Response to GOP: Growth and Opportunity Project

I recently took a few minutes and completed a little survey, at the personal request of  Reince Priebus. The ever-so-personal e-mails from the Chairman of the RNC are really all I need to rest assured that the GOP takes a finely tuned interest in my thoughts, beliefs and political musings. But this one — my good gosh — Reince nearly begged me to tell him how to win in 2014! Granted, I had to answer a few totally inane questions, but there are certain formalities, you know. We are talking about the RNC.

The best part was the fact that, once I finished with the pleasantries of the survey, I got to give suggestions. As best I can recall, here’s what I said:

 

“The GOP faces a crisis of leadership, but that is only the surface issue. Grassroots conservatives are optimistic and energetic; though frustrated, many intuitively grasp the simple fact that what we are witnessing is American postmodern pop-culture in a head-on collision with the very foundations of Western civilization, and those foundations are stronger now, because of our recent losses, than they have been for generations.

The very fact that you ask us to rank our concerns about fiscal conservatism, energy prices, taxes, government spending, and the debt; terrorism, foreign policy, and national defense; and social issues, like abortion and family values, shows you really have no idea what the root of the problem is. The reason for this failure is quite simple: you fundamentally fail to see that all of these issues are intrinsically related; that they comprise the various aspects of a particular weltanschauung, a worldview. You will continue to fail as a party until you begin to address these issues at the root cause and rigorously challenge progressive ideas as progressive ideas. We still hold the cultural high ground and it is entirely possible to take the moral and the philosophical high ground away from the opposition, but you have to know both the nature of the battle and the nature of that opposition.

 Allow me to draw an analogy from World War II.

Time and again you’ve been strafed and bombed by Kamikazes. You are about to come under attack from an entire squadron of Zeros, and decisions need to be made. Should you shoot the planes down or hope they don’t spot you? You decide to shoot them down, but then argue over which one to shoot down first. Deciding that, you argue over the order in which the others should be attacked.

 Sink the aircraft carrier!

 

Sincerely,

Privateer”

  

Their parting shot was to asked if I had any other suggestion. I said ‘yes’.  Then I reminded them they have my e-mail address, but noted that they probably couldn’t afford to hire me.

I’ll bring this post to a close – Reince Priebus may have just responded by e-mail – there’s a (1) next to my Spam tab.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shotgunner-in-Chief

During his recent interview with New Republic, President Obama claimed he shoots skeet “all the time”.   His comment has drawn fire from both sides, so to speak — progressives criticizing him for even trying to reach out to those concerned about the push for tightened gun-control, and many ardent defenders of the Second Amendment mocking him for what appears to be little more than an attempt to present a public image that might bolster his credibility on the matter, at least to undecided centrists.

While I generally don’t consider it a good use of time to wade into such things, this is a little different.  Jon Stewart asked:  “Since when did the ability to fire a weapon become a badge of honor, a patriotic achievement?”  Intentionally or not,  Stewart totally missed the point: What matters is not whether this president is familiar with firearms.  It’s about his integrity; it’s about judging a man by the content of his character.  So, while it may on many levels be rightly viewed as majoring on a fairly minor point, given that the issue is truth versus untruth, it matters.  It matters a lot.  And it should even matter to Jon Stewart.

That said, consider the photos below.

Anyone with any significant amount of experience with firearms can look at the photo of Skeeter and conclude that he doesn’t know how to handle a shotgun, certainly not like someone who shoots skeet “all the time”.  One can find a certain credibility in the eye-witness accounts that the president was “awkward” and “couldn’t have been more uncomfortable.”

 

Bloggers & Tweeters have raked Skeeter over the coals for his poor form (holding the stock way too high) and  because the angle at which he is firing is too low, they say, for him to be actually shooting skeet.  My initial comment on Twitter was, he’s firing far downrange to give ‘em skeet a sporting chance.  So much for my knowledge of skeet shooting.  I’ve only done informal trap shooting, which is quite different than shooting skeet, but it got me thinking, which may or may not be a good thing.

I decided to pull up a satellite image of Camp David and found the skeet range:

 

You’ll notice, in the photo of the president,  there is a paved area in the background, beyond which is a small grassy area.  Compare that to the satellite view of the skeet range, and you find something … interesting.   It’s not immediately obvious, but the pavement directly behind the president curves toward the foreground.  The image of the Camp David  skeet range shows there are only two paved areas that curve, thus only two places the president could be standing:

 

Of the two possible firing points, the uppermost (small red x) can be ruled out: firing from that position, one would pretty much be shooting into the trees across the road.  The lower position marked makes sense if the shotgunner-in-chief is slow to track, acquire and shoot a clay target that is far downrange on a make-shift trap shooting set-up.  I say ‘make-shift’ because he would be standing and firing from a position that is not one of the eight actual firing positions (yellow x’s) on the skeet range.

Does he shoot skeet “all the time”? Not likely.  It appears he was catered to (as any president might well expect or require) in order to be able to achieve some success at something rather difficult.  As any shooting instructor (or teacher of any kind, for that matter) can tell you, success can be very important whenever someone learns something new.   

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