The Race Card and the Victim Card

Isn’t it interesting how Barack Hussein Obama repeatedly plays the race card? Here’s a direct quote from Obama:

“What they’re saying is ‘Well, we know we’re not very good but you can’t risk electing Obama. You know, he’s new, he doesn’t look like the other presidents on the currency, he’s a got a funny name.’”

It’s as if Obama was expecting John McCain to mount a racist attack, and since he hasn’t done so, Obama has to go to the trouble to imply it himself. Obama expected to fight a race war, so he could play the victim – and when it didn’t show up, he has to pretend that it did, so he could still play the victim card.

Also, I wonder why he’s ashamed of his middle name?

I hate psychological manipulation in all its forms. When Obama tries to play at being the victim of racism, looking for sympathy as demonstrated by this direct quote; well, that’s manipulative and I don’t like it. Anybody with any gumption wouldn’t need to invoke this crap. Besides, he’s personally wealthy and successful – he doesn’t look like a victim to me.

I can’t speak for anybody else, but my vote will be cast based on a number of criteria: honesty, morality, experience, direction, ability, and how these match up to the needs of the country. You will notice that neither race nor gender is on this list.

-Popgun

About All These Bicyclists…

An observation about bicyclists: They have a hobby that annoys the uninvolved.

I live on a farm to market road in rural East Texas. I have on many occasions been delayed in traveling due to clumps of bicyclists who are much slower than a car, occupying an area of the road in which it is difficult to pass safely. Sometimes these areas last for miles.

On one notable occasion there was some sort of bicycle rally with hundreds of cyclists that completely blocked the highway I live on for hours. I got home by driving in the ditch a large part of the way. And I was seriously annoyed.

There was a sheriff’s deputy at one of the corners watching the proceedings, and I stopped and asked him if it was legal for them to block traffic like that; he responded with a sickly grin and said “I guess so…”. But I’m here to tell you that if I got out in the road and drove my car at 5 to 10 mph blocking traffic for ten miles, they’d darn well write me a ticket.

I have nothing against any particular bicyclist. But you people need to find a hobby that does not annoy the uninvolved. Or take your hobby somewhere that doesn’t shut down access for other people.

-Popgun

Nifty Photo of the Day

From Nasa Images website: what a solar eclipse looks like, from space:

-Popgun

Motorcycle Update – 800 miles

Yesterday, when I got ready to leave work, the battery was nearly dead on my Suzuki DR650SE. Many motorcycles have an ignition key position that locks the handlebars to one side or the other, to make the bike difficult to steal. This particular motorcycle has a key position one click counterclockwise of that position which does the same thing, but also turns the tail-light on. I knew about this, of course, but apparently yesterday morning I put it in that position by accident, and it ran the battery down as it sat in the parking lot all day.

As soon as I realized what had happened, I called my son Richard, because the timing was such that I thought he might be on his way home from work. Sure enough, he was only a few minutes away, and he had jumper cables with him. So while he was on his way, I undertook to expose the battery so I could jump it off.

First you take off both plastic side covers – one screw each. I carry a multi-tool which I used for this. Then, you take off a couple of 12 mm bolts that hold the seat down, one on each side. Some ape had put these on with a torque wrench, and the wrench in the toolkit that comes on the bike was completely inadequate to the task. So I borrowed a couple of ‘real’ wrenches from the shop, and got the seat off. Then, there’s a padded strap that screws down across the top of the battery, two more hex-head screws. And finally you can see the top of the battery.

It’s recessed in there so far that it was touch and go to get my son’s jumper cables to work. But we did get it started. Then I reversed the above procedure, while the bike sat there and idled.

I thanked my son, put the tools away, got my bag and my helmet and rode home. No problem starting this morning, the 15 minute ride home was plenty to charge the battery back up.

Not a big deal, but I have two points to make. First, the function to turn on the tail-light for emergency parking should be activated by an unmistakable extra detent in the switch, or something along those lines. As it is, it is far too easy to move the key into the additional position without noticing. Second, it would be possible to make it easier to get to the battery if the Suzuki engineers had put a bit of thought into it. It wasn’t too arduous, but it took three different tools to get to the battery. Third, this motorcycle lacks a kick-start, something I may not have mentioned earlier.

Modifications I will probably make as a result of this experience:

1. Buy a couple of color coded pigtails and install them on the battery, to run the connections out to where you can jump the bike off without taking anything off to get to it. Uncap your pigtails, jump it off, re-cap the pigtails, be on your way. No tools required.
2. Replace the el-cheapo tools with Craftsman equivalents. An open end wrench that spreads when trying to turn a bolt is worse than useless.

The things you go through, getting used to a new bike.

-Popgun

You Should Read These Stories…

These are testimonies of survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in World War II. Way back in high school I had read a book written by survivors, and I was looking online for that old book, when I came across this.

The stories of these people should not be forgotten.

God help us all.

-Popgun

Joy!

I had a great time with my 3 year old grand-daughter a couple of days ago. I got home from work, and she was there, so I got down on the floor with her and we started stacking blocks. She’s very articulate for a three year old, and cute as a button. We’d stack up a column of blocks 18“ or so high, and then we’d count out the one-two-three-go! and try to blow them over. Then we’d do it again. Watching her absolute delight while we did this together was an absolute blast.

So many people never know such love.

God has blessed me with an awesomely wonderful family. Every one of them.

-Popgun

Motorcycle Update – 650 miles

The Suzuki DR650 is continuing to perform as advertised. As I have gone through break-in and started applying a bit more throttle, gas mileage has dropped to around 48 mpg, the last hundred miles or so. Picked up my license plates today.

The seat still sucks chunks and I wish the engineer that designed it was forced to ride on it eight hours a day for a couple of months. I’d be willing to bet that he never spent more than ten minutes on the bike at a time, on the street.

I have decided to go ahead and lower it as allowed by the suspension. You lose around 1 1/2“ of height, and a like amount of suspension travel, but I believe it will make it lots easier for an overweight old person like myself to get on and off. The seat which I have ordered from Corbin should lower it another inch below that. This will still give 8” of suspension travel and I can live with that since I will probably be on-road 98% of the time.

Getting it like I want it. It’s still fun.

-Popgun

Oil, Pollution, and Energy Independence

The Democrats do not want to allow new drilling in the U.S. for environmental reasons (global warming). Their push is for alternate energy sources, and that is not a bad thing in itself, if we don’t wreck our economy to do it.

We now know that the Green River formation in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming has about 800,000,000,000 recoverable barrels of oil that we can go get for the taking. This is enough to supply our total oil consumption for 109 years, and give us complete energy independence from foreign countries. It would also have an immediate impact on our economy in that we wouldn’t be sending $300 billion dollars a year to other countries to buy what we have here already. We should be using this oil now. And we should also put in place a long-term program for a graceful, economical transition to alternatives to protect the environment, and because no oil supply is endless.

What about the environment, and global warming? Of course we want to keep our environment as clean as possible. However, as regards global warming, there are some very interesting facts that have recently come to light.

1. In the past 70 years the Sun has been more active than at almost any other time in the past 11,400 years … Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon, and Pluto warmed at the same time as Earth. This strongly implies that the rise in temperature is caused by increased activity on the sun, not by any activity of humanity.
2. The greenhouse effect has specific predictable symptoms that should be detectable. They are not. There is no greenhouse effect in progress on this planet.
3. Likewise, there is no evidence whatever that carbon emissions cause any significant global warming.
4. Ice core studies show that atmospheric carbon does increase with temperature rise – the records show that the carbon increase happens around 800 years after the temperature rises. So increased carbon does not cause increased temperatures – instead, it is a symptom of a warming trend caused by other factors.
5. The global warming trend peaked in 2001, and is now dropping, according to satellite measurements that are normally used to track this.

What this amounts to is that the (solar powered) global warming has in fact happened, a cooling trend is now in effect, and human activities did not have much to do with either.

So, we are NOT running out of time! (At least, not from environmental concerns).

It is essential that we do not ignore this relatively new information in making policy. Al Gore and others have a vested interest in pushing their environmentalist agenda; in effect, they’d look silly if they backed off now. But they are wrong!

We now know we have the resources and the time to make an orderly transition to cleaner technologies without wrecking our economy in the process. If we’ve got the honesty, intelligence, and gumption to use facts instead of opinion to steer us into the future.

-Popgun

Global Warming – revisited

Here’s an excellent article by someone who has reason to know the truth.

Very interesting. We’re about to destroy our economy to correct a non-problem. There is no greenhouse effect. Carbon emissions are not a problem.

-Popgun

Guns for Self Defense, and Heller

I just finished reading a site which listed a bunch of incidents in which a (legal) concealed handgun carrier was in a position to stop or reduce the damage created by a nutcase (bad guy) with a gun. Then I started reading the comments. Most of them were pro-gun, but there was one guy who was offensively, rabidly anti-gun, and was truly rude about it, descending to name-calling and personal insult.

The Supreme Court ruled that a person has the right to own and use and have available common weapons, including hand guns, for the purpose of self defense. The local government in DC immediately (sort of) complied, by requiring those who wished to register their guns. They denied Heller (the one who’s case went before the Court) his permit because he brought a semi-automatic pistol to register, just like the one I’m wearing on my hip right now. They denied it because it was a ‘machine gun’ because it had a bottom-loading magazine (their definition). This demonstrates the law in DC (possibly) obeying the letter of the law of the land, but most certainly not its intent. I have no respect for those people, who think their opinion should be law.

It appears to me that there are people on both sides of the gun debate that are not willing to consider the other side’s viewpoint. I myself have no particular willingness to disarm myself to make the anti-gun crowd happy.

If you want to actually find out the truth of the subject, do some research with real statistics. Go to www.gunfacts.info and read some true, documented, undistorted studies and make up your own mind. I’m not kidding – the anti-gunners commonly lie, distort, and make up their own statistics. Many of them are debunked here. The info at the gunfacts.info site is the real deal. Study it, and then make up your own mind. I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who actually goes to the trouble to study the facts, and then wants to discuss it.

To make me happy (on this subject), all that is required is that you let me continue to legally keep and carry my guns just as I do now. Just leave me alone.

To make the anti-gun crowd happy, I would have to give up all my guns. So in short, they’re getting in my face; the opposite is not true.

There are only two possible reasons I can think of why the anti-gunners want to take away my guns:

1. They are afraid of me.
2. They are afraid me and all my friends are going to try to take over the country, or something.

It can’t possibly be about saving lives. If you want to save lives, go tackle the problem of the 42,000 plus people who die on the highway EVERY YEAR because of drunk driving. It’s a far bigger, more deserving, problem to solve. I suppose we could ban all the cars; or maybe all the booze.

I’m not going around shooting people, or even letting them know I’m armed; so what’s their problem? I’ve been through a deep security background check to get my license; the police are always glad to see my CHL because they know I’ve been through that check. In short, I understand why I carry, and I understand under what circumstances it is right to use it, and you are safe from me. In fact, you’re safer with me in the room than if I’m not. Because if someone evil attempts something awful, I will try to stop them.

So, gun haters; why do you have such a big chip on your shoulder about this subject?

-Popgun