Can preen with the best

That oughtta be a bullet in my next EPR. We offer proof:

The Official Glamorous Full-Length Photograph of Fusilier N. Pundit





Annoying Mr. Hanson, Mr. Christopher Hanson . . .

Directors Cut

Here are my votes for the Board of Directors of the National Rifle Association. These votes are guided by criteria that I set forth below, in no particular order or unifying scheme. We could redefine online advocacy if we gunbloggers examine not just our votes for such things, but the philosophies or rationales behind those votes. We should advance something more coherent next year than I offer as a humble start here.

All mentions of NRA Director nominees below are personal preferences on the basis of my criteria, and represent no official position from the NRA. The NRA has, in fact, told you their preferences, right there in the magazine, printed on the ballot. I exercise my right to express my personal preferences here, and encourage you to share mine, or to express and explain your own. Anything I write here about specific named individuals I base on what they have written about themselves in the ballot package's biographies, and my responses to what I found in them.

If you have any criticisms of my choices or criteria, put them in the comments and work with me to refine the criteria for next time around.

If you're an officer or Nominee of the NRA and you don't like my treatment of you or the subject, tough. If you can't stand this pathetic heat you're unfit for the job of protecting my HK from Chucky Schumer.

* * * *

First of all, one's presence on the NRA Nominating Committee's list carries less than zero credibility with me. I undertook this line of thought upon the untimely passing of Neal Knox, who offered his own list of nominees in loyal opposition. Not having Neal's recommendations this time around, I offer my own and seek the counsel of likeminded fellows.

In that spirit, I want to see a gun blogger on the BOD, and after getting his permission, I ask you to write in Jed Baer of unincorporated Jefferson County, Colorado.

Next, a Director nominee should not tout his support of Operation Exile. That strikes Governor Gilmore.

Third, elected peace officers are OK in my book. Unelected cops, regrettably, are not. Sheriff Printz gets my vote, a bunch of Director nominees do not.

Fourth: professional lobbyists are not OK in my book. That strikes Mr Cors.

Fifth: if a nominee has taken the fight to the United Nations, he gets my vote. Hello Mr Dailey.

Sixth: if a nominee claims nothing more than competitive shooting or hunting in his vita, he offers nothing to the future of RKBA. For example, nothing in Mr Lanford's bio reaches out and grabs me. Conversely, if a nominee contributed his time or risked his life at the bleeding edge of the RKBA, he gets my vote. Mr Friedman taught emergency gun safety during the East LA riots.

Seventh: the NRA alone will not succeed in protecting the RKBA. All gunbloggers will agree that other organizations are needed as well. It is fitting for a Director nominee to claim membership in other orgs, as Mr Hollandsworth does. Mr Hollandsworth is also at the bleeding edge, as it were, in point six.

Eighth: Hollywood is not our friend. With some ambivalence, I assert that we need to cultivate the few friends there that we do have. Milius and Selleck, yes.

Ninth: there are times to embrace "diversity," if the diverse candidates also pass muster in raw merit. If antis complain that the NRA looks too GOP, too white-European-male, slam them with women and minorities. So we vote for Mr Innis.

Tenth: Have you defended RKBA in court as an attorney? Mr Stern gets the vote.

Senator Miller: Not sure. I liked his speech, as a Democrat to the GOP. However, Cathy Young's critique of that speech also must be considered. Enough doubt for me to withhold my vote.

Summary:
In the order in which they appear on my ballot, I vote for Selleck, Innis, Abrams, Dailey, Bennett, Friedman, Printz, Milius, Cotton, Cushman, Hollandsworth, Coy, Stern, Clark. Write in Baer.

I feel no particular pressure to vote for all 25 nominees that I am allowed. If that dilutes my vote in comparison to others, so be it.

Jot down yours in a comparable post at your place, leave a link in my comments, and please be prepared to pick this topic up again, with more circumspection, next January. Put it in your Palm if necessary. Do background on the nominees so we have more to go by than their bios, if that's your talent. If you attend the meetings, the votes of present Directors would also be useful.

State meme

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado* / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York* / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania* / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington/ West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C. /

Been to the States in bold, am living in the State italicized, lived in States that are underlined.

Now: the State I was married in bigger face. States where my children were born with an asterisk.

Which States I'd consider moving to.

I warned your asses. I warned you!

Rewind to my archive, about here:

Geekwitha45's comments and email to me disclose my embarrassing ignorance of BCRA. It does not regulate private activities, including bloggers, so my proposal does not incur the FEC's wrath.

OK, now scroll back to the present. The FEC is indeed now contemplating regulations, and the mechanisms to enforce them, against bloggers who participate in the national discussion of elections. HT to FreedomSight.

I propose a countermeasure.

Wish me luck

I wasn't joking in my description over there to the right, where I said "it's time to move to Wyoming."

The application package is going in. Cross your fingers for me. Salt over the shoulder. Blow me a kiss, if you're into that kind of thing.

And double your best wishes for my buddy Doug.

Martha is free

She should not have gone to jail in the first place, and I wish her well in her appeal.

I also agree with VC that she is turning her sentence and release into a public relations coup. It has softened her earlier image as a harsh, driven, er . . . capitalist. Not that it needed any softening to me, but I'm not her target market.

What could she do next? My guess: a program in her company to encourage hiring and training for women ex-cons.

Presidents' Day

The snow kept us from driving up Devil's Head Mountain, so we sneaked over to Roxborough State Park instead.





It's like Garden of the Gods, but a helluva lot closer and strictly on foot. We'll be going back.

Oh, by the way, it's posted against firearms, which I safely assume means CCW is unwelcome. Not a smart idea if there are hunting cats around.

Getting closer to a notebook killer

I remarked in this post about how there's a market for a hybrid PDA/computer, using a stripped Palm-type operating system to access what's stored on it, but shifting to a full desktop OS when docked to appropriate hardware.

It's still not here yet, but we can see approximations toward it. The most recent case in point is the Tungsten T5, a Palm (is it unfashionable to say "Palm pilot"?) with a USB flash memory drive aboard it. The Palm accesses this 256MB flash memory, leaving 160MB of it available as a plain USB flash drive. Some of it, only 55MB, is used by the Palm.

If it had an eentsy HD (20GB would do) instead of flash, it would be the killer. A few more grams for the extra power to spin it could be justified.

There's still plenty of life left in my m500, and all the room I need for spanking the Palm, but someday I'll want to abandon the 256MB flash drive that holds all my AF pdfs. When I do, I'll need more than 160MB. And I'll not pay $400 for it. Nor do I want a phone integrated in it.

As it is, the Clandestine Mobile Media Access Platform has been put out to pasture. I went about 2 months without it, then upgraded to this little girl, the 3250H1 model. At 4.5 lbs, she impresses me that notebooks will be the first notebook killers, not PDAs.

Quote for the day

Pithy, and served cold:

I've seen this type of thing before; this type of "empowered attitude" with nothing to back it up.

Publicola on the reaction of the Unprotected class to the capture of an alleged serial rapist.

So how come . . .

. . . microwave ovens do not have a "Chinese food" setting?

things that piss me off

Children's computer games that must be run as a sysadmin.

Officially beginning to worry

Anybody know of Coyote's whereabouts?

Old graphite mare ain't what she used to be

The current mission-critical computer at chez Fûz is now 5 years old, a Sawtooth Mac G4 that originally shipped with OS 9.0.

We've added memory, installed a second hard drive and loaded OS 10.2/ 9.2, upgraded to 10.2.8, repaired a noisy fan on the video card, upgraded the CPU from 350MHz to 1GHz.

But I think that's all I'm going to do to prolong this machine's service life---and normally I'm willing to do a lot incrementally rather than all at once. The Mac prior to this one? a Umax clone running a 603 at 180. Before that, a Performa 475.

I've read up on upgrading video cards, and I don't like the idea of either paying Apple prices for a new card on the one hand, or having to flash the ROM of an OEM card on the other. The original ATI Rage Pro 128 will have to carry us a bit further, and America's Army will have to be played on a different box and OS.

I'm not even sure I want to go to 10.3 either. What else has to get upgraded to come along with Panther? Quicken? Nutscrape? Do I need 10.3 to run iWork?

I'm open to subjective advice. Moratorium on any more Mac goodies for 18-24 months and bring home a G6?

It's not the fifties they're after

Brother gunblogger Triggerfinger (HT: FreedomSight) brings us news of CNN running a story that demonstrates how easy it is to buy a fifty-cal rifle and move it across State lines. To make the story, they had to break a Federal law.

My first impression is that no news organization should be breaking laws just to show how easy lawbreaking can be. Publicola and I agree that the law in question should not be a law in the first place, and that fifty-caliber rifles in private hands are no threat to public order. A first-and-a-half-th impression is that such laws serve only to make everyone just a little guilty, so anyone can have his arm twisted just a little bit by the Man. It's a Randian "consent of the victim" thing.

My second impression is that CNN and its reporters stand absolutely zero chance of having to defend themselves against charges of violating that law. Laws are for the little people.

My third impression is that CNN's reporters and/or producers and/or editors know, subconsciously perhaps, that fifty-caliber rifles are not the real story. The real story, and the activism motivating the fifty-caliber story, is terror and anguish over the fact that a seller of a gun and a buyer of a gun can find each other and arrange to meet face-to-face and make their transaction without the engagement of a licensed dealer. Sensationalize this, spice it up by adding today's Most Dreaded type of gun, and cue the anti-gun lobbyists.

Compared to the fifty-caliber, the antis would get more traction over the SKS (more bodies) except it has one letter or syllable too many. Ayyy-Kayy. Uuuu-zi. Fiff-tee. Mack-tenn. Ess-kay-ess takes just too long to say in a sound bite.

They're not after fifties, they are after private sales.

No Sosh Scurty crisis? (updated)

The chief counterargument to privatization of the Social Security system seems to be that "there is no crisis."

All well and good, one might conclude, funds are forecast to be plentiful in that lockbox-thingy until, uh, about the year that I might be retiring. Until then, there is no crisis, no reason to be discomfited, no reason to act. Heck, I even think the GOP is floating this idea not to save Sosh Scurty, but to shut it down.

OK, well how about this scenario?

A dummy corporation, in fact a network of dummy corporations, obtains credentials to do business with a major credit reporting agency (HT, Rick Stanley), thus getting access to the vast databases maintained on every person who has or at one time had a loan, credit card, bankruptcy, judgment, or bank account anywhere in the United States in the last 50 years or served in her armed forces since the 1970s. This much has happened.

This part has not happened, for all I know: the dummy corporations meticulously sift through these dossiers and then use dummy individuals to file false unemployment and disability claims against the Social Security "accounts" it has siphoned away numbers for, then wrecking their credit ratings. A company could sell stolen SSN's to third-parties willing to drift from place to place filing claims under multiple identities; the company could make its buck and disappear fast while the marketed identities are bled dry.

The amount of money to be stolen is far less than what could be scored by opening fraudulent credit cards or draining real bank accounts, but this lesser booty is easier to get away with. For anyone looking for it, fraudulent credit activity is easy to spot, by contacting the same credit bureaus in the first place. But how would you find out that someone has filed an unemployment claim as you? How would you know that this "account" you've created for yourself is being depleted, and when? And if you do find out, can you challenge the Social Security Administration so your own legitimate unemployment or disability claim will be honored? What will stop a third-party from holding on to a stolen identity for re-use a few years down the road?

Can't happen, right?

Then convince me there will be no crisis---that millions of retirees-to-be won't insist that Social Security accounts be privatized, one way or another, so an accountable private firm will be responsible for paying out, with stronger protections against fraud than what Social Security provides today. The crisis could be big enough to crater Social Security, if one out of, say, four people expecting SS benefits loses even a part of them because of fraud. That's probably enough for the House to draw the line, deny responsibility, and refuse to appropriate funds to repair the mess. Now who has reduced Grandma to eating dog food and living in a fridge box?

As far as I know, SS isn't even obligated to give you a new account number after an identity theft. Only if you are a victim of domestic abuse and you need to change numbers to hide from your ex. Hey, wait a minute . . . If the Social Security Administration admits that you might need to change your SSAN the better to hide yourself and kids from an abusive domestic partner, aren't they admitting that minor criminals commonly misuse the SSAN? Not to say that domestic abuse is a minor crime, but that it doesn't take Dr Evil's or the Russian mafia's vast worldwide criminal enterprises to exploit the weaknesses of the SSAN; all one needs is a bad temper and a private investigator.

But would he accept? (updated)

I recently posted on the topic of nominating somebody to the National Rifle Association Board of Directors who has his head on straight about gun rights and political strategies the NRA should pursue to secure them. The idea was floated of drafting someone from among the gun bloggers.

While reviewing the NRA BOD candidates' nominations, it occurs to me that I missed mentioning one candidate who carries respectable credentials.

NRA Life Member. Citizen-soldier for 24 years, Operation Enduring Freedom veteran, currently serving the US Air Force in active reserve capacity as an emergency preparedness specialist. Shooting enthusiast, web logger, commentator about the Right to be Left Alone. Second-degree black belt in Taekwon Do. Father of four, homebrewer, reloader, hunter, avid owner and defender of several evil-looking black guns that are not for hunting at all but were purchased expressly to practice shooting bipeds.

Well, nobody else from our crowd is bowling the rest of us over to seek the nomination (are they?). And my offer to serve as Director of TSA on the Lucas ticket just didn't garner enough enthusiasm for me to pursue it any further.

Fer Chrissakes, if bloggers can take down a CNN executive (actually, he took himself down but bloggers held the knife steady for him) or depose a Senator from a key leadership position (he took himself down too, but you get what I mean by now), can't we put a fin on the NRA BOD?

Update: It only took two comments equating me with the fraudulent Libertarian Girl for me to realize that I can't have both pseudonymity as a blogger, and public responsibility as either a United States Senator, or as a Director on the NRA Board. I'm staying pseudonymous for reasons I've made clear elsewhere, and those reasons are incompatible with either of those lofty public goals. I'm not abandoning those goals, merely deferring them until the day I become Fuz N. Pundit, USAF Retired and hang up the uniform for the last time.

Until then, I will ruminate on these pages about what I'd do in that hazy scotch-soaked future, but will not tease or coyly suggest my candidacy. That doesn't stop me from suggesting a draft of blogger or bloggers who proudly go public.

Giving Uncle 3 more years

I reupped some time ago, neglected to post anything about it, until Barbaloot discovered the photo, taken before the memorial wall at our Wing.

If only the Donks would . . .

Bill Bennett mentioned yesterday that he would try his hand at a Twenty-First Century manifesto for the Democrat party. I think Hugh Hewitt would try the same. Doubtless other bloggers and commentators have suggested it too.

"The Democrats could be a resurgent political force in the United States if only they would," [fill in the blank with your favorite killer policy prescription].

If only the Donkeys would embrace genuine tax reform and win back the small businessmen and the widows'n'orphans and the IRS victims. If only they'd pick up and run with Second Amendment rights, and recover their union rank-and-file base. If only they'd drop the pretense at Drug Warrior and stop incarcerating whole generations of black males. If only they'd give up their current infatuation with coastal elites and academics, and return to their roots among blue-collars and farmers.

If only. If only.

Every WUTT! reader has his favorite, the one sure thing that would turn the Donks' fortunes around. And I have mine.

It's not much.

Eminent domain abuse.

How better to reach out to Maw and Paw Heartland than to say "We Donkeys are really really upset, deeply livid in fact, that Big Corporations are suborning local governments into kicking ordinary people out of their houses to make way for condos, shopping malls, parking garages, and so forth. It's nothing but Corporate Welfare, and we Donks don't stand for it."

SayUncle is all over this, and so is the Institute for Justice.

None of the if-only policy proposals I've heard so far is utterly impossible for the Democrats, even an eminent-domain reform platform that runs afoul of the enviros, or a pro-gun platform that would hospitalize Chuck Schumer. Some Party leaders would be alienated, of course, but they'd come around, as they just might in '06 when Tom Daschle makes the rounds like a macabre breathing Marley's ghost and gets them thinking right about the fundamental problem, the only problem really, that of Staying In Office.

My greatest concern from all of this is that with such an opposition, the GOP can make a serious mistake and fail to realize it until it's too late. Like in the Colorado legislature this year, for example. From the point of view of individual rights and the free market, the GOP may be second-rate firemen, but the Donks are first-rate arsonists.





How about a little fire, Scarecrow?

So how come . . .

Bifocal spectacles have the lower portion of the lenses cut to a higher magnification, so someone with weaker muscles in the eye can focus more easily on fine print that is close to the eyes.

All well and good, I suppose, as long as the reader holds his head upright and trains himself to look downward. Then a good portion of his visual field is magnified, even though only the reading material that needs magnification is only a small sub-portion of that portion of the visual field. For other visual tasks at greater distances, the added magnification is useless and even gets in the way.

Bifocals could be made less awkward by limiting them to the field of view that a reader is likely to need. To wit, if the magnification is needed only for materials that are closer, then put the magnification in the area of the lenses that both eyes will be looking through when they are focused on closer objects. Eyes converge---point inward---on nearer material. So move the magnification areas closer to the nose, a little higher, and a lot smaller. They'll be where the eyes need them when reading, and out of the way for distant vision or for tracking moving objects.

If I get time I'll sketch what I mean.

Dr Freud, your slip is showing

A colleague snorted after a news story about another wedding for the British Royals, "I wonder what color of dress she'll wear."

I blurted out off-white colors that indicate less than the expected premarital purity, "Cream? Bone?"