You've no doubt seen those interminable TV commercials extolling the virtues of buying gold, silver and other precious metals. They tell you that gold will protect you from inflation and the falling value of our once-vaunted currency. And, so long as Mr. Bernanke, Fed Chairman, continues to print money at the rate of more than $85 BILLION DOLLARS a month, month after month, there's no question that it's just a matter of time before inflation (too many dollars chasing too few goods and services) grinds our dollar into pennies.
They also tell you that gold and silver have appreciated much more than the stock market over the past decade or so. That's true; while gold has increased about 400% since 2003, the stock market is up only about 175%. So yes, my friends, buying gold might be a really good idea. But I think I have a better one: Ammunition.
About ten years ago George W. Bush was president and a box of 50 .22 long rifle caliber rimfire cartridges cost about $2.50. Or, roughly a nickel apiece. They remained at about that price until something earth-shattering happened on November 6, 2008: Barack Hussein Obama was elected president.
Beginning the next morning there was a run on guns and ammunition that has scarcely abated since. Why? Because those in the know, know that Obama and his Chicago cronies hate guns and hate the fact that you and I can buy and keep and use them. He/they want to disarm you, and everything he's done since being reelected has proves it. Now that he no longer needs to be reelected he can begin to focus on his primary goals; pass carbon taxes, eliminate conservatism, end drilling, make citizens dependent upon the Government, end freedom and - wait for it - disarm us. His actions after the Sandy Hook massacre is proof positive that I know what I'm talking about.
So, I and millions of others like me have been buying guns and ammo at a record clip. In fact, Obama was named "Gun Salesman Of All Time" by the National Rifle Association. Gun company stocks have increased since his election by a factor of ten. Gun prices during that period have increased by at least 100%. And ammo is now almost beyond the budget of the average American. Proof?
A "brick" of .22 ammo, or 500 rounds, will set you back $100, maybe even $150, or about four or five times what it cost ten years ago!
Other calibers have increased more or less proportionately. Some of this is simple economics of the supply - demand variety. Lots of people want it and the manufacturers can't make it fast enough. And I'm of the opinion it won't calm down until we elect a president who decides to honor his oath to protect and defend the Bill of Rights...including that pesky 2nd Amendment.
Until then, you decide: buy gold and hope to get a modest rate of return, or buy ammo and be almost guaranteed to see your investment double, triple or even quadruple in value. As for me, I'm buying all the ammo I can find...
I screwed up. Yes, kiddies, I had a choice to make while growing up, and I chose wrong. I decided to get an education, take a job, work my ass off and, hopefully, reach the semi-lofty heights of success. Oh, and reap the rewards that accrue therewith.
I should have chosen to emulate Lois Lerner.
You may not know her. She's the career bureaucrat babe that until a few days ago ran the tax-free organizations office for the Infernal Revenue Service. Those are the 501c(3) IRS code organizations like Goodwill Industries and the Salvation Army, and c(4) political speech "Citizens United" outfits like Karl Rove's Crossroads USA and George Soros' uber-lefty Media Matters and MoveOn.org. They can raise money and spend it in an effort to influence thoughts and votes because the Supremes voted in the aforementioned case that doing so is protected by the 1st Amendment to the Constitution.
These outfits make application to the IRS, and those applications are then approved (or denied) by whoever runs the department at the time. Except in Lois' case. If the applicant organization consisted of folks with a conservative viewpoint, such as with the terms "Tea Party" and "Constitution" in their names, the applications were neither approved or denied; they were just put into the lower right hand drawer of her desk and allowed to languish there until the applicant sees the error of their ways and converts to socialism, or Jesus decides to finally return. Or, of course, until Barry leaves office. If he ever does.
Look at it this way. If an organization wishes to influence political thought and speech, and is prohibited from raising money to do so because the Liberal Loons running things at the IRS keep you from proceeding, then you have effectively been shut out. Your voice has been silenced. And your ability to provide that influence has been squelched. In essence, through the unreal power of the IRS only the liberal point of view was allowed to spew forth. And spew it did during the 2012 election cycle. And we all know how that turned out.
So good ol' Lois was hauled before Congress. She began her testimony by declaring her innocence, and then promptly claimed her rights under the 5th Amendment to the Constitution. Of course, as a lawyer she knew she couldn't do that, but she did. She basically testified, and then refused to testify. And because of the furor her doing so caused, she was promptly put on extended leave of absence at full pay and benefits! Whoa! From what I hear her union will appoint a lawyer at our expense, and she will appeal that absence. That may take 18 months to wind its way through the courts. And if she is found against, she has the opportunity to appeal. And that will take another 18 months! So Lois gets three years, at least, at full pay, which is $177,000,00 per year, for doing absolutely nothing. Which, by the way, would take her past her mandatory retirement age, so she could check out at full pay and bennies without ever working another day. Think of it; because she's caught hosing conservatives she gets to sit home eating bon-bons and watching Jerry Springer reruns at about $100 per hour.
Of course, we conservatives would prefer it that way, since while she was working she was screwing things up for good, God-fearing Americans. Reports are that she has been resolute in harming conservatives at every opportunity. But we poor slugs were never informed of such propensities because her peers in the D.C. bureaucracy were of a like mind...lefty socialist thieves.
So, Congress will investigate, and possibly recall her to try and pry some info out of her. And she'll just do that 5th thing again, which will result in more sturm and drang without anything being learned. But good ol' Lois will still be doing that "cha-ching" thing at nearly $4,000 a week.
Remember when choosing civil service meant a meager salary but great benefits and absolute, ironclad job security? Now, it's still the same but the salary is just about twice what an ordinary, run-of-the-mill, tax-paying civilian earns. Where did I go wrong? why didn't somebody tell me that civil service is the quickest and most secure way to becoming a millionaire? I'm pissed...
Have you ever thought you might like to live in Chicago? You know, that "City of broad shoulders," as Poet extraordinaire Carl Sandburg so famously described it.
Multi-million dollar apartments on ritzy Michigan Avenue, wonderful pubs and eateries on Rush Street, truly awful weather, whether in the summer or winter, or anytime of the year, for that matter, perhaps the very best way to spend a day at the Museum of Science and Industry, and, of course, one big damn place to arrive and depart at O'Hare Airport. BTW, did you know that O'Hare was named for Butch O'Hare, the WWII fighter pilot ace that exemplified everything that Chicago has since turned it grimy back upon.
Leave it to me to come up with a segues that twists your minds...
Yes, Chicago. A town that hasn't elected a Republican since Dwight David Eisenhower was Prezz. Chicago. A town once owned by the bootlegger barons and depression-era goons, and then by Mafia gangsters, is now owned and controlled by the unions and the lefty political machine they spawned and pay for. Chicago. The 3rd largest American city is, except for Detroit, the poster child for how not to run things. Chicago. A town run by ward heelers like the guy who decided Chik-fil-A couldn't open any more restaurants there because it's run by religious zealots who don't favor homosexual marriage. Deeply in debt, Chicago is the very capitol of underhanded political double-dealing. If you're not a crook, or if your daddy isn't a crook, there's simply no way you'll get a job in this broad-shouldered town. And this is the place in which Barry O'Bama chose to settle after (possibly, maybe, maybe not, who knows?) graduating from Harvard Law. How quaint...
So yes, if you've ever thought it might be fun to live in Chicago, guess what? You do! Everyone in America now lives in Chicago, or, better put, a suburb thereof. That's because the "Chicago Way" is now writ large over all of our lives. And we have proof of that with the multiple scandals now unfolding in Foggy Bottom.
It starts with "Fast and Furious," that little gun-running effort whereby we bought and paid for millions of dollars worth of "assault weapons," whatever they are, which were then provided to straw buyers, and then on to those fun-loving Mexican drug cartels so they could kill each other and various and sundry civilians. And, hopefully, a few Americans so Barry's famous admonition to the Mexican Assembly in 2009 that "90% of the guns in Mexico come from America," which is patent horseshit, could help to spur us to demand our elected representatives to erase the 2nd Amendment from the Constitution.
And then we have Benghazi. Our Fearless Leader was somewhere the night of September 11, 2013, but taking care of insuring our Ambassador and three other patriots were safe that night wasn't on his agenda. He had to get a good night's sleep so he could jet off in my airplane to Las Vegas to go raise some campaign cash the next morning. And so four of our citizens were brutally murdered while Barry snoozed. And what about Hillary? We don't know. She got a call from the Ambassador at 2:00 a.m., begging for help, but she did absolutely, positively...nothing. Remember her famous campaign ad about Barry getting the 3:00 a.m. call? Me too. President Hillary? Me thinks not.
And then we have the IRS clamping down on groups desirous of having a voice in the way their country is being run. The scum! Any group with the name "Tea Party" or "Patriot" were singled out for scrutiny, and their applications for 501(c)4 tax-free status were uniformly denied. Or simply ignored. One group out of Texas, which didn't much care for unfettered abortions in America, were queried about to whom they prayed and exactly what they said during those pesky prayers. I'm not joking.
Other questions this organization and others like them were asked included:
- Tell us what books have you read in the past three years, and give a book report on each;
- Give us copies of all your sent and received emails, letters and tweets for the past three years;
- Tell us who you associate with, have associated with, and plan to associate with over the past three years and for the next three years;
- And my personal favorite, "Will you promise not to lobby or advocate for conservative causes if your application is approved?"
Fun folks, those IRS types.
And then there's the AP, and now Fox News, DOJ scandals. Our boy Eric Holder signed off on a subpoena to tap 20 phone lines at an Associated Press office, in which 100 journalists worked, so he could find out from whom they were getting their leaks. And he did the same to Fox's James Rosen, in a chillingly brash slap in the face to the 1st Amendment's freedom of speech guarantees. And then on 5/23 he testified to Congress he knew nothing of such activities, never approved them and would never have anything to do with something so blatantly unconstitutional. The Chicago Way means being able to lie when the truth sounds better.
And let's not forget the NLRB. Barry illegally appointed three members to the National Labor Relations Board while the Senate was in recess, except the Senate wasn't in recess at the time. And we know doing so was illegal, because two separate Courts of Appeal have since said so. And this makes hundreds of decisions made since by the NLRB all illegal. Fun. Oh, and the NLRB refuses to stop its activities or send home the illegally appointed members. Ballsy, these crooks are.
And the EPA? Oh yeah, these folks are particularly nasty in their partisan approach to what should be a straightforward protections of our environment. Yeah, they protect us all right. They protect the Left from the Right, crapping on conservative causes at every turn. They have so far put more than 10,000 coal miners out of their jobs in seven Mid-Atlantic states, as an example, because they just don't like coal. Simple.
So, my friends, you don't have to move to Chicago. You already live there! And you now are experiencing what it's like to be governed by a bunch of self-dealing, hypocritical thugs. The only good part of this whole, unfunny deal is that the crime rate in Chicago, with exception of the gun murder rate, which is through the roof, even though there are no guns in Chicago because they outlawed them, has gone down since November 4, 2008. That's because all the really big crooks have moved to D.C....
Hardly a day passes without some erosion of our rights as American citizens occurring.
It could be small. It often is. But it could also be quite substantial.
In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, the Left has forged on with flank speed to pass any, any gun control law before the furor amongst the low-information voter subsides. They want to take advantage, as Barry O'bama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel so famously said, by not letting this - or any - crisis go to waste.
Example? There are many, but let me use recent proposed legislation by NY State's Congressweenie Carolyn McCarthy. She actually suggested that prospective gun owners be required to purchase liability insurance under her "Gun Owners' Risk Abatement Act," or be subject to a $10,000 fine.
You read that right. The "...right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" in NY State now means you are assumed to be a red-neck, inbred, child-molesting, monotoothed cretin who is likely to do bad things with that awful gun you, for some unearthly and unexplained reason, want to buy, so we must force you to insure yourself and the weapon before that bad thing that's sure to happen, happens.
We know that the weenies in California are trying their very hardest to tax ammunition purchases, no doubt under the theory that if they make ammo too expensive, gun owners won't be able to exercise their Constitutional rights. Connecticut legislators just passed a bill that would require you to buy an annual permission slip to buy ammo, which, of course, would come with a stiff fee to afford you that opportunity. And many of the weeniest states are trying to eliminate the crude and irresponsible act of passing guns on from father to son without an onerous, unnecessary and expensive universal background check to make sure 11-year old little Johnnie isn't a terrorist.
Let's just call this spade a spade (in this hyper-politically correct society, can we still say that?). The Lefties among us can't quite understand why the One Hundred Million of us gun owners want to own guns. They think if they just come up with creative little roadblocks to place in our way we'll give up and join their Utopian little, trust the cops and the Gummint to protect us, ranks.
They are wrong.
But, for the sake of some jocularity, I've decided to help them. I've come up with a few other plans to help them in their quest. Nothing head on, mind you, just kind of nibbling around the edges. So here goes...
The "Anything Black Except People is Bad" bill: So-called "assault weapons" are black. If you outlaw the color "black," then people won't be able to buy black weapons. Ergo, no more assault weapons. Clever? I thought you'd like it.
The "No Shooting on Days Ending in "Y" bill: This little piece of legislation would outlaw the discharge of a gun inside or outside of the city limits of any city, anywhere, on any day ending in "y." Enough said.
The "Forefinger is Verboten" bill: Pass this little bill and Americans could no longer use their forefinger to discharge a weapon. That oughta' slow 'em down!
The "You Have to Eat Everything You Kill" bill: Except for out-and-out cannibals, this should slow down gang killings in urban paradises like Chicago, Detroit and Camden, Neuwww Jersey.
The "Protecting Animals by Forbidding Aiming" bill: No more gun sights or telescopic sights would be allowed if this legislation passes. You have to kind of point the gun and hope. And if you're unsuccessful, then there's a really good chance you'll simply give up and go to Safeway for your Saran-wrapped packaged meats. Or, you'll miss your desired target and off some inner-city gangbanger and they'll prosecute the Hell out of you and put you away until Conservatives take power once again.
Oh, my friends, there are other creative ways to put stumbling blocks in the path of those who would attempt to subvert our God-given rights. Maybe you can come up with a few. Write me with those you recommend. I'll pass them along to the otherwise unemployables in Sacrarobyou in Round Two in this ongoing screed. I'm sure they'll appreciate the favor...
The last bastion of freedom for us Americans is - wait for it -
county sheriffs.
Yes, children, it's true. No matter what the weenies in Foggy Bottom decide, or the almost-as-weenie weenies in America's state capitols come up with, it's the county sheriffs in our great Country who are charged with following the constraints of the Constitution of the United States of America.
Doubt it? Think about Arizona's infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio. This guy has been a thorn in the side of redistributionist, illegal immigrant-loving, lefty legislators since Jimmy Carter was screwing up America. This is the guy that keeps arresting illegals, feeding them baloney sandwiches, putting them in pink undies and housing them in a tent city. He just tells everyone who disagrees with him to get bent, and goes about doing the job his constituents hired him to do. Right on, Joe!
Remember, the Constitution tells the Government what it cannot do, i.e., "negative rights," versus what it can. That sooooo irritates the Progressives among us. And let's look again at that pesky 2nd Amendment...
"...the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
Need the definition of those little highlighted words?
Keep: To maintain, store, safeguard, secrete, save, reserve, stock, employ, shield, shelter, own, look after, care for, house, store, etc.
Bear: To hold, support, carry, wield, display, control, show, flash, produce, shoulder, wear, holster, have, convey, bring, take, etc.
That means, Messrs. Obama, Biden, Schumer, Emmanuel, Durbin, etc., and Ms.'s Feinstein, Boxer, McCarthy, et. al., we Americans can buy guns, and openly wear them, with no more authorization than a dog-eared copy of the Constitution of the United States of America in our shirt pocket (trust me, I'm really, REALLY close to giving that a try here in the second least-free state in the Union).
Okay then, students of English, which I would assume most of our states' legislators are, should understand quite well that any movement they make, besides bowel, of course, to infringe upon those God-given rights, would be negatively received. And they are, by everyone except the CPDLW (commie pinko dumbass liberal weenies). But does that stop them?
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
They are Hell-bent to keep the Sandy Hook massacre crisis from going to waste. They want to pass any, any negative measure they can, while they can, against guns and their owners, especially their red-neck, wife-beating, tattooed, inbred owners, before the low-information voter's attention returns to DWTS (Dancing With The Stars).
And hundreds, hundreds, of county sheriffs across the fruited plain are lining up as friends and protectors of the Constitution and its Second Amendment, stating publicly that they will not enforce any law, new or otherwise, that in any way infringes on the Second Amendment. And, as a kicker, they openly threaten to jail any Federal agent who attempts to enforce anti-2nd Amendment laws within their borders. And kiddies, those statements are not sitting well with the CPDLW in statehouses across the Country.
Let's take Colorado for instance. CO legislators are warning their county sheriffs that they risk losing their annual raises if they don't fall into lockstep behind the new, unconstitutional laws. And if that doesn't work, they say they'll move to fire those that are appointed. And so far, the sheriffs are telling the legislators to pound sand.
Good for them. Keep it up. The citizens of America who love freedom are solidly behind you. And the citizens of the states with CPDLW governors and/or legislators who love the Constitution and freedom are preparing to toss these bastards out of office at the very first opportunity.
As Thomas Jefferson so famously said, "The tree of freedom needs to be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots."
I think that time may well have come...
.
I just had an epiphany.
I have been wondering non-stop as to why there's anyone left in California besides illegal immigrants, welfare recipients, gang members, drug-addled, naked San Franciscan hippies, sign twirlers, Starbucks baristas and slimy, liberal politicians. Oh, and my wife and me.
I think I've finally found the answer: Children.
Children, you say? Why, Mr. Chuckmeister? Well, my well-educated, high-information, snappily-dressed and unfailingly polite friends, here's why:
People came here to the once-Golden State looking for beautiful vistas, enticing seashores, glorious mountains, vast, shimmering arid deserts and a climate about which people go all orgasmically rhapsodic. Oh, and the chance to make something of oneself. Start a company, create something important, even become a movie star! It was all here. And that past-tense reference was completely intentional.
Now, California is a wasteland of liberal failure. Decades of looney lib policies have turned this paradise into a place where businesses go to die, or die aborning before they ever get the chance to live.
Examples? The highest corporate taxes in America. The highest personal tax rates in America. Among the highest unemployment rates in the Country. The lowest credit rating among all states in the nation. The most restrictive pollution and environmental protection regulations. The highest fiscal debt per capita. The most restrictive anti-Second Amendment laws in America, and poised to get much, much worse. Perennially rated as one of the worst governed States. Ranked by CEO's as the worst state in which to do business for the past eight years in a row. The worst collection of rules and regulations that make business formation difficult (ranked 50th in new business formation...is there anything worst than 50th? Oh wait...Obama said he'd been to all 57 states...), and continued operation almost impossible.
As an example, our citizenry, including illegals who voted en masse, just passed a new law championed by our perennial Governor, Jerry Brown, who is likely to live out his entire life without ever having had a real, private-sector job. It's called Proposition 30, which serves to redistribute wealth from those that made to those that sit on their asses and drink Pabst Blue Ribbon.
We now have one-party rule in Sacrascrewyou, completely unrestrained in any way as to the passage of new taxes. I, for one, think the very best job in California now is to be a Republican legislator: no one asks for their opinion, no one wants their opinion, and nobody gives a damn about their opinion. The rumblings among the lib weenies are even beginning to start over their very public desire to overturn at least a part of Prop. 13. Oh boy! Property taxes are going up, ladies and gents! Prepare yourselves. When that happens it won't be a straw that break the camel's back; it will be the whole damn wheat field.
We here in the land of fruits and nuts even have our own "cap and trade" legislation whereby those who, according to our tree-huggers, pollute a little (very little!) can buy the right to do that polluting from those who don't pollute at all, but could. And the pols in Sactorupyours will be pleased, thank you, to sell you that right. That will produce even more money for them to spread around by selling those rights. If you're a commie in Sacradonkeybrain and you can sell this bulls*t for a few hundred million, why wouldn't you?
Yes, kiddies we can buy credits enabling us to break a law that shouldn't exist by paying a fine...up front. Apparently the otherwise unemployables in Sacranumbnuts believe there's a 60,000 foot tall Plexiglas wall encasing California, which keeps our air in, and the air from the rest of the world out. Apparently they aren't aware that what's in Shanghai today will be here in about a week. Like I said, otherwise unemployable.
Did I mention that we're the first and so far only state to do this little kabuki theater? The Feds have even trying to enact such tomfoolery for several years, but even they are too smart, or too scared, to engage in such nonsense (even they?). It's purely and simply another form of redistribution of wealth from the makers to the takers. And the makers are getting really pissed.
There's many other ways California is blowing it. But suffice it to say that the states that surround us, like AZ and NV and UT, are damned happy we are. They are recruiting our best and brightest at flank speed, offering us a better and less expensive life just a few miles away. They actually have offices in California dedicated to recruiting our people and their businesses. Just recently, Texas Governor Rick Perry visited San Fran, the Silicon Valley and L.A. on a business-mining trip. And he'll was warmly greeted by business owners who are ripe for the poaching.
Over the past decade more than a million of (now ex-) Californians have chosen to head for greener (or, in the case of Nevada, beige-er) pastures. There's even in index rating of business exodus that ranks us at the very top in terms of the cost of one-way rentals of U-Haul trucks. They're leaving so fast U-Haul has to hire people to drive them back here - empty - from other states. Sad. And alarming.
So, if it's that bad, why havent' even more Californians elected to leave? Children. We come here, we meet Miss or Mr. Right, we get married and we start procreating. Then, one or two or three kids, or even more, result. And then you discover that the harder you work the farther behind you become. But by then it's too late. You can't leave. Your kids grow up, get married and then have kids of their own. Your kids now have your grandkids. Can you leave for tax-free Nevada or Texas and a better, cheaper life then? No, you can't.
In fact, if I were a commie pinko dumbass liberal weenie politician up in Sactyohorsesass, I would begin offering special tax preferences and direct payouts to those who start pumping out kids like a Xerox machine. These little "anchors" will insure you're stuck here, paying taxes until the day you drop dead. They'll then be able to take all your money and redistribute it to those I listed in the second paragraph above. Pretty scary, don't you think?
And infuriating...
It was reported yesterday that Florida has just surpassed 1,000,000 legal concealed carry weapons permits. That's a 30% increase over the preceding year.
That means that one in every 20 Floridians is now packing heat. And, as I like to say, if only 5% of the ducks were armed, do you think anyone would go duck hunting?
It was reported in the same AP news release that major crime in Florida is down 30% from the year earlier.
Do you think one statistic has anything to do with the other?
Well, do ya' punk?
