Also from Theo, this public service announcement

When you care enough to send the VERY best

you get results.
Royal Marines crept into position as the fanatics partied the night away just hours after Ms Bhutto was killed in Pakistan.
The bash was being held in ruined compounds a few hundred yards from Our Boys’ remote base in Kajaki.
Ragtag Taliban sentries tried to hit back with machine gun fire – but stood no chance against the heroes of 40 Commando’s Charlie Company.

Marines, meet thugs. Thugs, meet Marines; you can die now.

Troop Sergeant Dominic Conway, 32 – who directed mortar rounds – grinned: “It must have had quite a detrimental effect on their morale.”

Sgt Conway, from Whitley Bay, Tyneside, said of the Taliban lair: “It used to be their backyard and now we’ve made it ours.”

I just love a happy ending.

Thanks to Theo for pointing this out. And yes, this deserved notice, New Year's Eve and all.

Before I go, an update on the son

He called Christmas day, which was rather nice. Between last I heard about a month ago and now, kind of breaks down like this:

In a new base, he can't say where.
Doing something, he can't say what.
No showers, because the prefab unit being shipped in from wherever the hell they get them from was part of a shipment that go hijacked.
But the do have a field kitchen, so not eating MREs all the time.
No space for anything, so "don't send anything else right now".
And busy as hell, which means not enough sleep.

So cold(it's kind of chilly there right now), smelly and tired, but alive and kicking.

On the subject of boobs,

since Kim brought it up, I'll throw out the following:

I like them.

Pleasing size depends entirely on how they fit the lady in question.

I think that women who get Stetson-size implants, like those on the next-to-last photo in Kim's post, are either making a fortune stripping or have rocks in their heads. Possibly both.

Ladies, if you decide to get a boost, or have a touch of some other cosmetic surgery done because it makes you feel better, you go right ahead. But: if you think that big boobs are required for beauty, you're wrong; or if some male of the species hints- or flat-out says- that you need to get a boob job to make him happy, then you should remove yourself from his presence immediately, because jackass sometimes tends to rub off on you.

And now, having been invited to visit some friends for New Years, no posting barring something I just can't pass up(arrests, illustrations of the above or other big news) till after the first.

Note to self:

do not screw with the blog template when just home and tired.

Blogroll, etc., will return when I have time to put things back together properly

I just can't pass up this dirtbag lawyer story

found here, and all over the local airwaves. Short version: lawyer found guilty by the state bar association of various unethical things, including exchanging sex with a client for legal work. He was just on the air saying that he 'blamed his enemies for causing these charges to be prosecuted against him'(well, duh! as my daughter used to say) and that 'he will ask the state Supreme Court to impose a penalty less drastic than disbarring'. Again, what clown caught in something like this hasn't asked for a less drastic penalty? Seems to be a shortage of lawyers caught in such things willing to say "I screwed up bigtime, and I deserve the fullest penalty."

Oh, hell, I can't let it go: this is a LITERAL case of a lawyer screwing his client.

First off, here's what part of my little pecan tree looked like

after the ice stopped forming:























The ice on top of the husks there is about 1/2" thick. I thought I was going to lose a couple of branches off it, but it held.

Second, I've got to show you the neat flashlight I got for Christmas



















My parents ordered it from somewhere. It's a grand total of 1.5" long, 1.25" wide and about 9/16" thick. Two leds on the front instead of bulbs

















and a crank on the side to charge it


















It says one minute cranking will give about five minutes of light, which seems about right. Not something for a primary emergency light, but damn handy to stick in a glove compartment or console or whatever.

Is there no end to the stupidity of the globular warmering

idiots?
There is a poetic justice to this of course. It is conservatives who are giving us the candidates who steadfastly refuse to have the nation take steps that could slow the pace of climate change, so it is appropriate that they should bear the brunt of its impact.

The important thing is that we, on the higher ground both actually and figuratively, need to remember that, when they begin their historic migration from their doomed regions, we not give them the keys to the city. They certainly should be offered assistance in their time of need, but we need to keep a firm grip on our political systems, making sure that these guilty throngs who allowed the world to go to hell are gerrymandered into political impotence in their new homes.

So this clown thinks that A: it's us Globular Warmering Deniers who'll be flooded or droughted out because of us not worshipping at the Alter of the Goreacle believing in their Holy Cause and B: if their dream for the future were to come about, we'd simply stand quietly while the True Believers 'gerrymander us into political impotence'.

Got news for you, guy: First, your dream ain't coming true. Second, if some oddball circumstance did cause us to have to move, you need to remember two things:
We would not stand for being 'gerrymandered into impotence' in our new homes, and(a big one) if you think we'd leave our arms behind when we moved, then you have even fewer working brain cells than I thought. Just try kicking up into line: you won't like the result.

And isn't it just like a tolerant, fair-minded 'progressive' to plan on keeping political opponents from actually having a say in things?


Added: Just found this at Michelle Malkin: check out the other good progressive things this nitwit is involved in.

And one last thing from Tim Blair before I go:

Communists still control-the-news hypocrites:
There was no time to switch from the €22 (£16) "rich man's dish" to a more modest platter of kippers, because Sahra Wagenknecht had already been caught on camera in the act of betraying her own political ideals.
So the photogenic MEP for Germany's Left party set about trying to destroy the evidence of what happened that night in the Strasbourg restaurant Aux Armes in a manner that has sent ripples of scorn across Germany.
...
According to Uca, the photographs of Wagenknecht cracking into her lobster had been erased from the camera when it was returned to her the following day.
...
clearly embarrassed Wagenknecht - who was brought up on the works of Marx and Engels, joined the East German communists in 1989, and allegedly mourned the fall of the Berlin Wall - has admitted both to eating the lobster, and erasing the pictures.

But she defended her actions.

"I don't do anything that I say others shouldn't do," she told the daily TAZ. "On the contrary, I'm fighting for a society in which everyone can afford to eat lobster."

As to why she erased the pictures? "I didn't like them," she said.

Let's see, miserable communist acting like a miserable communist; is anybody surprised?

This just in:

Intellectuals have large holes in head. Or will as soon as the Taliban gets hold of them.

Right now I'm visiting my parents and hadn't planned on doing any blogging, but I saw this when checking some sites and just couldn't not comment on this crap:
I wonder where he stands on the pointed question that Amis recently put to his impeccably liberal audience at the ICA: 'Do you feel morally superior to the Taliban?' (Only about a third raised a hand to say they did, a nice demonstration of relativist liberal guilt.)

That's bad enough. There's also a slight problem with the response:
Eagleton lets out a sharp laugh. 'I certainly hope I am morally superior to people who believe in slaughtering innocents. But what I object to is the dangerous fudging of the line between the Muslim world and the Taliban, and the easy moral superiority that leaves us blind to our own crimes, or the crimes done in our names. It is an obvious point, but one still worth making, that it was our own barbarism and colonialism in the Middle East that has helped to create these situations in the first place. Amis and Hitchens have become perversely silent on the crimes of Western civilisation. Western civilisation has produced enormous advances, but not to see the darker side of that, not to see the barbarism of the West, and not to see that at a time when we are killing thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan, seems extraordinarily naive.'

Couple of points in this: First, I don't think it matters one damn bit what the U.S. or Britain did x years ago; the fact is our influences would have spread no matter what. In the past, did varous things done cause problems with various muslim or muslim-influenced countries? Yes. Does that justify a bunch of self-detonating neolithic goatherds blowing up people in the name of God? Hell no. Nice excuse, and it makes a lot of people feel better because they can blame their own country(if you're western) or outside influences(if you're a perpetual-victim muslim) for the problems, but not realistic. Lots and lots of Busddhists and others affected by, for instance, the British Empire in past years but you don't see a lot of them running around screaming "Death to those who insult whatever!" And, as I said, Coke and jeans and movies and whatever would have been spreading and causing problems for medieval-minded nuts even if our only contact with a country had been selling movies and books and whatever.

Second, the 'but not to see the darker side of that, not to see the barbarism of the West, and not to see that at a time when we are killing thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan, seems extraordinarily naive.' crap. That sounds an awful lot like "We're blowing up and shooting terrorists and islamist murderers, and that's just as bad as blowing up people in the market. Or torturing and murdering kids in school. We're just as bad as they are!" Which is, to put it bluntly, bullshit. From a clapped-out bull. As someone put it in a different reference, when innocents have died from Israeli military actions, it's been accidental, something they work hard to prevent; when it happens from Hamas & Hizballah and Co., it's what they're trying to do, and if you can't see that difference, then you have great big rocks in your head. And a really sick outlook on life.

I have what will apparently be a big surprise for Mr. Eagleton: given a choice, we wouldn't be there. I don't know anybody who actually wants to have troops in Iraq or Afghanistan, or a number of other places. Given a choice, we'd let them sink or swim on their own, and considering the dependance most of these places have on the west for an awful lot of things it'd mostly be sink. Which would let a lot of people salve their conscience by moaning about how "The rich countries are not helping these people!", etc. But the people in charge- in some cases the people who were in charge- wanted to control us, still do in some cases, and that we like even less. So we had to act.

Which means we've got friends and family in uniform in places they'd rather not be, doing work they'd rather not do. And we have to listen to people blame us for the fact that people like Ahmadinnerjacket would like to kill everyone in Israel, and for that matter most of the rest of the non-islamic world. But then, the latter would be true no matter what. We're what the wahabi nutcases blame for islam not ruling the world, so sooner or later we'd have been their target for terrorism, no matter what happened in the past.

And I have to note another post

at Thirdpower's place:
Anti Gunner- "What shortcoming are you Gun Nuts trying to compensate for?"

Pro Gunner- "I am compensating for the fact that I can't throw a rock at 1000 feet per second."

Peace on earth, etc., is temporarily suspended this day

to mention the new guy at CeaseFire PA. Who is denying, whining(death threats from us gun nuts, of course: check the comments), and CFPA is engaging in Reasoned Discourse about him.

Just wonderful, isn't it?

On this Christmas eve

there's two things I'd like to post. The first has been around a while, but it deserves to be up again:
The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.

Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.
The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.

My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.

The sound wasn't loud, and it wasn't too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn't quite know, Then the
Sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.

My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.
Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.

A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.

"What are you doing?" I asked without fear,
"Come in this moment, it's freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!"

For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts..
To the window that danced with a warm fire's light
Then he sighed and he said "Its really all right,
I'm out here by choice. I'm here every night."

"It's my duty to stand at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.
No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I'm proud to stand here like my fathers before me.

My Gramps died at ' Pearl on a day in December,"
Then he sighed, "That's a Christmas 'Gram always remembers."
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ' Nam ',
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.
I've not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he's sure got her smile.

Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white, and blue... An American flag.
I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.
I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat .
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother..
Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall."

"So go back inside," he said, "harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I'll be all right"
"But isn't there something I can do, at the least,
"Give you money," I asked, "or prepare you a feast?
It seems all too little for all that you've done,
For being away from your wife and your son."

Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
"Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back at home while we're gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us."




The other is some song lyrics. If you've never heard this by Trace Adkins, you ought to look it up:
Arlington
I never thought that this is where I'd settle down,
I thought I'd die an old man back in my hometown,
They gave me this plot of land, me and some other men, for a job well done,
There's a big white house sits on a hill just up the road,
The man inside he cried the day they brought me home,
They folded up a flag and told my mom and dad, we're proud of your son

[Chorus:]
And I'm proud to be on this peaceful piece of property,
I'm on sacred ground and I'm in the best of company,
I'm thankful for those thankful for the things I've done,
I can rest in peace, I'm one of the chosen ones, I made it to Arlington

I remember daddy brought me here when I was eight,
We searched all day to find out where my granddad lay,
And when we finally found that cross,
He said, "son this is what it cost to keep us free" Now here I am,
A thousand stones away from him,
He recognized me on the first day I came in,
And it gave me a chill when he clicked his heels, and saluted me.

[Repeat Chorus]

And everytime I hear twenty-one guns,
I know they brought another hero home to us

We're thankful for those thankful for the things we've done,
We can rest in peace, 'cause we are the chosen ones,
We made it to Arlington, yea dust to dust,
Don't cry for us, we made it to Arlington


Enjoy your family and friends, remember those at the sharp end of the spear, Merry Christmas to you.

Kevin's been working on one of his serious pieces,

and it's up here. It begins:
Welcome to another of my patented dissertation-length essays. (Consider yourselves forewarned.) This one is about perception and propaganda; about conviction, communication, conversion. It is, to some extent, about a documentary film, but more it is about government, about war, about politics, about history.

It's largely concerned with a '2005 Sundance Film Festival award-winning documentary' film. Considering the kind of things that's been Sundance award winners, you can probably guess the slant. Long piece, very much worth going through.

I'll just note part of a comment by Markadelphia:Reality is what you make it, Kevin. There are many people in the world who want peace. Someday they may succeed. What if it happens? As long as people believe that war is inevitable, it will be. Ever read On War by Clausewitz?
Two things about this bother me. One is the 'reality is what you make it' noise. The other is the standard-issue 'many people want peace, what if they succeed?' stuff. I've mentioned before having known a number of 'peace at any price' people, and I suspect Markadelphia fits that mold. Peace over freedom, peace over anything. I tend to not know if they're simply well-wishing people who don't want to see some things, or if they're actively deluding themselves. I want peace, surely; I don't know much of anyone(outside the enemy) who doesn't. I also want freedom; and if we say "We'll do anything for peace, including giving up parts of our freedom", we're screwed. I do think anyone who advocates that is, intentionally or not, on the side of the enemy. If they want the peace of slaves, they can have it, I and mine do not want and will not accept it.

Dammit, the Curse™ retains power!

Kim, you miss Chicago cold and snow and wind, get your ass about 200 miles north: we got it for you.

It's about 25 outside right now, and I'm listening to the sounds of friggin' idiotsdistressed motorists who can't get up the hill outside, and who thing that giving it just a little more gas will do it. Which means they wind up sideways, front or back wheels against a curb, cursing and wondering why they can't move.

Sequence of events:
Day begins in the upper 30's.
Light rain begins.
Temperature drops about eight degrees very quickly.
Rain turns to snow, mostly melts when hits street. For now.
Wet on streets turns to slush, snow continues with wind direct from Arctic Circle pushing it.
Slush starts freezing.
Streets now largely filled with people either creeping along, blocking traffic and getting stuck on hills or people who think they can drive just like the pavement was just wet. The latter class of fool includes those who think four-wheel drive means 'traction no matter what'. Kind of like the idiots sliding sideways on the street outside.

Streets are going to be flat nasty when I head to work in the morning, but there'll be very little traffic, so shouldn't be too bad. In the meantime, I think I'll stay inside stretch out under the nice wool blanket tonight.

Assuming some effing idiottroubled motorist doesn't slide into the driveway and hit something.

Range day

Just some general practice today, including taking the scattergun out for some practice. A while back I found a load that seems to duplicate the performance of the Hornady reduced-recoil buckshot that I keep in it for social purposes, which makes practice a lot less expensive.

I've read a lot of arguments between 'round in the chamber, safety on' vs. 'magazine loaded, chamber empty'. I keep mine same as Xavier: mag loaded, chamber empty, safety off. I'll add that I check the chamber to make sure it's empty, close the slide, then load the mag, then pull the trigger to drop the hammer. The last does two things: releases tension on the hammer spring and unlocks the slide. I still have to grab it and rack the slide to load, but I don't have to worry about pushing the slide release. I thought a lot about it, and decided that if I'm awakened by the sound of a window or my door breaking I want as few buttons/switches to deal with as possible. No warranty, your opinions may differ. I specify the sitting condition of the shotgun because I specifically practiced today as though I were grabbing it: in the condition above, me standing in roughly the same relation I would have to it if I'm in bed, grab, rack, aim & fire. For some reason I hadn't done it that way before, and I wish I had: definitely adds to the realism of the drill.

I've mentioned quite a while back that I prefer the reduced-recoil loads for this, but it's been a long time so I'll cover it again. I very much agree with "Use the most powerful gun you can shoot consistently and accurately" as a guide. In a different situation I might well choose a 3" magnum load, something that'll make a charging grizzly reflect on the folly of his last action. However...

The longest range I can see firing in a home defense situation is about thirty feet, and that means the reduced-recoil ammo should have plenty of power to stop a two-legged attacker. Also, have you ever fired a 3" mag buckshot load? The recoil is bloody awful, so I'm willing to trade some power for faster recovery and more accurate repeat shots(if needed). This also means that I can fire twenty or twenty-five rounds in practice and my shoulder still works after. I had an injury a few years back, and there are limits to how much pounding it can take.

The shotgun, about two boxes of .45 through the pistol and some other general shooting. Definitely a nice part of the day.

I hate political speeches and polls both

with a passion. On polls, Kim has this today, which covers a big chunk of why. I confess I don't know what a regression analysis is, having had little math beyond the basic four functions that I paid attention to, and the math isn't the big reason I so dislike polls; that comes from noticing over the years how the media weenies can breathlessly tell you the alarming news of the latest poll in the same breathless tones as they did the previous one, which gave the opposite result.

Lots of the political crap I just ignore at this point, so far as candidates. I mean, what have we got? On the R side, Giuliani and Romney are hoplophobes who really like the idea of the government telling us how to run our lives in various ways(Romney claiming the health-care scheme he signed just before leaving office is a 'free-market' way to deal with the problem really pisses me off). Huckabee has shown himself to be a jerk of the first water who shouldn't be allowed in the White House at all, let alone near the Oval Office. Ron Paul... it's kind of amazing. I had a chance to catch him on the Glenn Beck show a couple of nights ago, and it broke down into two sections:
A: He'd cover some point and I'd think "Yeah! Damn right!"
B: He'd hit some point and I'd be sitting there saying "Are you retarded or stoned, you idiot?"
Anyone who actually believes that if we retreat from anything defined as 'the muslim world' the terrorists will leave us alone- and will also then leave Israel alone- is de facto out of his damn mind. Overall, Ron Paul is another 'put a shock collar on him that goes off if he approaches the Oval Office doors' politician.
Thompson has some stuff in his background that I'm not fond of, but he seems to have some pretty good stands on some very important things, at this point I'd just about have to vote for him. There are a couple of others, Duncan Hunter, who would, I think, be pretty good, but have virtually zero chance of being elected.

On the D side, we've got a bunch of socialists who don't have either the integrity or courage to admit what they are, some worse than others. When Obama refused to salute the flag, that bypassed his gun-fearing wussiness by a BIG step: no way in hell I'd vote for him after that, it reveals too much about him. Clinton, hell, I can't type long enough to cover all the reasons why it would be better for the country if she were abducted by Bigfoot and disappeared into his honeymoon cave. The others are just about as bad as Clinton & Obama, except they don't have her baggage of Bill Clinton drooling over the thought of having access to the Oval Office again.

I told my kids in 2000 and 2004 that I had some real problems with George Bush, but the alternative was just too dangerous to consider. I'm really damn sick of having to plan my vote on "Which of these clowns is going to be less dangerous to the country over the long run?"

Speaking of intel problems...

There have been bits & pieces about the Japanese 'justice' system

published and broadcast over the years; this is the most recent thing I've seen on it.

According to Valentine's testimony, hospitals and doctors were contingent on him signing a confession, in Japanese (which he could not read), that the police had not hurt him. He refused. The interrogations continued for 10 days.

According to the U.N., this sort of thing is not all that unusual. The U.N. Committee Against Torture recently criticized Japan (CAT/C/JPN/CO/1, May 18, 2007, Sections 15(c) and 17) for "the lack of appropriate and prompt medical care for individuals in police custody," and for "undue delays in provision."

I've heard of other cases like this. It's a nasty one-two: if you don't sign a confession you don't get to see a doctor or legal counsel(assuming they'll let you see a lawyer at all), etc., and if you do you're guilty and off to prison.

Not a good situation at all.

Once again we are reminded that the Clintons and their team

have little regard for the truth:

The National Archives is withholding from the public about 2,600 pages of records at President Clinton's direction, despite a public assurance by one of his top aides last month that Mr. Clinton "has not blocked the release of a single document."

The 2,600 pages, stored at Mr. Clinton's library in Arkansas, were deemed to contain "confidential advice" and, therefore, "closed" under the Presidential Records Act, an Archives spokeswoman, Susan Cooper, told The New York Sun yesterday.

All things considered, there should be a bunch of people in that group with third-degree burns on their ass from their pants so frequently bursting into flame.

When son mentioned 'tired' and 'not much sleep'

it reminded me of some of Bill Mauldins' cartoons. Like this one:























I swear, except for tools and equipment, nothing changes

In the latest example of "Oops, wrong address!"

we go to Minneapolis; Rosenberg has a good rundown of the mess, just scroll down through the posts. What I'll note here is a couple of bits from this article:
But minutes after a SWAT team entered the house about 12:30 a.m., things went awry. The homeowner, a father of six, thinking the intruders were burglars, fired at them through a bedroom wall. He hit two officers, one in the back and one in the head, but both were uninjured because they were wearing protective armor. Police shot back, but did not hit him.

Hours later, police officials were apologizing to the homeowner, Vang Khang, admitting that they had erred based on bad information from an informant.

Sound familiar?

After police interviewed Khang's family, it became clear they had no connection to the case, Huffman said. But the address listed on the warrant was the one police had gotten from the informant.

"This house was part of a package of very credible information that resulted in other successful enforcement actions," she said. "This was the end of a chain of things, and there was no reason to question the credibility of the information."

Gee, an informant giving a wrong address. Who'da thunk it?

It's been said before: when you do no-knock warrants, there is no room for error. Not in a wrong address, not in failing to check what an informant says. An honest citizen hearing his door smashed in in the night is going to assume it's bad guys and react accordingly, and the police will have no room to say "Well, he shouldn't have shot at us/failed to roll over and wet himself/scared us, then we wouldn't have killed him!" They will anyway, with great indignation, but it's bullshit. Especially when things like this turn up:
. . . . well, it's finally gone public: when the MPD SWAT cops kicked in the door of the house, owned by Vang Khang, lived in by Vang Khang, his equally Hmong wife, and their six little kids, they thought that they were raiding a black street gang.

In our continuing chronicle of (Formerly)Great Britain

circling the drain, as Lawdog says, Sod 'em, the lot of 'em.

That the place where craftsmen created the Sutton Hoo sword, where the name Sheffield meant blades as fine as could be found in the world, where sixty lousy years ago people were ready to take family antiques down from the walls to face an invader, has come to this...

So THAT'S why OnStar is so popular!

OnStar: Hello, OnStar.
Customer: Hi, I have a problem.
OnStar: How can I help, sir?
Customer: I’m…umm…27, and still a virgin.
OnStar: How old are you really, sir?
Customer: Twenty-nine?
OnStar: Sir?
Customer: Thirty-six.
OnStar: [partially off mike] Holy shit!
Customer: [muffled crying]
OnStar: OK, sir, I need you to stay with me and listen very closely. I’m going to ask you some diagnostic questions to pinpoint the problem. Do you own action figures?
Customer: Yes.
OnStar: And if your Grakthorian Troll with +12 charisma and 170 hit points were to be attacked by a gelatinous cube, what would you do?
Customer: I would don my cloak of invisibility and bypass the cube to enter the dungeons of Dalagdon.
OnStar: I think I know the answer to the next one, but they make me run down the whole list. Do you live with your mother, or a spinster aunt?
Customer: Both. [weeping]
OnStar: And how often do you masturbate?
Customer: What? Never!
OnStar: Sir.
Customer: Three times a day.
OnStar: And do you look at anime comics while you engage in self-pleasure?
Customer: How did you know?
OnStar: Thank you for your patience, sir, I think we’re just about at a solution. What I’m seeing here is that you are going to have to pay for sex. Is this Visa you have on file with us good to use?
Customer: Yeah, uh, it should be…
OnStar: Sounds good. We’ll forward your payment info on to the dispatching office. Now, what I want you to do is drive 6.2 miles north to the corner of Laurel Avenue, and wait there for a “Miss Star.” She’ll be wearing a leopard-skin skirt and an OnStar jacket. She’ll take care of you from there. All right, I just sent the detailed directions to your on-board navigation system.
Customer: Wow, thank you, OnStar! Maybe I can come thank you in person some time!
OnStar: We’d rather you didn’t.

From the Pirate Royalty

Two notes on the enemy

First, the Lose At Any Cost weenies in Congress:
Rather than apologize for falling short with their base, however, Democratic leadership aides were unapologetic, believing they need to get more Democratic senators elected so that Reid has better than a 51-49 margin to work with in 2009.

“One thing that’s painfully clear is we need more senators committed to the American people than protecting the president,” said Reid spokesman Rodell Mollineau. “Not senators who are endorsing the status quo.”
If the American people reacted more directly to your attempts to hand victory to the enemy and rape their bank accounts you'd be either sporting tar and feathers or be dangling from a rope, you canker on the ass of this country. You don't want 'senators committed to the American people": you want senators committed to your party no matter what it does to the country.

And from the meeting of world socialists in Bali:
“It is a circus here,” [stat]ed Australian scientist Dr. David Evans. Evans is making scientific presentations to delegates and journalists at the conference revealing the latest peer-reviewed studies that refute the UN’s climate claims.We now have quite a lot of evidence that carbon emissions definitely don’t cause global warming. We have the missing [human] signature [in the atmosphere], we have the IPCC models being wrong and we have the lack of a temperature going up the last 5 years,” [...] Evans authored a November 28 2007 paper ”Carbon Emissions Don’t Cause Global Warming.”
Evans touted a new peer-reviewed study by a team of scientists appearing in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society which found “Warming is naturally caused and shows no human influence.” “Most of the people here have jobs that are very well paid and they depend on the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. They are not going to be very receptive to the idea that the science has gone off in a different direction,” Evans explained.

Oh yeah, the globular warmerers are ONLY interested in pure Science, yeah.

It's ON!

About 1300 it came back on! The heater's blowing, the fridge is chilling and, since I was able to find dry ice, looks like I didn't loose anything in the freezer, all still seems frozen nice & solid.

And I get to sleep in my own bed tonight. Without freezing.

Son has been heard from,

first time in almost three weeks. Seems he's been sent(transferred? posted?) to a new location, no further information allowed at this time. Healthy and uninjured, just very busy. Hopefully more information to follow in a few days when things settle a bit.

Just hope no problem with the packages in transit following him.

I used to think a couple of Oleg Volk's posters were Updated

just a bit over the top. But the more I read about the bullcrap being planned for us in Bali, I think this one's just about right:



















Yeah, does seem to cover it.

At this point, I see that train of blue armor in Rodger's post and think "Bridge, explosives... hmmmm."

And on the front here in OK,

still no power. They seem to have cut the numbers down a lot, but haven't gotten to my street yet. Dammit.

In other news, son in Iraq's birthday was a couple of days ago. With very little room for stuff, mostly got more edibles and some birthday wishes; not many other options. When last heard from he was still working on the books(not much time for reading, busy as hell) and about to get a new vehicle. Which will hopefully not break as much as the last one. Take a vehicle like a humvee, add on a lot of armor, then add a cupola, gun, etc., on top and it really adds to the wear. Also makes the thing top-heavy and slower.

Someday OG&E will finally get around to my area and get the damn power back on. Until then I shall continue to occasionally post as opportunity arises, and try to figure out something for Christmas presents for a few people.

Stealing the identities and screwing up the lives

nobody else does.

You've got two problems here. One is the illegal aliens stealing peoples' identities. The second is the standard-issue IRS bureaucracy that for some damn reason just can't straighten out their own files on this.

Ain't it just a wonderful combination?

And before I have to give back the keyboard, Updated

Chuck Adkins is a vile, steaming pile of excuse for a man.

It's kind of hard to imagine the level of shithead, cowardice and hate it takes to write something like that.


Update: guy posting a comment at Og's place had this link; looks like the heat got just a touch warm for him, hmmmm?

On the lady who whacked the dirtbag in Colorado, Updated

what would we expect? To quote Steve,
I knew this was coming. This brave, selfless lady is going to be punished for showing up the gun control assholes. Why would you investigate a hero's employment history, looking for negative information? Why would that even occur to you? Jesus; they didn't do that to the killer. No one is digging into the termination of his McDonald's job to see if he deserved it. They didn't do it to famous scumbags like Scott Peterson and Timothy McVeigh. So why do it to a wonderful lady like Jeanne Assam? We all know the answer.

As to the "He actually killed himself, so her actions don't really count" bullshit, he about covers it:
They're even trying to take the credit away from her, telling the world the psycho she shot killed himself. Listen, she shot that little son of a bitch to pieces. "Multiple times," the story says. Thanks to Jeanne Assam, he was a helpless pile of bleeding meat when he did the world a favor and killed himself. And he was going to do it regardless; these punks always commit suicide because they don't have the spine to face justice. There was never much doubt that he would kill himself; what was uncertain was how many people would die before he did. Jeanne Assam is the reason so few died.

True words. Also, I like the idea of his celebrity pledge:
I have a suggestion, in the interest of peace and love and being green and empowering little brown people and women and being nice to all the fuzzy puppies and kitties and worshiping Mother Gaia. How about if every celebrity who supports gun control publicly signs an oath, swearing he or she will refuse the protection of any person--private citizen or public employee--armed with a gun? I mean, hell, we all saw Charlie's Angels, where they proved three unarmed girls can beat up a whole roomful of men with guns. Surely George Clooney is as much of a man as Drew Barrymore. Come on, guys. You want the rest of us to be willing to die for gun control. Here's my challenge: lead by example.

In fact, you have to swear off bodyguards too, you pansies. Come on, Clooney, you fairy. The rest of us can't afford to pay other men to supply the toughness we lack. If you want us to live your fantasy, you have to live our reality.



Update: It seems the idiots saying she was fired didn't bother to actually, oh, check the damn records.

Yes, I'm still in the dark

Shut up, Og, I mean physically.

Shut up, dammit.

Still can't get any actual information from OG&E, just 'we appreciate your patience'. Which is rapidly wearing out. I know fixing this crap takes time, I also know that being stuck with a human parrot who has no interest in even trying to give you any actual information does NOT incline you toward happy feelings toward the company.

I did notice one interesting thing today: while reportedly being super-busy clearing limbs out of the streets(which they did do) the crew also took time to put up a sign of the 'thanks to your councilman and Mayor, this street will be improved!' variety up. Right next to the stump of the street light pole that's still laying there. Just bloody wonderful.

Supposedly it's down to about 150k homes/businesses without power in the OKC area. I just wish I wasn't one of them. This is seriously inconveniencing me, which makes it a serious matter, dammit.

And, depending on which forecast you listen to, anywhere from 2-5" of snow forecast tomorrow. "Happy Holidays", bah humbug.

Still alive, and still cold

Just to add to the joy, the weather weenies are now predicting snow Friday, and lows in the low 20's Friday & Saturday nights.

Just to check I called OG&E to ask. Please note I did NOT say "When will my power be on?"; I told them my neighborhood and asked if they had any estimate when they might be getting there? Only reply: "The only estimate we can give you is that all power will be restored in seven to ten working days." Two things bother me about this: first, on Monday they were saying 'seven to ten days', and while speaking of all the extra line crews pulled in they're still saying that; second, take note of that 'seven to ten working days'. Which kind of pisses me off, because that would seem a way to add days to their count while not actually saying it.

The joys of things this time of year...

And about 20 minutes after my previous post

I joined the ranks of the powerless. Which now, in OK alone, are estimated between 600-650k.

So far, the house is chilly but I'm fine. The propane burner works very well for making tea, the lamps take care of lighting(enough, anyway). Haven't broken into the MREs yet, and probably won't need to.

I'll have to qualify my last statement that this wasn't as bad as could have been: a few degrees colder or strong winds would have made this a large-scale as opposed to a mid-scale disaster. As is it's a pain, and if I don't have power by midday tomorrow I'll get some dry ice to put in the freezer to make sure things stay frozen, and reading by oil lamps isn't much fun. Oh, and if you're travelling there are a couple of turnpikes where you'd better not need gas as the stations have no power. But this is primarily tree and line damage, as opposed to the storm in 2002 which took down power poles by the thousands; a lot faster and easier to repair. Then it took damn near two months to get power back to everyone: with the crews being pulled in from surrounding states they're currently figuring a week to ten days, quite possibly less.

Pictures and further updates will have to wait until I have time again at a place with electricity.

As you can see from the bird feeder,

it's kind of nasty outside. And this particular bit the birds are really pissed about.

You can't really tell in this shot, but it's raining again. It's kind of a pain because the temp is just low enough for it to freeze on things, but just high enough that it's melting on the carport, and the streets. If it'd go up just a couple of degrees(which it's supposed to) it'd start melting a lot of this, which would take a lot of stress off things.

'Stress' as in there's almost 200k(update: radio just said 250k) people with no power right now, and as I took a few pictures out the front door I could hear limbs breaking off trees down the street: NOT a nice thing to listen to. Most of the power lines run across the back yards on my street, where there was an alley before everyone moved their fence back a few feet, and back in late spring the electric company did a lot of pruning to clear around the lines through the neighborhood. I'm hoping it makes the difference.

The joys of winter,

and Kim's favorite weather*, the bastard.

So far the ice has been not too bad in the Oklahoma City area: icy in some spots, less so in others on the way to work this morning. I went out about nine to scrape my windows and discovered that it was thundering like a spring storm and sleeting. A bit south & east of here the freezing rain was heavier at the time, more stuff moved through during the day. Right now they're still saying more off & on light freezing rain through tomorrow, heavier in some areas. I think the big thing saving this area is that the temperature is just at or a couple of degrees below freezing; if it were, say, 28 or below we'd be screwed. As is, a lot has melted after landing on the roads, and the trees right here just have a thin coat of ice.

By the way, just in case any of the people involved read this, I'd like to pass on something you seem to have forgotten since last winter(assuming you learned it then):
DON'T HIT THE BRAKES WHEN YOU'RE GOING UP AN ICY HILL. You have this thing called 'momentum' when you start up, and if you use the brakes, you slow down. And get stuck. And EVERYBODY BEHIND YOU gets stuck, too.

There. Isn't that simple?

I'm hoping for the best out of this, which would be nasty roads but no huge power outages. I hate having no electricity anytime, winter being right up there with mid-summer for the worst times.

After thinking about things to do after last years' storm, I realized a while back that that little two-burner unit I use for bluing will work very nicely in the house for cooking if need be, and I've got one full and one mostly-full bottle that'll run it or the grill outside. Also on the 'hoping I don't need them' list: a gallon of lamp oil for the two lamps and lots of candles, half a dozen small propane bottles for the lantern, and several good wool blankets. And half a dozen big bottles of water and a case of small bottles. I've been saving bleach bottles for emergency water storage, and may fill a few more when I get home. Just in case. And food, including a case of MREs.

I think the worst weather 'event' (as the weather weenies like to put it) I've been through was in the early 70's. I got to sit up late to watch the weather in winter(that part of the state you start paying attention early) and the forecast was for "flurries, we don't think there will be much accumulation." Dad looked out the door and then called me over. Turned on his Kel-Light and shined it out front, and it was showing so hard you could barely see the trees about twenty feet from the door; he announced that it was the hardest flurry he'd ever seen.

Next morning I woke up and it was bright in the room, and my first thought was "I'm late for school!" Jumped up, looked out the window and "Oh no I'm not!" Dad's patrol car was parked at the curb, and the only thing showing was the bubble on top. The fence in the back yard was now six inches high and the dogs were wandering around. In fields around town with no drifts there was an even 36" of snow. The official record says it was only a couple of counties west of us that got that much, but I will state they're wrong. Absolutely nothing was moving, and the National Guard was called out to do helicopter drops of hay to livestock, as on most farms you couldn't even get the barn doors open, let alone a tractor or truck out. It took three days for the county to get enough graders out and working to clear streets and roads in and around Medford. Powerlines generally stayed up, not many outages, and pretty much all the farms outside of the town gas lines had their own propane or butane tanks for heat. First time I'd ever actually been able to dig a tunnel in snow.

Barring the weather weenies blowing it bigtime on conditions, this shouldn't be nearly as bad as the ice storm last year, or the one a couple of years before that: that one put three inches of ice on much of the northwest 1/4 of the state. Power lines weren't just broken, hundreds of poles broke under the stress of the ice and wind. Friend of mine had no power for almost a month.

*Of course, according to a friend in Fort Worth it was 50 and raining there today.

Normally I do my best to ignore idiot celebrities, but

George Lopez Sucks!

George Lopez Sucks!

George Lopez Sucks!

I normally would try to ignore this, too, but this is the second time he's said something along these lines.

And I really used to enjoy his stuff.

Someone should tell the GFW's

that even blue dinosaurs know how stupid 'zero tolerance' is

And you know "can take a 30-round clip" will morph to

"can possibly be modified to take a 30-round clip" and then back to "nobody needs a gun with a magazine for hunting" and then...

Here's another reason not to have 'hate crime' laws

Because when someone in a protected group commits a crime, the weenies dance around trying to decide whether it is a 'hate crime' or not.

To Maryland officious jackassesofficials: knock it off. These little dirtbags committed- at least- assault and battery, and a strong case could probably be made for attempted murder. Stop playing your damned politically-correct games and charge them with the damn crimes. And put their sorry asses in jail.

Malkin also points to this piece of dirtbag behavior and official idiocy:
A Boston firefighter is mending from what could have been deadly stab wounds he suffered early yesterday morning when he was allegedly jumped in East Boston while off duty by a group of Hispanic males who told him they “don’t want any gringo here.”

Though police are not classifying the incident as racially fueled, the Boston Police Department’s Community Disorders Unit is investigating. The 32-year-old jake, whose name officials were not releasing, is white.

Gee, bunch of latino dirtbags attack a white guy and try to murder him, saying they "don't want any gringo here"(any guesses about how many of these little bastards are illegals?), and the Boston PD is playing word games. Note to Boston PD: read the above advice to MA idiots like yourselves.

I'm sure you've heard of the 'puppets' comment

by Sen. Harry Reid(Backstabber-NV), and the response from Sen. Arlen Specter(Two-Faced Weenie-PA). I just love it that after all the crap he's pulled over time, Specter gets so bent out of shape(in a very dignified, senatorial way, of course) over this. Besides that, his response was lame. The PROPER response would be something like:
"That's very interesting. Senator Reid has the hand of George Soros so far up his ass it's tickling his tonsils, and he calls someone else a puppet? Interesting."

"We should be more like England and Canada and Europe:

Things are so much better there!"

George MacFarlane, the Fredericton shopkeeper who discharged his shotgun at departing thieves, should count himself lucky. Found guilty of careless use of a firearm, he's been ordered to take an "anger-management" course (though, in truth, he seems to manage his anger with an impressively cool efficiency). In England, by contrast, a Norfolk farmer who did exactly as Mr. MacFarlane did in exactly the same circumstances (he'd suffered repeated break-ins) now finds himself charged with murder. His victim, a teenage burglar from Nottingham who practised his profession assiduously throughout the English Midlands and East Anglia, was described by his tearful mum as a "lovable rogue" with many redeeming qualities: for example, "he would never steal from the family."

Though different in degree, both prosecutions reflect the long-held principle that the Crown should have a monopoly on law enforcement: Relax, goes the argument; the Mounties always they get their man -- i.e., leave it to the professionals. But in practice, in both Canada and Britain, the professionals find it easier to get you instead.

In France?

Frederic Pons, the editor of Valeurs Actuelles, a magazine where Anne-Lorraine had worked as an intern, wrote on the magazine's blog: "When will this rapist with his knife leave prison? After 8, 10, 15 years? Our society must pluck up the courage to remove him from society once and for all. If we do not do this the fathers, the brothers, the uncles will. In the name of justified violence."

The next day Mr. Pons removed his post from his blog. His text was deemed an incitement to violence. It is taboo in Europe to say that if the state fails to protect the citizens, the citizens should do so themselves. There is no Second Amendment in Europe. Even European politicians from the so-called "right," like Mr. Sarkozy, are horrified at the suggestion that citizens should be allowed to protect themselves against criminals. Last year, Mr. Sarkozy told French radio: "Security is the responsibility of the state. I am against the private ownership of firearms. If you are assaulted by an armed burglar, he will use his weapon more effectively than you anyway, so you are risking your life."

Kevin pointed this out in a comment the other day, and it's a truly disgusting example of "Let the State take care of you. Or else." If you are assaulted by an armed burglar, he will use his weapon more effectively than you anyway, so you are risking your life. DAMN it. Mr. Sarkozy, when you're attacked by an 'armed burglar', your life is ALREADY IN DANGER! How the HELL could you make it worse by using a weapon to defend yourself?

Frickin' stupid, dumbass, statist,(mumble, mumble...)

Dumbass legislators are to be found everywhere,

even here.
In response to recent announcements regarding a proposal to make English the official language of the state of Oklahoma, Senator Jeff Rabon on Thursday said he will do everything in his power to ensure such a measure would not win the approval of the Senate.
...
“I feel like this highlights an intolerance and insensitivity to our history and background,” said Rabon, D-Hugo.
...
"We have folks here from all over the world, but we also have more than 40 Indian tribes all with their own unique language. I think we ought to be going the other direction and doing more to honor and highlight the fact that we have so many sovereign nations with their own languages and cultures.”

Left unspoken is how many languages he things drivers license tests should be given in, how many languages voting ballots should be printed in, etc.

Ever read any of the Man-Kzin Wars books?

If not, check them out. Very short version of the beginning:
Distant future, the world is run by the UN: it is THE World Government in all ways. Including the maintenance of and- very vital point here- the teaching of history. It had been determined that it was a Bad Thing for the peasantspeople to have unfettered access to history as They Will Get Bad Ideas.

So all history taught in schools has been edited and rewritten to serve the purposes of the UN. There were never any wars, no, just occasional international arguments back in the inefficient days of national sovereignty(which was done away with very quickly as the UN is so much better); weapons? no, just misused tools; and the only time people are violent is when they have a mental disturbance and need treatment. Competitive games have pretty much been done away with because people who compete and try to win are more difficult to controlguide in the proper paths of life. And anyone who discovers something of past history or turns out to be unwilling to be properly guided disappears into prison camps where they can't infect others.

What's one of the essentials to even approach, let alone run, such a system? Control- as close to absolute as possible- of information. So the UN controls the phones, the data networks, all of it, with constant monitoring for words or phrases that might indicate someone stepping off the reservation. Someone gets caught at such, reaction ranges from a visit from a 'counselor' to nudge them back to the correct thought patterns to a warning to you being packed away.

What brought this to mind was a comment on a radio show a bit ago about all the 'using your cell phone will give you cancer'-type warnings. Somebody said you could make an argument that some people don't want us using a lot of our communications systems so much because it means we're passing information along without it being approved.

Possible? Hell, anything is if you're willing to argue it. Likely? In this case I don't think so. But something that is not 'likely' but is happening is attempts to control this here innernets. The UN keeps having hearings about how they should be in overall control, and I do not believe they have our own good in mind. Just like they want all personal firearms banned(only Minions of Government should be allowed such things), the bureaucrats and wannabe-tyrants want our information controlled. And our communications. And they've got lots of buttmonkeys who want to help.

Like all those 'professional journalists' who get in such a snit over blogs. We aren't one of Them, so we cannot be trusted to handle information properly. Of course, their idea of 'properly' means "We decide what you need to hear about, and in what form, and with what slant." So having a bunch of unlettered commonersuntrained non-journalists digging things up and passing information around and factchecking the ass of the 'professionals' just Should Not Be Done. Or rather, Should Not Be Allowed. After all, we don't have the 'layers of editors'(who either don't know their ass from a hole in the ground or have a viewpoint to push), we don't have the 'training in ethics'(which doesn't keep them from violating those ethics on a regular basis, and defending themselves and their cohorts for doing so). And having the UN, which is also so 'progressive'-minded, in charge of the net would be quite helpful.

Added: managed to locate this:

Q: Do you think technology is changing [journalism]? That a good reporter will always find a venue because there are so many media outlets now?

Thomas: No, but I do think it is kind of sad when everybody who owns a laptop thinks they're a journalist and doesn't understand the ethics. We do have to have some sense of what's right and wrong in this job. Of how far we can go. We don't make accusations without absolute proof. We're not prosecutors. We don't assume.

Q: So if there's this amateur league of journalists out there, trying to do what you do...

Thomas: It's dangerous.

So are you, you sorry old bitch.

And let us not forget the islamists. They hate and detest the UN and all the other boards and committees of modern society, but they're quite happy to use them. They take the standard "Anything bad said about any muslim or act thereof is proof you are a racist/bigot/want to destroy Islam!" and run with it to the EU Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security or the Canadian “Human Rights Commissions” to screw over anybody who dares to speak in any way they don't like.

Do I think the UN would love to control and censor the use of the internet? Hell, yes, just like they want ownership of arms banned. Would a lot of journalists like it? Hell, yes. And a lot of national governments have been working at in on their own, usually in connection with some version of 'human rights and hate crimes' bullcrap from the EU, the UN or both. In Canada, quoting a passage from the Bible that offends someone can get you jailed. Mark Steyn has their damned 'Human Rights Council' trying to figure a way to, metaphorically or literally, keelhaul him for daring to write something that upsets the islamists. And the terminally PC go running right along with it; after all, to them 'free speech' means 'speech which we approve of and doesn't hurt the feelings of any protected species', and since they can't get everyone to agree to censor themselves, it's necessary to have the government do it.

Long ago in the 'citizen journalist vs. professional' arguments someone pointed out that bloggers are like the pamphleteers of the Revolutionary War. As a general thing I like being associated with such: just as they drove the British authorities to fury, we collectively- and some in particular- do the same to governments and tyrants- current, wannabe and information type- worldwide. Because one man or woman standing on a soapbox or doorstep telling people about something has a quite small audience, and is fairly easy to shut up if a government or thugs so decide; someone with a digital soapbox calling journalists and politicians to account and spreading information has a much larger audience and is NOT easy to shut up.

And I like that.

Ah, yes, the UN is considering

both sides:

The United Nations has rejected all attempts by a group of dissenting scientists seeking to present information at the climate change conference taking place in Bali, Indonesia.

The International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) has been denied the opportunity to present at panel discussions, side events, and exhibits; its members were denied press credentials. The group consists of distinguished scientists from Africa, Australia, India, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

"We are fair and seek all information on matters. Except that which doesn't agree with us."

A group of reporters representing the conservative newspaper Environment & Climate News were refused press credentials to attend the U.N.’s climate change meeting in Bali this week.

That wonderful UN at work protecting you. From information and reporting that doesn't go along with them.

Well said, Phelps!

Well said!
"Well. Let me break it down for you, Duhrlene. If you — my servant — are going to pass a law — and enforce that law using guns — and that law makes me and my fellow permit-holding constituants (who as I mentioned are more law abiding than the average person) so pissed off that we decide to shoot you dead over it — don’t you think that maybe, just maybe, you should rethink your position on that law?"

I realize this probably comes under what Uncle refers to as 'scaring the white people', but... I'm sick to death of being told I practically have to crawl on my belly saying "Please listen, master!" when I speak to or write to a politician. So right now, I really don't care.

Further evidence- as if it was needed- that the government of Iran

is a canker on the ass of humanity, controlled by mentally diseased men who hate the very concept of individual rights and fear women so much that they do things like this:
Violence against women is the only sphere where there is no discrimination between men and women. If anything, there is a policy of reverse discrimination, and women are treated more viciously. The mullahs show a particular vengeance towards women who become politically active and join the resistance. Tens of thousands have been arrested on political charges and severely tortured and executed. Many have died under torture. One method is particularly revealing: the Pasdaran (Guards Corps) fire a single bullet into the womb of the condemned women political prisoners, leaving them to bleed to death in a slow process of excruciating pain. Even pregnant women have not been spared. Hundreds, including Massoumeh Qajar-Azdanloo, Azar Reza'i, Zahra Nozari, Nayyereh Khosravi and Parvin Mostofi, have been executed with their unborn children.

And this, just in case you need something else to get your blood pressure spiking:
According to a "religious" decree, virgin women prisoners must as a rule be raped before their execution, "lest they go to Paradise." Therefore, the night before execution, a Guard rapes the condemned woman. After her execution, the religious judge at the prison writes out a marriage certificate and sends it to the victim's family, along with a box of sweets. In a written confession in January 1990, Sarmast Akhlaq Tabandeh, a senior Guards Corps interrogator, recounted one such case in Shiraz prison: "Flora Owrangi, an acquaintance of one of my friends was one such victim. The night before her execution, the resident mullah in the prison conducted a lottery among the members of the firing squads and prison officials to determine who would rape her. She was then forcibly injected with anesthesia ampoules, after which she was raped. The next day, after she was executed, the mullah in charge wrote a marriage certificate and the Guard who raped her took that along with a box of sweets to her parents."

What was it Tam said, something about self-immolating neolithic goatherds?

Unfortunately, I can't credit those who led me to this properly: it was a 'somebody linked to this which mentioned this which led to this which-' things. Which also led to something I didn't lose track of:
Now imagine how many women would report a rape if she needed 4 male witnesses or 8 female witnesses to the act! If you had to take a guess, how many rapes are committed within eyeshot of so many witnesses? I doubt that there are 1 in a hundred, unless of course you count the 8 Muslim men doing the raping since they love to gang-rape their victims. Even more: how many victims would come forward if they knew that they themselves would be prosecuted for having sex outside of marriage if they couldn't prove the rape? And more: how many would come forward if they knew that they themselves would be hanged if they couldn't prove they were raped?

My label of 'Downright Disgusting' doesn't even begin to cover it.

It does make the point, doesn't it?

Oleg has a way with camera and words, do he not?

Oh, joy,

'tis the season, and all that

Night Slight Chc Showers Lo 48°F

Saturday Mostly Cloudy Hi 65°F

Saturday Night Chance Rain Lo 33°F

Sunday Chance Rain Hi 33°F

Sunday Night Chance FzgRain Lo 29°F

Followed by:
Monday: A chance of freezing rain or rain. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 37. Chance of precipitation is 40%.

Monday Night: A chance of freezing rain or rain. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 32. Chance of precipitation is 40%.

Which means it's either be a bit wet and cold, or things will get nasty. After all, this is more than 24 hours away, so only God knows what it'll actually do.

And He's not talking.

Good dogs are protective of their pack,

they're supposed to be. And if you're stupid enough to do this, you deserve to receive toothmarks.
The gardener, Giovanni Rivera, was attacked in June by a German shepherd named Congo and four other dogs at a Princeton home where he did landscaping. Charges were filed against the family who owned the dogs, and Rivera received an insurance settlement of $250,000...

James [the owner of Congo] contends the men showed up early when the dogs were eating, and disregarded his calls for them to stay in their vehicle. He said Congo attacked Rivera after the panicked gardener grabbed his wife from behind and pulled her down, causing her to scream.

I read the article, and found these little nuggets:
Much of the public discussion has centered on Rivera's immigration status. Neither Riechelson, the James family, their lawyer, or the prosecutor said they know whether Rivera is here legally, nor do they care, saying that it wasn't relevant to the case. (bold mine)

Otis described some of the comments directed at Rivera as "very disturbing" and questioned whether public opinion would be different if the victim had been a child or a non-immigrant.

That thought was echoed by some Hispanic immigrants in Princeton.

"Maybe they would have killed the dog already," said Oscar, a Guatemalan immigrant who didn't want to give his full name because he's in the country illegally. "This country values Americans."

Why, yes, jackass, we DO value Americans. More than illegal aliens, most of us. Deal with it. As to the rest, gee, I wonder if, possibly being here illegally and- like many such- not being too good with English, maybe Mr. Rivera didn't understand when the homeowner said "Stay in the truck"? Hmmm, it is to ponder...

Years ago when Wife #1 and I bought our first house, we got a dog. Near as we could tell was half either Lab or Weimeraner and half (probably) Springer Spaniel. Solid black, long fur like a Springer, smart and very protective. One day we were working on lunch when the dog started barking. First it was "One of those people is here" barking, which meant meter reader. Then it changed to "YOU are not supposed to be here!" barking. Serious barking. Wife went out to see as I had my hands full and about five seconds after she went out I heard her say "Just read it and get out!"

And then the dog went nuts. This wasn't just warning barking anymore, it was "You're dead meat!" snarling. I hit the door at a run and discovered an interesting little tableau:
Wife holding dog by collar.
Meter reader holding a piece of 2x4 about two feet long, waving it at the dog.
Dog dragging wife forward.
I found out later this idiot, instead of reading the meter and walking out when the dog barked at him- like every other reader did- picked up the 2x4 and shook it at him. That violated Rule #1 of dog/meter reader etiquette, causing the 'get out' barking. And then, when wife grabbed the collar and told the idiot to finish up and leave, he actually took a step toward them and shook the board again. Dog took this to mean "Normal rules do not apply to this two-leg, he's threatening the alpha female!" and he went into full defend-the-pack mode.

This dog weighed about 40 pounds as I recall and, as I say, was dragging my 110lb. wife forward as he tried to reach the idiot. I tackled the dog, wrapped both arms around him and held on. After a few moments he stopped trying to get loose as he realized the boss didn't want him to chew up the intruder(I didn't want to add any more yelling to the situation), and alpha female was running the intruder out. With loud and abusive words.

Idiot left, wife went in to call the electric company, and I sat there telling the dog he'd done good protecting her, but it was time to calm down now. Which he did.

Bad thing about the aftermath was that forevermore he would not let anybody he didn't know in without challenge; idiot had broken all the rules and all meter readers were now considered suspect.

But nobody, nobody, ever tried to get into our yard without permission.


Oh, later found out they'd had several complaints about this idiot and he wound up being fired. Do not be a meter reader if you can't deal with dogs: they're supposed to protect their territory.

I wonder if this stuff will stay in Obama's upfront message,

or if it'll disappear until after he's(he hopes) elected?
MANCHESTER, NH—Senator Barack Obama today will issue a “Call to Serve” and detail his commitment to making national service an important cause of his presidency in a major policy address at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa.

In his campaign, Obama has enlisted hundreds of thousands of Americans to join him in working for change that America can believe in. As President, Obama will increase opportunities for Americans of all ages to serve their country. In his remarks, Obama plans to discuss his personal experience in public service, as well as his plan to call on Americans from all walks of life to serve and to build an architecture that focuses their service toward achieving leading national goals.

Yes, Comrade Stalin, a wonderful idea! They will serve the party- er, Motherland!country!

Among all the 'double the size of' and 'new agencies' and so on, there's this:
* Establish a goal of having middle and high-schoolers contribute at least 50 hours a week to community service, and reach that goal through national guidelines for service-learning and additional resources for schools to develop successful programs.

I don't give a rats ass if that's a misprint and it's actually '5' hours, this is the same kind of crap we heard at previous elections along the lines of "I will require students complete x hours of volunteer service or they don't get their diploma." That's not 'voluntary service' and this isn't 'community service', it's involuntary servitude. You socialist bastard.

Read the whole damn thing. Doesn't it sound like, with slight rewording, it could've come out of the Soviet Union? Or something you'd expect to hear from the PRC today?

No wonder he wants us all disarmed.

Word of this bullcrap found thanks to Our Lady of the Thong.

Range day, loads tested

Had a chance to hit the outdoor range today, partly just for fun and partly to try out those cast bullet loads I mentioned the other day.

With my standard DISCLAIMER: these loads work well for me in my firearms: they may not in some others. Use at your OWN PERIL, I'll pass on the loads.
#1 7.62x54r is Hotshot or Prvi Partisan brass I picked up at the range a while back(can't tell which), 150-grain RCBS flatnose gas-checked bullet and 16.0 grains of 2400 powder. Bullet seated up to the crimp groove and lightly crimped.
#2 Same brass, 110-grain Lyman spitzer gas-checked bullet, same powder charge.

This is the same load I dug up a couple of years(with the 150-grain bullet) ago for .30-06. With 7.62x54r being pretty close in case capacity, also being a strong bolt-action rifle and with this being a mild practice load, I tried it. Quite good results in both, and with both bullets in 7.62. I had to set the rear sight at the 400-meter mark on the M39- interestingly, same setting in yards on the 1903- to put it dead on at 50 yards. At 100, had to move the sights- on both- up to about 550. In the M39 this had the 150-grain bullets grouping right at the top edge of the 6" bull with a 6 o'clock hold, and this load gave groups averaging about 2". Which is pretty good for a .309" bullet going through a .310 bore. The 110-grain bullet hit a little higher but didn't group nearly as well. For practice out to 50 either would do nicely. Low recoil and good accuracy, what more could you ask for?

I also tried something out in .22. While back I mentioned I was going to get some match-grade ammo to try out in the Martini and see just what a difference it made; Sportsman's Warehouse carries some, the Eley Match EPS* to be specific, and I got a box last time I was there.

Eley has come up with a bullet design for their match stuff: flat nose with a flat-tip spike in the center. Undoubtedly some engineers and ballistics experts sweated coming up with and testing this design, it's what they use in their best match ammo, and the grade or two below.

I'll point out, as evidence that the 'grade or two below' probably consists of ammo that didn't meet the specs for the Ultimate, that the noses on the ammo were not real consistent: some had low, badly-defined spikes and slightly rounded corners on the point.

How'd it do? If I did my part, it gave 1.5 to 1.75" groups at 100 yards. Which ain't bad, except that Eley Sport and Federal Champion will do the same out of this rifle at MUCH less cost. The Match cost $12 for a box: Sport runs about $2 now and the Federal about $1.50. The Match may have been a touch more consistent, but not nearly enough to be worth the difference in price. Some day when I run across some of the Ultimate I may pick up a box of it to try, see if it gives enough of a better result to be worth keeping some around, but it's not something I'm going to go digging for. Not at $15/box


*All they had was the Match, and unless I'm sending an order to Midway or someplace so I can add a box on, I'm not ordering the stuff. Not just a box to try out.

There may always be an England,

but it ain't gonna be the same place.

A grandfather has been given a prison sentence for racial harassment after calling a Welsh woman "English".

Mick Forsythe used the term during an argument over a scratched car in his Welsh home town.

He called the vehicle's owner, Lorna Steele, an "English bitch".

She and her husband took great offence at the jibe and decided to take him to court.

The 55-year-old former lorry driver was found guilty of racially aggravated disorderly behaviour, and received a ten-week prison sentence suspended for 12 months.

You know, I've been known to make comments about the cursed sassenach and other such statements of endearment(especially when wearing a kilt), but I never, even in my most whiskey-addled weird moments considered English(or Scots or Irish or whatever) a 'race'.

Just flat freakin' amazing.

Said a while back, takes everyone from the drivers to the

dishwashers to the mechanics to the shooters to fight a war. And to quote McQ, Bravery isn’t just found in a firefight.
When he saw the tail fin of the RPG round, he yelled, "everybody get out!"

"I had never even seen an RPG before, but I figured anything with a rod and fins on it had to be a rocket of some kind."

Oh asked for volunteers to stay in the operating room and help him save Moss's life. Several soldiers raised their hands.

Go. Read.

If I were Jewish

I'd buy a second menorah. One that used big candles. BIG ones. 'Why are peasants carrying torches in that house?' big. Friggin' idiots.

Totally unconnected- except for the fact that it concerns more friggin' idiots who, in this case, should be fired after being caned in the hallway outside the personnel office- are these clowns in our 'intelligence' community. After they were caned and thrown out the door there could be an announcement: "Your job is to provide information and, when asked for, estimates. NOT to decide what information the administration gets, NOT how to 'slant' it, NOT to use your position to push your own political views. We've got a lot more rattan sticks, people, don't make us use them."

Added: I just saw this and, since I'm on the subject of friggin' idiots, Mr. Stephen Smith has to enter the listing.
"And when you look at the internet business, what's dangerous about it is that people who are clearly unqualified get to disseminate their piece to the masses. I respect the journalism industry, and the fact of the matter is ...someone with no training should not be allowed to have any kind of format whatsoever to disseminate to the masses to the level which they can. They are not trained. Not experts." Bold mine.

Ah, yes, the 'experts'. Mr. Smith, we've gotten tired of the 'expertise' of the clowns in your industy, which is a large reason why us bloggers say mean things about you. And try to correct the errors you 'experts' throw at us, and the slanted and edited information. And make fun of you, you friggin' idiot.

See how easy 'journalism' is?

It has truly been said:

There is no cure for stupid.

Nothing non-permanent, anyhow.

And in other news,

one of the dollar stores nearby has a shelf of carb & choke cleaner, 19oz. spray cans, for a buck.

Yes, I AM going back tomorrow.

It's the CAIR Mo-bear!

Mohammed Bear - Mohammed Bear fools all the other Bears (except Dhimmi Bear who is forced) into believing he is Holy. His followers go on to continually divide and harass the world while claiming to be victims. What a tricksey Bear he is!

Check out the other CAIR Bears!

Now, this is downright cool!

A dinosaur that was partly mummified instead of petrified:
Although the first dinosaur mummy was found a century ago, the newly described fossil is striking because it contains soft tissues from the original beast.

The remains of the uncollapsed skin envelope of the tail, arm, and legs of the Hadrosaur were uncovered in a rocky tomb in North Dakota to reveal fossilised skin and tendons that, under the gaze of an advanced scanner, provide a unique and tantalising glimpse of the 3D innards of a dinosaur.

All kinds of interesting things out of this. The changes in how this thing looked sounds like something a Drake character said in Time Safari: that so much of what we 'know' about extinct species is based on guesswork that damn near all of it is subject to change the moment we find something that gives more hard information. For instance, now it's been decided that T-Rex was relatively slow and some argue he was mostly a scavenger; what if it turns out there was something about his structure that allowed him to run faster than we think from looking at the fossils?

Lots of interesting things to come in the future, I have no doubt.