For any young boy, nothing could ever replace the breathless adrenaline rush of hunting down one of your mates in a wooded area and finishing him off with a well-aimed shot to the torso before he gets to you first. Realistic toy guns are, of course, pretty much outre in this post-hippy age, but there was a glorious time in the not-so-distant past when toy makers knew exactly what boys actually like and were allowed to sell it to them big-time.
Hoo-ah! On the ground, running dog! I will not arrange your flowers!
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.
Here are “the best” signs from the Stewart/Colbert Rally to Restore Sanity, where wannabe hipsters demonstrated their belief that America’s trillion dollar debt problem can be avoided if Americans just act smarmy and glib like Jon Stewart.
I so wanted a Johnny Seven in 1964 , I could have helped Sgt.Saunders
I dont know what boys did before guns but I think the hunting ape is deeply ingrained in us. I pointed out some magpies to my 2 year old grandson , he said unprompted.`get a gun, kill them“
its not neaderthal , its deeper than that.
Back in the day, nobody I knew could afford those advertised cannons, uniforms, and warfare arms.
We just played “army” with randomly affiliated neighborhood squads armed with Daisy lever actions.
Hell yeah BB’s sting. We all knew when you were “dead”.
The only Parental Rule: Don’t shoot the song birds.
The Washington Post’s Kathleen Parker on “Obama’s missing sense of humour“:
“Stewart had just asked Obama how he could square his campaign mantra of ‘change’ with hiring economic advisers such as Larry Summers, who looks the same as those who had served in previous administrations. In response, Obama said that Summers had done a ‘heck of a job.’ Whereupon, Stewart said, ‘You don’t want to use that phrase, dude.’
“Everyone got the joke. George W. Bush used the same words to commend Michael ‘Brownie’ Brown after his disastrous performance as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency following Hurricane Katrina. Translation: You’re fired.
“Everyone got the joke, that is, except for Obama. He got it eventually, after seeing the ‘oops’ expression on Stewart’s face, but he couldn’t take the joke. There’s a world of difference.
“Instead of laughing at himself, he turned to the audience – a beat too late – and said, ‘Pun intended.’
No, it wasn’t. Anyone watching could see that. He slipped. Obama is a nice guy; he was trying to say something nice about Summers, and “heck of a job” just tumbled out. No big deal. We get it. Stuff happens. But Obama couldn’t roll with the gut punch.
“In that, among other moments, Obama revealed his fatal flaw. He has no sense of humor. He might be able to laugh at a joke. He can even tell one, as he demonstrated at the last White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Whoever wrote that script should send his rsum to Comedy Central. Oh, wait, some of the writers do work at Comedy Central.
“No, what Obama revealed was that he has no sense of humor about himself. This is utterly huge.”
I had my daisy , we used to outfit ourselves with the stuff at the army surplus, crown surplus preferred. I had a gas mask,with hose and filter, helmet, desert cap(for playing `rat patrol`)rucks, far to big camo shirt.
I buy camo on ebay now, for helping with the Army Cadet corps. now I have desert storm, woodlands and digital
Just returned from the Mark Steyn appearance in London Ont.
A rollicking good time! Steyn carved new a##holes for a few well deserved people and institutions and even managed to belt out a few show tunes.
I’m sure Shaidle will have the full goods on her blog come tomorrow.
Good on ya atric!
It will be interesting to read how how the London Free Press covered Steyn in London.
This is the true madness we have to deal with. Not real insanity, but a cult who makes young killers by following a Pedophile mass murder claiming to be a prophet. A child rapist. With a so called god who has no mercy, but loves the blood of his enemies. Hence Allah the merciless. Moloch is more like it.
By way of Five feet of Fury:
‘Smiling’ woman ‘stabbed MP twice in stomach after confronting him about Iraq war’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1325614/MP-stabbed-twice-Iraq-war-woman.html
“No, what Obama revealed was that he has no sense of humor about himself. This is utterly huge.”
EBD
We need to maybe confirm with ET but I think this might be a symptom of narcissism.
——————————————
About 1/2 hour ago I met Mark Steyn at a London, ON gathering…The place was fairly full (About 1000 according to local media), some students were present but the majority were 40 to 75. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. A few young people left that seemed to be of Muslim faith. They walked out when Steyn was talking about Sharia law, genital mutilation etc…
I met Kathy Shaidle (Five Feet of Fury)…Very nice, passionate gal. I also met the guys from Stricklyright.com who organized the event.
I stood in line to get my “America Alone” copy signed, told Mark I read and sometime post on SDA.
The London Free Press was standing a few feet away an Mark said:
“Kate is very smart, she’s has a way of presenting things in an interesting and witty fashion, her blog is one of Canada’s best…(Then he exclaimed, looking towards the London Free Press troupe)…Much better than anything the Free Press would print!”
The London Free Press wrote stuff about Mark he did not appreciate and we heard all about it at the beginning, just after he introduced “The Liberal Media” who were all installed in one corner.
All in all a great evening.
The real question EBD is whether Oblamebush missed the joke because he lacks a sense of humor or whether he missed the joke because he is about as intellectually sharp as a sack of soggy oatmeal.
atric
Lets hope someone taped it.
Mark Steyn put on a great show tonight in London, Ontario, covering a variety of subjects, cracking jokes, singing a few songs, with special appearances by Imam Andrew al-Lawton and some dominatrix left over from the the London Convention Centre’s Sexapalooza.
I spotted Salim Mansur, Five Feet of Fabulosity, and the Blazing Kitty in the audience. Steyn asked for Mohamedan legal titan Faisal Joseph to stand up and make his presence known, but if he was there he stayed seated.
I got one of those Tiger Joe tanks for christmas 1964/65, I lived accross from the delta in Hamilton ont. On the edge of gage park.
I loved that tank, it survived well into that summer, it went on many a battle into that park, right up until my nephew tried to ride on it.!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePDpdhOPIsM&feature=related
I also had a secret agent man radio that converted into a sniper rifle.
I don’t think Obama’s nearly as bright as advertised, Joe, but I don’t think he’s a dummy, exactly. BTW, I don’t think Kathleen Parker was saying Obama has no sense of humour because he missed the “joke”, but rather because he was unable to laugh at himself after missing it. Unlike GWB, the guy has little or no humility.
Anecdotal evidence, fwiw:
“I’ll give you an example of why President Obama is not right for America. He sure as hell has not been right for the party. Not long ago, the president took a meeting. He’s late, which apparently is becoming more and more common with him. The meeting was almost canceled. In strolls the president, joking with an aide. He plops down on a sofa, leans over and claps another guy on the back asking how he’s been. Apologizes for being late, says he was ‘held up’. He laughs some more. The meeting begins. After just ten minutes, during which time the president appears to almost totally withdraw into himself, an aide walks in and whispers something to the president, who then nods and quickly stands up, shakes a few hands and tells another aide to update him later on the rest of the meeting. As the president is walking out he is laughing at something yet again. He asked no questions of those at the meeting – not one. He left after just ten minutes, coming in laughing and leaving laughing. His behavior during that brief time he was there was described as ‘borderline manic’.”
(h/t ghostofaflea)
Just a lovely tribute to the Tea Party on the National (cbc) from Kneel McDonald tonite.Totally non-partisan…cough cough.
One great comment re the O’Donnell ‘I am not a witch’ vid..the man being interviewed said he didn’t see anything wrong with that..and,’has Hilary Clinton ever cleared that up?’
My parents would never buy me a BB gun so I perfected making and using bows and arrows. When when I was strong enough to break any of the one piece willow bows I made I mastered the atlatl. If I could have just figured out how to shape and mount a flint tip like the native hunters whose arrow heads I found on Grandpa’s farm I could have been a stone age hunter!
“Johnny is not a signatory of the Geneva Convention.”
I’ve been reading through an old archive of DC Comics where the archivists preserved all the pages, including the ads. It’s certainly a bit of an anachronistic shock to see ads for BB guns in a publication aimed at 8-10 year olds.
I cherish my childhood memories of my BB gun – I remember the awesome sound of the spring, the feel of the BBs, and the look of them as they loaded up.
Sadly, my kids only want the Hasbro suicide vest, and the Norelco make your own IED kit.
Mojo (12:24): That’s funny.
Excerpt from Robert Redeker’s opinion piece (translated from the French) “The Incompatibility of Islam and the West”, published in Le Figaro:
“The Qur’an is from the outset a political book. Before offering the reader biography (in the form of the life and achievements of Muhammad), hagiography (the life told in the manner of a legend), and spirituality, the Koran presents itself as a political book. On the one hand, the Prophet’s life is indeed that of a party boss, a clan chieftain, a military leader who did not hesitate to shed blood and to engage in intrigues that unfold in the heat of battle and political conflict. On the other hand, the Koran is a collection of political laws describing precisely how society should be organized and governed. Hence this book, and the religion it established, Islam, is a matrix that has given rise to societies made in its own image. These are societies in which theology and politics have been intimately fused together, forming a jumble that makes it impossible to distinguish between that which is essentially political and that which is essentially religious.”
The whole thing here.
I watched the process with my step-grandson. For
several years any stick was either a sword or
a machine gun or a ray gun.
About 20 years ago in Ottawa International Airport
I watched as an RCMP officer patiently but firmly
told a mother than she was NOT going to take her
little son’s surprisingly large collection of
toy guns on the aircraft. They were made as realistic
as possible. These days toy guns are no closer to
reality in appearance than the step-grandson’s stick.
Walking down Memory Lane … one summer, 9 or 10 yrs old, I had the coolest water pistol, an awesome Luger replica. For a water pistol, it had a very good range, 12-15 feet. A prized possession. 🙂
I do recall the “Tommy” gun. It could make short work of a roll of 50 caps in no time flat.
Nothing however could be as exhilirating as a Daisy Red Ryder BB gun with the wooden stock, and the odour of “3 in 1” oil. I can still feel the adrenilin flowing when the BB would hit a sparrow in the chest, followed by a loud “thuck” and the bird would drop to the gravelled surace beneath the phone line. No I was NOT the one who shot at the insulators.
Actually, my Dad was a farmer and a lineman for some time in the 60’s. A BB gun rarely broke an insulator. Even a .177 air rifle couldn’t break the thick greenish glass. A .22 with “Super X” in the chamber, now that was a different story.
Here are some glorious comments against the Anchorage TV Station that was clearly actively working to hurt Joe Miller’s chances.
Fair minded people are FED UP with these unprofessional journolists [sic] actively trying to shape the news.
Aha, Sherriff Smith! So you were one of those songbird shooters we used to chase down and pummel…
Excerpt from Shelby Steele’s A Referendum on the Redeemer, in the WSJ:
“‘Hope and Change’ positioned Mr. Obama as a conduit between an old America worn down by its evil inclinations and a new America redeemed of those inclinations. There was no vision of the future in ‘Hope and Change.’ It is an expression of bad faith in America, but its great ingenuity was to turn that bad faith into political motivation, into votes.
“But there is a limit to bad faith as power, and Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party may have now reached that limit. The great weakness of bad faith is that it disallows American exceptionalism as a rationale for power. It puts Mr. Obama and the Democrats in the position of forever redeeming a fallen nation, rather than leading a great nation. They bet on America’s characterological evil and not on her sense of fairness, generosity or ingenuity.
“When bad faith is your framework (Michelle Obama never being proud of her country until it supported her husband), then you become more a national scold than a real leader. You lead out of a feeling that your opposition is really only the latest incarnation of that old characterological evil that you always knew was there….”
Verily.
The whole thing – highly recommended – here.
My grandson is reading this, and he tells me I mispelled “exhilarating,” and “adrenaline. He also says that a “gravelled” road is a “gravel road.” And I say that that “texting” should be a “text message.” And if he wants a Red Ryder for Xmas, he’d better learn to respect poor eyesight and bad memory!
I recall, years back,a gal who was determined to nurture her son in non-violence, no toy guns/war toys, then finally relented when the kid improvised his own from sticks, rocks, string….a pre-schooler…yep it’s in the DNA.
In my distant youth I swiftly abandoned bows and arrows because although fashioning a practical bow was easy enough my attempts at fabricating arrows was pathetic and purchasing store bought was not an option.
Out of curiosity, I made a crude sling and discovered I had a knack for that. A neighbout a vet provided old parachute riser and I then became truly dangerous. I recall the serious look on dad’s face when with one stone I dispatched a running groundhog at….maybe 75-80 yds…..Dad paced it off.
Clarification—sling—as in David/Goliath…not one of those gay forked stick/catapult thingy’s that hurl AA buck at best.
A sling starts bigger and can pitch 1/2 a brick downrange…..less range and accuracy but impressive as it warbles away…
These days a potato gun supercharged with propane and lox(not to be tried at home) is much more fun. I recommend electric ignition and LONG wires. A great way to entertain teenagers…….
Sherriff Smith (1:29):
“…and if he wants a Red Ryder for Xmas, he’d better learn to respect poor eyesight and a bad memory.”
Good line. That’s great.
Excerpt from a post by a disappointed, formerly Obama-supporting soccer mom who explains why she won’t be voting tomorrow:
“I expected (Obama)…to outline powerful and bold positions on the economic stimulus (yes, bolder and more expansive), health reform (yes the public option) and in all those other areas where he is on the record as promising change.”
That’s right, she wanted the guy who has piled up more debt than all previous presidents in history combined to spend even more, and she wanted him to violate other Americans’ strongly held views by ramming through an unconstitutional health care act.
She also – apparently – wanted Obama to appoint progressives to elected positions:
“….I want more progressives – more progressive women, blacks, Latinos, gays, and other unrepresented groups – in Congress and in power.”
Therein lies the problem with having a great salesman promising to heal the earth and all it’s peoples by sprinkling his magic faerie dust: people expect the great promiser to actually do it. If a magician walks onstage and doesn’t pull off the trick, it’s an abject *failure*, ten times out of ten.
And then there’s stopping the rise of the oceans…
A jack knife, some branches from the bush and some carving served a budding Sarge King of the North West Mounted Police or Lone Ranger quite well in the late 40s and early 50s.
Strange story: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1325614/MP-stabbed-twice-Iraq-war-woman.html
Ebd:
Read the full interview from the link you provided on obamas conduct in a meeting. Very, very sobering and worrying stuff. I hope ET gets a chance to read it… Do you think it’s all true?
(malkin and Kurtz et al have done a lot of research that would concur with what this guy is saying, its just that it seems so
Damn shocking – much as I suspect the Nixon tape transcripts were when they were first made public. )
In Alberta it was an old “Right of Passage” . When your dad gave you your first .22.
Used to get 25 cents for every Gopher tail
I could get by farmers near the city limits.
I was 12 . No bubble wrapped kids in those days.
@EBD
The funny thing is that is EXACTLY how people describe his leadership of the Harvard Law Review.
Nothing has changed.
That would be perfect fodder for a juxtaposition if we could bring the two quotes together.
Why the Democrats are having GOTV problems this election
http://tinyurl.com/32ub2xl
Funny Graph
Is Obama A Keynesian? Rally For Sanity, 10/30/10
http://tinyurl.com/2dktqxb
sasquatch – how does one make an effective throw with a sling?
I suck at horseshoes – which is maybe why I couldn’t get the whole sling thing. The delivery is just beyond me.
I had a Johnny Seven OMA when I was a kid in the ’60’s at the cottage. Used to run around the bush and hid in the tall grass. The bullets and some grenades are long gone but the hours of fun were memorable.My oldest son is now into the paint-ball thing. Just as much a rush I guess. Say- does the narrator in these comercials [especially the J-seven OMA] sound like the narrator from Christmas Storey? I think Ralphie wanted the ” Red Ryder Carbine-Action 200-Shot Range Model Air Rifle (with a compass in the stock}”.
Vote Liberal Garneau?
Send Liberal O’Iggy back to Harvard, Mass.
The guts, the guts.
Whose guts? Jeancula*’s guts:
“Canada’s Access to Medicine Regime — originally called the Jean Chretien Pledge to Africa Act”.
“Effort to boost exports of medicine to developing countries is now ‘gutted,’ critic says, after Liberal MP votes with Conservatives”
…-
“Watering-down of humanitarian bill ‘shameful’
Vancouver Sun – Amy Minsky – 2 hours ago
In a move critics are calling “shameful” and “disrespectful,” Liberal MP Marc Garneau voted with Conservatives Monday, effectively gutting a bill intended to help Canada send desperately needed …
Amendments water down access-to-medicine bill Globe and Mail
Garneau guts AIDS bill at Commons committee Xtra.ca”
(googlenews)
…-
The guts:
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Watering+down+humanitarian+bill+shameful/3762782/story.html
*Jeancula:
http://archives.vigile.net/05-4/13-cornichon-jeancula.jpg
Vote Liberal Garneau?
Send Liberal O’Iggy back to Harvard, Mass.
The guts, the guts.
Whose guts? Jeancula*’s guts:
“Canada’s Access to Medicine Regime — originally called the Jean Chretien Pledge to Africa Act”.
“Effort to boost exports of medicine to developing countries is now ‘gutted,’ critic says, after Liberal MP votes with Conservatives”
…-
“Watering-down of humanitarian bill ‘shameful’
Vancouver Sun – Amy Minsky – 2 hours ago
In a move critics are calling “shameful” and “disrespectful,” Liberal MP Marc Garneau voted with Conservatives Monday, effectively gutting a bill intended to help Canada send desperately needed …
Amendments water down access-to-medicine bill Globe and Mail
Garneau guts AIDS bill at Commons committee Xtra.ca”
(googlenews)
…-
The guts:
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Watering+down+humanitarian+bill+shameful/3762782/story.html
*Jeancula:
http://archives.vigile.net/05-4/13-cornichon-jeancula.jpg
What great commercials. Most of them were slightly before my time, the bigger kids played with toys like that. They were long gone by the time I hit six or seven.
It is no wonder our boys today are turning out to be effeminate wastrels and homosexuals. What kind of boy actually WANTS to play with care-bears or smurfs? The poor buggers are being raised to be pansies and pussies and sissies.
NDP’s Pat Martin wants the police to go after Sgro and Cannis,two liberal mp’s who have reportedly paid back $140,000 in dubious expense claims.
Of course,I agree. Why there hasn’t been much in the media about their scam is because they are LIBERAL mps. Compare the coverage of this swindle to Jaffer,who got $0 from the gov’t.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1209915.html
Look at the soldier on the Gung Ho package he has a cigarette hanging from his mouth.
I recall getting lost in the moment, totally. Each of us armed with their respective Dad’s B’B gun. He on his side of the street, me on mine… and I got him first, got him good, right between the eye’s.
I remember having to roll it out of the deep impression between his eyes. Hours later when his Dad got home, and he saw the depression, still most prominent… he got it again, worse. He he, ah!, the good’ole daze~
“The plane! The plane!”
“Welcome to Fantasy Island. I am Mr. Roarke, your host.”
Fred Barnes, Five (Improbable) Election Outcomes to Make Democrats Happy
Democrats face a rough election day. There’s almost no chance they’ll keep control of the House. And they could lose the Senate as well, not to mention governors’ seats. My prediction is Republican pickups of 60 House, 10 Senate, and eight governor’s seats.
But there are a few things that could make Democrats happy today. Not extremely happy, but at least happy to have something positive, from their viewpoint, to talk about….
Some amusing election day quotes (laments?):
“”They just had so much faith in the president’s ability to navigate all this and that no matter what the right threw at him, the president would have this force field of trust that would protect him,” a House strategist said.”
“We ignored what voters were actually feeling and thinking,” this strategist said.”
“Mr. Greenberg then told a forum hosted by the liberal blog Fire Dog Lake he was “really puzzled over Democratic leaders stuck in a message that demonstrably doesn’t work.””
I guess today’s results will reflect the inevitable outcome of an election strategy hinging on an invisible force fields. I also consider it an excellent example of the “Restore Sanity” slogan championed by the left vs. their actual thought process and their tenuous grip on reality (summed up as magical thinking and wish-casting (trademark of AOSHQ).
The filter caught the post the first time so you’ll have to go to the WSJ and look up “Pressure Builds on Obama to Shake Up Inner Circle ”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704865104575588793684019552.html?mod=wsj_share_twitter
EBD- yes, that outline of Obama’s behaviour in a meeting is ‘spot on’. And yes, that’s apparently how he behaved as ‘editor’ of the Harvard Law Review.
I’m saying that he has no capacity to ‘think’ in the traditional sense of analyzing a THEORY, examining it as a model, applying that model to reality, examining the comparison between model and reality..etc. That’s an intellectual act. Obama is not an intellectual.
I think we’ve seen this in his inability to comprehend what is going on in the world, with Islamic fascism, with the economy, and with American reaction to him.
He is a socialist, not because he has intellectually examined its theories and history and considered the results of making such a model operational. He is a socialist because his psychological needs, which are alone causal of his actions, require that he be politically in a situation where he controls all others.
Again, Obama’s psychological needs are what make him act. These needs are those of a pathological narcissist. He interacts with people only to control them.
To achieve this control and to bond people within his ‘bubble of authority’, he must misinform; he’s a pathological liar. He must emotionally manipulate others, preventing them from using reason – hence his ‘hope and fear’ tactics. And if these others deviate or try to, he’ll try to weaken them by accusing them of bias: ignorance, fear, political bias, religious, ethnic, racial.
There is no way he could come to that meeting and engage in its content. He cannot intellectually think about an issue! His only interaction has to be one of control over people – and he achieved this very well.
He essentially told the people there that they and their work were ‘beneath his time and interest’. He was late – that sets him up as authority and them as dependent on him. He was disinterested – I’m saying because he can’t handle a situation where the ISSUE is what’s important..rather than Obama. And, he cannot analyze of think! And he left, leaving it to an aide (a serf) to tell him about it. Beautifully done; he asserted his power and control over them and told them they and their work was of little value to him.
The laughing? That trivializes them and their work. That separates his world from their world. His world is one of laughter; their world doesn’t get the joke.
If Obama had been left in local politics, as community organizer, his pathology and its effects would have been local. Put someone as psychologically deranged as him into a position of power and in contact with many people and with many issues requiring thought – and his need to control – can’t be fully met.
So, he will become more stressed, angry, defiant. To deal with this, he will also withdraw from situations and people more and more. He will ‘drop in’ as president, spend more time in the ‘feeding situation’ (tours, campaigns, prepared public speeches). He’ll become more authoritative.
How will he react when more and more of the public withdraws from him? He can’t handle this.
Obama lives in a virtual not the real world. This virtual world is one that he alone authors; he controls all interactions in it. Put him in a situation where reality intrudes into this virtual bubble..and what will happen? Some think he’ll crack; I think he’ll retreat into authoritarianism, anger and, more virtuality. He’ll become ‘intellectually’ unreachable. More laughter.
The number one gift my boys want: Vulcan’s battery-powered full-auto tripod-capable general purpose machine nerf gun. This to compliment the array of nerf pistols, plastic and rubber swords and plastic grenades. Oh, and more camo gear. They would wear camo every day if we would let them.
Of course, Dad can’t wait to get the gp machine gun in the house either. 🙂
Ottawa, Ontario to get back small portion of GM aid
_http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/ottawa-ontario-to-get-back-small-portion-of-gm-aid/article1781236/