The Loyal Opposition

July 03, 2010

Appropriate brag for the holiday...

I took my 11-year-old daughter to the range last month for the first time. Once she got over her fear of the noise and flash, she demonstrated a knack for hitting the paper at about 5-7 yards.

Her only remaining fear? The ejecting shells from the semi-auto .22 she was using would bounce off the wall of the stall and back at her. She wants to try a revolver next time. And wants that 'next time' to be sooner rather than later.

That's my girl!

Posted by: Douglas Oosting at 09:27 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Posted to category: Second Amendment

I must remember to dust myself more often...

...so, I haven't been writing anything. Not that a lot of things haven't been happening, of course. I think we're all quite aware of just how swimmingly the Second Great Depression is going so far.

The original point I was making with this blog...or at least intended to make...was to demonstrate how it was possible to disagree with someone without demonizing them. A trait the outspoken Left was singularly incapable of during 8 years of "Bushitler" jokes and crying-wolf "Facism!" It was suddenly "trendy" to make jokes about assassinating the President.

These days, I'm not feeling so civil. The inaction of the President and his office during several crises--the Deepwater Horizon spill being but the latest--has been, at best, negligent. The mass populist uprising of the Tea Parties seems poised to make their point at the ballot box in a few short months.

Unless, of course, the Black Panthers and SEIU get to control the ballots. I, personally, have no fear of that. King County here is all-mail voting. Yep, even if I don't trust it, the ONLY way I have to vote is to put it in the mail...and hope it doesn't get misplaced in a warehouse somewhere.

Soapbox, ballot box, jury box. These are the orderly means of addressing wrongs in our society. I need to practice my soapbox more.

Posted by: Douglas Oosting at 09:15 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Posted to category: Looking Ahead

1 and there's a bug with the pullquote. I'm leaving it up that way until Pixy sees it.

Posted by: Douglas Oosting at July 03, 2010 09:16 PM (mNd5t)

2 I think this is my favorite thing about the internetâ€¦ even more so than pornâ€¦ is that we can actually publicly express ourselves with the possibility of receiving a wide audience. Sure anyone can do it and there are plenty of whack-a-doos out there, but the stronger your message, the more reception you get. I'm glad you're back in the saddle here Doug. The more folks we have speaking their mind, the better chance we all have of genuinely representational government. (Even if that light is all but invisible today.)

Posted by: Kevin Pettway at July 04, 2010 05:33 AM (80DX0)

3 While I've got to say that I'm pretty disgusted with the administration on many levels and for many reasons, I can't say that I'd call inaction on the government's part with respect to Deepwater Horizon to be particularly negligent. Hypocritical, certainly, when coming from the same people who so maligned Bush for the government's Katrina response, and interfering with private efforts is downright evil, but shouldn't this rightly be a mostly private matter?

Posted by: lazlo at July 11, 2010 09:37 PM (ZBAaV)

4 Lazlo, I know exactly where you're coming from, but the simple fact is that BP hasn't been able--and never had the resources--to clean this up on their own. The entire Gulf basin, and apparently working around the E coast of Florida, is getting oiled...and that kicks things into the level of "jobs government actually should do." In my book, anyway.

BP *will* be forced out of business before this is through--and long before any significant cleanup happens. Then what? The scapegoat is gone, leaving only economic and environmental devastation. I doubt they had an open policy with Lloyds of London to cover this sort of thing. (Hint: the next rig to set up shop--it will be Chinese-flagged--in "Cuban waters" in that area won't carry any either, and will be spectacularly unconcerned if any accidents occur.)

The negligence, BTW, comes from refusing to back down from various union-driven protectionist Federal rules, like foreign-flagged cleanup vessels operating in US waters (not allowed!), or returning "insufficiently pure" water to the Gulf (two 9s ain't enough, better to let it stay totally contaminated). Leadership would have been to mobilize all-hands-on-deck activity from anything that could float and skim something out of the water--especially after the first several cap attempts failed. Instead...we get more empty rhetoric.

Oh, and the Governor of LA gets told "no, you can't take action to protect your inland waterways either." Kinda like Arizona--don't you dare DO anything while we do nothing ourselves.

Posted by: Douglas Oosting at July 12, 2010 08:02 PM (mNd5t)

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