Saturday, February 06, 2010

Bitch, bitch, bitch

And you're right. As he was examining me, ol' doc registered a look of surprise (something you never want to see on your doc's face, let me tell you) and said...

"When did you get the hernia?"

I, being as quick as a cat in the thinking department, replied "What?"


Go read the whole story; it's worth it

I agree with Swampy


...WINTER STORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM MONDAY MORNING THROUGH MONDAY AFTERNOON...  * TIMING: RAIN IS EXPECTED TO BEGIN MIXING WITH SNOW EARLY MONDAY   AND CHANGE TO ALL SNOW BY MONDAY AFTERNOON. THE SNOW MAY BECOME   HEAVY AT TIMES. MOST OF THE PRECIPITATION IS EXPECTED TO END   BY MONDAY EVENING.   * MAIN IMPACT: WIDESPREAD SNOW ACCUMULATIONS OF 3 TO 6 INCHES   WILL BE POSSIBLE AND ISOLATED HIGHER TOTALS MAY OCCUR NEAR AND   NORTH OF INTERSTATE-40. THIS WILL HAVE SIGNIFICANT IMPACTS ON   TRAVEL AND COMMERCE.  * OTHER IMPACTS: NORTHERLY WINDS WILL INCREASE ON MONDAY...   LEADING TO SIGNIFICANT BLOWING AND DRIFTING OF SNOW. THIS MAY   RESULT IN WHITE-OUT CONDITIONS FOR A TIME MONDAY AFTERNOON.

Sen. Richard Shelby(Stupid Party & Greedy-AL),

the kind of Republican who helped get Obama elected.

Earmarks and pork and legislative bribes; What We Already Have Far Too Much Of.

Well, crap. The Klingons are arriving, with an effed-up

cloaking system.

"I'm not going to take away your guns! I don't have the votes!

(so I'll do it in other ways)

Damn these people. Personal ideology above all, including stopping terrorist threats.

I'd love to have one,

but it's gonna have to wait a while: Kaffiyah Y’Israelit

It seems that being a honest, fair and hard-working ATF agent

is like being that kind of cop in New Orleans; dangerous and disgusting.

I'd read about this case before; as I recall most of the serious charges brought due to the agent getting into Hell's Angels were dropped or thrown out because of the prosecutors and agency brass effing up the cases. And now they seem determined to prove that in their eyes the worst thing you can do is trust the agency brass.

And here's a damn good reason to tell Levi Strauss company

to go to hell.
Reader "Barney B" sent me copies of his email correspondence with the clothing giant. I'll give you the CliffsNotes version, from their corporate "consumer relations" reply:

Levi Strauss & Co. believes deeply in the importance of equality, social justice, community involvement and corporate citizenship.

Here's one of the ways they manifest their deep beliefs:

In this time of need, we encourage you to give what you can at www.oxfamamerica.org.

OXFAM? Where have I heard about them before?

Oh, yeah--they're the international citizen disarmament zealots who are conjoined with IANSA to stump for a global gun grab.

Levi's really hit the trifecta here: 'social justice', 'corporate citizenship' and 'Let's ban guns!'

Some years back I wrote to them when I heard about their involvement in PAX, their big thing at the time being "For the children, we need to ban guns because of school violence!" I pointed out that fists, feet, clubs and knives were used far more often than guns in crimes in school, so why weren't the primarily worried about those? Reply boiled down to "We're worried about all violence, but especially that caused by those nasty guns." Which caused me to formulate my General Rule of Semi-Non-Violence Idiocy: Some kid getting strangled, beaten or stabbed to death in a school isn't NEARLY as important as something the weenies can use to attack gun ownership, because for a lot of them that's the real goal.

And I haven't bought anything Levi's since.

Also pointed to by Codrea, why the hell does the Collin County DA

spending a bunch of money on a personal SWAT team? Is this shit now just a prestige item("How can I face the other DAs at the next convention if I'm the only one who doesn't have one?") or has the level of stupid and availability of money just led to this?

And is he going to be personally responsible for any deaths, injuries and property damage they cause?

Well, here's something that has the possibility of biting someone in the ass

Oklahoma has a new law that makes it a crime to “fortify” a citizen’s home against possible entry by law enforcement.

State Rep. Sue Tibbs was one of the sponsors of a bill that makes it unlawful for “any person to willfully fortify an access point into any dwelling, structure, building or other place where a felony offense prohibited by the Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Act is being committed, or attempted, and the fortification is for the purpose of preventing or delaying entry or access by a law enforcement officer, or to harm or injure a law enforcement officer in the performance of official duties.”
...
The law states that to “fortify an access point” means to willfully construct, install, position, use or hold any material or device designed to injure a person upon entry or to strengthen, defend, restrict or obstruct any door, window or other opening into a dwelling, structure, building or other place to any extent beyond the security provided by a commercial alarm system, lock or deadbolt, or a combination of alarm, lock or deadbolt.


I understand the idea, though I think it's unnecessary; it's not like this is going to bother someone who's cooking meth or whatever. My concern is that some prosecutor is going to decide to use this against someone charged with something else because they had done something to make their home more secure.

On the mess with Austin PD and BATFE

Melissa has some posts on the matter.

Looks like Iran could get downright messy

It looks like February 11th will be the most violent confrontation to date. The regime is taking unusual measures to put down the promised demonstrations. In many ways it resembles the “Chinese solution.” First, an unprecedented mobilization: 120 trains and something like a thousand buses have been deployed from as far away as 250 kilometers from the capital. They will be used by the Revolutionary Guards and Basij to bring tens of thousands of paid “volunteers” to Tehran. These will consist of entire families (dependent on the regime) to counter the Green Wave. Each family gets $80 for the day, plus free food. The regime is aiming at 300,000 thugs in the streets. The Greens don’t think the numbers will be that high, and in any event they expect ten times that number of protesters, upwards of three million increasingly angry people, demanding freedom and justice.

I shall now borrow, among others, from Denny

on the subject of Canadian health care:
Here's the deal. Ronald Reagan once pointed out that people voted with their feet. They went to where the best jobs are and where the living is better. That's why people are leaving Mexifornia and migrating to places like Texas. Texas is due to pick up four congresssional seats after the 2010 census. Georgia is gonna pick up at least one. People are leaving high tax and dying states like Michigan. Way to go unions!

But I digress. That's a rant for another day.

Mr. Williams' decision to leave Canada for the surgery has raised eyebrows over his apparent shunning of Canada's health-care system.

He knows that the Canadian system is not as good as ours.

"It was never an option offered to him to have this procedure done in this province," said Ms. Dunderdale, refusing to answer whether the procedure could be done elsewhere in Canada.
Either it couldn't, or the rules they follow would've delayed it so long he'd have died, probably; and deity knows they don't want to admit either one.


So the Chinese have figured out the IPCC is not worth trusting; maybe someday our media will start reporting this stuff fully.


Speaking of which, Insty pointed to this: two feet of globular warming expected. And here in Oklahoma they're predicting ANOTHER round on snow on Monday; this has been the worst winter, snow and ice-wise, I can remember in a LONG time. Somebody find Algore, we need to either lock him up somewhere or he can join the defenestration queue with the tax weenies.


When Sen. Gillibrand(Evil Party Backstabber-NY) decided to stab the people in her home district in the back, she really went to a big knife, didn't she?
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand will make a joint appearance at a forum next month with controversial lawyer Van Jones, who left the Obama administration last year amid outrage over his past remarks about 9/11.
Question becomes, did this slip past her puppetmaster Schumer, or did he think it was a good idea?


Keith Olbermann: devoid of fact, and nearly of viewers.



Well, well, Starbucks refused to roll over for the Brady Coalition to Ban Guns; good for Starbucks. And Peets Coffee & Tea and California Pizza Kitchen? If I lived there, you would've lost my business for this PC idiocy of yours.


To the EffingBI: screw you, you little statist thugs. It's none of your damned business what websites I look at, unless you have gotten a legal warrant to dig into it. One thing we do NOT need is another massive invasion of privacy by you people with the standard excuse "It's for the CHILDREN!" You wanting to force this record keeping so you can go on fishing expeditions? Screw you.


Well, here's a good reason to stay out of Omaha. Let's see, a "We'll do it no matter what state law says" prosecutor, a "I want to know what you own" police chief... Not a place I'd want to spend money.


Charles Johnson: wonderful little bastard, isn't he?


Jeez. And in most of Europe, owning arms for self-defense is highly discouraged... an awful lot of Jews must be getting pretty nervous over this crap.


McChrystal says things have improved; hope so, and hope it continues.


Wow, MSNBC slants the news and The Obama is full of crap; whoda thunk it?


Well, lots of whores don't like being called what they are, Landrieu, deal with it.


Now if you'll excuse me, got some running around to do

Apparently the Diplomatic Security Service follows the standard rule:

'Protect the agency, no matter what."

Friday, February 05, 2010

Well damn, guy, what was your first clue?

These conclusions of his, in a finely argued and brilliantly written book, carry the worrisome implication that the propaganda of the regime may actually mean exactly what it says, which in turn would mean that peace and disarmament negotiations with it are a waste of time—and perhaps a dangerous waste at that.
I don't know why I'm surprised by this, except that I'd thought Hitchens would have already realized this a long time ago.

'Course, we've still got a lot of people who refuse to believe that Ahmadogcrap and the mullahs in Iran actually mean what they're saying, too.

This is one of the times I'd like to line up all the people responsible

for our tax system and shoot every third one, horsewhip every second and defenestrate the others. Anybody who's had a hand in producing a set of laws and regulations this idiotic and complex, who then holds YOU responsible for any errors even if you followed advice given you by the IRS, deserves such. At best.

I hate that you can go over everything multiple times, rechecking by the instructions each time, and you still have to worry about it.

Well, that IS a good question: What is the Austin Police Department

trying to hide?
Forgive me if I can't help but focus on these words:

[T]he department wishes to withhold some of the requested information and has asked for a decision from the Attorney General about whether the information is within an exception to public disclosure.

Why?

Sorry, and with all due respect and gratitude to Ms. Tripp for following up and fleshing out so many details for us, when the government dodges being forthcoming, and thus held accountable to the law for information their agents are willing to personally attest to on an official record (with all the attendant liabilities that implies), my antennae go up.

Zero Tolerance: so the school brass don't have to attempt to use their brain

'Pathetic' just doesn't really describe this.

Evelyn Matroianni, you are an effing fool.

Speaking of savages, they exist in various places

some of them are socialist bastards(their apologists are in the useful fucking moron category), and some, well, some would just look better dead.
Turkish police have recovered the body of a 16-year-old girl they say was buried alive by relatives in an "honour" killing carried out as punishment for talking to boys.

The girl, who has been identified only by the initials MM, was found in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-metre hole dug under a chicken pen outside her home in Kahta, in the south-eastern province of Adiyaman.
...
A postmortem examination revealed large amounts of soil in her lungs and stomach, indicating that she had been alive and conscious while being buried. Her body showed no signs of bruising
.

Let's start the day with Government Control of the Internet:

After finding himself on the receiving end of widespread criticism and unfriendly hashtags on Twitter, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has announced that he now considers Twitter messages and social networking as terrorist threats. He is quoted in this Spanish-language news report as calling for more state control over the internet. The Great Firewall of... Venezuela?
Every jerk in every government who wants more government control of the 'net(all for the public good, of course) is traveling down the same path; Chavez the Communist is just more open about it.


Can you say 'Coverup by the State Department and DC Police'? I knew you could:
An agent in the vehicle, Mike McGuinn, did not identify himself to Medlock at the scene, or apologize for running him down. Indeed, Washington, D.C., police drove to a local emergency room to serve Medlock with a jaywalking citation as he lay prostrate in a hospital bed, while a man who identified himself as “special agent” stood by watching and taking notes.
...
Curiously, the ticket says that Medlock was struck at an intersection four blocks from where the accident actually took place. And it claims that Medlock was walking diagonally across the intersection at the time. In one of his strikingly short conversations with the Daily Caller, agent Mike McGuinn acknowledged that Medlock was not jaywalking at all, but walking “outside the crosswalk when the incident occurred.”

The question is: Did the federal agent driving the SUV, faced with potential liabilities from the accident, encourage local police to issue some sort – any sort – of citation to Medlock, to establish his culpability?
...
MPD provided several answers about the level of detail they would be able to provide. MPD public affairs said a police report would not be available until early next week at the soonest. A Daily Caller reporter who visited the Second District station, where Officer Muniz posts, was told there will be no incident report at all filed for a traffic incident
.
Well, isn't this just a wonderful little runaround they've got going?


Hmmm, another possible link between AG Holder and terrorist groups; isn't THAT a wonderful thing?


Max Blumenthal, Professional Journalist, is full of crap. Big surprise, right? But hey, he's got someone of conservative bent to slime, so...


Andrew Sullivan really is a shit, isn't he?


Gee, another Obama appointee who lies to the Senate. This one's name is Craig Becker


Actually, that's about all I can take this morning. The sun's shining and most of the snow is gone, so I've got some things to do.

'No tax increases' my ass; this is on the line of using candy

to lure a kid into an alley so you can rape them:
Wall Street Journal op-ed, Another Obama Tax Hike: The Senate Health-Care Bill Would Raise Effective Marginal Tax Rates on Lower and Middle-Income Singles and Families up to 41%, by Douglas Holtz-Eakin (Former Director, Congressional Budget Office; Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations) & Alex Brill (American Enerprise Institute):

[The Senate health care bill raises] to shocking levels the effective marginal tax rates (EMTR) on lower and middle-income singles and families--with the government taking up to 41% of each additional dollar. ...
Got that? Tax increases by back 'helping you with your health care'.
As a family's income rises above 133% of poverty, Medicaid eligibility will be eliminated but a family that does not receive health insurance from their employer will receive a subsidy to purchase health insurance in the "exchange." In turn, however, as their efforts yield higher income, subsidies are clawed back or effectively taxed away. The current law policies show that there are already some lower income families facing EMTRs above those in the middle class. But the barrier to success imposed by health-care reform is even more striking. According to the Congressional Budget Office, about 20 million people would receive a subsidy to purchase insurance through an exchange and thus face a higher EMTR.

So. Obama promises 'no tax increases if you're not 'rich' ', which definition keeps shifting around; then this crap would give you a subsidy(i.e., other peoples money) to 'help' you get insurance, but that subsidy would be considered income so you'll pay higher taxes... And anyone who works hard and succeeds will be raped with this garbage, making it not worth succeeding.

So the Obamites get two things: take control of our health care, and destroy growth because people won't want to work hard and 'succeed' when it means they'll be taxed to death for doing so. Wonderful people, aren't they?

Some of this information has been around a while, but the Globular Warmering

mess needs to be getting attention, because they're still pushing the crap.
In fact, the Fourth Assessment Report suggests 2035 as the likely arrival of Armageddon, but what’s half a decade between scaremongers? They rate the likelihood of the glaciers disappearing as “very high”—i.e., more than 90 per cent. And the IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for that report, so it must be kosher, right? Well, yes, its Himalayan claims rest on a 2005 World Wildlife Fund report called “An Overview of Glaciers.”

WWF? Aren’t they something to do with pandas and the Duke of Edinburgh? True. But they wouldn’t be saying this stuff if they hadn’t got the science nailed down, would they? The WWF report relies on an article published in the New Scientist in 1999 by Fred Pearce.

That’s it? One article from 12 years ago in a pop-science mag? Oh, but don’t worry, back in 1999 Fred did a quickie telephone interview with a chap called Syed Hasnain of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. And this Syed Hasnain cove presumably knows a thing or two about glaciers.
...
...Dr. Murari Lal, the “scientist” who included the 2035 glacier apocalypse in the IPCC report, told Britain’s Mail on Sunday that he knew it wasn’t based on “peer-reviewed science” but “we thought we should put it in”—for political reasons
.

And it also needs to be kept in the public eye just what- besides accolades and authority- some of these people are getting out of this crap:
V. K. Raina, of the Geological Survey of India, produced a special report demonstrating that the run-for-your-life-the-glaciers-are-melting IPCC scenario was utterly false. For his pains, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, the self-aggrandizing old bruiser and former railroad engineer who serves as head honcho of the IPCC jet set, dismissed Mr. Raina’s research as “voodoo science.” He’s now been obliged to admit the voodoo was all on his side. But don’t worry. By 2008, Syed Hasnain’s decade-old casual chit-chat over the phone to a London journalist had become “settled science,” so Dr. Pachauri’s company TERI (The Energy & Resources Institute) approached the Carnegie Corporation for a grant to research “challenges to South Asia posed by melting Himalayan glaciers,” and was rewarded with half a million bucks. Which they promptly used to hire Syed Hasnain. In other words, professor Hasnain has landed a cushy gig researching solutions to an entirely non-existent global crisis he accidentally invented over a 15-minute phone call 10 years earlier. As they say in the glacier business, ice work if you can get it.

Thursday, February 04, 2010

Yes, some people really are savages,

and enjoy it. If they or their apologists don't like them being called that, tough shit.

The quote from Ghandi, I believe, is Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India,

history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.* It still hangs on in the Indian government, and some people are working to change that.
In the land of Mahatma Gandhi, Indian gun owners are coming out of the shadows for the first time to mobilize, U.S.-style, against proposed new curbs on bearing arms.

When gunmen attacked 10 sites in Mumbai in November 2008, including two five-star hotels and a train station, Mumbai resident Kumar Verma sat at home glued to the television, feeling outraged and unsafe.

Before the end of December, Verma and his friends had applied for gun licenses. He read up on India's gun laws and joined the Web forum Indians for Guns. When he got his license seven months later, he bought a black, secondhand, snub-nose Smith & Wesson revolver with a walnut grip.

"I feel safe wearing it in my ankle holster every day," said Verma, 27, who runs a family business selling fire-protection systems. "I have a right to self-protection, because random street crime and terrorism have increased. The police cannot be there for everybody all the time. Now I am a believer in the right to keep and bear arms."

India currently seems to have the kind of bullshit victim disarmament laws Bloomberg and the Brady group would like to force on us.
Although India's 1959 Arms Act gives citizens the legal right to own and carry guns, it is not a right enshrined in the country's constitution. Getting a license is a cumbersome process, and guns cannot be bought over the counter -- requirements that gun owners describe as hangovers from the colonial past, when the British rulers disarmed their Indian subjects to head off rebellion.

In December, the Ministry of Home Affairs proposed several amendments to the Arms Act that would make it even harder to acquire a gun license, restrict the number of people eligible for nationwide licenses and curtail the amount of ammunition a gun owner can amass
.
Ah, yes, face a terrorist attack and then pretend to deal with it by working to disarm the honest citizens. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? So will the reaction:
"We are outraged. We are not murderers. Instead of going after real criminals, the government is indulging in window dressing by bringing in gun control laws that target law-abiding citizens who have licensed guns," said Abhijeet Singh, 37, a software engineer who started Indians for Guns and is the coordinator of the new gun rights association.

"We want to remove the stigma on licensed gun owners," Singh said. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, 87 percent of murders by firearms in India in 2007 involved illegally held guns
.
I can't remember if it was Kevin or someone else who said "Gun control laws are what politicians do instead of actually doing something." These folks need to remember that, and push it out there.

The reaction of the 'experts' will sound awfully familiar to you:
Indian security experts appear dismissive of the group's efforts. "There is no place for a gun rights movement in India," said Julius Ribeiro, a former police officer who comments on security issues. "That kind of debate may work in America, but it will not work here, because laws are misused and guns can easily fall into the wrong hands. It can get dangerous in India."
Standard translation: "You peasants have no need of arms, that's to be left to us minions of the state and experts. We of the State cannot trust you to own them." And I love the 'laws are misused' bit; does he mean the current 'disarmament by bureaucratic bullshit' described in the article? Just what the hell DOES he mean? And considering that the bad guys demonstratively have no problem getting arms, how would honest citizens having arms affect that?

Same arguments for disarming the citizens the hoplophobes and statists use here, and just as full of crap.

Mr. Verma, carry on; you're doing a good thing.


*It's one of those quotes that the hoplophobes really don't like people to remember.

Would YOU trust the EUnuchs to have access to this?

The European Court of Justice has told Sweden that it must implement a 2006 measure requiring telecom operators to store information about their customers’ phone calls and emails.

The only proper response of a country even pretending to be free would be "Excuse me. Gentlemen? Fuck your mother with a spade."

Let's talk about weather and weather-related stuff

India has established its own body to monitor the effects of global warming because it “cannot rely” on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group headed by its own Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr Lying Bastard R K Pachauri.
Ok, so I may have added something there. Deal with it.


What? A major nor'easter will strike the Mid-Atlantic states producing major snow accumulations and strong winds.

When? Storm begins around midday Friday and lasts through the majority of Saturday.

Where? High-populated areas of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey and southeastern Pennsylvania will likely all experience big snow totals. Washington, DC and Baltimore could experience foot plus snow totals.
Globular warming my ass.


Right now it's so foggy outside I half expect to see some tall guy in a deerstalker strolling along outside. But at least it's well above freezing.

Mad Rocket Scientist notes something about central-planning economies

that it doesn't work too well when the planners are effing batcrap insane.

Trouble is, when you have a nutcase-level communist government, an awful lot of the people connected to the planning are.

Hehehehehe

I flat love his work



Also, I'll be interested in what the price of this holster turns out to be; for the Ruger .22 pistols it looks great.

So Holder now admits to the idiot decision

A Senate Republican aide tells National Review Online that Holder's response was released within hours of Senate Republicans' formal request that Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) call on Holder to testify before the body. It was Holder's first public response to a series of four GOP letters on terrorism policy that date back eight months, according to Republicans.
So he and his buttmonkeys delay and delay until he basically has no choice, THEN he admits to this being his responsibility.

And also that Obama was right in the middle of it:
In the days following December 25 — including during a meeting with the President and other senior members of his national security team on January 5 — high-level discussions ensued within the Administration in which the possibility of detaining Mr. Abdulmutallab under the law of war was explicitly discussed. No agency supported the use of law of war detention for Abdulmutallab, and no agency has since advised the Department of Justice that an alternative course of action should have been, or should now be, pursued.
Yeah. Those other agencies also run by Obama appointees and such had a problem with this decision; that just makes it all warm and fuzzy, doesn't it?

Apparently Amazon didn't think some things through

real well.
Due to Amazon.com’s removal of many of our authors’ books from its ordering system, we are removing Amazon.com links from our website. Our authors depend on people buying their books and since a significant percentage of them publish through Macmillan or its subsidiaries, we would prefer to send traffic to stores where the books can actually be purchased.

To that end, our volunteers are in the process of redirecting book links to indiebound.org, Powell’s, Barnes and Noble, and Borders
.

Snork. Hehehehe....


Thanks to Sondra

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Can ANY of the media make ANY EFFORT to find out what the hell they're talking about

BEFORE they publish it?

I guess he decided they couldn't keep it running without him

Son has re-upped. Current location, somewhere in Kurdistan for the next few months.

Two fine demonstrations of 'Politician should know what the hell he's talking about

or make sure not to lie when making a public statement. One from here,
Our increasingly-RINO Mayor hath sworn a solemn oath to slay the beastly notion of letting licensed citizens carry their guns in Indy parks, 'cos he's like, wanting to be a one-term mayor. Or maybe he feeeeeels guns are all creepy. (Um, I thought he was in the military. USMC? Oh $DIETY please no; but yes). Heck, maybe he'd just like to see me get stomped flat in a city park; who can say? Money shot quote from the Indy [pinko] Star:

“This never comes up in any forum I ever go to,” Ballard said of the issue. “I’m putting out what I hear from the people.”

Except there is a poll at the Star, presently running at 71% in favor of permit-holders being allowed to carry in parks (criminals already are -- why should they get special treatment?) and only 29% against the idea. The citizenry hath spake, Mr. Mayor, and they're sayin' you're full of it.

Your move, pal. The electorate's watching.
Oh, Mayor Ballard, you'd better believe they are!
The other is from Down Under:
"I'll give you an example: repeatedly in the AdelaideNow website one will see commentary from Aaron Fornarino of West Croydon. That person doesn't exist," Atkinson said on the air. "That name has been created by the Liberal Party in order to run Liberal Party commentary." This morning, AdelaideNow took great delight in posting a picture of Fornarino posing with a Mac and his young daughter. He's a second-year law student who moved to the area last year and "lives in a flat on Port Rd, about 500m from Mr. Atkinson's electorate office."

One made a dumbass statement, apparently from not checking to make sure he was right, the other I have a strong suspicion is lying. And both made the error.

That there is funny

(CNN) -- Iran said Wednesday it had launched a rocket carrying a rat, two turtles and some worms into orbit...
All of which were wearing teeny, tiny explosive vests, no doubt, making it the first Persian MIRV.

If you read about a jerk named Dale Robertson

who the MSM is pushing as a 'leader' of the tea party movement, here's some information on the clown.

I have to say, this required a serious level of dumbass

on the part of the PD:
Oklahoma City Police officials have launched an internal investigation into how and why a man who paraded himself as a former German federal police officer, made his way into specialized training here. The suspect, 27 year old Maziar Golchehr reported told a high ranking police officer in Oklahoma City that he was a former German police officer, who was interested in living and working here.

It appears the city officer befriended the suspect, allowing him into various police functions, including SWAT training, in which he was given access to a high powered, sawed-off weapon which is legally authorized for use only by police officers
.
In case you're interested(and I know you are), the 'high powered sawed-off weapon etc.' was that mysterious object known as the MP5; and no, I have no idea how or why they came up with the dramatic wording.

A city officer participating in one of those training sessions became suspicious of Golchehr, based on how he reacted during the exercises. At that point, city police contacted the US State Department, and German authorities, only to learn Golchehr didn't have the background he claimed, and had engaged in similar ruses in Germany.
Same source from which I heard about the MP5 told me that he'd also had access to the PD computers; which means that besides that department's stuff he may also have had access to NCIC and NLETS and so forth; they must be having bloody fits. And it makes the line at the end of the story more worrisome:
Golcheher had been living in Germany and is of Iranian descent.
Now, isn't that just SO confidence-inspiring?

It's cold, but a lot of the snow melted yesterday and more

should melt today. And now they're saying rain tonight & tomorrow. Yuck. Anyway,
Wow, the 9th Circus actually slapped a federal judge down! And for actual good reasons!


Rep. Murtha(Corrupt Bastard-PA) is in the hospital. I admit a temptation to say a number of things, but I'll not do that today.


Hehehehehe
“He didn’t learn his lesson the first time, but when he hurt our economy by his ill conceived rhetoric, we didn’t think it would happen again, but now that it has I want to assure you, when he comes I’ll do everything I can to give him the boot back to Washington and to visit his failures back there.

“I gotta tell you this, everybody says I shouldn’t say it, but I gotta tell you the way it is. This president is a real slow learner.”

Sen. Reid must be SO happy to have The Obama coming to town for him.


Oh, wonderful. Question is, will The Obama send them a stern note, or just try to overlook this? I say 'overlook' because he's finally learned, I think, that if he publicly protests the next thing will be Ahmadogcrap telling him to go to hell.


That is one big-ass snowblower.


Ah, that seems just a bit excessive for whitetail...


I used to think a lot of Arpaio; after reading the last few months about some of the stuff coming out, not so much.


Last: Supposedly Abdulmuttalab is talking. Isn't that convenient? I mean, here Holder & Co. are getting serious heat about "Who decided? When? And why?" and the announce "Hey, he's talking, see how good our work is?"

Also, to borrow from Ace,
First, awesome and all but relying on the family of a terrorist to help gather intelligence isn't exactly a sure fire strategy. The fact that this guy's dad gave him up beforehand shows how extraordinary a case this is. There are huge numbers of examples of everyday Americans who won't help authorities put their family members behind bars for ordinary crime. Does anyone think we can rely on this type of cooperation every time?

Second, Abdulmuttalab began talking over a month after the attack. Do we really have that kind of time to waste? Considering the top counter terrorism officials in the administration said yesterday it's a virtual certainty that there will be another attempted attack within the next 3-6 months, I'd so we don't
.


That's it for now, I need to find a 1/4" bolt 1" long.

Don't ask.

I guess this rates as "The dog ate the work, but it doesn't matter,

since a bunch of it was crap anyway."
But when Jones turned down requests from them to reveal details about the location of the 84 Chinese weather stations used in the study, arguing that it would be "unduly burdensome", they concluded that he was covering up the error.

And when, in 2007, Jones finally released what location data he had, British amateur climate analyst and former City banker Doug Keenan accused Jones and Wang of fraud.

He pointed out that the data showed that 49 of the Chinese meteorological stations had no histories of their location or other details. These mysterious stations included 40 of the 42 rural stations. Of the rest, 18 had certainly been moved during the study period, perhaps invalidating their data.

Keenan told the Guardian: "The worst case was a station that moved five times over a distance of 41 kilometres"; hence, for those stations, the claim made in the paper that "there were 'few if any changes' to locations is a fabrication". He demanded that Jones retract his claims about the Chinese data.

Now Phil Jones, the head of the CRU and his Chinese-American colleague Wei-Chyung Wang, from the University of New York at Albany are admitting that the data are lost. Even more damningly, the Guardian reports:

The story has a startling postscript. In 2008, Jones prepared a paper for the Journal of Geophysical Research re-examining temperatures in eastern China. It found that, far from being negligible, the urban heat phenomenon was responsible for 40% of the warming seen in eastern China between 1951 and 2004.


Lies and coverup from True Believers. Who were working very hard to affect how we'll be allowed(and that's what they want) to live our lives.

If you read the article, along with other stuff that's been coming out, you'll find that the Guardian and other papers are basically playing "Yes, they faked and lost data, but that doesn't change that we're warming the earth and disaster(might be, maybe) IS coming!" Talk about trying to have it both ways...

But the unpleasant fact is that these Brit papers are at least reporting on this mess, with most of our media seems to have an allergy to.

Ok, so according to this Reuters pulled the story

on taxes because of gross errors(I guess the multiple layers of fact-checkers were off duty that day). He also points out that the increases Obama is planning
The tax cuts at the top that the president would allow to expire would significantly lower marginal tax rates on saving and investment and promote long-run growth. Letting those tax cuts expire would ultimately harm the middle class by lowering their wages.
Yes, but those would be tax increases on those evil people who dared to succeed! so that's just ducky according to The Obama & Co. Or if not 'succeeded' as yet, people building a business and may succeed, so they need to be punished now!

So it would seem.

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Yeah, that third law can be a bitch

Is there any level of suckitude that CNN

won't sink to?

And some of the media is still so in the tank for Obama

that they'll pull a story like this? Wonderful, our major media, aren't they?
While the administration is focusing its proposal on eliminating tax breaks for individuals who earn $250,000 a year or more, middle-class families will face a slew of these backdoor increases.

The targeted tax provisions were enacted under the Bush administration's Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001. Among other things, the law lowered individual tax rates, slashed taxes on capital gains and dividends, and steadily scaled back the estate tax to zero in 2010.

If the provisions are allowed to expire on December 31, the top-tier personal income tax rate will rise to 39.6 percent from 35 percent. But lower-income families will pay more as well: the 25 percent tax bracket will revert back to 28 percent; the 28 percent bracket will increase to 31 percent; and the 33 percent bracket will increase to 36 percent. The special 10 percent bracket is eliminated.

Investors will pay more on their earnings next year as well, with the tax on dividends jumping to 39.6 percent from 15 percent and the capital-gains tax increasing to 20 percent from 15 percent. The estate tax is eliminated this year, but it will return in 2011 -- though there has been talk about reinstating the death tax sooner
.

Hey, Californicated: now you know that Meg Whitman

is a PC little squish. Who thinks this statement is unacceptable:
There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. [and/or] We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any flag of a nation to which we are hostile. We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.
Bad enough we have to listen to a bunch of race warlord poverty pimps calling this 'racist'; that this jerk Whitman has fits this way means you do NOT need her in office.

Cuba: the kind of 'gun control' the Brady Bunch, Violence Policy Center

and Obama would love to force on us:
Cuba has declared a two-month amnesty for citizens to register unlicensed guns, and says those passing aptitude and psychological tests will be allowed to keep their weapons.
A: Anybody who believes they mean that, and trusts them, is a fool.
B: This is exactly the kind of crap the Brady Group, Mayors Against Gun Ownership & Co. would love to force on us: "Just take the tests, and if we decide you're approved you'll be allowed to own that gun. For now."

And that brings us to the question of "If a communist dictatorship on a bloody island can't keep people from getting or making guns, just how the hell is that supposed to work here?"
The move is unusual in a state where almost no one except some active military personnel and plain-clothed state security agents are allowed to possess weapons.

Even most police officers are required to leave their pistols at the station or in a regional barracks when on vacation or leave, and young men participating in mandatory military service are given unloaded firearms for most exercises
.
And yet we read this further down:
While Cuba is among the safest countries in the hemisphere, it is not unusual to find firearms in Cuban homes, though most are weapons improvised from household materials or guns that were smuggled into the country and bought on the black market.
'Safest country'. Snorf. Hehehehehe.....

And why might people be a bit untrusting of the 'amnesty'?
Cubans were encouraged to register any weapons they owned in the years after Fidel Castro and his band of rebels toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista on Jan. 1, 1959. But later authorities used a list of those who had sought licenses to go door-to-door and encourage them to turn over their firearms - even antiques considered family heirlooms.
Nice word, that: 'encourage'. As in "It would be very unfortunate if bad things happened to your family because you didn't surrender that Mauser like a good peasantsupporter of the revolution would."

And just to make it more wonderful,
The call to register arms is for Cubans civilians, and the bulletin stated that "security and protection agents, detectives and bodyguards will be summoned by the Ministry of the Interior" for an independent licensing process.
Yep. Approved minions of the State will get a different licensing setup. Isn't that just so deserving of trust that you could puke?

And it's what people like Bloomberg would love to do to us.

It's cloudy, but warmed up enough that things have been melting

all night(barely, but melting). Now, assuming it doesn't rain or snow(like the rain now predicted for tomorrow night), it'll only take a week or so for the ground to not squish when you step on it. Since it's too yucky to do anything out there(no, Tam, not heading to the range today, though it'd be nice),

If the Canadian socialized medicine system is so good, why is he coming here?
Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams is set to undergo heart surgery this week in the United States.

CBC News confirmed Monday that Williams, 60, left the province earlier in the day and will have surgery later in the week.

The premier's office provided few details, beyond confirming that he would have heart surgery and saying that it was not necessarily a routine procedure
.
Are they hinting that the system is good for 'routine' but not anything else? Did the doctor say "Get this done or you'll die, so head south"?


Insty links to McArdle on the socialized medicine meltdown. She says, among other things,
I don’t think it is actually true that trying to pass a bill people hate, and then thinking the better of it because it turns out the electorate hates it, is no different from trying to pass a bill people hate, finding out that they really, really hate it, and then ignoring them and pushing it through anyway.

Moreover, I am sort of amazed that anyone does think this
.
I'll suggest she's overlooking something: the burning-white-hot desire of the progressives in Congress to grab this power over the peasants. Some of these bastards would happily see the Democrat Party absolutely stomped in the next elections if they could just pass this and then spend the next years trying to keep the new Congress from getting rid of it. They Want This Power, and they're willing to shove it down our throats at any price; the only thing stopping them has been the Tea Parties making it absolutely plain to the elected reps that "You don't own that office, and we'll throw your sorry ass out of it." Which is also a sorry commentary on so many of said reps: they care so much about keeping their fat ass in that chair that they'll actually pay some attention to what their bosses say, which they should have been doing in the first place.


Well, well, it seems Jones was being even more conniving in pushing AGW than we already knew.
Phil Jones, the beleaguered British climate scientist at the centre of the leaked emails controversy, is facing fresh claims that he sought to hide problems in key temperature data on which some of his work was based.

A Guardian investigation of thousands of emails and documents apparently hacked from the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit has found evidence that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed and that documents relating to them could not be produced
.
Seems like an awful lot of documents and data has turned out to be 'lost' or 'unavailable' from these scientists.


What? Obama lied? Tax increases on people making less than 250k?

Whoda thunk it?(other than everyone who warned about it BEFORE the election)



Ah, Chicago, where only some Nobel winners are worth mentioning.


Remember that part about Obama being an amazing liar? It really is something how he'll look you in the eye(in many cases it's actually the teleprompter, but still) and flat lie.


Holder just does not want to answer the question: How many of the political appointees now in charge of terrorist detainee issues at the Obama Justice Department were, not too long ago, lawyers and activists working on behalf of those very detainees? Who are they? Have they removed themselves from cases involving their former clients?
And there's no good reason for him not to. Maybe, in this case, the expression 'feet to the fire' ought to be taken a bit more literally...


One more thing, but it deserves APOIO.

Monday, February 01, 2010

A bit more on the O'Keefe case

at Althouse.

Big problem for me: I want to believe the Justice Department wouldn't abuse the powers it holds, but after the last couple of decades or so I don't believe that; they've been caught at it too many times, and there have been too many times when they should have acted and didn't, which can be just as bad as acting when they shouldn't.

If you know somebody who wears a Che(he's still dead, y'know) shirt

or thinks he was a 'hero of the peoples', ask the dumb bastard if they've ever actually read anything about the slime.
In a famous speech in 1961, Che Guevara denounced the very “spirit of rebellion” as “reprehensible.” “Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates” commanded Guevara. “Instead they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service.”

And woe to those youths “who stayed up late at night and thus reported to work (government forced-labor) tardily.” Youth, wrote Guevara, “should learn to think and act as a mass.” Those who “chose their own path” (as in growing long hair and listening to Yankee-Imperialist Rock & Roll) were denounced as worthless “lumpen” and “delinquents.” In his famous speech Che Guevara even vowed, “to make individualism disappear from Cuba! It is criminal to think of individuals!” he raved
.
I'd read about this miserable little pustule on the anus of mankind before; it's always been just amazing to me how people who claim to be for individual liberty and free speech could in any way admire the murdering little shit. That people like Depp, who've become rich pretty much by being the kind of character Che would have locked in a camp- or murdered- can talk about how wonderful he was has to be taken as a sign of abject stupidity.

Of course, in the 'arts' community, there seems to be an awful lot of that going 'round. And in the teaching world, too(these being those teachers who should be removed from the classrooms and sent to Cuba so they can enjoy the society they keep preaching is so wonderful).

This corruption of Rep. Pelosi deserves a post of its own Updated

Since Nancy Pelosi took over as Speaker in 2006, she's rung up millions in military travel expenses to commute between San Francisco and Washington.

Worse still, she also appears to have requisitioned entire flights for the personal use of her children and grandchildren. That is, unaccompanied by any member of Congress, her kids, in-laws and grandchildren are utilizing entire military passenger jets for their routine travel needs.

Using the documents obtained by Judicial Watch's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, I have discovered the following manifests and travel requests.

Here's the post with the information; apparently 'Most Ethical Congress EVAH!' has a different meaning for her and her buttmonkeys than it does for the rest of is.

Update: Michelle Malkin has this.

It's Monday. Blah.

Let's see, The Lightbringer(or Lightworker or whatever) just keeps wanting to suck up to China; I realize he has a soft spot for communist dictatorships, but damn.


I'm with Insty on this: shaming and blaming campaign aides is all very well, but what's really needed is naming, blaming and shaming the miserable excuses for reporters who covered up all this crap during the campaigns.


Interesting piece here on a gentleman named Wole Soyinka. I'd argue with him on two things. First,
"England is a cesspit. England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence. And yet England allows it. Remember, that country was the breeding ground for communism, too. Karl Marx did all his work in libraries there."

Why is Britain the way it is? "This is part of the character of Great Britain," Mr. Soyinka declares. "Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness." And so it is, he says, that Britain lets everyone preach whatever they want: It confirms a self-image of greatness
.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: freedom of speech has to include people you don't like and ideas you don't agree with, or it's NOT freedom of speech, it's 'freedom of PC speech'. Where Britain, and some of the idiots here go off the rails is when they treat the islamists and their bullshit as 'specially protected'. When muslims can demonstrate demanding people be killed for 'disrespecting' islam, and anyone who dares to carry a sign protesting that is threatened with arrest... they've gone away from freedom of speech and into 'silence anyone who doesn't speak in a PC manner, or who upsets a protected species'; that's the problem.

Second,
Will radical Islam take root in the United States, as it has elsewhere in the West? Mr. Soyinka was confident that it would not. "I doubt you can have the kind of indoctrination schools in America as you do in the U.K. Besides, there's a large body of American Muslims in the U.S.—the Nation of Islam—which has created a kind of mainstream Muslim institution. The Muslims there are open Muslims, whereas in Europe they tend to go into ghetto schools.

"The Nation of Islam provides an antidote in the United States to fundamentalist Islam—which is why individuals from America have to go abroad to find radical teachings."

This makes me wonder if he's been smoking crack. We've got a population of the same kind of radical islamists Britain has, and they're pushing to get away with the same crap, and the same progressive idiots who've screwed Britain are trying to do the same thing here.


Such a racist attitude(cowardly, too) from the Violence Policy Center. Be nice if they had the nerve to call themselves what they are, The End Gun Ownership Center.


Jeez, can The Obama nominate anyone for anything without them being a lying dirtbag?
Patricia Smith, President Obama's nominee for Solicitor of Labor, appears to have lied to Congress, according to e-mails released from during her tenure as Commissioner of the New York State Labor Department. As Daniel Halper explains over at The Weekly Standard, Smith has lied about her involvement with the Wage and Hour Watch program -- five times telling senators that she had no intention to expand the program to the entire state (leaving it localized in New York City), but later emails and other documents revealed that she did indeed plan to expand the program throughout the entire state of New York.

Senate Labor ranking member Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., has asked that Smith's nomination be withdrawn.


Well, I'd guess it's because he hasn't had a king or commie tyrant to bow to in a while.

Ah, hell, things to do. I'll get back to this stuff later.

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Besides causing Tam to need to wash out her brain,

Breda reminded me of something:
back during the primaries I was talking to a woman a friend had introduced me to, and the subject turned to politics, at which point she mentioned she wanted Edwards to get the nomination.

Up to that point I'd thought she seemed a pretty bright sort, so I asked "Why?"
"He's so good looking! And that voice..."

It was one of those "What the hell is going to happen to my country?" moments.

And no, I didn't see her again.

A very delayed test report: Quick Measure powder measure

Three years ago these folks were at the Tulsa gun show and I got a good look at their measure;

looked pretty good. And I decided to get one, but didn't want to carry it around through the show. Then, in the rush at the end of the day I forgot about them(shut up, Og).

Happily, they usually have an ad in Handloader magazine and I ran across it, and ordered one. That was more than a year ago; I decided to give it a good try(thinking "Dammit, this better work as well as I hope!") before I said anything about it. And then tried it out, and did other things, and I kind of forgot to write about it...

Ahem. Where this thing really comes in is loading rifle cartridges using stick powders like IMR4895; these powders don't go through a standard-type measure very well, they tend to cut granules among other things. So the usual method is to dump a load that's a bit light into the powder scale pan, then trickle in a bit more to bring it up to weight. Which is about as delightful and engrossing a task as you imagine*, especially if you're loading a bunch of cartridges. Instead of a rotating drum this thing has a powder chamber that slides up into the body, and a set of tubes of different lengths that fit into the bottom. Look at the chart, figure which tube you want for the powder/charge you're after, stick it in(held by friction from an o-ring), add powder. It comes with a funnel that has a brass dome in the center:
put the funnel end in the pan, place the dome under the mouth of the tube and push up; the chamber opens, the chamber and tube fill, you lower the funnel to close the chamber and then lift the funnel from the pan to drop the charge in. Weigh, and use the adjusting screw on the tube to adjust. When you've got the charge set, you can take a loading block of cases, stick the funnel over the first, up/down, then move the funnel to the next case and repeat.

The standard set comes with the measure, five charge tubes and the funnel, which also comes with several ends to fit different cartridges.

I've loaded a few hundred rounds so far with it, and here's the one thing you really have to do: be consistent in how you use it. Very consistent. If you move it up and down slowly, that's fine; if you move it quickly, that's fine too. BUT YOU HAVE TO DO IT THE SAME WAY EACH TIME, or you WILL get variance in the charge. Not a lot, but enough to be a problem for accuracy.

I've been using it for 8x57, .30-06 and .303, more for the -06 as I shoot it more. And so far, it's done pretty well; as long as I use the same motions/speed each time, I get very consistent charges. As to construction, the only gripe I have is that sometimes the o-ring doesn't put enough pressure on the tube and it can slip down; I'm thinking use a small round file to open the slot just a touch so more of the ring fits in. So far, when it's seemed loose I've just pushed on the ring over the slot with a fingernail. I'd think some kind of setscrew would be best, but they may have worried about someone getting heavy-handed and bending the tube.


Overall, I like it. It very much speeds up charging cases while still giving consistent weights. You'll note the clamp I've got holding it to the bracket for my Hornady measure, the 1/4" bolt, nut and big washers I usually use picked a fine time to go walkabout(the do sell a stand that's made for it). What I've had best results with is to make sure it's FIRMLY clamped to the stand, and when I lift do it quickly enough that I feel a sharp stop when it hits end of travel, then pull it down at the same speed; I find it easier(for me) to use that motion and speed consistently.


*worth it for match loads or hunting loads you want just perfect, but you still have the problem of most measures cutting granules; probably not enough to be a velocity/pressure problem, but not something I like.

For what it's worth, here's what I did before the storm

Two things in particular were a problem in the big ice storm a few years back: heat and food. I had friends I was able to crash with on several nights, which made a big difference. I'm still thinking about some kind of indoor-safe propane or other heater(not worried about being toasty, just a bit more comfortable). I've also got the Aladdin oil lamp I picked up last year; if you've never used one, they produce about as much light as a 60-watt electric light and a fair amount of heat. You can burn kerosene in them, but for indoor use you're better off getting lamp oil: little or no smell. Yeah, the stuff costs a lot more.

Damn, I was just thinking of getting a spare mantle, and they're sold out; apparently a lot of people bought them recently.

Be aware, a lot of the oil lamps that have a wide, flat wick are good for some light, and a little heat, but not something you'd want to do work by if you could avoid it.

The heat part of cooking I was ok on last time, I used the two-burner unit I use for bluing and melting lead(yes, I cleaned it off VERY thoroughly). It hooks up to the same propane tank the grill uses, so I just made sure I had a full tank before the weather hit(I've got two). It was the food part, as in 'can't open and close the fridge or freezer or it'll let all the cold out'. So what I did was pick out some stuff that'd be easy to cook and give lots of calories; then the day before the storm hit I got a couple of bags of ice, and when the storm started put the selected stuff in the ice chest with the ice. I figured that if the power was off for long, I could use that stuff and not worry about the fridge/freezer. Experience shows that in this weather, the freezer will keep everything solid for a good three days before you have to start worrying about it, the refrigerator not quite as long. So if it was off more than three days I know where to get dry ice; unplug or turn off the unit, then put the chunk on the top shelf, if you leave the door closed that's good for another three days in my freezer, about the same in the refrigerator(chunk in the freezer compartment).

Yes, I've got non-cook food around, it's just kind of encouraging to be able to turn out something hot when it's so cold and dark.

I do need to plan out my bugout supplies better; BRMs posts give me some good ideas there. I've never been in a situation where I needed that, but this is tornado country; if need be having some stuff ready to go in case the house/neighborhood gets hit would be a very good idea. For some reason I hadn't put any clothes in; a really dumb oversight.

Some disaster lessons, pre-, during and post-

RNS pointed to this over at Bayou Renaissance Man, and it's very worth reading.

One of the things he points out, that didn't get nearly the notice it should have, is the stuff in Third Post: trouble with other people who realize you actually prepared, and trouble from the authorities on several levels. Including #4, which I'm posting this excerpt of:
...Other families were arbitrarily separated upon rescue and/or evacuation, and are still scattered across two or three States. Their efforts to locate each other are very difficult, and when they request to be reunited at a common location, all of those with whom I have contact report a blanket refusal by the Red Cross and State officials to even consider the matter at this time. They're being informed that it will be "looked into" at some future date, and that they may have to pay the costs involved if they want to join up again. This, to families who are now destitute! I'm very angry about this, but it's so widespread a problem that I don't know what can be done about it. I hope that in future, some means will be implemented to prevent it happening again. Lesson learned: never, EVER allow yourselves to be separated as a family, even if it means waiting for later rescue and/or evacuation. Insist on this at all costs!

Triumph grows the engine?!?




Thanks to Theo

Yeah, that's one classy jerk

sitting in the Oval Office.

And in news from the Stupid Party,

Gingrich tries sucking up to actual conservatives and libertarians. Screw you, Newt, you've shown what you are and we don't want you in office. We damn sure don't want you running for President.

And Sen. Lindsey Grahamnesty(RINO Asshat-SC) wants the Stupid Party to roll over for a climate change bill because 'Congress needs a win.' Has it ever occurred to this bastard that
A: those things didn't pass because the people didn't want them to?
B: a 'victory for Congress' in these matters would mean a win for Congress over the people?
Or is he just such an arrogant asshole politician that he wants to stay in power no matter what? That he thinks he deserves to be there?

RINO hunting. Now. Not for the trophy, to get rid of the vermin.

He's not an idealogue, and he wants to freeze spending!

Except where he doesn't.

Hey, you can't try to buy votes with actual fiscal responsibility, now can you?

Michael Moore once again demonstrates what a dirtbag he is

"When I do it, it's journalism and protected; when the other side does it, it's an ad and propaganda and should be controlled."

"And the other side is EVIL, too!"

The other night, when I did my 'Sgt. Preston without the red coat'

imitation and walked to the essentials store(I did say I was out of whiskey), when I got to the corner of the walk by the store it seemed the wind had kept is swept clear of snow. Which meant there was about two inches of frozen slush; think of trying to walk on the surface of a pond that froze in a strong wind.

Step, slip, thump, and then I slid sideways off the walk and into the lane. I think I had the same look on my face as Wile E. when he realizes the cliff is coming up and he can't shut the rocket down.

A bit more on the Pashtun boy-banging situation

I've been reading some various "We shouldn't judge" stuff on the story a couple of days ago; I stand by my title.

The U.S. army medic also told members of the research unit that she and her colleagues had to explain to a local man how to get his wife pregnant.

The report said: "When it was explained to him what was necessary, he reacted with disgust and asked, 'How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean, when one could be with a man, who is clean? Surely this must be wrong.'"
...
The report also detailed a disturbing practice in which older "men of status" keep young boys on hand for sexual relationships. One of the country's favorite sayings, the report said, is "women are for children, boys are for pleasure."

The report concluded that the widespread homosexual behavior stems from several factors, including the "severe segregation" of women in the society and the "prohibitive" cost of marriage
.
A culture that so denigrates half their population, and overlooks the rape of kids because, well, they don't really count in such matters, is sick. And no amount of "It's their culture!" bullshit is going to change my mind on that.

Some more arguing on the matter over at Gay Patriot.

About Obama & Co. not really caring about space exploration,

I'm going to steal a chunk of Tam's post; it covers things nicely:
It's a good thing NASA didn't exist from the nation's founding, or Lewis & Clark's canoe would have taken thirty years to build and contained strips of birch bark from 72 different Congressional districts. If we want to see progress in space, we need to tell NASA to go research airfoil shapes and just declare everything that happens above X miles to be extraterritorial and tax-free.

They’re worried about funding the ISS? Auction it off. You don’t think that people will pay big bucks to go gambling in a casino with zero-g hookers and blow? It'll be the only way to get regular folks into space, too, because they're not going to pay astronauts to mix Long Island iced teas in those weird drinking squeeze bulbs
.

What NASA and the government overall have done is try to make it as difficult as possible for private enterprise to do the job; there's an awful lot of people in government- including NASA- who'd rather see the ISS de-orbit and crash than have some nasty private company run it. And most of the European governments would rather see an asteroid hit the planet without warning than have private enterprise running space missions(even if they'd spot and deflect the asteroid).

And he's not an idealogue, either...

...For example, we said from the start that it was going to be important for us to be consistent in saying to people if you can have your -- if you want to keep the health insurance you got, you can keep it, that you're not going to have anybody getting in between you and your doctor in your decision making. And I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge. [emphasis added]
That would be some of the 'snuck in' stuff that was put in in closed sessions, I'd guess; you know, the closed sessions he's now claimed 'were on CNN'?

Hanson is right, this guy is one of the damnedest liars I have ever seen.