A guide for soon-to-be ex-congressmen and aides

Step 1: Assess Your Skills and Competencies

The road to your new non-Washington career begins with an inventory of your personal strengths and competencies. Read the critical skill list below, and circle the ones that you possess.

• Telling other people what to do
• Demanding money
• Peddling influence
• Talking loudly over others
• Condescension / arrogance
• Threatening, browbeating, arguing
• Narcissism
• Evading responsibility
• Spin control

As a former Washington professional, you probably circled four or more of the above. Yes, there are some private sector industries where these skills are valued - such as journalism, bill collection, professional wrestling, higher education, and carnival barking. Unfortunately, these are all declining industries with low wages and/or fierce job competition. In order to maintain your standard of living, you will probably have to seek employment in other industries where you will find surprisingly little demand for your skills.

And Merry Christmas to all

Proving that Oklahoma has a full share of idiots who're being called

'teachers', we have this story of a teacher having a kid arrested for- well, go read it.

"How dare you embarrass the government clowns in charge?"

Three days after he posted his critical video clips on YouTube, four federal air marshals and two sheriff's deputies arrived at the pilot's house to confiscate his federally-issued firearm. At the same time as the federal marshals took the pilot's gun, a deputy sheriff asked him to surrender his state-issued permit to carry a concealed weapon. The pilot's attorney, not unreasonably, said he believed the federal government sent the posse to the pilot's house in order to send a message.
Question: does a local LE even have the legal power to ask for his carry permit? Or was he demanding it with no authority? If the latter, he and his sheriff need a severe kick in the ass for taking part in this and abusing their authority to do so.

As to the air marshals, "We were just following our orders", etc. Bastards. My words for the clowns who gave the orders I will not go into.

When I was first teaching the kids to drive, one of the warnings I gave them

was "Just because the machine you're on can do certain things, doesn't mean YOU can."
A Tempe man is hospitalized in extremely critical condition after his motorcycle ran into a light pole at nearly 160 mph in the central Arizona town of San Tan Valley.
...
The motorcyclist sped past a county sheriff’s deputy at 2:05 a.m. on a road where the posted speed limit is 45 mph. The deputy‘s radar gun clocked Calazo’s motorcycle at 157 mph.

Before a pursuit could begin, authorities say Calazo had crashed four miles away, hitting the concrete base of a traffic light pole.
So it took dumbass, oh, roughly 1.5 minutes to reach from where he was clocked to the pole.

I repeat, dumbass.
“The motorcycle was nearly disintegrated on impact and Calazo flew an additional 104 feet through the air before striking the ground,”
I wonder if he was conscious during the flight?

Insty calls it 'Gun control as child abuse';

good a description as anything.
Malik Hall, a round-eyed second-grader, looked apprehensive as he stood in line with his favorite toy, a thick, blue gun with plastic sword underneath the muzzle. The 8-year-old was furious when his mother, Amanda, told him he would have to give it up. Yesterday morning, he tried to hide it under his pillow, she said.

“I’m worried,’’ she said. “He might cry.’’ . . . Diane Levin, professor of education at Wheelock College, said police and parents coming together to destroy toy guns sends a powerful message to children.
Yeah, it sends a message: hoplophobe nannies will take your toy and destroy it because it's not pc. And you should blame THINGS for what people do, not the people. Oh, and if someone in authority says "I have decided you should do this" your parents will cave in and make you surrender your toys. Etc.

Yeah, pathetic does pretty well cover it. Both the idiot Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch and the spineless PC parents who went along with this.

So Aitken is going back to court

Not only should his conviction be thrown out, the prosecutors and judge involved should face whatever consequences can be found. Can't fire the judge as he's already been fired, but the prosecutors, yeah. Can he file a civil suit? Don't know; I'm sure his lawyer is finding out.

One part of the article that sticks out:
The Burlington County Prosecutor's Office and former Superior Court Judge James J. Morley both said that Aitken's defense team did not present enough evidence at trial to support the moving exemption. Although the jury asked to see the exemption on three separate occasions, Morley refused.
So you prevent the jury seeing the information, and then say the defense 'didn't present enough evidence'; that passes for 'justice' in New Jersey.

Son is home on leave,

and part of the morning was spent at the range shooting stuff he doesn't have in the Army*.

Which brings one thing to mind: when they were in the Kurdish territory, the mostly didn't carry rifles, just a M9 pistol and a magazine(in the pocket, can't carry it in the pistol); but from what he says the pistol training the infantry gets isn't exactly extensive. If they're going to have people- at times- depending on that pistol for their primary arm, they really need to add some more in-depth handgun training to the mix.

So just a few things I'll bitch and yell aboutmention today, starting with
US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was asked about the attacks, with ABC News interviewer Diane Sawyer posing the questions: "First of all, London. How serious is it? Any implication that it was coming here?"

After a long pause, Clapper replied, "London?"
Isn't that just terribly confidence inspiring?



The brave soldiers of Islam hide behind children while the crusaders take shots to the head to avoid putting them at risk.

Compare and contrast.

Personally, I'm damn glad and incredibly grateful that Sgt Williams and LCpl Murfitt are on our side.


Congressional Democrats could not find the votes to pass "net neutrality." No problem. Three un-elected officials will impose rules on hundreds of millions of satisfied online consumers. A federal appeals court stops the FCC from employing authority over the Internet. Again, not a problem. Three out of five FCC commissioners can carve out some temporary wiggle room, because as any crusading technocrat knows, the most important thing is getting in the door.

It's not that we don't need the FCC's meddling, it's that we don't need the FCC at all. Rather than expanding the powers — which always seem to grow — of this outdated bureaucracy, Congress should be finding ways to eliminate it.
Sounds good to me.



Yeah, things were SO much nicer before those nasty guns showed up...


After initially appearing to retreat in the face of the midterm onslaught, Barack Obama and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson have decided to pursue an end-run strategy to impose regulation on energy producers regarding greenhouse-gas emissions. The move sets up a confrontation between the White House and Congress, which has already signaled a willingness to play hardball with Obama on regulatory innovation:
Let's see, he's already sent out Empty-Hat Salazar to say "No exploration or drilling in 'X' areas" and helped push oil prices up, now this; anybody belive he actually gives a rats ass how much damage his policies do to people in this country?
Note to Republicans: you don't oppose this crap in every way possible, your ass will be gone at the next election.


Last, a piece on the idiot academics and media people who have such a soft headspot for communism. One paragraph:
Two weeks ago, there was an Asia Society screening of a UN documentary about the trial of Comrade Duch, who ran one of the Khmer Rouge’s most infamous political prisons. Two women became upset during the Q&A session (about 37:00 into the linked video) that all this talk about torture and killing fields and retribution and memories of the dead had not been presented “in context.” You can guess what they meant, can’t you? That’s right: Big, Bad America had been an enabler for Pol Pot and his fellow-travelers, and apparently that was what we should have been getting worked up about. After all, Indochinese peoples are peaceable, guileless, grudge-free aspiring-Buddha types, so all that unpleasant torturing and executing isn’t the real story, and even if it were, we’d be in no moral position to criticize the Khmer Rouge. Yes, I’m caricaturing the view presented, but not by much. The response from the panel—pointing out that, among other things, the United States and Canada were among only five countries to condemn Cambodia’s human-rights abuses while they were happening—follows.


Later, folks. Bye

It's never comforting when government officials here are channeling

commies in places like Venezuela.
Teodoro Petkoff is a former Marxist guerrilla leader and now a major opponent of Chavez’s goons. He correctly called Chavez’s announcement a “Christmas ambush,” writing in his daily Tal Cual that Chavez is preparing totalitarian measures that amount to “a brutal attack … against democratic life.” These measures include a new vat tax, restricting access to the internet, regulating posts on the internet, and, of course, closing down more of opposition newspapers, and television and radio stations. All this, of course, in the name of real “democracy.” Joel D. Hirst at the Council on Foreign Relations presents a full account of what Chavez intends to do with his new powers.
Here we have the FCC wanting to take control of the internet 'in the name of fairness', etc.

Kevin has a response to James up,

covering in detail a bunch of what can only be described as bigoted and anti-US statements by James.

Original post here; the followup is here.

I'm going to start off with a bit "If Bush was still President...

The FBI is assembling a massive database on thousands of Americans, many of whom have not been accused of any crime, the Washington Post's Dana Priest and William Arkin report.
...
1. The FBI's Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative, or SAR, currently contains 161,948 suspicious activity files, into which authorities can put information they've gathered about the people at the center of the files: employment history, financial documents, phone numbers, photos. In many cases, the people in the files have not been accused of any crime but have attracted the suspicions of a local cop, FBI agent or even fellow citizen. The files have led to five arrests but no convictions, the FBI says. Some of the files are unclassified so that local police agencies and even businesses can submit reports on anyone they deem suspicious.
Naw, no possibility of abuse THERE, no...


Ok, Uncle is right: I want one.


The fact that the Akaka Bill could be seriously considered by Congress is all the proof needed that the Democrat Party(and some RINO morons) don't want the racial bullshit to end: they just want to control it for their own ends.


A lot of you have probably seen this already:
A Harry Potter star was beaten, called a "slag" and threatened with death after she met a young man who was not a Muslim, a court has heard.

Victim Afshan Azad, 22, played Padma Patil, a classmate of the teenage wizard, in the blockbuster Hollywood films based on the children's books by JK Rowling.

She was assaulted and branded a "prostitute" after meeting a young Hindu man, a relationship which brought anger from her father, Abul Azad, 53, and brother, Ashraf, 28, Manchester Crown Court heard.

The frightened actress later fled through her bedroom window after threats were made to kill her. But despite attempts to get her to come to court for the trial of her father and brother, Miss Azad would not attend voluntarily, the court was told.


Snork...
While hunting around for something else, I stumbled across this factoid: In 2008, 93% of American workplace fatalities were men even though males accounted for only 57% of the total hours worked.

I, for one, am grateful, because if women died disproportionately at work we'd never hear the end of it.


Remember the mess in Honduras?
For a long time I assumed Obama was a communist. How else to explain his support for the Honduran Chavista Manuel Zelaya? Ideological sympathy on Obama’s part seemed the simplest explanation.

However, documents from WikiLeaks suggest an even worse possibility, namely that the whole sorry affair was driven by incompetence at a level that’s astonishing even by the low standards of the Obama administration. Were they really so eager to appease Chavez? That’s crazy even if Obama is personally sympathetic to Chavez...
You have to remember: Obama really believes that he and his minions(in some cases, who's really the minion?) are smarter than everybody else in the damn world, so how could he possibly be wrong?


From Theo:
Charley, a new retiree-greeter at Wal-Mart, just couldn't seem to get to work on time.

Every day he was 5, 10, 15 minutes late. But he was a good worker, really tidy, clean-shaven, sharp minded and a real credit to the company and obviously demonstrating their "Older Person Friendly" policies.

One day the boss called him into the office for a talk.

"Charley, I have to tell you, I like your work ethic, you do a bang up job,but your being late so often is quite bothersome."

"Yes, I know boss, and I am working on it."

''Well good, you are a team player. That's what I like to hear.

It's odd though your coming in late. I know you're retired from the Armed Forces. What did they say if you came in late there?"

''They said, "Good morning, Admiral, can I get you some coffee, sir?'''


Really, AG Holder? Two short years ago 'We' didn't worry about this?
Effing dirtbag or effing moron, you have your choice.


Bilal Ali Muhammad, whether the government remembers you or not, we will.


And on that note, I give you good night.

One big reason I've come to despise the Democrat Party

and call it the National Socialist Democrat Party: you build an estate, on which you pay various taxes throughout life- sometimes more than once on the same things- but you shouldn't be allowed to leave the estate to your family or whoever because miserable little bastards like Barney Frank say 'They haven't earned it."

Frank, put bluntly, it is NON OF YOU GOD-DAMNED BUSINESS WHAT I DO WITH THE ESTATE I BUILT. None. You and your kind are nothing more than thieves workign under color of law to steal what other people earned.

A little personal history

Way back, when I was first working out forging, I knew a blade- and a lot of other things- had to beheat-treated, but didn't really understand the why and only a fuzzy idea of how. So did some reading(couldn't find a lot at the time,pre-internet it was books only and not yet a lot of them). A lot of the stuff I could find was more industrial-oriented, but got the idea.

I've mentioned this job before, basically two steps: bring the piece up to critical temperature and
quench in the proper medium to harden; then heat again to a lower temp to temper*. Nice and simple;but the first times you do it... not just stressful on the steel.

I'd learned to forge and grind and polish blades fairly well, but knew had to heat-treat them properly before they'd be ready for real use**. So gathered my special material. Which in this case was some old motor oil.
A quick digression: the proper medium to quench in depends on the steel(and sometimes
on the end use); for blades even a steel rated as water-hardening usually gives best results with an oil quench; a steel that hardens beautifully in water in a large structure may well crack if made into a blade and water-quenched, it just cools TOO fast and the shock is too much.
There are oils made specifically for hardening different types of steel, but I not only didn't have any I didn't know where to get them and couldn't have bought them if I had(two little kids, etc.) So this attempt started with motor oil. And I didn't know that it was best to warm it either(though if I were smart enough I'd have figured that part out on my own). In any case, I had about two quarts of oil in a bucket, and two small blades for the trial.

Lit the forge, worked it to a clean fire and put the first piece in. This part, no problem, just work
the blade back & forth, turn it over to keep the heat even, get to that proper shade of red that meant critical temperature***. This was a short blade to make this easier, and it only takes a few minutes to get it there, and then pull it out of the fire and plunge it into the oil.

Oh yeah, it smokes and stinks, and I was standing there wondering if it would crack from the shock. It didn't. A piece that comes out of the quench looks gray and scaled(especially from dirty oil), and you have to clean off the oil and scale and shine it up to see if there are any flaws. There weren't, so came the tempering.

Turn the blower back on, low, and start working the blade back & forth and turning it to heat it evenly. You have to keep it clean as you do this, so you can see the color of the steel**** to tell how hot it is, how hard it is. (very)Generally speaking, for a general-use knife with steel like I had you looked for a dark yellow-light bronze shade which indicates around 450F. The level of stress I was feeling as I worked that blade around was incredible; it was so damned important
to me that this work. What I had read said that it was best if you didn't have to quench it again to stop the heat, to time it so when you took the blade away from the fire the color would not continue to darken. Amazingly, I managed to time it right, and let it cold down completely, and test it.

The first test is with a file; a sharp file should almost cut the edge of a properly hardened blade;
if it actually cuts metal away the blade is too soft and won't hold an edge well, if it won't cut
at all(just slides off) it may be too hard and the edge will chip or crack in hard use. So clamp the tang in a vise and try it, and it seemed just about right. So the next is to clamp an inch or so of the point in the vise and see if it'll flex without breaking, not only to make sure it's not too hard but to find if there might be a flaw hiding inside from the forging or hardening. I cannot
describe the elation as I flexed that blade back & forth like a spring, tough enough that I couldn't
bend it, just coming back to straight when I took the pressure off. Effing incredible, and I'd done it. Myself. With my home-built forge and charcoal and a piece of coil spring. If there'd been a woman handy...

When I calmed down a bit I did the second blade, and it worked too! I was damn near floating above the ground I was so high. And when sharpened they actually cut, and held the edge well! Just bleepin' amazing!

A somewhat disgusting number of years has gone by since then, but I still remember it. Lots of knowledge and experience gained, and materials; a few years later I found a place in Tulsa that sells industrial oils and got a five-gallon bucket(of which I still have about two gallons) of light quenching oil; I found places where I could buy oil- and water-hardening tool steel of different alloys for downright cheap, though I still used spring stock for a lot of blades; I found places to get coal instead of charcoal briquets for the fire. I made a lot of things in time to come, small and large, but I still remember the feelings when I heat-treated blades for the first time.


*Quick repeat from years ago: the quench- if you have the temp right- freezes the steel structure in a very highly stressed state, makes it brittle-hard; the tempering heat relieves enough of the stress to remove the brittleness but still leaves it stressed- hard- enough to be tough & flexible AND still hold an edge in use.
**Realistically, back when in the historical periods I was interested in- especially the early ones- the steel I was using, just ground to shape, would have made a better blade than most of humanity would have access to for centuries to come; but to help that steel come to its real potential...
***One of the tricky things, the difference between a little too cool where it won't harden fully and a little too hot which coarsens the structure and makes the blade less than it can be. To get a bit poetic, I came to describe it as 'the moment when that slight shadow in the steel disappeared', which if you actually watch the piece heat is true.
****One of the things I later did was temper in the oven; clean off the oil and shine the piece, and you could set it in at a known temperature. By the way, another method was to heat an iron block really hot and then work the blade on the surface to heat it, or lay a piece of iron pipe-an arch, if you will- over the fire to heat and work the piece on it.

It appears Gov. Christie -ALMOST- did the right thing Updated

by Aitken.

Now the cops and prosecutors who arrested him and brought the charges need to be either severely disciplined or canned for idiocy and misuse of taxpayer funds.

Update: it's been pointed out that this still leaves him a convicted felon, which means his 2nd Amendment rights are gone; yeah, Christie could have done more. Looks like he wanted to split the difference, which means screw him if he runs for higher office.

I know there's argument this allows appeal to whack the law itself; I don't know. I do know that the police and prosecutors and the judge involved need to be punished for their actions.

Oh man, I'd have been on the honor roll

EVERY SEMESTER!

T'is the eason, etc.

Not much in the way of moisture around here the past while; while icy on roads and wires is not desired, some rain or snow would be nice, it's pretty damned dry lately. Aside from that, the supposed-to-be part-time job has been pretty much full time the last while, leaving not much time for blogging. Or sleep at times. SO here goes some stuff I noticed the last couple of days:

Who you gonna believe: Michael Moore(lying commie dirtbag hypocrite) or where Cuban bigshots actually go?
American diplomats made up a story that Cuba banned Michael Moore's 2007 documentary, Sicko, in an attempt to discredit the film which painted an unflattering picture of the US healthcare system, the film-maker said today.
Must suck to be running around giving money to the Wikileaks bozo and find out what you're in favor of points out you're a lying asshole.
The cable describes a visit made by the FSHP to the Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital in October 2007. Built in 1982, the newly renovated hospital was used in Michael Moore's film as evidence of the high quality of healthcare available to all Cubans.

However, according to the FSHP, the only way a Cuban can get access to the hospital is through a bribe or contacts inside the hospital administration. "Cubans are reportedly very resentful that the best hospital in Havana is 'off-limits' to them," the memo reveals.
...
The memo noted that even the Cuban ruling elite leave Cuba when they need medical care. Fidel Castro, for example, brought in a Spanish doctor during his health crisis in 2006. The vice minister of health, Abelardo Ramírez, went to France for gastric cancer surgery. The neurosurgeon who heads CIMEQ [Centro de Investigaciones Médico-Quirúrgicas] hospital – widely regarded as one of the best in Cuba – came to England for eye surgery, returning periodically for checkups.
You might remember Castro bringing in the foreign doctor to take care of his own precious self; in the news at the time and nobody denied it.


Is this fellow being psychologically evaluated? I wish the writer would have mentioned that. Soaking a cat in oil and salt seems just slightly crazy. You're supposed to use fruit juice and inject it.
And you normally remove the outerwear first.


On the Boobs with Badges front,
Abusakran brought a raft, and Jim Hart joined him.“We had oars and shovels to break the ice, for the deer to get out,” Abusakran said.

But in the excited aftermath of the rescue, a natural resources police officer on the scene wrote both men a ticket.

“And he didn’t say anything,” Jim Hart said. “We went in and out of the water numerous times. He didn’t stop us at all.”

They say they were ticketed for not wearing life vests, although both are over the age for mandatory use of flotation devices.



Nanny Bloomberg says "You need to hear opinions!(but only mine)"
The mayor's mega-company, Bloomberg L.P., announced it is adding opinion pages to its media platforms, and the opinions will be the mayor's.

Conflict of interest? You betcha -- for anybody else. But with a billionaire at City Hall, the rules never seem to apply.

Remember term limits? Or that deputy mayor who moonlights as head of Mike's charity programs?
Or a bunch of the other stuff the article lists.


More of the wonders of socialized medicine in Merrie Olde England:
Trusts around the country are refusing to pay for operations ranging from hip replacements, to cataract removal and wisdom tooth extraction.

The health service is also tightening restrictions that prevent patients undergoing procedures for lifestyle reasons.

Smokers and obese patients are being denied operations until they change their habits and trusts are delaying surgery and non-emergency treatments, the Telegraph has found in the most comprehensive snapshot of NHS cuts yet.
...
Ministers are determined that front line services should be protected and the savings needed can be found from management costs and efficiencies.

But there is growing evidence that NHS managers are sacrificing patient care instead.

Doctors and nurses said the 'grim' results undermine the 'myth' that front line services are being protected and warned they were just the 'tip of the iceberg'.
If Obamacare doesn't get knocked down all the way, this is our future.


From a friend's Facebook post:
I sent a letter to TSA suggesting using scent dogs in place of dangerous backscatter machines and enhanced pat-downs. Their response? Was to send me step-by-step instructions on flying with fishing rods.



Your TSA at work:
Iranian-American Farid Seif was screened by Trasport Security Administration officials at Houston airport in Texas. His hand luggage was also X-rayed before he took off on his international flight.

It wasn't until Mr Seif arrived at his hotel several hours later that he realised that he had forgotten to unpack a loaded snub nose Glock pistol from his luggage before he embarked on his journey.
But they can feel up your kid or irradiate you just fine.
'It's just impossible to miss it, you know. I mean, this is not a small gun,' Mr Seif told ABC News.
Evidently THEY can.


I'm going to close this one with note that Kevin has a piece up on This I Believe, concerned with the difference in culture and worldview between us and people like James who think nobody but the government minions can be trusted with arms. Including knives, apparently of any type. Because if someone owns them in interferes with his 'right to not be afraid', etc. Well worth reading.

And I don't care if it is later than I usually eat, when that banana bread comes out of the oven I'm having a slice.