Has anyone heard anything about chemically rifled barrels?

I feel another screed coming on. I'll put something up tomorrow.

Readers of this blog will need a pretty strong case for McCain to hold their noses and vote for him in November. As Laura at Pursuing Holiness explains, there is simply no valid reason to vote for him.

For me, the most compelling reason was the McCain-Kennedy amnesty. I jus can’t seem to see the sense in going to war overseas as Bush and McCain have and will have us do if we’re to just let Islamic savages from all over the world come and settle next door. I also don’t believe the “Hispanic family values” lie after too many personal experiences.

I’m a single issue voter, I guess. I suppose the next president will pass some amnesty, and then it’s bye-bye America. At least I won’t bring a rope to my own hanging by voting for THE AUTHOR of the amnesty.

The most telling part of Laura's post touches on a point I try to make:

He thinks conservatism is a dead ideology that doesn’t recognize that the world has moved on. It has lost its relevance in a nation where the old paradigms are falling away. We are becoming a nation of Mexican and Latino immigrants, legal and illegal. That must be recognized and catered to. We can no longer afford the wild swings and gyrations of what he views as unfettered capitalism. The people at the top make - and keep - too much money. He proposes to fix that. All of the rest of his programs and policies reflect -not a conservative sensibility - but an accomodationist, populist vision: He sees the future of America as One Big Party, with all those scurrilous, hard-nosed, stubborn shell-backs on both the left and the right who prate that principles are more important than pragmatic politics effectively sealed out of the process of representative government.

There you have it, Euro-Americans - piss off and die! This democracy isn't for you.

The next amnesty will have me planning a move to much colder climes, hopefully where I won't have to fund my own demographic replacement with my tax dollars.

... A new book on the Emergent church. Unlike with myself and others, Emergents will have a hard time using tu-quoque and other logical fallacies against authors - they're pretty darn squeaky clean.

We've heard from the Thomas Friedmans of the world on how globalization will increase the size of the overall economic pie because free trade and free markets naturally do these things. Jobs sent overseas are done more cheaply by people in lower wage countries, leaving us a cost saving in terms of labor. Of course, the employee here whose job has left is forced to find another job or retrain. In the field of white collar jobs, it takes a long time to build up expertise that an employer will pay top dollar for. If you've got several kids and were being paid well, you've got a real problem on your hands. For example, if electrical engineering jobs start going overseas, and they are, I don't think I can just take four years to learn something else whilst supporting just my wife, let alone any kids. In the short term, my only options are to work for the same wages as the guy overseas, or much less due to the overhead paid by employers here in terms of social security etc, or be out of work. I'm caught in a Malthusian trap in the short term. Moreover, as new jobs are created, they can be quickly sent overseas because of the technological advances made in fiber optics and internet protocols.

There's really no stopping it, thanks to those fiber optic cables running between here and Asia and the ability to harness them thanks to TCP/IP. Perhaps the economic pie will expand quickly enough to necessitate far more engineers, scientists, and other "knowledge workers," as Friedman et al claim. Others have suggested that "globalization" itself is actually a worldwide shift towards intellectual jobs and capital. (Read the comments below the last link as well.) Friedman suggested this as well. But thanks to this phenomenom, our governance is likely to change completely as well, and not for the better, at least until popular revolt moves us back in the other direction. After all, anyone with the requisite knowledge can sever cable lines or attack internet hubs. All you need is det cord and a scuba gear or a computer, respectively.

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(h/t JihadWatch) This is why I'm not in favor of a draft. If we (the people) don't agree to go to war at the behest of these deep thinkers, we don't have to.

Almost every time I turn on the television nowadays, I see some show or news report on how to "go green," or some global warming alarmism. For example, there was a Discovery channel special on Alaska last week that basically contained doomsaying about the effect of global warming on the environment in Alaska. It featured trips to melting glaciers and habitats of endangered animals supposedly being wiped out by "climate change," as well as an account of permafrost melt and paranoia about the effect of subsequent methane release.

The earth has been warmer before. Greenland had farmable land that the Vikings populated and developed between 800 and 1200 AD. We're coming out of a little ice age, as a matter of fact. I know the IPCC is predicting global catastrophe due to man-made global warming, but I can assure you that scientists engage in groupthink and collectivism just as much as the uneducated. The way science generally works is that a couple of very intelligent, highly regarded people make a claim, and their lackies, graduate and post-graduate students pile on board. As the snowball gets rolling, more people jump on the bandwagon of "scientific consensus," until the consensus gets finally discredited and everyone either wonders why they ever believed the consensus in the first place or claims that they never did, usually the latter. In most cases, scientists are trying to get funding and will often say what the sponsors want to hear on order to do so. Sorry to burst the bubble of those who've put "scientific opinion" on a pedestal, but I've worked on several projects run by PhDs (Pile it higher and Deeper) that have accomplished nothing but have still succeeded in bamboozling the government into doling out more research money. I'm fairly confident that the IPCC is the same sort of outfit: a bunch of scientists who see dollar signs and would like to pay the bills and upgrade their computers. The fact that they're making these dire predictions without any sort of caveat or nuance should be very telling, because their are many, many poorly understood knobs that tune the climate, and the climate can change completely on its own with no external forcing whatsoever. So, the climate will certainly change, because it always does, even on its own, but how drastically and to what effect, the scientists are unable to say. They can't even predict weather accurately even a week out, let alone this.

That said, the IPCC and media-generated paranoia has evolved into a new religion of asceticism, nature worship, and neighbor hatred amongst most whites that I encounter lately. Consider the case of the guy who got killed by an adult White shark in San Diego last week. If you look at the comments below the article, you'll find plenty like this:

Right on Dovi. You got it right. The ecosystem has been around for 100'000's of years and we are killing it faster than any previous event. Go to nationalgeographic.com to see how sharks are fished and killed at alarming rates. The impact to our ecosystem is devestating. Please...no more anger on this website. If you have a different opinion express it in an acceptable manner without insults. Again...my prayers are with the Martin family. God bless them. It was good to see that his son was back in the water surfing again.

How about just leaving it at sympathy for the man's family? The only other guy who'd been attacked before just left it at that:

I was attacked in Humboldt Co back in 1990, my heart and thoughts go to the family members of the victim.

Species are being wiped out for numerous reasons. Man, of course, plays a significant role. The reason for that is that there are a lot more people now than there were 200 years ago, and we consume resources. We eat and we have a negative impact on the environment because we live. Aside from a mass population die-off, the situation is likely to accelerate, and there's not much we can do about it. As technology improves, we will only become more numerous. I'm not volunteering to kill myself to better the environment. I'm sure no one at the IPCC is, nor CNN, nor any of the Outside Magazine demographic, (which routinely has guides to products and gadgets made in China where the smog is so thick they only see the sun 30 days a year), so let's all get over the hysteria. I don't see any non-whites in the third world freaking out about this either, and they make up 90% of the world's population, which grows exponentially each year.

/r

Muslims and their useful idiots like to tell us that their jihad is an act of self defense because of Western intervention and colonialism, especially by the United States. The useful idiots, both white and non-white, believe that the Muslims are just reacting to oppression by the white man. I hear this canard repeated so often it's not even funny. Muslims are apparently 'reacting' to non-white 'oppression' in many other parts of the world. Nigeria provides just one example of this. It's not about the white man at all. Muslims just enjoy mayhem and violence, which is why their civilization is so backward.

I had linked the movie "Fitna" on my blog earlier on this month. After Geert Wilder's mass email, I took down the stored version that contained copyright infringements. Anyways, here is an explanation of the Qur'anic verses quoted in the movie. Most important is the discussion of the Battle of Badr, which is the context of Surahs 9:5 and 9:29, where Mohammed commands Muslims to kill unbelievers. Muslims like to claim that the battle was fought in self-defense. As the article demonstrates, Muslims have a different definiteion of 'self-defense' than everyone else.

Excellent article at the Heidelblog.

I'll be back tomorrow. Thank you all for keeping this discussion up on my blog.

Sorry my blogging has been so intermittant lately. I'm in FL for the next two weeks doing a sea test, and the hours are sort of long with not much access to a computer. I've been reading "The World Is Flat" by Thomas Friedman, which has some rather interesting points to make about the implications of globalization. He happens to be against importing low-skilled, poorly educated immigrants, by the way. Oh well. I'm sure that problem will work itself out.

Rob Bell spoke at a conference recently. A Little Leaven captured the gist of Rob Bell's lecture, with video and context. Read the discussion in the comments below, where there's an exchange between people who defend historic Christianity and several of Bell's acolytes, including the wife of one of Bell's house church leaders. No headway was made in convincing the Emergents to turn back towards the gospel, of course. Emergents are interested in monologue, despite claiming to be a part of a "conversation." I guess they'll just continue quoting James when anyone raises an objection.

Larry will take over guest-blogging as soon as I can figure out why he doesn't have the right permissions.

I have very little experience with this species, but I join the website authors in working towards its eradication. Like emos, guidos are a sign of a very sick society. I hope this blog entry will further guido awareness and hopefully help disinfect our society to a certain degree, on purely secular grounds of course.

When Muslims make an assertion about what they're faith teaches, many of them expect us just to believe what they say. Usually, no references are provided from the Qur'an, Hadith, or Sira. If they are, they aren't provided with jurisprudence (fiqh) by their scholars (Ulema - jurists). Often, they'll quote a verse in the Qur'an (Surah) where Mohammed is advocating peace or mercy, without also telling us that Mohammed's Meccan teachings are advocated by his Medinan teachings.

This begs the question, where do we go to learn how Muslims themselves understand their religion? What does the highest authority of Sunni Islam (Al-Azhar University) teach about Islam? Where is their doctrine codified and organized?

Fortunately for we infidels, there is somewhere to look: the 'Umdat al-Salik (The Reliance of the Traveler), which has been helpfully translated into English. Robert Spencer quotes from it frequently. Al-Azhar certified that it "conforms to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community." Unfortunately, it's temporarily out-of-stock on Amazon (I wonder why?). Still, Amazon has a "search inside the book" feature that allows one to look at the table of contents. You can type "jihad" in the search button and see what comes up. Go ahead try it for yourself:
here

When I searched for the term "jihad", it returned 62 pages inside the book, which I was able to read. Page 599 and following are especially interesting.

(h/t GatesOfVienna) Hi all. I'm back from vacation. I did some hiking and tried flyfishing, which is definitely the best way to catch trout I've seen, but it's tough to learn.

Fjordman, writing at the The Brussels Journal proposes creating a European Indigenous People's Movement. This is an idea I strongly support. After all, every other race on this planet is allowed theirs, especially in the United States.

I'm sure, by now, you all have seen the Absolut Vodka ads depicting a reconquered American Southwest by Mexicans. I'll never buy a bottle of that vodka again. Ketel One is now my brand.

I'm going to Yosemite this week. If anyone's interested in guest-blogging, email me at PRCalDude(removethis!)at gmail dot com.

If any bloggers out there are interested in increasing their traffic by a power of 10, hosting a copy of "Fitna" is the way to go. I bought more bandwidth, and it's (again) used up.

When you do a google search for "fitna download," my insignificant corner of the blogosphere comes up pretty high, right below Gates of Vienna. Very few bloggers have actually saved it on their site so others can download it, and most have the actual movie linked through Google Video, which will probably disappear soon. Where's the blogosphere on this one, or am I just misunderstanding things? More people need to use their bandwidth towards hosting their own copy, because Google's version will probably be taken down soon, knowing them. Too many people are drinking my bandwidth milkshake, and I don't consider myself obligated to be one of only stable viewing sites on the entire internet. I don't have gigabits/s of bandwidth here, which is probably why my version of "Fitna" can be seen only sporadically below. Anyways, the rest of you bloggers better put yours to work, because mine is a relative garden hose.

...Anti-emo kid riots have broken out in Mexico. Since male emo kids are either under 100 lbs or over 200, they have no means of defending themselves. Sexual ambiguity results in violence people.

Lots of philosophical points made here. RC Sproul interviews Ben Stein about an upcoming documentary he narrates.

Bela, commenting at the Gates of Vienna, offers this observation:

A couple months ago Gates o V had a heated argument with LittleGF and the later was accused of not helping the Anti-Jihadist. I stated here that American institutions (except for individuals may be) will never support Anti-Islamists and I explained why.
Here is the proof: the American IP povider bolted before anything happened.
This big talk about Eurabia, Sharia, "kiss good by to EU" is bullshit: Americans many times betrayed their best friends; - in Vietnam, the Kurds, the Hmong, Hungarians (1956)Serbs, next will be Israel and Taiwan.
American business interests -real or imaginary override any moral or ideological considerations. At the end may be Europe will be the saviour rather than Al-Obama Hussein.

She's absolutely right. I have conversations with other people trying to expose them to the dangers of Islam in Europe and here, and I'm met with the usual indifferent moral equivalence, even from Christians. "Well, they're not all like that!!1111!!" The number of actual, thinking conservatives in this country is probably pretty small, and the jet-set Davos Men are firmly in control of our foreign policy. Europeans must understand that we (the USA) will probably do to them what we did to the Serbs and Israelis: shove them under the bus.

I've been studying the issue of Europeans arming themselves for awhile now. The major fly in the ointment appears to be the construction of reliable barrels. Shotguns are the best thing to own for self defense and CQB because of their speed and power. But they can't be easily concealed and kept in automobiles and other places outside the home where a weapon is actually handy. I still haven't been able to figure out how to turn out a shotgun barrel on a lathe because of their large size and thickness near the breech caused by the forcing cone.

I think one could actually construct a pistol barrel without too much trouble on a small lathe, but rifling it would still be difficult. Benchtop milling machines and lathes are becoming cheaper and cheaper, which means that everyone can own the means of production of a pistol.

My friend lived in Germany for a couple of years and he said that guns could be purchased from your neighborhood Russian. It seems to me that given the right of everyone to defend themselves and the laxity of European laws, finding a Russian may be the way to go.

Anyone who has knowledge in barrel making, please comment.