October 16, 2009 

 

 

Kudos to TMZ.com- This and Other Photos at:

http://www.tmz.com/2009/10/13/arnold-promises-swift-action-on-shriver/

                       

 

                        - Picture of First Lady Maria Shriver adding

                          to carbon dioxide levels, killing polar bears

                          and threatening children while breaking a

                          a signature law her burenwurst of a

                          husband signed into law. Photo can

                          be found at TMZ.com.

 

 

 

 

                        - Picture allegedly taken by Austrian Foreign

                          Press photographers of Governor Arnold

                          Schwarzenegger explaining why handgun

                          ammunition buyers have to be biometrically

                          identified just to do a little target practice.

                          (Working to confirm bona fides of photo).

 

 

To All,

     Don't you just love it when politicians recycle hare-brained schemes? Unfortunately, AB 962 should have never made it out of the sausage factory that the Capital has become:

 

Anschluss 2.0:

     Gun owners were faced today with the imagery of politicians without a clue, including a recently elected official to the City of Los Angeles and a police chief skedaddling before the crime stats change on him, trying to sell an idea that has failed numerous times before.

 

     One suspects that Governor Schwarzenegger is trying to salvage his record as governor on the backs of firearms owners by helping extend the dubious political nostrums of San Francisco to the rest of us. But not everyone is going to don lederhosen and yodel in surrender, or even run for whichever border is closest to their locale. No summer soldiers are needed here.

 

     Instead, experienced firearms activists will dig in and resist like we always have. Politics becomes even more of a contact sport of ideas when politicians forget their place, their constituents, and their promises. And given the recurring nature of the perfidy of the political classes, there are really good odds that they will lose in the end run just like they have before.

 

Link at:

 

http://gov.ca.gov/press-release/13603/

 

Tell Us Another Story:

     An October 7 article by Graham Chisholm, Executive Director of California Audubon, regarding the role hunters may play in the recovery of the California Condor omits certain interesting aspects of recent events related to species’ “recovery”.

      For example, condors are primarily dependent upon livestock carrion, even during limited hunting seasons that can provide an opportunity for the scavenging that Mr. Chisholm describes. These, plus depredation activity of feral hogs by ranchers, farmers, and government officials hardly constitutes sources of natural food that the recovery of condors would seem to mandate. If anything, near-total reliance by California condors on anthropogenic food sources (Spanish rancho cattle, washed up whale carcasses from 19^th Century whaling fleets, etc) may have been going on long before the current recovery effort was even dreamed of.

      Today the Program has fed condors at proffered food sites donated dairy cattle carcasses, domestic rabbits, domestic rats, farmed trout and even fallow deer culled despite citizen protest from Point Reyes National Seashore. If proposed regulation of water allotments, storm runoff, and air quality requirements drives cattle and dairy operations out of California, the donated cattle supplies and mortalities of cattle in the field that the program depends on for most of the year will leave the condor with insufficient biomass to make recovery goals in short order. If anything, Mr. Chisholm should be on the side of the farmers and ranchers of Fresno and Tulare in current water issues if he wants to give the condor a “fighting chance” to survive.

      Mr. Chisholm also touts an evolving AOU study from 2008. He omits that California Audubon had a hand in producing this very same study. And despite substantial internal criticism from Recovery Team Participants, he uses it to obscure the true effects of the current campaigns to ban hunting ammunition in California.

      Evidence presented to the California Fish & Game Commission in June and August of 2009 demonstrates that quite a number of members of the California Condor Recovery Team are aware and concerned as to the potential toxicity of certain non-lead ammunition substitutes required by Assemblyman Pedro Nava’s AB 821. Well-elevated copper levels in liver tissue have been noticed in at least 6 condor necropsy reports in California alone. And that does not account for any potential laceration effects from the condor’s established fondness for consuming jagged trash objects, many of which contain copper.

      Add these facts to condor mortalities related to power system collisions (11 through 2008) and a fairly downplayed effect on reproduction failure related to DDE levels found in marine carrion, and one can have serious concerns that the California condor will not recover despite the best of intentions, and the most draconian of regulations.

      It has been clear for a while that the avalanche of endangered species listing petitions and lawsuit threats is having a hand in draining DFG accounts primarily funded by hunting and fishing license revenues. Warden compensation and habitat monitoring efforts end up taking a back seat to costs incurred just answering lawsuits, and answering the inevitable defensive inquiries from a public not “permitted” to see the real raw data held hostage by environmental extremists financed by private funds, grants, and revenues extracted literally at gun point.

      This data is needed so that the public, including hunters and shooters, can determine for themselves the veracity of the various claims related to ammunition and condor mortality. It is this lack of candor that played an important part in the 4-1 rejection of a lead shot ban by the California Fish & Commission on August 6 of this year. Perhaps Mr. Chisholm could work to get those who would keep these documents secret, before we decide that his words of praise for the hunting and shooting community have real meaning.

 

Link at:

 

http://www.bakersfield.com/opinion/community/x2067559748/Humans-are-contributing-to-the-health-of-the-California-Condor-by-hunting

 

 

It Takes A Bunch of Thieves...:

     Shaun Waterman reports at the Washington Times that the Liberal-led US Senate raided "consumables" accounts from the Defense Department budget to provide earmark funds for local projects in the United States.

 

    Troops are going to be shorted funds for ammunition, training, and fuel needed to move vehicles and air support so that $ 2.6 billion can be diverted for pork.

 

    Some of the expenditures coming at the expense of troops' abilities to sustain action in a firefight include $ 20 million to "...launch..." an educational institute to dedicated to the Lately Rotund Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.

 

    There have been many examples of boondoggling in the past. But somehow the thought of taking ammunition and training away from troops currently deployed and engaging the enemy seems well beyond the pale. Given that such chicanery can cost American lives, and is apparently being ignored by the Senate Leadership, can only bring antagonism and derision to the members of that now less-than august body.

 

     For shame ladies and gentlemen, for shame.

 

Link at:

 

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/15/troop-funds-diverted-to-pet-projects/

 

 

 

Respectfully,

 

 

Anthony Canales

SFVMC-NRA

 

 

Copyright 2009 Anthony Canales,

except as noted. All rights reserved.