Newsweek:

“Your argument is pure apple sauce. Enjoy your 20 seconds of fame, you fcuktard.”

A man named Jim is reading out some of the vitriolic abuse he’s received over the past few days via the Internet. Previously known only by his Twitter handle, @Hyperationalist, Jim last week launched a Change.org petition calling for the open carry of guns at the Republican National Convention, which will be held in Cleveland in July. The petition has ganered international news coverage and prompted responses from the Secret Service and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, as well as online haters.

David Codrea has some salient comments:

You have to give “The Hyperationalist” credit — his fake Change.org petition for open carry at the RNC Convention has been a highly successful exercise in both advanced trolling and in applied Alinksy Rule 5 ridicule. With over 50,000 signatures amassed at this writing, and noting all the major press coverage, a primary goal of going viral has unquestionably been achieved in a big way.

Of less certainty is how many people were actually taken in by a parody designed to embarrass and to exploit venue realities – besides all those “professional reporters” who got sucked in and treated it as real. Some of us figured we were being played from the outset. Of those who signed, how many actual gun rights supporters added their names is unknown, as many signatories are undoubtedly anti-gun/anti-Republican “progressives” gleefully piling on.

[ … ]

Carrying at the convention is a moot point anyway. Aside from it violating venue rules, the Secret Service flat-out won’t allow it. If they did allow guns, we’d have no reason to suspect the outcome would be any different than we saw play out at NRA’s Annual Meeting last year in Nashville. Almost 80,000 attendees gathered in a setting where lawful concealed carry was widespread.

David had him figured, and so did I.  The first time I saw this I was tempted to comment on it, but only for a split second.  This is the first attention I’ve given to this issue.  After blogging for ten years, I’ve become fairly skilled at spotting trolls.  Not perfect, mind you, but fairly skilled.  Look, if they want to have an intelligent conversation about guns, we do that every day around these parts.  Furthermore, I’m willing to engage smart debate with anyone over guns if they have clean motives, play fairly and are sincerely interested in learning.  Tell me the next time you see a progressive who meets those requirements.

The gun rights community is going to have to get better at spotting insincere overtures like this, trolls who want to make us look bad.  Put your thinking cap on, don’t jump at the first thing you see, and when you do engage, make it the person and venue of your choice.  That’s why, although I agree with Mike on 99.9999% of everything else, I didn’t like Mike Vanderboegh’s choice to go on the Alan Colmes show.  Colmes was never going to be anything but what he is, a dishonest and filthy rag.  As Sun Tzu teaches, pick both the battles and the time of engagement.

Says the jerk (via reader Mack):

Frankly, I don’t care if people call me an Establishment Republican. It used to bother me, but it doesn’t anymore. In fact, I’ve come to wear it as a badge of honor.

I’ve been working on my own definition of what it means to be an Establishment Republican. While my definition is still a work in progress, I would suggest that the following are some good factors to consider when deciding what kind of Republican you are:

First, an Establishment Republican is typically someone who was actively involved in the Republican Party prior to the advent of the Tea Party.

In my case, I have been a Republican since I worked on my first political campaign at the age of 15. I have been a member of the Republican Party of Virginia since 1987. And I held elected office as a Republican for more than 22 years.

Even though some of the GOP’s more recent members seem to think that they are the only ones who know what it means to be a Republican, I would remind them that there was a very successful Republican Party prior to the advent of the Tea Party. In fact, I would argue that the Republican Party was stronger, more cohesive, and more successful in days gone by than it is today.

Second, an Establishment Republican is someone who adheres to a conservative political philosophy, but understands that not everyone will agree with us on every issue; and we have respect for dissenting opinions, even if we don’t agree with them.

Or, as Ronald Reagan said, we understand that the person who agrees with us 80 percent of the time is an 80 percent friend, not a 20 percent traitor. This distinguishes us from those that take an ideologically rigid “my way or the highway” approach to politics and policy.

Third, an Establishment Republican is someone who understands that there is a difference between being conservative and being anti-government.

Okay, have you heard enough?  I’m sure Mr. Bolling and I aren’t going camping or shooting together.  I don’t think he’s my type.  Besides, I’ve grown weary of the whole tea party / establishment bifurcation and definition and advocate something much different.  Marco Rubio was a tea party candidate, and he’s a loser and liar.  In fact, Mark Levin and I think alike on this.

Mr. Bolling wants to know what you think about a “do something” republican.  I don’t think I like that idea very much.  You see, I think that the federal government has the right under the constitution to provide for the common defense, and that’s about it.  States only a little more, perhaps the construction of roads to enable commerce.  Gun control is evil in all of its forms, and I would much rather see the federal government completely shut down than anyone doing something about anything.

I want a constitutionalist, not an anti-establishment candidate.  Donald Trump is an anti-establishment candidate, and he’s blabbering about making all kinds of deals with just about everyone under the sun.  I don’t want that.  I don’t want the federal government to be empowered that way.  I don’t want somebody who pokes their thumb in the eye of the establishment, because that could very well be the devil, who happens to hate you and want to control you even more than the establishment.

I will not side with the establishment or the devil.  The Holy Scriptures contain examples of God using evil nations to judge Israel, and then turning on those evil nations and destroying them for what they did.  When God has two wicked enemies attacking each other, the best bet is to stay back rather than take sides in that dark war.  There will be no winners – only losers.

NBC:

Beginning July 1, Idaho residents age 21 or older will be allowed to carry a concealed firearm without a permit inside city limits.

Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter has signed Senate Bill 1389 into law. It will relax the state’s gun policy and remove permitting requirements for concealed carry. Prior to SB 1389, residents age 18 or older could carry concealed firearms without a permit outside of city limits. Open carry is already legal within city limits.

Beginning July 1, Idaho residents age 21 or older will be allowed to carry a concealed firearm without a permit inside city limits.

Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter has signed Senate Bill 1389 into law. It will relax the state’s gun policy and remove permitting requirements for concealed carry. Prior to SB 1389, residents age 18 or older could carry concealed firearms without a permit outside of city limits. Open carry is already legal within city limits.

“While S1389 is consistent with the U.S. Constitution, Idaho values and our commitment to upholding our constitutional protections from government overreach, I am concerned about its lack of any provision for education and training of individuals who choose to exercise the right to concealed carry,” the Republican lawmaker wrote.

“Such a safeguard would seem to be part of the Second Amendment’s ‘well-regulated’ standard. What’s more, the addition of a simple training requirement in this bill could have addressed the concerns of our valued law enforcement leaders and others who cherish both the shooting culture and the safety of shooters and non-shooters alike.”

Trying to play both ends against the middle, huh Governor?  This is just rich.  He admits that the new law is consistent with the provisions of the second amendment, but then essentially says that he doesn’t think the second amendment goes far enough because of the need for education and training.

Then he switches back and reverses his position, saying that a requirement to get training and education is consistent with the notion of “well regulated.”

“Well regulated” has nothing to do with governmental control via regulations, it has to do with accurate and effective fire control.  Furthermore, I’ve warned about the dangers of seeing the second amendment as a political treatise on the foundation of liberty.

The governor is just frightened.  He’ll be better once this has time to soak in and become the standard.  It works in other constitutional carry states, and it’ll work in Idaho too.

Politico:

If Republican establishment forces conspire to deny Donald Trump the party’s nomination, they will risk “absolute destruction” in November, Ben Carson said Monday.

“If there are shenanigans, if it’s not straightforward, all of those millions of people that Donald Trump has brought into the arena are not going to stay there, and the Republicans are going to lose and it’s going to be not only the presidency but it’s gonna be the Senate and it could even be the House,” the retired neurosurgeon who endorsed his former opponent earlier this month told “Fox and Friends,” adding, “It’s going to be absolute destruction.”

You pathetic whiner.  Is that supposed to scare me?  I’ve already pointed out that it isn’t just of Trump is not nominated.  It’s if Trump is in fact nominated too, or anything else happens, because the GOP is already dead.  So don’t come trying to engender the panic.  I’ve got a few gray hairs too.  Bring on the destruction.

David Codrea:

“‘cause in rural America, there are a lot of folks — Sen. Enzi knows this — they might be out huntin’ gophers and go in to pick up the mail, and they got the gun sittin’ in their pickup — it’s just a matter — it’s a tool to do their work with,” he explained.

You jerk off bigot!  I know your type and I loath you.  Your antics don’t amuse me.  As for the pathetic republican cowards, how about shutting down the government over shit like this?  Oh, I forgot.  Ted Cruz already tried this and you hung him out to dry.  So come to think of it, I loath all of you.

One day at the great and awful white throne judgment when the Lord of Lords sits and examines everyone, someone will answer for the thievery of Fifth generation warfare and the waste associated with the F-35.

Pat Toomey gun control ads.  Good grief.  The man cranks it up again.

Effects of universal background check laughable.  So why did you support it, Dave Workman?

In light of the murder of a security guard at a nuclear power plant allegedly by ISIS, I had a conversation with someone this weekend on that subject.  A brief synopsis of it follows.

Person A: So can ISIS do anything to a nuclear power plant?

Me: Do you really want to have this conversation?

Person A: Yes.

Me: Okay.  So be it.  No, ISIS can’t do anything.

Person A: But what about Chernobyl?

Me:  At Chernobyl, which is an RBMK-1000 design, it was neutronically a loosely couple reactor in order to allow refueling on line because it was producing weapons grade material.  It’s neutron moderator was graphite, not water.  The water was both the coolant and a neutron poison.  Thus, on lose of coolant, the neutron population rapidly increased.  That fateful night an electrical engineer was running a test on the reactor, and the reactor operators were operating under his procedure.  He put the plant in a condition in which safety systems and automatic reactor trips were bypassed, forced a plant transient, and voided the core of water.

When he did this, reactor power increased by a factor of 100 within one second.  Shortly after the accident a lot of multidimensional analysis work was performed to ascertain whether it was a nuclear explosion or a steam explosion.  The answer was pretty clear, it was a steam explosion.  Commercial nuclear reactors cannot explode like a bomb.  It’s impossible.  But it dispersed the coolant channels in such a manner that the core could no longer be cooled.  It melted.

This Russian design had what we call a positive void coefficient, leading to an overall positive power coefficient.  Reactor transients with increasing power further increase power.  In America, the code of federal regulations dictates that reactors be designed with overall negative power coefficients.  In Europe too, I believe.  The RBMK only exists in Russia and the Ukraine.

I’m sorry, I asked you if you really wanted to have this conversation.

Person A: So the plant is intrinsically safe, but can ISIS do anything with the security badge?

Me: No.  Entry into the plant requires biometric screening, like palm prints.  If someone tried to force their way into the plant, they would be shot within seconds (not to mention the fact that the turnstiles would never open).  The only real threat to safety and security would be an inside job, where engineers who had extensive knowledge of the safety analysis of the plant went into the plant to area terminal cabinets and opened sliding links, lifted leads, and so on, disabling safety systems.  In other words, malicious tampering.  Engineers are very non-fertile ground for that sort of thing, having worked their entire careers trying to baby the machine into working right to begin with.  No engineer wants to see his life’s work go away in ignominy.  Besides, engineers are boring people.

Person A: So why all the hype?

Me: Soccer moms will do anything, give over any amount of privacy, give up virtually anything, in order to maintain a level of safety and security.  ISIS and nuclear power plants is the latest incarnation of the whole ISIS thing generically.  The government gets a chance to say, “Hey, listen to us, we’ll protect you if you’ll only give us access to your iPhone, all of your records, bank accounts, medical data, tell us whether you have any guns in the home, let us listen to and record your phone calls and all of your text messages, and in short be your protector.  We’ll take care of you, we promise!  We won’t let the mean bad men make the big bad thingy go BOOM and hurt your precious little babies!  Let me have the keys to your life, sweetie!”

NYT:

Though Mr. Cruz has adjusted his public tone, calling for party harmony and appealing to “our better angels” in a moment of political discord, senior Republican officials say Mr. Cruz has made little effort to repair relationships, particularly in the Senate.

Senator John Cornyn, the second-ranking Republican senator and Mr. Cruz’s fellow Texan, privately lobbied Mr. Cruz to attend a Senate Republican luncheon in the Capitol and soothe feelings, according to a Republican strategist briefed on the request. But after a CNN report in which some Republican senators suggested that Mr. Cruz apologize to the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, whom Mr. Cruz called a liar on the Senate floor, Mr. Cruz’s campaign became irritated and backed off a peacemaking lunch.

Mr. Cruz and Mr. McConnell have still not spoken, according to an aide to Mr. McConnell.

“I’m not sure there’s anything to apologize for,” Jason Johnson, Mr. Cruz’s chief strategist, told reporters recently.

Hey Lindsey, you can cram your endorsement up your ass.  As for Mitch McConnell, apologizing to him would be akin to pledging fealty to a demon.  I would lose all respect for Ted.  I would rather see McConnell tarred and feathered.  Or perhaps hanged.  But a good old fashioned tarring and feathering would drag it out longer.

Don’t do this.

WRSA has this up where it is implicitly suggested that Paul Ryan (weasel that he is), is actually going to make a move for candidacy.  It also appears to be suggested that this behavior is somehow controlled by the GOP machine.

Bhah!  The establishment controls little to nothing, Paul Ryan has as much chance at being the candidate as my dog, and the second example is a bunch of goobers in over their head trying to run things they shouldn’t.  Nothing more.

I’ve heard it until I’m sick and fed up.  The establishment.  They are to blame for Trump.  The establishment.  THE ESTABLISHMENT!  Screw the establishment!  They are responsible for all of the nation’s ills.  Except, not really.

The establishment is mostly filled with gargoyles, demons and pit vipers, except for a few like Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Louie Gohmert (TX), Dave Brat and Jeff Duncan (who as I discussed before, all met in Ted’s office on a regular basis and strategized to kill the gang of eight bill, for which they all give him credit).  But the bad ones, and they are numerous, were put there by voters.

Let’s cover that point again.  Voters put the bastards in office.  Every Senator and member of the House (with the sole exception of which I am aware, Tim Scott) was voted into office, not appointed.  The voters have all the power.  The voters put the bastards in office.  Sure, the voters’ ranks is mostly filled ignoramuses, goobers, idiots who would rather spend time playing fantasy football, and couch potatoes who would rather watch mind-numbing nighttime sitcoms than learn anything about government, human nature, theology, philosophy or anything that requires heavy thought.

But that’s the point.  If voters are too stupid or disconnected to vote honorable men into office, then it’s to be expected that dishonorable men will behave dishonorably.  And by the way, I simply don’t buy Ann Barnhardt’s axiom that “The culture has degraded such that seeking and/or holding office, especially national-level office, is, in and of itself, proof that a given person is psychologically and morally unfit to hold public office.”  It has absolutely nothing to do with the culture, and everything to do with the state of man both redeemed and unredeemed.  There is nowhere in the Holy Writ that Ann can turn that explains that merely seeking leadership marks a man out as being more sinful than any other man (Ann should read more John Calvin on the state of mankind), and she can’t demonstrate that there is.  Screaming it louder and louder doesn’t make it so, and Ann just made that up because she’s so pissed off, like she always is.

As for the GOPe, “the establishment,” they are easily dealt with.  The voters are doing it now.  A single election cycle can throw them all out on their ears.  The establishment has no power not given to it by the idiot voters.  Finally, most of the chattering class is woefully ignorant of most of the things I’m telling you, so you’re now smarter than most of the pundits inside the beltway (you probably were anyway).

Except that they may be beginning to catch on (and I’ll cite with caveats and stipulations).  Enter Jonah Goldberg.

Nominating Donald Trump will wreck the Republican party as we know it. Not nominating Trump will wreck the Republican party as we know it. The sooner everyone recognizes this fact, the better.

[ … ]

Trump’s response to this floor-fight talk was to vomit up the usual word salad. “All I can say is this, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Trump told ABC’s This Week. “But I will say this, you’re going to have a lot of very unhappy people [if I’m denied the nomination]. And I think, frankly, for the Republicans to disenfranchise all those people because if that happens, they’re not voting and the Republicans lose.”

Even through the syntactical fog, Trump’s point is clear: If he can’t reach 1,237, he should get the nomination anyway. Because he is Trump. If that doesn’t happen, his supporters will stay home, defect from the party, riot, or all three.

And he’s right. Not about deserving the nomination even if he doesn’t have the delegates. That’s typical Trumpian whining. But he’s right that if he’s denied the nomination, many — not all, but many — of his supporters will bolt from the convention and the party. Left out of Trump’s unsubtle threat: Many anti-Trump Republicans will desert the convention and the party if he’s not denied the nomination.

[ … ]

Trump represents just the most pronounced of a spiderweb of ideological and demographic fault lines that are increasingly difficult to paper over. As Joel Kotkin put it in a column for the Orange County Register, the Republican party now “consists of interest groups that so broadly dislike each other that they share little common ground.”

For whatever reason, Trump’s supporters have concluded that (a) they don’t care about issues of life and will vote for candidates who support abortion, and (b) they don’t care about having a single payer socialist health care system for the rest of their lives and the lives of the children’s children.

I’ve told you before and I’ll say it again.  This election cycle is the last chance … the … last … chance … you have to turn back a single payer health care system.  If Trump dumps Obamacare and substitutes his own version of a single payer system (which is no different except that it opens state lines), it will never be reversed in American history without bloody revolution.  It will take weapons to turn it back.  Maybe that’s what you want.

And yet there are those Ted Cruz voters, who have said that they will bolt the party if Trump is nominated.  I’ve outlined my four non-negotiables, and Trump misses on two of them, and is weak on a third (he misses on pro-life, misses on a single payer health care system, and he’s weak on gun rights).  I won’t vote for Trump, so I’m in the category I mentioned above.  On election night, I’ll sit back and laugh, but I won’t whore my vote out to the least bad candidate.

But that’s the point of this whole thing, yes?  The fault of the GOP debacle lies not with the GOPe, not with Trump, and not with Cruz.  The responsibility for the debacle lies in fault lines developed years ago, irreconcilable differences, voters who have fundamentally different world views on very important matters.

The GOP is not finished if Trump is the candidate (future tense).  The GOP is not finished if Cruz is the candidate (future tense).  The GOP is not finished because of the GOPe.  The GOP is finished – past tense – because of fault lines in the voters.  It is irreversible, having to do with things theological and philosophical and things related to incorrigible values and world and life view.

Prepare yourself now for the fallout.

HBR:

Absent from much of the discussion, and President Obama’s recent Executive Order in particular, is any role for the gun manufacturers. When it comes to guns getting into the wrong hands, the President’s executive order frames it as a dealer issue to be addressed by expanding the capability of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). When it comes to technological development for safer guns, it is a task assigned to the Departments of Defense, Justice and Homeland Security — not to the U.S. based firms who have been designing and manufacturing guns since the Civil War. So it’s natural to ask: Where are the gun manufacturers?

To understand why they’re absent from any discussions of gun safety, you have to both grasp how the gun industry works — and go back about a decade to a landmark piece of legislation.

None of the “Big 3” sell guns directly to consumers. Ruger sells exclusively to a small set of wholesalers, each of which are licensed by the federal government. Remington sells to both federally licensed wholesalers and directly to some federally licensed retailers (Walmart being its largest retail account). In each case, the company uses this buffer of its distribution structure as a disclaimer of any responsibility for the ultimate use of their weapons. For example, in the wake of Sandy Hook where one of its Bushmaster assault rifles was used for all 26 killings, company management issued a statement saying the company: “…does not sell weapons or ammunition directly to consumers, through gun shows or otherwise. Sales are made only to federally licensed firearms dealers in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.”

Statements like this seem to suffice as legal protection for manufacturers due to the 2005 passage of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Firearms Act, which the National Rifle Association referred to as its “number one legislative priority and a monumental victory for the Association…” The Act grants broad immunity to manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and even industry trade associations. No action can be brought as long as the product functioned “as designed and intended” and there is no evident negligence. Since the act’s passage, no case has been successfully brought against a gun manufacturer. So without the threat of litigation, the manufacturers’ stance has been to protect the status quo – no matter how unhealthy that status quo is to the public.

“Obey the law” is generally good business advice. But gun manufacturers, guided by senior leaders trained at some of the best business schools in the country, are quite capable of more.

[ … ]

Step one is for manufacturers to adopt the role of steward for the entire gun marketing system, all the way to the buyer. This would include not only efficient distribution within the legal channel but directing meaningful effort to minimize the flow of guns from legal to illegal channels …

Step two is to monitor and stop selling to “problem” dealers …

Step three is to put some portion of the research and development spend — about $25 million in 2015 for the Big 3 — in technology-enabled gun safety to direct a new generation of guns to consumers.

There you have it.  Three easy steps to business success!  First, do the job of law enforcement.  Second, be intrusive into the lives of their customers.  Third, invest money into things (smart guns) that no one will buy, no one wants, and no one will use.

It’s a sad day when a Harvard Business School professor ignores business realities and teaches vapid tripe in order to push a political agenda.  The business realities of his suggestions would certainly be harmful to firearms manufacturers, but of course, that’s his intention, yes?

And how much does it cost to attend Harvard Business School?  Couldn’t you just take that same amount of money, invest it in firearms manufacturers and be much better off?  How is that for business advice professor?