Quick Hits 8.

I thought I'd post some pictures of a Bible and my guns. ( well, not technically my guns but pictures of the same guns I found on the web. My Magnum is more tricked-out than the one in the picture) I did this for two reasons; to tie in to my first item and to pay homage to Charlton Heston.

-So I was cleaning my guns while reading my Bible the other day when I heard the Obama quote about fear, guns, religion, anti-trade sentiment (?), and xenophobia the other day. And I gotta tell you......he's got a point, at least on the xenophobia front. Lumping guns and religion in was a bit of a mistake, one that I think could hurt him a little bit in Pennsylvania. But, I think he was right in some cases. Also, I don't tend to judge people as harshly for off-the-cuff remarks (unless truly egregious) as I would if they say something more deliberately. So this wasn't a huge issue to me, but then I'm not what you'd call a fence-sitter and I am familiar enough with his voting record to know where he stands on most issues at this point.

-I'm going to move on to three things that pissed me off in the past week. We'll start with Senator Jay Rockefeller talking about how John McCain can't possibly know what common people go through. Because when I think of ordinary, hard-working people I think of the Rockefeller family. I'm sure Rockefeller had plenty of contacts with "ordinary people" growing up: chauffeurs, gardeners, nannies, window washers, etc. But that's not the part that pissed me off. Why is it that McCain can't identify in Rockefeller's view? Spending close to 30 years in government? Marrying into an incredibly wealthy family? No. It's because he served his country in Vietnam! "He was flying fighter planes dropping laser guided bombs on people from 35,000 feet. He was never around to see what those bombs did.(paraphrased)" This was absurd and offensive to me on two levels. First, I'm not the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee or anything, but "fighter plane", "laser guided bombs (in 1967, no less)", "35,000 feet"? Secondly, yeah actually McCain did see what those bombs did to people when he was nearly killed in the U.S.S. Forrestal fire, in which he was wounded by shrapnel and 134 of his fellow sailors lost their lives. According to his book it made him re-think what he was doing, but ultimately he decided that he had to do his duty and continue.

-Rockefeller then went on to talk about Obama having the good judgment to oppose the Iraq war from the beginning. I for one find this far less impressive in light of the fact that he had spent about 16 years going to a church that denounced "American Imperialism" on a regular basis. Also, Rockefeller spoke in favor of the war and voted for it. He supported it until people started dying. What the Hell does he think war is? Did he think he was voting to authorize a tug of war? Because those can be dangerous too.

-The second thing that pissed me off is how some people (media and otherwise) used the death of Charlton Heston as an excuse to take shots at the guy for being the president of the NRA. The same people don't bring up the fact that Charlton Heston also marched with Dr. King at a time when it was not cool in Hollywood to be seen marching with Dr. King. That actually took some courage. It's not like today where you have idiots like George Clooney rushing to get in front of a camera for whatever the trendy cause is lately like raising "awareness" for Darfur. Those people don't need our awareness (which has done them a Hell of a lot of good so far), they need guns. Also, I for one don't find the fact that Charlton Heston was devoted to protecting my right to bare arms to be a bad thing. I believe a prohibition of guns (or "war on guns") wouldn't be every bit as successful as the prohibition of certain narcotics. I mean, marijuana is illegal and now no one can get a hold of that, right? I also recalled an interview with Heston talking about how some of his Hollywood liberal friends called him up during the LA riots back in the early-nineties wanting to hang out or borrow guns.

- Also, there is not a "pregnant man". There is a pregnant woman who wishes she was a man. I saw the headline "pregnant man" and thought it was some kind of deal like that Schwarzenegger movie. No it turns out this is a woman. But she likes to think of herself as a man and pump herself full of male hormones (which I'm sure is really good for the fetus). "But Steve, can't people choose to be what they want to be?" NO. There are certain things in life that you just can't change ( like your age, your race, your gender, your species, your parents, etc.) Mutilating your genitals doesn't make you a different gender, just like gluing hair to myself, eating bananas, and swinging from trees wouldn't make me a monkey. To make this worse, the politically correct thing to do is to enable these delusions. To anyone who disagrees, I'm sorry if biology offends you.

-I've noticed that radical leftists have been crawling out of the woodwork at a rate I haven't seen since I started following politics back in 1992. This is a good thing in my opinion. The best thing that could happen to the right is stronger opposition. This is my "free market of political ideas" theory that the more competition, the better. When the left imploded as a political force in the late-80's/early-90's, the right became unfocused because there wasn't enough of a struggle to force us to keep refining our ideas.

-I had to laugh at the Obama sound-byte where the questioner accidentally asked him about how he would go after "Obama Bin Laden". It had to be way more embarrassing for the questioner than for Obama, who handled it very well.

-Does anybody really think Hillary is a hunter and gun enthusiast from way back? I'd like to see all the candidates in each election gather to see who can shoot the best. (Who do you think would win in a "shoot-off" between Bush and Kerry? I think Kerry might have won that one) Maybe a shooting contest would not be as entertaining as it sounds but there seems to be a desire among voters for some kind of "macho factor". I think there should be a talent show, a macho test, and perhaps a dance off. (There should NOT be a swim-suit competition, which Obama wins by default.) I think certain candidates like McCain, however, would be exempt from the "macho" competition.

-I've begun studying 1st Corinthians. My plan is to go through all of the New Testament epistles, spending a week or two on each of them. I also cashed in my change jar and ordered a bunch of study-helps (concordances, commentaries, dictionaries, books on exegesis, etc.) on Amazon. It's been pretty interesting so far.

-James Dobson still won't support McCain. Thank you, doc. Keep up the good work reminding people that McCain is not like you.

-Rush Limbaugh had this whack-job guest host on Friday talking about the need for less regulation of airlines (and everything else). His argument was "let the market handle it". Let them have crashes, get sued, lose reputation, go out of business, etc. I prefer the option that doesn't involve letting a bunch of people die so the "free market" can sort it out, but looks to prevent the crash in the first place. I've grown used to hearing some wacky stuff on Limbaugh, like when he talks about his love for oil (seriously he is literally in love with oil) and how he works himself into a lather while talking about how great oil is, but this guy was even more out there.

-Speaking of "out there" I saw Ted Turner on Charlie Rose a week or two ago. Man, talk about a nut-job. He was talking about how global warming will cause all of us to either die or become cannibals. I agree it's a problem, but cannibals? He also talked about how we should rid the earth of all nuclear weapons. Right. There's only one way to get rid of all nuclear weapons, and the solution is much worse than having the nuclear weapons. I've also noticed how whenever Charlie Rose has a guest who is not a white male he interrupts them constantly (I mean even worse than Sean Hannity).

-I saw an interesting passage in the Bruce Bawer book I was reading about how the European media loves to point out anything bad that happens in the U.S. He mentions how the French media went on and on about how terrible the U.S. government was because of the roughly 1,200 people who died in Hurricane Katrina (which was an absolute disgrace, I don't disagree), when over 11,000 people died in France that same summer during a heat wave. A heat wave! You don't have to call out the 82nd airborne to keep people from dying in a heat wave. You just need to set up some fans and open some fire hydrants.

-I was listening to a clip from the "compassion forum" this weekend where one of the social-justice preachers asked the Democratic candidates if they would pledge to cut poverty by half in the next 10 years. What this question overlooks is that nothing could be farther from the interests of the Democratic Party than the elimination of poverty. To do this would be to destroy one of their core voting blocs. It's in their interest to make people's poverty a little less grinding, but if people are brought out of poverty and actually start paying taxes they might become Republicans. It's a lot like asking oil companies to try to get people to use less oil. This also explains why government aid programs are often designed to subsidise poverty rather than to create wealth.

-I read a New York Times article about Prince Harry in Afghanistan and how this relates to the dilemma if McCain gets elected in regards to his two sons, Jimmy and Jack, who are currently in the military (and thus can't relate to real people). It's an interesting situation, because on the one hand they would be prime targets for the insurgents. On the other hand, one of the things I respect most about Senator McCain is that he's not a politician calling for American involvement in the Iraq war to continue without his family making a contribution. Put another way, when he talks about the need to stay the course, he isn't just asking other people's kids to put their lives on the line, he's also including his own flesh and blood in this. The article also mentions that given McCain's history as an admiral's son and POW, he is uniquely familiar with the idea of being a very valuable target for the enemy, and as such is uniquely qualified to make this decision.

-Lastly, this week an anonymous person paid 1.5 million dollars at auction for a Marylin Monroe sex film. I think I may know who it is, and I have just one question. "Isn't that money that could have gone to a good cause, like using it to help your wife's presidential campaign?"

All joking aside, I bet it was Hugh Hefner. He paid a ton of money to be buried next to her when he dies, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was him.