TGO David

A small Nashville area gun dealer uses a rather derogatory statement about a larger Winchester area gun dealer as his signature on his forum. To the effect that, "That ****ing douche bag can't find his ass with both hands, i seriously doubt he is going to find you a SP-101 or any other non-uber tactifool firearm" despite the fact that the dealer had at least one in his case at that time. The statement in question was actually made by another member of this forum, on that forum, and has grown legs and seems to have a life of it's own now. So whenever the SP101 is brought up, hilarity now ensues.

The question regarding SP101's is whether you are capable of finding it with both hands. Are you? (it's an inside joke)

Sadly that seems to be the case on the Internet at large, but I think we should strive to be better than that here.

The focus of this article was taking the media to task for historical revisionism. The problems with Academia would span volumes.

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights? By Orson Scott Card Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism. An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America: I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know. This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration. It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans. What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay. The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating. They end up worse off than before. This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them. Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.) Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending? I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate." Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed. As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" ( http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com] ): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury." These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party. Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout! What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame? Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae. And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing. If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was. But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign. You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican. If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama. If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis. There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.) If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression. Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper. But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to. If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate. Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned. Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naiveté time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing. Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months. So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means? Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for? You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles. That's where you are right now. It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there. If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices. Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door. You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way. This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion. If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie. If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard. You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.

Daily: Glock 19 with 15rd mag in Comp-Tac MTAC holster Spare 15rd mag in Comp-Tac offside holster Hornady TAP 147gr 9mm SOG Flash II serrated tanto or Gerber Fast Draw #G07161 knife.

THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH, RIGHT THERE. And for what it's worth, and it should be worth quite a bit given that I paid $250 to hear it in a class, there are current law enforcement officers on this forum who also teach civilian defensive firearms classes and they recommend the exact same thing. Keep your mouth shut! You will get to spend some time in the jail cell, but that's just part of the game. ANYTHING that you say can and will be used against you. It's better to sit quietly in the jail cell and allow someone far more skilled at the game (i.e. your attorney) to do the talking for you. Anyone who does it any other way is a damn fool and I don't care how many people that rubs wrong. Part of carrying a handgun for self defense is accepting that if you ever have to use it, the cops will get involved and that you will have to spend a little time under their care while the facts of the event are sorted out. If you can't handle that, then you don't need to be carrying a gun! Your statement on the scene should be no more, no less than: Officer I was in fear for my life and/or the lives of my family members. Point out any relevant evidence. (The knife, gun, axe, chainsaw, etc. that the attacker was using is located there.) My firearm is located [give location] and is [loaded/unloaded]. Please secure it. I will gladly make a statement to assist your investigation, but only after I have my attorney present. Optionally, #6 -- I don't feel well and request that you call an ambulance and have me taken to the hospital immediately. I'm afraid that I may be having a panic attack, heart attack, etc.

You're my mole inside the DNC... we need you to stick around!

I really don't understand why people post silly questions like this on gun forums. One would think that a person who has gone through the process of building and assembling their own rifle, and who has navigated the murky process of getting their NFA tax stamp, probably knows better than to shoot their rifle toward a neighbor's house. Being that the target is hanging from a sawhorse, one would probably also think that the target was meant to be portable and that this photo was taken not on the firing line but back at the guy's home.

So where's the expose on what Obama has spent on clothing? I've seen pictures of Palin prior to her pick as the Veep candidate. Her wardrobe looked like the pages of a Lands End or LL Bean catalog. Obama has always looked like he stepped off the page of GQ or Ebony.

Shouldn't the majority of your party's voter base???

I found that the trigger guard was wanting to hang on the outer lip of the VM2 when reholstering. Not a big deal, but a little annoying at times.

XD Free Since July 2008

How do you like the feel of it?

I had no idea!

We tried really hard to do some zombie shooting last weekend. I think those who were able to, had fun.

I hope that a mediator will not be necessary. Charlie Gibson, huh?

I hear that you were her second pick too. Tough break, man.

Does anyone here have a Glock rear sight pusher that I might borrow? Would be willing to secure the tool with a deposit of some sort if that matters. I think any of the people here that I have dealt with could vouch for my trustworthiness, but I would not be offended by the request of a deposit. Tools are expensive to replace after all. I am considering a set of Warren Tactical tritium sights for my Glock 19 and prefer not to use a nylon drift to drive the rear sight out. Thanks.

That should be submitted as a Letter to The Editor in newspapers across America. SOON.

If I ever have to use deadly force in my home to protect my family against an intruder in the middle of the night... I really hope that Todd @ CIS is not the officer who responds to the call. I just don't think I could handle being questioned about how loose my grouping was at a time like that.

Wayne Stoneback, president of OHGC, has graciously accepted my offer of getting together soon for coffee to discuss the matters at hand. I look forward to meeting with him and will convey our concerns to the best of my ability. Thanks, all.

We should only round up the extremist gun owners that attend Buddhist temples, though.

Thanks for sharing your opinion. It's wrong, but thanks for sharing it anyway.

Excellent choice in weaponry!