We Are Too Easily Offended Today And I Blame The Left

Can you stop being offended long enough to watch this roast of Sammy Davis, Jr? Can you laugh along with all the audience and all the people on the dais? Or do you always look for a reason to be offended?

Scotland The Nanny State

Albania The Brave?

Alba Alban Albany Albania what’s the difference anyway …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great Britain no more?

Scotland is facing an independence referendum in about 23 days. And at present the news reports a 48% favorable headcount.

There are any number of implications to Scottish independence having to do with defense matters and currency, but the driving force behind the movement is from my perspective, surprising, as it is driven seemingly by the politically left-wing.

A glance at The Guardian’s article on divided families shows some very interesting opinions by those in favor of independence.

Apparently a significant number of supporters want national sovereignty, or independence, for the purpose of enhancing an already substantial Scottish welfare state.  This leaning is confirmed by a look at the Scottish National Party web site.

The Freedom to be less free

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In addition, and speaking of voting away your freedom in the name of a worry free existence,  there seem to be numerous questions which would have to be resolved only after independence is declared.  Sort of like ObamaCare: you know, you have to vote for it before you can find out what’s in it.

Anyway, here are a couple of pro-independence voices recorded by The Guardian. Remarkably, they do seem to channel Ms Pelosi in a number of ways.

 

Caroline Wylie, says:

“I’m voting yes because of many things. I think the nationalists, while they’ve been in power, have delivered things that show they can govern properly. I like the fact that I live in a country that can deliver free prescriptions and university education for its children …

The no side say they will give us fresh tax-raising powers, although they are unspecified, but if they are to be believed we will get that anyway, whether it’s yes or no. …

I have to confess, though, that until the referendum campaign I was very apolitical, whereas all the rest of my family – my mum and dad and my two sisters – were all more politically engaged than I and are all against independence.

Most politicians are selfish, I think, and purely in it for themselves, but I think the SNP are different and want to look after ordinary people. We have a chance here to throw out all the debris of Westminster; the large, corrupt and cumbersome government that does not represent the ordinary people in the street.”

 

So, the previously politically uninformed and disengaged Ms Wylie says that the taxing power is going to go up anyway, and she likes free government stuff, and [elsewhere] that she trusts the Nationalists to properly spend the money they take in.

Our next example is from Clare McKenna. Clare says,

I never used to be very interested in politics, as I thought that most of our politicians were just in it for themselves. Then, when I began to study social work, I began to see the negative impact of London’s policies on very many poor and vulnerable people.

I just see independence for Scotland as an opportunity to reject the neo-liberalism at the heart of Westminster politics. This is all about protecting the interests of a tiny political elite and their wealthy supporters.

You can see that in the way that the coalition government, aided and abetted by the so-called Labour party, have punished poor people and disabled people in their austerity drive.

I have seen the pain and suffering that the Westminster government has caused to vulnerable families in Scotland. And now we have been given this fantastic opportunity to reject the greed, corruption and self-interest of Westminster rule and to create a new politics in Scotland.

 

Like Caroline then, Clare had also been uninformed and politically disengaged. But since then, she has discovered through her government job, that she likes and that people are deserving of free things. There is at present she says, just too much London driven Classical Liberalism going on. And like Caroline again, she is certain that once Independence is achieved and the tides of English influence recede from Scotland’s shores, Scots will finally have the freedom they need to be less free and more sharing; as corruption disappears and compulsory wealth redistribution blooms.

Now, for those of us who have been reading about the dwindling away of Scotland’s population and the  ratio of pensioners to workers, we wonder just how do Clare and Caroline expect this to happen?

Well, my guess is that Clare and Caroline really have no idea at all as to how this is supposed to work, since they have they admit, just begun to take an interest in politics. They cannot after all, be seriously expected to have it completely figured out. Discovering that Classical Liberalism is wasteful, corrupt, inhuman and cruel, and that Independence means compassion and caring and sharing out the wealth, is quite enough for starters.

On the other hand, the Scottish National Party has at least some notion as to how they will attempt this multiplication of loaves.

They will do it in part, by importing a replacement population, and then dressing them in kilts, or something ….

“What a Yes vote means for immigration …

The Scottish Government’s White Paper ‘Scotland’s Future’ lays out our approach.

We plan a controlled points-based system to support the migration of skilled workers for the benefit of Scotland’s economy. An independent Scotland will have an inclusive approach to citizenship and a humane approach to asylum seekers and refugees.

The Scots are exposed to the same anti-immigrant rhetoric of the right wing press, and Nigel Farage is as ever-present on Scottish TVs as he is south of the Border.

In Scotland we have to lump inappropriate Westminster immigration laws, and we are constantly told that they must become even more restrictive to protect us from the various ‘floods’ of ‘foreigners’ who are to erode our way of life.

Scotland votes for a Government at Holyrood that couldn’t sound any more different from the UK Tory Government on immigration and we are a better country for that. The difference in how the two Governments see immigration is best demonstrated in their various responses to the annual census of net migration.

In Scotland, when we see an increase in our population given our history of depopulation, we celebrate the good news. At Westminster it couldn’t make the politicians more miserable.

Scots are also becoming increasingly aware of our own population and demographic requirements. Only 20 or so years ago there was a real fear that our population would dip below five million. Although our population is currently growing at a healthy and welcome rate, there is still a realisation that our population levels remain more fragile than south of the Border.

We can only properly deal with that if migration policy is decided in the Scottish parliament, not by Westminster.

Scotland has always accommodated new people coming to our country — and one of the greatest sayings in Scotland is that ‘we are all Jock Tamson’s bairns’.”

 

And all will then be well: as Caroline and Clare will henceforth be able to more fully enjoy the comfort and security and caring and sharing which they have so recently discovered they, and all others, are entitled to experience through the miracle of redistributive justice, finally, at last, enabled by “Independence” … of a sort.

Well, free to enjoy as long as the imported replacement population allows them to.

Of course nothing to worry about anyway. Those scare mongers on the other side of the debate are making false claims, claims which don’t matter even if they are true, as we SNP types eventually get around to admitting:

 

” … people on the state pension are not necessarily dependent. It sounds academic, but it is also common sense. Think about friends and family who are on the state pension – are they all ‘dependent’? Even if they are right that more people are reaching retirement age, this does not mean suddenly our population will be unable to produce what a country needs to prosper, or that suddenly our spending on health will increase beyond control.

As one of the report’s authors puts it: “Sometimes you hear people saying that 60 is the new 50, and that is absolutely right. The health status of people the life expectancy of 60-year-olds is pretty much the same as it would have been for 50-year-olds 20 or 30 years ago”.

Older people are not the burden that the No campaign tells us they are.

But those who work to represent older people say what we already know – that older people contribute more to society than we tend to admit, including as workers. Age Scotland said “Older people have a great deal to offer to society: as workers, active citizens, cultural contributors and carers.” They say the Edinburgh findings “will help dispel the myth that our ageing population is a burden. On the contrary, it is something to be celebrated.”

See! All you have to do is equivocate the word “dependency”, and then celebrate it, and the problem magically goes away through the miracle of subversive redefinition and (more quietly now) …. changed expectations.  Ain’t that great?

Oh yeah, and don’t forget to import those foreigners. (Link within the above link:) “Our immigration policies and policies to support and encourage families could and must also address this trend.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rat fight! Ted Rall and the Daily Kos

Rall v. Kos

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes a rat fight can be rather amusing. Just try not to let them know you’re watching, much less laughing.

Now I admit that I’ve inadvertently ruffled rat fur in the past.  I did it on another blog by making – years after the fact – what were by any rational standards temperate and measured remarks about the object lessons available from that infamous Greensboro, North Carolina gunfight which took place between Neo-Nazi’s looking for revenge and self-professed Maoist revolutionary types trolling for a second-round public confrontation with them.

There were those among that blog’s readers who were especially outraged that I looked askance at the speechifying activities of one of the ideology drunk Maoist participants; as her husband lay on the ground with the top of his head shot off.

Quivering with indignation they fumed – or pretended to fume – that I was dancing in the blood of fellow Americans.  That’s “fellow” and “Americans” in quotes of course, since we are talking here about Nazi-types on the one hand, and totalitarian disciples of a mass murdering Marxist dictator on the other. Listening to self-described leftists wave the American flag over the bodies of its enemies while hysterically shouting about human decency was pretty much worth the price of admission alone.

Anyway, those who are unfamiliar with that particular historical  event – the gunfight not the years later blog eruption – can research it all for themselves, or make a beginning by clicking on this link.

However the rat fight I have in mind here, is not between two species of rat, but a more all in the lefty-family type of brawl. And thus far there have been no known fatalities, though there has been the usual obscene speechifying.

Will rat blood be shed by rat? I doubt it. We can probably rest easy on that point.

Ted Rall versus the Daily Kos.

Gee … what more can one reasonably say?

 

We don’t talk to each other!

No need to go into the details. The hand wringers of the mainstream left accuse conservatives of not reading or communicating with them.

How would they know?

You access a “mainstream” Internet news site. You read some article published on, say, the Huff Post or Yahoo.

Comments are invited.

The article or opinion is the usual lefty crap. You think you might very politely let them know where they have fallen into error.

Leave comment . OK

Send. OK

Sign in first please. Huh? OK.

Register first please. Ah … well, OK

Then: Sorry, administrative trouble, try back later.

In the meantime the string of self-congratulating liberal pseudo-intellectuals grows ever longer.

“I’m not interested in this dog and pony show” you tell yourself.

“There is no point in even bothering” you say.

“But someone ought to set them straight on a certain matter of fact.”

Against your better judgement you persist. Register. Sign in. Write. Send. Oops! You encounter this:

It’s not like we want to monitor and record everything

And the left complains about the chilling of communication and  “free speech” … [This is where you say “Har dee har har!” in your best braying snort]

That’s why blogs like this exist; in part because the left just isn’t worth the trouble it takes to even try and talk with them.

UPDATE:

Commenter AOTC annoyed at the activities of the shameless Alan Grayson, has observed that she imagines that he might look like a notorious and casual liar whose commenting privileges we had to suspend and whose person we had to ban from this site.

This is probably something many wonder about or would comment on: whether the fact that X looks like Y possibly means anything in moral terms. We would cite Chris Matthews as a prime instance of this line of thinking.

Though, I would say, Matthews went a  bit over the top with his remarks regarding conservatives rallying around those menacing ultra-male politicians with the “black Irish” kinds of looks which Chrissy finds so alarming in Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz.

The late of comment and now unlamented non-presence Perry Hood, seems to think in the same vein. He wants to hang Joe McCarthy around Ted Cruz’ neck on the basis of a supposed  physical resemblance.

But then, as with so much else involving the old Gap Bridger’s work, it’s difficult to sort out what might be the fellow traveler’s own ideas and work from what it is that he has just received in his email  in box “for immediate publication” from Kos Central.

Wherever it is that this Matthews-Hood guilt by phenotype meme actually originates, I don’t necessarily buy into it; and I certainly would not morally indict anyone on the basis of their looks.

But if following Matthew’s lead for fun I were to look for resemblances among morally suspect persons, and Grayson were the standard of comparison, then, as far as looks go, I find the following comparisons as or more likely than Cruz/McCarthy.

This,

Alan Grayson, propagandist

With this, for example …

Martin Borman

 

Not, we should make clear, that their both sharing piggish features means that they also share exactly the same totalitarian/collectivist ideologies.

One, Martin Borman was a notorious national socialist from Germany, while the other, now of Florida is apparently a different sub-type of left-fascist.  As grounds for this latter characterization, I think that we can confidently cite Grayson’s support of the individual mandate as clearly defining his ideological stance when it comes to “bundled” responsibility.  A Sozialstaat man, obviously; and he looks it.

 

 

Here’s another fellow of their stripe for comparison’s sake …

Trumka

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hmm. Does give you some pause to wonder, doesn’t it …

Katie Halper of Salon – fast and loose with the facts

When someone, in this instance Katie Halper of Salon, is caught out playing fast and loose with facts in a transparent attempt to whip up a little progressive mob action, how are we to judge the author and her intentions? Barely sublimated narrative malice is after all, the common coin of progressive political narration. The disposition toward malice is taken for granted by most alert readers as being part of the architecture of the run-of-the-mill leftist mind. So, when we come across news articles which in passing misrepresent the facts of  some leftist cause de jour, we tend not to blink.

When however, the construction of the false narrative is rather more elaborate than usual, we pause.

Wandering from news link to news link recently, I came across this mess , ” ‘Stand your ground’ law helps white defendants a lot more than black ones” Double standards and all of that .

In her essay, Halper poses two Florida cases, “Wald” and “Alexander”, as examples of notorious and especially invidious legal outcomes resulting from what is generally called a no retreat self-defense or “stand your ground” plea.

Wald, who was a white male, got off on a justifiable force plea after killing an intruder in his house. This was bad. Alexander, who is black, went to jail for  for assultively firing a gun in a house she had once shared with her spouse. This is however not good, but also bad. But perhaps we are getting a little ahead of ourselves …

The relevant Florida statute reads in part:

1) A person is presumed to have held a reasonable fear of imminent peril of death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another when using defensive force that is intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm to another if:

(a) The person against whom the defensive force was used was in the process of unlawfully and forcefully entering, or had unlawfully and forcibly entered, a dwelling, residence, or occupied vehicle, or if that person had removed or was attempting to remove another against that person’s will from the dwelling, residence, or occupied vehicle; and

(b) The person who uses defensive force knew or had reason to believe that an unlawful and forcible entry or unlawful and forcible act was occurring or had occurred. 776.013 Home protection; use of deadly force; presumption of fear of death or great bodily harm.—

Halper’s narrative strategy is to illustrate her double standard contention with descriptions of what she offers up as two relevant paradigm cases. Halper concludes that the divergent outcomes for defendants Ralph Wald and Marissa Alexander (in these purportedly legally comparable events) is attributable to the race of the defendants. Halper writes:

“The disparity between these outcomes should be shocking. But, sadly, it’s not, once you take into account the fact that Wald is white and Alexander is black.”

Now,  it soon enough becomes apparent that Halper’s real purpose is not so much retrospective and legal as proactive and political. She wishes to use these cases to sound a more particular alarm: warning the progressive troops that while no “stand your ground” claim has yet been made in the Martin-Zimmerman case, as ” Zimmerman waived his right to a “stand your ground” pretrial hearing …”  she nonetheless considers it ” is likely that ‘stand your ground’ will come up during the actual trial.” And, Halper wonders, ” If it does, [and ] … the defense is successful. Will Zimmerman end up a free man, like Wald?”

So it’s to prime the troops for a little, or a lot of, anti-Zimmerman street action as much as any other reason that this is written. But the obvious poisoning of the well aside, what author and left-wing activist  Katie Halper more overtly purports to do, is to draw a contrast in supposedly egregious judicial outcomes between two putatively legally alike cases.

So, just as an exercise, let’s place Halper’s preemptive attempt to de-legitimize a defense which Zimmerman’s defense team has not in fact made, aside for a moment. Let’s instead consider whether the two exemplar cases she cites are even truly alike. In aid of doing so, we ask: is her presentation of the material anything like honest or evenhanded?

Let’s review the first instance in Halper’s parable of racial disparity, injustice, and unequal treatment, which centers on Ralph Wald.

Katie Halper introduces Wald thus,

“On March 10 of this year, around midnight, Ralph Wald, 70, of Brandon, Fla., got out of bed  to get a drink and found Walter Conley, 32, having sex with his wife, Johanna Lynn Flores, 41, in the living room. He immediately went back into his bedroom, grabbed his gun and shot Conley three times.”

Now, the “Think Progress” site, which Halper cites twice in succession as an authority for Conley being Flores’ lover, establishes the background somewhat differently:

“Ralph Wald, a 70-year-old Vietnam veteran, walked into his home around midnight, and less than ten seconds later, fired three shots at Walter Conley, according to ABC News.” Italicized divergences.

Halper, unfortunately,  does not bother to inform us as to why she believes the Think Progress site was a trustworthy source for information on Conley and Flores’ status lovers, but not for a description of the exact circumstances proximate to the shooting.

1. Did Wald walk into his house as Think Progress has it, or did he arise from sleep? Halper does not follow Think Progress there, but does not say why.

2. We also note that as part of the process of establishing context or characterization, Think Progress thought fit to include the factoid that Wald was a Vietnam veteran. This, Halper either also fails to notice, or dismisses without explanation. Her mind is obviously focused elsewhere.

But, as we see when reviewing a number of other articles, besides being as Halper describes him, an impotent 70 year old white man, Wald was 1. a Vietnam veteran, 2. a retired Lieutenant Colonel, and 3. the father of a then 20 year old daughter from a previous marriage.

To then recap the fact situation somewhat more comprehensively (and comparably, as we will see later): It was midnight and retired Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Wald, a 70 year old Vietnam veteran, and father of an adult daughter, had been sleeping in his house.  Wald awoke from his sleep only to find a man on top of his wife in his  own living room. Wald reportedly retrieved a gun from his bedroom, returned, and shot the man three times.

The man was apparently so preoccupied with his activities, or indifferent to their discovery, that he never bothered to decouple and decamp when Wald retreated to his bedroom in order to arm himself against the intruder.

The sticking points for Halper’s moral slide rule seem to be Wald’s age and impotence, along with the reported fact that the man having sex with, or raping, Wald’s wife on the living room floor of Wald’s house in the middle of the night, was a sometime current neighbor, and her one time boyfriend. Apparently Halper believes that this past association somehow made the neighbor’s presence in both Wald’s house and wife, excusable; or at least nonthreatening in some way.

Unfortunately for Halper’s insinuated no-harm no-foul thesis, Wald’s wife Johnna Lynn Flores,  the actual recepient of Conley’s living room floor delivered sexual attentions, is not of much assistance in granting us this particular progressive reassurance.  The Tampa Bay reports:

“Flores, the surviving central actor in the episode besides Wald, testified she was “black-out” drunk the night of the shooting after consuming a large quantity of cognac and remembered almost nothing.”

Halper seems wary that this “minor detail” might imply trouble for her theory, as she defensively admits,

“… while the fact that the two were lovers doesn’t imply consent, Flores has never accused Conley of rape — nor do prosecutors buy that that’s what Wald actually thought was happening.”

No, she is right in this; it does not imply consent. Flores was, on her own testimony blacked out and incapable of remembering anything.

We naturally suspect that if this sexual episode had taken place on, say, a college campus, with Flores an alcohol or drug besotted and blacked out coed, that Halper would be asserting there was a prima facie case that Flores had been de facto , if somehow not legally, raped. We would tend to agree. And note too, Halper’s trust of the prosecutors’ judgment with this statement:

” Flores has never accused Conley of rape — nor do prosecutors buy that that’s what Wald actually thought was happening”.

This trusting attitude will be much less evident later, once Halper begins work arranging her version of the Alexander case. And, while Halper makes much of the fact that the deceased was a former boyfriend of Flores, and an apparently occasional next door neighbor whom Wald might have recognized – and then presumably spared – Wald’s wife Johanna Flores, the recipient of Conley’s sexual attentions, had a somewhat different view of the outcome.

What was Johanna Flores’ own verdict on the verdict? ”

“I am elated, absolutely elated,” Flores said outside the Tampa courtroom where her spouse, retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Ralph Wald, 70, was acquitted of second-degree murder Thursday. Once Wald was released from jail, she said, he had promised her a special celebration. “Because my husband puts me first, he’s taking me to the Waffle House,” Flores said.”  Tampa Bay Times

What then of Conley?

In the second instance of Katie Halper’s parable, the moral character of both Marissa Alexander the shooter, and Rico Gray the abusive husband will become hammering points as she labors to establish exculpating factors in the Alexander case which will help to prove racial bias. So, what of Conley’s character then? Why has that not been introduced more thoroughly? We do remember him. He is after all, the dead “lover” in the Wald case. And Halper even thought fit to include the fact that he had a tattoo honoring Johanna.

Well, in the words of a Mail Online article which Halper cited for the authority that Wald showed no remorse in killing Conley, but which she failed to actually quote, we find this eminently quotable nugget:

“Ms Flores was arrested last October – just two weeks before she and Wald were married – for allegedly firing a shot of Conley. She said he came over and refused to leave. Conley told police Flores invited him back to the home they used to share. She and Conley, who had a record of petty thefts and worked as a laborer, had shared a house next door to Wald in the community of Brandon. Flores allegedly shot at Conley at 3am on October 19. She and Wald were dating then and he bailed her out of jail. Those charges were later dropped. Ms Flores and Wald married on October 25. Wald, a U.S. Army veteran, has a 20-year-old daughter with a previous wife.“

So, in order to drive him away, and in a period prior her marriage to Wald, Johanna Flores had herself shot at Conley – months before her husband finally killed him using the same technique.

Wald, a retired – if 70 and impotent- Lieutenant Colonel; Conley, a petty thief killed while shagging the “blacked out” wife (who had already shot at him) of another man, in the middle of the night, in that man’s own house, in that man’s own living room.

In the Alexander case, as sad as the eventual legal outcome was for Marissa Alexander, the facts on the ground, and the proximate circumstances, are clearly different. But before we start in on the physical facts, let’s make specific note of how Halper introduces Marissa Alexander:

“On Aug. 1, 2010, Marissa Alexander, a 31-year-old mother of three, with a master’s degree and no criminal record, was working for a payroll software company in Jacksonville.”

Compare that again with the treatment she delivers Wald, “On March 10 of this year, around midnight, Ralph Wald, 70, of Brandon, Fla., got out of bed  to get a drink and…”

Again, for Wald, no “Vietnam veteran”; no, father of a daughter; no, retired Lieutenant Colonel; and no mention of a previously clean legal record. Just a description of a supposedly cuckolded and impotent old man, who killed his wife’s lover in a fit of jealousy, when in search of a drink, he got out of bed and discovered them.

On then, to the description of setting in the Alexander case.

First, although the way Halper describes the context in Alexander’s case is jarringly sketchy and telegraphic, it is still clear enough to show that when Marissa Alexander committed aggravated assault with a firearm, the location in which the event occurred was not her current home, and she was not confronting  an unrelated midnight intruder. Instead, Alexander (on testimony and report) went to a dwelling which she had once shared with her spouse Rico Gray.

Thus, according to Halper’s own account, Marissa Alexander  ” … went to their former house to get some belongings.” Halper asserts Marissa Alexander did this thinking, “he [Rico Gray] was not at home”. However, “he”, her estranged husband Rico Gray, was home; whether she knew it or not.

Halper, now switching to one of those really neat passive voices wherein shit just magically happens, says, “The two got into an argument.” And, “Alexander says that Gray threatened her and she feared for her life.”

Ok … Halper then does something seemingly odd for anyone looking to present an objective and informative version of events, but something which makes sense for a polemicist trying to be clever. She angles to base her exculpatory recounting of Marissa Alexander’s actions not on neutral police reports, but on the testimony of the formally aggrieved party: performing a little rhetorical judo so to speak.

In this instance the legally aggrieved party of record is ostensibly Rico Gray, the husband of Alexander. It is Gray who is posited (his kids actually are) as the victim of the aggravated assault charge involving Alexander’s felonious use of a firearm.

Halper aims to undermine the State of Florida aggravated assault charge against Alexander by impeaching her husband Gray with his own words. But now remember, it is really the kids who are the state’s main motivation in bringing charges. Halper then, ostensibly referencing Rico Gray’s deposition of the encounter, tells us,

“When Alexander retreated into the bathroom, Gray tried to break the door. She ran into the garage, but couldn’t leave because it was locked.  She came back, he said, with a registered gun, which she legally owned …”

At a glance, we therefore assume Halper is quoting Gray’s damning admissions in the deposition document directly. The elisions are naturally taken to be all Halper’s. Thus Halper, superficially quoting Gray’s deposition, writes:

” I called her a whore and bitch and … I told her … if I can’t have you, nobody going to have you,” he said, in a deposition.”

But for anyone who actually bothers to check the link under the words “he said”, he finds not a legal deposition, but  an outraged opinion piece written by Fred Grimm of the Miami Herald. Here is how Grimm wrote it up:

“Sitting in the State Attorney’s Office, Gray described how he had erupted in anger when he discovered text messages on his wife’s phone to another man. (Alexander had moved out, but had come home briefly that day to retrieve her clothes.) “I was in a rage. I called her a whore and bitch and . . . I told her, you know, I used to always tell her that, if I can’t have you, nobody going to have you. It was not the first time of ever saying it to her.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/28/v-print/2821403/you-call-this-justice-not-if-its.html#storylink=cpy

Halper did then add an ellipsis to those Grimm used; but she  might better have helped the cause of truth  if she had quoted Grimm a little more extensively rather than elliptically:

“Marissa fired the gun twice that day into the wall. No one was injured. But the State Attorney’s Office said the reckless discharge of a firearm endangered the children. A jury (never told about the mandatory 20-year sentence) agreed. Circuit Judge James Daniel, handing down the verdict, noted that because of the state law, the sentencing decision “has been entirely taken out of my hands.” emphasis added.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/28/v-print/2821403/you-call-this-justice-not-if-its.html#storylink=cpy

Oh yeah, there were those kids in the room. Halper does of course mention them as being there; almost in passing as part of Grays self-critical depositional assessment of his own behavior. But she does not clearly stipulate why Alexander was really charged as she was: which was because the shots were discharged in a dwelling in the presence of kids (one of whom a little research will show was apparently next to the man whom Alexander was trying to impress with her no retreat seriousness of purpose). Or as one news source put it:

“Alexander, 31, claims she fired a shot from a handgun into the wall to protect herself during a confrontation with her husband, who she said had abused her. Because his two children were with them when she fired a shot in his direction, she was charged with three counts of aggravated assault.”2012 by News4Jax.com. All rights reserved Emphaisis added

Nor in Halper’s attempt to establish this as a legally comparable case to Wald which ended in racially motivated and disproportionate justice, does Halper mention the following “little fact”: After the shooting event of August 10 2010, and after her booking on the aggravated assault charge, Marissa Alexander was freed on bond.

Ordered to stay away from her ex husband, she nonetheless, 5 months later on December 30th of the same year violated her probation, and was arrested on a charge of domestic violence for assaulting Rico Gray at his Brockett Way home address.

Photographs were taken into evidence of his [in my view relatively minor] facial abrasions and swelling.

Marissa Alexander was then contacted by the police via phone; and, after initially claiming she had an “alibi”, eventually consented to meet with an officer: She was arrested and remained jailed until her trial over the aggravated assault charge involving the children.

In perusing the various news accounts it appears that Alexander could have made a defensive pleading at trial on a basis other than “stand your ground”, but chose not to do so.  She opted to try for the so-called “stand your ground” defense instead.

However, ” …  a Duval circuit judge rejected her Stand Your Ground defense. The judge decided that Alexander could have fled instead of running into the garage and fetching the pistol from her car. ‘This is inconsistent with a person in genuine fear of his or her life,’ the judge ruled — illustrating, if nothing else, that the effectiveness of the controversial self-defense statute varies wildly from one Florida circuit to the next.”

Whether it affected the judge’s decision or not, it is interesting to note how the law  reads regarding the presumptive coverage of the right. It says,

(2) The presumption set forth in subsection (1) does not apply if:

(a) The person against whom the defensive force is used has the right to be in or is a lawful resident of the dwelling, residence, or vehicle, such as an owner, lessee, or titleholder, and there is not an injunction for protection from domestic violence or a written pretrial supervision order of no contact against that person; or …

It should also be noted that despite all this, Alexander was offered a reduced three year sentence plea by the same prosecutor who is in now charge of the Zimmerman case, Angela Corey.

Corey further indicated that she might have offered an even greater reduction (than three years instead of a potential 20) but it was Marissa Alexander’s violation of the terms of her probation over the outstanding aggravated assault charge, a bond violation which also resulted in her arrest for domestic battery, which made an even greater reduction of sentence offer on the part of prosecutors problematical.

In any event Alexander turned the 3 year offer of reduced time down. And now, unfortunately, she is in jail, sentenced to 20 years. But it is not because she’s black.

Where does all this leave Katie Halper? It leaves her holding title to what can only be, given the sources she herself cites, a deliberately deceitful narrative; a narrative intended to poison the well of public and perhaps even judicial opinion, in order to harm a third party’s interests.

That Halper has done this, is clear evidence of malice. That she has done it so blatantly, and expected it to pass, is persuasive evidence of stupidity.

Halper certainly looks guilty on both counts.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/28/v-print/2821403/you-call-this-justice-not-if-its.html#storylink=cpy

Mia Love Uses White Child Slave Labor!

What better way for a white person born over a century after slavery was abolished to pay reparations to a black woman born roughly a century after slavery was abolished than to perform slave labor for that black woman?

From Mia Love:

Look at all those young men with “fun bags” (according to Pennsylvania Legislator Babette Josephs, D – Phila)!!!

By the way, normal people call them “responsible, politically astute young adults”. We all know Leftists have all manner of different terms for them, many of which would not survive the moderation filter here at Truth Before Dishonor.

Also note: Truth Before Dishonor officially endorsed Mayor Mia Love for Congress many months ago, prior to her winning her Primary in Nevada’s 4th Congressional District.

More Information On Artur Davis (Already Available For TBD Viewers)

For those of you who don’t know about Artur Davis, he was a Democrat member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and a Representative from the great state of Alabama. He lost his bid to become the Democrat Governor of Alabama, and this year, having moved from Alabama to Virginia, has also moved from Democrat to Republican. Like Ronald Reagan, Texas Governor Rick Perry, and many Democrat politicians before him, he declared he hadn’t left the Democrat Party but rather the Democrat Party left him.

And Artur Davis, the black man who was once tagged as a great up-and-coming power broker in the Democrat Party, who seconded Baraka Hussein Obama’s nomination for President and introduced him to the Democrat Convention in 2008, absolutely rocked the Republican Convention in 2012. Absolutely killed it.

 

Remember 2009 to 2011: lesson learned. 2012: mistake corrected. Yowza! Baraka Hussein Obama: merely a man I once knew. And the angels rejoiced!

Now, there are many Socialists, such as Perry Hood, the 77 year old Socialist from Lewes, Delaware, who cynically declared that Artur Davis only switched parties to stand a better chance to get elected in the future out of very Conservative Alabama. The fact Artur Davis moved to northern Virginia aside, there was a possibility that such dishonest and cynical Socialists had a point. So I decided to do a bit more research. And that research involved examining information found right here at Truth Before Dishonor.

How did Artur Davis vote on ObamaCare? Especially since Artur Davis loudly and derisively declared that the Democrats refused to add a single Republican option to the monstrosity and the monstrosity was passed without a single Republican vote? And since Artur Davis noted that 50 percent of Americans are Republican? (More accurately, it’s about a 34/34 split with 32 percent being too wishy-washy and uncaring about the government that is wrecking their lives and the lives of their children.)

Well, Truth Before Dishonor has had that information for a very long time now. It’s in the ObamaCare Roll Call page. That’s right, a whole page devoted to the ObamaCare Roll Call. Artur Davis’ votes are recorded here.

How did Artur Davis vote on that Socialist wet dream that refused any Republican input and didn’t get a single Republican vote? He voted NO and NO again. He voted with the Republicans and against the Socialist Democrats both times. So, did Artur Davis switch parties out of self-serving expediency like the septa-genarian Socialist from Lewes, Delaware proclaimed? Or did Artur Davis look at what the Democrat Party had become, then look at what the Republican Party stands for and decide that he is, after all, a Republican? You decide for yourselves. As for me, I have already decided.

Welcome home, Artur Davis!

Time Sink

Girl you know he loves that….

Someone linked this site on facebook.  It’s called “Hey Girl, it’s Paul Ryan.”

I have now spent… far too much time reading every single page. It’s lolcats, but dreamy-cute, not fluffy-cute, and with better grammar.

This MIGHT be a girl thing… but here’s one more:

Huddle up!

Don’t Tell The Liberal Trolls

But elected Democrats are jumping parties to the Republican Party. Nice Deb has a lengthy, but far from exhaustive, list of elected Democrats running for reelection as Republicans.

If it were just one or two stories, I wouldn’t think much. Pols that never quite fit in in the first place, finally leave their party – it happens – jumping Jeff Jeffords, Joe Lieberman, and Arlen Specter come to mind.

But what we’re seeing here in the age of Obama – is something else altogether. He was supposed to stop the rise of the oceans but it looks like he’s stopping the rise of the Democrat party.

Am I exaggerating? Just look at all these recent defections – I think I detect a pattern, here.

Another important matter to make sure you don’t tell the Liberal trolls: Not all the elected Democrats who are becoming Republicans are white. Also, not all of them are men. Just what are the racist Democrats (and they are racist, since they call non-white Republicans “race traitors”) and the sexist Democrats (and they are sexist, since they declare Republican women to not be authentically female) to do?

This harkens back to the 1994 Republican wave, where Democrats jumped that sinking ship to become Republicans. But, as Nice Deb asked, are they really leaving the Democrat Party? Or did the Democrat Party leave them? Just as the 1994 jump showed, and as Rick Perry who went from being a Democrat Texas Legislator to being a Republican Texas Governor, and as Ronald Reagan who went from being a Democrat to being a Republican, it isn’t they who left the Democrats, but the Democrats who have left them.

The Democrat Party is quickly becoming the Democrat Socialist Party. And that leaves little room for sane people. Very little room for sane people within the Democrat fold.

Oh, as an aside, many of these Democrats-turned-Republicans have done so due to Barack Obama’s actions. See the above link for verification.

Multi-Stage Moby Fired At The First Street Journal

and had the same success as the multi-stage North Korean rocket launch.

For those ignorant few who don’t know what a Moby is, the Urban Dictionary has as its top definition a very clear encyclopedic definition of a Moby. It is very unusual in that it gives an accurate definition and provides a very accurate history for the resulting term.

An insidious and specialized type of left-wing troll who visits blogs and impersonates a conservative for the purpose of either spreading false rumors intended to sow dissension among conservative voters, or who purposely posts inflammatory and offensive comments for the purpose of discrediting the blog in question.

The term is derived from the name of the liberal musician Moby, who famously suggested in February of 2004 that left-wing activists engage in this type of subterfuge: “For example, you can go on all the pro-life chat rooms and say you’re an outraged right-wing voter and that you know that George Bush drove an ex-girlfriend to an abortion clinic and paid for her to get an abortion. Then you go to an anti-immigration Web site chat room and ask, ‘What’s all this about George Bush proposing amnesty for illegal aliens?’”

The strategy has been frequently attempted on conservative blogs, but has not been nearly as effective as Moby envisioned, since false rumors are easily debunked by fact-checking minions, and cartoonishly extreme commenters often get immediately identified as mobys and banned.

I not only found a Moby, but I found a multi-stage Moby. And he hit an older (in blog years) article that hadn’t had a single comment for his Mobyism. (That’s one of the multiple stages: sneak a comment in when nobody’s looking and no admin are on.) So you understand fully, I’m not the quickest to figure out some character belongs to somebody else, or some sock is actually a sock. You can check with the regulars at Shattered Kingdoms, a MUD where I am well-known (as Pushing40, a moniker I created in 2004 and keep to this day). Heck, I didn’t even recognize the Socialist New Zealand Librarian PIATOR when he was sock-puppeting for a good bit. So, this is not a self-aggrandizement effort, but rather a mocking of the Moby who couldn’t even convince me that he was real.

Let me see if I can capture the complexity of the Mobyism.

• He pretended to be a sock-puppet of a Conservative, and not merely a Conservative.
• He pretended to be a racist.
His black sock had comically horrible grammar.
• He tied his sock’s name to Barack Obama (by tying it to the White House) through the common “link your name to your blogsite” tools.
• He commented in the middle of the night (Eastern Time) when 2 of the 3 Administrators would likely be asleep, and the 3rd (myself, in Central Time) may or may not be asleep.
• He commented on a stale article.
• He commented on an article that had no comments.
• He commented in a way that appeared possibly germane to the article, while trying to use what he thought would possibly pass as Conservative humor (and if not, would get past the sleeping staff, for use later on his own sites to defame TFSJ for allowing his Moby sock to exist unchallenged).

Gleen Grenwald… Gren Gleenwald … Green Glenwald… whatever his name is, he’s a known Leftist sock who socks to pump himself up. There is a known Conservative sock, by the name Limerick Avenger, but that sock takes standard care to allow everyone to know who owns that sock, unlike ol’ whathisname above. But this Moby tried to be an unknowable racist Conservative sock. And he failed miserably. Because I, of all people, caught him as soon as I saw what he wrote and the name he used. I didn’t even have to hover over his name to get even more proof. I suspected it when I saw the obviously racist name and the article header on which he commented (since the article on which he commented made his name obviously racist). It was confirmed when I saw what he wrote. And that confirmation was provided all the support it needed when I hovered over his racist Moby moniker to see where it linked to. None other than Obama’s White House.

Here’s a clue, Jeromy Mobys, if you cannot deceive me, you cannot deceive anybody. The Little Green Footballs asshat already tried your gambit, albeit a lot less comically complex (and maybe a lot less stupider than you), and got exposed (multiple entendre intended) for all the world to see. Did you think you could do better, with your sophomoric attempt?

Life Of Naomi: Fate Worse Than Death

Naomi faces a fate worse than the almost assured death before the age of five that she previously faced. It is absolutely horrendous, as the Puff Ho commenters made very clear. She is being forcefully made healthy and whole, against the wishes of the Leftists at Puff Ho. She is gaining weight from her previous 2-year-old, 14 pound condition, against the wishes of the Leftists at Puff Ho. Her fate of a healthy life and a long, healthy future is far worse than her all-but-guaranteed death by emaciation she had previously faced, according to the Leftists at Puff Ho.

What am I talking about? Bristol Palin, that evil hypocritical Christian Conservative Republican of the Palin lineage, in the Reagan mold, the adopted sister of Jesus Himself, linked to an article written by her co-author Nancy French, another evil Christian Conservative Republican and adopted sister of Jesus Himself.

What was Nancy’s crime that got the Liberal blogosphere all incensed? She and her Christian husband had the audacity to adopt a 2 year old, 14 pound Ethiopian girl and rescue her from certain death. As far as the Leftosphere is concerned, it would have been better for Naomi, the black emaciated Ethiopian girl, to have died than to be raised by white Christian Conservative adoptive parents!

The next time some arrogant arse like Perry Hood of Lewes, Delaware arrogantly ignores all facts in order to accuse Republicans of raaaaacism because we disagree with Obama’s Socialist agenda, remind that arrogant arse just who the racists truly are. It’s the Liberals. It’s the Democrats (as shown in my left-hand side-bar). It’s why I have a link-list specifically dedicated to “race traitors”, a name Liberals give to all non-white Conservatives.

It is to spit.

A Real Job

….Yeah, I’m posting on that.  Some idiot talking head makes a slam at a grandmother with MS and everyone has to comment about it.  I think I have something worth saying, though, rather than just talking about it because it’s big.

I’m a stay at home mom.  A home-maker.  A house wife.

I have worked outside the home, before I got married, in a very similar field—I was a Petty Officer in the Navy, specializing in calibration. (Making sure things that measure are accurate enough.)  Before that, I was in another similar field, at least sort of—I was a ranch kid.

Perhaps some folks look at those things and are curious—what on earth is the connection between being a mother, working with cows and fixing stuff that’s used to fix planes and ships?

The hours, for one.

All of those jobs are 24/7 on-call, with holidays usually meaning that there’s more work to get done.  Cows don’t stop eating just because it’s Christmas, after all.

The job description being woefully incomplete, for another.

I was a “calibration technician,” as I described earlier.  I also did janitor work, was a security guard, maintained a half-dozen different collateral duties that included things like “mailman” and customer service.

How serious the situation is, for another.  In all of these jobs, if I screw up, a life might be lost—and it’s almost always a hurry-hurry-hurry and wait situation.  The way that if you do it for the pay, there’s a screw loose somewhere.  Probably several more, though I’ll try to avoid making jokes about uniforms.

I don’t know what other folks “hear” when I say I’m a housewife, so I’ll try to lay out what I do, trying to stick to jobs where I actually do everything a civilian counterpart would be expected to do:

Day care, house keeping, laundry lady, cook (not chef— I’m not that good), handyman, secretary, inventory management and procurement.  (explaining that last one: part of managing the house is making sure we never run out of anything, and we don’t pay too much for anything.  I just know about what the normal price is for most of the stuff we use, and I keep our chest freezer nearly full with stuff that’s on sale, be it hams for 99c or frozen veggies for a third of the normal price, knowing what brands are cheap at twice the price and which ones are over-priced if you get them free.)

After the stuff that I do, there’s the stuff we don’t do:

We don’t have to have a second car, or any of upkeep that requires. (It’s a nice-but-not-required.)

We don’t have to eat out or get takeout. (Yes, my husband brown bags it, although he does eat out to socialize sometimes.)

We don’t take days off for appointments or illness, unless TrueBlue is deathly ill.

We don’t fight over who cleans the house.  (unless I need help moving stuff)

We don’t need daycare.

We don’t fight about yard work. (Unless I need Big Strong man to move things or kill a spider)

We don’t fight over laundry and such, or pay to have clothes cleaned.

We don’t have to worry about our kids getting “quality time.”  They get all kinds of quantity time—which also lets us have mom-and-dad time without as much guilt. (Hey, rule #1 of parenting—you will probably find a dozen things to feel guilty about before breakfast.  Not counting breakfast itself.)

We don’t have nearly the stress that double income families seem to have—when TrueBlue gets home, I can give him time to decompress; when I’ve had a horrible day, it’s horrible in different way than he’s had, so my venting doesn’t add to his work related stress.  (Digression: ever notice folks that complain about stay-at-home only talking about kids only want to talk about the office?)

I didn’t take six months off from work to give birth and bond.

K, you’ve made it this far.  Notice something missing?

I didn’t make any judgments about moms who get paychecks.

I bet I still get at least one comment from someone that claims I did, though.  There’s a LOT of guilt tied up in the topic—I’d guess it has to do with the BS we’re told about being able to do everything and do it well.  Every mom I know that doesn’t have a full time paid job sometimes feels guilty about it; every mom I know that spends any time focused on anything that isn’t the kids feels guilty about it.  “Why” is a psychology type question I don’t care to look at too closely, since it’s broad enough to say more about the questioner than the topic.

Being a house wife is a job.  The lack of a paycheck doesn’t change that in the least.  I suspect that if someone looked at the background and prior statements of the woman that started this whole kerfluffle, you’d find a lot of things that are a rejection of her notion of The Way Things Were as represented in the form of whatever she’s rejecting.  Think something like the famous line about hating what they think the Church is about, rather than what the Church actually is.

Attention Race Traitors And Self-Proclaimed Right Wing Extremist™ Blogs

Do you want to help the radical Leftists keep track of you? Do you want the Obama Government to know who you are, so they can watch you? Let us at Truth Before Dishonor know! We’ll put you on the list! That way, Big Brother only needs to come here to find out who you are, and you don’t even have to report yourself to Barack Obama’s multiple web-sites set up to track you from your neighbors reporting you to the local Office of Watching Your Neighbors.

We have had a large influx of new visitors since the last time we issued the invitation, so there may be some who don’t know exactly what this is all about. Weeeeellllll, let me tell you! If you’re black… or if you’re hispanic… or if your not-white… and if you’re a Conservative, you’re a Race-Traitor. So saith the radical Leftists in charge of the Democrat Party. If you’re a woman who votes Republican, well, Democrats have declared they need to look up your skirts to ensure you actually are a woman, because for some reason, Democrats don’t believe women should be allowed to vote Republican and still call themselves women. Heck, just recently, a Democrat woman from Philadelphia, the Democrat head of a Committee in the Pennsylvania Legislature, declared all such women were in actuality men with jugs.

So that’s where the Race-Traitors point comes in. If you’re not white and yet you believe you have the freedom of mind to be Conservative, you are a race-traitor as far as the Democrat Party is concerned. Welcome to the club. And if you have a blog, we have a special place of prominence for you in our side-bar.

Regarding the Self-Proclaimed Right Wing Extremist™ Blogs, that came straight out of laughing at Janet Napolitano’s document warning about those of us Right Wing Extremists™ who could become the next terrorist groups to violently attack the US from within. So a couple of us decided to call ourselves Self-Proclaimed Right Wing Extremist™ Bloggers, and I sent out an invitation to all others who would like to be so labeled, just to help the overburdened Janet Napolitano and the overburdened Federal Government be better able to keep track of us would-be terrorists.

Won’t you join us and self-identify today?
________________________
For more information and to help you reach your decision, I am providing some research information.
Right Wing Extremist™ Blogs
Self-Proclaimed Right Wing Extremist™ Blogs, A Renewed Call
I Added A New Blog List (The Race-Traitors blog list)
Attention All Race-Traitors, Gender-Traitors And Self-Proclaimed Right-Wing Extremist™ Bloggers
#AttackWatch

Barack Obama, You Don’t Speak For Smart Girls #TCOT

HT Tina Korbe, who is a smart girl.

Barack Obama doesn’t speak for smart girls like my Army Veteran daughter (or her Army and Navy Veteran husband, who isn’t a girl). Teh Won doesn’t speak for my sister, or my female (or male) cousins, or my aunts, or my mother (who cannot imagine anyone actually wanting to kill her unborn child). And the man who claimed “this is the day the oceans began to recede” (or something to that effect) after he was elected definitely does not speak for these Smart Girls:

Dear hunting …

The hunting of whitetail deer is considered a less than admirable pursuit by many people nowadays. And for various reasons. Some feel it’s just a bit gauche if not atavistic, while others more hostile to both man and his sport, claim to believe that the only real hunting that can be justified is the kind of hunting that makes man the hunter as likely to wind up prey, as the ostensible game.

And too, some arguments used by hunters to “defend” their activities are as emotional and ill thought out as the critcisms. Anyone who has actually spent days stalking deer only to wind up with a mere 70 lbs of dressed meat to be shared out amongst family and friends, has probably also had the thought cross his mind that insofar as producing a supply of  meat goes, it would be much more efficient to just raise such things in a pen and …

And just about then you drive past a farm field with a herd of grazing beef cattle.

Oh yeah, someone has already thought of that.

Funny how that works though.  Mankind spends thousands of years of energy in domesticating and breeding, say swine, and the beneficiaries of this effort can’t wait to release the product into the wild so they can then face the uncertain prospect of obtaining in the woods and swamps what could easily have been had from the pen.

And what, to get back on track,  about overpopulation? From the point of view of logic, killing to reduce an animal population through unsportsmanlike culling practices is just as reasonable as culling through fair chase, IF your only “real” aim is to control the population and benefit from the product.

That said then, my own reasons are perhaps not too much better grounded, or bullet proof, so to speak. But they are my reasons, and I’ll try to lay them out.

Going Hunting

Although the “deer camp” social experience has often appeared in outdoors writers’ works as a significant part of the hunting event, it ranks with me in importance somewhat above a run of the mill game of poker with friends, but well below a family holiday at home. The only thing that makes the collective aspect of it enjoyable on balance rather than annoying, is the outdoors context, and the companionship of people – in my case mostly relatives – whose company one already appreciates.

Now as far as primitive goes, we certainly don’t tent it. But on the other hand, the cabin has no running water, and no electricity, and the nearest paved road is miles away. So being there, for some days, with no radio, TV,  or electricity, does constitute a different experience. One that given sufficient time, resets your internal clock, and reengages your mind with certain physical realities, from which we as adults have become distanced. For someone in good health, this re-acquaintance with the simple life can be a very satisfying experience. For someone physically weak, or fearful, I will grant you it’s not so much of an attraction.

This though, constitutes the outdoors experience available to most of us, whether or not we hunt.

What hunting really adds to it all, is this: It will, in a more concentrated way than any simple outdoorsy experience can, tell we “everyman” types some important things about ourselves. If, we are willing to listen.

And if we listen, and heed, then we may be able to make some of the corrections that it suggests to us.

To really learn the message however, it takes more than a few days afield, or a couple of lucky morning outings during the course of a lifetime. For what one is reminded of and forced to confront as a result of a sufficient period of time spent in the field,  are the local and direct costs of petty sloth and indifferent ignorance, of lack of seriousness of purpose, of lack of focus, and lack of sustained, sustained, and well-directed effort. These are natural mini-lessons presented with just enough intensity and immediacy of feedback and effect to make a broader life point.

Thus, in chasing game, you learn in a very immediate and analogically applicable way the cost of pointless minor indulgences: the cost of a negligent shrug, twitch, kick or yawn; that of a slothful retreat into a reverie, when outward attention is due; that of the impatient step, or of yielding to an impulsive urge to lean up against, or to take an easier yet the noisier path.

The body and it’s habits and urges, which are felt as our psychological dispositions, can in everyday life be more or less  allowed to sweep us along without harm – seemingly. In hunting however, no judgement is put off. Thus, welling impulses must be mindfully at first, and then habitually, controlled, in order for one to have an expectation of more than fitful or random success.

Hunting, still hunting, is not easy. It’s not even easy, I hear, to sit patiently in a blind for hours. But hours of alert, purposeful, and controlled passage across a forest floor covered at almost every step with fallen and entraping limbs, grabbing branches, crackling twigs, all while being buffetted by cold and and gusting winds can be psychologically as well as physically exhausting, no matter how unhurried the effort.

The meaning of the wood signs are not obvious to the beginner either, and remain uncertain for years for most of us who have only a limited amount of time to spend in the woods or fields. They take effort to learn. To take an almost comic example, no one who has never before seen a deer or read about one, would have any reason to know which way a set of deer tracks are pointing in the snow. There is no analogy with common household pets, and a young and untutored novice would just as likely imagine that the foot of a deer is streamlined so that the narrow part of the track pointed to the rear, as to correctly imagine the opposite. Don’t ask me how I know this. I just do.

Now that you are older and hopefully wiser, have you been paying attention to when that snow squall started and stopped while you sat there at the base of the tree resting? Or were you more than likely ( don’t ask me how I know this either) hunkered down in your parka, drowsily daydreaming about a hottub stuffed with girls in bikinis? Alertness to the cold world “out there” will tell you whether those tracks you eventually discover 20 yards on further, were laid down in the last 30 minutes, or date back hours.

And are you ready for the opportunity? It’s tiring to walk with your rifle at a semi-port or “patrol” arms for hours, even with the sling wrapped around your left wrist as you grip the fore-end of the stock. So, whew … what the hey, take a break; stop, adjust that burden and sling it over your shoulder.

Which proves just enough to undo that near hour of careful traversing, and to  send that deer you hadn’t yet seen,  but which you had moved to within 30 yards of, bounding away – before you could recover enough from the startle to unshoulder your rifle, disengage the safety, sight the target, and fire with control.

Aren’t you glad you yielded to that impulse to drop the pretense of stalking, step out of the hunter act, and unguardedly relieve the strain at just that moment? After all, you had been a good little woodsman for more than 45 minutes. Enough deliberation and deliberateness. Nature owed you this break; and a bite of that crackly wrapped candy bar in your pocket too. And since we are not taking this all that seriously – you know as a matter of life and death or something – why should our targets respond as if they are?

Well, I guess I don’t know why others hunt, when it comes right down to it. Nor maybe, did I even know when I began. But I do now, and I think that it provides a refresher course once a year in lessons, the objects of which, I need to keep in mind for the rest.