Saturday, July 14, 2012

Back in May I made a trip to the Castle at Muskogee, Updated

and while there visited the shop of Tracey. Where an idea formed(shut up, I can have them, you know) when I saw a very pretty tea/coffee cup and saucer. "Could you make a cup this size, but without the handle, and shaped so I won't drop it when I'm drunk having a taste?" "Let's see," says she, and took a hunk of clay, put it on the wheel and began turning. And produced something that looked just about right. So made a deal to pick it up or have a friend pick it up when finished.

Ever read The Garrett Files? He once mentions the godlet assigned to screw with him? The little bastard hires out.

Which all boils down to "It dried out before I could put the decoration on!"
"Plain is fine."
"I said 'It dried out before I could put the decoration on'." With emphasis.
Followed by missed connections, etc. Which finally led to a small box being delivered today with this in it:
Friend had told her I'm a blacksmith, and she'd determined I was going to get a decorated whiskey cup. Period.
A while back, just before the prices started shooting up, I'd splurged on a bottle of my favorite, and I still have most of it;
The cup will be properly christened tonight.

Tracey's stuff- some of it- can be found here and here, should be able to contact her through either if you have a desire or something strikes your fancy. May take a few days to get an answer, she travels to fairs and such a lot.

Update: Glenfiddich sips very well out of this. Now I need to find out how much that stuff Gerry mentioned costs...

Two things, one neat

and one disgusting:
However, jihad comes first, for it is the pinnacle of Islam, and if the pinnacle of Islam can only be achieved through sodomy, then there is no wrong in it. For the overarching rule of [Islamic] jurisprudence asserts that ‘necessity makes permissible the prohibited.’ And if obligatory matters can only be achieved by performing the prohibited, then it becomes obligatory to perform the prohibited, and there is no greater duty than jihad. After he sodomize s you, you must ask Allah for forgiveness and praise him all the more. And know that Allah will reward the jihadis on the Day of Resurrection, according to their intentions—and your intention, Allah willing, is for the victory of Islam, and we ask that Allah accept it of you.


The neat one is this set of pictures: some artists' renderings, most actual pictures from the Hubble and other systems.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Not surprisingly, Baen is involved

Support for the troops

WHAT is Operation Baen Bulk ??

OBB is a different kind of support for the troops. Instead of focusing on individuals, we support entire UNITS, by finding what they need, or want, and can't easily or quickly get while deployed. . .and get it to them. In LARGE quantities. Think of it as the Warehouse Club approach to Soldier Support: we use the power of buying and shipping in bulk, to maximize the stuff delivered to our troops, out at the pointy end of the spear, and minimize things like waste, shipping costs, etc. And in the process, generally deliver a lot more to the individual soldier than normal "CARE Packages" do.


WHO is Operation Baen Bulk ?

Operation BAEN BULK started in the fall of 2009, when one of our founders got a 90-day layoff notice, and moved into the Layoff Pool. With nothing to keep him busy, he corresponded with a few deployed GIs, and noticed that while they had individual requests, there were a number of things they mentioned their entire outfit needed or wanted. And he needed a project to keep him sane while looking for a job with the economy going south.

The rest at the link

Now THAT is an interesting way to put it:

As Obama’s fourth year rolls around the blame Bush chorus has still not abated. If anything, it’s become even more strident, ever more shrill and delusional.

And that’s because Bush is a Jew.

No, President Bush is not Jewish; he is a pious Christian.

But he is Obama’s Jew, Obama’s scapegoat.

Obama’s entire social and political ideology has been formed and informed by radical leftists. Obama’s personal history—mother, father, grandparents, Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayres, Derrik Bell, Michael Pfleger, Rashid Khalidi—is littered with Jew-haters, men who routinely scapegoat Jews and Israel.

The political convenience of scapegoating is the habitual reflex of the left.

Thus, it’s a small intellectual leap for Obama and red diaper baby David Axelrod to treat President Bush as The Jew, a malignant force whose power extends like tentacles to strangle all the good intentions and policies of Obama.

Poor Barack Hussein Obama, President of these United States, but a powerless victim in the face of Bush The Jew.

Empty-Hat Salazar and Obama strike again

While the Obama administration was taking a victory lap last week after the 5-4 Supreme Court decision to uphold the president’s signature legislative accomplishment, Obamacare, the Interior Department was using the media black hole to release a much-awaited five-year plan for offshore drilling. That plan reinstitutes a 30-year moratorium on offshore energy exploration that will keep our most promising resources locked away until long after President Obama begins plans for his presidential library. Given the timing, it is clear that the self-described “all of the above” energy president didn’t want the American people to discover that he was denying access to nearly 98 percent of America’s vast energy potential on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).

H&K: Because you suck, and we hate you

If you've never seen that piece by Correia, you really need to read it.


And
"Because is beach!"
"Hey, darlin', what kind of can is- nono, I mean on the muzzle! THAT can although yours is quite- ok, I'll behave.

ATF head wants to 'move beyond Fast & Furious';

I'll bet you do.

And fat effing chance.Link

Competing fishermen;

strong language used for some reason

Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but

Annan is significantly damaging the reputation of the United Nations through his irresponsible handling of the situation. And, what’s worse, he may even be responsible for prolonging the crisis.
wouldn't the UN need a reputation worth crap for him to damage it? And isn't Linkprolonging crisis what the UN does best?

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Looks about right


And, just because I like them,



And to annoy everyone who screamed and whined about 'evil rightwingers carrying GUNS at political meetings!',

More on what Obama wants the UN to force on us

click to embiggen


In fact, a short tour through the U.N. schemes shows that international tracing, combined with nationalized regulations and controls on the manufacture, transfer and sell of small arms, is the central feature of the plan. The U.N. program for implementation includes such requirements as no “military style” weapons should be possessed by civilians, a registered and traceable lifetime for every weapon, and so on.

I wonder how this works? Does the actual husband

get to beat on dumbass? Since it was a woman, does she deserve it anyway, so no foul?

I'll take "Because ATF management is in the tank "

for gun bigot politicians" for $500.Link
The data is out there and it is available from reputable government sources. Given that, why is the ATF using skewed statistics from the Brady Campaign? Moreover, why are they using the term "gun violence" when as the chief Federal agency charged with the regulation of firearms they should know better?

These videos are nothing but propaganda and the ATF should be ashamed of themselves. I think Congress should be asking just how much was spent to produce these pieces of propaganda. They should also be asking why they used the Brady Campaign talking points
.


"Hey, just because he's your Representative, but he's been gone for a month, doesn't mean you get to know why he's not on the job!" Especially if there may be complications.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

There is no excuse for this shit on American roads


Found at Rodge's place

New York Times' "Another Stab at the U.S. Constitution."

Not surprisingly, it is with a totalitarian bayonet.
A borrow from Sipsey Street:
From Kurt Hofmann: New York Times hosts call to 'get rid of the right to bear arms'
Here is Melynda Price, who is an associate professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law, presenting touchy-feely wrapping paper on the federal government's fist. She blogs at http://ivorytowerinterloper.blogspot.com/
I came of age when the word “drive-by” entered the American lexicon. By high school graduation, I lost one cousin to gun violence and another was incarcerated for a gun crime. I know many harmed by guns and even more who feared the possibility. I always wonder if, but for the Second Amendment, there would be a more radical commitment to compromise and peacefully working through easy and difficult issues.
The process of compromise is exactly what the Framers were engaged in and is exactly what seems absent today. What if terms like “black-on-black crime” were instead “black-on-black reconciliation” or “black-on-black-let’s-talk-this-out-like-the-human-beings-we-have-always-known-ourselves-to-be.”
I am not naïve enough to believe that doing away with the Second Amendment would do away with gun violence, but I know firsthand the impact of guns and gun shots on children. This nation was constructed and reconstructed in the aftermath of violent and bloody conflicts. Still, the Framers believed that not only the Constitution, but also the peaceful way the document was created, would penetrate the Americans' minds and change they engaged. The Constitution would be the only weapon needed unless there was an external enemy.
Despite the Supreme Court’s repetition of outdated mythologies of kings and castles in Heller v. District of Columbia, I am not sure this amendment envisioned the kind of gun toting that is permitted across this country in the last decade. The Second Amendment acknowledged the vulnerability of a nation in its infancy, but could not predict a world where some would move through life feeling more like targets than citizens. Now a mother watching her own fragile creation grow into black manhood, I would worry less if it were more difficult for him to find himself facing a gun held by boys or men who look like him or by those whose job it is to serve and protect.
Go and read Kurt's analysis, but he has one statement I would take issue with: "Those who would nullify the right to keep and bear arms had best be prepared to kill--by the tens of thousands--to do it."
Wrong. They had best be prepared to kill -- and to die -- by the millions. For we do not intend to go gently into that totalitarian good night.

From Hofmann's piece:
Sunday, not surprisingly, the suggested "fix" was to "Get Rid of the Right to Bear Arms," as University of Kentucky College of Law Associate Professor Melynda Price advocates:

I always wonder if, but for the Second Amendment, there would be a more radical commitment to compromise and peacefully working through easy and difficult issues.

As dubious as that notion is, it pales in comparison to Professors Price's misunderstanding here:

The Constitution would be the only weapon needed unless there was an external enemy.

That, of course, is about as close as possible to the exact opposite of reality. The Framers included the Second Amendment's protection of the right to keep and bear arms precisely because words on parchment--no matter how noble--are no "weapon." The Constitution only protects the rights of the people to the extent that the people are willing and able to enforce that document's limits on governmental power. Enforcement of such things tends to require something stronger than harsh language.

Which reminded me of this: The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed - where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once. -- Judge Alex Kozinski, dissenting, Silveira v. Lockyer, denial to re-hear en banc, 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, 2003.

With all the attention on them, why is BATFEIEIO

changing the 4473 this way?

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

It's the birthdate of Nikola Tesla

You want an alternate history novel? He and John Browning get together and...

The possibilities are... scary

If true, every time they've done something

like this before, it's screwed readiness and led to dead and crippled bodies; so if they've done it with the friggin' RANGERS... if true, I wonder what ass-kissing politician in uniform is responsible? And if the consequences bother him at all?

Iran is on the board overseeing the Arms Trade Treaty?

Really? That makes as much sense as sending Kofi Annan to Syr- oh, wait, they're doing that too...

Ok, so is the UN just
that effing clueless?
that effing stupid?
Or they actually want a huge pile of bodies for PR purposes?
Actually, considering that august body, it's probably a combination of all.

That lovely redhead playing pool?

Her name(thanks to Gary) is Vica Kerekes
Oh mah Lord, look at them freckles




And I now have this burning urge to visit the Czech Republic

The Weather Service showed 50% chance of rain;

now it's raining, and their site shows a 40% chance.

On that 'shot while giving a hug' story

the other day, over at Uncle found links to this story and this one; the official story appears to be 'soft holster let trigger be pulled', but that still sounds, off.

Remember the post about Ron Perlman the other day?



Pictures

Yes, they've finally gotten around to the pyramids

According to several reports in the Arabic media, prominent Muslim clerics have begun to call for the demolition of Egypt's Great Pyramids--or, in the words of Saudi Sheikh Ali bin Said al-Rabi'i, those "symbols of paganism," which Egypt's Salafi party has long planned to cover with wax. Most recently, Bahrain's "Sheikh of Sunni Sheikhs" and President of National Unity, Abd al-Latif al-Mahmoud, called on Egypt's new president, Muhammad Morsi, to "destroy the Pyramids and accomplish what the Sahabi Amr bin al-As could not."
Just how long would it take the engineers of the Egyptian army to do it? Not very bloody long.
Ain't the Arab Spring wonderful?

In the past,
This is a reference to the Muslim Prophet Muhammad's companion, Amr bin al-As and his Arabian tribesmen, who invaded and conquered Egypt circa 641. Under al-As and subsequent Muslim rule, many Egyptian antiquities were destroyed as relics of infidelity. While most Western academics argue otherwise, according to early Muslim writers, the great Library of Alexandria itself--deemed a repository of pagan knowledge contradicting the Koran--was destroyed under bin al-As's reign and in compliance with Caliph Omar's command.

And, considering past actions and current ones, anybody think Obama would really say squat about it?

More on Obama's other 'under the radar'

workings:
Just as the world's worst human rights violators sat on and often chaired the U.N. Human Rights Council, Iran, arms supplier extraordinaire to America's enemies, was elected on Saturday to a top position on the United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty being held in New York. It began July 2 and extends through July 27.

This came right after the same U.N. found Iran guilty of illegally transferring guns and bombs to the murderous Syrian regime of Bashar Assad, currently slaughtering thousands of its own citizens as an impotent U.N. joins the U.S. administration in standing around and watching
.
And if you still have any belief that this is 'only directed at weapons getting to criminals and such',
A paper by the U.N.'s Coordinating Action on Small Arms (CASA) notes that arms have been "misused by lawful owners" and says that the "arms trade therefore be regulated in ways that would ... minimize the misuse of legally owned weapons." Is defending your home against intruders a "misuse"?
It is to these clowns.

This being an election year, even if your Senate critter is anti-gun,

yell at him. Loudly.
Have no doubt that this plan is very real, with strong Obama administration support. In January 2010 the U.S. joined 152 other countries in endorsing a U.N. Arms Treaty Resolution that will establish a 2012 conference to draft a blueprint for enactment. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has pledged to push for Senate ratification.

Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton has cautioned gun owners to take this initiative seriously, stating that the U.N. “is trying to act as though this is really just a treaty about international arms trade between nation states, but there is no doubt that the real agenda here is domestic firearms control.”

An awful lot of "I LOVE Obama! but not what he does"

going around.

Along with, since so many Obama staffers so like communism, the Little Blue Book.


Five of the new Obamacare taxes coming if this mess isn't stopped, including
1. The ObamaCare Medical Device Manufacturing Tax
This 2.3 percent tax on medical device makers will raise the price of (for example) every pacemaker, prosthetic limb, stent, and operating table. Can you remind us, Mr. President, how taxing medical devices will reduce the cost of health care? The tax is particularly destructive because it is levied on gross sales and even targets companies who haven’t turned a profit yet.

These are often small, scrappy companies with less than 20 employees who pioneer the next generation of life-prolonging devices. In addition to raising the cost of health care, this $20 billion tax over the next ten years will not help the country’s jobs outlook, as the industry employs nearly 400,000 Americans. Several companies have already responded to the looming tax by cutting research and development budgets and laying off workers.



Wanna drive a tank? Over things?



What moron came up with the idea of 'warning shots' with beanbags against armed smugglers(“Disarmed by the very bureaucrats that armed their killers.”)? And suddenly there's a reward for the bad guys? AFTER the contempt vote and so forth? Really makes you wonder what all is being hidden behind the 'executive privilege' crap.


I've written before about the idiocy of the Queers for Palestine clowns; here's some more of what they're enabling.

A little history today, the Starfish Prime test

and the "Oh bleep!" it generated.
Link

Monday, July 09, 2012

I knew possums were weird, but

damn!
The Journal of Venomous Animals and Toxins has found that the American opossum produces a protein known as Lethal Toxin-Neutralizing Factor (LTNF). And as the Boing Boing blog points out, the LTNF protein is exactly what it sounds like, seeking out otherwise lethal poisons that have entered an opossum's body and neutralizing them.

Amazingly, tests on the opossum LTNF found that the protein even left the marsupial creatures immune to poisons from snakes on other continents that the American opossum had not been previously exposed to
.

Hey, AT&T, I have two words for you:

I'll let you dirtbags think about all the possible combinations they could be.
So why won't AT&T take the same position and write off the calls as a result of fraud?

"This is the crazy part," Smith said. "AT&T is not arguing over whether these calls were fraudulent. There's no dispute there."

Instead, the telecom giant is hinging its case, filed last year in U.S. District Court, on two legal theories: that Smith's firm should have taken more precautions to prevent unauthorized access to its phone system, and that under Federal Communications Commission regulations, it's entitled to collect from the owner of the phone line that was used to make the call, regardless of who actually made the call.

Smith said he's tried to resolve the matter, even trying to contact the CEO of AT&T.

But two weeks later, he was told by a secretary that because the matter was being handled by "outside counsel," there was nothing the company could do for him
.
and
"They're taking a hard line," said Smith, who said he was also warned by lawyers for AT&T that they would take action if he "disparaged" the company's name in the media.
This just flat sucks. And AT&T knows it.

On the 'attitude' post the other day, Updated

the officer saying When I was on SWAT our view is that "We will always win....even if we have to burn down your entire house by bombing it....we will win". reminded me of something.

Ever hear of MOVE? Nutty group in Philadelphia, and in 1985 the Philadelphia Police raid on them went bad; they actually did bomb the house:
A police helicopter then dropped a four-pound bomb made of C-4 plastic explosive and Tovex, a dynamite substitute, onto the roof of the house.
11 dead, and the whole damn block burned down. I wonder if the clown quoted above considers that appropriate, or possibly a slight overreach?
And, of course, No one from the city government was charged criminally.


A commission that investigated found that Goode and two other officials, police commissioner Gregore Sambor and fire commissioner William Richmond, had been "grossly negligent." The deaths of the MOVE children "appeared to be unjustified homicide," it said. Police had not taken them out of the house when they had the chance. They had used excessive force in firing 10,000 rounds of ammunition into the house. The plan to drop explosives was "reckless" and "unconscionable." And they let the fire burn until it was too late to control.

Update: in comments Keith notes something I'd heard but can't find any reference for: that not only did they drop a bomb, but it had a can of gasoline attached. Which makes it a big damned incendiary bomb dropped on an occupied house surrounded by OTHER houses that were also going to burn. Which to my mind makes the idiots who gave the orders and the moral cretins who carried it out murderers and arsonists. That nobody was charged is disgusting.

I have no idea what they're advertising


And I really don't care

After that mess about Brit words,

Robb took the bull by the horns to explain it all

Ron Perlman, an actor who's NOT

a total jerk.

Here’s Ron Perlman helping out the Make-A-Wish foundation in full, film-ready make-up as Hellboy for little Zachary (above) whose dream was to not only meet Hellboy but get a chance to become him which creator Mike Mignola and the folks at Spectral Motion made happen.

After all, nobody knows whether Robert Gibbs embezzles money

from orphanages. Nobody knows whether Robert Gibbs attacks little old ladies and beats them within an inch of their lives. Nobody knows whether Robert Gibbs is an anti-Semite. Nobody knows whether Robert Gibbs illegally downloads music. And nobody knows whether Robert Gibbs has engaged in identity fraud.

This is a fun game. You can play too
.

Actually, I apologize for those analogies.

I hope the carrion feeders and gang-bangers of the world will forgive me for equating them with politicians.

Hyenas and vultures both have valuable roles in the ecosystem. And gangs sometimes engage in non-coercive activities such as selling drugs to yuppies.

It’s beyond my abilities, however, to say something nice about politicians
.

Hey, Governor Fallon:

are you listening?

So, if the wicked Bush tax cuts only helped the evil rich,

how can President Kardashian 'extend' them for people who aren't rich?

And, because the idea of anybody keeping lower taxes probably gave him gastric distress, he wants to raise taxes on some people... at this point I'm back to the question "If he WAS deliberately trying to trash the economy, what would he do differently?"Link

Read this, and see if you're thinking the same word (updated)

I am:
The shooting happened at an outdoor social gathering about 12:30 a.m., said police Sgt. Eren Stephens. It happened on the city’s west side.

According to Stephens, the woman “embraced the officer from behind, causing the holstered weapon to accidently discharge.” The bullet punctured Miller’s lung and hit her heart, and she died at a hospital.
Really?

Update: over at Uncle was a link to this story; basically 'soft holster let trigger be pulled'. Which still sounds awful strange.
Also, this story

Ok, for your Monday morning, I present the racist jerk

who the President says he never heard a word of this from in 20 years:
“Take that baby him or her away from the African mother, away from the African community, away from the African experience … and put them Africans at the breasts of Yale, Harvard, University of Chicago, those trinity schools, UCLA or U.C. Berkley. Turn them into biscuits then they’ll get that alien DNA all up inside their brain and they will turn on their own people in defense of the ones who are keeping their own people under oppression.”

“There is white racist DNA running through the synapses of their under-brain tissue,” he continued
.
Racist and America-hating, but Obama says "I never heard those words!" Right.


More on how the IRS will be involved in running your health care
The health care law "includes the largest set of tax law changes in more than 20 years," according to the Treasury inspector general who oversees the IRS. The agency will have to hire thousands of workers to manage it, requiring significant budget increases that already are being targeted by congressional Republicans determined to dismantle the president's signature initiative.

"Knowing the complexity of the health law, there's no question that the IRS is going to struggle with this," said Rep. Charles Boustany Jr., R-La., chairman of the House Ways and Means oversight subcommittee. "The IRS wants more resources. Well, we need to start digging down into what are they doing with the resources and personnel."

The frikkiin' IRS can't tell you what the tax law is consistently, and if they give you bad advice you're screwed for listening to them, and now this? We're supposed to trust this crap?

Also, in this article,
Under the guise of implementing the law, the Internal Revenue Service has announced it will impose a tax of up to $3,000 per worker on employers whom Congress has not authorized a tax. To make things more interesting: If the IRS doesn't impose that unauthorized tax, the whole law could collapse.
Yeah, it's a few days old, I just saw it.



"How dare you show all the flags of this states' history?" Screw history, only show the parts the progressives want you to see.



In addition, Dershowitz added, if Democrats wanted to fight a misogynistic donor to political super PACs, they need look no further than television host Bill Maher, whose money they have enthusiastically accepted: "I'm sure that if the Democrats were to apply David Harris' 'Adelson test' to all the contributions they have received from Hollywood moguls and other wealthy business people, they wouldn't like the results."


Over at Two-Four, some thoughts on Hillary Clintons' involvement in Gunwalker.



Might make you want a bigger boat:

Sunday, July 08, 2012

Being too tired for more outrage tonight, I'm going back

to the 'older vs. younger women' argument touched on back here. There's a line in this book that came to mind, and I finally dug it up:
A beauty like Clodia's was not something a woman could be born with. It consisted of more than what they eyes could see, of a mystery behind the flesh which accrues only with the passage of time.
I understand this exactly; why most 25-year-old women, no matter how pretty, cannot compare to a woman of some years and experience.

On the ATT treaty,

two from Workman:
The same political mindset that is pushing the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) talks this month is also at work keeping residents of Washington, D.C. from exercising their Second Amendment rights, and one might suggest that Bellevue’s Alan Gottlieb is strongly linked to both quagmires.

As this column has noted, Gottlieb has been actively battling the ATT through his international activities related to the formation of IAPCAR (the International Association for the Protection of Civilian Arms Rights) and his participation in the World Forum on the Future of Sport Shooting Activities (WFSA).

And, though not identified by name, the handiwork of the Gottlieb-led Second Amendment Foundation was alluded to by the Washington Times Thursday in a piece about resistance to federal concealed carry reciprocity is stymied over amendments that would allow firearms carrying in the District of Columbia
.


and


American gun rights advocates might thank the Palestinians and their supporters for delaying, until Tuesday afternoon, anyway, the start of the long-awaited Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) negotiations at the United Nations, although it leaves two key players from Washington State in a bit of a lurch.
Yeah, these are a little behind; I can't yell about everything... My understanding is the PA wants to sit in as a government, and the arguing over that is what delayed all this.

Now, there's an attitude guaranteed (updated)

to piss people off.
Second, police response to the law in question. A SWAT team is like a military unit. You can moan all you want about the militarization of the police and all of that but your tears will not change a thing. Get used to that theme, BTW. When I was on SWAT our view is that "We will always win....even if we have to burn down your entire house by bombing it....we will win". Losing is not an option. That again is reality....to expect less once the event kicks off is simply stupid. Period.
Found this over at Two-Four. And isn't it a fine example of "Screw being a peace officer, I'm an infantry grunt in enemy territory" attitude?

Which, by the way, makes pretty much anybody not a cop 'the enemy', doesn't it? I will leave off the various criticisms and comments I could make; you know them and if the author ever sees this, he wouldn't care. I'm undoubtedly in his '1776 type' and we all hate the cops, don't we(ignore everything I've ever written, that doesn't count)?

The quote that comes up at times from Battlestar Galactica is
"There's a reason we separate military and the police: one fights the enemy of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people."
And when the police become military? The same seems to be true.

Update: should have mentioned, what this idiot reminded me of was the Philadelphia Police raid on the MOVE nuts; they actually did bomb the house
A police helicopter then dropped a four-pound bomb made of C-4 plastic explosive and Tovex, a dynamite substitute, onto the roof of the house.
11 dead, and the whole damn block burned down. I wonder if the clown above considers that appropriate, or possibly a slight overreach?
And, of course, No one from the city government was charged criminally.


A commission that investigated found that Goode and two other officials, police commissioner Gregore Sambor and fire commissioner William Richmond, had been "grossly negligent." The deaths of the MOVE children "appeared to be unjustified homicide," it said. Police had not taken them out of the house when they had the chance. They had used excessive force in firing 10,000 rounds of ammunition into the house. The plan to drop explosives was "reckless" and "unconscionable." And they let the fire burn until it was too late to control.

LOOOOOONG-range shooting

Golf Battery, 2nd Battalion, 11th Marines, out of Camp Pendleton, Calif., dropped the 155mm M982 Excalibur round on insurgents 36 kilometers away — more than 22 miles — in Helmand province. The strike was launched Feb. 12 from an M777 howitzer on a mountainside at Forward Operating Base Zeebrugge, in Kajaki, to neighboring Musa Qala district, Marines said.

I did some digging, and the reason my Holy Grail of Pistols

is so damned expensive when I see one is that S&W only made the K-32 for about 11 years. And it seems most who bought them either barely or never used them; so every one I've seen(online, only actually seen one in the wild) starts around $2k. Which isn't going to happen.

On Fast & Furious,

During Avila’s allocution, no mention was allowed to be made of Agent Terry’s death, or of Fast & Furious, or the two guns. Follow the linked Fronteras leads to other stories, which shows that Agent Terry’s family had sought to be listed as victims in the Avila 20 case, that petition denied by a Tucson Federal judge in Jan 2012, then accepted an informal deal with the new federal prosecutor to withdraw in Feb 2012. Their reasoning: “The request would have opened the possibility of turning the smuggling case into one against the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms.”

If you throw the Department of Justice into the mix, that is precisely the point. They should be.

I’ll tell you why.
Found thanks to Codrea


Not Gunwalker, but also corrupt politicians:
In a response to the senators, shared with PJM, the Integrity Committee agreed to meet July 12 to review the allegations that Kendall failed to manage — and perhaps impeded — a full investigation of the White House and Salazar’s twisting of the findings of the National Academy of Engineers report into supposedly endorsing the moratorium.

Kendall, the senators noted in their request, was reportedly involved in the so-called 30-Day Report, “which erroneously indicated that independent peer review experts endorsed the Administration’s six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling.” Then, Kendall conducted an oversight investigation of the report
.
What? A IG being corrupt and screwing with the process? Why that's- um, kind of like the 'IG investigation' in Gunwalker, isn't it...


The Robert's Taxon


Systems behave the way that they are structured to behave. All have to work within the framework of what is possible, not what is desired. And so to Progressives who think that they're nicer people because their new system is now a'coming, remember who your "nice" new system is going to kill.

Because kill it must. There's no magic wand that will increase the number of doctors, there's no health care fairy who will keep lines from lengthening. There's no untapped pool of money to keep Senior's care from having to be raided for your different set of priorities. These people must die, because you want to spend that finite set of health care resources a different way
.


The 7 Most Badass Founding Fathers. On Washington:
This is a guy who could settle an argument among a room full of the best and brightest men in the world with a simple declaration of how things should be. (At least 2 of those men had the hubris to rewrite the Bible the way they thought it should be, and all of them had risked hanging to establish a new form of government.)

And when you think of the contentious fights between those egos over who would be the succeeding presidents to Washington, the idea that he would be the not only unanimous — but obvious — choice of this group to lead them is just mind-boggling.

Without the rhetorical flourishes of a Henry or a Paine, Washington could enter a room full of possibly rebellious soldiers whose rightful pay was being withheld by the Congress and leave them weeping simply by the force of his character.

And last, but not least, nearly everything he did to establish how a president should act and lead (basically on the fly and by instinct) was naturally accepted as correct and proper by his peers, and established precedent for centuries
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Yes, he should be hurt for this

See? You can't view a restraining order

like it's a protective force field. You have to view it as similar to a deer tag for your hunting license.
Found thanks to Jay G

Down the street sits this



Damn, for both the money and a place to keep it.