The 'Justice' System of Philadelphia

Remember the bit in this post Friday on the guy who dared defend himself and girlfriend from a jerk who turned out to be related to cops? Well, it gets even worse:

Eight days later, on April 13, Westberry was surprised to see Eberhart and two special agents with the state Attorney General's Gun Violence Task Force at his front door. They asked to see his guns. An avid gun collector, Westberry had 40 guns, all legal, all registered and all locked up.

"I'm thinking they just want to verify the serial numbers, verify that everything I own is legit," Westberry said.

But they confiscated his guns and said that they had a warrant for his arrest.

Got that? His REGISTERED firearms were CONFISCATED as a result of this bogus arrest. Because the dude who sucker-punched him was related to cops, he was put through the ringer. And because his guns were registered, they were easy pickings for an overzealous cop with an axe to grind and a badge to hide behind.

And his chances of getting his stolen property(because realistically that's what it is) back? In MA? Probably about zero.

Note: corrected this, was pointed out I messed up in originally thinking it was in the PRM.

I'm going to ste- borrow a chunk of this from Correia,

because it's too good not to:
Al Gore screamed when he saw the evil snowmen rampaging. “They’re terrifying, what with their eyes made of coal. Coal is a leading cause of green house gases, just behind farting cows. However, I am glad to see that they are using biodegradable materials such as carrots for noses.”

Tim pimp slapped Al Gore. “Get a hold of yourself, man!” He thought better of it, and slapped Al Gore again, just because it was kind of fun.

“What can I do to help stop this terrible army of evil snowmen?” Al Gore asked. “Anything. Just please make them go away!”

“I need you to let global warming happen!” Tim said. “Rising temperatures will cause Stabby and his army to melt. We might not be able to save Christmas this year, but we can still save humanity. I’d rather be farming Greenland than impaled on a giant icicle.”

Al Gore grew quiet. “Uhm… well… that may be a bit of a problem…”

“What?” Tim cried. Outside the snowmen were building a siege engine.

“Yeah… that global warming thing. We… uh… we made it up… The data was all fabricated. I… uh… I just wanted to be important. And I used the money to buy a rockin’ private jet. You must have missed that thing with the e-mails.”

“But… but you won the Nobel Prize!” Tim gasped.

Al Gore laughed. “Are you kidding? Haven’t you been paying attention? They give those things out in Happy Meals now!”

***

From Chapter 7.

Sally Love-Interest screamed in terror as Tim stumbled into the mall. “Tim! You’re covered in blood!”

“Don’t worry, it’s from Al Gore,” Tim answered quickly. That Stabby sure lived up to his name.

Why I despise Bill Gates and some other hugely wealthy people

Because he makes speeches like this about why the death tax should be as high as possible, while
From all published accounts, Gates Sr. has it set up to give 90% of his wealth to a few pre-selected charities upon his death. The other 10% would go to individuals.

Now whether that remaining 10% would put any of those individuals over the $7M mark is unknown to me, but if he truly thought that giving the government 45% of the wealth you acquired throughout your life via the Death Tax, why would he have would he have his fortune split up like that?
Because he's one more fucking hypocrite like the late Swimmer Kennedy who thinks YOU should have to pay the death tax while HE'S busy hiding the money away in ways and places to keep it from being so taxed.

This just in: Sen. Nelson is an expensive whore,

just like Landrieu.

I hope this bastard gets hung by the short & curlies when he gets back to Nebraska.

About that mention of the wonderful 'pointing' in the Model M design

I mentioned a couple of days ago, here's the target in question:
The three big holes are from something else, ignore them(please!). The point of interest here is that tight cluster at the top of the 'shoot here' oval with two a little low. That's seventeen rounds at about ten-twelve feet, six of them fired as fast pairs from low-ready. In this case the light at the range was such I could get just a hint of 'bright' off the front sight, which helped.

Did I mention I really like this pistol?

Which brings me to something else. A while back Tam mentioned him, and it occurred to me that while I've read magazine articles and blog posts I'd never read any of Massad Ayoob's books. And I had a gift card for Borders. And they had a copy of Combat Handgunnery, so...

Very good book, but the part I want to concentrate on is his chapter that includes his advice on point-shooting. Two things here:
First, his advice is 'Don't'.
Second, an interesting difference from how he describes things and how I'd thought of it before.
I've mentioned before that the way I was taught(damn, that was a while back) was that at close range you had the piece close to you, moving it further out- and going to two hands as soon as possible- as range increased for greater accuracy, similar to what's shown in the pictures I posted here from Bill Jordan's book. I never thought of it as 'unaimed' fire, just 'fire without using the sights'. Ayoob, as I recall, described point-shooting as 'unaimed fire', with shots fired with the gun far enough forward that you can see it(especially the front sight), and reference it to the target as 'aimed fire'. Which got me thinking.

For all but the closest range- with the gun right at your hip- you can see it, way down in your field of vision(yes, I need pictures; later on, when I have someone to work the camera, I'll take some) which lets you reference it to the target, which by Ayoob's definition means you're aiming*. So I did a bit of messing with this: I started with a target about 5-8 feet out(this is a close-range thing), drew slowly and made a point of noting the pistol low in my field of view as well as the spot on the target I was aiming at, and fired. Repeat a bunch of times(I was using the .22 conversion for this to keep costs down, and also did a bunch of dry-firing).

Damn, working at it this way makes a difference! I could point-shoot fairly well before(when in practice at it, had been doing a lot less of it than in the past), but this made a definite improvement. By training to note the gun, it's position and the target when shooting slowly, you build the reflexes to do it without having to consciously think about it. Which means you're making aimed shots without looking with/over the sights at close range.** And my accuracy improved in this style of firing.

I do not argue, at all, Use The Sights. I do think that practicing point-shooting for very close and fast situations is something very good to do; having more tools in the box(tools that you've practiced using) is a Good Thing.

Something else: after reading Tam and others writing about the Super Kung-Fu Grip they learned from Jarrett, it rang a bell. Something I'd read about Jordan years ago popped up: a guy had a picture of him shooting on a timer pointed out that you could see the tension in his hand and arm, that his body was locked to support the shot(one-handed with a .357 Mag in something like 1/4 second, including draw!). Somehow, over time, I'd forgotten that. And in the book Ayoob makes specific point of the 'tight as you can' hold. So I started tightening up my grip; and yeah, that helps too. A lot, especially in rapid fire.


*Ayoob is very specific that you should always get the piece up far enough that the sights, mainly the front sight, is in your vision on the target. And I'm not arguing against that. I'm talking about close-up/low-light/fast situations.
**Repeating, whenever possible always use the sights, much better for a variety of reasons.

Doubletapper has a post on Chanukah

that contains this paragraph that strikes me very strongly:
When the Macabees went out to battle, they had no feasible chance of winning. Not only were the Jews fewer and weaker than the well-oiled Syrian Greek war machine, but amongst the Jews themselves, only a sparse few went out to battle under the command of Juda Macabee and his brothers. Thus the essential miracle of Chanukah was not the war victory, but rather the very fact that a few Jews realized that "things just cannot go on this way", they arose, and with immense faith in the Almighty, and in an act of incredible courage, declared war on the superpower of their day. Think of it like the movie the 300, except that the Jews didn't lose!*

The whole post is here.

*being picky, in real life the Spartans were, on the last day, fighting a holding action to give the rest of the Greek army time to retreat to fight another day, and they succeeded. It was a very real victory for which they paid with their lives. Which changes the point of the Chanukah story not at all, I just had to throw it in.

One of the dirtbag portions of the Health Care Takeover Bill

is the 'Cadillac tax' on, to put it plainly, 'insurance plans we think cost too much or benefit the holder too much'; with that decision, of course, being made by a bunch of corrupt politicians desperate to A: get more of our money and B: control our health care. Looking over at Megan McArdle's blog(I think she's a moron to want carbon taxes and that other crap, but that's another post) she has this post on these planned taxes. Among the things she points out.
The levy has been dubbed the Cadillac tax," but research shows it would likely affect a broad swath of Americans regardless of their income, which could indeed amount to the tax on the middle-class that President Obama promised would not happen under his administration. The tax is a growing source of anxiety for Huber and his co-workers, but also for Democrats in the House, who vow to strip the measure out of the bill in conference or consider bringing the bill down altogether.
'Amount to'? It IS one of the increased taxes- or in this case added taxes- Obama promised he would not enact. Which a lot of people said he was lying about when he made said promise(nice to be right, but-). But back to the point.

At the time, Obama said he did not want the tax to hit middle-class families, but when the proposal emerged from the Senate Finance Committee in September, it proposed charging insurance companies and a 40 percent excise tax for high-dollar, but not exactly gold-plated plans. The bill now calls for the tax to apply to plans exceeding $8,500 for individuals and $23,000 for families, for the cost of combining health savings accounts, medical, prescription drugs, dental, vision, etc.. The tax is charged to insurance companies, but it is widely assumed they would passed it on to employers.
They will, because they don't have a choice; they can't simply swallow that. Oh, and for anyone who says "They make too much money, force them to eat it!", well, not only do their profits go down- a LOT- but every pension plan out there that has money invested in those companies, which means every man and woman in that plan, loses(You want to be the one informing those people "Your pension just lost 'X' in value because of the increased government taxes on the companies you're invested in" ? And just how do you think they'll react? Which is a different post).

And if they're not allowed to pass that cost on? They'll probably cut the plans for the next year, or do something else that reduces the benefits and/or ups the costs.

This next paragraph contains something that just pisses me off no end:
Despite the politically powerful unions that oppose it, the tax is enormously attractive to government economists because it both raises revenue -- $149 billion over ten years -- and should depress the rate of health care inflation by discouraging companies from offering more generous health plans. The Joint Committee on Taxation and the CBO credit the tax as the largest factor in "bending the cost curve" and cutting the federal deficit, as the Senate bill is expected to do.
Just what the HELL business is it of these bastards what insurance plan I'm offered at the place I work? Who the FUCK are they to say "This is too good a plan, so we're going to tax it" ? This is nothing but a means of forcing companies to either cut to crappy plans people will want out of or to force companies to drop it altogether, forcing people onto the socialized medicine plan.

If the place where I work considers its employees valuable enough to offer a really good health plan and is profitable enough to afford such, IT IS NONE OF OBAMA'S BUSINESS, it is none of Pelosi or Reid's business. Hell, they ought to be happy, IF their actual concern is simply the health of those people. But this tends to prove that that's not their real concern; their real concern is government control of all health care and to hell with the people it screws. This is nothing but a way to, again, steal more money from people under color of law and to FORCE people onto a government-run health care scheme.

Christina Romer, a senior economic adviser to the president, predicted in October that the tax would encourage, "both employers and employees to be more watchful health care consumers." But research released last week by Mercer, an employee benefits consulting firm, showed that in addition to considering lower cost plans, two-thirds of companies polled said they would also raise health care costs for workers through higher co-pays and deductibles, regardless of whether the employee is a CEO or a line worker at a factory.
You man that line worker that Obama promised would face no tax increases under his benevolent rule? Who now gets to 'choose' a crappier health plan because the God-damned politicians and bureaucrats want more of his money? Gee, that's a winning idea, isn't it?

"We have an agreement!(that doesn't actually

mean anything)

The Annointed One(funny how Chavez still says the President stinks of sulphur) was just heard on the radio announcing the 'agreement' from Copenhagen. Basically, "It's not legally binding, but it allows people to talk, there's no actual monitoring but it does move us forward" blah etc. freaking blah. Added: Ah, here we are!

So they decided they'd look like even bigger fools than they already do if they didn't come to SOME agreement. Especially The Obama couldn't come back from meeting the EUnuchs & Co. once more with no win. So the 'agreement'. I'm going to borrow a chunk from Roger Simon:
On the last day of COP 15, staring at a Jumbotron where Hugo Chavez was addressing the conference, something was nagging at me besides the obvious (that half the audience was enthusiastically applauding a maniac). I was trying to figure out what it was about the conference that so perplexed and disturbed. And then, before the Caudillo had concluded his tedious remarks and long before the “meaningful deal” between the world leaders was announced, I realized what it was. We had returned to the Middle Ages.

A high tech Middle Ages, of course, but still the Middle Ages. Forget the Renaissance, forget the Enlightenment, forget Spinoza, Locke, Galileo and everybody else, we had returned to our roots as gullible and idiotic human beings, as willing to believe in the primacy of anthropogenic global warming as we would in the sighting of the Madonna at a river crossing twelve kilometers south of Sienna in 1340.

And this even after the revelation of the Climategate emails and documents, not to mention the further revelations about the manipulation of Russian climate data with NOAA and NASA themselves complicit. No, the show must go on. The UN Pope had convened the College of Cardinals in Copenhagen. Everyone must attend, including the Princes of Macedonia and the President of Tuvalu.

Not that anyone believed it.

Except perhaps the earnest young woman from Mother Jones, I watched question, in a style reminiscent of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, some Republican House Members at a press conference, demanding to know if they believed in man-made global warming.

The 'four horsemen'? Kerry, you are a freaking moron; doesn't matter how much money you have, that won't change.

China's saying "No, you can't monitor our pollution, we'll tell you what you need to know", Chavez and that moron who's murdering Zimbabwe are standing around saying "Where's our case, you dirty capitalists?" and the socialists are all agreeing "It's a wonderful agreement, since we don't have to actually do anything except have more meetings and I get paid for doing those and have the use of the jet and limo." Yeah. Hope and Change from the True Believers of AGW*.


*That is, the few who actually do; I'm just lumping in the power-grabbers along with the useful idiots.

Indianapolis imports a gun-grabbing 'public safety director' from

(ta-daaa!) New Effing York:
"My own personal perspective is we have way too many guns on the street and way too many people that own guns," Straub said, adding there is no clear national policy dealing with guns.

"The policy has to start at the federal level and then work its way down to the states and to the local level. Until we control the flow of guns between states . . . you have a problem."
Ah, yes, we need the feds decreeing who will be allowed to own how many guns; that'll work wonderfully!

I wonder how that asshat nanny Bloomberg ever let this one go?

Well, they were Sheriff's deputies; wider range of skills

than city cops, I guess:
Deputies spoke with the elk and they agreed to leave the roadway and not return.
Snork. "Ya'll are causing trouble with traffic. Now I wouldn't like to see you get hurt, but I do think you'd look awful good in the freezer."

On the 15-22 saga, got some information in comments from Bullseye

First, as many of you are very aware, the magazine of a semi-auto can cause more problems than sometimes believed: on that subject, this link has some information.

The ejection problem: he found this video showing one way to fix it yourself.

I've got one magazine that occasionally winds up with a round sticking up vertically with the rim stuck in the feed lips; the others have always fed just fine. Like with anything else, you can get a mag with a problem.

On the ejector, I thought of messing with it myself, but didn't for two reasons:
First, in case it was something unusual, wanted S&W to be aware of it(turns out that wasn't a problem), and
Second, the damn thing was new and this should have been caught before it left the factory, so I wanted them to fix it.
I should add one more: I could just see breaking the ejector and then having to return it...

I will warn that Bullseye's site is about as Unsafe for Work as you can get, so be warned; he's over here.

Remember when Germany was one of the countries calling for "More time for the sanctions

to work!" against Saddam & Co., while they were quietly violating the sanctions? And lots of German bigshots were getting bribes through the Oil For Food mess?

An "embarrassing affair," is how one German diplomat described it. The official could also have added: potentially damaging to trans-Atlantic relations.

In an operation reported on by SPIEGEL over the weekend, US soldiers entered the freighter Hansa India in the Gulf of Suez at the beginning of October and discovered seven containers full of 7.62 millimeter ammunition suitable for Kalashnikov rifles. An eighth container was full of cartridges suitable for the manufacture of additional rounds. The incident is particularly awkward for Berlin as the Hansa India is registered to the Hamburg-based shipping company Leonhardt & Blumberg.

Investigators suspect that the arms were part of an Iranian shipment bound for either the Syrian army or for Hezbollah, the militant Islamist group. US officials have pointed out that the delivery is in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1747, which prohibits arms shipments either into or out of Iran.

It should be noted that Rep. Alan Grayson(Thin-Skinned Boob-FLJ)

has forgotten about some little things, like the 1st Amendment:
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), prone for throwing his own political bombs at Republicans, has threatened a local critic with five years in jail for creating the website “mycongressmanisnuts.com,”

The Orlando Sentinel reports that Grayson wrote a letter this week to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding that the federal government imprison Republican activist Angie Langley for five years because of her website criticizing him.
He's also forgotten that holding elective office doesn't mean your tender damned feelings can be protected by throwing critics in jail.

"It's ok to be racist, as long as you're doing it for a protected species."

Sponsored by Senator Daniel Akaka, the bill would transfer a percentage of public-owned lands to a native Hawaiian government within the state of Hawaii. The legislation would collect some 400,000 ethnic Hawaiians scattered across the country into a newly affiliated tribe, eventually endowed with the powers of a sovereign state, including freedom from state taxes and regulations and separate police power.

Proponents say the plan would duplicate the legal scenario set up for Native Americans, but the Akaka bill carves out new territory. Unlike Indian tribes made up of tightly knit populations that have lived together continuously, participation in the new group would be available to nearly anyone able to trace their roots back to a Native Hawaiian ancestor, no matter where they now reside. U.S. Civil Rights Commission member Gail Heriot told Congress in June that, “If ethnic Hawaiians can be accorded tribal status, why not Chicanos in the Southwest? Or Cajuns in Louisiana?”
So let's hear it for hopey-changey PC racism!

Yeah, Obama's done made us all looooooved

around the world.

Y'know, while I still think a meteor strike on the Capital at the right time would do the country good, one on that hall full of watermelons and out & out commie tyrants and murderers would be pretty damn good, too.

In the continuing saga of the M&P15-22,

it did indeed arrive at S&W. Actually a day ahead of schedule; so tied up yesterday forgot to make note of it.

Now we'll see how long it takes to get to it and take care of the problem. Hopefully permanently.

To borrow from Uncle, He was probably compensating for the size of his wheelchair

A man in a wheelchair shot and killed an intruder Monday night inside his home, according to Marion County deputies.

Two things I'll note. First,
"Several people have called and told me I'm a hero, but I don't feel like a hero. A hero usually helps people, not shoots them," Wroblewski said.
Mr. Wroblewski, you may not consider yourself a hero, but you did something that far too few can or will do: you fought to protect yourself, and that's nothing to belittle. If nothing else, consider that if you hadn't stopped this guy, A: you may not have lived through it and B: who would he have gone after next?

Second,
Wroblewski said he had an uneasy feeling just before he grabbed his handgun and opened the door.

"I was suspicious. I didn't really want to open it, but I did," Wroblewski said.
A lot of people have pointed out over time, When you have a bad feeling about something, pay attention to it. One more case in point.

Now we're back to a new edition of Idiots in Black Robes: Judge Arthur Tilson

This time, it's legally-embattled Jon's turn to man the guns, and it looks like it's gotten him into hot water, per MyFoxPhilly.com's "Judge Bars Guns At Jon Gosselin House":

Judge Arthur Tilson issued the court order Thursday in Norristown, Pa., after Jon Gosselin was photographed on Wednesday in Wernersville, Pa., shooting a .38 pistol on his property.

The judge also ordered Gosselin to register his pistol at a new address in Pennsylvania within 90 days.

Some slight problems with the judges' order, like there is no registration law in PA. And other problems. And when he called the judge to ask what rationale or law authorized the order. I told the lady who answered the phone who I was and why I was calling, and she replied (drumroll):

"I'm sorry, I do not wish to comment on it."

Translation: "The judge is a moron and has no wish to further point out that he's a moron."

Read the whole thing.

Oh, bloody HELL, if this is how base commanders think

then the Army is screwed:

If I'm a Soldier exercising my Second Amendment right, I'm apparently now considered a terrorist by the powers that be.

Last time I checked military members are military members 24/7.

Last time I checked they should be proficient with their tools.

Last time I checked, firearms are the tools of a Soldier.

Last time I checked, Nidal Hasan walked onto a military base, carrying a weapon and killed a dozen Soldiers and civilians. His weapon wasn't registered. I guess we're allowed to call him a terrorist now? The PC ban on calling that camel fucking scumbag a terrorist is over?
Oh, of COURSE not; the politicians in uniform won't stand for that! But calling a serving troop who doesn't register a personal firearm a terrorist? Well, that's just fine!


Which makes the politicians in uniform fit right in with DHS and Napolitano



Pointed to by War on Guns

Something the major media will probably never mention,

since it doesn't fit the template:
As the man was firing shots, another citizen armed with a gun came around the corner and ordered the gunman to put his weapon down. The gunman dropped his weapon and ran into his father's apartment and barricaded himself inside.

Friday morning, and it's chilly but not really cold

My joints rejoice.

In other news,
Patterson recalls something Newsbusters readers won't have forgotten: White House Communications Director Anita Dunn attacked the legitimacy of Fox News in October and White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod said of Fox's news programming, "it's really not news." Patterson notes that the White House has shown no similar concern for objectivity at ABC: "ABC appears willing to turn over large chunks of its news programming to a politician, if that politician is backed by companies representing more than half of their advertisements. And for the President, it seems it's OK for a news organization to support a point of view - so long as it's his."


Speaking of corrupt Democrats,
Traficant, whose wild hair contributed to an offbeat reputation, was convicted in a raucous trial in 2002 of bribery and racketeering for accepting bribes from businessmen and taking kickbacks from staff members. He then was expelled from Congress, only the second House member since the Civil War to be ousted for unethical conduct.
He says he's proud of being an ex-con and wants to run for office again. He'll fit right in, won't he?


To borrow a line, Some people just look better dead, and the ones responsible for this crap are among them:
Surgeons in Brazil are attempting to save a two-year-old human "voodoo doll."

Doctors in Barreiras hope to remove 42 metal sewing needles -- some as long as two inches -- that were inserted into the boy's body, possibly as part of a black magic ritual.

An official said Thursday that the boy is being airlifted to a hospital in northeastern Brazil because two of the needles are close to his heart, the Associated Press reports.
Althouse pointed to this documentation of sick and/or evil people, and she trails off imagining someone doing this to a child. Which reminded me of something: remember the talk of Obama's father being tied to the Mau Mau rebellion, and the heavy-handedness of the Brits in dealing with it being why Obama treats the Brits badly? Well, have you ever looked up the Mau Mau rebellion? If you do, find the unexpurgated information on the oathing ceremonies, and read it. Then see if you have any problem understanding the Brits being a bit harsh in dealing with some of those people.


Obama looks down upon the world, and throws the US under his bus;
...In his short speech he said the science on climate change is settled, thereby ignoring all of the recent information that indicates how the data used to arrive at that conclusion is being called into serious doubt.

For somebody who constantly chastises his critics as using the "tactic of fear" to question his policies he was sure using it in his short little speech this morning. He said the time to act is now, with not a moment to spare. Anybody who thinks he will not do an end run around the Congress using his energy and environmental czars, along with the supreme imperial power of the EPA, are deluding themselves.
He may or may not be a AGW True Believer, but he damn well believes in power over others, and sees this as a great way to get it.


This nonsense does not bode well for the future. Catch & Release for pirates = more piracy. And every time it happens it convinces more people over in that region that the west doesn't have the will or balls to actually deal with problems.


Totally unrelated to the news, when hit the range a couple of days ago took the Pocket Hammerless .380 along. The sights still suck; but it points so well it hardly matters for the purpose of its design. If you can't keep your shots in the triangle with this thing at self-defense ranges, you may be hopeless. I've got a target, will try to add a picture later.


Nancy Pelosi speaks crap to watermelons:
Pelosi said women should be particularly concerned about the detrimental effects of climate change.

“Women have the most to gain and the most to lose in the climate crisis,” she said. “The impacts are not gender-neutral; as the primary users, managers, and stewards of natural resources, women feel the consequences first.”
Yeah, us dumbass males don't really notice things like higher energy prices and food prices and our kids and grandkids being placed in debt for life by a bunch of power-hungry dirtbag politicians; that's just a woman thing, y'know. And apparently Speaker Jetliners thinks women will like the government(i.e. her) being in charge of their lives.


More on the Russians accusing the CRU of faking data.


Ah, the palistinians, that we're supposed to support because everything bad is the Evil JOOOOOOS! fault:

There are an unusually high number of male pseudohermaphrodite births in the Gaza neighborhood of Jabalya, where Nadir and Ahmed live.

Dr. Jehad Abudaia, a Canadian-Palestinian pediatrician and urologist practicing in Gaza, says he has diagnosed nearly 80 cases like Nadir’s and Ahmed’s in the last seven years.

“It is astonishing that we have [so] many cases with this defect, which is very rare all over the world,” Abudaia says. He attributes the high frequency of this birth defect to “consanguinity,” or in-breeding.

“If you want to go to the root of the problem, this problem runs in families in the genes.” Abudaia says. “They want to get married to cousins… they don’t go to another family. This is a problem.”

I'm sure they've already been blaming the nasty Israelis for this. Somehow. After all, it can't be their own fault, can it?


What Sacramento City Council really thinks of the Bill of Rights. The non-PC parts at least:
Several cities have voted to join the lawsuit brought against the city of Chicago by a resident there. The cities have joined the suit as 'Amicus Curiae,' basically supporting the city's position that the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, should not apply to local governments.
I wonder what other basic enumerated rights they'll eventually decide 'should not apply to local governments'? I mean, it'd be SO much easier to seize property if not for that pesky 4th...


Washington lawmakers want to attack the eeevillle 'assault weapons' again. From Joe Huffman:
For the clueless bigots in Seattle what that means is that if you managed to get your proposed law passed the U.S. Supreme Court, if not the Washington State courts will overturn it. You know why? Because Obama was elected.

What? Yeah, you read that right.

When Obama won the election the U.S. population went on a gun buying spree the likes of which has never been seen before. The guns they bought were the very guns that those Seattle bigots want to ban. If they weren't already considered "in common use" before Obama's victory they sure are now.

And because of the delay from when a law is first proposed until the time it can become the law of the land anytime some lawmaker starts having the power to ban a particular type of gun the people will have put that gun into "common use" and thus render the law stillborn.

But if those knuckleheads want to waste their time on harassing activities I suppose that is better than some of the other things they might try.
But they'll get to spend millions of other peoples' money and get to play "I CARE!!" while they're wasting said money and trying to screw the citizens, so they'll consider it good.


When dumbass prosecutors, probably egged on by corrupt cops, act:
Before Westberry could finish dialing 9-1-1 on his cell phone, Cujdik stepped through the doorway and punched him in the throat, Westberry said.

That’s when Westberry pulled out his gun and Cujdik fled, Westberry told the Daily News.
...
But Westberry was brought up on a host of charges, which were, as the Daily News reports, “felony aggravated assault, possession of an instrument of crime, terroristic threats, simple assault and recklessly endangering another person.”
Where do corrupt cops come in?
When Cujdik refused, Westberry threatened to call police.

” ‘Do it. My family are cops,’ ” Cujdik said, according to Westberry.

What Westberry didn’t know at that early-morning hour of Palm Sunday, April 5, was that Cujdik’s father, Louis, is a retired police veteran and that his two brothers, Jeffrey and Richard, are narcotics officers.
And if you don't think this had something to do with the bullshit charges, I have some land in Florida to sell you. You're not supposed to cause trouble for Only Ones and their family members.


Someone just called and told me H&H has a sale on, reloading stuff included. I need groceries(not from there), and do I need primers? Need to check. Back later

Ref the problem with the .380 snap caps,

finally remembered to get out the caliper and do some measuring. The diameter of the rim was the same on the caps and on some randomly-selected .380 cases, .370 to .373". For thickness I set the caliper along the taper of the case to the extractor groove, and got a difference. The snap caps measure right at .034, the cases fell right around .042".

So I'm guessing the thinner rim let the extractor of this pistol slip over instead of grabbing.

I nearly lost my drink

Slightly damp thanks to Chris

Still think Copenhagen is about carbon control only?

President Chavez brought the house down.

When he said the process in Copenhagen was “not democratic, it is not inclusive, but isn’t that the reality of our world, the world is really and imperial dictatorship…down with imperial dictatorships” he got a rousing round of applause.

When he said there was a “silent and terrible ghost in the room” and that ghost was called capitalism, the applause was deafening.

But then he wound up to his grand conclusion – 20 minutes after his 5 minute speaking time was supposed to have ended and after quoting everyone from Karl Marx to Jesus Christ - “our revolution seeks to help all people…socialism, the other ghost that is probably wandering around this room, that’s the way to save the planet, capitalism is the road to hell....let’s fight against capitalism and make it obey us.” He won a standing ovation.
Wonder if Obama will make a point of bowing to this Marxist thug and Mugabe while he's over there?

Copenhagen is about control; over you, over how you live, what you're allowed to own and do, in the end over whether you get to live.

Yeah, Joe, them redneck towns don't have nothin' but dial-up,

so you go save them- oh, wait...

So Speaker "I get all the airplanes I want, or else!" Pelosi

and all her little buttmonkeys are spending $300,000 of our money(absolute minimum; if they actually take the FIVE planes word leaked about, multiply that, PLUS the time of all the flight and ground crew people and their costs while over there) to go play Saviours of the World in Copenhagen.

"Most waste-cutting and ethical Congress EVAH!" Just that tax-cheat Rangel being along would screw that, even without all the rest.

Oh bleep! Can you say 'scientific fraud'?

From the Telegraph:
Climategate has already affected Russia. On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.

The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.

The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.
Ok, this is big stuff. And on the subject of the peer review process, look at this:

UPDATE: As Steve McIntyre reports at ClimateAudit, it has long been suspected that the CRU had been playing especially fast and loose with Russian – more particularly Siberian – temperature records. Here from March 2004, is an email from Phil Jones to Michael Mann.

Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either
appears I will be very surprised, but you never know with GRL.
Cheers
Phil

This is hard proof of these people preventing papers that didn't support AGW from being published. It's also a- hell, nails pull out, this is a screw in the lid of Jones' coffin. Mann's, too.

Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill: still a conniving dirtbag

and suckup to terrorist supporters making deals with the Brit government:
Mr Hinds calls al-Megrahi every second week. Tuesday’s call was the first time he had called unexpectedly, and the first time he had been unable to speak to him. Al-Megrahi knew Mr Hinds was going to call back yesterday.

Sceptics also asked how al-Megrahi was well enough to take yesterday’s call when he had been too sick to do so less than 24 hours earlier. Some politicians and victims’ relatives doubt al-Megrahi was as sick as Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Minister, claimed when he released him.
So they're pretending to check in on this bastard, and pretending his still being alive is 'amazing'.

And, as Drew says, In somewhat related news, the 270 people this animal killed are still dead.

With progressives in charge, this is what you get

In 2007, the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) held a seminar for the nonprofits vying for a piece of $78 million in funding. Grant seekers were told that in the next funding cycle, they would be required — for the first time — to provide quantifiable proof their programs were accomplishing something.

The room exploded with outrage. This wasn't fair. "What if we can bring in a family we've helped?" one nonprofit asked. Another offered: "We can tell you stories about the good work we do!" Not every organization is capable of demonstrating results, a nonprofit CEO complained. He suggested the city's funding process should actually penalize nonprofits able to measure results, so as to put everyone on an even footing. Heads nodded: This was a popular idea.

There are two lessons here. First, many San Francisco nonprofits believe they're entitled to money without having to prove that their programs work. Second, until 2007, the city agreed. Actually, most of the city still agrees. DCYF is the only city department that even attempts to track results. It's the model other departments are told to aspire to.

But Maria Su, DCYF's director, admitted that accountability is something her department still struggles with. It can track "output" — what a nonprofit does, how often, and with how many people — but it can't track "outcomes." It can't demonstrate that these outputs — the very things it pays nonprofits to do — are actually helping anyone.

"Believe me, there is still hostility to the idea that outcomes should be tracked," Su says. "I think we absolutely need to be able to provide that level of information. But it's still a work in progress." In the meantime, the city is spending about $500 million a year on programs that might or might not work.
...
This includes San Francisco's signature initiatives. Is Newsom's pet project, Care Not Cash, "meeting its goals" as his office claims? Hard to say: "We neither investigated the number or percentage of clients participating in support services by individual service, nor attempted to assess the outcomes of clients participating in services," the controller's 2008 audit reads. This means the city paid for support services for more than 2,200 homeless people, but never tracked how many were actually using the services. It also never checked whether those who were using the services were helped by them. While Care Not Cash has undoubtedly found housing for some people, it has no evidence to suggest that their lives are better because of it, or that they're not still spending time on the streets getting into the same trouble they got into before.
That's just two of the fine examples of progressive idiocy and craven politicians in general and unions running that city; go read it all.

"No religion in schools! Except for the politically corrrect

religion, of course(them being all victims and everything)."

Good news and bad: the good is that LtCol Chessani found not guilty of misconduct;

bad is that Chessani must now retire because he displayed “substandard performance” by failing to conduct a more detailed investigation of the civilians killed as a result of the house clearing actions of four Marines after they were ambushed in Haditha, Iraq on November 19, 2005.
Got that? He 'failed to conduct a more detailed investigation'. Slight problems with that:
Not one of LtCol Chessni’s superiors ─ including top generals ─ who received his report of dead civilians considered such deaths unusual. Not one ordered a further investigation. Instead, they commended him for a job well done. In fact, LtCol Chessani’s immediate superior told him that no investigation was needed because it was a bona fide combat action – consistent with the orders in effect at the time: no investigation of civilian deaths related to combat action. That order was changed in April, 2006, well after the Haditha incident.

LtCol Chessani’s commanding general, Major General Huck, reported up the chain of command, “I support our account and do not see the necessity for further investigation.” This same commanding General was allowed to retire without going to a Board of Inquiry, and he was allowed to retire as a Major General.

Consequently, not one of LtCol Chessani’s superiors faced, nor will they ever face, a court-martial or a Board of Inquiry for their actions in relation to November 19, 2005.
First thought: "We can't convict you of the actual charges, but we WILL convict you of SOMETHING!" WHich is absolute bullshit. It's a bunch of clowns determined to have SOME kind of conviction after they tried to hang a bunch of people, from the look of it in order to make a bunch of anti-military politicians happy.

By the way, anybody planning to hold their breath until that miserable scab on the ass of humanity Murtha finds the balls and integrity to apologize to these troops?

Me neither.

Due to an asshat named Jennifer Scott on the Huntsville, AL school board,

a milblogger is having serious problems, and in show of support a whole lot of milbloggers are silent today. Links here, here, here, and here; at the last you can go here and read the 'open letter' from the asshat Jennifer Scott of the V.P. membership J.E. Williams Elementary School.

My, that was a bit rude, wasn't it? Not as nasty as 'the skank Jennifer Scott' or 'the bitch Jennifer Scott', which her actions in this make me think she is. But a bit rude.

Oops.

On the energy and globular warmering(BS) fronts,

slight problem with LED traffic lights:
Cities around the country that have installed energy-efficient traffic lights are discovering a hazardous downside: The bulbs don't burn hot enough to melt snow and can become crusted over in a storm — a problem blamed for dozens of accidents and at least one death.
This is something I probably wouldn't have thought of, but then I'm not a traffic engineer; it appears this is one of those little things that kind of snuck up on people.


From Insty, it appears the Yellowstone reservoir and magma plume is a lot bigger than thought: which means that if it goes WE'RE ALL GONNA BE DEADER!! Or something. Please note that there was strong disagreement on the size of this, and actual research was done and tested to find the answer: the way science is supposed to be done.


Over at Samizdata:
I agree with Johnathan Pearce in the previous posting that the old-school media are definitely, albeit belatedly and with much embarrassment and confusion, starting to notice all this. You can feel that most crucial of propaganda processes happening with Climategate: the reversing of the burden of proof. Unfair to all the fraud detectives (Watts, McIntyre, and the rest of them, including Monkton himself) though it undoubtedly was, those noble toilers, until the Climategate revelations erupted, had to prove everything, in defiance of the default position. Their every tiny blemish was jumped upon. Their major claims were ignored. Now the default position is slowly mutating into: It's all made-up nonsense. And the burden of proof is shifting onto the shoulders of all those who want to go on believing in such ever more discredited alarmism. In short, our side is winning this argument, big time.
I damn well hope so. This seems to be one more case where at least some people in the major media are starting to feel both embarrassed and worried about being so far behind on a major story, and scared to death of what that means for their future. And they should be.


Big-time televangelist Oral Roberts died the other day. He's one of those who I couldn't decide about: was he straight con-man, did he actually believe what came out of his mouth, or a mix? I've known a lot of devout people who came as close to hating him as they ever did anyone short of Hitler or Stalin types for the crap he pulled.


From Insty: you expect Schumer to follow the rules? He's a SENATOR, don't you forget!


My first thought: this is the first step of "If you air cargo carriers ship cargo we don't like, we'll go after you!"


Yes, our AG Holder is a man who wants to get to the bottom of things. Just only the things he controls and the administration benefits from.
The Justice Department has told the federal attorneys who filed a civil complaint against the New Black Panther Party for disrupting a Philadelphia polling place last year not to cooperate with an investigation of the incident by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

The commission last week subpoenaed at least two Justice Department lawyers and sought documents from the department to explain why the complaint was dismissed just as a federal judge was about to punish the New Black Panther Party and three of its members for intimidating voters.
This is a big load of steaming crap. But what do you expect to come from Holder & Co.?


Hehehehehe...
"I've never seen so many attractive domestic terrorists in all my life!" Armey yelled at the adoring crowd. "It's so nice to be here again together, isn't it?...You mean you actually came to town on your own terms? To say what you wanted to say? And to be heard? Sounds pretty much like terrorists to me."
And to DHS; anyone watching for Napolitano flunkies sneaking pictures?


And now I'm off: laundry to do, gunpowder residue to wash away, groceries to buy.

That prison that Obama is giftingopening for the detainees?

Seems Illinois already has problems they could use it for
Moreover, Illinois is already suffering its own severe prison overcrowding crisis – which Gov. Quinn has alleviated by secretly releasing more than 850 inmates, including violent offenders, since September, according to the Associated Press.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Dan Proft points out that “[t]he state’s 28 current prisons are 32 percent over capacity. Why not alleviate the overcrowding and bring the Thomson prison online” for existing criminals instead of importing them from abroad? Another Republican candidate Kirk Dillard blasted Gov. Quinn’s fiscal desperation: “I think Al-Qaeda needs to stay in Cuba. It shows how pathetic the state of Illinois’ finances are where we have to stand with our hat in hand and have the federal government give us money to open a penitentiary that the Democrats have let sit vacant for years.”
What, you expect them to use bribery funds to actually fix something? In Illinois? Oh, and among the problems the media and AG Holder(Corrupt Official-Ours, God help us) don't want to talk about:
Obama officials stress that the prison would house Gitmo detainees separately from federal inmates, and that the two would be “managed separately” with “no opportunity to interact” between them. Which entirely misses the point that Gitmo detainees’ lawyers and translators have been primary security concerns – not just other inmates:

*Last month, jihadist-enabling lawyer Lynne Stewart was finally ordered to jail after her conviction in 2005 for aiding and abetting imprisoned blind Egyptian Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman by smuggling coded messages of violence to terrorist followers abroad — in violation of an explicit pledge to abide by her client’s court-ordered isolation.

*Earlier this summer, the Justice Department launched an inquiry into photographs of undercover CIA officials and other intelligence personnel taken by ACLU-sponsored researchers assisting the defense team of Guatanamo Bay detainees. The pictures of covert American CIA officers – “in some cases surreptitiously taken outside their homes,” according to the Washington Post – were shown to jihadi suspects tied to the 9/11 attacks in order to identify the interrogators.

*As investigative journalist Paul Sperry reported recently, a number of Arabic and Pashtu interpreters who served at Gitmo are “under active investigation for omitting valuable intelligence from their translations of detainee interrogations, among other security breaches.”
Isn't that just wonderful? And let us remember Holder's background with terrorists:
Remember: He served as senior partner with Covington & Burling — the prestigious Washington, D.C. law firm, which represents 17 Yemenis currently held at Gitmo – and top attorneys at his Justice Department have had to recuse themselves numerous times over their conflicts of interest in Gitmo-related cases. Holder has failed to provide a full recusal list of all the Gitmo detainee cases from which current Justice Department political appointees have had to recuse themselves.
AND the FALN terrorists he worked so hard to get pardons for, let us not forget.

The standard liberal/progressive method now: don't just attack who you're mad at,

go after their family, too.

The sensitive, caring, reality-based community: ain't they wonderful?

Snork, hehehe

If you ain't reading DBS, you need to start

Heard about this disgusting threat earlier, this is the first link

I ran across for it:
According to a Senate aide, the White House is now threatening to put Nebraska’s Offutt Air Force Base on the BRAC list if Nelson doesn’t fall into line.

Offutt Air Force Base employs some 10,000 military and federal employees in Southeastern Nebraska. As our source put it, this is a “naked effort by Rahm Emanuel and the White House to extort Nelson’s vote.” They are “threatening to close a base vital to national security for what?” asked the Senate staffer.
Even for this administration this is effing disgusting.

I'd forgotten about this: something else Al Gore lieds about

In his serious voice, Mr Gore presented a nifty animation, a band of little mosquitoes fluttering their way up the slopes of a snow-capped mountain, and he repeated the old line: Nairobi used to be ‘above the mosquito line, the limit at which mosquitoes can survive, but now…’ Those little mosquitoes kept climbing.

The truth? Nairobi means ‘the place of cool waters’ in the Masai language. The town grew up around a camp, set up in 1899 during the construction of a railway, the famous ‘Lunatic Express’. There certainly was water there — and mosquitoes. From the start, the place was plagued with malaria, so much so that a few years later doctors tried to have the whole town moved to a healthier place. By 1927, the disease had become such a plague in the ‘White Highlands’ that £40,000 (equivalent to about £350,000 today) was earmarked for malaria control. The authorities understood the root of the problem: forest clearance had created the perfect breeding places for mosquitoes. The disease was present as high as 2,500m above sea level; the mosquitoes were observed at 3,000m. And Nairobi? 1,680m.
...
Take their contention, for example, that as a result of climate change, tropical diseases will move to temperate regions and malaria will come to Britain. If they bothered to learn about the subject, they would know that in a period climatologists call the Little Ice Age, when Charles II held ice parties on the Thames, malaria — ‘the ague’ — was rampant in the Essex marshes, on a par even with regions in Africa today. In the 18th century, the great systematist Linnaeus wrote his doctorate on malaria in central Sweden. In 1922-23 a massive epidemic swept the Soviet Union as far north as Archangel, on the Arctic circle, killing an estimated 600,000 people. And malaria was only eliminated from the Soviet Union and large areas of Europe in the 1950s, after the advent of DDT. So it’s hardly a tropical disease. And yet when we put this information under the noses of the activists it is ignored: ours is the inconvenient truth. Let me add, there's often been wondering why Washington chose a malarial swamp for the nations capital; and that's nowhere near 'tropical'.
...
And you'll love the close:
At the end of his movie, Al Gore ridicules global warming ‘sceptics’ as a tiny and dwindling band of flat-earthers, people who believe the moon landings were staged, and accuses us of being richly rewarded by the oil industry. According to him, ‘the science is in’. End of discussion.

In truth, the science is never in. We’re not pollsters or policy-makers. We proceed by question, observation, hypothesis, and testing by experiment. We are still re-testing Einstein’s theory of relativity! So I’m happy to be a sceptic. That is how science works.

And in other idiot politician news,

yeah, this is going to work out just great...

It does bring up is this Biden being his usual idiot self,

or is he letting the cat out?
..."This is not a Coin [counterinsurgency] strategy," Biden said. "We just want to make sure that the Taliban is diminished enough so that the Afghan government can contain it."

Perhaps most troubling, Biden said: "the president has made something exquisitely clear to each of the generals: He said do not occupy any portion of that country that you are not confident within 18 months you're going to be able to turn over to the Afghans. Do not occupy what you cannot turn over."
Is he/are they TRYING to screw the troops as badly as possible?

Don't answer that, my headache's bad enough now

And yet more federal prosecutors behaving badly

and unethically and probably flatly illegally:
Carney found that prosecutors tried to prevent three key defense witnesses from testifying, improperly contacted attorneys for defense witnesses and leaked information about grand jury proceedings to the media.

"I find that the government has intimidated and improperly influenced the three witnesses critical to Mr. Ruehle's defense and the cumulative effect of that misconduct has distorted the truth-finding process and impeded the integrity of the trial," Carney said. "To submit this case to the jury would make a mockery ... of the constitutional right to due process and a fair trial."

The judge said Nicholas would need the same three defense witnesses to try to prove his own innocence, and because of that, he too could not receive a fair trial.

"You only have three witnesses to prove your innocence and the government has improperly intimidated ... each one of them. Is that fair? Is that justice?" Carney said. "I say, absolutely not."
I'd say so.
Prosecutors left court without talking to reporters, but acting U.S. Attorney George Cardona told the judge he did not agree with the ruling(big surprise, isn't it?). Prosecutors can appeal the dismissal of Nicholas' indictment, but Ruehle cannot be tried again because it would be double jeopardy.
Aw, he doesn't agree that someone he screwed over shouldn't be hung just because he wants it and broke the rules trying to get it; isn't that just terrible?
Ruehle's attorneys alleged that lead prosecutor Andrew Stolper leaked information about Samueli's 2007 grand jury appearance to reporters and contacted the attorneys of two other witnesses to try to influence their testimony.

One of those was former Broadcom general counsel David Dull, who was granted immunity to testify in Ruehle's case.

In a hearing away from the jury last week, Stolper acknowledged leaking information to the press and called it the "stupidest thing I have done in my career."

He has declined to comment outside court.
Every one of these clowns needs to face serious punishment, and prosecution if possible. I don't know if the accused were guilty or not, and it doesn't matter: the prosecution has rules to follow, and they not only didn't follow them, they frickin' ignored them. And this is what happens when you do that and get caught.

Which brings up the question, how many times have they done this before, and gotten away with it?

Do the British cops even remember who Peel was anymore?

In this video, two British police officers come up to a young woman who is filming a building and harass her, imply that she is a terrorist, intimidate her, demand to see her footage. The policeman says that he's harassing her for being "cocky" -- punishing her for failing to cringe sufficiently.
First: there is no damned excuse whatever for this attitude. Period.
Second: A while back orders went out to stop exactly this kind of garbage; apparently the cops don't think they have to pay attention.
Third: in comments someone says these clowns are 'community support officers'; is that supposed to excuse them from obeying their damned orders?

This is friggin' disgusting. I repeat what I said before, I don't want to hear one damned thing about the wonderful cops and system in England again until they've cleared this kind of crap up.

Odd little thing I ran across the other day

I've got a bunch of different snap-caps in different cartridges, most of them A-Zoom(they last a lot longer than others I've tried. Couple of days ago I loaded some .380 caps into a magazine to check a pistol I'd cleaned and cycled the slide and oops! Two or three times out of each mag the extractor wouldn't extract; sometimes had to work the slide back & forth several times to get it to grab.

Checked the extractor, couldn't find any problem. Finally, just to check(Note: this is one of those BE DAMN CAREFUL IF YOU DO THIS things) I loaded the mag with ammo and- being very careful where my finger was- cycled the slide. And no problems.

Loaded the snap-caps, problem. Ammo, no problem. I've never had this happen before; apparently the rim or something on the caps is just enough different that this occurs with this pistol. I guess I need to make some dummies with cases and bullets just for testing things like this if they occur in the future.

Updated: took that pistol to the range today, and it worked flawlessly. But it still has the problem with those caps.

I don't think I'll go to the range this morning after all;

at 17 outside, the line at the indoor range will still be a touch uncomfortable(i.e. "It's hard to load mags when your fingers are going numb"). Maybe this afternoon, after it gets all the way up to 30 and I've got a bowl of jambalaya under my belt.

Let's see, some people are having problems with their new 'smart' electric meters. And, as Insty says, that doesn't count what'll happen when it's a hot or cold day and the network decides "You naughty consumer, you're using more power than we like!" and adjusts the temperature for you.


Cathy Young writes on what happens when science & politics get too cozy on a matter. I'll throw in that it's not just politics, it's ego: when a scientist becomes so "This IS the Truth!" on a hypothesis or theory that they play games with the data it's a real problem as well, and becomes far more so when people playing political games grab hold of it. Wrote before, this is one of the very damaging things in this mess: when people find out that the experts they're told to trust are doing something like this, it makes it harder to trust them on other things. Especially when the 'investigations' launched turn out to be exercises in damage control and "Don't worry your poor brain cells about this, We will take care of it" coverup.


Also from Insty, it seems a bunch of federal employees aren't paying their taxes. Years back, second wife was a fed employee at a large agency, and mentioned one day that there was a notice at the offices reminding people that 'just because you work at a fed agency does not mean you can skip paying your taxes'. Turned out she knew a couple in her own office who hadn't paid in a couple of years. Wonderful, isn't it?


So Lieberman says "NOW I can vote for the government takeover of the health-care system." Wonderful that his concerns are so easily bought off taken care of. No, Lieberman has never been one of my favorite people; aside from his desire to actually win the war he's pretty much a standard high-taxes/high-spending left-wing democrat.


What? The Goreacle was shading the truth? Damn, who CAN you trust... When he's caught shading the words of a True Believer(never mind all that Arctic ice and such, THE POLES WILL MELT!) to try to push this mess, there's a problem. Very happily.


Speaking of being caught lying, in this case to Congress,
According to Republican investigators, Alan Solomont, then the chairman of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees AmeriCorps, had denied meeting with Jackie Norris, at the time the First Lady's chief of staff. But recently-released White House visitor logs show that Solomont met with Norris on June 9 of this year (as well as on two earlier occasions). President Obama fired Walpin on June 10 after an intense dispute over Walpin's aggressive investigation of misuse of AmeriCorps money by Obama political ally Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacramento, California.

After being presented with the visitor logs, investigators say, Solomont explained that he met with Norris to discuss Corporation business but did not discuss the Walpin matter. When pressed, Solomont said he might have made an offhand comment, or a mention in passing, about the Walpin affair, but that he and Norris did not have a discussion about it.


Ooooh, look at this! I think there may be some actual investigatin' goin' on down there.


Getting back to The Goreacle and his wonderful 'green'(as in cash) programs,
"Gore left a few facts out of his speech that day. First, the firm was run by Strong and a group of Gore intimates, including Peter Knight, the firm's registered lobbyist, and Gore's former top Senate aide," wrote EIR.

"Second, the company had received more than $25 million in U.S. Department of energy (DOE) research and development grants, but had failed to prove that the technology worked on a commercial scale. The company would go on to receive another $8 million in federal taxpayers' cash, at that point, its only source of revenue.

"With Al Gore's Earth Day as a Wall Street calling card, Molten Metal's stock value soared to $35 a share, a range it maintained through October 1996. But along the way, DOE scientists had balked at further funding. When, in March 1996, corporate officers concluded that the federal cash cow was about to run dry, they took action: Between that date and October 1996, seven corporate officers--including Maurice Strong--sold off $15.3 million in personal shares in the company, at top market value. On Oct. 20, 1996--a Sunday--the company issued a press release, announcing for the first time, that DOE funding would be vastly scaled back, and reported the bad news on a conference call with stockbrokers.

"On Monday, the stock plunged by 49%, soon landing at $5 a share.By early 1997, furious stockholders had filed a class action suit against the company and its directors. Ironically, one of the class action lawyers had tangled with Maurice Strong in another insider trading case, involving a Swiss company called AZL Resources, chaired by Strong, who was also a lead shareholder. The AZL case closely mirrored Molten Metal, and in the end, Strong and the other AZL partners agreed to pay $5 million to dodge a jury verdict, when eyewitness evidence surfaced of Strong's role in scamming the value of the company stock up into the stratosphere, before selling it off.
Just a wonderful icon of good government and green causes, isn't he?


What was that Insty once said, that a return of the Carter Administration was looking like the BEST-case outcome?
"I don't think anyone can doubt that our outreach has produced very little in terms of any kind of a positive response from the Iranians," Clinton told reporters at a joint State Department news conference with visiting Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos.
Gee, ya think?


I read something about his problem a while back: it seems that some troops are not getting the Medal not because their actions don't measure up, but because they're alive. And that's just not right.


As Sondra says, Enjoy the cold and the brownouts, greenies. And everyone else who would have gotten power from this. You know, there's a bunch of people in northerly and southerly climes who're desperately hoping for globular warming, because otherwise they're gonna freeze.


Snork. The new Crisis In Africa: Fat People.


And my last for now, there's just too much for one short bit: go to Gateway Pundit and start scrolling down for the latest on the Safe Schools Czar's activities; if you've got kids in school it should scare hell out of you.

The People's Republic of MA is not a good place

to raise kids, it seems. "Blindly follow the rules" seems to be the top accomplishment of their school weenies, especially the morons so many of the teachers seem to be.
A Taunton father is outraged after his 8-year-old son was sent home from school and required to undergo a psychological evaluation after drawing a stick-figure picture of Jesus Christ on the cross.

The father said he got a call earlier this month from Maxham Elementary School informing him that his son, a second-grade student, had created a violent drawing. The image in question depicted a crucified Jesus with Xs covering his eyes to signify that he had died on the cross. The boy wrote his name above the cross.
...
The student drew the picture shortly after taking a family trip to see the Christmas display at the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette, a Christian retreat site in Attleboro. He made the drawing in class after his teacher asked the children to sketch something that reminded them of Christmas, the father said.

Two last things this evening, one AGW and the other Jew-hatred

For the first, from Canada Free Press,
"Charles Dickens wrote, “I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance, any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.”

The criminals at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in England brazenly defend the indefensible. It is stunning to watch Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt, who even look alike, staring directly at the camera and denying the significance of their emails.

It works because they used it to deceive the world. They know most won’t understand the emails. The Associate Press (AP) has already confirmed this.

As with Revkin at the New York Times the journalist Seth Borenstein of AP has no journalistic integrity. Here is his email to the gang. On July 23, 2009 he wrote, “Kevin, Gavin, Mike, It’s Seth again. Attached is a paper in JGR today that Marc Morano is hyping wildly. It’s in a legit journal. Watchya think?” “Again” means there is previous communication. A journalist talking to scientists is legitimate, but like the email’s tone and subjective comments are telling. "
You bet your ass they are.


On the second matter,
On December 4 I wrote an editorial for Pajamas Media about the scurrilous Channel Four television documentary presented by British conservative commentator Peter Oborne exposing the “power” of the Anglo-Jewish lobby.

Now I would like to turn to some items following on that story.

No sooner had the program aired than the Jew-avoidance champion Richard Ingrams wrote in his Independent column that it was about time somebody stood up to the Zionists. Then on November 28 he hit the jackpot with a real doozy: he accused former Bush advisers Doug Feith, Richard Perle, and Paul Wolfowitz (he who liveth with a Libyan lady) of being ardent Zionists who are “more concerned with preserving the security of Israel than that of the U.S.” Let’s stop and look at that for a moment: he is saying that the triumvirate of Jewish neocons was subverting the security of the United States. Isn’t that an offense punishable by life behind bars? Would Mr. Ingrams like to let us know exactly how Messrs. Feith, Wolfowitz, and Perle were ignoring the security of the American people in favor of the Israelis?
And it goes on from there. Downward.

As an update on the S&W 15-22 saga,

I can only say 'In transit'. From here to the People's Republic of Massachusetts, the 11th to the 17th. 'Tis the season and all that.

Word on the son

He's back in Iraq, at a FOB in the northern part of the country. As usual I'm not wanting to say something that might let information out, so this'll be very basic.

At this point just routine work, and it's warmer there than back here in Oklahoma; that part he likes.

So he's ok, the wife is sort-of, and that's about as good as it gets right now.

So the CRU either has a network problem, or

they're hiding things.

Oh, and about that Antarctic 'warming' data,

see here.

Geez, with brass like these no wonder the Church of England is sinking

The Rt Rev Stephen Venner called for a more sympathetic approach to the Islamic fundamentalists.

The Church of England’s Bishop to the Forces said it would be harder to reach a peaceful solution to the war if the insurgents were portrayed too negatively.
...
“We’ve been too simplistic in our attitude towards the Taliban,” said Bishop Venner, who was recently commissioned in his new role by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

“There’s a large number of things that the Taliban say and stand for which none of us in the West could approve, but simply to say therefore that everything they do is bad is not helping the situation. The Taliban can perhaps be admired for their conviction to their faith and their sense of loyalty to each other.”
"Yes, the Nazis are murdering Jews and others by the millions and torture and have total police-state powers, but it will be so much HARDER to have a peaceful solution if we insist on portraying them too negatively. And they have such loyalty to their creed and each other!"

Effing moron.

The founding texts of the English Constitution – charter, petition, bill of rights –

have one theme in common: they create nothing. They assert old freedoms; they restore lost harmony. In this they guided America’s Revolution, itself a codification of early colonial liberties.
Yep. And what have the socialists brought to Britain now?
The Charter of Fundamental Rights – legally binding in the UK as of Tuesday, when Lisbon came into force – asserts that the EU has the authority to circumscribe all rights and freedoms.

The text was modified after I threw a tantrum in the Daily Telegraph during the drafting process, comparing it to the "general interest" clause used by Fascist regimes to crush dissent in the 1930s.

Article 52 now reads: "Subject to the principle of proportionality, limitations may be made only if they are necessary and genuinely meet objectives of general interest recognised by the Union."

Don’t be misled by this inverted wording. What it states is that the EU may indeed limit rights in the "general interest". In other words, our Magna Carta has been superceeded.

Anyone trust the EUnuchs not to abuse that power? Bueller? I didn't think so.

You really want to know what the AGW weenies are pushing?

Read this. It's just freakin' wonderful.
A year later and the cost of food today has still to fall to previous levels. More alarmingly, scientists are warning that far worse lies ahead. A "perfect storm" of food shortages and water scarcity now threatens to unleash public unrest and conflict in the next 20 years, the government's chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, has warned.
And yes, you DO know what's behind it.
In Britain, a global food shortage would drive up import costs and make food more expensive, just as the nation's farmers start to feel the impact of disrupted rainfall and rising temperatures caused by climate change. "If we don't address this, we can expect major destabilisation, an increase in rioting and potentially significant problems with international migration, as people move to avoid food and water shortages," he told a conference earlier this year.

The reliable availability of food – once taken for granted – has become a major cause for alarm among politicians and scientists. Next month several of Britain's research councils, together with the Food Standards Agency, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for International Development – will announce a taskforce that will channel the UK's efforts in feeding its own population and playing a full role in preventing starvation in other nations.
Think they're trying hard enough to scare everybody to death?
The problem is summed up by Professor Janet Allen, director of research at the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). "We will have to grow more food on less land using less water and less fertiliser while producing fewer greenhouse gas emissions," she said.
Sound desperate enough for you?
It took a green revolution in the 1960s that involved the development of new crop varieties, greater use of agro-chemicals and changes in farming practices to double production by the 1980s. Now a second revolution of equivalent magnitude is urgently required, say food scientists.

"We can certainly do it, although it won't be easy," said Bevan. For a start, farmers will have to increase yields using greatly reduced amounts of agro-fertilisers because their manufacture is energy-intensive. Some 3% of the world's energy is used in the manufacture of fertilisers and in a post-Copenhagen world, dominated by renewable energy, such carbon consumption is likely to be prohibited. "What we need are major research programmes to create new crop yields that, in effect, make their own fertiliser and will also be disease-resistant and more resistant to droughts and rising temperatures," added Bevan.
Uh, guy? People have been working on drought- and disease-resistant crops for a long damn time, maybe you haven't heard? And require less fertilizer? But if you pretty much cut off the making and use of chemical fertilizers... yeah, you'll get your food shortages.

To me, here's the key bit of bullshit weasel-wording in this whole piece:
In this country, one such programme dedicated to improving wheat varieties is scheduled to be launched next year as part of Britain's food security initiative. This will exploit cutting-edge DNA technology to speed up wheat breeding projects to develop new drought-resistant, low-fertiliser strains, though the programme will stop short of the creation of genetically modified strains. "The wheat we use today is a hybrid, created by ancient farmers 10,000 years ago, from three different species of wild grass," said Bevan. "We are going back to these first types of grass and from varieties of these create fresh hybrids."
To be crude, God-DAMN these people! "We will be changing the gene structure of these plants, but it won't actually be evil genetic engineering, oh no, THAT's not PC!" Son of a BITCH! There's not a food crop in the world that HASN"T been genetically modified over time; it's been called 'selective breeding'. Just because you don't manipulate a particular gene in a lab doesn't mean it's not genetically modified, but they don't have the balls to note this, oh no, mustn't upset the greenies who scream "FRANKENFOOD!" and burn crops and smash laboratories! And they ARE doing this in the lab, but they'll stop short of the creation of genetically modified strains, they will. Bull-Effing-Shit.

...However, scientists have recently discovered a strain of wheat, known as Sharon grass, that is resistant to Ug99, raising hopes that the outbreak could be contained. "Creating ranges of new crop varieties is going to be vital in feeding the world," said Allen.
It always HAS been, you bastard.

And the constant "AGW is proven and will kill us all!" push: ...as global temperatures have risen..., ...the life cycles of diseases such as bluetongue speed up as temperatures go up,..., "But as the weather gets warmer and warmer, and on and on.

And, of course, we must stop using those evil pesticides, and go to Gaia-Friendly Pest Control like One ingenious solution involves planting nettles around wheat fields. Parasitic wasps arrive to feed off the aphids that are found in nettles. Then, as the neighbouring wheat grows and aphid infestations arrive, there is a ready supply of wasp predators to deal with them. Except, as I recall, nettles tend to spread among the crop and cause their own problems, which has been controlled with herbicides except THOSE will have to be done way with too...

Of course, you'll need to have proper political control of more things, too:
Of course, some answers to the threat of the forthcoming perfect storm and the threat to our food security involve political and economic solutions as well. The end of cheap supermarket deals(more expensive food, can't have it cost too little now can we?), restraints on water use and the need to change farming practice have all been touted. In the case of farming practices, economists argue that small farms are too inefficient and should be incorporated into larger outfits, for example. Owners of small hill farms oppose the idea, however. Gee, why would someone object to the government seizing their property and letting someone else take it over, hmmm? Those non-progressive kulaks have to be dealt with!

In the last paragraph we have this jewel: However, it is now accepted that science will play the principal role in Britain's battle to ensure the nation can rely on food security in the future. Whether it has the funds to do so remains uncertain. A total of £600m was cut from the nation's science funding last week. Scarcely an auspicious start to our battle to survive the perfect storm.
Translation: "Holy Science of the PC kind will save us, but only if we take more of your money away from you and gift it to the Scientists of the Approved Kind; so get ready for more taxes."

And every researcher who has pushed AGW and lied about or hidden data and slandered anyone who questioned the idea has a hand in pushing this crap on us.

Didn't see Palin's appearance on the O'Brian show,

have heard all about it. Apparently a bunch of lefties have been caught writing and saying things like "Well, I STILL don't like her politics, but she's got a sense of humor!" and similar heresies.

I have to admit to a lack of understanding on something: the actual hatred displayed toward Palin by so many 'feminists'. She was the target of a level of crap that was- and is in many cases- just flat amazing. And disgusting.

And her family... People who insisted that Chelsea Clinton not be mentioned(properly, when she was a kid), that Gore's kids not be spoken of(they even pushed this on adult kids involved in politics) at all, have attacked her kids viciously. Hell, they don't speak of the 9/11 hijackers and those who helped them with that kind of hatred. And I just do not understand this.

Said something about it to my daughter a while back, that if you disagree with someone's politics then work on that, but don't waste time and don't pretend to be doing something wonderful by repeating crap and lies(like the "I can see Russia from my bedroom" Tina Fey line that was spread as being from Palin). What we've seen directed at Palin is much like what was directed at Bush: flat-out attempts to destroy them(and other leftists lying about it later and pretending it didn't happen; remember that idiot Gibbs acting like there'd not been posters and puppets and whatever of Bush as a nazi and Hitler so he could act outraged about some of the anti-Obama signs?).

And to my mind the quote feminists endquote are the worst. Here's someone who is a wife and mother AND succeeded in politics, but she doesn't have the 'correct feminist' viewpoint so they want to destroy her. And the words they use show outright hatred. Why? Disagree with her politics, sure; but this is someone they should celebrate: not from the 'right' colleges, wife and mother and still went into politics: school board to mayor to a governor with an 80% approval rate from both sides. Instead they rage against her; I guess that "Feminism means women can succeed at whatever they choose" only holds if what you choose is lefty-'feminist' approved.

I mean, really, WHY? Not just the idiotic demonization of Palin, why do these clowns have such a desire to actually destroy anyone who opposes them, or even has the nerve to express a different viewpoint? It just makes no damn sense to poison your own life with this crap simply because someone doesn't agree with you. But the do. On and on and on.


I occurs to me that it's somewhat connected to the way the AGW True Believers don't want to argue science(i.e. facts and figures) with those who disagree, they have to paint them as the equivalent of Holocaust deniers and earth haters, and all the other bullshit.

Remember the friend I mentioned who's a TG? Last week, just as "Well, I have to pass this on, it's too damned important not to" I sent her a link to one of the news stories(this one) that had some background and pointed out that 'the science is NOT settled, and some of the people pushing this have not been playing by the rules'. Fronted with "I promise, last time I'll write anything on this."

Mistake.

The only thing she believed might be true in the piece was the bit from a AGW defender that 'most scientists agree' blah etc., and sent me a link to that bit when the EPA decided CO₂ is a horrible pollutant that's destroying the planet(as if you could somehow have not seen it) with "See! The EPA says it's so!" Well, I apologized for bothering her with it, and she asked "Why does this bother you so much?" Along with a subtext of "Why don't you care what's happening to the planet?"

So I told her. Starting with 'I'll backtrack and write this one more thing', I told her that it bothered hell out of me that the scientific method was being perverted this way: hiding and destroying data, refusing to allow true peer review, attempting to ruin the careers of anyone who, whether a 'denier' or not, dared to demand the rules be followed. Well, the response to that was
I don't read anything except what agrees with my 'theory'
I get some of my information from BLOGS, and RIGHT-WING blogs at that!(apparently following a link from a blog to a story at the Times of London or New York Effin' Times or wherever automatically invalidates the article)
The entire state and ALL broadcast media is owned by the evil oil companies so only their line is parroted
The- well, hell, you know exactly what the rest was. Including Glenn Beck and Rush controlling my mind, WHY won't I believe the REAL scientists who aren't bought by Big Oil, every freakin' cliche you can think of.

No, I didn't answer them. Saw the first line of the first message, deleted it and sent back "I told you, I'm not writing you any more about this. Drop it." And then deleted the next half-dozen. Come ON, does anybody out there actually believe you don't see the AGW-pushers side of things? Basically every major media source pushes it daily, usually either ignoring or denigrating anyone who 'denies' it. What really bothered me the most, that was the line where she basically said I was incapable of looking up information and making up my own mind. That pissed me off. Oh, she insisted it wasn't my fault, it was because of 'the right-wing oil company control of the media' here; yeah, let's totally ignore that there innernet thingy that allows you to look at everything from newspaper sites to blogs to historical documents to actual documentation of information(real sciencey-stuff, really!) and say "Oh, you just don't know the facts because 'X' is all you hear, so it's not really your fault." You bet it pissed me off.

I guess what I'm getting at is that the disgusting hatred directed at Palin & family is much like the actions of the AGW True Believers: anyone who disagrees, anyone who even wants to see the raw data to check it out has to be silenced or ruined because they threaten OUR viewpoint. If you point to facts, you point to climatologists and physicists and meteorologists who disagree with AGW, why, they're not real scientists or they're bought off or they're something else disagreeable and should be shunned. And if you don't believe the Holy Writ of AGW it's because you're not capable of forming your own views and/or are controlled by the deniers who are controlled by Big Oil... It's enough to ruin your digestion.