Gun News Update

The Washington Examiner is reporting that President Obama is once again planning to take unconstitutional action; this time looking to impose a ban the sale of 5.56 caliber ammunition which is manufactured for the top selling AR-15 Rifle. Even word of the mere speculation of the push for the ban by the bureaucrats at the ATF has driven up prices and gun retailers and has outdoor superstore Cabela’s urging its customers to contact Congress to block the President’s action. Can’t imagine the so-called Republican leadership will do anything but roll over.

Bestselling author John Lott (More Guns Less Crime) authored an excellent rebut to the specious reporting of the New York Times by laying out the facts about the law abiding nature of concealed carry permit holders.

Magical Liberal Thinking

Guantanamo Diary – Mohamedou Ould Slahi with Larry Siems, editor (Little Brown and Company)

It really comes down to two things; the perspective you bring to the table and critical thinking, or a lack there of.

If you come to this book, Guantanamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi with editing help from Larry Siems, from the perspective that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld are war criminals or that being forced to listen to heavy metal music at staggering volumes while having the air conditioning or heat cranked up equates to torture, then this book will confirm much of the simplistic, mind numbed liberal horse crap that you have been fed about Gitmo.

Slahi, a Mauritanian by birth, has been in custody since November of 2001 and housed for much of that time at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Slahi penned this tale during a period in 2005 and 2006 and after some time and legal wrangling was allowed to release a redacted version of the story after some editing by Mr. Siems.

Magical Liberal Thinking

It doesn’t take long for what I can only call magical thinking to begin; in the preface of the book, Siems details some of the background to Slahi’s story.

Slahi readily admits that he was a member of al Qaeda in 1991 and 1992 when he traveled to Afghanistan and being trained in weapons and tactics then joining the fight against the invaders from Soviet Union. Magically you are supposed to believe that once that fight ceased with the Soviet defeat, that Slahi severed all ties and drop his allegiance to al Qaeda.

Then we must account for an ongoing, steady series of coincidences that occurred in Slahi’s life.

·         Slahi was arrested in Mauritania in 2001 on suspicion that he was involved in the foiled Millenium Plot to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport on New Year’s Eve 1999. That plot was foiled by an alert border crossing agent at the Seattle/Tacoma, U.S./Canada crossing point who took Ahmed Ressam into custody when he attempted to smuggle explosives across the border. Magically Ressam had been a member of the same mosque that Slahi had led prayers during Ramadan. Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents had put Slahi under surveillance for several weeks, suspecting his participation in the plot, but had not been able to connect the dots to arrest him.

·         According to the 9-11 Commission Report Slahi was responsible for recruiting multiple jihadists into the al Qaeda fold. In the book Slahi again readily admits meeting with Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah while living in Germany, even allowing them to stay with him. Magically al-Shehhi and Jarrah were among the terrorists who flew hijacked planes into building on September 11, 2001, killing nearly 3000 people in the process.

·         Slahi also admits in the book to crossing paths with Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who intended to be a participant in the 9-11 attacks, but could not manage to get a U.S. Visa to enter the country. When bin al-Shibh was arrested and taken to Gitmo he admitted to knowing Slahi and told his interrogators that it was Slahi who directed him to an al Qaeda training camp. Bin al-Shibh later helped to supply cash and other items to the 9-11 terrorists as part of what would become known as the Hamburg (Germany) Cell that Slahi was believed to be a key contact in.

·         Peter Finn, writing in the Washington Post, hardly a outlet of conservative thought, described Slahi and fellow Gitmo detainee Tariq al-Sawah as “two of the most significant informants ever to be held at Guantanamo.” Finn went on to say that the pair had provided enough reliable information to “help officials chart connections among Islamic radicals across Europe.” So while Siems and other magical thinking liberals would have you believe that Slahi simply told interrogator “what they wanted to hear” this report clearly shows that hard intel that was garnered from Slahi.

·         Siems points to Marine Lt. Colonel Stuart Crouch a military prosecutor assigned to Slahi’s case, who declined to bring a prosecution against Slahi as evidence that there is no case to be made against him. To the contrary, Couch as stated in an Atlantic Magazine article, again far from a conservative outlet, that he chose not to prosecute Slahi on moral grounds, because he believed that Slahi had been tortured, but he still believed that Slahi was guilty of terrorist activities.

Where’s Obama

If Mohamadou Ould Slahi is innocent as seems and many other would lead you to believe it begs the question; why hasn’t President Obama, who seems hell bent to release as many terrorists as possible from Guantanamo and make good on his promise to close the facility, released Slahi back into the world? With reports of upwards of 60 to 70 percent of those who have been released from Gitmo taking up arms and returning to the Jihad, if Slahi is is so innocent, then wouldn’t he be a poster child for the program to release detainees?

Or could it be that all of these “coincidences” and the magical thinking they spawn are nothing more than a bunch of bullshit and this guy is a terrorist pure and simple. Was he on the receiving end of harsh treatment at the hands of his interrogators? Without a doubt. Did it amount to torture? All I ask is that you compare the treatment he received to that of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl or those taken prisoner by ISIS. Also know that Slahi is reported to be spending his time at Gitmo in a special compound, separated from other detainees for his own protection; tending his personal garden, writing and painting.

 

Republican Wake Up Call

When will Republican's finally learn that they have to stop dealing with Liberal, reporters on their terms and start taking charge. Out going Republican, Texas Governor Rick Perry, ponder another run for the Republican nomination for the right to run for President in 2016 has been dipping his toe in the water with donors and the media.

Perry recently sat down with liberal, NBC hack political reporter Kasie Hunt who had the unmitigated gall to ask Perry "are you smart enough to be President?"

Instead of telling Ms. Hunt to stick her question where the sun don't shine or removing his mic and walking away, Perry actually responded to this insulting question. Until Republicans learn to stand up for themselves and squaring off head on with these liberal hacks, then they will continue to be subject to this kind of crap. This is a wake up call for Republicans to not subject themselves to this kind of crap. I can't imagine any Democrat candidate ever being asked this kind of ridiculous question.

Unexplored Theory Doesn’t Equal “An Agenda”

The Book of Matt: The Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard – Stephen Jimenez (Steerforth Press Paperback Edition)

The October 6, 1998 beating and torture of Matthew Shepard that eventually led to his death has become one of the more interesting rallying points in our recent history in the United States. Almost overnight Shepard’s brutal murder was plunged into politics based solely on the fact that he was an HIV positive, gay man; which raised the specter that his murder was due to hated or as popularized at the time, a hate crime.

In, The Book of Matt: The Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard, journalist Stephen Jimenez continued his investigations of the crime and some of the facts that were left unexplored during the eventual trial and conviction of Shepard’s murders. Jimenez had been the producer of an ABC News 20/20 investigation into the case and a couple of years after the trial and conviction of Shepard’s murderers, he went back to Laramie, Wyoming to dig a little deeper into things that had come up in the initial digging into the story.

The book is the result of that second, deeper look at the story and some of the facts weren’t a part of the trial or the case against Shepard’s killers. It didn’t take long to track down those killers and the case against them in legal parlance was “air tight” so why would police dig any deeper?

Jimenez uncovered some clear evidence that Shepard, a slight, college student wasn’t perhaps the innocent victim of a hate crime, but perhaps even more likely, he was murdered due to his involvement in dealing methamphetamine. This naturally flew in the face of the activists who were pushing for legislation that eventually came to pass, to somehow supersize the crimes against protected classes as defined in the law.

Jimenez became the subject of attacks that labeled him as somehow “anti-gay” because he pointed out facts that flew counter to the public claims about Shepard. I guess that would make Jimenez a self-hating gay man; since he is in fact gay himself. The orchestrated campaign against Jimenez and the book is ridiculous on its face, since it doesn’t bother to actually address the facts in the book.

But that seems to be the way politics is debated in this day and age; and that is purely what is at play here. The politics of who cares more and who can somehow do more to protect or defend of give more to defined special classes. Think about the ridiculous nature of so-called hate crimes. Are people injured or killed because someone hates them? Certainly the answer is YES! Do we need a special set of laws to enforce criminal sanctions against those deemed to be in protected groups? NO…not really.

Matthew Shepard’s murder’s were convicted of their crimes; in a deal brokered by Shepard’s parents the killer received life sentences without chance of parole. If they had been convicted of a hate crime, would they spend any more time behind bars? The vile murderers of James Byrd, a Texas man who was beaten, chained and dragged to his death; both received death penalty sentences. When Texas eventually gets around to meting out that sentence, would they have been executed twice due to committing a hate crime?

Turning this book into a political debate is ridiculous. It’s clear to me that Jimenez didn’t have an “agenda” in mind when he set out to investigate the story, but it is in fact the left who attack him that have the agenda to somehow protect ridiculous hate crimes laws to somehow be portrayed as more caring and compassionate.

Rachel Maddow: Delusional Lib

MSNBC host and wonk Rachel Maddow (I hate that guy) in a monthly screed for the Washington Post on Monday, had the nerve to claim that the Republican party was running on a platform of fear; in the twisted estimation trying to peddle an unfounded fear of Ebola, ISIS, and illegal immigration in an attempt to wrench power away from Harry Reid’s senate Democrats.

Clearly Mr. Maddow can’t conceive of the concept that Americans were really in the mood to shift power from the Democrats, based largely on the crappy performance and awful lack of leadership displayed by Liberal all conquering hero, the Community Organizer in Chief Obama.

Lord knows Democrat candidates have never ever run on fear! Right?! Dems have never tried to peddle things like “Republicans want to take away your grandma’s Social Security.” Or “Republicans don’t want you to have healthcare, they just want you to hurry up and die.”

Democrats would certainly never say “Republicans want to take away your right to vote…your civil rights…and go back to the Jim Crow era” to black voters. Or make a ridiculous claim like “if you vote for a Republican you vote for another black man to die” (Ferguson, MO.)

We certainly never had any Democrat claim that Republicans have a war on women: “Republicans want to take away your right to choose” or “Republicans want to ban contraception.” Or how about “Republicans don’t think women should be paid the same amount as men for the same job.”

And there would never ever be an instance of Democrats claiming that “Republicans want to pollute the air and water and poison the environment and don’t believe in the settled science of global climate change.”

Yes, in Mr. Maddow’s delusional, twisted, liberal mind…none of those things ever happened. Anyone with common sense…knows otherwise.

Drive Liberals Crazy…Oh Wait They Already Are!

Hands Off My Gun – Defeating the Plot to Disarm America – Dana Loesch (Center Street)

Conservative Radio/TV Host and author Dana Loesch has to just drive Liberals crazy. She is a true triple threat; brainy, bold and beautiful. Loesch’s first book, Hands Off My Gun – Defeating the Plot to Disarm America is like much of her career to this point as she fearlessly and systematically dismantles Liberal rhetoric on guns and the Second Amendment piece by piece.

Loesch points out the almost delusional self-importance that whacko Libs like former New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, California Senator Dianne Feinstein and Community Organizer in Chief, Barack Obama bring to the gun debate. They firmly believe that they can simply put a stop to both the high profile incidences of murder involving guns, like Newtown, Columbine and the shooting of Congresswomen Gabby Giffords, as well as the average gun crime, by passing yet another gun law.

 

Currently there are in excess of 20,000 gun laws on the books in the United States, many that go unenforced or contradict each other; so what would make these Liberal clowns think that they have the proverbial magic bullet to stop gun crime?

I love the fact that Loesch used a quote from Seinfeld character George Costanza, “It’s not a lie if you believe it” to start the chapter entitled The Fourteen Biggest Anti-Gun Lies, Debunked. That quote could be the clearest indicator of the Liberal mindset when it comes to guns. Time and time again Loesch points out the inherent lies and utter lack of knowledge that liberals seem hell bent on parading out for all to see when it comes to guns. Clearly they have NO knowledge of what an automatic weapon is, what the difference is between a clip and a magazine is, or what in God’s name an “assault weapon” is.

In the process of researching and writing this book, Loesch has delivered one of the most passionate and clear thinking defenses of the Second Amendment and gun ownership since scholar John Lott served up the classic More Guns, Less Crime back in 1998.

In The Zones…Green and Red

The Bremmer Detail – Protecting the Most Threatened Man in the World – Frank Gallagher with John Del Vecchio (Open Road Media)

May 2003, Paul Bremmer, a former associate of Henry Kissinger, is named a presidential envoy to Iraq, by President George W. Bush; he will essentially run the country until a new Iraqi government can be stood up to replace the regime of the deposed Saddam Hussein. Naturally Bremmer will have to make decisions that will be unpopular among Iraq’s opposition parties so he immediately becomes a target for extremists.

Frank Gallagher, a former Marine and private security veteran gets tapped by the fledgling security firm Blackwater to head to Iraq and help secure Bremmer. In The Bremmer Detail – Protecting the Most Threatened Man in the World, Gallagher and co-author John Del Vecchio detail the fly by the seat of their pants approach during those early days in which Blackwater, Gallagher and his team were writing the protective playbook with game afoot.

Gallagher captures in entertaining detail the almost constant evolution of of the job he and his team were tasked with performing in the face of not only untold danger, but also the almost non-stop schedule that Bremmer kept. When you consider the limited manpower, the tactical limitations and the total unknowns; like the force arrayed against them, the uncertain nature of terrorist-types and improvised weapons, it is amazing that they were able to complete the task at hand and keep Bremmer unscathed.

The Bremmer Detail takes on a “bunch of guys telling stories” quality and ladles out healthy doses of insider stories that offer real insight into the process and transition that Iraq was going through. There is a level of irony given the current state of the country and ISIS terrorists.