Sebastian:

Stop making strife within the party. I agree with Ace that this bickering between the coalition partners isn’t accomplishing anything … The term “States (sic) Rights” needs to be banished from the Republican vocabulary.

Well, there you go.  A loser’s strategy if I ever saw one.  The last milquetoast candidate did all of that and lost.  But so what?  He wouldn’t have changed anything anyway.

Don’t bicker, says Sebastian.  Banish the term state’s rights.  Perhaps he thinks we can vote our way out of the mess we’re in.  And the best way to do that is to elect politicians who will slow the train as it heads over the cliff, rather than turning or stopping the train altogether.

None of this matters anyway, since the GOP has already banished the term state’s rights from its vocabulary.  They are all statists, which is why they lost the last election.  If you want to lose the patriot vote, saying out loud that you’re banishing the term state’s rights is the surest way to ignominious defeat since no one will show up at the polls.  But at least it would be honest.

And we learn again how differently Sebastian and I think about things, how different our world views are.

In followup to my post on the negligent discharge at Gold’s Gym in Clemson, S.C., Marissa McFarland writes:

Mr. Smith,

I came across your article about the shooting at the Gold’s Gym in Clemson. I noticed your thoughts on the “accident” after the article. I, along with several other members of the gym, are angered by what has happened and the lackadaisical response the gym has had over this. I am planning to contact local media sources to try to get publicity, and hopefully force the gym’s hand on doing something about this. Is there anything you can do to assist us with this matter? Thank you in advance for your time.  This is a petition that was created to ban concealed weapons at all Gold’s Gym locations that have child care present.

Sorry Marissa, but I cannot condone rules against the carry of weapons, not anywhere or any time.  I preach the rules of gun safety to myself and anyone who’ll listen.  The boys who perpetrated the negligent discharge were goobers.  The Sheriff (and prosecutor) are also probably goobers for not charging them with reckless endangerment.

And you are correct to take your business elsewhere.  The market should determine the outcome of the situation.  But I will never favor regulations or rules that prohibit the carry of weapons.  That’s the wrong approach.  It’s like saying that since people have wrecks in cars, automobiles should be illegal.  See how stupid that sounds?

Kurt Hofmann:

We are told that we are to lock up our guns, “for safety.” We are told that cops (and retired cops) must have unlocked guns . . . “for safety.” How does once having worn a badge make what’s safe for one person the exact opposite of what’s safe for the next?

Expanding this line of thinking, if it’s safer to disarm us completely because, after all, guns are no defense, then the gun control advocate should also be in favor of disarming police.  But they never are, because they know guns are a defense.  The surest way to disarm (pardon the pun) gun control advocates is to ask them if they favor disarming the police too?  When they demur, you can call them a hypocrite.

Kurt Hofmann:

Sanders’ idea of the “middle” would also ban semi-automatic, detachable magazine-fed rifles–popularly, if inaccurately, referred to as “assault weapons”–and the “high capacity” (gun ban zealot-speak for “standard capacity”) magazines that feed them. This is the “middle”? Sending people to prison for buying the most popular class of centerfire rifles in America is his idea of respecting the rights of gun owners? Prison time for buying an 11-round magazine is the “compromise” he wants to sell us? Outlawing the most useful arms for defense of one’s home, one’s life, one’s family, and one’s liberty is part of the give-and-take he proposes?

Sanders is a communist like all other gun control advocates.

A blogroll addition at WoG.  Hey, I just noticed that I’m not blogrolled.

David’s latest at Oathkeepers.  I read the whole article, but David’s summation is the best: “Mirkarimi appears to fit that description. Initial charges of domestic violence were plea-bargained down to false imprisonment, allowing him to keep his gun. Not that he wants non-LEOs to keep and bear theirs. Hey, as long as he’s taken care of, why would the pesky Second Amendment and a ceremonial oath to the Constitution get in the way of an agenda?”

Mike Vanderboegh links this concerning someone’s pipe dream over how they define a “well regulated militia.”

“Here’s what a well-regulated militia actually looks like.”

1. First of all, assault weapons will be banned except for the National Guard. People who currently own assault weapons will be required to sell them to the National Guard which will distribute them to legitimate military units where they will be used for defense of the country.

2. Anyone wishing to buy a handgun will buy it from a police department. The police department will be allowed to make a profit on the guns they sell in order to pay for the systems’ gun owners’ database. These individual police department databases will be collected into a full national gun owners’ database and maintained by the Department of Homeland Security. Following a background check, the police department will issue the applicant a gun permit.

This person obviously wants civil war.

NJ.com on what it takes to legally transport a firearm into or through New Jersey.  I think the writer is wrong and that if you tried any of this you’d be arrested and charged with a felony.  Don’t follow this writer’s advice.

Via WRSA, Robert Gore posts this piece.  Robert’s place should be a regular stop through your daily or weekly reads, and I normally like the stuff that Gore writes, but I have to disagree on this, and profoundly so.  The problem is more than just missing the point.  Missing the point just happens to be missing a very important point, one that needs to be made.

The Greeks blame not just the banker cartel, but the Jew banker cartel for their state of affairs.  And to be fair, the global banker cartel is responsible for much of the financial woes we face now, even if indirectly.  But that’s the important point to be made.

Goldman-Sachs (as a mere example) appears to be just as influenced by the United Methodist Church as it is Jews, but let’s stipulate for the sake of argument that Jews run the global banks.  Without the direct involvement, assistance, and even incestuous relationship with the politicians, the banks couldn’t do a thing to harm the financial system.

Banks cannot make fractional reserve banking legal – only politicians do that.  Banks cannot create debt-based economies – only politicians can do that.  Banks cannot create money-printing – only politicians can do that.  The entire crumbling edifice upon which Keynesian economics is built requires the willing participation of politicians who couple with bankers to fleece the people.

These politicians are elected by the people.  This is so in America, which is behind Greece in rottenness of the system, but perhaps not by much.  This is true in Greece as well.  For years now, the Greek voters have elected communists to office, these communists being in bed with the money people like they always are.

People get the government they deserve and demand.  While Gore seems to make much of the supposed revolution against the banker cartel in Greece, even sounding like some sort of purist ideological revolution similar to the founding of America, I know a Greek who is even now visiting Greece, and has known his community of people for a very long time.

His take on Greece is that they are suffering now because they “sit on their asses and do nothing all day.”  True enough, even with people working hard all day, a banker cartel can destroy the economic system of a country.  But his point is that the people elected communists to office because they want a state-run system.  They got what they asked for.  It’s unimpressive to argue now that the poor Greeks are victims of either the government or the bankers.  The Greeks are victims of the choices they made.

So too will Americans be victims not of the government, nor of the bankers, but of the choices the voters made in the voting booth.  And those raging against the machine will suffer in the wake of judgment on the balance of society.  God’s judgment is sometimes corporate and collective.  The bankers and government are like the Babylonians.  God doesn’t approve, but He uses them to create the consequences that teach us all.  In the end, they will suffer punishment.

None of this is to say that the bankers aren’t thieves.  Of course they are, just like the government.  Likewise, the voters are thieves.  Anyone who votes to get something for nothing is a thief.  And no one should be surprised that when two groups of thieves get together, someone wins and someone loses.  The collective moral weakness begets the collective sin, and both groups of thieves will suffer in the postmortem.

Christianity Today:

Theron Wiggins, a pastor in Flint, Michigan, who worked as a police detective, is trying to change the situation.

“They believe the angels will protect us,” Wiggins said, referring to his congregation. “Well, I’m one of the angels.”

No you are not.  You are a man, and allowing them to believe otherwise is superstition.  It’s just as much superstition as it is to believe that the angels will protect them.

I believe in every one of God’s promises – every one of them.  They were spoken by the only sovereign, the ruler of heaven and earth.  When God speaks, it comes to pass.  Now, show me where He promised to send an angel to stop bullets from penetrating your body?  Don’t send me to a miracle, or a normative statement in Scripture.  Send me to a promise in Scripture.  No, seriously.  You can’t do it, can you?

And pastor, why does your congregation believe such superstition?  Should you not be teaching them better than that?

Greenville News:

A member of Gold’s Gym in Clemson accidentally fired a gun that the manager was showing him inside an office at the gym, according to the manager.

The bullet went through the manager’s desktop and lodged in a plastic dolly on the floor below, manager Rob Harrell said.

No one was hurt, but some members are upset about it.

Clemson Police Chief Jimmy Dixon said he didn’t know details about the incident but that no charges would be filed if it was an accident.

“All I can tell you is nobody was hurt, and that’s all I care about,” he said.

Harrell said he brought two handguns to work to show a member who, like him, was a gun enthusiast.

“I told him both firearms had full magazines but neither firearm had one in the chamber,” Harrell said.

The member pulled the trigger a few times on one of the guns that Harrell had removed the magazine from and then picked up a Glock that Harrell hadn’t taken the magazine out of.

“Before I could even say anything, he had picked it up and fired it,” Harrell said. “It went through my desk and straight into the floor.

“It was a horrible mistake, but nothing major happened.”

Oh dear.  How many rules were broken, how many times?  Something major did indeed happen.  People broke the sacred rules of gun safety, and lives could have been lost.  I guess a round was indeed chambered unlike what he said, and I guess he shouldn’t have pointed the gun anywhere, and I guess he shouldn’t have been pulling the trigger, and I guess the idiot who laid the guns out shouldn’t have.

These goobers are fortunate they aren’t being charged with reckless endangerment.

Bellevue Leader:

A survivor of the 2012 assault on the U.S. consulate and annex in Benghazi, Libya, related a harrowing tale of bureaucratic indecision and desperate military courage Sunday.

Kris “Tanto” Paronto, a native of Colorado who has lived in Omaha since 1996, spoke to a crowd gathered under a hot sun at the Take Aim firing range in the Daniell Crossing shopping center in west Bellevue.

Paronto was one of six 40-something contract security personnel, all former Marines, Navy SEALS or Army Rangers charged with ensuring the security of the consulate, considered among the most dangerous diplomatic postings in the world.

The six contractors lived one mile from the consulate in an annex building intended to be unrecognized as a support base.

But, as related in “13 Hours,” a book co-written by Paronto which relates the events of the night of Sept. 11, 2012, no one was fooled, the annex’s role betrayed by the constant flow of Americans and heavy equipment.

Tyrone Woods, one of the six contract fighters, died during the assault on the annex that followed the attack on the consulate. Also killed was Glen Doherty, a former Navy SEAL who was part of a contract security team in Tripoli who flew to the scene after news of the attack broke.

Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and an information technology specialist named Sean Smith died from asphyxiation at the consulate due to smoke inhalation.

[ … ]

Paronto said things were quiet as late as 9 p.m., when the security contractors were thinking more about bed than combat. Then the call came for a general muster in the annex, where they learned an attack had been launched against the consulate one mile away.

Paronto said he could see and hear the fighting from the annex building and with the rest of the security team geared up to rush to the consulate’s defense.

It was then, he said, that the top CIA staffer in Benghazi, referred to by Paronto only as “Bob,” told them all to stand down. That stand down lasted 25 minutes, at which point the contractors decided to ignore the order and head to the consulate. When they arrived they found the building had been decimated by diesel-fueled fire, the ambassador was missing and the body of Smith lay dead.

Stevens’ body would later show up at a local hospital where some Libyans had delivered it in the hope of reviving him, but he was declared dead of asphyxiation.

With nothing left to do, and unaware of the fate of Stevens, the team returned to the annex, surviving a firefight along the way.

Just after midnight the annex sustained mortar and rocket fire, the beginning of a long and bloody battle that resulted in the deaths of Woods and Doherty.

Paronto said his team repelled the attack, killing approximately 40 attackers and saving the lives of six State Department employees and evacuating about 30 other Americans from Benghazi.

Paronto’s testimony was unsparing, describing his security colleagues who survived as nonetheless sustaining horrific injuries, with legs and arms severed and hanging by tendons.

He said his faith in America waned in the wake of the Benghazi debacle but has since been restored by the support he and his fellow veterans have received from the general public, among whom he counted the 50 or so people listening Sunday.

“I want to say thank you to you all for bringing me back from a point where I had lost everything following Benghazi,” he said. “I’m a bigger patriot now than I ever was.”

One day, Kris, we will know who ‘Bob’ is, and we will know who gave Bob the order to stand down.  But first to the things we already know.  My military readers knew within 24 hours that this was the result of a well-planned, well-coordinated combined-arms attack with the use of crew served weapons (e.g., see DirtyMick’s comments).  We also know that weapons were being moved through Libya to Syrian insurgents, those whom we now know as ISIS.  We know that this was illegal, immoral and ill-advised, and was being funded by the U.S. government.

We know that there were awful men like Philip Smucker who, claiming to be a good friend of Ambassador Stevens, said of the incident, shit happens.  Smucker is such an ideologue and worshiper of Obama that anything could happen to friends or loved ones, and he would (and did) reply, “shit happens.”  Thus did the main stream media ignore or white wash the incident, also being worshipers of Obama.

As to what I suspect – but cannot yet prove – the movement of weapons to terrorists was becoming hard to hide, and the whole operation had ripened to the point of rottenness.  Stevens had to be moved out and told to shut up about what he knew.  Even if the administration didn’t plan the military operation to take down the consulate at Benghazi, they nevertheless used it to hide their tracks.

The administration didn’t know how long the attack would last, and so there was certainly a QRF on the European continent that could have been sent, even if it turns out they would not have arrived in time to assist Stevens and the team with which you deployed, Kris.  Furthermore, there could also have been air assets within theater that were brought to bear, and perhaps even another QRF closer than Europe.

General Ham – who quietly went into the night with no explanation – knows something.  Leon Panetta knows something.  General Petraeus knows something.  No one is talking, but one day we will find out the truth of Benghazi, how a small team was left to perish because it was more expedient for the political life of the administration.  One day we will know.

As for you, Kris, what are you trying to tell us by describing yourself before all else as a “patriot,” and wearing a tee shirt that says “Don’t tread on me?”

Yahoo News:

Baghdad (AFP) – With wooden crosses around their necks and others tattooed on their arms, several dozen Iraqi Christians are training to recapture their homes overrun by the Islamic State jihadist group.

A year ago, IS launched a fierce offensive in northern Iraq, quickly capturing second city Mosul, with its large Christian minority, and Christian-populated areas in the surrounding Nineveh province.

Residents were given the choice of converting to Islam, paying a tax to continue practising their faith, or death.

Thousands fled, but some want to fight back, and are now training at a military base near the Baghdad airport.

They have Shiite Muslim fighters instructing them on how to use their Kalashnikov assault rifles and on the basics of combat manoeuvres, but they are vocal in their Christianity on parade, chanting Ya Mariam (O Mary) in cadence as they march in a salute to the mother of Jesus.

“We heard that the Christians had an opportunity for jihad (holy war), and we all came and volunteered,” said 17-year-old Chaldean Christian Frank Samir.

“Our children are dying; our Christian families were displaced. How do we ourselves accept that people say the Christians are not fighting? On the contrary, we want to fight everywhere,” he said.

I applaud his efforts and spirit, but I say again, “Christians are not fighting.”  This is a pitiful contribution to self defense, this “several dozen” fighters.  ISIS should have run into a buzz saw, a veritable hail of bullets, when they attempted to drive the Christians from Mesopotamia.  The same goes for the Sunni or Shia Islamists.

Hundreds of thousands of Christians is quite enough to lay the smack down on even a large number of jihadists.  The several dozen Christians who are willing to go to war doesn’t speak well of the state of Christianity in the Middle East.  They won’t win this way.  They will only queue up more pain and suffering for their women and children – pain and suffering that didn’t have to be if they would simply fight back for faith and family.

Most of my readers also read WoG and WRSA (or you should), so you know about Mike Vanderboegh being admitted to the hospital for observation.  Just a quick note to request that you remember him and his family in your prayers.