Something about this disturbs me on a level no one is talking about. I would love to join in the feeding frenzy circling tighter and tighter around President Downgrade and Prime Minister of Justice Holder, but I can't because this article brought a sudden, nagging question. "In what context were these weapons found?"
I would imagine rocket launchers and C-4 to be fairly rare commodities, and would further think that the laws of supply and demand would make them valuable enough to those who went through all the trouble and expense of obtaining them, that they would not be simply left lying around in the desert. Furthermore, although it is possible (although not PROBABLE) that this type of weaponry could be obtained through a civilian gun dealer, how would this sort of transaction been initiated in the first place. I can't imagine a straw purchaser simply walking up to the counter asking to purchase these items (when you start asking cavalierly for c-4 and rocket launchers it is bound to arouse suspicion).
I am starting to become a little skeptical of gunrunner reports here as of late. If the facts in this article are indeed correct, then that is almost more troublesome, because something just seems very awry with this as it has been presented.
It is not "impossible" that weaponry of this magnitude would be in a gun store. If the shop owner held the correct classification of FFL, they could legally deal in the ordinance we are now seeing. Now, anyone with the schedule and class of FFL required to legally deal in explosive ordinance would likely prize their livelihood and freedom enough to not jeopardize it by putting this stuff on the shelf as if it were available to the general public; it is POSSIBLE (although admittedly not PROBABLE).
It isn't quite that simple Random. The tri-burst feature of the M-16 (now the M-4) was due to the excessive shot to kill ratio in Vietnam (basically to discourage wasting ammo), AND the fact that the "pencil" barrel of the Stoner design could not really sustain automatic fire for any significant duration. It is an adequate infantry small arm as deployed, in conjunction with the heavier light and medium machine guns a unit would have as well. That doesn't minimize the point of this whole scandal though. Back to your regularly scheduled debate...
Good point, and well taken. This is the grievance that I have with the Republican party. Why do I have to choose between "Socialism" and "Socialism (only let's slow it down just a little bit)"? The people within the Republican establishment that have been trying to understand and get rid of the TEA Party (of which i do not consider myself a member...they aren't quite conservative enough for me yet), are the same ones who tell us which candidates are "moderate" enough to be "electable" (both phrases i have grown to detest hearing spew from their mouths). What I regret is not so much the votes I have cast as the fact that I am never presented with a real choice. Liberalism in the Republican party has become like zoysia grass. It grows slow enough you can't actually see it, but fast enough that if you ignore it for even a short time, it becomes unmanageable. And, once it has taken root, it continues to grow until it takes over completely. The TEA party Republicans seem to be attempting to cut it back a bit, but it keeps growing back just a thick as ever (as evidenced by the debt ceiling compromise).
I have noticed that about once every generation, the country seems to elect an administration of pure liberal progressivism. It's almost like preventative medicine. After this train wreck of an administration is voted out, we probably won't see another progressive president for another 16-20 years. We were due for a Barrack Obama.
In a way, I'm glad it's over with and the newest generation of voters have gotten it out of their system (insert witty sarcastic remark about Acorn and/or illegals/fictional characters/metabolically challenged here), and now they can see what an epic failure liberalism really is.
Bush became the face of conservatism for the "professional left" (the only term Obama has ever used that is worth repeating) and the media; the only problem with their narrative is that Bush was far from a conservative, and any benchmark by which they measured his "failure" was (in my not so humble opinion) generally a result of his compassionate (i.e. lib-prog lite) brand of conservatism. McCain as president would have simply prolonged this by allowing the media to simply continue to narrative of "failed conservatism" using a completely false standard of measurement.
McCain is the personification of everything that has given rise to the Tea Party. He is a politician, and not a representative. His position will shift with whatever way the polling winds blow, is ever willing to compromise in the name of "getting things done" (that is Washington-speak for "spend more money" btw), and will take whatever stance cements his power as well as the rest of the good ol' boys. McCain-Finegold wasn't about getting money out of politics, it was about getting everyone ELSE'S money out of politics so that he and the rest of the bi-partisan club in D.C. could retain their exclusivity. The pervasive attitude of this club, of which McCain is a card carrying member, is that the Tea Party is sabotaging American politics. I agree with this completely. I simply reject the premise that sabotaging American politics is a bad thing, because American politics is sabotaging America.
I disagree. It is just more subtle and nuanced than many can detect. The verbal flatulence from him and his ilk (Madcow, Olbie, Tingles, Special Ed, etc.) is probably a bigger contributor to greenhouse gasses than anything else. That is why the climate alarmists are having so many problems with real empirical measurements as opposed to the predictions of their computer models. Air America crashed and burned, and the level of greenhouse gas emissions fell sharply, leading to cooler than anticipated temperatures.
You can extend this further with the Latino/Mexican activists as an example. The more extreme factions (LaRaza) are forever railing against "European imperialism" as their proverbial springboard from which they launch their attacks against all that is wrong with the United States. It never occurs to them that unless they are undiluted direct descendants of the indigenous tribes that existed before the arrival of the Conquistadores, then much of their lineage and descendency is directly from the very same European imperialism.
I hardly consider CCB a "good" bill. It was still business as usual. Spending at an increased rate of 8% annually is only a "cut" in Washington D.C., and is the exact sort of thinking and "compromise" that has added up over the decades to get us to the point we are at right now. The only person with anything I have heard that actually makes sense, and doesn't require fiscal and linguistic gymnastics and a flowchart to explain how it will reduce our defecits and leave that Rube Goldberg feeling, is Connie Mack from Fla. His plan is extremely simple: start with a baseline of 2011 spending levels, then lower it by 1% every year. When the libprogs start screaming about seniors and children, the response should be "Grandma was able to see her doctor, and noone was screaming about children starving last year" EVERY SINGLE TIME. Get a plan that makes real sense, unify the message, stick to it, and repeat it at every news camera and to every journalist with a pad and pencil in D.C.
Unfortunately, as their vision was in the implementation phase, they couldn't help but see that not only was it turning into a complete disaster, but MORE IMPORTANTLY, the American people, who had been asleep at the political wheel for the last several decades, were seeing it as well. In the next year and a half, this will become even worse. They have wed themselves to this administration shamelessly, and are pretty much poised at this point to throw themselves on the funeral pyre and go up in flames with it. The media have turned their amps up to 11. They have to, because they shamelessly invested themselves in this president, throwing any pretense of objectivity and credibility (and in many cases, apparently self-awareness) out the proverbial window. Their entire existence as an entity is based on the concept of credibility, and they know that unless they can convince us unwashed masses of this administration's success, they will have lost it completely.
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