Saturday, November 01, 2008

Mrs. du Toit has a post on Obama

that you really ought to read. Pulls a lot of things together.

Looks like the Brits need to start with the lampposts

around 10 Downing Street. And the Ministry of Defense.
Major Sebastian Morley claims that Whitehall officials and military commanders repeatedly ignored his warnings that people would be killed if they continued to allow troops to be transported in the vulnerable Snatch Land Rovers.

As a result, he says Cpl Sarah Bryant – the first female soldier to die in Afghanistan – and three male colleagues, the SAS soldiers, Cpl Sean Reeve, L/Cpl Richard Larkin and Paul Stout were killed needlessly.

All four died when their lightly armoured Snatch Land Rover split apart after hitting a landmine in Helmand province in June.

In his resignation letter, Major Morley, the commander of D Squadron, 23 SAS, said "chronic underinvestment" in equipment by the Ministry of Defence was to blame for their deaths
.

Short version: the government is so busy spending everyone's money on 'buy votes and turn (fG)Britain into the New Soviet Republic that they don't want to be bothered with actually equipping the people they send to the sharp end.

I wonder how they'll feel about that when the sharp end moves into major cities in (fG)Britain?

Commenter at Tam's has a new phrase for the unstable boobs

like Jong: those suffering from Emotional Incontinence.

Perfect.

And it should be pointed out that even if the information hadn't been given

to people not authorized, the fact that they ran his information through the system at all is a crime. Not a proper, legal reason to do so.

And please note the coverup attempt:
The senior manager would not learn about "Joe" for another week, when she said her boss informed her and directed her to write an e-mail stating her computer check was a legitimate inquiry.

The reason Niekamp said she was given for checking if there was a child-support case on Wurzelbacher does not match the reason given by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
...
On Oct. 23, Niekamp said Doug Thompson, deputy director for child support, told her she had checked on "Joe the Plumber." Thompson "literally demanded" that she write an e-mail to the agency's chief privacy officer stating she checked the case for child-support purposes, she said
.
These people damn well knew they were misusing the system and breaking the law, and did it anyway, without hesitation. They should be fired, and criminal charges filed.

Friday, October 31, 2008

If you've got one of the LCP pistols,

there's a recall. Which I found out about because Rachel Lucas linked to Two Nervous Dogs who has one on order but it's not here yet so maybe it'll be already taken care of... etc.

I've got a blog list on my browser so damn long I lose track of who's there, and it just got longer by one.

Well, we know what a lot of The Obama's followers

want. Glenn Beck just played some audio from a rally held after the Super Obamessiah Infomercial the other night; along with the orgasmic feelings from hearing the Obamessiah speak, she said "I won't have to put gas in my tank, I won't have to pay my mortgage", etc.

You want to know why there'll be some trouble if Obama loses? He's basically told a lot of people that if he wins the gummint will take money away from 'the wealthy'(i.e., anybody who works for a living and pays taxes) and pay all their bills. And they'll be pissed if they find out they'll have to pay their own damn way after all.

Updated: just found the exact words and where:
Peggy Joseph: "It was the most memorable time of my life. It was a touching moment. Because, I, I never thought this day would ever happen. I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car, I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage, you know, if I help him, he's gonna help me."

Speaking again of "Don't vote for McCain unless you want riots",

we have this from Erica Jong, found by Ace:
"My friends Ken Follett and Susan Cheever are extremely worried. Naomi Wolf calls me every day. Yesterday, Jane Fonda sent me an email to tell me that she cried all night and can't cure her ailing back for all the stress that has reduces her to a bundle of nerves."

"My back is also suffering from spasms, so much so that I had to see an acupuncturist and get prescriptions for Valium."

"After having stolen the last two elections, the Republican Mafia…"

"If Obama loses it will spark the second American Civil War. Blood will run in the streets, believe me. And it's not a coincidence that President Bush recalled soldiers from Iraq for Dick Cheney to lead against American citizens in the streets."

"Bush has transformed America into a police state, from torture to the imprisonment of reporters, to the Patriot Act."


Uh huh.

"Obama will be sabotaged by Republican dirty tricks", yeah. Democrats are registering to vote multiple times, openly; if Acorn were connected with the Mafia they'd all be in jail already after the RICO investigation; committing vote fraud with state officials helping*; Obama's campaign is engaged in credit card fraud, and intimidating reporters and stations that dare to bring up anything that he finds inconvenient, Evil Party state officials are illegally using state and law enforcement systems to try to dig up dirt on people and Republicans are going to pull dirty tricks. Yeah.

As Ace put it, this woman is weapons-grade crazy. Squirrelly as a pecan tree in November. Effing NUTS. And a fine example of the 'progressives' in the Evil Party.

Bleepin' amazing, isn't it?

*Brunner argued that federal rules only require the state to have a system in place for double-checking registrations but do not require her to make the checks. No, because it's so much more difficult for fraud to occur if the state official in charge actually does anything to prevent it.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Dealing with pirates

Seems some shipping lines are hiring contractors to protect ships and crews, especially around Somalia. With some of the usual "Oh NO!"
Mody says armed guards onboard ships may encourage pirates to use their weapons or spark an arms race between predators and prey. Currently, pirates often fire indiscriminately during an attack but don't aim to kill or injure crew. The pirates usually use assault rifles but have rocket-propelled grenades; some reports also say they have mini-cannon.
I admit to not being an expert on maritime affairs, but I'd think that discouraging 'firing indiscriminately' at my ship by rifles and RPGs would be a good thing.

"The standard approach is for (pirates) to come in with all guns blazing at the bridge because when a boat is stopped it's easier to board," said David Johnson, director of British security firm Eos. "But if you have guns onboard, you are going to escalate the situation. We don't want to turn that part of the world into the Wild West."
Uh, guy? You've got worse than the Wild West going on now; because when the dirtbags 'come in with all guns blazing', the good guys can't shoot back.

Notice how much this sounds like the GFWs here telling people not to get a gun for self-defense?

Velociman seems to have

attracted a major bunch of moonbatstouched a chord with the Barack I'll Get You For That Obama crowd. First he wrote this, that caused two high-level jackasses to take notice, and that seems to have led to a plague of acorns. Which go nicely with the squirrels who showed up in the comments.

Just amazing.

I hadn't been to Frank's place for a while,

so I'll note he has advice on investments, and a short, concise description of Daily Kos.

Let's see, isn't Delaware Biden's state?

No surprise here, then.
Delaware State Police stopped Alvina Vansickle from purchasing a .22-caliber pistol for self-defense because she was too old and a woman, said Superintendent Col. Thomas MacLeish.

The outrage that followed led to the revelation that Delaware State Police had been keeping lists of gun buyers for years; state law requires them to destroy these records after 60 days.
...
An employee in the state police Firearms Transaction Approval Program noticed Vansickle's age and gender, and brought the sale to an immediate halt.

Vansickle's application was then routed to Sgt. Benjamin Nefosky, who heads the firearms approval unit.

According to MacLeish, the transaction was halted over concerns "based upon age and gender."


And just how did these supposedly destroyed records just happen to be around?
In an interview with The News Journal, MacLeish claimed all paper firearms records are destroyed every 60 days.

The electronic records, however, are another story.

"Our review of our electronic records indicated we had a glitch in the system, back to August 2005," he said. "They have since been purged."

The electronic records never posed a threat, MacLeish said.

"The info was in an electronic file that no one did anything with," MacLeish said. "We've since purged that file in its entirety.


Excuse me for a moment, as I have the need to drop into blunt language.

MacLeish, you are a God-damned liar.

'Glitch in the system' my ass. You bastards have been SEARCHING these records for years, and you claim it's a 'glitch' that they're there? And we're supposed to believe you now that those records have been purged? Or is that 'purged from the active system, but the backup files are another matter'?

And as for 'not posing a threat', you've been using them to screw people over; I call that a threat, you bastard.

As to the 'honor' of the people involved, here's a big excerpt:
Word of the delay rebounded around Delaware's small-firearms community, eventually making its way to Dave Lawson, a retired state police lieutenant and firearms instructor. Lawson spoke to his former colleague Nefosky about Vansickle's dilemma, Lawson said.

Lawson said what Nefosky told him revealed there was a much larger problem in the firearms approval unit than keeping a small-caliber revolver out of the hands of an 81-year-old woman.

Lawson said Nefosky told him he searched seven years of firearms transaction records to see if Vansickle had ever bought a gun before.

Some gun owners fear any government agency that tracks gun purchases or keeps lists of who has them. They worry these lists could someday aid in weapons confiscation, fall into the wrong hands and serve as a road map for burglars and thieves, or result in increased scrutiny by law enforcement.

"I was totally drop-jawed," Lawson said. "I asked him how far back the records went. He didn't know. He didn't care. He felt she was possibly a threat because of her age, a threat to herself or her family. That's what the implication was. He was concerned that never having bought a gun before, why would she want one now, at 81?"

Lawson served in the State Bureau of Identification as a lieutenant, which includes the firearms approval section and other specialty units. He knew the law. Nefosky's concern about Vansickle's age and sex, he said, should never have come into play.

Lawson also knew the gun records should have been destroyed.

MacLeish would not allow Nefosky to be interviewed
.

Liars. Lawbreakers. Sorry excuses for lawmen. Miserable statist.... Excuse me, I do not have the proper words right now.

Found thanks to the Random Strikes gentleman.

And if anybody actually believes the Obamessiah & Co.

only want to raise taxes on 'the rich', you're either deluded or a moron:
Obama, after all, has been promising a tax cut for the "middle class" - those making $200,000 a year or less.

Biden yesterday lowered that bar.

"What we're saying," he told a Pennsylvania TV interviewer, "is that [our] tax break doesn't need to go to people making . . . $1.4 million. It should go to [people] making under $150,000 a year."

Oops. That's a 25 percent downward redefinition of "middle class."

An Obama mouthpiece quickly dismissed the discrepancy as just another one of Joe the Senator's gaffes.

But consider: The campaign has a new TV commercial out declaring that families - not individuals - earning $200,000 or less would qualify for a tax cut. Two incomes - not one.

And, as most middle-class wage-earners know, that's a huge difference
.
Yes, it is.

I make considerably less than the lowest number Obama & Biden have mentioned so far. The Bush tax cuts nevertheless got me a break. Which will go away if an Obama administration refuses to renew/make permanent the cuts. Which means Barack I Need Your Money More Than You Do Obama can raise my taxes by letting them expire, and then claim "No, I didn't raise your taxes!"

Dirtbags.

Oh, and let us note another slight problem connected with the Pork, Bribes & Payoffs Bailout Bill:
Gov. Paterson grimly declared yesterday that New York faces a historically unprecedented four-year, $47 billion budget deficit, $20 billion higher than projected just three months ago - and will need some form of federal bailout.

"In order to address these issues, as New York is really the epicenter of the national crisis of finance, we're going to need federal assistance," said Paterson , as he presented a six-month report on the state's current budget
.

Because we're all just DYING to have our pockets picked some more because the NY government is too stupid and corrupt to deal with their budget.

Well, at least two of the guilty parties in OH are known

in the improper(to say the least) looking for dirt on Joe the Plumber.
[DSS] Director Helen Jones-Kelley said that after a “team meeting,” she OK’d the check because the department often runs inquiries to check for unpaid child support when people are thrust into “the public spotlight.”…
If the governor of OH actually gave a crap about honor, or about the integrity of the system, he'd ask for her resignation. And if he didn't get it, fire her(I'd prefer just fire her) for misuse of the system. Instead,
Democrat Gov. Ted Strickland is satisfied that there are no political overtures to the check on Wurzelbacher, a spokesman said. “Based on what we know to this point, we don’t have any reason to believe the information was improperly accessed or disclosed by a state employee,” said Keith Dailey, Strickland’s press secretary.
Translation: "Hey, she's a Democrat and was helping The Obama, so I'm not going to bother her." This man is a liar and a dirtbag, proven by his own words. There's no damned way this was not politically motivated, and it damn well was an 'improper access and disclosure' of this information. And he knows it.

The second?
Toledo Police have confirmed that a TPD records clerk is accused of performing an illegal search of information related to 'Joe the Plumber.'

Julie McConnell, has been charged with Gross Misconduct for allegedly making an improper inquiry into a state database in search of information pertaining to Samuel Wurzelbacher on Oct. 16
.
And why did she do this? She was doing a favor for a reporter.
Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner admitted yesterday that a member of the media made the request of the Toledo Police Department for Joe 'the Plumber' Wurzelbacher's records, NewsTalk 1370 WSPD is reporting. The comments were made in response to questions during an unrelated press conference.

What I'm wondering is if any of the people involved in this had him run NCIC and/or III. If they did, that's not just a state problem, it's a violation of federal regulation and law. Which the FBI should get involved in. Any bets as to whether that'll happen?

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

A little bit more roundup

seeing as it's late, I'm tired, and I will not have a tire for the bike until Friday. No, I'm not mounting it myself(yes, Fire, I said 'mounting'; shut up). I've done it, but not on aluminum wheels.

Let's see, Sondra points to a bunch of enviroweenies who give weenies a bad name:
Simon Woods, who is 6, would like to play on a baseball team. His mother, Sharon Astyk, is sympathetic, but is also heavily committed to shrinking her family’s carbon footprint. “We haven’t been able to find a league that doesn’t involve a long drive,” she said. “I say that it isn’t good for the planet, so we play catch in the yard.”

That is one way that Astyk, a mother of four, expresses her concern for the environment. She has unplugged the family refrigerator, using it as an icebox during warmer months by putting in frozen jugs of water as the coolant. (In colder weather, she stores milk and butter outdoors.) Her farmhouse in Knox, N.Y., has a homemade composting toilet. The house gets its heat from a wood stove; the average indoor winter temperature is 52 degrees.

...They air-dry their clothes, and their four sons often sleep huddled together to pool body heat.
...
David Chameides, a cameraman in Los Angeles, is collecting all the waste he generates in a year in his basement, and keeping a blog that describes his detritus. A sample entry (from Oct. 6, Day 279 out of 365) includes “1 bag of hair from haircut – put out on lawn for birds,” “1 plastic wrapper from ice cream – garbage” and “2 aluminum tuna cans – recycle.”
...
But Gore’s group doesn’t recommends reusing the same plastic Ziploc bag for a year, as Anita Lavine and Joe Turcotte, a Seattle couple, have been doing. When their two toddlers come home from preschool, Lavine scrubs the Ziploc bags that hold their soiled clothes and biodegradable diapers, and uses them the next day. She does the same with the plastic bags that hold her children’s apples “and random lunch stuff,” she said.

My daughter is much more sympathetic to morons like these than I am; if your kids have to sleep huddled up for warmth because you're such a freakin' idiot you refuse to use enough energy to keep the place warm, you should be... I don't know what.

They began this regimen in 2002. “My husband and I started to talk about climate change, and oil prices were going up,” Astyk said. “The other factor was a justice issue. There was a great disparity between the resources used by the Third World and by us, so we decided we had to cut back.”
...
Not everyone thinks that Lavine and her ilk are crazy. “What these people are doing is fantastic, needed and catalytic,” said David Gershon, the author of the book “Low Carbon Diet” and founder of the Empowerment Institute, a consultancy that helps people and communities reduce energy consumption. “Some people are in the vanguard and show what it’s possible to do,” he said
.

Listen, you dumbass: the reason the Third World countries don't use much energy is they can't; because they have (usually) socialist tyranny for a government, a trashed economy and NO WAY TO GET MORE ENERGY. In many cases because idiots like you and the Goreacle work to keep them from getting more. "What, you want a power plant? Or a hydroelectric plant? No, you can't have one. You'd just use electricity and want radios and televisions and computers; you'd hurt Mother Gaia's feelings and not live in your picturesque village any more, burning dung for heat and cooking."

There's a special place in hell for people who work to keep others living in the dark and living an iron-age(at best) existence; but we'll pass on that for now.

And as for you, Gershon, you bastard: yes, it's possible to live in a wood and dung hut, and have no electricity and no modern food storage and no artificial lights; THAT DOES NOT MEAN IT IS A GOOD THING, jackass.

I swear, these clowns would probably fit right in with Bill the Incompetent and Cowardly Terrorist Ayers; they'd likely love the idea of killing 25 million people or so to cow the others into doing what they're told. Like living without a refrigerator. Or a heater. Or air conditioning.

Got news for you idiots: the first one that comes for my modern, powered conveniences gets shot. I am not going to go back to living in the dark and cold with nothing but wood or dried animal crap for heating. Or digging a damned pit latrine in the back yard because you idiots don't like the thought of a flush toilet.

As Quint said in Jaws, it's enough to piss off the Good Humor man.


Damn, how far (fG)Britain has fallen from what it once was:
Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle both witnessed the lethal fire that Boer farmer-riflemen rained on British troops in 1899. They returned home to promote civilian marksmanship through the expansion of rifle clubs in England. ...

"What the `clothyard shaft and grey goose-wing` effected, when guided by an English eye and an English hand at Crecy and Agincourt, the rifle bullet will do in any future contest...." wrote Hans Busk in The Rifle and How to Use it.

The London Times went so far as to editorialize: "The change from the old musket to the modern rifle has acted on the very life of the nation, like the changes from acorn to wheat and stone to iron are said to have revolutionized the primitive races of men."

Now the cops will show up and steal your legally owned firearms because they make a neighbor nervous. And God help you if you use a weapon to defend yourself. Or even punch an attacker too hard. Or demand actual numbers on the crime rate. Kind of like how a lot of our 'institutes of higher learning' are controlled by idiots and GFWs:
The Young Conservatives of Texas branch at the Houston-area Lone Star College-Tomball has been censored and threatened with campus-wide de-recognition for passing out a humorous pamphlet with gun jokes at a campus fair.

Oh, and in case you've forgotten, we need Smart People™ like Edwards to do our thinking for us:
Elizabeth Edwards —currently a health care advisor to Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign—isn’t 100% behind the Democratic nominee’s health care plan.

Edwards complained that Obama… views healthcare as a commodity, rather than a human right. ...

said McCain’s plan fails in all important areas by leaving the decision-making process up to individuals, who can frequently “make stupid economics decisions.”

Yeah, like you and your hubby have such GOOD decision-making skills.

Enough. I need a drink.

Having survived the wilds of a trip to visit friends

(hey, have you been caught on I-35 in a construction zone? At rush time?), and having gotten all the stuff unloaded, put away, etc., I'm back to it. To find a number of things:
Had a flat on the bike just before I left. Flat kit got me home, but I'm going to have to get a new tire. Yuck.

Oooh, I'm one of the people the Beltway Insiders don't think much of. Just breaks my friggin' heart.
...And one of my sources, who is very well connected, tells me that Noonan was at first rumored to be looking to write a regular column for the New York Times. Why she’d want to work for a paper that is spiraling further down the economic sinkhole, with stocks that are near junk status, is beyond me. But the rumor has escalated beyond the Times and gone straight to the White House: my same source says now the word is that Noonan may be being courted for the job of press secretary for an Obama administration.
She'd want a column at the NYEffin'Times because it is THE paper for the smart people, of course. She, of course, is one of Them, proven by writing things like this:
Bloggers persist no matter their contributions or quality, though most would have little to occupy their time were the mainstream media to disappear tomorrow. Some bloggers do their own reporting, but most rely on mainstream reporters to do the heavy lifting. Some bloggers also offer superb commentary, but most babble, buzz, and blurt like caffeinated adolescents competing for the Ritalin generation’s inevitable senior superlative: Most Obsessive-Compulsive.

Even so, they hold the same megaphone as the adults and enjoy perceived credibility owing to membership in the larger world of blog grown-ups. These effete and often clever baby “bloggies” are rich in time and toys, but bereft of adult supervision. Spoiled and undisciplined, they have grabbed the mike and seized the stage, a privilege granted not by years in the trenches, but by virtue of a three-pronged plug and the miracle of WiFi
.
'Conservative pundit' my ass.

I was on the way home when I heard the quotes from Obama's interview, how the failures of the Civil Rights movement include not trashing the Constitution to allow the government to flatly redistribute wealth. This man is indeed a friggin' marxist, as well as a crooked Chicago machine politician.
And let's not forget that interview where the lady actually speared Biden with some actual, nasty questions, and Biden lies. Repeatedly. And knowingly. That man sucks like a shop vac plugged into a 220 outlet.

Want a good look(if you need another) at the sufferers of PDS? Check the comments on this post. Woman points out that Palin is anything but a moron, and the brain-damaged lefties come swarming out of the woodwork; just freakin' amazing. Read an article while I was gone, lady pointing out that it doesn't matter whether you agree with Sarah Palin's positions, she's someone who decided some things needed doing and did them, and her determination and accomplishments should be appreciated. This led to a stream of "So I'm supposed to support her because she's a women?!?" and other equally idiotic comments from people who can't stand the idea of someone not hating her, along with the required comments on her obvious stupidity. Some of these people should not be out without a keeper; they're liable to run into traffic.

Have you noticed that Obama's campaign seems to be positively allergic to anyone who asks questions? REAL questions? And otherwise doesn't bow down to Barack Lightworker Hussein Obama? Or talks about voter fraud?
In other words, I am going to read what you write and watch what you say. Hopefully you will be fair and impartial as you told me you would be.

Thomas L. Rosenberg
Roetzel & Andress, LPA

Columbus, OH 43215
trosenberg@ralaw.com
Wonder if the firm knew this dirtbag was doing this? And using their name to give weight to his threats? If they didn't, they do now. Might have been some interesting conversations about this.

Friend of mine likes the Winchester white-box 9mm for practice, doesn't like to buy anything else. Apparently he's not alone; stuff seems to evaporate off the shelves when it comes in.

On the information that people, official people, used the OH data systems to try to dig up dirt on Joe the Plumber:
Every state has law-enforcement networks to let officers in the field(if they have mobile data terminals) or their dispatcher run people to see if wanted, check their drivers license, see if their tag is good, etc. Those systems link to systems in other states, so if someone's travelling through they information can be checked if they're stopped or arrested. The states also link to the FBI, the National Crime Information Center(NCIC for short) to see if someone is wanted, if a vehicle, gun or article is entered as stolen, etc. There's also the Interstate Identification Index(Triple-I for short) that holds a lot of records. Let's take this a step at a time.
Back when I was a dispatcher, it was pointed out in training and recertification as a terminal user that this information was for law-enforcement use only: running some girl's tag to find out her name, checking someone's driving record for a friend, running somebody to see if they had any criminal or arrest record; any of these things, whether done from curiosity or as a favor or for money, are illegal. Period. Penalties ranged from getting chewed out(if handled informally) to being fired and prosecuted(done all the way). And if it could be shown that the agency knew you(or whoever) was doing it and did nothing to correct it, the agency could lose access to the system. So far as I know that was and is true in all states.

Now we move to NCIC and III. The III system holds not only criminal history information:
If you've been convicted of a crime, the information should be there.
If you've been arrested for a crime, should be there.
If you've been arrested, and cleared, the fact that you were arrested should be there.
If you were tried and found innocent, it's there.
AND
If you've applied for a job that requires a background investigation? A security clearance? Been fingerprinted and checked for a carry permit? It's there.
So there's a lot besides criminal history data in that database. And as a consequence, the use of it is fairly tightly regulated. For instance, you get pulled over for speeding, or a burned-out light, the officer can run your tag to see if the car is stolen, and check your license to be sure it's valid, he can run you to see if you're wanted; he CANNOT legally run you through III just to see if you have a record there. Or to try to find something he can use to pressure you to let him search the car. Last I heard, the only two legitimate reasons for him to run you through III would be
as part of an ongoing criminal investigation, or
subsequent to an arrest.
And a traffic stop doesn't count as an arrest. So if he does run you 'just to see' or whatever, or runs somebody as a favor or for money, it's a violation of law.

Now, so far as I know(I can't imagine this having changed) ANY agency, whether a child-support office or whatever, that is granted access to these systems and databases is under the same kind of rules: for official purposes only. Running somebody because they pissed off the mayor or annoyed a candidate, or looking for dirt on someone for political purposes, is flatly illegal. So, if the FBI is not looking into this along with the state authorities, I'll be very surprised. If they're not, somebody needs to ask them why not. This kind of garbage, besides the general bad, also causes people to lose trust in the systems: if something that's supposed to be used to fight crime, and that they've been promised is protected from misuse, can be used this way without the guilty paying the price, why should the agency that runs and oversees it be trusted? Why should they be trusted with ANY information? So, for multiple reasons, the people who did this need to be strung up, at least to the extent allowed by law.
Couple of links on this here and here.

Ah, well, back to work.