Articles by Herschel Smith

Straight from Sweden via the U.K:

Uh huh.  “Allah the merciful.”  Prepare for this stateside.  If you think it isn’t coming, you’re a sucker and a fool.  Prepare now.

NYT:

The New York City public advocate on Monday asked federal regulators to investigate whether the gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson had made adequate disclosures in its financial statements.

In an eight-page letter, the public advocate, Letitia James, said the Securities and Exchange Commission should examine whether Smith & Wesson misrepresented or omitted information about how often its products are involved in crimes and what it has done to keep its guns out of the hands of criminals.

Shareholders would want to know whether Smith & Wesson faced heightened regulatory scrutiny or significant litigation risk, Ms. James said in the letter.

Nearly two weeks ago, a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif., left 14 people dead and provoked a fresh outcry about gun violence in America. It also is the third anniversary of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults.

“With the increase in mass shootings, public concern about the proliferation of firearms has animated a national dialogue about gun control measures, interstate gun trafficking, and whether gun manufacturers should take additional steps to ensure that their products do not end up in the hands of criminals,” the letter says. “Smith & Wesson knows that it is at risk of grave reputational harm.”

Ms. James is opening a new avenue in her fight against gun sellers and makers. Earlier this month, she called on TD Bank, a big lender, to stop financing Smith & Wesson. This summer, she convinced the New York City Employee Retirement System, the city’s largest pension fund, to explore divesting itself of its holdings of gun retailers like Walmart and Dick’s Sporting Goods.

Here is the letter, sponsored by the City of New York because it is hosted on a New York City web site.  Ms. James, who makes $165,000 per year at the expense of city taxpayers, and who is almost never on the job to do her job of public advocate, is using her salary, time and staff to fight legitimate, law abiding gun manufacturers by – you guessed it – regulating them to death at the hands of the *.us.gov.  What regulation, what law, what knickers-in-a-wad fabricated problem of the day, it matters not.  This is what community organizers do.  Regulators are the philosopher-kings, and we are the subjects.

No, she isn’t another Bloomberg apparatchik.  She is much more progressive than Bloomberg, and gave an anti-Bloomberg speech upon de Blasio’s inaguration so caustic that that even The New York Times berated it.  She is next-gen progressive.  And like the current administration, she doesn’t mind spending money she didn’t earn from the public coffers to battle what she perceives to be social justice warrior battles.

And we can all say with one voice, “Get a real job and mind your own damn business.  We don’t care what you think.”  I hope Smith & Wesson buries you.

This is one reason Neocons hate Ted Cruz.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz says the United States is safer if we leave Bashar Assad in power in Syria.

The GOP presidential hopeful told the Associated Press that while Assad is a “bad man” who has “murdered hundreds of thousands of his own citizens,” toppling him would be “materially worse for U.S. national security interests.”

He faulted the Obama administration as well as one of his Republican rivals, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, for wanting to get rid of the Syrian leader.

“If President Obama and Hillary Clinton and Sen. Rubio succeed in toppling Assad, the result will be the radical Islamic terrorist will take over Syria, that Syria will be controlled by ISIS, and that is materially worse for U.S. national security interests,” Cruz said.

Cruz, who has been gaining some ground in recent polls, also said the United States should not have supported the overthrow of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, or even former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

“If you topple a stable ruler, throw a Middle Eastern country into chaos and hand it over to radical Islamic terrorists, that hurts America,” he said.

Neocons foolishly believe in the export of liberty.  But as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us again, some people don’t want liberty.  They love their enslavement, and Islam is a prime example of the kind of Fascism that comes to dominate a man’s heart, soul and culture.  It cannot coexist with anything.  Only by overthrowing Islam can a country embrace liberty, and so the so-called Green movement in Iraq would have gone to war with the Iranian establishment had the U.S. supported it.  Instead we relegated it to a failing and sidelined movement, destined to perish like every other ideology that met the Mullahs head on.

In the case of Libya and Syria, Cruz knows what the Neocons don’t.  The dictator we know is better than the one we know will come to power in his place, and without the destruction of Islamism in Iran, it’s better to leave well enough alone.  Meddling has produced bad results, and so the meddling should stop.

But Cruz is hated for that and other anti-Neocon positions.  I listened to Brit Hume tonight on Fox News O’Reilly (Hume misspelled Cruz’s name), and Brit was all somber and insistent about Cruz’s upcoming month being an opportunity for the good folks of Iowa to find out what his “real” positions are, and they may not like them.  Positions such as Cruz’s opposition to the NSA spying program, which according to Hume, people may find that they want in the wake of the San Bernardino shootings.

Really, Brit?  Conservatives want larger government programs that enable the Leviathan executive branch to spy on U.S. citizens?  Really?  Is this the great dagger in the heart of Cruz?  Look, we know that the best bet to ameliorate terrorism in America is to close the borders, which runs directly contrary to Rubio’s position.  You won’t have any success convincing us that it’s best to leave the borders open and try to fight them when they get here.  That’s weak tea.  As far as we conservatives are concerned, leave the *.us.gov out of it except to close the borders, and leave our guns alone.  We’ll be just fine.  We’re unimpressed, but I will make a note of the fact that it sounds like you got your talking points from Karl Rove before coming on the air with O’Reilly, who was too stupid to interrupt you and tell you to go back to the drawing board.

Next up is Max Boot, who waxes emotional about Regan’s demeanor.

Like many of his rivals for the Republican nomination, Ted Cruz has embraced the mantle of Ronald Reagan. He regularly cites the Gipper as an inspiration, and last week gave a foreign policy address at the Heritage Foundation that was laced with tributes to him: “As Reagan knew well, the best way to project America’s leadership is by protecting and promoting America’s strength and this principle should always guide our actions.”

You have got to be kidding me?  In Boot’s alternate universe, McConnell is a “staunch” conservative, and Boehner, old yellowstain himself, is somehow worthy of anything but our most robust disapprobation and insults.  And yet these two quisling traitors are responsible for much of the socialism, crony capitalism, indebtedness, and unfunded liabilities with which our nation is plagued today.

This is rich.  Boot begins with apparently his strongest condemnation of Cruz, which is that Cruz condemns socialism, crony capitalism and debt.  And Boot thinks that this is somehow going to be effective with conservatives.  Again, this is just rich.  But it is telling that it sounds like Boot got his talking points from Karl Rove.

Message to Hume and Boot.  Don’t hang around with Karl Rove.  It’ll prove to be your undoing.  And don’t be persuaded that those outside the beltway think like you do.  We don’t.  You lead the insular life of the effete, inner city dwellers, out of touch with just about everyone except those with whom you dine and discuss.  You should get out a bit more.

Oh, and none of the things Rove has planned for Cruz will change a thing.  Rove is a putz, and you can tell him I said so over dinner.

SandyDog, who comments:

Anybody with half a brain can out-think a dog, and rare indeed is the dog that’s so vicious that a treat and a few kind words won’t turn it into a friend. As most officers own dogs themselves, only a psychopath would want to shoot one and have it die in agony right in front of him.

Shooting the dog when it was already confined in a cage is the height of needless cruelty, and a clear sign of a twisted mind.

Raw Story:

Police Chief Andrew Spencer resigned this week after it was revealed that he shot and killed an innocent dog that was in a cage and meant no one any harm. To make matters even worse, he took the puppy to a firing range and killed it there because he did not want to deal with finding its home.

Spencer found the dog and managed to get it into a cage using a catcher pole. He then wrote in his report that he had planned to take the dog to a shelter where it would be “destroyed,” but then he got another call about a car accident so he decided to do it himself.

The report said that he had planned to go to “the cheapest vet to destroy the dog at the cost of the city.” However, the report continued “Due to the higher priority call and the imminent destruction of the dog, I decided it was best to destroy the dog and respond to the accident.”

After the fact, Spencer claimed that the dog was charging at people in the neighborhood. However, he said that he did not believe that the dog bit anyone, otherwise he would have had it taken to the vet and tested for rabies.

Also, at the time the dog was shot, it was in a cage and thus not a threat to anyone. If Spencer just had a little bit more patience and compassion, he would have found that the family of the lost puppy was looking all over the town for him. Owner Elizabeth Womack said that her puppy Chase was extremely peaceful and friendly animal.

Womack wrote on her Facebook page how she attempted to contact the police and was lied to on several occasions about the incident. Eventually, she was told by the police Chief that he shot and killed her dog, and that they would be free to identify him if they wanted to go dig him up.

CheaperThanDirt.com:

In October 2015, Winchester issued a recall and important safety notice for Winchester XPR rifles.

XPR rifles have the potential to fire an unintended round when the safety switch is manipulated. During continuous product testing, Winchester found that moving the safety switch on the XPR rifle “may cause movement in the trigger system that could result in unintended firing of certain XPR rifles.”

As such, Winchester is recalling all XPR rifles. Winchester is replacing certain trigger group parts in all Winchester XPR rifles free. Winchester requests all owners of XPR rifles send their rifles for retrofitting.

This is the right way to do it, the responsible and ethical way.  If you find a problem, recall it and fix it.  Unlike what Remington did with the Model 700 Walker Fire Control.

Hispanic voters vow to punish the GOP.  But, but, but, I thought they were solidly in our camp, conservative, religious and all that?  Isn’t that what we were told?

David Codrea:

No doubt the press will show up, but funny thing — there’s not a lot in the “news” announcing things at this writing.  My guess is, they don’t want it to turn out like Bloomberg’s bus tour, where they kept stops secret because they didn’t want subsidized “supporters” outnumbered. Still, look for the media to give the handful of indignant zealots who do show up inordinate exposure, and to position their camera shots to make it look like the events draw widespread public participation.

It’s because they’ve lost.  No, I’m not saying stand down.  We can never stand down.  Evil knows no end until the very end, i.e., judgment day.  I’m saying that moms have lost, but as a Leopard cannot change its spots, so too the moms cannot help but be collectivists.

LEOs and gun free zones.

In a statement Thursday, Police Chief Steve Conrad expressed surprise that some of his officers weren’t allowed inside the downtown theater.

“Given today’s climate, we would think most businesses would welcome armed and well-trained police officers, on or off-duty, to help out should there be a problem,” Conrad wrote.

Oh go cry me a river.  And what about concealed carriers?  Oh, I see.  You’re more “specialer” than we are.

From Mike Vanderboegh.  This seems to me to be very important.  I might talk to my daughter the Nurse Practitioner about this.  Read it.

After watching this, I’ve decided that The Captain’s Journal will call for a ban on guns for all one-armed men born on the third Thursday of April.  After all, you never know when they will become a terror problem.

Or not.

This is must-watch video.  Mark Steyn is at his best.

Sadly, if you read the comments at WRSA, they get random very quickly, and they go off the rails in places.  Not Islamists, but cops are our worst enemy.  We don’t want to talk about jihad, but rather, how much we hate cops.

Look folks, I’m hard on bad cops, but this kind of single-mindedness is a sign of immaturity and lack of ability to focus and a short attention span.  The subject wasn’t cops, it was Mark Steyn on the civilized world.

I’ve even seen comments at WRSA where they sided with the rioters in Ferguson because they were fighting the same fight as us.  Ridiculous.  I’m not any more colleagues, friends, or brothers with the rioters in Ferguson than I am the Islamists.  They are all my enemy.  If you’re looking for friends, court the right kind of people.  Don’t hang with the bad.

Nothing … and I repeat … nothing … can placate or mollify my loathing of Lindsey Graham of S.C., whom I loath about as much as I do State Senator Larry Martin of S.C.  But this exchange between the loathsome Lindsey Graham and the director of the FBI is priceless.