

BEN AND BAWB'S BLOG- A blog of two brothers: published writers, gun nuts, former soldiers, and recovering Republicrats both. From the purple mountain majesties of Montana comes Bawb, bitterly clinging to God and his guns. From the fruited plain of Iowa comes Ben, a patriot Walter Mitty. Wielding the sacred power of the written word the way a three-year-old might wield his daddy's shotgun, these are their musings.*
Saturday, February 28, 2009
IF GOVERNMENT IS THE ANSWER, IT WAS A STUPID QUESTION

Sunday, February 22, 2009
BARRY BEATS JESUS! YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP

Friday, February 20, 2009
MAY YOU LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES
The times we live in are getting too interesting for me these days. I wasn't like those guys down in Cody, WY buying 10,000-round pallets of 7.62x39 when Clinton got elected. Y2K didn't scare me. 9/11 didn't send me scampering for the foxhole. But, if left unchecked, things now seem to be on the verge of spiralling completely out of control. We'll even skip all the financial chaos, like the U.S. national debt now surpassing the GNP of THE ENTIRE WORLD, (plenty of Republikrat priming and help on that one) to keep this under 200 pages.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
DONNER, PARTY OF FIVE
I rented a small log cabin with a wood-burning stove as our "basecamp". The original intention was to build snow shelters and do all that cool winter survival type stuff, only using the cabin as a safe retreat if our toes started to turn blue and break off.
Unfortunately, winter did not cooperate with the winter campout. We've been having unseasonably warm and sunny weather for about two weeks now, and most of our snow is gone. In the open, there was still enough white stuff to make walking without skis or snowshoes exhausting, but in the dark timber the combination of the green trees and the sun had melted everything down to bare pine duff. For those of you on the East Coast, who are arrogant experts on all things Rocky Mountain even though you've never had your feet off pavement in your life, it's hard to dig a snow cave in pine duff. So we just stayed in the cabin.
We made do. We did do quite a bit of cross-country skiing and snowshoeing. In between the stands of timber, you would posthole into the snow down to your crotch with every step without such aids. I showed the proper method of using the wrong ski wax, and the resulting crash & burn method of locomotion that results from it. I was going to demonstrate flashing through the the woods on skis, mowing down Russians with a Suomi and blowing up their tanks with Molotovs, but we were short on Russians, tanks, Suomis, and Molotovs. And good skiers, too, as far as that goes.
The temps were still getting down around zero at night, so we even found an ice crust we could cross the creek upon. Which was good, as I was not going to practice my stream fording technique in such temperatures, unless perhaps I was being pursued by Janet Reno with lust in her eyes. I did practice my Dutch oven cooking, which is getting pretty good, so we all ended up as fat as ticks.
Just to celebrate the few remaining months of freedom, and to irritate any nearby liberals (I don't think there were any closer than the People's Republik of Missoula, a two-hour drive away) we played with our guns, too. AR's and AK's and M1A's and an Enfield, oh my. We shot the Appleseed and hung up a steel gong that we could "ring" with the rifles, at least until it fell ouf of the tree it was hanging in. Lucky for the forest creatures, no hunting seasons were open, or we would have added them to the Dutch oven fare.
Most amazing to me was one of our political discussions. I mean, here's this gathering of red-blooded Heartland males clinging bitterly to their guns and God, and there is unversal agreement that we would rather have Hillary than Obama...or McCain...in the Whitehouse.
Well, we all know Obama is a dangerous idiotic socialist demogouge, but even so the comments in support of a President Hillary were interesting, although not exactly in the cheerleader range of endorsement. "She has more balls than McCain." "Better to be stabbed in the front than in the back." "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't."
At any rate, here is a short video I took of our mountainous winter adventures.
I sure hope everyone present had a great time this winter. By this time next year, we may get bombed by the Obama Royal Air Force if we try to have another such a get-together.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Gun Nut Roundup February '09
If there is one litmus test as to whether someone is on our side or not, it is the debate over so-called “assault weapons.” If someone says that assault weapons (however that is defined that day) should be outlawed because they have no “legitimate” sporting use, then that person doesn’t understand the true meaning of the Second Amendment, no matter how much they may mouth platitudes about supporting it. The newly-elected chairman of the Republican Nat’l Committee, former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele is one such person.
In 2006 he said: “Society should draw lines. What do you need an assault weapon for, if you’re going hunting? That’s overkill. But I don’t think that means you go to a total ban for those who want to use gun for skeet shooting or hunting or things like that.”
Firstly, “overkill?” In most states that allow deer hunting with a rifle, you wouldn’t be able to use an “assault weapon” such as an AR-15 because they are too underpowered to ensure a clean kill. Some so-called assault weapons fire 9mm pistol ammunition which the FBI and police departments around the country have abandoned because it can’t reliably drop bad guys.
Secondly, the Second Amendment isn’t about “skeet shooting or hunting or things like that,” Mikey! It’s about shooting Red Coats, bandits, charging cougars, and usurping tyrants.
A teacher from Beaver Dam, Wisconsin has been placed on administrative leave (suspension). What was teacher Betsy Ramsdale’s crime? She had a picture taken of herself holding her gun. No, it wasn’t at school and she wasn’t pointing it at a student’s head or something. It was just a picture that she posted on the private “social networking” site called Facebook.
A “concerned” co-worker saw the picture on Facebook and ratted Ms. Ramsdale out to school officials. While it’s unclear what rule, if any, Betsy broke, the school’s superintendent Donald Childs said that the photo “appears to be poor judgment."
Superintendent Childs’ email address is childsd@beaverdam.k12.wi.us and his work phone number is (920)885-7470, ext. 1111 if you’d care to discuss “poor judgment” with him.
House File 86 “An Act relating to the justifiable use of reasonable force,” has been introduced in the Iowa General Assembly. Under current law, Iowans have a duty to flee from criminal attack before being “justified” to use deadly force outside their home. The proposed law would specify that “a person has no duty to retreat, and has the right to stand the person's ground, and meet force with force, if the person believes reasonable force, including deadly force, is necessary under the circumstances to prevent death or serious injury to oneself or a third party, or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”
You can find your Iowa state representative here, to urge them to support HF 86.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Stimulus Bill: Worse Than It Looks
"Over the last three weeks the policy experts at my institution, the Heritage Foundation, have published dozens of biting critiques of literally every aspect of the House and Senate versions of this legislative monstrosity. They agree on one thing: Under the guise of stimulating the economy, this one bill contains a generation’s worth of liberal policymaking, an entire Great Society-scale agenda, one that advances the liberals’ view of man and his relationship to government enough to cause LBJ himself to turn red with envy.
"The pork and the overall spending are every bit as bad as the critics say, but in the long run, they are mere distractions. The real damage comes from other, less noticed provisions in the bills.
"The House and/or Senate stimulus bills would undo the 1996 welfare reforms, explode entitlement spending by a cool quarter trillion dollars, lay the groundwork for the federal government’s takeover of our health care system, double Uncle Sam’s already overbearing role in education, require taxpayers to pick up the bail tab for potentially dangerous felons, allow unemployed Wall Street executives to qualify for Medicaid, and reignite the fires of trade protectionism, thereby risking a global trade war.
"Not bad for the first month of unified liberal rule in Washington, eh?"
Read the entire article here.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
HARRISON BERGERON: IF LIBERALS GET THEIR WAY
It reminds me very much of Obama and the other Socialists' goal of trickle-up poverty, making everyone equal by dragging everyone down rather than lifting everyone up. In Harrison Bergeron Vonnegut humorously and wickedly satirizes the eventual "unintended consequences" of affirmative action, equal opportunity, and all the other politically correct pogroms being forced down our throats. Enjoy!
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
WHEN PISSING AWAY SOCIAL SECURITY JUST ISN'T ENOUGH...

Sunday, February 08, 2009
MORE SOVEREIGNTY, LESS STIMULUS...MMMMM GOOD

Thursday, February 05, 2009
HOW ABOUT SOME GOOD NEWS?
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Roughly translated, that means about three quarters of Fed.gov's social engineering programs and mandates foisted upon the States are unconstitutional.
It would seem that lately, as Fed.gov and its lust for money and power spirals out of control, a few States are rediscovering the 10th Amendment. I'm pleased to say Montana helped to lead the way with Governor Brian Schweitzer basically telling Obergruppenfuhrer Chertov to kiss his butt on Real ID. There were also strong rumblings from the governor and senators about a possible negative decision in Heller rendering Montana's "contract" with Fed.gov null and void because our own State Constitution makes the right to keep and bear arms an individual right. Now there's a bill, and only a bill at this stage, exempting firearms made in Montana from odious federal regulation.
Joining in the fun now are the states of New Hampshire, Arizona, Oklahoma, Washington, and Missouri. Imagine that. States declaring their sovereignty! Following the United States Constitution. What a concept!
Moving from the encouraging to the hilarious category, House Speaker Nancy "Dumber than Dirt" Pelosi, showing her true colors and extremely low IQ, explains that without immediately passing the new bloated pork stimulus bill, "500,000,000 Americans will lose their jobs!" Check the census and get back to us on that one, Nancy.
THE O FAMILY LOVES SMOKIN' THE REEEFER
Now his half brother George Hussein Onyango Obama, the one who lives in abject poverty in a hut in Kenya (how 'bout spreading a little of your own wealth there, Barry) has been busted for pot.
You won't see it mentioned in any American MSM source, and I agree it's no big deal. However, just think if it were some relative of Sarah Palin's. The media would be all over it like flies on hog crap, treating it like the Crime of the Century.
In fact, if not for the foreign press, we would not even know that Barry had a half-brother living in a hut in Kenya. Without the blogosphere and talk radio finding and breaking stories, we wouldn't know about his illegal alien aunt (also living in poverty), Bill Ayers, Jerimiah Wright, Tony Rezko, Frank Davis, the Barry Soetoro thing, or any of the other minor scandals. In fact, I'll bet most people don't know about half of the associations above.
If they don't report it, it didn't happen. That's the MSM's dirty little secret. What they don't report is probably more important than what they do, kind of like the days of Pravda in the old Soviet Union. No wonder the Drive-by Media detests and is so fearful of alternate news sources. How dare they challenge the monopoly?!?!
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
SOME TAX CHEATS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS
