|
ih8censorship
|
read my profile
sign my guestbook
Name: Kenny
Birthday: 7/28/1985
Gender: Male
Interests: God, Paintball, Hunting,Target shooting, Fishing, Camping, Computer programming, playing Soldat (even though i get pwned most of the time.. its still fun),chatting online,watching movies, snow (as long as im playing in it... ) , Linux, the criminal justice system
Expertise: being myself... thats about it.
Occupation: Other
Industry: Construction
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  Sadhaminsane
MSN: c_and_h_fan@hotmail.com
Member Since:
1/12/2005
 True
|
|
| I remember when I was a kid (well a younger kid  ) in school , about 5th grade or so we were allowed to have water at our desks in case we got thirsty. Most kids had water bottles, most of them the fancy bike water bottles. I had an old army canteen. I thought it was cool so I used it. Still do think it's cool. I got picked on though, mostly because kids are mean and pick out whoever isn't going with the rest of the herd and give them a hard time. I didnt care too much though. Anyway, that's not what this post is about haha. This post is about the commercialization of the army surplus (style) canteen, and the fact that they are now being sold as fashion accessories. Don't believe me? Check this out http://www.uscanteen.com/catalog.html . I really do hope it takes off like wildfire. Not because I want to be able to feel normal carrying a canteen around with me (as we know, I ditched normal on a back road many years ago. At this point he's probably wandering around northern Wisconsin looking for his iphone or something, hopefully I never meet him again.) I hope it becomes a fad that takes off because then I will be able to point back and say how I wasn't weird, I was just ahead of my time. Like the Sega Dreamcast.
| | |
| Today I went to an "open carry tea party". The main point of which being that many people want to be able to carry concealed handguns here in Wisconsin, but we are forbidden by law. However, there is no law against carrying a pistol openly in public. Also, a side point of the tea party was focused on the direction the country is turning and what we the people can do about it. Several politicians spoke, and all in all it was a good day and I can't think of much else that could have made it a better afternoon for me. I also have a few specific things I'd like to bring up about it, and I have sorted them into topics for your convenience
You sure seem comfortable for being around something you say is so dangerous.
For a while someone I know and I were talking with someone who was against people carrying guns in public, and had many signs with (flawed, or otherwise misleading) statistics on them. He seemed very comfortable, considering he was around what he considered a public health hazard. We discussed several things with him, and he didn't seem like he even knew what certain firearm laws are or the fact that if the current laws are obeyed and enforced it is much better than banning or otherwise restricting the possession or even use in a worst case scenario of various sorts of firearms used in non-recreation applications.
The protester brought up the fact that his son has mental issues, and bought guns online. The man said that his son should never have been able to do that. I replied with a question. I asked him if he ever bought a gun online or even knew what it took. He did not, and I explained to him that to do it legally you have to do it through at least one gun dealer, and 2 in the case of interstate trade. He didn't know that, and didn't say if his son bought them legally or illegally. In reality though where I live, buying a firearm online is legally no different than going into a store and buying one. It can be cheaper and you have a wider selection, but that's about the only reason anyone would choose buying a gun over the internet versus actually handling it before buying it.
Anyway, I noticed one of the signs said something on the order of "10 kids die every day because of guns" and I asked one of the protester women what the definition of "kid" was. Being not a complete idiot, I know that "kid" means anyone up to 18 years old. So I was basically setting a tarp. She "shhed" me and told me she was listening to the speaker, I insisted on talking about it, (just like I insisted on talking to the zealot who said I was going to hell last year haha) she "shhed" me again and handed me a piece of her propaganda. Being the fair person that I am, I've been reading through it. I've found a lot of information that is simply flawed statistics. However, there is one part they use to try to discredit what the gun owning, Second Amendment supporting person thinks. Reading that, it actually is counter productive for them because it cites U.S. vs Miller (1939) (which I think is actually irrelevant to their cause, you can read about it here ) which they say protects the right to keep and bear arms "only if the arms in question are those that would be useful as part of a citizen militia" . So yes, thank you anti-gun protesting lady for distributing propaganda which tells me that any battle rifles, landmines, grenade launchers, f-16's and any other combat weapon I may or may not own is protected by the constitution of the United States of America.
It also said that the only US supreme court ruling in history that focused on the second amendment was in 1939. This is false, D.C. vs Heller (2008) focused around the second amendment, and whether or not it means that the citizens of the united states have the individual RIGHT to keep and bear arms. It was ruled that the people do, 5-4. Perhaps if these people quit living by their fears , they would come out of their caves and not print such blatantly false and misleading propaganda. Though when they try to tell the truth it doesn't work out for them, as I discussed in the previous paragraphs. haha.
Anti gun protesters and politicians really need to wake up and quit living in fear and running to their flawed statistics and not giving any credibility at all to the legitimate use of firearms for non-recreational activities.
Protests, Police, and the Media
Some of you may remember how last year around this time I went to St. Paul and Minneapolis with a friend to take a look around the outside of the Republican National Convention and whatever chaos may have arose, as well as seeing Rage Against the Machine later on that evening, and then whatever chaos arose after that. After today, my views on how these three elements tend to mingle have really been eye opening, as well as cementing the views I had from last year as well.
The Media tends to cause trouble wherever they may be. Not directly, but through their mere presence and the fact that they are typically exploited to further the agenda of whoever is protesting, and in the cases of the far left (at least in this country) this leads to stuff like people throwing bricks through windows and other extreme behavior on the basis of extreme behavior is what makes it onto the news.
Police tend to cause trouble because their presence is typically overboard in these situations, as well as making people uneasy. Also, certain sorts of people make bad police because of the fact that they lack a thing they were supposed to have learned called "discretion" and some of them just plain seem to enjoy being an ego maniac. Not that they are all that way, I mean I've met some really nice police. It just depends. In peaceful protests (regardless of what you may have heard, a group of people can assemble and talk politics while carrying loaded guns without anyone dieing. At least here in America.) their presence draws the media in, which we've already discussed is a problem.
Media Bias
What Bias? :-O No, I'm kidding. I know they are biased. Seeing it first hand today really made me mad. I have a friend who was there, she has 5 kids who were there as well, she was carrying a gun on her leg and she was interviewed by a news crew. They tried to bait her into saying something like "its all Obama's fault" or anything else to make her look ignorant. She just told the truth and how she felt. She didn't make it on the news however, except for a very small sound bite..
The 1 protester that was there most of the time (most of them left after the initial news crew video taping, hence the reason media causes problems) got A LOT more airtime on the news than anyone who was supporting the causes the tea party was for, and he was interviewed for less time than my friend was, and all he really did was puke up slogans. There are still people who cant figure out why there are some of us who think the mainstream media has a bias. I know even Fox News isn't unbiased (I believe that honor goes to The Onion) but they do a much better job than ABC does for sure.
My back and my pistol made it on the news! I'm glad they got me from my best side.
I'm about done...
...living my life the way I have been for far too long. Life is too short to waste it on things that don't matter. In the past month a good friend of mine has died in a car accident and a young person I know had a heart attack. Today I invited quite a few people who didn't come for what I saw as unimportant reasons. In reality I'm sure a lot of it was fear based, though some of them did have legitimate excuses for why they couldn't make it.
One thing I did agree with the protester guy about (there were only 2 there that I knew of 1 guy and 1 woman... haha) is that he made a point of saying at least he wasn't sitting on his couch watching football this afternoon like a bunch of his friends that had the same mindset. I needless to say told him I agreed with him on that, and I knew a lot of people who think like I do on the gun issues who were also doing mundane things like watching football.
Anyway, I'm going to start asking myself what actually matters. My life is too precious to spend "watching football" when I could be doing something that would make better use of my life. Not to say I won't have fun, I'll have a lot of that too. I'm just not going to push aside things that really matter so i can do something that i have no control over and that probably wont matter in another week. Catch my drift? I think I have a good start on this already for quite a while now actually, woo hoo!
What actually matters? A persons soul and where it goes, the people in my life in general and how I treat others, living my life right, what I do to make my country a decent place while I'm here, and for those that are here after I'm gone. Anything else is just icing on the cake of my life.
| | |
| I'm going to deviate from the norm here (well lately anyway there hasn't been much about my life on here as I'm boring) and talk about my weekend. A few of you know that I have some friends who happen to have a band ( Lightswitch for anyone who doesn't know them) and they invited me to be a roadie for their trip to play in Schuamburg, Illinois (suburb of Chicago) for a music festival. Here's some stuff that happened in more or less chronological order:
1. Sleeping on someone on the way. We knew we wouldnt get much sleep before morning so we had to try to sleep in the van. I pretty much put a pillow on someone and went to sleep for a couple hours haha.
2. Showing up at the wrong hotel, and wondering why we couldn't get in.
3. Beach balls. We inflated soo many beach balls. It was most definately worth it when they were all bouncing around in the crowd though!
4. Me running away from Security. None of us had our "artist" passes yet because we were in a hurry to get set up and we didnt realize we needed to have special passes already. What happened was before the general public was allowed in, I was in an area where the bands and other vip's eat lunch and stuff and I asked a security guard if i would be allowed up there during the show to take pictures. he said not without a pass, and that he had to remove me from the building as i had no pass and it was before the general public was allowed in. I tried to reason with him a little, it didnt work and I was being escourted out of the building. He got distracted though by some other people, I went for the stairs. He was fat so there was no way he could have caught me. Anyway long story short me and the other roadie went and got the passes we and the band needed to go where we needed to go. It was good he didnt get me out of the building, because otherwise it would have been a long walk to the artists sign in area from where i would have gotten kicked out of the building.
5. Getting to hang out with people the general public usually doesnt . One of the guys from the Family Force 5 crew is actually pretty cool :) So i'm guessing that the others might be too.
6. Barlow Girl and Skillet. Enough said. Though the lead singer of Skillet did claim to be wearing Barlow Girl's underwear...
Other than that it was a pretty awesome time with friends, even though none of us had much time for eating, showering, or sleeping. One can do that any time right  Thanks again!
| | |
| Why would anyone ever want to live in a garbage dump? Seeing those pictures makes me think about how difficult it is for one culture to understand another. From our perspective, it's extreme poverty and we think no human being should be forced to live like that. From their perspective however, things are totally different. They are there because there is money to be made there. It's just something we cannot understand. I have a friend who often cites a story he was told by people who came back from the Philippines or India someplace, the story basically goes, an evil American company pays workers basically nothing (by American standards that is, by local standards they are actually more fair than we can even realize I'm sure) and people go home at night and live in a garbage dump. Well I think this news story sheds light on this. If they were living in a little shack outside of the dump, they wouldn't have the access to the recyclables which help them to make more money.
This is not to say I'm going to go out and buy a pair of Nike shoes or anything, I would have to be pretty desperate for a pair of shoes to pay that much when they cost so little to make, especially when 9$ shoes probably cost a company the same as Nike paid for a 110$ pair. Also I'm not saying that all of these situations are fair. I know there can be abuse in these sweat shops, I know there are other ethnic , religious, and other factors that come into play. I'm saying we have no idea. I have no idea. The only people who know the reasons they do the things they do are the people themselves. I think that applies even wider than I'm using it here, after all do you know why I do, say, and think the things I do?
| | |
| Lets have some fun with a statistic! How about this one! Sound's pretty frightening doesn't it? How about when you consider the fact for a moment that only includes firearms which could even be traced. Yes, some firearms cannot be traced. Say if you buy it from a Somalian for a few goats or something. How are you going to trace that? So while "87%" of the guns that were traced point back to purchases in the US, it is most likely actually only a small percentage of the countries which would be represented if they could all be traced. The statistics are then heavily skewed because the weapons being traced are weapons that already have a high probability of coming from the US. Certain weapons could be "guessed" as coming from the US without even tracing them , and placed into the "to trace" bin. and then that is how they get such a high percentage. It's propaganda preparing you to hear an excuse to give up more of your rights. I also know that If i was a warlord/drug dealer etc I would buy as many weapons as possible for as cheap as possible. If you've been gun shopping you'd know they're quite expensive, I think taking a trip to Africa or the middle east would be a much more efficient way to equip an army.
| | |
|
