novatownhall blog

He was stoic in the face of adversity this year and led the team through an amazing near-turnaround in December, but Joe Gibbs has retired from football – apparently for good this time.

The stated reason is to spend more time with his family, although he does not really need a reason: The NFL is pretty tough sledding these days, a fairly unpredictable venue in which to try and achieve success no matter how much time you sink into it, and he has given enough of his life to the sport. Since his first run with the Redskins ended, his racing team has been about a million times more competitive than he was able to get the ‘Skins during the second tour.

As my wife noted, now it will be a little bit easier easy to simply hate the Redskins again. Before, you had to add that qualifier “but I DO like Joe Gibbs.”

Daytona speed week is only about a month away. I bet we will be seeing a good amount of Coach Joe at the track.

Yep.

I’m not an isolationist. I’m not afraid to use the military where it’s needed. But to sit in these extended f—ing wars, draining the economy – and if we stay or we leave, the same g–d— thing happens: nothing! So let’s leave.

Surveying the tangled mess that is the 2008 presidential campaign – well, on the Republican side, anyway, since it appears Barack Obama is the current candidate of destiny – I think it is worthwhile to begin contemplating what the Lou Dobbs presidency would mean for America. According to his latest book, Lou wants to see a reinvigoration of the “populist” movement in American politics.

In the book, Dobbs traces the key themes of American populism, and surveys some of the populist figures who have given the movement a bad name, including William Jennings Bryan and Father Coughlin. On the other hand, he quotes heavily from Teddy Roosevelt.

For starters, Dobbs is dead-set on ending illegal immigration. The solution to that problem seems pretty simple: enforce the law.

On the matter of trade, he has made it clear he sees NAFTA as a huge mistake. But how exactly would we fix that mistake? I’m only halfway through the book so I haven’t gotten to that part yet. It would be interesting subject matter for the summer presidential debates, to be sure.

Listening to the Laura Ingraham show on the way into work: The interviewee – who I did not hear long enough to get an ID on – said she might actually drop out of the race after New Hampshire.

UPDATE: Oh, I guess this Drudge headline might have had something to do with that news, huh?

Hey, I’m a busy, busy man, far too busy to read the news …

And now she’s reportedly ducking media interviews. What this says to me is Obama is the Democratic candidate.

Good to know.

The men of Digital Camel are following this closely.

I respect their insight. Hillary is toast.

The upcoming contest will feature at least a triangle, and possibly a quadrangle. Obama will be one leg of it.

When you read something in the paper with which you have some familiarity, and you see what is blatantly false, you expect the source to be someone for who the information is not necessarily part of their main body of knowledge. One thing you would not expect is a statement about “assault weapons” not to be confused with machine guns (fully automatic weapons) from a police officer. Machine guns are not legal to manufacture or import. The only people that can legally buy or transfer them are the military and people that have a very tightly controlled license (collectors) from the federal government, and they may only have those that were registered prior to May 1986 (FOPA). A link to the report:

http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/14941809/detail.html

The totally inaccurate statement in reference to “assault weapons” is here:

“You just pull a trigger and 20 or 30 rounds come in a second and in those 20 rounds you’re sure to hit your intended target and some innocent bystanders, totally unlike a firearm that is just one bullet every time you pull the trigger,” Miami Police spokesman Willie Moreno said.

Misinformation coming from a police spokesperson about something they should know (and I have to believe do know … it is incredulous that a police officer would not know that fully automatic weapons, machine guns, are not the cause of increases in murders). They know better. Even though the average police officer might not know the rate of fire for a fully automatic weapon (even at 600 rounds per minute, that only is 10 per second) and even the military no longer issues fully automatic M16s. Even the MAC-10 only has a 1000 rounds per minute, or 16.7 rounds per second, not even at the lower end of the range of “20 – 30 round a second” — and again, they are neither manufactured or imported, they cannot be bought new or even replaced if they break.

There is no excuse for this. I cannot believe it is just a mistake. The best I can hope is the person making the report took the statement completely out of context. The next best thing to hope is that the police spokesperson is grossly incompetent. The alternative of the Miami police department purposely lying about what they know to be true would put in doubt the concept that any police officer anywhere could be trusted to tell the truth — even in court.

Those willing to give up liberty to obtain security deserve neither and will lose both. (B.F.)