The latest on Squeaky

here.  The title's the very short version: I don’t have a lot of concrete surgery details, just a lot of vague, scary shit. Here it is. Happy Birthday to me!

Sometimes it’s excruciating, listening to the rhetoric of gun grabbers.

The combination of self-righteousness and sheer bloody ignorance is like fingernails on the blackboard of the mind.
And that's just the beginning.


Remember that bit a few days ago about the Brits burning wood to generate power because that's somehow better for the environment than coal?  From Keith, over in that part of the world, part of the Law of Unintended Consequences:
Try buying fence posts in Britain now. 
The supposed intention was for power stations to burn baled up brash and stumps, but it's much cheaper for them to burn prime timber. 
As a result fence posts have multiplied in price, and as creosote is now banned in the EU, posts which in the past might have lasted twenty five or thirty years, have to be replaced after two or three years.

Back when I was starting 'smithing, one of the things I read of was Elizabeth I making an edict that the iron-making industry in Britain would move to coal.  You see, blacksmiths had preferred charcoal because(in the forge*) it burned cleaner than coal; but the growing industry was stripping Britain of forests to feed the furnaces, and they needed trees for the wood to build the ships that both the defense of the island and trade demanded, so "Start using coal.  Like it or not."  Now, apparently at least as long as the wood comes from somewhere else, they're trying to reverse that...

*Because they weren't worried about all the smoke produced by burning wood to charcoal, and didn't matter to them that the same weight of coal produces several times as much heat as charcoal, just that the finished product was cleaner in a forge.


Salon has thrown up(just about literally) a piece stating that 'Detroit is in ruins for the same reason New Orleans was almost left to die: it's a majority-black city and the right wing hates blacks'.  Note that 'right-wing' to these people means, well, 'Anyone who doesn't love socialism and PC racism.'

Kevin received this from the guy who tipped him to it:
This is why trying to reason with left wing, right on, politically correct groupthinkers is a bit like trying to wallpaper fog.  And, incidentally, why I firmly believe we are deep within an era of anti-Renaissance where such idiocy is published and taken seriously.
Oh, and Katrina was so horrible because GLOBAL WARMERING!!, don't forget.  And what you hear from 'right-wingers' is all race-coded("We got to punish them darkies!"), etc. ad Bullshit.

Speaking of, the writer is so full of it he should be standing in fields to fertilize the crops.


If I had to live in Seattle for a while, I think I'd work at causing the language police to have strokes and hemorrhoids; because they effing deserve it.


Someone should run a count: People who insist private schools are evil and kids should be made to go to public schools, but who send their kids to private schools.

Extra points for each celebritute listed.


Mad Ogre noted this the other day: temperature-sensitive camo.
Something mentioned in a number of sci-fi novels is uniforms of chameleon-fabric that shifts patterns depending on what the surroundings are; wonder how far away it is now?


Why the EPA should be trashed, reason #whatever:
So an exemption from today's mandate is far more than a perk—it is a lifeline, an outright payday. Making this indulgence even more curious is that it is being issued by the Obama EPA, an agency that isn't exactly known for doing favors for beastly carbon producers.

So who is the lucky dog? Who could make this happen? That's the best part. The EPA won't say. The agency not only refused to name the refinery in its rule, but also obscured certain numbers in the document to hide the beneficiary's identity. An EPA press officer would not give me the name, citing "confidentiality restrictions."
Translation: "You expect us to tell you who's paying-off who?"


And Palin was right.  Interesting who's agreeing, too:
In an op-ed last month in the Wall Street Journal that Palin could have written, Howard Dean, former head of the Democratic National Committee, called IPAB "essentially a health care rationing body" and said he believes it will fail.

"The IPAB will be able to stop certain treatments its members do not favor by simply setting rates to levels where no doctor or hospital will perform them," wrote Dean, who is also a physician. "Getting rid of the IPAB is something Democrats and Republicans ought to agree on."


Unrelated to news, a little while ago I read something about Magholders: magazine holder that holds it horizontally.  Then I ran across this at WOTC on them(note the coupon code if you want to order one).  Well, short time ago I was given a gift card as a "Thank you for continuing to spend money with us" from my internet service, and this seemed like a fine way to use it, so I now have one for 1911 mags.  I'm going to try it out for a while, and I'll report back.  So far, I like it.
Ah, WOTC now has a review on one they got for Glock mags.

I started to write "The level of stupid in this is painful",

but I really can't tell if it's stupidity, or malign intent.
The city of Oakland, California now wants to ban any object that could be used as a "tool of vandalism," including hammers, wrenches, slingshots, shields and presumably anything else with a blunt edge such as garden rakes or sticks.
...
The city claims these objects will be illegal to possess during a "protest," but a protest can be defined as any two people standing around, or walking down a street, or even just talking loudly. There is no official definition of a "protest," meaning the police can invoke the ordinance any time they wish. That's how these laws always go: they get interpreted and deployed far beyond their original intent.


Speaking of abuse of authority,
5 Apologies to the Cops Who Beat Me Up for No Reason
which includes
...You explained that you had received a domestic abuse 911 call from our apartment landline despite the fact that we have neither a phone nor a landline from which to call....
I think I'd want some explanations of this crap.

Commit a felony, get promoted;

anybody still believe the IRS gives a damn about the law?
Thomas’s promotion will not be without controversy, given that, in November of last year, she signed off on the illegal release to the left-leaning ProPublica, of nine pending, confidential applications for tax exemption filed by conservative groups. One of those organizations, the Colorad-based Citizens Awareness Project, yesterday filed a federal lawsuit against the IRS over the release of its application.

Like he says, if BATFE gives you a tip,

especially on a possible federal violation, and wants you do to the work...
Clue to local authorities: when a Federal agency has jurisdiction, and it's a big case that will draw publicity but they hand it to you .... that's right up there with an email from a guy who says he's a Nigerian bank president, has embezzled $10 million, and would like to wire it to you. They have a grudge against the guy, but know they have no case.
And if you add to the mess by saying you're an expert when you don't know squat, and act like assholes during the raid, and lie about not having photos of the seized property at the time of seizure, then you're both a sorry excuse for a lawman and generally a lying dirtbag.

Why does (fG)Britain have such a low homicide rate?

they lie about it.  Including
Since 1967, homicide figures for England and Wales have been adjusted to exclude any cases which do not result in conviction


Speech in Canada(sure as hell can't call this 'free'):
Asked whether he ever felt intimidated or threatened, he said, “There was a very clear choice laid out to me. The police said, ‘we don’t believe this agrees with [our] values, so either you have to give up your chaplaincy or you can have this speech.’
Rabbi, you made a bad choice.


Obama's minions have no problem at all with lying to Congress formally, do they?
As far back as December 2012, Obama administration officials were insisting that the data hub at the center of the ObamaCare exchanges was nearly finished.

Yet all the while, they were pushing back deadlines or missing them altogether, to the point where, unless ObamaCare's launch is delayed, millions of people's privacy will be at risk.

Obama officials may, in fact, have flat-out lied to lawmakers about the data hub's progress.
...
At that same hearing, Cohen claimed that the agency was "well along" on its data-sharing tests with "Social Security, with homeland security and with IRS" and would "be able to complete that testing by this spring."

But a June report from the Government Accountability Office found that such tests didn't even start until May, and that they won't be finished until September.
And back in April, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told the House Ways and Means Committee that the data hub was "basically completed."

But the GAO report said that "several critical tasks remain to be completed" before Oct. 1.


Speaking of lying to Congress, we're back to the NSA:

"The assumption is our people are just out there wheeling and dealing. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have tremendous oversight over these programmes. We can audit the actions of our people 100%, and we do that," he said.

Except

(c) Alexander's own assertion (in June) that NSA was "now putting in place actions that would give us the ability to track our system administrators"?

That is a good question. It certainly appears that the actions of some NSA employees could not be audited 100 percent. And if you want to get really deep in the weeds, see Marcy Wheeler's argument that there are multiple NSA employees with access to private data who wouldn't be tripped up by an analyst audit, because they're working with your raw data before it is queried by the folks hunting for terrorist plots.


Helluva thing to find in the attic.


Also found at ToM,
A: the magma chamber under Yellowstone is even bigger than previously thought.
B: the putative adults in this video ought to be horse whipped. Or staked out in front of the herd.


Good God.

Dear gunstore lawyers:

Shut. Up.

Don't think I'd heard of Carol Swain before;

wish I had.
"Trayvon Martin's mother is missing an opportunity to lead a social movement. America needs a conversation about the unfortunate plight of thousands of young black men who have adopted unhealthy lifestyles.

"High unemployment, black-on-black crime, and hopelessness are factors that must be addressed. Individual choices and wrong internalized messages have led to the devaluation of human life in the black community at every stage of development.

"The devaluation in human life is reflected in our abortion rates and the willingness to accept high black-on-black murder rates. We can do better!"
I'm surprised she's still a professor; wonder how many times the Usual Suspects have tried to get rid of her for saying this?


More on those attempts to frame Oathkeepers.  And a reporter.


Speaking of such, from Thirdpower: If you're not on a list, you're not doing enough. 
Also from his place,
Josh Horwitz Hates Logic and
Gifford's anti-gun donors listed.  Not much grassroots there.


A quote from 1764:
“A principal source of errors and injustice are false ideas of utility. For example: that legislator has false ideas of utility who considers particular more than general conveniences, who had rather command the sentiments of mankind than excite them, who dares say to reason, ‘Be thou a slave;’ who would sacrifice a thousand real advantages to the fear of an imaginary or trifling inconvenience; who would deprive men of the use of fire for fear of their being burnt, and of water for fear of their being drowned; and who knows of no means of preventing evil but by destroying it.

The laws of this nature are those which forbid to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent. Can it be supposed, that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, and the most important of the code, will respect the less considerable and arbitrary injunctions, the violation of which is so easy, and of so little comparative importance? Does not the execution of this law deprive the subject of that personal liberty, so dear to mankind and to the wise legislator? and does it not subject the innocent to all the disagreeable circumstances that should only fall on the guilty? It certainly makes the situation of the assaulted worse, and of the assailants better, and rather encourages than prevents murder, as it requires less courage to attack unarmed than armed persons.”
The article: Gun-Free Zones: A Threat to Every Child.

Whoever in DoD is responsible for this

needs to be canned.
Preferably literally.

Don't forget: the laws they pass are for little people, not those close to Congress.
And the miserable jackass in the Oval Office thinks NONE of the law applies to him.


A squid with zombie arms?  That's both interesting and downright nasty.

Only the Lords of the EUnuchs could decide that it's green to

stop using coal and START BURNING TREES FOR POWER.
The level of stupid is- it HURTS!

TSA: now violating their oath to the Constitution in many locations

other than airports.

So TSA says the 4th Amendment doesn't apply to them because T.S.A. officials respond that the random searches are “special needs” or “administrative searches” that are exempt from probable cause because they further the government’s need to prevent terrorist attacks.
Guess that oath to uphold the Constitution doesn't mean squat to these clowns, does it?  "The Constitution would keep us from doing this, so this is our excuse for pissing on it."

Some T.S.A. officials told auditors that they had concerns that deploying VIPR teams to train stations or other events was not always based on credible intelligence.

The auditors also said that VIPR teams might not have “the skills and information to perform successfully in the mass transit environment.
So they're just randomly harassing people to get us used to it. And sending untrained people out on bogus or nonexistent information to do it.

Let's not forget that the Chief Clown in charge of these molesters has said that in his opinion 'flying is a privilege'; and you give up rights to exercise privileges.

The Tueller Drill Revisited

An interview with Tueller; well worth reading.

If you're not familiar, he's the man who got the question "How close does someone with a knife or club, something like that, have to be before he's a real threat?" and actually worked on it.  Which produced what came to be called the '21-foot rule'(which he doesn't like; too hard & fast) and a lot more research into things like MOVING when someone is attacking.  I'll steal one section:
Tueller: At the time, I was assigned to the Salt Lake City Police Academy, conducting firearms and other use-of-force training. I was also teaching part time at Gunsite. During an academy training session, we had been doing draw-and-fire drills at the seven-yard line. During a break, we were discussing use of force issues and one of the recruit officers asked what to do if someone was attacking you with a knife, a club, or some kind of a contact weapon. He wanted to know how close an attacker should be allowed to encroach before the use of deadly force was justified to stop him.

At first, I thought about saying three or four steps, but then I realized that I didn’t have any idea how close was too close. I thought, “We can do better that this!” Since we already knew the average time it takes to draw, fire, and hit a target at seven yards – which was about 1 1/2 seconds from the holster – I decided to see just how long it would take someone to cover that same distance.

So we had one recruit officer play the role of the “bad guy” and another played the role of the “startled officer.” We put them 21 feet apart, and when the bad guy role player decided to start his attack, we started the stopwatch, and when the bad guy made contact with the good guy, we stopped the watch. I was quite stunned to discover that the time was roughly 1 1/2 seconds!

Then we tried the same exercise with everyone available in the class – some younger, some older, big and small, male and female – and all of them could run that seven yard distance in about 1 1/2 seconds. Of course, this was before Simunitions® or Airsoft®, but later we did test it with dart pistols. What we found was that if you’re ready and if everything goes perfectly, you might get the gun out and get a shot off before the bad guy role player makes contact. That is not good enough! Shooting does not stop the action.
The bold is mine.  Because this link was found in a thread on Facebook, wherein Larry Correia- who has a long record as a trainer for both LE and general citizens, wrote
And the thing you are thinking of is the Tueller drill, based on the research of Dennis Tueller from the SLCPD where he demonstrated that the average person can cover 21 feet and inflict serious injuries with a knife in the time the average officer could draw and fire. Keep in mind that all handguns suck, and just because you put a round into somebody, they don't always immediately stop doing whatever it is they are doing.

Some just because

Sometimes "Make it bigger!" really does work

Defense Distributed created the first fully 3D-printed handgun called the Liberator a few months ago. Now a Canadian fellow on YouTube has revealed a 3D-printed rifle, which he continues to make improvements upon.

On the YouTube channel “ThreeD Ukulele” a man going by Matthew, who doesn’t show his face, uploaded three videos a few days ago documenting what he said are 14 total shots with the weapon before it cracks.
Single-shot turn-barrel.  And we want accuracy results, dammit.

And yes, the tears and screaming of gun bigots and hoplophobes are sweet.

Put Ma Nature and Murphy together,

and it sucks.
A Canadian city is “in shock” after two young boys were seemingly killed by an escaped snake that slithered into the room where they were sleeping late Sunday night.
Rock python.  From another building.

Pictures from the West in the 1870's

over here.  Including

Shoshone Falls


These miserable disgraces to peace officers should be fired, and prosecuted, and fined for everything they have or ever will have.

And I include the supervisors-however high up they go- who knew this crap was going on.
In two separate incidents hundreds of miles apart, Texas state troopers have conducted body cavity searches on women pulled over for traffic stops on minor infractions in full view of passing motorists. The repeated incidents mean that the uncomfortable, invasive searches are some sort of department policy, civil rights advocates now say.
...
On video of the incident, the two women can be heard yelling with discomfort as the female officer inserts her finger into their genitalia. The officer wore the same glove to search both women.
Fired.  Horsewhipped.  Sued.  EVERYTHING.


Because laws, and obeying them, are for the peasants, not the President and Congress.
And now the White House is suspending the law to create a double standard. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that runs federal benefits will release regulatory details this week, but leaks to the press suggest that Congress will receive extra payments based on the FEHBP defined-contribution formula, which covers about 75% of the cost of the average insurance plan. For 2013, that's about $4,900 for individuals and $10,000 for families.
How OPM will pull this off is worth watching. Is OPM simply going to cut checks, akin to "cashing out" fringe benefits and increasing wages? Or will OPM cover 75% of the cost of the ObamaCare plan the worker chooses—which could well be costlier than what the feds now contribute via current FEHBP plans? In any case the carve-out for Congress creates a two-tier exchange system, one for the great unwashed and another for the politically connected.


Ok, this is something I had not considered about the current mess in Syria:
Wide Angle Shot#4: Hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees are pouring into Jordan. Among the huddled masses yearning to be free are a goodly number of Islamists who hate the Hashemites almost as much as they hate Jews and Christians. The name of the Jihadist game is to foment revolution in Jordan—the so-called Palestinians make up about 80% of the Jordanian population, which makes Jordan yet another Palestinian state, along with happy-go-lucky Gaza. Thus we can expect a replay of Black September any day now.
Obama & Co. are trying to shove Muslim Brotherhood clowns down the throats of the Egyptians now; can you imagine the hissy fits they'll throw if the Jordanians start whacking Obama's Favored?


And remember, per Tam: “Loophole” = “People Doing Legal $#!t I Don’t Like”.
In this case it's the 'Internet Sales Loophole!!!'

CDR Salamander on the Army's new ammo:

So, anyone consult an infantryman on this?


But they've got it all under control and we can trust them, right?
USA TODAY obtained a copy of the FBI's 2011 report under the Freedom of Information Act. The report does not spell out what types of crimes its agents authorized, or how serious they were. It also did not include any information about crimes the bureau's sources were known to have committed without the government's permission.
...
The rules require the FBI — but not other law enforcement agencies — to report the total number of crimes authorized by its agents each year. USA TODAY asked the FBI for all of the reports it had prepared since 2006, but FBI officials said they could locate only one, which they released after redacting nearly all of the details.
Well, if they can't locate their own damned reports, why should we trust them to find their own ass, let alone bad guys?

Other federal law enforcement agencies, including the ATF and the DEA, said last year that they cannot determine how often their informants are allowed to break the law.
The obvious question being "WHY THE HELL NOT?"


Mark Glaze of Mayors Against People Owning Guns is one of two things:
A freaking dirtbag, or- if he believes what he said-
A freaking moron on the level of Joe Biden.


Miguel speaks to a gun bigot who's either hugely ignorant, or a damned liar.  And making false criminal charges, yet.

It may speak more of my cynicism

than of actual ill intent, but
The IRS mess that was 'intolerable' a while back has become a 'phony scandal',
the investigations into Benghazi are heating up again(damn well better),
revelations about NSA/FBI/CIA spying are pissing off more people,
and-
Suddenly!-
the bad guys are making Serious Threats, and embassies have to be shut down, and 'internal security'(i.e. molestation and theft by TSA and abuses by DHS) has to be ramped up to deal with the threats!  And we really NEED that intelligence the NSA gets from reading your mail and chats and listening in to your calls(don't forget DEA)!

Little as ten years ago I'd have never believed I'd be this willing to believe this ill of the .gov.

Oh, you hadn't heard about the DEA?  I hadn't till this morning:
A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.
Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin - not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.

The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don't know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence - information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.

I've mentioned before my opinion that a good teacher

is a treasure to be cherished*; just had another example of that.

Speaking to a guy who's an engineer who brought up post-tensioned concrete construction, and since I'd heard of it but knew nothing I asked for details.  It seems that using that method isn't actually taught in school("There are EXPERTS who will do that", etc.).

One of the first jobs at the company he worked for, guess what  the project he was assigned to used?

About oh-dark-thirty he and three other guys were sitting in the office trying to figure out how to make the specs they'd been given work, and it wasn't working no matter how they tweaked it, and they were accelerating down the ramp to screaming when one of the owners walked in("Just dropped by on my way home", which was BS because home was in the other direction from the airport), stopped in the door and asked what were they doing there?

"Trying to make 'X' work."

Heavy sigh.  Slow shake of head.  "Guys, it's not that difficult."  Took a legal pad and, in half-an-hour on ONE SHEET, gave a college-level class on post-tension concrete construction that had all of them saying "Well, shit, it's not hard NOW."

He'd saved that sheet.  And had, a couple of months before we met, used it to clear up the same mysteries for a new engineer with the company working under him(apparently it's STILL not taught).

That owner had been a professor of engineering; and I'll bet the students who came in after he left never knew what they missed.  And probably never had someone who could do what he did.


*The followon is 'and bad teachers need to be thrown the hell out before they do more damage than they already have.'  Which really pisses off the 'All teachers are wonderful!' idiots.

Tab clearing

Starting with "There's plenty of money, we just haven't stolen it yet."


More on efforts in Californicated to ban ammo.


Minimum wage arguments.


Why IS FEMA asking this?


Dead, or just mostly dead?


Judge to federal agents: "So far, looks to me like he CAN sue you for this."