police officers were immediately ambushed and killed by a racist thug who used DeBlasio’s own words to justify his actions.

Obama has introduced radicalism into every aspect of government action.  He has filled senior government posts with people who have had a long history of militating against America as it was founded, constantly judging everyone around them, constantly harassing and accusing everyone around them, and this is just one more piece of evidence that Obama is at war with American citizens.

The blood of these two officers is on the hands of Barack Hussein Obama and Eric Holder.

My heart goes out to these two brave police officers; may they recover soon and completely.

Junk social science drives bad policies

Another fake social study has poor ammunition and even worse aim, but it is indicative of the purposefully low quality “studies” used by politicized “academics” to pursue certain social policy goals.
Go ahead and read the report on the “youth suicide” “study,” and then read the analysis I wrote below.
Analysis: It is an utter crap study with a 100% political goal.
First of all, Gallup and other sources demonstrate huge gross and relative increases in gun ownership among Americans over past thirty years, not decreases or moderate stability, as the study asserts.
Second, the anti-gun editorial at the end is a dead-giveaway that the study is about guns and gun ownership, not suicide.
Third, if suicide rates are stable in rural areas but dropping in urban areas, then it seems the story is that they are dropping in urban areas.  Is that because more urban youth are dead from homicide before they can commit suicide?
Fourth, after 17 or 18 years of age, a person is no longer a youth.  Counting 24-year-olds as youths is another hint that the researchers were hunting for the right mix of numbers to serve their political goal, and could only get them by warping the definition of their study population.  I am willing to bet that the actual youth numbers are way down.  But that would defeat the purpose of having a good anti-gun study.  So the net is widened.
Fifth, the study apparently does not identify or quantify the relative amounts of suicide by type – firearm, hanging, suffocation, poison, etc – so that it is impossible to make a logical connection between the study’s results and firearm policy, but the policy result of the study is nonetheless all about guns.  What would be really interesting to see is the method type among actual youth – including 17-year-olds and excluding anyone older.  I am willing to bet that firearm use is down among youth.
These anti-gun junk “studies” are epidemic.  They are funded by anti-gun foundations, completed by politically active anti-gun academics who do not pursue excellence, but rather particular policy goals at any cost, and these studies are then marketed by anti-gun media in a cycle of self-reporting that becomes its own story.
The Left has this stuff down very well.  A compliant liberal media plays right along.

Small success stories come in big, snoring packages

Sitting at lunch today with someone in his late 60s, we reminisced about how sparse bears and turkeys were 40 years ago in central Pennsylvania.

We also recalled how pheasants were in our back yards every morning, forty years ago, and how sad it is that they are now gone, victims of abundant raptors, foxes, coyotes, skunks, possums, raccoons, and loss of traditional farmland edge habitat.

Doug remarked that pheasants are not a native species, and that as much as he enjoyed hunting these colorful, beautiful birds, if he had to make a trade-off, he is happy with the outcome of surplus bears and turkeys.

While I wish I could have it all ways – abundant wildlife of all types, I agree with Doug.

Just to drive home how successful Pennsylvania’s bear conservation program has been, a friend texted me yesterday to say that the bear I had found sleeping under a log on his farm on the southern Lower Paxton Township line three weeks ago is still snoring away there.  He has set up a couple trail cameras around it to monitor its movements.  Although we did not hear any squeals of little newborn bear cubs then or this week, and we do not know its sex, it may have since given birth.  That long stay in that one place could be pregnancy, and would account for how long the bear has remained in the scraped out den-nest it made for itself.

What is amazing is that this deeply snoring bear is literally on the edge of suburbia.  Well, it is actually deep into suburbia, in a relatively small island of open space.  Think about it this way:  Bears used to be a symbol of wild places.  Now, they are often suburban dumpster divers.  That speaks well to the large population of bears still inhabiting the truly wild areas away from suburbia.  That original population of deep forest and mountain dwellers is obviously in very good health.

And on that same farm there are now roving bands of wild turkeys, something not seen since the mid-1800s, when wild turkeys were literally all eaten up in this region.

Conservation success stories are abundant, and here we have two – bears and turkeys.  We cannot take these wins for granted, however; we must safeguard what has been accomplished.  I hope that the Wolf Administration soon appoints the new Sportsmen’s Advisor.  That is a unique leadership position Pennsylvania can not afford to leave vacant.

 

A lot of work, buried under the Internet

For about a year I wrote for watchdogwire.com, a professionally led citizen reporter-fueled website that exposed a lot of local issues the mainstream media will never write about.  Then the website changed, a few months ago, and my favorite editor, Jana, left to find another job.  All of the essays I wrote for Watchdogwire remain enshrined there, cryogenically frozen in some Internet deep-freeze visible only to those who really want to dig around.  Here is the URL to those essays.

Harrisburg City makes legal mistake after legal mistake

I am a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Mayor Eric Papenfuse and Harrisburg City, over his unwillingness to comply with longstanding state law and remove anti-gun ordinances from the city laws.

Papenfuse is a 1960s-1970s-style liberal, for whom ignoring the law, subverting the law, abandoning the law, undermining the law all represent some vague “Yeah, man!” hippie stand against laws he personally believes are wrong.

The problem with this approach is that once elected to office, a mayor cannot pick and choose which laws to follow or ignore.  The rule of law requires that all laws be upheld equally, or changed through the political process.

Being an elected leader means that you accept the legal and law-making process.  But then again, Papenfuse is an adoring fan of Obama, who also believes that he is a Government of One, able to do whatever he wants, rule by fiat, contrary to democratic norms.

Under Papenfuse’s hippie-fist-in-the-air don’t-have-a-care approach, Harrisburg City is making huge legal mistakes right and left in this lawsuit.

Two days ago, our attorney, Josh Prince, scored a default judgment against the city for $21,000 plus additional costs.  The city lawyers failed to file the correct paper work, failed to correctly fill out the paper work they did file, and missed key deadlines, and so the city failed on many counts to respond in court to legal documents presented to them.

While Papenfuse struts and preens to prove some undemocratic point, the city taxpayers are on the hook for ever increasing amounts of legal fees and judgments.  Eric fails, and the taxpayers here pay for his arrogant attitude.

If this is not failed government, then nothing is.