Is the tide turning in California?

Just one month after Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens loosened concealed carry requirements (in light of Peruta), they have received nearly 3,000 applications for concealed carry licenses.

The staggering backlog of applications for concealed weapons permits in Orange County has grown to almost 3,000 and some applicants said they’ve been told it may be years before their applications are fully processed. 

The flood of applications for concealed weapons permits was triggered by a pro-gun appeals court ruling that relaxed the restrictions on who could carry weapons. 

Orange County Sheriff’s Department officials said they are scrambling to speed up the process and deal with the thousands of gun applications that have rolled in since February. 

Since the court ruling last month, the Sheriff’s Department has received four times the applications it typically receives in an entire year.

Although I left nearly 6 months ago, I can say I am truly happy for California.  The state is finally gaining some ground in restoring the most important Civil Right, the right to Keep and Bear Arms.  It is the right that makes an individual a sovereign, with control over his own destiny and life, the right that prevents slavery, and the right to which a politician's reaction yields absolute understanding of his true character.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.  

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.  

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?  

If he doesn't want you to have the means of defending your life, do you want him in a position to control it?  

If he makes excuses about obeying a law he's sworn to uphold and defend -- the highest law of the land, the Bill of Rights -- do you want to entrust him with anything?

Knowing who really lives behind the mask is so important with politics, one area of life almost completely obscured by lies, that the 2nd amendment makes and effective lodestone for the truth.

White Male Appreciation Week: Electricity

Via the Captain:

For the final day of White Male Appreciation Week we celebrate electricity.  Now many people will insist on either Edison or Franklin, but we're going to go with Tesla.

Try to be half as good a person as they think you are

Owning a dog is a double edged sword. Every day in the pleasure of their company sharpens the blade that cuts you when you lose them.  The pleasure is spread out over years and years, but the pain of their loss is sharp and terrible.

Goodbye Chaser, I will miss you.

Time for some pi!

Happy Pi Day! :)

 

Single mom wants Microsoft to parent her child

It's an old story, but it fits right into the narrative of irresponsibility.  Single mother buys her 11 year old son an Xbox membership through the console, but doesn't notice when he starts buying things for his games.  The boy racks up over £1,000 in charges, and of course, she blames Microsoft.

A desperate mother has condemned Microsoft after her 11-year-old son racked up a £1,000 debt on her debit card - through his Xbox. 

Brendan Jordan racked up a bill of £1,082.52 on his Xbox without realising all the purchases were being charged to his mum Dawn Matthews' card. 

The schoolboy made the payments to buy accessories and new games on his console after it saved the details of a previously registered card.

 

Single mum-of-two Dawn, 37, from Strood, Kent, has now complained to Microsoft but claims the computer giant is ignoring her. 

She said: 'When I put my card details in 18 months ago I thought it was just for his membership to play online with his friends.

... 

'It is ridiculous to allow someone of his age to make payments without any checks being done.

'When he is in gaming mode he can't be thinking about the money. You can't put all that responsibility on a young boy.

'It is impossible to monitor everything your children do. These companies should take some responsibility. They take advantage of vulnerable people.'  

A spokesman for Microsoft claimed that a parental control setting would have prevented Brendan from spending Dawn's money. 

No checks being done? Do you hand your child a remote control and not care what television show he watches? Not if you are serious about being a parent. I think it is fair to say that most children lack judgment, which is why you have to exercise that judgment ahead of time. You're not being distracted by "gaming mode," right? You already knew ahead of time that you would be leaving your child alone while you are working, etc.. When you bought the game system, did you not ask any questions? Did you not pause and think, hey, this thing is going to connect to the internet, what risks does that pose for my children? Guess what?  Microsoft did think of those questions, which is exactly why they have created tools for you to make it easier. The tools are called Parental Settings.

Let me give you a bit of advice now. Your son is 14 at the time of my blog entry, and he'll be getting online every day. You have those same parent tools on the computer he will use, and probably on your network router. Go down to your electronics store and ask some questions about these settings, and stop pushing responsibility for your lack of parenting onto others.

Affirmative action hire? Gunman arrives, female "security" guard runs, male bouncer bounces!

Outstanding job Mr. Eric Wasson!  You saved several lives that night, and have proven yourself a shining example of courage.  As for your partner, I am going to guess the gal is an affirmative action hire, based on her behavior.  Good thing you were hired for your skill and courage.

When a man holding a gun came to the door of the St. Paul bar where Eric Wasson is a security guard, Wasson was determined not to let the man get past him.

Wasson tried to defuse the situation by smiling at the man and saying, "Hey, what's going on?" He also told the man to calm down.  

The man told Wasson to move and raised his gun, Wasson recalled.  

Wasson worried about the more than 150 people inside Johnny Baby's on University  

Avenue, and he rushed the man, whose gun went off twice as they struggled. No one was struck.

Update:

The original video has been removed from Youtube, but here is a LiveLeak link. I have uploaded the video here as well.

 

 

This GIF shows the hero, Eric Wasson, but not the security chick running away and pushing past the customers - it starts just after she ran away.

 

 

Mr. Wasson has been interviewed several times.

When a man with a gun walked into the St. Paul bar where Eric Wasson was working as a security guard, it flashed through Wasson's mind that his mother shouldn't lose a second son.  

Wasson's brother was fatally shot in 2009.  

"If I got killed out here, if I got hurt, what about my mama?" Wasson said. "When it boils down, my mama don't deserve that."  

Wasson took action. When talking to the gunman didn't work, the former high school and college football player rushed him. The gun went off twice as they struggled and Wasson disarmed him. No one was injured.

It's clear to me that Putin has been working hard

To establish a cult of personality.  From hunting and horseback riding, to judo, fishing, and motorcycles, he's taken quite a different track than Obama, but I think soon enough he'll have all of Russia worshipping him and demanding he wear a crown.

Borepatch: So if Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize ...

 

On progressive taxation

Just a simple scenario for you to think about.  Feel free to share it around.

If you took a second full time job doing the same work for the same wage, and thus worked twice as many hours in the week (80), you would earn twice as much money.  Are you "benefiting more from the economy" or "contributing more to the economy"?  Should you get hit with a higher tax rate because you put in twice as many hours?

Image via borepatch

I'll bet you a nickel this gal will major in psych or some other worthless subject

She's already incapable of working to support herself, which is why she decided to sue her own parents for her expenses.  The Captain will have a field day.  Or a brain hemorrhage.  Or both.

 

A New Jersey teenager claiming that her mother and father tossed her out of their home and cut her off financially is suing them for immediate support, current private-school fees and future college tuition. The parents, meanwhile, say that daughter Rachel Canning, 18, moved out voluntarily after refusing to abide by their rules.

“We love our child and miss her. This is terrible. It’s killing me and my wife,” Rachel's father, Sean Canning, a town administrator and retired police officer, tells the Daily Record. “We have a child we want home. We’re not Draconian and now we’re getting hauled into court. She’s demanding that we pay her bills but she doesn’t want to live at home, and she’s saying, ‘I don’t want to live under your rules.’”

Update:

I hope this teen drama queen loses, and loses hard.  I hope that the parents are awarded legal fees and the man who is fronting Canning's bill, (over $12k so far) is named responsible for their fees.  Teach everyone a lesson here.

A Morris Catholic High School honor student and athlete who claims her parents threw her out of their Lincoln Park home when she turned 18 has taken the highly unusual step of suing them for immediate financial support and to force them to pay for her college education. 

Private high school senior Rachel Canning, a cheerleader and lacrosse player who has aspirations to be a biomedical engineer, filed a lawsuit last week in the Family Part of state Superior Court in Morristown that seeks a judge’s declaration that she is nonemancipated and dependent as a student on her parents for support.

...Rachel Canning’s lawyer, Tanya N. Helfand, will ask that parents Sean and Elizabeth Canning, who haven’t paid an outstanding $5,306 Morris Catholic tuition bill, be ordered to settle that debt, pay Rachel’s current living and transportation expenses, and commit an existing college fund to their daughter... 

Leave California, my friends, just leave

California is the worst.

CEO Comments  

“CA Regulates and taxes companies unreasonably.”  

“California is getting worse, if that is even possible.”  

“California’s legal system is broken. Employment law and contract law are highly problematic and along with regulations and taxes, discourage any further investment in this state.”  

“California is completely confiscatory, ever dreamng up new ways to stick it to sub-Apple-sized companies. So far, Washington is smart enough to recognize where its jobs come from.”  

“Am not aware of any businesses other than entertainment that will be expanding or moving into CA. It is a black hole.”  

“Only thing [California has] going for them is the immigrant influx and the established industries already there.”  

“California has the best labor pool and the worst government. Taxes are punitive, labor laws are punitive and regulations are restrictive. California is a Union Owned State.”  

“California is accelerating down the wrong track. At some point even the climate will be outweighed by the massive disincentives to business and the tax penalties on the modestly successful. It’s well on its way to becoming an environment where the super elites (Hollywood, Silicon Valley and the political class) are separated from the ‘service class’ by a personal income chasm as the union continue to plunder the state’s treasury.”  

“I’m considering relocating my business now based in California.”  

“California is not small business friendly, or friendly for any business size when it gets down to it. Taxes are beyond belief and going higher. Cost of living overall is out of control just like our elect leaders in Sacramento. Too many entitlements and not enough people contributing.”

 Seriously.

California not only taxes and regulates its economy more than most other states, but also aggressively interferes in the personal lives of its citizens.

Why is California so bad?  I'm going to say this is the reason. California's politics are overwhelmingly liberal.  Large state, high taxation, punish success in business, reward mediocrity and failures of behavior, and of course, every person is a child who needs a coddling (and sometimes a scolding) from the state, their beneficent parent figure.

 

Listen, folks.  You are not going to change it from the inside. It's a stage 4 cancer that will run it's course.  There is no question about that.  The only real question is whether conservatives and libertarians will let themselves be taken down with that cancer. Don't do it.  Leave now and let California go feral. When they've eaten themselves sufficiently, we can come back and buy up the property for less than $100 per house, like you can in Detroit.

That will be the time to come back to California. Then we'll tear it down and rebuild.

Paying with plastic?

I'm sure the Captain and Peter Schiff will have a chuckle over this.  I know I did.  I'm certain Ben Bernanke is laughing his ass off, albeit for a different reason.