It's not quite the Close-In Defense System the Slammers use,

but it's getting close.
Enter CROSSHAIRS/Iron Curtain. Now, interlinked miniature radars will instantly detect and track any fast-moving projectile in the vicinity, pinpointing the location of the firer and swivelling the vehicle's turret guns onto target. If the incoming RPG seems likely to actually hit, the Iron Curtain system arms itself and, as the warhead comes close, a countermunition mounted on the edge of the vehicle's roof fires downward and blasts it.

The downward-angling countermunitions are meant to avoid any snags with the system inadvertently blowing away innocent bystanders or shooting up the scenery. Provided nobody is standing too close by, all should be well.

Meanwhile, even as the RPG is being blasted in midair, CROSSHAIRS - if necessary without human input - is raking the place it was fired from with a hail of fire from a .50-calibre heavy machine gun, automatic grenade launcher or whatever the MRAP has in its top mount. Trucks within a convoy will cooperate automatically using a digital network, sharing out targets and hopefully avoiding any unfortunate friendly-fire accidents. It's possible to have a human check first before the trucks cut loose, but not necessary.
David Drake, call your office; do you have some kind of royalties you can ask on this? I mean, rocket-assisted artillery, counter-battery radar and GPS-guided shells, THEL and now...

I love this description:Given that we're talking here about an array of automated weaponry able to pick a speeding rocket out of the air while simultaneously shooting dead the person who fired it, the identity of the agency behind CROSSHAIRS will not surprise many regular readers. It is of course DARPA, the leather-clad motorcycling lone wolf your mother forbids you to have anything to do with of the metaphorical boffinry-bureau-boyfriend community.

Sen. Mary Landrieu isn't cheap,

but she can be- has been- bought. Integrity-wise, at least.

Ooooh, Columbia Journalism Review is screaming 'Blackmail!'

for someone daring to point out to Holder "There really is stuff here you need to investigate."
In response to the Columbia Journalism Review’s accusing me of “blackmailing” the Attorney General of the United States, I must take notice that the mainstream media as a journalistic establishment IS paying attention to the ongoing ACORN scandal. Good. I thought so.

What the Columbia Journalism Review is doing is very similar to what Media Matters is doing: protecting the Democrat-Media Complex, the natural alliance of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media. This ACORN investigation has been going on for two months and Hannah, James, and I have proven to be truth-tellers every step of the way, while the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now has been proven time and again to be liars.
And it appears that the only way to get AG Holder to stop giving rights to terrorists and to stop looking on gun owners as the enemy is to say "Investigate, or we start releasing more of the tapes before the next election."

That it seems to be taking that to make A: Holder even consider criminal investigations of ACORN and B: the major media say anything about this mess is disgusting.

And to every "Obama doesn't want to take your guns" moron out there,

read this:

Drawing reasonable conclusions from what Holder publicly said, we now know:

• Holder wants a national, permanent gun registration system administered by law enforcement. A registration of honest citizens that have cleared the federal background check for gun purchases with those records permanently retained by and shared among law enforcement.

• Holder wants new federal authority to prohibit any person on the federal watch list (reported to be 400,000 names) from buying guns and supports confiscating guns from those on the list who possess them.

I held off on bringing this release to the attention of Gun Rights Examiner readers because I wanted to corroborate the claims--which, unfortunately, the official transcript of Holder's prepared remarks, posted on the Justice Department website, do not.

So I contacted LEAA and spoke last night with their Chief Operating Officer and national spokesman, Ted Deeds. He told me they were reporting on remarks made during questioning, and sent me a transcript of the appropriate segments of AG Holder's testimony:

This bastard is more solicitous of the 'rights' of terrorists and illegal combatants than he is of honest people in the US who own, or want to own, guns.

A very incestuous group that doesn't properly peer-review papers

that support the 'consensus' being pushed; you could call this 'The hidden rape of the scientific method'.
A scientific scandal is casting a shadow over a number of recent peer-reviewed climate papers.

At least eight papers purporting to reconstruct the historical temperature record times may need to be revisited, with significant implications for contemporary climate studies, the basis of the IPCC's assessments. A number of these involve senior climatologists at the British climate research centre CRU at the University East Anglia. In every case, peer review failed to pick up the errors.

They're specifically referring to tree-ring research that was conducted. And, it seems, cherry-picked. With a very damn long pole.
In particular, since 2000, a large number of peer-reviewed climate papers have incorporated data from trees at the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia. This dataset gained favour, curiously superseding a newer and larger data set from nearby. The older Yamal trees indicated pronounced and dramatic uptick in temperatures.

How could this be? Scientists have ensured much of the measurement data used in the reconstructions remains a secret - failing to fulfill procedures to archive the raw data. Without the raw data, other scientists could not reproduce the results. The most prestigious peer reviewed journals, including Nature and Science, were reluctant to demand the data from contributors. Until now, that is.
Take careful note of that: they refused the basic rule of releasing data so it could be cross-checked by others. AND two of the 'most prestigious' journals didn't push for it; gee, I wonder why?
At the insistence of editors of the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions B the data has leaked into the open - and Yamal's mystery is no more.

From this we know that the Yamal data set uses just 12 trees from a larger set to produce its dramatic recent trend. Yet many more were cored, and a larger data set (of 34) from the vicinity shows no dramatic recent warming, and warmer temperatures in the middle ages.
Remember some of the stuff in the e-mails about getting rid of the Medieval Warm Period?
In all there are 252 cores in the CRU Yamal data set, of which ten were alive 1990. All 12 cores selected show strong growth since the mid-19th century. The implication is clear: the dozen were cherry-picked.

(This oversimplifies the story somewhat: for more detail, read this fascinating narrative by blogger BishopHill here (http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/9/29/the-yamal-implosion.html).)

Further along,
Controversy has been raging since 1995, when an explosive paper by Keith Briffa (http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/) at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia asserted that that the medieval warm period was actually really cold, and recent warming is unusually warm. Both archaeology and the historical accounts, Briffa was declaring, were bunk. Briffa relied on just three cores from Siberia to demonstrate this.
This isn't just cherry-picking, they genetically engineered the damn things to get the result they wanted, so as to try to hide and deny the facts.

Found at Q&O

Now I'll have THIS in my head the next while

Thanks, Chris

Cool and wet outside; must be some of that faked globular warmering

causing it.

Good thing I don't have a job for the True Believers to go after. 'Course, they're rather busy right now anyway, both going after climate scientists who actually believe in science and defending themselves from possible criminal charges(can you say 'deleting records subject to FOIA requests?)

With the mist and fog I can work inside without feeling guilty about not climbing trees and pruning and such, and concentrate on browsing around onlineresearch. And loading. I've got a whole pile of bullets ready to go, and I need to load some 7.62x54r, 7.5x55 and .30-06 practice loads. Maybe some .380. I need to go through the Immediate-Use Stockpile and see if I'm short of anything else. And need to process all the brass from the other day- both fired and found- so that's out of the way; good day for it. And makes sure I've got shooty goodness for the next range trip.

Just to note, I've tried Berry's, Rainier and X-Treme plated bullets now, and had good results out of all of them. If you've not messed with them they're basically a swaged lead bullet that's copper plated; you can't load as hot as a regular jacketed, but you don't get lead fouling in the bore(unless you really push the velocity; then you can). I've been using the Berry's .32 hollow-base wadcutter for 7.62 Nagant, I've shot a bunch of Berry's and Rainier 200-grain flatnose .45acp, and Dad's used the X-Treme 210-grain flatnose in .41 Mag; not a problem with any of them. Dad prefers the X-Treme for .41 as it has a cannelure; Berry's doesn't, and Rainier doesn't make a .41. Also, if you're looking for bulk buys, Berry's and X-Treme have free shipping above a certain price, and Midway often has 'buy 2000, free shipping' deals, which with the weight of bullets is very good*.

Sen. Harry Reid is going to try to shove through a vote to allow debate on the abortion result he calls a 'health care' bill today. You want to know how bad this crap is?
Ryan Ellis of Americans for Tax Reform notes that the bill contains 18 separate tax increases — one of them targeting parents of disabled children.

“One of them caps the amount that can be deferred in Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) at $2500 per year (a similar provision was included in the Pelosi-Obama health bill),” Ellis notes.

“There is currently no limit to how much can be saved, though all monies must be used by the end of the year. Employers may put a cap in place for their employees, but this would put a cap in federal tax law for the first time. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), 30 million American families use an FSA,” he explained.
Reid, you suck. I mean, you really suck; you're a miserable human being. And let's not forget the various other senators pushing this steaming pile on us, including those being bribed like Landrieu, who's apparently willing to be bought with 100 million dollars of other peoples money. Add this to what Coburn revealed the other day, and right now I'd settle for a tiny little meteor that only takes out the Senate(yes, I'd prefer the House too, but right now I'd settle for the one). Oh, and on the bribery and corruption front,
One provision epitomizes the nature of this ploy. According to research firms, unions are woefully short of funds to pay their retirees’ anticipated insurance claims. Thus, under the House resolution, union leaders who have mismanaged these plans for their members could receive up to $10 billion in taxpayer-funded bailout money, innocuously referred to as a “reinsurance program.”

Unfortunately, this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Under the proposed public option, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius would wield tremendous discretionary authority to regulate participating health care workers. She and various federal panels, where the unions would have guaranteed seats, would take the lead in recommending health care policy. Thus, labor would have considerable influence over decisions affecting most doctors, nurses and patients.
Malkin's got a list of people and groups being bribed.

And over here, we have the bullcrap being spread by SEIU to try to cover up threatening the Boy Scouts and any other volunteers; includes link to the 'misunderstood' audio.


Here's another opinion on the Obama & Holder Show Trial Of The- Damn Near Forever:
Kohl's question is highly pertinent, and Holder simply evaded it. No one is suggesting that failure to win and sustain a conviction is an "option," but it is a contingency for which it is shocking that the administration is, or at least claims to be, unprepared.

Further, Obama's and Holder's assurances that KSM will be convicted (and, according to the president, "put to death") make a mockery of due process. Nothing is more fundamental to America's criminal justice system than the presumption of innocence, and if terrorist detainees are to be treated as criminal defendants, they are entitled to that presumption.

For the sake of political expediency, Obama and Holder are refusing even to make a pretense of respect for due process. If KSM & Co. are convicted and put to death, America's critics and enemies will point to Obama and Holder's assurances in arguing that the defendants were subjected to sham justice. Nice work restoring America's moral standing, Mr. President.


I just realized I need bread. And parmesan to make more spiced olive oil. And some onions. Crap, I was hoping to stay in. Oh well, shopping I go.

Remember that idiot wall between intelligence and LE that Clinton's idiot

set up? Well, the damn things apparently still around:
FBI officials have said a military investigator on the task force saw the e-mails and looked up Hasan's record, but finding nothing particularly worrisome, the investigator neither sought nor got permission to pass the e-mails on to other military officials.

But the senior defense official has countered that the rules of the task force prevented that military representative from passing the records on without approval from other members of the task force.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said it appears there was enough information available to law enforcement, the military and intelligence agencies to raise alarm bells about Hasan but no one connected the dots.

So the God-damned Senate can't bother to read things before passing them, and these bastards still can't do- in some cases the good ones aren't allowed to do- the damned job.

C'mon, Deity, just one little asteriod when these clowns are in session...

Well, this explains why Coburn is called Dr. No,

and why he's doing it so much; from his newsletter:
Every week, the Senate routinely passes legislation that is never voted on, never debated, and rarely, if ever, read by the full Senate. Now surely, you say, this process is reserved for non-controversial bills like renaming post offices or honoring the Super Bowl champions, right?

Wrong. The “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body” regularly passes major legislation that creates new programs and authorizes billions in new spending without you knowing until after the fact.

The game works this way: the leaders of both parties send an email and recorded phone message to each Senate office notifying them they would like to pass certain bills sometime that day by unanimous consent. If no senator calls his or her party leader to object, it usually passes at the close of business that day without a recorded vote. Sometimes, I am given just a few minutes to read lengthy bills, and unless I pick up the phone to object (“hold”), it is considered passed by the US Senate.

I would be willing to bet that few senators even take the time to read the request, let alone the bill. Worse, the decision is usually left to an unelected staff member.

And they expect you to find out by noting the bill’s passage in the congressional record on the day after passage.

They call this process “unanimous consent” when in reality it is consent by default.

Well, I guess he is running out of crowns

to bow to
Stolen from this guy

Not only were the "Let's screw with the evidence" files real, Updated

you can download them.

Apparently the 'true believer' sites are bitching about the hacking and saying absolutely nothing about the content; big surprise, huh?

Update: remember Mann and the 'hockey stick' graph that turned out to be bull? He's involved:
Dr. Mann was implicated in the global warming email conspiracy. It was reported on several websites today that classified emails and files prove that the junk scientists behind the global warming movement knowingly perpetrated a fraud on the global community. Mann’s name came up in several of the emails. The posted material, which includes e-mails allegedly sent by the CRU’s director Phil Jones to fellow climate researchers, including Michael Mann at Pennsylvania State University in University Park.


Update 2: the more people go through these files, the worse it gets:
Jones, head of the CRU unit whose emails were leaked, has been under most fire so far over one email in particular in which he boasted of using a ‘“trick" to “hide the decline” that would have otherwise spoiled his graph showing temperatures soaring ever-upward.

But far more serious - at least in a legal sense - may be his apparent boasting of destroying data to stop sceptics from checking this alarmist work. If, as some emails suggest, he destroyed it to thwart FOI requests from Professor Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre, who’d already exposed as fake the Michael Mann “hockey stick”, Jones, one of the most active of the IPCC lead authors, could even face criminal charges.

(Note: in saying that, I should add that these emails may simply be poorly worded, out of context or even altered by the whistleblower who leaked them. Jones may also not knowingly have done anything wrong, and there is no proof that he did anything against the law.)
He may not have known he was quite possibly breaking law, but he damn well knew he was violating the most basic rules of the scientific method, and for that alone he deserves to have his ass handed to him.

That last, in some ways, is the worst of all about this. In a comment on an earlier post Wolfwalker said, in part, This story hurts. I don't want to believe it. But so far it doesn't look good at all. And if it's true, if they've really been fudging and falsifying data, and intentionally censoring the scientific press, then heads should roll in large quantities.

We must be able to trust our scientists and engineers.
And it's exactly that trust that these people have been taking advantage of, and destroying. The damage won't just stop here, either, it's going to cause problems for a whole lot of people. "Look at all the lies these people pushed; why the hell should we trust them on ANYTHING!?" will be the attitude of many, and it- unfortunately- is a damned good question.

Forget everything else: one of the basic rules of the scientific method is the information has to be studied by others, tested and tried by others for errors or missed data or misinterpretation; and these people deliberately hid information, refused to allow others to review their data and even hid or destroyed information to keep others from reviewing it. The violation of basic ethics is disgusting.

Funnies for the day

How pumpkin pies are made

And while I don't know squat about the background,
I still think it's funny

Dammi, I forgot: it's National Ammo Day!

Like the man says, "If you can find some."

If I'm not mistaken, haven't the socialize medicine weenies held out military

hospitals and such as evidence of how wonderful it'll be?

One of Hasan’s commanding officers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Lieutenant Colonel Melanie Guerrero, told investigators she had considered failing him as an intern but “decided to allow him to pass since he was going into psychiatry and would not be doing any real patient care.”

Just consider that for a second. OK.

Guerrero told ABC News his performance problems stemmed from his lack of competence in the intensive care unit, including problems with recommending the proper medications or coming up with the right kind of patient treatment plan.

Words fail me. And LtC Guerrero needs her ass demoted to something useful, like Murtha detail at a FOB somewhere.

"The science of global warming is settled!" my ass

The director of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit confirmed that the e-mails are genuine — and Australian publication Investigate and the Australian Herald-Sun report that those e-mails expose a conspiracy to hide detrimental information from the public that argues against global warming (via Watt’s Up With That):

The internet is on fire this morning with confirmation computers at one of the world’s leading climate research centres were hacked, and the information released on the internet.

A 62 megabyte zip file, containing around 160 megabytes of emails, pdfs and other documents, has been confirmed as genuine by the head of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, Dr Phil Jones.

In an exclusive interview with Investigate magazine’s TGIF Edition, Jones confirms his organization has been hacked, and the data flying all over the internet appears to have come from his organisation.

“It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails.”

One of the most damning e-mails published comes from Dr. Jones himself. In an e-mail from almost exactly ten years ago, Jones appears to discuss a method of overlaying data of temperature declines with repetitive, false data of higher temperatures:

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@[snipped], mhughes@
[snipped]
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@[snipped],t.osborn@[snipped]
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,

Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow. I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers, Phil
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit

Every 'scientist' who had a hand in this should be shamed at the least. And should be thrown out of whatever position they hold for fraud and screwing with the information.

Hit the range the other day with a friend; good because
He hadn't been in quite a while, and
We hadn't gone together in even longer.
So we made lots of holes in targets. One of the things I had to do was sight in; I had a pistol scope I'd taken off the Trailside, and found some extra-high rings and mounted it on the 15-22.
The rings fit right onto the rail as they should. And, amazingly, it only took about three clicks left and two up to put it dead-on at fifty yards. I will note that it would actually have fit my face better with even higher rings, but this is what I had(do they make extra-extra high rings? Need to look).

It was blowing like hell yesterday, which did not help, and the angle of the sun was giving me some glare on the front lens; not ideal conditions for ammo testing. But, results so far, of the ammo I've tried, the most accurate out of this are Centurion 40-grain solids
and the real surprise, Eley Sport
Being lazy, instead of putting up another target for these I just held on the 12; no, I couldn't actually see the '12', just held where I knew it should be. The two to the right are called flyers, and I wasn't trying real hard for the best groups(see 'hell, blowing like' above); just steadied on the mark and squeezed off, and got this. And that's 20 rounds. The accuracy wasn't a surprise, I've had good results from this ammo before, but it's standard velocity stuff so most autoloaders won't reliably feed it(just not enough energy to fully cycle the action) ; yet it cycled through perfectly. You could tell from the sound and recoil it's a lighter load, but no failure to feed, cock or anything else. Impressive from the rifle.

Just to prove that I can actually shoot decently(sometimes), I'd taken the Martini model 8 along, and managed to fire this group at 50 yards
also with Eley Sport. And that's sitting at a bench, elbows rested and using the sling. I'll excuseblame the not as good groups from the S&W mostly on a little difficulty keeping the eye properly aligned(see 'rings' above), and it's quite possible that with some match ammo it might do much better; I just find it very easy to shoot good groups with this old BSA. I'll throw in that with the iron sights on the S&W, I actually managed equal to slightly better groups(with the Centurion) last time; sometimes a scope has its own problems.

I'm not real familiar with the AR-type platforms, does using a sling on them help with accuracy? Or is it not helpful with this rifle type?

On ammo, has anyone else noticed the variability in the recent batches of bulk-pack ammo? Out of some Remington Golden Bullet I got everything from proper high-velocity 'cracks' to one that damn near sounded like a CB cartridge, and some in between; not good for accuracy. And similary variability(not quite as bad) from some Federal 36-grain HP.

Friend had something along he picked up recently, and I'll try to get a good picture of it later: a Husqvarna single-shot bolt rifle in .32-20. Octagonal barrel, still has a lot of the colors from the case-hardening showing on the bolt and receiver, nice walnut stock; lovely thing. And a very good trigger; it shot very nicely.

So that was range day. Good time had by all, etc.

Busy, busy, busy (updated)

Patterico has a prosecutor's view on the idiot decision to move the terrorists and illegal combatants to civil courts:
Although Hot Air and others have linked the clip, I haven’t seen anyone else focus on this particular statement, which I found very revealing. Commentators (including myself) have been arguing that Holder and Obama chose federal court because they thought they could win anyway, and make some Grand Point about due process. But this quote indicates that Holder and Obama actually think they have a better chance in federal court.

Combine that with Holder’s frank admission (which he quickly backed off of) that he might not choose this forum if he were not confident of success:

If I was concerned about the forum not leading to a positive result or if I had a concern — a different concern, you know, we would perhaps be in a different place.

And you can see that what we have is an administration that is choosing where to try the detainees, not based on some principle or neutral protocol (as they claim), but based on where they can win. They’re rigging the game.

And if they lose, they won’t let him go anyway.

This is just further evidence that the KSM trial will be a show trial.
Yeah. And it looks so good for the "We will show what a fair trial is" bullshit, doesn't it? Great for the image, and all. And let's note this from earlier:
Gotcha. Hey, anything else going on? Let’s read on to paragraph 12 of the article, shall we?

Administration officials say they expect that as many as 40 of the 215 detainees at Guantanamo will be tried in federal court or military commissions. About 90 others have been cleared for repatriation or resettlement in a third country, and about 75 more have been deemed too dangerous to release but cannot be prosecuted because of evidentiary issues and limits on the use of classified material.

We told you about this category in earlier posts. The concept of holding people without trials was discussed by Obama in a May speech. In May, Karl fleshed out the details: some detainees will be held because we can’t try them — and some might even be tried and acquitted . . . and then held nevertheless.

Kinda makes KSM’s trial seem like a show trial, huh?


Hey, President B. Hussein Cartman Obama, if you'd make a damned decision instead of playing games while our troops are fighting and dying, you wouldn't have to worry so much about leaks, now would you?


I do sympathize with these students, having gone through kids finding out tuition & fees are going up- again- twice; it's tempered by the thought that most of these people probably thought having the state of CA take care of everything for them by taxing the life out of everyone(every else, that is) was just fine; but now that there's nobody left to tax to death, and they'll have to pay more... Probably a bunch of them working part- or full-time to pay their tuition and fees and bullcrap, and some with parents trying hard to cover it, they're the ones really getting screwed.
Update: look at this crap:
Mark Yudof, president of the UC Board of Regents, noted that students who come from families earning less than $70,000 will pay no tuition whatsoever, thanks to financial aid programs.

"If you make less than $70,000 a year, you will not pay any fees. You not only won't pay the increase, you won't pay the base. And if you make between $70,000 and $120,000, we'll pay half of the increase in the initial year. So the access is still there," said Yudof ...
And that's just not good enough for them. Damn.


I guess SEIU is a bunch of thugs no matter who they have to threaten to keep their image up:
Last week at a city council meeting in Allentown, Pa., a top official of the local Services Employee International Union chapter ranted about 17-year-old Scout Kevin Anderson’s park clean-up work. Anderson devoted some 200 hours to the job in order to earn an Eagle Scout badge. He picked up trash and helped clear a 1,000-foot walking path with fellow members of Boy Scouts Troop 301 of Center Valley.
But SEIU’s Nick Balzano gave them hell instead of thanks.

Balzano disparaged altruistic efforts in city parks and asserted that “there is (sic) to be no volunteers” since his union members were laid off. He then issued a witch hunt threat: “We’ll also be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails. We may file another grievance on that.” Citing union rules, he gave the Allentown city council, the Boy Scouts, and all potential volunteers an iron-fisted ultimatum: “None of them can pick up a hoe. They can’t pick up a shovel. They can’t plant a flower. They can’t clear a bicycle path. They can’t do anything. Our people do that.”
...
...SEIU headquarters in Washington immediately blamed “the disreputable Fox News and other right-wing outlets like Michelle Malkin’s accuracy challenged blog” for the backlash. While decrying their critics’ “fiction,” SEIU distanced itself from Balzano, denying that he was a top union leader and dismissing his remarks as “unauthorized.”

Fact: U.S. Department of Labor records from 2008 (their most recent filing), show that Balzano is no rogue, rank-and-file member. He currently serves on the SEIU local’s Executive Board and previously served as president.

Fact: The union tried to minimize Balzano’s grievance threat as “inappropriate.” But the dirty open secret is that public-sector unions have routinely attacked volunteer workers who threaten their stranglehold.

Last June, union officials in Baraboo, Wisconsin filed a complaint against volunteer firefighters who built sandbag barricades to protect the city from record flooding. They whined that city Department of Public Works employees should have been called first and demanded overtime pay (for work they didn’t do) to compensate them.
Wonderful bunch of union people, aren't they?


More "You can speak out and work to influence bills; as long as you agree with what I think" from a Democrat.


Just wonderful how the justice system is working in Missouri with County Counselor Patricia Redington:
One wonders just what exactly if anything new is being done. Three months seems a long time to wait to bring charges, especially in the case of Kelly Owens, where the incident is on video camera and witnessed by a police office. The answer given by Redington is noncommittal, and basically says ‘we’re looking into it.’ But are they? The pressure of the police report, the line drawn between St Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch and the Obama truth squads, and the background stories on Perry Molens and Kelly Owens got local citizens up in arms and interested KMOX reporter Kevin Killeen enough to ask some questions. This is Redington’s response to Killeen’s questions.

Six people were arrested by St. Louis County Police, with at least two suspects booked on suspicion of assault. But the person who will decide whether to file charges, St. Louis County Counselor Patricia Redington, is still sorting it all out. “There were multiple altercations and police involvement,” Redington said. “We’re looking at the whole evening and the charges that may be filed as a result of that.”

Redington says there were half a dozen possible criminal incidents at that event and she plans to announce her findings all at the same time. She did not give KMOX a timetable for the announcement. But, according to Redington, the incident, ‘definitely has not been swept under the rug.’”

It’s interesting that Redington says the incident is not being swept under the rug. I wonder if she would admit that it has been slowed to a crawl so as not to bring to light the fact that five HCAN supporters were arrested the week that Margarida Jorde sent out instructions on how to counter Townhalls? And let’s not forget Jake Wagman, the silenced reporter arrested that night. If the Post Dispatch had done their job as a news organization and asked a single question about the event anytime after August 14th, perhaps we wouldn’t still be waiting to find out if it’s acceptable to punch and kick your political opponents to send a message. It is only when KMOX contacts Redington that we hear the investigation is moving forward. And yet the question remains whether Redington is telling the whole truth, or counting on the local press to cut her some slack.


One of the many immigrants who became a U.S. Citizen. And has done damn well, for self and country:
Boy Who Fled Vietnam as a Boat Person Returns 34 Years Later as the Commander of a US Navy Destroyer
In 1975 when he was 5 years old Hung Ba Le and his family escaped Vietnam in a fishing boat and were eventually rescued by a US Navy ship. Later they settled in Virginia. Now 34 years later Le is commander of the US Lassen which made a goodwill visit to Danang last week.
Escaped with nothing from a communist dictatorship, and made it to this? Worked his ass off to get there. Good for him.


Jesse Jackson is still a racist bastard; can you imagine if someone said "You can't be white and support this bill!" ?


President Obama, you suck. You're putting off making a decision, by doing so you're putting these troops lives in more danger AND endangering this country, and you stand there and tell them they're a good photo-op? You just flat suck.


Speaking of sucky politicians, Sen. Chuck Schumer is a high-rating member of that class.


Moe's right: this is just freakin' amazing:
There’s something… pure… in this hysterical (again, parse as you choose) title found on Indymedia: ‘Fascist Obama Jails Framed Ill People’s Lawyer Lynne Stewart.’ And here I thought that wanting to bomb the United Nations was a nutball-far-extremist-right-fringe fantasy. Live and learn.

Got something to put together for later; for now, brass to put in the tumbler, grass to mow and edge.

If I were Holder and Obama, or any other politician

connected with ACORN, I'd be worried:
Not only are there more tapes, it’s not just ACORN. And this message is to Attorney General Holder: I want you to know that we have more tapes, it’s not just ACORN, and we’re going to hold out until the next election cycle, or else if you want to do a clean investigation, we will give you the rest of what we have, we will comply with you, we will give you the documentation we have from countless ACORN whistleblowers who want to come forward but are fearful of this organization and the retribution that they fear that this is a dangerous organization. So if you get into an investigation, we will give you the tapes; if you don’t give us the tapes, we will revisit these tapes come election time.

This is downright nervy, on multiple levels. And makes you wonder what all the hell they caught on tape, and what names and people, and...

And just why no other media found any of this, or even bothered to look.

Some thoughts on Obama & Holder's idiocy

here.

Every time I think we've hit near the bottom of the idiocy of politicians,

something else comes along to lower the level.
The problem is, last night I learned about something awful that happened while millions of ordinary citizens who simply tried to live their lives did nothing to stop it. Someone has to be responsible, but who?

I honestly don't know. Not only do I hate to be a scold, I don't know who to scold for this damnable atrocity that befell this country in May and June of 2008 (while I and most bloggers were busy writing post about the impending election).

I refer to the 2008 Farm Bill (also known as the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, aka Public Law 110-246). To call it a law would be dishonest in the extreme. To attempt to summarize it would be impossible because of its vastness, so this post will focus on just one minor detail in the bill -- the federalization and criminalization of wood

Hell with shooting them: the people who pass this crap deserve a rope.