"Serve up a..."

"...bitch-slap"? Check.

"Speak simply yet eloquently on the questions of 'Why?' and 'How long?'". Check.



h/t Gerard.

Obama: "Incoming!!!"

I just watched Rev. Wright's sermon/press appearance at the National Press Club. Michelle Malkin has it live-blogged here.

All I can add is: Whoa. Obama had better be in a bunker somewhere, because his pastor has not made things easier for him. Not by a long shot.

Had Wright stayed out of the public view...like until the election...Obama might have had a chance to let the storm over Wright's preachings blow by. Not now. It's all now back on center-stage (to irreparably mix my metaphors).

"The Thunderbirds have an underground runway..."

"...Why can't I?"

OK. Just off the top of my head, what's to prevent an opponent of North Korea from, I dunno, dropping one bomb on the mouth of the runway's tunnel, and removing its military value entirely?

h/t Insty.

'Obama struggles to draw White voters' support'

So says this article in the Arizona Republic.

There are plenty of loaded words in the article (do they still teach those in J-school?), but the fact remains that Obama has not broadened out his appeal (or "made the sale" to use Hillary's words).

Beyond the systemic problems that the D's have with their super-delegates about to decide this thing (and the eruption that that will bring), neither D candidate has been able to convince America that they should be President.

This woman...

• Who admires the "...activists who were devoted to overthrowing everything hateful about this government and corporate structure that we live in, and capitalism herself, himself..." (2:50)
• Who agrees with MLKs 1967 observation that "America is the Greatest Purveyor of Violence in the World, and that "that is what's true today". (5:15)
• Who believes herself to be "in the belly of the beast". (5:20)
• Who still, to this day, is talking about Kent State.

...is the same woman whom Barack Obama considers as "mainstream".

Amazing.

h/t Ed over at HotAir.

Democrats going soft on healthcare...

Nice idea, but when it comes down to working out the details, it seems as though we like our healthcare as it is.

Hey, Barry...

Have you really thought this out?

"Bringing Our Troops Home
Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda."

Really?

"Alex, I'll take..."

"...'Option Two' for a thousand dollars."

Except it won't just be...

"...the New York Times [which goes] into hysterics."

It will be the entire lefty world. The eruption from "Peace Mom" Sheehan, Code Pink, and all the rest of the lefty world will make their current irrational antics seem like collegial discussion at Sunday School.

A "President Obama" (and for that matter, a "President Clinton" too) has nothing but bad choices here.

Hope for a new kind of politics...

...Indeed.

Another...

...endorsement for Obama.

"We don’t mind — actually we like Mr. Obama. We hope he will [win] the election and I do believe he is like John Kennedy. Great man with great principle, and he has a vision to change America to make it in a position to lead the world community but not with domination and arrogance."

Ahmed Yousef, the top political adviser for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

Well done, Barry!

No. Say it isn't so....

"...Obama does not really have a well-thought-out position on the subject of extricating us from Iraq."

and more...

"...another Obama foreign policy adviser had to be corrected by campaign headquarters. Samantha Power, a Pulitzer Prize-winning expert on the history of genocide, told the BBC that Obama “will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. senator” with regard to Iraq strategy."

The whole thing here.

"I was against wearing a flag lapel pin before I was for it"*

It looks as though Obama has gotten over his need to explain his patriotism sans an American Flag lapel pin. Makes one wonder if the Rev. Wright/cling because they're bitter questions are beginning to hurt.

*=Line stolen from jgapinoy in the comments to Allah's posting.

Welcome to...

...the freakshow. (But do read the article from it's start.)

h/t: Allahpundit over at HotAir.

Thought Bubble....

Damn my meager internet, html, photoshopping skilz....

This thing just begs for a thought bubble...."I'm going to cut to bowels out of the next aide who sets me up to dance in front of the cameras."



h/t Gerard.

Obama the Elitist...

OK, so everybody in the world has already commented on Obama's latest gaffe...

"...You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations...."

This thing is offensive on so many levels that one hardly knows where to begin. "Typical White Person" pales in comparison. The right side of the blog world has spoken widely on this, and Clinton is making good use of this self-made problem for Obama. That said, somebody has prolly already made this point, but this little gem popped into my mind earlier today...

Obama says that he found God and Christ in his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and a church home in the Trinity United Church of Christ.

And yet, with his explanation that bitterness over lost jobs has lead rural Midwesterners to "cling" to their churches (among other things), is not Obama denying that rural Americans might be drawn to the same sort of church homes that he himself claims as an asset?

"Let's 'Surge' Some More"...

Michael Yon in the Wall Street Journal.

Yon is a better journalist all by himself than the cumulative work of the ten best MSM reporters.

h/t Ace, of course.

"That's just not accurate..."

Get your hands off..

...my pie, Michelle.

"...The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more."

Oh, yeah. Got it from Glenn.

AZ State IDPA Championship

OK, while I haven't mentioned it here, I have been working the last few months on prepping myself for the State Championship. I am realistic enough to know that I'll never be one of the better shooters--I simply am not willing to spend that kind of money or time on a hobby--I am also vain enough to like to think of myself as "OK". A state championship is a good place to show oneself the folly of that vanity. Simply put: I suck. And I hate it that I do.

I admit to a number of handicaps here...

• I have never been an athlete, I am almost 51 years old, and I confess to carrying roughly an extra 25 pounds. This makes me slow.
• Being in my 50's, my eyesight is becoming an issue. This means, while I may, hypothetically, be able to "call" my shots, I often find that I cannot see whether what I have "called" is really what happened at the target.
  
• Rather than use an Outside-the-Waistband holster, as 98% of the IDPA shooters do, I prefer the Inside-the-Waistband holster I use for concealed carry. This too slows me down.
• Most critically, I used my recently purchased DAO HK USP Compact in .40S&W.

This last point really hurt. I have been struggling, especially with long shots to get shots on target. I've been known to miss ("Mike", in IDPA parlance) targets entirely. Apparently, I am not meant to use a DAO action in competition. It is just too much for me to keep the aim on target while pulling through that trigger load while under the pressure of the clock. The USP is a fine machine, but regrettably, sometime later this year, I may be looking for something else. I hate to be the guy who blames his equipment for his competition failures, and, again, fully acknowledging that I will never be one of the best (or even top-half) shooters in the group, but for me I do think it is the wrong gun for me.

So, enough about me...more about the match and the other competitors...

The match did not move along as well as I had hoped. One of the first announcements was that we were going to be grouped into squads of 20 or so, and that keeping the squads together would help move things along. That lasted exactly one stage. After shooting the first three stages, we waited 45 minutes before lunch was served, and then another hour to get to the fourth of our 12 stages. They did get stages 1-3 (the fourth stage I shot) moving more quickly just as we were finishing them, but I'm sure that we wasted 2 hours there. Waiting to shoot did not help me shoot any better. I was able to get all but one stage done on Saturday, and on Sunday morning, at my last stage I sucked as badly as I had on the previous 11.

One highlight was the opportunity to shoot with Donnie Burton (upper left). Who is Donnie Burton, you ask? He's the reigning IDPA National Overall Champion. (For those who golf, imagine golfing with Tiger Woods.) From watching him, and speaking with his father, he is both a very focused competitor, and a really nice kid. He was more than willing to answer questions (that he must have to endure at every match) and was probing the rest of us for what we saw in our turns shooting. To get an idea of just how focused he is, get this...

• Like NASCAR and golf, IDPA has a "season". In preparation for the season, Donnie shoots a thousand rounds a day. Yep. That's not a typo. A friggin' thousand rounds each day. Every day...all seven of 'em. When he's finished with that week, he starts it all over again.
  
• Do the math with me. A thousand rounds means you load a 10 round magazine a hundred times a day.
• More math. Donnie shoots a custom 1911 platform in 9mm. A thousand rounds of this stuff would, if you had to buy it (Donnie has an endorsement deal) run $199 from one of my favorite internet ammo sources. That's $200 dollars a day. Every day.
  
• None of that counts the incidentals used here. Cleaning patches, solvents, magazine springs, etc. all add up when you're shooting that much.
• Donnie has a program of running, weight training, and diet to keep in fit enough for this level of competition.
• While in a match, he eats tuna, fruit or something else about every two hours to keep his blood-sugar levels constant.
  

To top off the frustration I had at my poor shooting performance, I didn't even "raffle" all that well. I was part of the last 10 or so shooters who had not been called for the prize table raffle, and rather than call us all the way down to the end, the Match Director just said for us to "clean the table". I came home with a reasonable cleaning kit that I gave to SonofAzlib, a hat that barely fits my head, a t-shirt that fits me, but has an oil stain on it, and one of the dumbest videos Gunsite has ever produced.

I enjoyed the championship, as frustrating as it was for me. I'll plan now on attending next year, but it won't be with a DAO gun. I'll go back to carrying and competing with my Glock 23, and maybe sometime later this year (after I get Dau#1ofAzlib married off and sell some of my safe queens), I'll start thinking about something in a 1911 platform.

Better luck next year.

Rest in Peace...

Charleton Heston has died.

Heston was a good actor, who after receiving great acclaim for his work leading to an Oscar, was reduced to B-movies and semi-obscurity.

All that until he became President of the NRA. None of us from the culture that respects our gun rights will ever forget Heston thundering the words in each of our hearts: "From my cold, dead, hands."



Update: I just found this trailer for The Omega Man, courtesy of The Drawn Cutlass. I knew that Will Smith's recent I am Legend was a remake of something, but I didn't realize that it was of The Omega Man. It's kinda campy to look at now and I wonder if I am Legend will be thought of in the same way some time in the future.



Updated update:

BTW. Wish me luck...

...SonofAzlib is about to finish his college studies and is off to a job fair today. Let's wish us both that he scores a job in his field that will lead to a rewarding career.

Yet another frustrating week...

...wondering if I could ever log into this thing again. I finally established a gmail account to see if that will make the task of logging into Blogger a bit easier. My hotmail email address wasn't working at all for Blogger.

Short story: I've got a lot on my plate right now, and posting here would be slim even if I weren't having problems logging in, but at some point I may investigate getting my own domain or another free blogging software.