The Federal Gubbermint's War On Guitars: You Just Can't Make This Up

For anyone, anywhere on Planet Earth who wonders why the US economy is not recovering, and is not likely to recover with the present regime in place, OS shares this story from the Nashville Tennessean.

Now, mind you, the Tennessean has never met a Democrat politician it didn't love--the more to the left, the better, the stupider the better, the more corrupt the better. Hell, they even sheltered AlGore as a young man, had him on the staff as a writer because his Daddy was Senator Al Gore Sr and LittleAl needed to be parked somewhere, 'cause college just didn't agree with the boy.

So, for this paper to cover this story is noteworthy. Maybe it's dawning on them as well, since their business is barely holding together, that something may be terribly amiss with life under Himself and MassahHarry.

Remember, the Obama Administration wants to keep the border open, wants more people on welfare, wants to control the health-care system, objects to the idea of anyone actually having to identify themselves as they vote--they've got all that covered, ya'll. They love illegals, welfare dependency, and vote fraud--they live for it!

The real focus of their attention is on small business, 'cuz that's where the munney-is-hunney, and especially they hate those subversive....guitar makers and dealers.

Read and see if this makes sense to you:

Here’s how Tennessee retailers get approval to export a vintage guitar containing protected species of wood or animal products:

First, they must get export licenses from Fish and Wildlife and APHIS, which have to be renewed every year or two. Then they must apply for Fish and Wildlife permits to export each guitar containing protected plant or animal materials.

Retailers who get a permit must ship the guitar and export documents to be inspected in another city because there are no designated inspection stations in Tennessee. APHIS officials examine wood products containing Brazilian rosewood and other protected woods, while Fish and Wildlife agents inspect products containing animal products such as ivory. The nearest city with inspection offices for both agencies is Atlanta.

Individual musicians also need permits to leave the country with vintage guitars containing Brazilian rosewood, ivory or other protected materials, but they don’t need to submit Lacey Act paperwork when they come back to the U.S., APHIS officials say. Federal officials say they focus on commercial vendors and haven’t heard of any enforcement actions being taken against musicians.

The fees associated with permits and inspections can add up to more than $200 per guitar, said Jim Goldberg, Washington counsel for the National Association of Music Merchants. The shipping and insurance to get a guitar to an inspection station can cost an additional $150 or so, merchants say.
Time is the biggest cost, according to merchants. Fish and Wildlife officials say approving a permit usually takes two to three weeks, and inspections generally occur the day an instrument is received. But Goldberg said the entire process — from applying for a permit to shipping the guitar to the buyer — typically lasts closer to two or three months.

Gruhn Guitars’ latest attempt to ship two guitars to the Netherlands took five months, business manager Christie Carter said. She said she applied for a permit on Sept. 19 and received it on Nov. 8, but the guitars weren’t shipped until Jan. 26. Carter said they might have been shipped two weeks sooner had she better understood where to send them for inspection.

Few international buyers are willing to wait five months, Gruhn said.



This is what it takes to sell a vintage guitar, ya'll.  Let's extrapolate that out to all the other businesses and products of a large economy, and ask ourselves 'Why don't businesses form and grow?'

Until the day comes when we elect both Houses and Senates at both state and federal level in overwhelming conservative majorities that will refuse to spend another penny of our money on nonsense like this, we will continue to stagnate and decline. Until we run people like the enviro-nuts and the inspectors and the layers of 'civil servants' who daily make war on the culture out on the proverbial rail, we will not recover.

It's really that simple, but it will be difficult to achieve. No time like the present to begin.

Holy Humiliation, Batman! Obama Lost His Own Primary In Most Of Kentucky's Counties!

The Courier Journal tells the tale, and has the map of the state results by county.

President Barack Obama’s underwhelming victory over a nonexistent candidate in Tuesday’s primary in Kentucky can be tied to a mix of factors — but mostly to widespread and emphatic opposition to many of his policies, according to state and national political observers. Voting for “uncommitted” over Obama in the primary doesn’t mean Democrats will vote for a Republican in the fall, “but it’s a pretty loud criticism of where they see this president and his policies,” said Bill Bissett, president of the Kentucky Coal Association, who believes Obama has angered people in Kentucky coal counties with his support of alternative forms of energy. Obama won just 58 percent of the vote against “uncommitted,” which drew 42 percent of the vote. “Uncommitted” won in 67 of Kentucky’s 120 counties and tied Obama in another.

Himself lost to MizzHillary in the 2008 primary and McCain took the state in the general, but still, ya'll.... Kentucky is a heavily unionized/closed-shop state, and predictably Obama won Louisville and Bowling Green, where the UAW plants are located, along with the universities, and General Electric (in Louisville). (Precinct-by-precinct results here.) But apart from the traditional urban Democrat-or-nothing enclaves, it is not good news for Himself.

He has openly declared war on the coal industry, and by golly the counties that house the coal industry are, well, pissed-off. The Department of Labor attempted to regulate family farms to the point that children couldn't do chores-and by golly, the rural county voters pushed back, at least those few who bothered to vote the Democrat primary. The Department of Agriculture and EPA have decided that dirt stirred up by the wind is a threat to the polar bears, and rural people are pushing back while they still can. It is no secret that Obama, Holder, MizzNancy and MassahHarry would confiscate every gun in every home, given the opportunity; or that they would leave the southern border wide open, given the opportunity.

They think people who live in small towns are stupid, that they are just dumb rednecks, unworthy of a thought. The small-town folks beg to differ.

Then there are the social issues...and the obvious decline of the county seats under the heel of a government that only knows how to increase welfare dependency and punish accomplishment. The schools that don't function, occupied by the NEA, still. The decline in living standards, the ballooning of debt, the underemployment, the kids having to move back in with their kids because all the jobs went away.

Then, there is the memory of the 1990's, when the federal government and the trial lawyers kicked the legs out from underneath the tobacco industry. The empty barns and idle farms stand as silent witnesses to that bit of Utopian intervention. People remember when those little tobacco plots made the difference in a family's way of life, and how they were taken away, and all that 'settlement money' from the tobacco industry was simply pissed away by the politicians. They remember these things.

They also remember that it's their kids who join the military, and do the fighting and dying, and suspect the Commander-in-Chief may be working off some other playbook than the one that outlines how to win wars.

So. Let's assume all those 'undecided' types, after they see that their primary votes are ignored, simply...stay...home this fall. No donations. No phone calls, no meetings attended. No yard signs. No showing up at the polls in November. That's the best-case scenario for Himself.

 OS thinks some of those folks will even show up in November, given the opportunity to express their feelings about Obama, and vote GOP, up and down the ticket. OS checked the precinct totals at the union halls--even there, there were some 'undecideds' lurking about, and not many votes cast at all. Wonder how many of those folks, who are unhappy with Himself but not willing to confront their union bosses, just stayed home?

Of course, this won't receive much attention from the East Coast media. After all, those folks in Kentucky are just a bunch of hillbillies, not worthy of the attention of sophisticates like us...

The Lockerbie Bomber Dies Peacefully In His Libyan Hospital Bed. His Victims Are Left With More Questions Than Answers.

The whole affair stinks to High Heaven.

Two hundred-seventy innocent people were murdered in cold blood. The lives of their families were shattered. Al-Megrahi, the bomber, lived in freedom for eleven years before his keepers in Libya decided to cough him up. They needed the money from the oil revenue, and had tired of the role of Pariah of the Mediterranean.

He's convicted in Scotland, sentenced to life. Finally.

Then Scots cough him up again in 2009, and send his scurvy cowardly behonkus back to Libya, supposedly on 'humanitarian grounds', two years ago. Eight years into his life sentence, claiming he was at death's door, poor chap. He's put on the plane in Scotland on a hospital gurney, and upon his arrival in Tripoli, saunters down the step of the plane to a hero's welcome.

Meanwhile, twenty-four years later, the families still feel the loss, and know two things:

They will never get the true story of why their loved ones were killed. This was not a one-man operation, by any means.

They were sold out, probably for cash, by politicians in both Edinburgh and London.

OS especially extends his sympathies to those parents whose college-age children were lost. Those kids would be about forty now, most with families and kids of their own. Every December, those parents, now in their seventies, hear silence where their grandchildren that never were don't gather around the tree and table. They also get to relive the date 21 December, when their children died, as they soak in that horrible silence.

Lest anyone wonder at the general sense of disgust felt by the law-abiding towards their amoral and law-flouting political class--remember Lockerbie.