The Countertop Chronicles

Let’s all work hard to ensurethis idiots dying wish is never granted.

Straight from the VCDL newswire

“Breaking news! I have just been told by one of my official contacts

that Ohio and Virginia WILL have reciprocity effective August 1st!

If you are headed up to OH on or after the 1st, be sure to check the

VASP and OHAG web sites below to confirm reciprocal arrangements:

Ohio Attorney General’s CHP page:

http://www.ag.state.oh.us/web_applications/concealcarry/reciprocity.asp

Virginia State Police reciprocity page:

http://www.vsp.state.va.us/cjis_reciprocity.htm

I expect that Florida reciprocity will be announced in the near

future. Kentucky should happen as well.

As always, I will advise on other states as I learn of them. There

are a bunch of states that should qualify under the new VA

reciprocity laws.”

Does reciprocity with Florida mean I automatically pick up all of Florida’s reciprocity agreements as well?

In his column today on Washingtonpost.com, media critic Howard Kurtz reviews reactions to Kerry’s speach and concludes with this shocking comment (after examining Glenn Reynolds reaction)

That’s the thing about critiquing a speech–it’s all so inherently subjective, like critics disagreeing over a movie. It’s all the more remarkable, therefore, that the mainstream media–the folks who don’t overtly come at politics from the left or the right–were nearly unanimous in hailing the speech. That, I predict, will convince people out there that it was a better speech than they might have thought.

And just who does he think makes up that maintream media - the folks who don’t overtly come at politics from the left or the right?

“A strong speech,” said Tom Brokaw. “Working himself literally into a sweat,” said Dan Rather. “A good speech . . . a tough speech,” said Peter Jennings.

“An extremely tough, hawkish speech,” said Jeff Greenfield.

“The best speech I’ve ever seen John Kerry deliver by a mile,” said ABC political director Mark Halperin.

“I’ve never seen the man speak so well,” said Joe Klein, who covered Kerry’s first congressional campaign in 1972.

Oh sure there are others too . . .

• The Los Angeles Times sees a strong Kerry
• The New York Times also seizes on the S-word
• The Boston Globe takes the personal approach
• The Chicago Tribune is Lincolnesque in conjuring up Kerry’s essence

Got that.

The non partisan mainstream press.

The folks who don’t overtly come at politics from the left or the right

I guess he failed to read Daniel Okrent’s admission? He probably failed to review this report on the political activities of the “mainstream media” as well.

Sort of makes you wonder what he’s been smoking up there in Boston.

Turns out (WSJ subscription required, I’ve lectured my readers about this before) Kerry doesn’t just look French, he is French (or at least partly so).

Mr. Kerry comes from an American family, albeit one with members who settled here. James Grant Forbes, Mr. Kerry’s and Mr. Lalonde’s common grandfather, was descended from the Brahmin Forbes family of Massachusetts. He went into banking and married Margaret Winthrop in 1906. Her ancestors were Pilgrims. Mr. Forbes was drawn to foreign business and financed railways, coal and steel businesses across the globe. When World War I began in 1914, he was living in Paris and remained in France for most of the rest of his life.

His daughter Rosemary was John Kerry’s mother. Rosemary’s younger sister, Fiona, is Mr. Lalonde’s mother. In World War II, Rosemary fled to the U.S. and married Richard Kerry, John’s father. Fiona fled to England. There, she met a French resistance activist, Alain Lalonde, the descendant of a Jewish man named Levy. Alain’s father had changed his name to Lalonde, converted to Catholicism and settled in Paris. Brice Lalonde was born in 1946.

His cousin, the subject of the article, is also what you would call, a bit of a commie.

Both men grew up to become politicians running for president of their respective countries. Mr. Lalonde was a leader of the 1968 Paris student revolt, and in the 1970s he helped found the French chapter of Friends of the Earth. He never joined a political party, though the Greens drafted him as their candidate for president in 1981. He served as Minister of Environment in a socialist government from 1988 to 1991

What does this all mean? It means, the French love Kerry.

Today, the people of Saint-Briac (population 2,000) are excited about the blood tie Mr. Lalonde has with the Democratic nominee for president. And like most Frenchmen, they are rooting for Sen. Kerry to unseat George W. Bush, whom they blame for poisoning Franco-American relations in the dispute over whether to invade Iraq. A recent poll in Le Figaro showed 78% of French adults would vote for Mr. Kerry if they could, compared with 9% for Mr. Bush.

American’s should be skeptical.

THe parallels between this report on a landscaper being assaulted by a Houston Police Drug Task Force unit for legally growing hibiscus in his front yard, and the recent police actions against Virginian citizens excecising their right to openly carry firearms is alarming.

Perhaps whats needed is a new law to prosecute snoopy citizens who should otherwise mind their own business. I hope Mr. Davis sues and wins big.

In a discussion on the commitment of Bush to prememption, Hugh Hewitt has more clearly enunciated why Kerry is unfit to lead than anyone else I’ve read.

John Kerry is not so committed. In his acceptance speech he said “[a]ny attack will be met with a swift and certain response.” This is not the question, and by refusing explicitly to answer the question of when if ever he would act preemptively, we can only conclude that Kerry will not move preemptively against gathering threats. Like Clinton, he will judge the intelligence too vague, the country insufficiently prepared for battle, or the undeniable costs in the lives of Americans and American dollars too great.

George Bush is trying to kill the terrorists before they kill more Americans. He will not always succeed. But I think fewer Americans will die from such attacks if Bush wins reelection, far fewer in fact.

Hugh’s right. Failing to respond to a direct attack is almost treasonous. I’m not worried about that, though I do worry about the nature of our response - do we overthrow the Taliban or send missles into the desert. The bigger questions remaining though is to what extent is Kerry willing to go to kill them before they kill us. As George Patton once said

To conquer, we must destroy our enemies. We must not only die gallantly; we must kill devastatingly. The faster and more effectively you kill, the longer you will live to enjoy the priceless fame of conquerors.

Of course, Patton also said

We’ll win this war, but we’ll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that we’ve got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We’re not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we’re going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We’re going to murder those lousy Hun cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket. War is a bloody, killing business. You’ve got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it’s the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you’ll know what to do!”

Replace German and Hun for Muslim and Islamist and I think it is also applies.

Yet another instance of guns saving lives.

LIVINGSTON, Montana — Two Colorado girls vacationing in Montana used a cell phone to call for help after finding themselves on a hillside infested with dozens of rattlesnakes. Izzy Effler, 13, and Morgan Beadwell, 12, climbed a hill in Livingston to try to get cell phone reception. However, while climbing, Izzy said a rattlesnake struck at her. Morgan also reportedly stepped on a snake. The girls then discovered that they were surrounded by six rattlers and used the phone to call for help, according to the report. Brian Effler and his nephew eventually rescued the girls after shooting two of the snakes. A rattlesnake trapper said he saw 25 to 30 snakes in the area.

I love the Dead and I love guns, so it was a pleasure to read one of John Perry Barlows recent, but all to infrequent, postings touching on his recent travels across the country.

I left there with the Dead boys in their tour bus, driving through the night to Nashville and re-telling old tales like a bunch of war buddies. (There were great moments, like: Billy Kreutzmann: “Hey, I almost shot Weir one time.” Bobby Weir: “Well, Barlow *did* shoot me!” Which is true. Sort of. I’d kind of forgotten about it.)

Wish he would have expanded on this story. Perhaps he will in the future.

Oh, and BTW, his daughters are cute.

SayUncle linked to this story in the Hill but left out the most revealing admissions I’ve seen yet.

The bill itself is not controversial, Hamm and Hummel said, because even gun owners favor its extension. Sixty-four percent of gun-owning households and half of the NRA members polled were in favor of extending the ban, according to a recent poll conducted by the Annenberg Election Survey.

But many of the weapons included in that poll, Uzis and AK-47s among them, have been illegal since 1981, Cox said.

This is way way way too funny.

Straight from the mouth of the spawn of Satan:

LO: You’re known as a bona fide liberal in the halls of power, in the halls of Congress. What kind of struggles and obstacles do you have to go through every day to get your causes, our issues, advanced?

JS: None right now. I’ve never seen such a united Democratic Party.

You look at people who have the podium. As a liberal, did I have a problem yesterday?

Just in terms of members of Congress: Tammy Baldwin and Stephanie Tubbs Jones were up there making speeches.

Any progressive I think would have been proud with what they heard yesterday…

…so as a person on the left of the party, or as the late Paul Wellstone would say, the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” I feel very, very comfortable right now.

A centrist party my ass.

I thought they said Bill Clinton was getting out of town after his speech?

Everyone is walking around grinning like thy’ve just had their first threesome.

I’ve got a story for you.

It involves a household name actor with a couple of early memorable roles under his belt, who in recent years has been appearing in an increasingly more embarrassing string of B movies and is just recovering from the very public breakup of his relationship with a women possessing far more star power. The guy seems to have little luck in Hollywood recently, and instead has been hitting the lecture circuit working as a spokesman and selling a product. While a little awkward at first, he has grown into the role magnificently and his star power is now rising in new ways. The guy can give a great speech, has tremendous presence, and really connects with the audience, in a come-into-my-living-room-and-have-a-drink kind of way. In addition, it turns out the guy also writes his own speeches, tailoring them on the fly to the audience at hand and has a pretty well developed foundation of ideas on how to address real issues facing American families.

Sounds familiar?

Sound a little like the Ronald Reagan story? Well, it could be, but in this case I am talking about Ben Affleck (Reagan worked for GE, Affleck seems to be selling Democrats).

Now, I liked Good Will Hunting, but haven’t been a fan of anything else Affleck has done. When he started appearing all over the place with the Dems and vigorously campaigning for Al Gore in 2000, I wrote him off as just another Hollywood Lefty. However, in recent months he has clearly separated himself from the usual vacous Hollywood pols. While I don’t agree with him on almost any issue, I do have to give him a lot of credit for being very good at something a lot of people really struggle with.

With the publication of a glowing profile in today’sWashington Post, Affleck’s political value was just bumped up a little more.

Affleck doesn’t speak in lefty cliches. He sounds like a party man, if not exactly original, then as cogent as the average House member: “The deficit is financing tax cuts for millionaires like me.” He doesn’t have the usual Hollywood causes — Tibet, acid rain, world peace — and instead subscribes to the party platform, with the exception of gun control.

It certainly would have been nice if the Post expanded on his gun control views, but in the meantime, it will be very interesting to keep an eye out for him as he goes forward. I wish him luck (even as I hope his party fails).

If you haven’t checked out Matt Welch’s excellent convention coverage at Hit and Run you should. Discussing Teddy Kennedy, he had this to say

So, too, is the confusion of normal campaign politics with profound revolutionary bravery. Here’s Ted Kennedy tonight, right after he invoked the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution (but before he compared John Kerry to John Adams):

For today, like the brave and visionary men and women before us, we are determined to change our government.

Ben Franklin may have been a big fat lecherous drunk from the Eastern Seaboard, Ted, but that’s about where the similarity ends.

And about Howard Dean’s speech

[T]he vision of a disabled woman handing over her last quarters to another moneybags politico who dreams of taking more of the stuff by force strikes me as, at minimum, nausea-inducing.

Heh.

I was going to post something about her rant tonight, but then remembered I already put up my post on Climate Change and the Democrats Lying Liars and the Lying Lies they Lied. Go read it, use your head, and tell me what was strange about Teeee Reeee Saaa Ketchup’s speech.

On a more positive note though, I really do think Waffles and Grits ought to let her out some more. I’d love for every American voter to meet her, just once.

In the meantime, today is Wictory Wednesday and you can help celebrate it, and ruin Teeeee Reeee Saaa Ketchup’s day by volunteering and/or donating to the Bush campaign if you haven’t done so already. And if you have volunteered and donated, then get a friend to join you. It’s the only way to defeat Teeee Reee Saaa Ketchup, the lying liberal media and their special interest pandering whores in Congress and keep the French out of the White House.

If you’re a blogger, you can join Wictory Wednesday simply by putting up a post like this every Wednesday, asking your readers to volunteer and/or donate to the president’s re-election campaign.