If you don’t read anything else on the web today.
Robert Pirsig’s ‘Cruising Blues and Their Cure’, originally printed in Esquire magazine in 1977.

From Fly Over Country:

Some people, and I mean liberal in the current defintion, think they can dream up the way it supposed to be, snap their fingers, and the whole world will be remade over in their image. Fishing allows me to not fall into that mindset. Fishing, like hunting, allows me to plug in on the ground floor of a market economy and begin to piece together the relationship between what I get from the grocery store and the forces it took to get it there. Running cattle offers the same sort of insight, only it is a lot more messy and the potential for getting hurt is exponentially bigger. But, that is for another time.

It’s not just liberals, folks. Conservatives, stupidly, believe the same thing.
It’s a whole way of governing, it doesn’t work very well, and we’re living with it. It needs to change.
Robert Pirsig (‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’), wrote a brilliant essay called ‘The Cruising Blues’; I need to find a copy right about now…

Meryl Yourish, new Virginian (go Hoos!!), shows how ‘dethphicable’ the WoT has become.

Brian Linse, another confused liberal, writes about the practical, as opposed to legal, gun show loophole here.
In effect, what is happening is that the law allows private individuals who are not in the business of selling guns, much like private individuals who are not in the business of selling cars, not to comply with a bunch of regulations designed in the case of cars to defend consumers, and in the case of guns to regulate who can buy and how.
Now, on paper, this distinction is just fine, and perfectly clear, as has been pointed out ad nauseum by, among others, The Professor. I’m a private individual, and should I decide to unload…er, sell…a gun, I can do so to a private individual and not be in violation of various laws.
Personally, unless I knew the individual I was selling to, I’d run it through a dealer and make the buyer go through the background check anyway; I’d feel pretty crummy sitting on the witness stand after my buyer did a drive-by. And my insurance would be kinda bummed as well. But that’s just me.
And, practically, I have to give one to Linse, because I’ll bet there are people who make a living selling guns at gun shows, but do not register as dealers, just as I’ll bet there are people who make a living selling cars and not registering as dealers, or running ‘permanent’ garage sales. They’re cheating, breaking the law, and in our society the fact is some people get away with it.
On the other hand, in my experience, at the gun shows at Pomona, Ventura, and Orange County, I have never interacted with a seller who wasn’t going to run me through the paperwork and waiting period, and wasn’t going to act like a dealer…whether they were or not, I can’t say because I never asked for a copy of their FFL.
And politically, I have to wave my hands in the air and go “are you kidding??” THIS is the important public safety legislation you want to waste your time and my money on?
In other words, I think that “closing the gun show loophole” legislation is symbolic, probably unnecessary, and generally useless. And I oppose it, flatly.
Why? I’ll tell you simply; because it has little to do with gun crime or violence, and everything to do with legislators who confuse passing laws with solving problems.
Look, there are probably a hundred million guns in circulation in the U.S. The genie isn’t going back into the bottle. I won’t get into what kind of regulation of firearms I could or don’t support…my mailbox isn’t that big. But I am abso.damn.lutely clear on one thing.
Most of the gun laws that are passed…and they probably are a good proxy for most laws…have little to do with solving the problem, and everything to do with the sociology of electoral and administrative politics in our day and age.
The reality is that if I want to buy an illegal weapon, I probably just have to ask my son in high-school. Give me 5 benjamins, drop me in MacArthur or Will Rodgers Park here in L.A., and I’ll come home with a gun.
But the fact that it will have no impact doesn’t matter. The fact that that there is a regulatory loophole simply infuriates those who look for intellectually solid, completely realized regulatory programs. (note, in case you haven’t figured it out: I believe that liberal goals are better accomplished in other ways)
The gun show loophole crisis is like the .50 caliber rifle crisis. It doesn’t exist.
I don’t doubt that some guns are sold at gunshows to people who couldn’t get them at a traditional dealer. Some being a very small number, near the limit of statistical measurement. I don’t doubt that someone has, or likely will, commit a crime using a .50 caliber rifle.
But in terms of impacting the overall level of crimes using guns in this county, we’re looking at something less than rounding error.
And, simply, it’s time to stop passing laws because a) they give legislators something to say they did come re-election time; and b) because they sound good on TV. You want to propose gun laws?? Make a convincing argument, not based on anecdote, but on statistically valid research, that it will have an impact. And, best of all, convince me that the laws you are passing aren’t simply turning up the heat under the frog.
When someone proposes a package of gun legislation that a) has some reasonable likelihood of measurably reducing crimes where firearms are used; and b) has some built in, irrevocable, defendable baseline guarantee of my right as a noncriminal citizen to arms, I’ll look really hard at it and probably support it.
It’s all just re-election posturing until then.

One of the bloggers who got me into this (along with The Prof) was The Sarge.
Well, it looks like he’ll be a mere hundred or so miles away, on his Beers Across America tour on June 24, which Outlook says is a Monday.
Hell, I used to go to Bakersfield for country music concerts…who’s with me on this?
Pinto? Flounder? D-Day? (was that him in ‘Sum of All Fears’? Note: Yes!! I need to go to IMDB…)

The Bleat covers the Muslim Brotherhood like a worn-out keffiya. Be careful where you drink your coffee, I say.
And someone was explaining why there wasn’t really a clash of cultures?…

Ann Salisbury, in the great political blog Two Tears In A Bucket, blasts Bill ‘Daddy’s Money’ Simon Jr.
I sense the beginning of a problem. She refers to him as ‘Simple Simon’, which, while punchy and alliterative, I don’t feel really sums up his character as well as ‘Daddy’s Money’. Of such things are blog wars born, I fear.
So I’d like to make a public proposition to Ann: consider ‘Daddy’s Money’; roll it around on the tongue a bit and see what you think. If you don’t like it, I might be persuaded to change over to ‘Simple Simon’ if you’ll logroll and start using ‘SkyBox Liberal’ for Davis.
Let me know.

This is old news, came up at lunch today, and I agreed to email the link to a friend, proving the point that anti-gun California State Senator Don Perata has a CCW.
I’m sure it’s not unreasonable for him to want one; I can imagine that he gets frightened sometimes even though he has the entirety of the Capitol Police to protect him at his workplace.
But you have to admit that the irony is delicious.

Who is this person, anyway?
From Silt via Tim Blair.

U.C. Berkeley political economist Brad DeLong has a great Issue Briefing on Estate Tax Repeal. Why does this matter? Because it is the ultimate symbol of the abject surrender of our political class to the SkyBox crowd.
They stand in front of the SkyBoxes like uniformed monkeys in front of an organ-grinder, their hands held out for whatever peanuts they can get, and they wonder why they aren’t respected by the citizenry?