Saturday, November 20, 2010

To borrow from Tam, "Why didn't somebody tell me about this place

before?" Brass Fetcher, ballistics testing with gel blocks. Lots and lots of cartridges, long gun and pistol.

Why I consider TSA to be the equivalent of 'zero-tolerance' in schools:

a lot of these rules are simply so the TSA people don't have to actually think about anything.
So we’re in line, going through one at a time. One of our Soldiers had his Gerber multi-tool. TSA confiscated it. Kind of ridiculous, but it gets better. A few minutes later, a guy empties his pockets and has a pair of nail clippers. Nail clippers. TSA informs the Soldier that they’re going to confiscate his nail clippers. The conversation went something like this:

TSA Guy: You can’t take those on the plane.

Soldier: What? I’ve had them since we left country.

TSA Guy: You’re not suppose to have them.

Soldier: Why?

TSA Guy: They can be used as a weapon.

Soldier: [touches butt stock of the rifle] But this actually is a weapon. And I’m allowed to take it on.

TSA Guy: Yeah but you can’t use it to take over the plane. You don’t have bullets.

Soldier: And I can take over the plane with nail clippers?

TSA Guy: [awkward silence]

Me: Dude, just give him your damn nail clippers so we can get the f**k out of here. I’ll buy you a new set.

Soldier: [hands nail clippers to TSA guy, makes it through security]

This might be a good time to remind everyone that approximately 233 people re-boarded that plane with assault rifles, pistols, and machine guns–but nothing that could have been used as a weapon
.
At least according to the TSA.

"You'll do what you're told, peasant,

or else."
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is warning that any would-be commercial airline passenger who enters an airport checkpoint and then refuses to undergo the method of inspection designated by TSA will not be allowed to fly and also will not be permitted to simply leave the airport.

That person will have to remain on the premises to be questioned by the TSA and possibly by local law enforcement. Anyone refusing faces fines up to $11,000 and possible arrest.

"Once a person submits to the screening process, they can not just decide to leave that process," says Sari Koshetz, regional TSA spokesperson, based in Miami.

Koshetz said such passengers would be questioned "until it is determined that they don't pose a threat" to the public
.
Please remember that the 'don't touch my junk' guy was told to leave by these cretins and then threatened by them for trying to do so.

Go screw yourself, Koshetz, and take all your little molesting minions with you. I especially don't like your threats when you morons are doing things like this:
A German government minister has today revealed that a fake bomb found on an Air Berlin flight in Namibia was manufactured in the U.S. to test airport security.

It was not yet clear who had planted 'test suitcase', said German interior minister Thomas de Maziere, but the one fact they had established was that the device had been manufactured by a U.S. company that specialises in alarm systems.
...
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) confirmed today that it was working with the German and Namibian authorities 'to determine the origin of the device and the reason it was being transported on the plane'.
This is YOUR SHIT, Koshetz, and you don't know how it got there? By whose hands? And you threaten us for not being docile enough about taking your orders?

How cool is this? Closeups of a friggin' comet!

Story at WUWT

Friday, November 19, 2010

So a gun bigot finally admits the truth

I couldn't care less about truth and falsity or causation and correlation, or all that other double talk the pro-gun crowd like so much.
Then, after his general bullcrap, he proceeds to yell at people for actually reading his words.

Ah yes, the proper response to PETA and other

animal rights weenies.

Thanks to RNS for pointing to it

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Just a few bits & pieces this evening

Hey, Mr. Rockefeller(NSD-WV), fuck you. You are not the official censor, and if you can't do honest work with Fox or whoever talking about it, you ought to get your fat ass out of that chair and go away.


(NZZ AM SONNTAG): The new thing about your proposal for a Global Deal is the stress on the importance of development policy for climate policy. Until now, many think of aid when they hear development policies.

(OTTMAR EDENHOFER, UN IPCC OFFICIAL): That will change immediately if global emission rights are distributed. If this happens, on a per capita basis, then Africa will be the big winner, and huge amounts of money will flow there. This will have enormous implications for development policy. And it will raise the question if these countries can deal responsibly with so much money at all.

(NZZ): That does not sound anymore like the climate policy that we know.

(EDENHOFER): Basically it's a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization.

You bastards want to rob me, at least have the balls and integrity to try it with a gun; we'll see what happens.


Speaking of lack of integrity, the Democrats still want to give illegal aliens amnesty; Malkin has a list of (reported)Republicans who need yelling at.


Oh yeah, no reason to be bothered by the TSA assholes playing with the images, nooooo...


And last, what's Pashtun for "Holy Shit!"?

Something I hadn't previously considered about the Dick-Measuring Machines

TSA is so proud of:
I've worked as an electron microscopy tech and while there was extremely little risk of radiation, I still had to wear a monitoring badge just in case. Why aren't the TSA agents? We also had to have out equipment inspected and calibrated regularly, with the inspection info clearly visible. Again, if this were the case with TSA, I might feel a little better. However, until third-party unbiased tests come out, I'll be opting out and reporting TSA agents doing pat-downs for sexual assault and battery - what you claim is protocol and what go on are two very different things.
That is a damn good point, I think. I mean, hell, police are supposed to be able to show that the bloody speedguns are checked and properly calibrated, so...

And he's not kidding about the 'sexual assault and battery', either.

Opening day

A hunter and his friend were sitting in a tall tower stand near Highway 7 early one cold December morning. Suddenly, a huge buck walked out over the corn they had spread in the low shrubs.

The buck was magnificent, a once in a lifetime animal. His rack was huge. The hunter's hand shook as his mind was already counting the Boone and Crockett points.

Moving quickly, the hunter carefully aimed the Leopold scope on his .300 Win Mag at the unsuspecting buck. As he was about to squeeze the trigger on this deer of a lifetime, his friend alerted him to a funeral procession passing slowly down Highway 7.

The hunter pulled away from the gunstock, set the rifle down, took off his hat, bowed his head and then closed his eyes in prayer.

His friend was stunned,

"Wow, that is the most thoughtful and touching thing I have ever seen you do. You actually let that trophy deer go to pay respects to a passing funeral procession. You are indeed the kindest man I have ever known, and I feel lucky to call you a friend."

The hunter shrugged. "Yeah, well, we were married for 37 years."

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

A last note for the evening

On a local radio show some guy called in about the TSA mess and said '...I want to get through the trip alive, in other countries they're REALLY invasive,' etc. To which I thought "So the underwear bomber went through, ah, was it two or three? of those foreign airports with all their 'REALLY invasive searches' and still got on the plane with a bomb... So were they just not invasive ENOUGH or what?"

When boredom strikes in Iowa



In the category of 'People who would look better dead'

we have David Weaving:
The Associated Press reports that David Weaving, who is serving a 10-year sentence for slamming his car into Matthew Kenney, is suing Kenney’s parents for $15,000 for causing him “great mental and emotional pain and suffering” and inhibiting his “capacity to carry on in life’s activities.”
WTF? you say?
Weaving contends that the Kenneys were negligent when they allowed their then 14-year-old son to ride his bike without a helmet.

Let’s put that claim in context, Matthew Kenney was riding his bike in a 45 mile per hour zone when Weaving slammed into him going 83 miles per hour.
I think that I will get little argument that this excrescence from a syphilitic boil is a leading member of the category in question.

Trying to get something mailed from Japan?

Don't count on it.
Japan Post Services Co. said it will stop accepting airmail packages bound for the United States weighing 453 grams (1 pound) or more starting Wednesday because airlines will stop such delivery at the request of U.S. aviation authorities as part of antiterrorism measures.

The postal services arm of Japan Post Holdings Co. handles 16 million letters and packages by air and sea to the U.S. annually, and "15 percent of that will be affected," a Japan Post spokesman said. That means about 200,000 packages a month will be affected.
Further:
However, JP Post will continue to accept packages regardless of weight in cases where it has confirmed the safety of the sender, such as packages from corporate customers that use JP Post's post-shipment payment system and have a history of doing business with JP Post. JP Post will also continue to handle packages shipped by methods other than air, such as sea mail, as usual.

"Among private firms, on November 11, Yamato Group's Yamato Logistics suspended acceptance of household goods for shipment by air to the United States. Other major private firms are under pressure to respond as well, and there is concern that this will lead to major disruptions in the flow of goods between the United States and Japan."


I'm throwing this in just because it seems to fit in with idiots giving orders:
Governor-elect Lincoln Chafee on Monday stood by his campaign pledge to repeal Governor Carcieri's executive order on illegal immigration, saying that a letter sent to him from a Rhode Island woman who was kidnapped and raped at knifepoint by an illegal immigrant would not change his mind.

"That could happen in any state. We're one of only six states, I think, to have E-verify. There are 44 other states that don't have it and these types of tragedies can happen in any one of those 44 states," he said at a news conference for a separate issue. "I don't necessarily make the linkage." ...
.
Translation: "I sold myself for the votes this bought, and I'm going to pay off, no matter what the price to others. Besides, what good is it to try to protect people in this state if ALL other states aren't doing it(please buy this shit I'm selling, pleasepleaseplease...)"

Whether it's the guy he always had in mind, or he just decided

to shove the worst he could forward for the job, Andrew Traver for BATFE head. Read all the links, and this piece from NLOGM:
Traver has significant connections to projects of the notoriously anti-gun Joyce Foundation. The Joyce Foundation provided $675,000 in funding for the International Association of Chiefs of Police - IACP - to put on the 2007 Great Lakes Summit on Gun Violence. Traver was a participant in this meeting along with such gun control notables as Gary Wintemute, Director of UC-Davis' Violence Prevention Research Program, Nina Vinik and Robyn Thomas of the Legal Community Against Violence, and David Hemenway of the Harvard School of Public Health. There were also a number of representatives from some of the local gun control organizations and a selection of anti-gun politicians and police chiefs including Mayor Richard Daley.

It is important to note that Traver was not a mere attendee at this meeting, he is listed as an advisor to it along with others like Tom Diaz of the Violence Policy Center and Nina Vinik of LCAV. The acknowledgments thanks the advisers who "worked tirelessly to help us design and accomplish a powerful policy summit by attending many meetings and events and by voicing their invaluable counsel as we moved forward with this important initiative."
Part of their wish list:
  • Requiring that all gun sales take place through Federal Firearms License (FFL) holders with mandatory background checks
  • Enacting an effective ban on military-style assault weapons, armor-piercing handgun ammunition, .50 caliber sniper rifles and other weapons that enable criminals to outgun law enforcement
  • Repealing the Tiahrt Amendment, which hinders investigation of illegal gun trafficking
  • Destroying guns that come into police possession once their law enforcement use has ended
  • Mandating safe storage of firearms by private citizens and providing safe facilities where gun owners can store their weapons
  • Mandating reporting of lost and stolen firearms
  • Develop a best practices protocol for voluntary gun surrender programs
  • Congress should restore funding for the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program for state, local and tribal agencies to investigate and prosecute cases of gun trafficking and gun violence
  • The federal government should increase funding to ATF for personnel and technical assistance to combat gun violence
  • Congress should enact legislation to allow federal health and safety oversight of the firearms industry
Be sure to check out the opinion of the guy from ATF agents at the bottom of the post; just the kind of guy we expected The Obama to shove in. As someone put it "There damned well BETTER be a confirmation fight."


In the same "You need to be controlled by the Government for your own good" line,
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said using a cell phone while driving is so dangerous that devices may soon be installed in cars to forcibly stop drivers — and potentially anyone else in the vehicle — from using them.

“There’s a lot of technology out there now that can disable phones and we’re looking at that,” said LaHood on MSNBC. LaHood said the cellphone scramblers were one way, and also stressed the importance of “personal responsibility.” …

“I think it will be done,” said LaHood. “I think the technology is there and I think you’re going to see the technology become adaptable in automobiles to disable these cell phones. We need to do a lot more if were going to save lives.”

Once again, 'necessity' is the mother of "We need to control you" with these people. What? Ticket people driving carelessly ore recklessly because of their phone use? No! WE NEED MORE LAWS!!!


Andrew Dodges' experience
with the friendly fast-food rejects at TSA.


And last, there's a bunch of people at DOJ who need to be fired over this. And banned forever from any government job.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

If you want proof that the current TSA bullcrap is exactly that,

read this. If this crap was the 'absolutely must-have security measures' Big Sister Napolitano claims, there's no way in hell ANY particular racial/religious group would be given this kind of option.

The fact that TSA is giving muslim women this option tells you exactly what bullshit this is.

Hit the range this morning with the Hand Ejector

and I'm in love. Or something like that. A very sweet-handling and shooting little thing it is.

I foresee lots of shooty fun with it in the future.

Something important, here

Staff Sergeant Giunta, MoH awardee

It's morning, and wet as a not-yet-squeezed sponge

out there; light rain off & on most of yesterday and last night, not a lot but the kind that soaks in instead of running off. Which leads to "It's too wet to work in the yard without a wetsuit, so I'll do this instead."
Free Americans, allowing themselves to be treated like prisoners at the county lock-up, just because they want to fly to Granny’s for Thanksgiving. Why?

Napolitano says it’s vital to our security, though nobody can point to a single attack foiled by this fondling. She insists this is a key part of their “layered” approach to air safety.

OK, fine, Janet. I’ll do it. Only, you go first.

I want you to zip over to Reagan National and, on live cable TV, go through the full body scan - with the images available for broadcast and our review. Since it’s no big deal and it’s all for security, I’m sure you won’t mind setting the suck-it-up example.

And after that, you can step over to the personal screening area for what you euphemistically call a “pat-down.” We’ll all watch as a female TSA employee does to you what she did to American grandmothers over this weekend
.
The description of how one lady passenger was felt up- and that's exactly what it was- would be enough to get the clown punched out if it happened anywhere else outside of an actual arrest; either this crap stops or it's going to stop happening. Especially when some parent hears their kid scream "Don't touch me there!"


About the DOJ not jailing those NBPP clowns,
The e-mails show two political appointees' involvement in Justice's decision to dismiss, the watchdog group says. And, it notes, those e-mails contradict what Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for Justice's Civil Rights Division, told the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights under oath: that decision involved "only career people."

The e-mails lend additional credence to the long-held suspicion that politics drove Justice's decision-making in this case. They also go a long way toward answering a key question: What is Attorney General Eric Holder hiding with his stonewalling against the commission's investigation?

We already knew what the bastard was hiding; this just goes to prove it. And Perez and anybody else that can be shown to have lied under oath needs to be prosecuted for perjury.


The National Socialist Democrats are indeed thinking about trying to shove amnesty for illegals through in the lame duck session. Big surprise, huh?


I don't know if the ROE have been changed, but sounds like Petraeus is doing his job: actually working to win. And if Karzai actually gives a damn about winning, he'll shut the hell up; if he's just another suckass corrupt politician who'd rather have a deal to get a cut from the Taliban, he can go to hell.


Apparently a bunch of the Donks are either truly deluded or trying desperately to believe that it wasn't what they did, they just didn't talk about it right. Dream on, jackasses; it's what you DID. And are trying to do.


Just ran across this(yeah, it's afternoon now, deal with it) on some of the DOJ mess:
The report’s author, Maura Lee, began her DOJ career in the civil rights division, but now works in the DOJ Office of Inspector General. Hans von Spakovsky, former counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights, supervised Lee and told TheDC that he was “astonished” when he found out she was the author of the report.

According to von Spakovsky, Lee was “one of the most belligerent, unprofessional lawyers” he encountered during his time at the DOJ. “Because of her,” he said, “we had to completely change our security protocol.”

Another former senior DOJ official who asked not to be named confirmed Lee’s involvement in strategizing to leak information to the Washington Post, saying that she was not a trustworthy person and had major political motivations.
...
The former coworker also alleges that Lee sent out e-mails to the more “left-leaning DOJ employees,” suggesting that they leak sensitive information to the Washington Post. According to this former DOJ employee, once Lee was found out, the entire security system within the Voters Rights Division had to be revamped
.
If this information is correct, not only should she NOT be in the Inspector General's office, she should've been fired and disbarred.

I mean, c'mon, the IG's OFFICE?


Hehehehe, just the thing to wear to the airport.


Ok, so Rangel has been convicted of all but one of the charges; his probable punishment? ...is more likely to face a letter of reprimand or a formal censure. Yeah, that's great, be a corrupt government official and get your hand slapped. Just effing wonderful.


I was just thinking: it's long-standing policy that if you drive you have given 'implied consent' to a DUI test, because(seems to me) you have a right to travel but if you want to travel by any means of personal transport more advanced than feet or a bicycle it's a 'privilege'. Anybody surprised that the government, TSA in particular, is extending that to 'flying is a privilege for which you give up rights'? And being as vindictive as possible? And making it as damned uncomfortable and invasive as possible to force people to choose being irradiated and shown naked:
Going through airport security this past weekend, radio host Owen JJ Stone, known as “OhDoctah,” related how he was told that the rules had been changed and was offered a private screening. When he asked what the procedure entailed, the TSA agent responded, “I have to go in your waistband, I have to put my hand down your pants,” after which he did precisely that.

Stone chose to conduct the search in public in the fear that the TSA worker would be even more aggressive in a private room
.
Image from Oleg Volk


Speaking of sorry excuses for lawmen, Oleg has this on Minneapolis PD and what SWAT overuse/misuse is causing some people to do.


That's enough of that for this afternoon.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Remember the kid being told "You can't have the US flag on your bike"?

Don't think this was quite the response the weenies were hoping for.

The school weenies must've almost wet their pants.

Ref the curent "You touch my junk Updated

and I'm going to have you arrested." situation, I remembered reading about the run-in Penn Gillette had with the TSA people and managed to find it.
...A security guy came over. I assumed the position. I had a button up shirt on that was untucked. He reached around while he was behind me and grabbed around my front pocket. I guess he was going for my flashlight, but the area could have loosely been called "crotch." I said, "You have to ask me before you touch me or it's assault."

He said, "Once you cross that line, I can do whatever I want."
I said that wasn't true. I say that I have the option of saying no and not flying. He said, "Are you going to let me search you, or do I just throw you out?"

I said, "Finish up, and then call the police please."

When he was finished with my shoes, he said, "Okay, you can go."

I said, "I'd like to see your supervisor and I'd like LVPD to come here as well. I was assaulted by you."

He said, "You're free to go, there's no problem."

I said, "I have a problem, please send someone over."
That is an idea; they fondle something you think they shouldn't, demand a police officer so you can have them arrested. Would make things interesting., since the TSA weenies have apparently been trying to make the molestations as offensive as they can get by with:
I asked him if he was looking forward to conducting the full-on pat-downs. "Nobody's going to do it," he said, "once they find out that we're going to do."

In other words, people, when faced with a choice, will inevitably choose the Dick-Measuring Device over molestation? "That's what we're hoping for. We're trying to get everyone into the machine." He called over a colleague. "Tell him what you call the back-scatter," he said. "The Dick-Measuring Device," I said. "That's the truth," the other officer responded.

The pat-down at BWI was fairly vigorous, by the usual tame standards of the TSA, but it was nothing like the one I received the next day at T.F. Green in Providence. Apparently, I was the very first passenger to ask to opt-out of back-scatter imaging. Several TSA officers heard me choose the pat-down, and they reacted in a way meant to make the ordinary passenger feel very badly about his decision. One officer said to a colleague who was obviously going to be assigned to me, "Get new gloves, man, you're going to need them where you're going."
...
The second lesson is that the effectiveness of pat-downs does not matter very much, because the obvious goal of the TSA is to make the pat-down embarrassing enough for the average passenger that the vast majority of people will choose high-tech humiliation over the low-tech ball check
.
You know, I'm really surprised some parent hasn't already decked one of these clowns for handling their kid; wouldn't that be one hell of a news story and court case?

Update: the thugs really don't like it when anyone says 'No', do they?