Saturday, December 18, 2010

Syracuse University is currently acting like a giant collective asshat

due to hurt feelings and tyrannical desires; Popehat has an opinion on it that includes
I interview, and hire, people at a law firm. I cannot imagine a situation in which I would decline to hire someone because they had been the target of satire. That’s because I’m not a fucking idiot. Perhaps the subjects of Audaer’s blog aspire to be hired by fucking idiots. It sure looks like they are going to the right school, then.

And one more left-wing racist opens his mouth and tells us

what he really thinks. And then tries to cover it over.
Meeks made the statement on Wednesday during an interview on WVON-AM (1690). It happened during a discussion of why African-American businesses got a 7 percent sliver of Chicago’s $1 billion spending pie through Aug. 31, down from 8 percent a year ago.

“The word ‘minority’ from our standpoint should mean African American. I don’t think women, Asians and Hispanics should be able to use that title,” he said. “That’s why our numbers cannot improve — because we use women, Asians and Hispanics who are not people of color, who are not people who have been discriminated against.”
Got that? 'People of Color' means anybody not white, except when it suits a racist like Meeks to direct money to a particular group, in which case it only means blacks.

Of course, he makes it all better by later saying he actually only means
he would only exclude white women if elected mayor. The set-aside program currently earmarks 25 percent of all city contracts for minorities and 5 percent for companies owned by women.
There, isn't that all better?

I have two words for the UN clowns who want to regulate this here innernets:

Fuck You.

You corrupt bastards are cordially invited to kiss Security Staff(Jr.)'s ass. One of the last things we need is you dirtbags controlling the net. I don't care how much you like Obama's "Never let a crisis go to waste" idea.

Long Beach Police Department: if the facts are as presented,

the officers involved need to be fired and prosecuted. And any brass who make excuses for them need to be fired.
I'm going to borrow Pournelle's post:
For fifteen minutes the Long Beach Police watched Douglas Zerby sitting on an interior courtyard stoop playing with a toy gun. They never announced their presence. There was no danger to anyone. They never announced their presence. There were at least five police officers there. Then, after fifteen minutes, two or three of them opened fire with shotguns and pistols. There was no warning, and no command to drop the weapon. Apparently his first notification that the police were present was to be shot dead.

This, according to the LBPD, was to protect the citizens and make certain no one got hurt.

Heroic.
The levels of- not fail, incompetence and idiocy- involved here are just flat disgusting. Reading through stuff, it appears that not only did they not announce themselves, they were concealed from him right up to the time 'Zerby reportedly pointed the black metal-tipped nozzle at one of the officers' and they killed him.
Yes, it could be there's something else not being reported; frankly, I hope so, because if there's not then this was the murder of a citizen by the people sworn to 'serve and protect' followed by attempts to cover it up by their brass.

Friday, December 17, 2010

I wonder if Napolitano & Co. never bothered to consider any of this

or just don't give a damn?
We are writing to call your attention to serious concerns about the potential risks of the recently adopted whole body backscatter X-ray security scanners. This is an urgent situation as these X-ray scanners are rapidly being implemented as a primary
screening step for all air travel passengers."


Translation: The naked body scanners may be dangerous to your health.

"Our overriding concern is the extent to which the safety of this scanning device has been adequately demonstrated. This can only be determined by a meeting of an impartial panel of experts that would include medical physicists and radiation biologists at which all of the available relevant data is reviewed."

Translation: The safety of these naked body scanners has never been demonstrated, and especially not by an independent panel of qualified scientists.


Speaking of Napolitano and security,
A Mexican drone crashed in El Paso's Lower Valley, sparking a federal investigation and raising questions about why the aircraft was in U.S. airspace.

"We are collecting data about the crash. We don't have the aircraft because it was returned to its owner," said Keith Holloway, spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates aircraft crashes in the United States and in other countries that request its help
.
So, loss of control and wandered over the border, or deliberately violating our airspace?


That's all I've got time for today; if I was going 'round any faster you could hook me up to a generator shaft.

Snork, hehehehe...

This coming year, both Groundhog Day and the State of the Union address occur on the same day.

It is an ironic juxtaposition of events; one involves a meaningless ritual in which we look to a creature of little intelligence for prognostication, while the other involves a groundhog.

Yeah, the recovery is well under way, all right

Yesterday had to drive by Penn Square Mall enroute to a place. If you live in the OKC area, you know what that means this time of year: backed-up traffic in the streets around, and Deity help you if you actually want to get into the mall; usually they've got traffic cops directing things to try to keep the street-blocking to a minimum.

Not now. Normal traffic flow on Penn and on NW Highway, and going past I saw lots and lots of empty parking spaces where in EVERY year I can remember for the last 20 or so the place was packed(generally from about a week ago till Christmas).

Lets see, actual unemployment is above 10%, food and gas(and all other oil-related products) prices are up again, people don't know what the hell is going to happen with Obamacare(including what's going to turn up next the bastards in Congress didn't bother to read before voting on)... yeah, consumer confidence is up.

Problem is, it's up that "We're confident we're getting screwed because of the clowns in DC."

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Monet Parham: not only is she a nanny-state jackass

she's doing this on taxpayer's dime. AND she's a whiny little bitch:
The Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group, claims it violates California law for the hamburger chain to make its meals too appealing to kids, thus launching them on a lifelong course to overeating and other health horrors. It's representing an allegedly typical mother of two from Sacramento named Monet Parham. What's Parham's (so to speak) beef? "Because of McDonald's marketing, [her daughter] Maya has frequently pestered Parham into purchasing Happy Meals, thereby spending money on a product she would not otherwise have purchased."
...
No, she's suing because when she said no, her kids became disagreeable and "pouted" - for which she wants class action status
.
A: Hey, dumbass, you ever heard of using the word "No" and just stopping there? You should, you're SUPPOSED to be a parent.
B: This is such a frigging amazing thing on various levels:
"I don't want to have to listen to my kids whine, so I want everybody to be prevented from getting this."
"I'm such a wuss I can't tell my kids "No" and hold to it, so I want McDonald's to pay!"
The- hell with slippery slope, this would be a vertical dropoff- of 'class action status because of whining kids' is so idiotic that if this weren't in Californicated I can't imagine it even getting a hearing.

Oh, the taxpayer's dime?
Monet Parham, by the way, seems to be an activist employed by the California government to advocate the ingestion of vegetables, though some pains seem to have been taken to obscure this connection.
Gee, I wonder why...

Ah, the level of information we've come to expect

from much of the major media:
Get all that? We have the New York City Health Department saying soda doesn’t actually make you fat, and Duke researchers saying soda taxes don’t actually discourage people from drinking soda, and Bennett pushing the idea that we need soda taxes anyway in order to subsidize medical treatment for all the people who are getting fat from stuff besides soda.

And perhaps most significant: Not a word about public health pioneer Mayor Bloomberg, owner of Bloomberg news.
This is the same major media that likes to keep pushing the Mexican Gun Lie, too. Even though they know it's bullcrap.


More on the past wonders of the communism the 'progressives' want to ram down our throats:
But inside the archives is an abundance of evidence, from the minutes of emergency committees to secret police reports and public security investigations, that show these estimates to be woefully inadequate.

In the summer of 1962, for instance, the head of the Public Security Bureau in Sichuan sent a long handwritten list of casualties to the local boss, Li Jingquan, informing him that 10.6 million people had died in his province from 1958 to 1961. In many other cases, local party committees investigated the scale of death in the immediate aftermath of the famine, leaving detailed computations of the scale of the horror.

In all, the records I studied suggest that the Great Leap Forward was responsible for at least 45 million deaths
.
Link found at Insty, along with this:
Communists are as bad as Nazis, and their defenders and apologists are as bad as Nazis’ defenders, but far more common. When you meet them, show them no respect. They’re evil, stupid, and dishonest.


Why no, I'd never heard about this:
Fred Phelps is a long time Democrat supporter and frequent Democrat candidate for various offices in Kansas. As recently as 1998 Phelps got 15% in a Democrat primary for governor. He has been a devoted supporter of Al Gore and led his church members in working for Gore in 1988. Phelps’ son Fred hosted a fund raiser for Gore in his home. Have you ever heard of that? Why do you think these things are left out of news reports about Phelps?
Is that a rhetorical question if you ever heard one?



Since Congress passed the Orphan Drug Act 27 years ago, less that 250 new medications and treatments have reached the market, so that means CBLB502 is in very select company. It is the first designed to combat the effects of a massive radiation dose.

The rush to get the drug on the market raises a rather obvious question. The threat of a nuclear or radiological attack by terrorists has existed for more than a decade. If their capabilities in those areas have remained rather crude, why expedite production and introduction of CBLB502? Why not spend the money on more pressing homeland security needs?

Makes you wonder, doesn't it?


Guess That Party! again:
Ex-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, the ultimate target in a six-year federal investigation into City Hall corruption, was indicted today by a federal grand jury, accused of orchestrating an elaborate scheme that forced contractors to pay heavily in return for city contracts.

The charges cap a lengthy federal corruption investigation headed by the FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office that has netted more than 10 felony convictions, including former City Council President Monica Conyers
.



Is Incompitano still saying the border 'is as secure as it's ever been'?
Terry, 40, was killed about 11 p.m. while patrolling near Peck Canyon in a remote area by Arizona 289.

Border Patrol agents and officers from the Department of Public Safety are stationed on ridgelines throughout the area in the Coronado National Forest. Authorities also are stationed along Peña Blanca Lake.

The scene is about 10 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border and west of Interstate 19
.
TEN MILES INSIDE THE BORDER. I guess somehow they leapfrogged that 'secure border' Napolitano claims.


One more activist the media is either too stupid to find the facts about or too dishonest and biased to report on:
Much of the interviewing press was happy to treat Monet Parham as a random (if oddly well-informed) California mom, but it didn’t take the blogosphere long to discover that she is apparently anything but random. Ira Stoll, who blogs at Future of Capitalism and used to put out the New York Times-tweaking smartertimes.com, soon discovered (via a commenter) that she is in fact the same person as Monet Parham-Lee, who is a “regional program manager” on the state of California payroll for child nutrition matters.

Specifically, she works on a federally funded program that campaigns to exhort people to eat their vegetables and that sort of thing. The comment:

Interestingly, her name has been scrubbed from the website of Champions for Change, the Network for a Healthy California. She has given numerous presentations and attended conferences on the importance of eating vegetables and whatnot.

“She presents herself as an ordinary mother. She is not. She is an advocate, and an employee of a California agency tasked with advocating the eating of vegetables. To the extent that Monet Parham-Lee has EVER taken her daughter to a McDonald's, she should have known better.”
But she's suing Evil McDonald's, so it's all fine, right?


One of the best phrases of the week: Yeah, I know that that level of stupid usually causes flash cavitation, but somehow he survived it.
What brought it on?
Ya know, if you’re going to blame the brown people, blame the Israelis that manufacture a lot of the AKs, too.

KrisAinCA
So it's not just us, it's the JOOOOOOOS!!! responsible for the mess in Mexico.



According to Die Welt, Venezuela has agreed to allow Iran to establish a military base manned by Iranian missile officers, soldiers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Venezuelan missile officers. In addition, Iran has given permission for the missiles to be used in case of an "emergency". In return, the agreement states that Venezuela can use these facilities for "national needs" – radically increasing the threat to neighbors like Colombia. The German daily claims that according to the agreement, Iranian Shahab 3 (range 1300-1500 km), Scud-B (285-330 km) and Scud-C (300, 500 and 700 km) will be deployed in the proposed base. It says that Iran also pledged to help Venezuela in rocket technology expertise, including intensive training of officers.
...
And, over the long haul, Caracas and Tehran would expand and improve Mr. Chavez's missile arsenal, adding such systems as the BM-25 (with a range of up to 4,000 km) that are capable of striking U.S. population centers with a nuclear warhead. Iran reportedly acquired the BM-25 from North Korea back in 2006 and has been working to duplicate the technology. Obviously, Tehran would have no qualms about selling the BM-25 to Venezuela, or simply moving its own intermediate range missiles to that joint base described in the Die Welt dispatch
.


Ok, that's enough happy stuff for one morning. Bleah.

A note about the S&W Combat Masterpiece I drooled over and wondered how to run away withgot to shoot the other day: I'd had a .38 along and fired some of my loads through it, Berry's Plated 148-grain wadcutters over a load of Titegroup; very accurate and very clean.

I've been using plated bullets(from Berry's, X-treme or Ranier) in some loads for a few years now; I've had no problems with them, and they definitely leave less mess behind than cast. Depending on your needs/wants, might check into them if you want to handload but want something less expensive than standard jacketed bullets but don't want to mess with casting.
Yes, I still cast a lot of stuff, that fills a number of niches too.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

S&W K38 Combat Masterpiece


Tam wrote about the piece here* I had a chance to shoot one today.

Damn.

I want one. This was an earlier model than the above, a 5-screw, and it shot beautifully. Slick action, good sights, far more accurate than I(don't you just hate having to say that?), just couldn't ask for better.

Well, I could ask for my own one. And a K32. But that's asking for more, not better.


*Yes, I sto- uh, borrowed the picture from her post; it's such a damn good one

Well, except for that groundwater contaminatiion possibility

sounds good to me

Oh yeah.........

The Washington Post still pushing the Mexican Gun Lie;

anybody surprised?
When the Post reporter claims that the "ATF disagreed," he doesn't speak for the entire agency, just a regional supervisor that is either pushing a political agenda or lacks the big picture. Either way, his superiors have overruled his opinion with facts for over a year.

The myth that legal guns sales in the United States are responsible for Mexican drug cartel violence took another serious blow last week when an ATF official testified in Congress that only eight percent of weapons recovered in Mexico came through licensed U.S. gun dealers.

This figure is far lower than the 90 percent claim made previously as an appeal to reinstate ineffective gun laws that expired in 2004. The claim — still active among the less informed or serially dishonest — officially became myth during congressional testimony last week when Bill McMahon, deputy assistant director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, revealed the eight percent figure, how it was calculated, and where the 90 percent myth arose from.

Of the 100,000 weapons recovered by Mexican authorities, only 18,000 were determined to have been manufactured, sold, or imported from the United States, and of those 18,000, just 7,900 came from sales by licensed gun dealers.

The Post can't even get through their accompanying photo gallery without exposing their dishonesty; this FN MAG machine gun certainly didn't come from a U.S. gun store.


Monday, December 13, 2010

T'is the season



I miss Calvin & Hobbes, but I still love the books

It's official; I need help

'cause I laughed my ass off

And a judge says Obamacare IS unconstitutional

Flatly.
Administration officials told reporters last week that a negative ruling would have virtually no impact on the law's implementation, noting that its two major provisions — the coverage mandate and the creation of new insurance markets — don't take effect until 2014.
Yeah, just because a negative ruling says "You can't do this", no impact at all. No. Sure.

All kinds of news out there, and I don't want to write about it

Just that kind of morning. I will leave you with two things:
First, evidence of just how effing stupid TSA is:
India’s envoy to the United States Meera Shankar, seen in 2004. Last week Shankar was pulled out of the security line at a Mississippi airport and subjected to a “rigorous pat down”, according to Indian officials, despite her diplomatic status.
So either TSA doesn't bother to train people about that little 'diplomatic immunity' thing, or the people on the line are too damn stupid to remember it. Sad thing? This may be the only incident in which the TSA clowns involved may actually face some consequence for their actions.



And last, ref that "I'll leave it to Bill" moment,

The new sniper rifle

.300 Winchester Mag, adjustable stock, rails, and a suppressor as standard equipment. I would definitely think you could reach out and touch someone with it.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Friend in Texas sent me 'A Gunny Parable'

Seems a guy cruises thru a stop sign, or whatever, and gets pulled over by a local policeman. Guy hands the cop his driver's license, insurance verification, plus his concealed carry permit.

"Okay, Mr. Smith," the cop says, "I see your CHL permit. Are you carrying today?"

"Yes, I am."

"Well then, better tell me what you got."

Smith says, "Well, I got a .357 revolver in my inside coat pocket. There's a 9mm semi-auto in the glove box. And, I've got a .22 magnum derringer in my right boot."

"Okay," the cop says. "Anything else?"

"Yeah, back in the trunk, there's an AR15 and a shotgun. That's about it."

"Mr. Smith, are you on your way to or from a gun range...?"

"Nope."

"Well then, what are you afraid of...?"

"Not a damn thing..."

Is there some rule that 'Made for SyFy Movies'

have to be absolute crap?

This is brought up because I suffered through some of a piece of crap called 'Storm'. Idealistic researcher gets pulled into evil government scheme run by a general to control the weather. Why? "So Americans can have the cheap gas they want" of course. Add in some kind of secret agent who murders best friend of said idealist because he discovers something, various planes blowing up, etc. ad nauseum on a major scale.

Just as bad as putting a magazine from a M16 into a dinosaur while it eats somebody and the critter not noticing, just in a different way.

Kind of come to think that way myself

That movie The Tourist? I could never

wind up in that situation(least from the commercials I've seen); if I were touring somewhere in Europe and a gorgeous woman made a point of making my acquaintance, I fear my first thought would be "Ok, what is it? I KNOW I'm getting set up for something!"