U.S. Government Agencies Stockpiling Ammo

The website businessinsider.com posted the following report today.

"First the DHS needed 450 million rounds of ammunition, then the NOAA requested 46,000 rounds, now we've discovered an online request at FBO.Gov calling for 174,000 rounds of ammunition for the Social Security Administration.

The request actually calls for 174K .357 hollow points that arguably have as much stopping power as any bullet out there, and hollow points do as much damage to soft tissue as possible on top of that.
R.K. Campbel at Gun Blast mentions his experience with .357 rounds:

I observed the effect of the .357 Magnum 125 grain JHP once over the top of my own sights. The effect was gruesome. A solid hit that produced a severe blood flow AND dramatic effect from the rear, including lung tissue thrown perhaps three feet.

The 125 grain and JHP (jacketed rounds) are exactly the ones requested by the SSA and their offices of Inspector General and Investigation.
The FBO has a link that lists all locations slated to receive the batches of bullets. Offices like Greensboro, NC are getting a mere 1,000 rounds while offices like Iselin, NJ are getting 10 times that number.
Alex Jones' InfoWars is quick to point out that this acquisition jibes with a DHS operation in January where the agency swarmed a Leesburg, FL social security office and posted armed guards outside the doors."

Is our government expecting trouble? Is anybody else uncomfortable with the idea of non-law enforcement agencies stockpiling ammunition? It doesn't give me a "warm and fuzzy" feeling.
A few months ago the Washington Post reported that heavily armed special agents of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Inspector General raided a home in Stockton, CA. While it wasn't a S.W.A.T team as originally reported, the concept of "heavily armed Education Department employees" still leaves a bit unnerved. I think I would have preferred that they turn cases like this over to the FBI.

I guess the next time someone opposed to the 2nd Amendment asks, "Why would an ordinary American citizen need an AK-47?" Maybe one answer might be "Because apparently NOAA and the Social Security Administration have .357 magnums with hollow point ammunition!"  

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-does-the-social-security-administration-need-174000-rounds-of-ammunition-2012-8#ixzz23fcypIYM

Romney Announces Paul Ryan as VP Choice: Democrats Latest New Catch Phrase

THIS IS A CATCH PHRASE/BUZZWORD/SLOGAN ALERT!

Yesterday Mitt Romney announced that he has chosen Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) as his running mate. Over the next several weeks or so there will be a great deal of analysis from both ends of the political spectrum as to the wisdom of this choice. Personally, I think it was a good pick because Ryan is an expert on the federal budget and he will be invaluable to Romney in helping to articulate the difference between the Democrat "Tax the Rich" and "Continue to Spend" approach that has clearly failed and a Republican economic growth agenda. There is a danger of course in choosing Ryan because his budget plan gives the Democrats specific items to attack and snipe at. However, I would argue that having a plan is preferable to President Obama and the liberals' non-plan. Romney will need to stick to the basic tenants of Ryan's budget proposal while demonstrating a willingness to be flexible on the individual parts. Now for the new catch phrase part.

Like Madison Avenue advertising executives trying to find the next CLIO award winning ad slogan, I think I have detected the next Democrat catch phrase attempt - "the Deserving Wealthy." I heard it used in rapid succession by two different panel guests on "This Week with George Stephanopolis." Apparently, the Left's teleconference/phone tree of political hacks, "journalists" and spinmeisters was busy last night or early this morning coordinating the "message" which is just a new twist on the old liberal charge that Republicans are only for the rich. So watch over the next several day as the mainstream media, the Debbie Wasserman Schultz's of the world, and the Obama Administration try to insert "deserving wealthy" everywhere from newspaper stories, TV news casts and prime time shows, commercials, Saturday morning kids cartoons, sports coverage, etc. It should be a hoot but it won't turn around the economy now will it?

In Romney Tax Returns, Democrats Find Their "Birther" Issue ...With One Major Difference

       In their never ending quest to distract the voters from the Obama Administration's dismal performance on the economy, the Democrats have been throwing everything they can at the wall to see if something will stick. The usual suspects - Harry Reid, Nancy Peloci, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Jay Carney, David Axelrod, et al - have been trotted out, hit the Sunday Morning Talk Show circuit and in well rehearsed lines, floated one trial balloon after another to try to find that "Gotcha Issue." A few have gained a bit of traction for a time but ultimately all have failed to deliver. Some topics such as Seamus the Dog and overseas investments outright backfired because the Democrat accusers didn't have enough common sense to do the due diligence to check their own vulnerability on these issues: President Obama had actually eaten dog and most of the accusers had some amount of overseas investments in their portfolios.
       Over the last several weeks, the Democrat mantra has been "Governor Romney release your tax returns." and "If you have nothing to hide, why not just release your tax returns?" In their desperation, they have even gone so far as to accuse Mr. Romney of committing a felony and also not paying any taxes for the last ten years. Absolutely no evidence of course but when Harry Reid tells us "The word is out." that should be enough for us, right? It is for his "associates" back in Vegas. Hearing all this, it began to sound vaguely familiar to me. "Where had I heard this before?" It wasn't until I saw part of an interview with that titan of intellect, Robert Gibbs, that it occurred to me. This sounds like the same argument the "birthers" were making! Gibbs said he couldn't remember anyone refusing to do something so simple and that this is easy enough to settle: just release the tax returns. Once I regained my composure after witnessing Gibbs' apparent acute attack of amnesia, I thought to myself, I bet the Democrats are seeing an equivalence between the two issues. "You demanded to see Barack Obama's birth certificate and we are demanding to see Mitt Romney's tax returns. It's the same thing." Of course, for anyone who has read and understands the Constitution, the difference couldn't be more obvious.

The Latest Gun Tragedy Brings Same Tired Liberal Response

Well we have had another gun massacre and the Left's response was as predictable as the tides. First, of course without any information, the Left tried to blame the shooting in Aurora, Colorado on the most recent statements by Rush Limbaugh. Then in a brilliant piece of investigative journalism, ABC's Brian Ross did a Google search on the apparent shooter's name, James Holmes, found one of the forty plus names that came up was a Tea Party member and logically assumed that this was the same James Holmes. ABC has subsequently had to apologize. Wasn't Jared Loughner - the shooter in the Gabby Giffords shooting - also originally misidentified by the media as a Right-wing Tea Party guy? Wow! Oops! Turned out in that case the guy was actually a manifesto-writing, Left-winger, kook. A mistake anyone could make, right? The next step of course will be the demands for more gun control laws. The liberal theory is that adding more laws to the thousands of existing laws is bound to do the trick because more gun laws means fewer guns in the general population which means fewer horrific crimes like this. But why do these massacres always seem to occur where there aren't supposed to be any guns anyway - a school, a college campus, a summer camp for teenagers in Norway (a country with some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the world), a place of business, and now a midnight showing at a movie theatre? Hmmm? I wonder why something like this has never happened at a 24 hour pistol range? What if an armed off-duty policeman or several trained, licensed and armed citizens had been present at the theatre? Could the carnage have been stopped? I guess we will never know.

Do Liberals Have Security Tourette Syndrome?

Tourette syndrome (TS) is a neurological disorder characterized by repetitive, stereotyped, involuntary movements and vocalizations called tics. The disorder is named for Dr. Georges Gilles de la Tourette, the pioneering French neurologist who in 1885 first described the condition in an 86-year-old French noblewoman. ...Tics are classified as either simple or complex. ...Perhaps the most dramatic and disabling tics include motor movements that result in self-harm such as punching oneself in the face or vocal tics including coprolalia (uttering socially inappropriate words such as swearing). - National Institutes of Health

When it comes to operational security, I can't help but wonder if  liberals have a form of Tourette Syndrome. I am reminded again of the damage liberal Democrats have done by today's newspaper reports that the Pakistani doctor who help the US locate Osama bin Laden was sentenced to 33 years in prison for helping the CIA. You may remember that it was the Obama administration's public "end zone dance and locker room interviews" that helped identify Dr. Shakil Afridi. Liberals need to learn to keep information regarding methods and sources to themselves. If you recall, shortly after the Bin Laden raid, 25 members of SEAL Team Six were killed when their helo was shot down during a similar mission. The bad guys DO learn from our "loose lips." 

Other liberal security "give aways" were the NSA's warrantless intercepts of phone calls to known terrorist, our ability to track terrorist cellphone calls, and revealing that if Israel is going to attack Iranian nuclear sites, it would have to happen in the next couple of months. All of these incidents resulted in grave damage to our ability to combat terrorism.

Then there was the recent revelation by a high-level US intelligence official (read intel agency or Obama administration official) of the double agent that penetrated al Qaeda and helped thwart the latest underwear bombing attempt. Forgetting for a moment that the credit grab by the US was entirely un-deserved, it completely compromised the agent, placed his family in danger, revealed critical information about our counter-terrorism capabilities and made the possibility of future cooperation by foreign agents and governments unlikely. Who would trust us?  

So liberals need to seek professional help for their Tourettes. In the meantime, I wish their TS would manifest itself in "self-harm such as punching oneself in the face..." rather than vocalizing national secrets that harm our security.

Obama's John Kerry Moment and Then Some

Amidst all the liberal media's fawning over Barack Obama's "historic" announcement that he is now in favor of same-sex marriage, I couldn't help but remember the words of Senator John Kerry during his 2004 presidential bid, "I actually voted for the war before I voted against it." President Obama went one better: He was actually for same-sex marriage, before he was against it, before he was for it.

For Kerry, his poor choice of words notwithstanding, there were actually extenuating circumstances behind the flip-flop. In President Obama's case, it is clearly more of a matter of political expediency than core belief. This of course will be overlooked by Obama's liberal base, won't do anything to help him with moderates and will motivate conservatives even more to turn out on election day. Time will ultimately tell if this will have the same effect on Obama in 2012 as it did for Kerry in 2004.

Forward: What's Old is New

The new slogan for President Obama's 2012 presidential campaign, "Forward", is pretty revealing. The word "forward" has long been associated with communism and socialism. Given the president's apparent philosophy and his administration's previous tone deafness and history of gaffs, it is just as easy to believe that the choice was made in an information vacuum or it actually reflects the true ideology of Barack Obama. However, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if the president's campaign staff didn't do even a Google search of the word "forward" which would have enlightened them as to the history of the word's association with communism and socialism. Remember this is the administration that gave Queen Elizabeth a set of CDs in a format that isn't usable in the UK, gave the Dalai Lama cuff links (if you don't get this, find a picture of the Dalai Lama), announced the cancellation of the plan to deploy anti-ballistic missiles in Poland on the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 which was an opening step to World War II and the list goes on. One must also consider the fact that Mr. Obama named Van Jones, a self-proclaimed communist, as his Green Energy Czar, the White House Christmas tree had an ornament that pictured Chairman Mao, and numerous other statements made by Obama associates, such as Anita Dunn's expression of admiration for Mao Zedong. Then there is the non-stop class warfare language used by Mr. Obama and his advisors. What you believe is up to you but either explanation is pretty alarming.