I am sitting in the Imperial Capital, aka, Washington DC. Lovely weather, a beautiful day. The Diplowife and I walked all over the city, and now she's off to go shopping while I recover in the hotel.
I was delighted to read that President Trump is withdrawing our signature from the so-called UN Arms Treaty. He signed the notification to the Senate with a typical Trumpian flourish, while giving a speech at the NRA HQS. He knows politics like nobody else does! The Dems are going to have their hands full in 2020.
Your humble Diplomad had written about this travesty of a treaty WAY BACK in July of 2012. I noted back then that this UN effort posed innumerable threats to American sovereignty and to the rights of Americans. It also promised to be an endless source of employment for lawyers and leftist activists. It would have devastated the small arms industry, and essentially ended individual ownership of firearms. It was a disaster, so, of course, Obama signed it and sent it to the Senate for ratification, where it languished.
Trump has canceled that signature.
Delightful news.
Amen!
ReplyDeleteyet another instance where the former dictator is told to FOAD in no uncertain terms. good.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAnd another bit of the Obama Legacy bites the dust at the hands of Trumpus Magnus.
ReplyDeleteBut Trump has been wrong about one thing...Im not tired of winning yet.
A Most Pleasant Thing to hear of! HUZZAH!
ReplyDeleteI figure that this UN arms treaty was just more of the same "Gun Control" we have already seen. More hoops, fees and costs to firearm ownership. "Firearms for the rich, but not for the poor". The same people clamoring that presenting ID, finger prints, and a background check is not too much to ask for a firearm transfer get a forehead vein bulge when even a basic ID check for voting is brought up.
ReplyDeleteAnd cue the injunction from some court in the 9th Circuit that forbids Trump from withdrawing from a legitimately signed treaty by Obama.
ReplyDeleteNah, they'll save their big "guns" for later - they'll get some traffic court judge on Maui to take the first shot at this one.
DeleteIf, on 27 April, you listened to WTOP, one of the biggest news/traffic/weather radio stations that broadcasts to all the DC Beltway commuters each day, you would have learned only that Trump stopped the UN from preventing human rights violators from accessing weapons. Nothing else - just "human rights violators".
ReplyDeleteNothing about the Second Amendment or any of our other Constitutional Rights being protected from foreign legal chicanery - just weapons for human rights violators - which tells you exactly what the leftists in the media think of you and those rights too.
Right!
DeleteThe Blue Helmets would replace the foreigner's headgear that BLM and the Deep State deployed for their 1st overt assault on the Bundy Ranch!
On Watch~~~
"President Trump is withdrawing our signature from the so-called UN Arms Treaty. He signed the notification to the Senate with a typical Trumpian flourish, while giving a speech at the NRA HQS."
ReplyDeleteIn their faces!~~~Shazam! Boff! Boom! Bang! 3 Cheers! Screw the UN and the EU too!~~~
~~~While in other NRA News... Ollie's empty hotseat was sadly only represented by his nameplate! You'd think a guy with a squeaky voice and shaky grip would of learned by now, NOT to Bluff with a Busted Flush! Sorry for your troubles Lite Col., but a Million NRA Bucks+ from 'Ackerman-Mcqueen' for a year in limelight, is a pretty good payday, for silver haired goofy-footed hoofer like you!
Still, I'm glad I sent you the $50. US dollar donation for the NRA when you asked! Hope you take some time off to enjoy the fruits of your labors, before the next GOP campaign kicks off!
On Watch~~~Proud Member of the Golden Eagles~~~
Semper Fi
"Let's Roll"
Now if only we could eject Wayne LaPierre and some of the other not very effective people drawing down big bucks.
DeleteCheck. Some of the sketchy personalities that have become the face of the NRA end up being a drawback. North and LaPierre just don't cut it. The NRA's membership - and its mission - are so much bigger than those guys and should never be overshadowed.
DeleteWonderful to see President Trump revoking Zero's attempt at giving away our 2nd Amendment, and I thorougly enjoyed his picking the NRA Convention as the venue which he chose to do that in! It's the old thumb-in-your-eye that Trump does so well!
ReplyDeleteBut I am worried at the turmoil in the NRA right now. I am a Patron (Life) Member and strongly support gun rights; however I am well aware that many gun owners don't consider the NRA to be a staunch defender of those rights, and as a result don't care whether the NRA lives on or dies.
A lot of people think the NRA has cooperated far too well with those intent on infringing our rights as granted by God and guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment, and that accusation has been around since the 1934 NFA. It intensifies every time another infringement is passed into law, like the 1968 GCA, and more in 1986 & 1993, and the Federal Assault Weapons Ban in 1994 that thankfully had a sunset clause; and the latest insult is the bump-stock ban, even though those stocks didn't change a semiauto weapon into a machine gun any more than a rubber band does.
My point is, the NRA didn't fight against that silly bump-stock ban. What's the point of having a toothless tiger, one which is continually asking for more money? Simply the fact that it's still the Big Cat in the eyes of the gun-grabbers. They are afraid of it, and if the NRA would just get its act together then it would be the fearsome monster that we need to prevent those Leftists from destroying the 2nd Amendment, which they really, really want to do. I'd rather reform the NRA than let it pass away, and I don't yet know exactly what's going on with this internal strife or who should shoulder the blame.
The bad news is that the NRA is a non-profit org registered in New York; NY has an anti-gun Governor and an anti-gun Attorney General; they'd love to get the NRA into court where they can slice & dice it into oblivion, with the help of Bloomberg and other gun-grabbers.
I was in Australia when their gun-ban went through. The gun owners there were helpless: they had nothing like the NRA, and couldn't believe that their own Liberal Party (the right-wing party in Australia) could do this thing to them, yet it did. I heard many say, "Oh, why didn't we ever set up an NRA here! Now it's too late."
Don't let that happen here!
afaik, the 'law of the land' as a treaty, can't trump the constitutional right to bear arms.
ReplyDeleteBut as mentioned above, economic terrorism is often not strictly a violation of the constitution.
"You can buy and own your guns, we just have made it illegal for corporations to do business with a company which either manufactures or imports guns.... commerce clause! scotus tells us we can do anything we want with it!"
- reader #1482
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ReplyDelete@Eskyman, Non-profits can change their state of registration. NRA should think about that. They can operate in NY (and every other state) while being registered as a corporation of, let's say, Texas or Oklahoma or any gun-friendly state.
ReplyDeleteRoger that Doc!
DeleteSince Ollie, jumped the line on the NRA 1st VP Richard Childress -- I vote that he gets to wear the NRA Crown going forward! Moreover the New President should be tasked by the NRA Board, to bring The National Rifle Association of America to its New Appalachian Home in the Tar Heel State, and reincorporate there, where the state motto is ("To be, rather than to seem")!
'Sides, Childress has the temperament,and experience to win in tight races or, duke it out as necessary... wiki: "Childress reportedly approached Busch in the garage area, took off his jewelry (a gold watch) and proceeded to punch Busch in the face. The fight was broken up and insults were exchanged before Childress put Busch in a headlock and hit him again." HARDER HARDER! Or perhaps Pistols at 10 paces, reserved for anti-American scoundrels, including Faux newsies and Progos!
hOWling out loud~~~
"Let's Roll"
Yes, but I read somewhere that it's hard to do that while under a legal microscope for possible wrong-doing, which does make sense. It wouldn't do for the accused to be able to just change their address to avoid justice.
DeleteMy worry isn't that there's anything actually crooked about the NRA, but that any appearance in court gives the gun-grabbers an opening to wreak havoc, in a court where the judge would be hand-picked & the DA & all the King's men would be lined up to do damage to the NRA, with the help & finance of Bloomberg & other anti-gun activists.
George Zimmerman almost got railroaded in the Trayvon Martin case, it was very close; they had nothing but lies to hang him with but almost got away with it, so I'm far from complacent in this case. Courts are dangerous places, for the innocent as well as the guilty!
@Eskyman: I've long thought it's high time for some of the conservatives in Congress to start impeaching many Federal judges.
Deletewhat... no comment on our 'youth' planned attack on jewish centers?
ReplyDeleteMost articles have kept to their 1-mention of islam limit pretty well.
You see, the important thing about the would-be perpetrator was that he was previously enlisted in the military... not that he was loyal to the religion of peace.
- reader #1482
Politics by Other Means: The Use and Abuse of Scandal
ReplyDeleteMarch 2019 • Volume 48, Number 3 • John Marini
The great difficulty of interpreting political scandals was summarized by a newspaper editor in the western film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Deciding not to publish the truth of an explosive political story, the editor justifies it by saying, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” We have certainly had many legends regarding political scandals foisted on us, especially since Watergate.
...
Many great scandals arise not as a means of exposing corruption, but as a means of attacking political foes while obscuring the political differences that are at issue. This is especially likely to occur in the aftermath of elections that threaten the authority of an established order. In such circumstances, scandal provides a way for defenders of the status quo to undermine the legitimacy of those who have been elected on a platform of challenging the status quo—diluting, as a consequence, the authority of the electorate.
. . .
The key to understanding how this works is to see that most political scandals, sooner or later, are transformed into legal dramas. As legal dramas, scandals become understood in non-partisan terms.
The way in which they are resolved can have decisive political impacts, but those in charge of resolving them are the “neutral” prosecutors, judges, and bureaucrats who make up the permanent (and unelected) government, not the people’s elected representatives.
To resort to scandal in this way is thus a tacit admission that the scandalmongers no longer believe they are able to win politically. To paraphrase Clausewitz, scandal provides the occasion for politics by other means.
...
It wasn’t until many years after Watergate that we learned the identity of the source of the leaks that led to Nixon’s removal. Deep Throat, the source for the reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein at The Washington Post, turned out to be Mark Felt, --->a high-level FBI official<--- who had access to all of the classified information pertaining to the investigation.
Felt leaked that information selectively over the course of a year or more, helping to shape public opinion in ways the prosecution could not. Although Woodward and Bernstein were lauded as investigative reporters, they merely served as a conduit by which the bureaucracy undermined the authority of the elected chief executive.
Geoff Shepard, a young member of Nixon’s defense team who has continued investigating Watergate using the Freedom of Information Act, has recently established as well that the prosecutors and judges involved in Watergate violated the procedural requirements that ensure impartiality, acting instead as partisans opposed to Nixon.
...
The guardians of the status quo in the permanent government and the media have defined past political scandals so successfully that a full and proper understanding of Watergate, for instance, is likely impossible now. It remains to be seen whether, in the end, they will succeed again today—whether the legend will again become fact, and they will print the legend.
More here:
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/politics-means-use-abuse-scandal/?_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9lBwBqtfD723l2Dzo2pS6e2IoRKdO0typ4PSYnzowO2lAOiZ9lORDaIi8z9IaSkaKpVzbQVxunvDrg