Damn, a lot came out while I was at the show

Let's start off with the current display of ineptitude from the Obama Administration:
He then told people to remember that "our adversaries are those who would attack our country, not our fellow Americans", before decrying "fear and cynicism" and "partisanship and division" - the code phrases for horrid Republicans used during his 2008 election campaign.

Complacency, faux moralising and partisan shots at Republicans. It was a neat summary of where Obama is going wrong after the Christmas Day debacle when the Nigerian knicker bomber managed to waltz onto a Detroit-bound flight.

For a man who campaigned denouncing the politicisation of national security under President George W Bush, it is worth noting how intensely political Obama's treatment of what might henceforth be known as Underpantsgate has been.

His White House recognised its political vulnerability more readily than it comprehended the level of danger faced by Americans.
Interesting, isn't it, how we're having to see reporting on this crap from British papers for the most part?


Now, from a Canadian paper on Time's man of the year(this crap doesn't deserve caps):
I suspect Time knew just as well as everybody else that the real person of the year, whether you worshipped him or were a critic, was – how could it be anyone else? – Barack Obama. Was not Barack Obama sworn in as President in 2009? Was he not – the descriptors are now bonded to his name – “the first black man to occupy the White House?” Was this not a “historic milestone?” Did he not, almost immediately, also win the Nobel Peace Prize? Was he not the predominant politico-celebrity figure of the entire world this year?

What was Time waiting for before it would name him as person of the year? Did he have to win Wimbledon with one hand tied behind his back while simultaneously directing repairs to the Large Hadron Collider?

I think Time went to the relatively faceless functionary Bernanke mainly not to name Barack Obama. Time, like a lot of its fellows in the wild world of the contemporary U.S. media, is in an awkward place with regards to Mr. Obama. Having devoted so much incense to his remarkable ascendancy, a great swath of his country's press is looking for a convenient and not too noticeable off-ramp while it – shall we say – recalibrates its enthusiasm.

It's an uncomfortable pivot from the audacity of hope to buyer's remorse. Very uncomfortable for those in the media who played the cheerleader for Mr. Obama, who skated by controversies that would have sunk other candidates or abandoned the ruthless investigations they would have pressed on less congenial candidates.

The ferocity they applied to the Republican vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, in contrast with the timidity they brought to his campaign, will in time come to be seen as one of the most shameful episodes in American journalism. Not so much for what they did to Ms. Palin, but for what they neglected to do in examining the candidate for the office that really counted. In some curious way, the U.S. media's bulldogging of Ms. Palin was kind of an inverted compensation for what they weren't doing to him.
Just exactly: they saw Palin as a threat to Obama's Ascension and did everything they could to her, AFTER having done everything they could to ignore anything questionable about Obama. Which an awful lot of them continue to do.


Back to the subject of the Underwear Bomber, and terrorism in general,
It speaks eloquently to the Obama administration’s priorities that it took the White House four days to acknowledge the “catastrophic breach of security” that led to the failed bombing of a US-bound jet on Christmas Day — but a scant four hours to accuse Dick Cheney of coddling terrorists.

The former vice president Wednesday harshly criticized the administration’s efforts — or non-efforts — against terrorism. Whereupon, Team Obama went ballistic.
And, for one of the best parts of this mess,
n response, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer actually claimed that Cheney was “more focused on criticizing the administration than condemning the attackers.”

That’s a laugh.

Dick Cheney — the man who, as one blogger put it, would waterboard terrorists until their lungs qualify for federal wetlands status — soft on terrorism?


Have you seen the picture over at Insty? If you haven't, go take a look; what's your first thought? Have to tell you, even if I liked him that pose would piss me off unless it was directed at a terrorist, Chavez or a Saudi bigshot. Over at Althouse she notes that some True Believer says he looks like James Bond, which is freaking laughable: Bond might have looked confident, watchful, dangerous or a few other things but he wouldn't have had an expression like that unless, well, looking at a terrorist(just before shooting him), Chavez or a Saudi bigshot(again, just before shooting him). This is a guy who took days to make a personal statement about a terrorist attack that came way too damn close to downing an airplane but made a sirens screaming run from the beach over a friend's kid banging his chin; that's contempt on his face, whether for Biden(I know, I know, shut up) or someone else(us?) I don't know, but Bond it isn't.


Damn, I wonder just how much Pachauri is making? Go here and start scrolling down.


Over in Britain, 'Cold of a variety not seen in over 25 years in a large scale is about to engulf the major energy-consuming areas of the northern hemisphere. The first 15 days of the opening of the New Year will be the coldest, population weighted, north of 30 [degrees] north worldwide in over 25 years.'

That is the chilling (quite literally) verdict of Joe Bastardi, a weather forecaster on the American TV channel AccuWeather.

Yet, while many months ago he and several of his rivals correctly forecast a pre-Christmas freeze, the organisation that told us last year to prepare for a 'barbecue summer' was getting it wrong again.
They rip the Met a new one, and throw in this point:
The data collection system is far from perfect, designed primarily for weather recording, not long-term climate prediction. Reflecting the military origins of the Met Office, many weather stations are situated on airfields. They are there to provide real-time observations for aviators and to provide the basis for short-term forecasts. They are not climate monitoring stations and arguably should not be used as such.
"But they're so convenient! And they show Warming!(ignore the runways and machinery and such)"



Right.

No "smoking gun." Just, basically, three or eight foreign intelligence services with dossiers on this guy thicker than a Stephen King book all saying "hey, this guy says he wants to get on a plane wearing a bomb."

Oh -- and yeah, the guy's own father called up and said he's a dangerous jihadist.

But no smoking gun. I mean, not even Sherlock Holmes could put these paltry clues together.


Snork. Hehe. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Iranian legislators on Sunday decided to not allow a visit from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.), according to Iranian media.

"Members of the Iranian parliament's Foreign Relations Committee (a subcommittee of the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission) voiced opposition to the request after studying the issue," Hassan Ebrahimi, head of the committee, told the semi-official Fars News Agency.

Several Iranian news outlets reported last week that Kerry had submitted an official request to visit Tehran in an emissary role.
But, of course, the Pepe le Pew of the Senate wasn't actually going at all!
When asked Sunday if Kerry had filed a travel request as claimed or if Iran had taken pre-emptive action against talk of a visit, Jones told The Hill, "John Kerry has no plans to travel to Iran."
Especially since they told him to keep his sorry, treacherous ass out of the country, eh, Pepe?


Words from Blackfive ref the TSA blog attacks:
Hint to any who have had their computers or other com gear taken TSA/CID/Other: get new. You don't know what's been done or added to those devices. If you think they wouldn't add, just look at what they did to you to get it in the first place. Bugs, bad porn, you name it -- if it shows up after an incident like this, the so-called investigative agencies should not be given any benefit of doubt. Yes, I am saying I think them capable and willing to do such. While I would normally give any LE the benefit of the doubt, the circumstances and actions of LE in these cases negates that. Turn anything seized over to your lawyer and don't let it back in your home. As Insty has noted, you have already been found guilty of the worst thing in the world -- you made a bureaucrat(s) look bad. There is little or nothing that such will not do to make you pay for that crime. I love my country, but I fear the bureaucracy. So should you.


To close I'm going to point you to a Mark Steyn piece:
Whom should the traveling public thank for these impositions? The 9/11 killers were mostly Saudi. But the Shoebomber was a British subject. So were the Heathrow plotters. And the Pantybomber was educated in British schools - first in Togo; then at University College, London - and there is plenty of evidence he was radicalized while in the UK. So three of the four circles of homeland security hell with which the public are tortured are British in origin.

That ought to prompt astonishment - and great shame in Britons. Yet Timothy Garton Ash, Hoover panjandrum and eminent British complacenik, wrote in The Guardian only three weeks ago:

Not all Muslims, all of the time, will be able to support all these minimum essentials of a modern free society. There is a real tension between some of the essentials (for instance, the equal rights and dignity of homosexuals) and what is habitually taught even in mainstream, conservative Muslim communities. But most British Muslims, most of the time, will support most of them.

Even if that's true (and it's by no means clear that it is), is that enough? I said a few years back that Britain had been so hollowed out by Islamic radicals that it was becoming Somalia with chip shops. Mr Abdulmuttalab supposedly got the ol' jihad fever while at university. I see The New York Times reports the remarkable statistic that one-fifth of students at British universities are Muslim. As Professor Garton Ash would say, most British Muslims most of the time will be most unlikely to self-detonate over most American cities. So that's okay, right? Up to a point. A poll by the Centre for Social Cohesion found that one-third of Muslim students in Britain believe killing in the name of religion is justified and are in favor of a global caliphate. That's a lot of potential airline tickets.

Out with a friend at the gun show today,

which wasn't quite a waste of time but... These Hall of Fame(they actually call it the Grand American Arms Show now) shows used to fill the building; now there were lots of empty tables, and it's been this way for more than a year, this one just worse than the others. And the admission keeps going up. They've got to either get more people in, cut the price or both or a lot more people are going to say to hell with it and not go.

Sen. Nelson(Expensive Whore-NB) doesn't wants the problem 'fixed'

by extending the Cornhusker Kickback (100% federal payment) on Medicaid to every state.”
Well, gee, isn't that a GREAT idea? Since the current estimate(and those are always too high, aren't they?[/sarcasm]) is Nebraska costing the 'feds'(us, since it's our damned money) about 100 million bucks, add in another 49 states...

Nelson, you suck. You don't like the heat you're getting for your crap so you throw this out to try to cover up. We know what you are, we know what you did, and this garbage isn't helping your case. In case you don't realize it, we DO know that WE'RE THE ONE'S WHO'LL BE PAYING FOR ALL THIS CRAP! And we're really tired of you and Reid and others acting like that's not the case, or that we're too stupid to understand this.
According to the memo, McMaster responded to Nelson by saying that the goal of the GOP attorneys general was to remove the Nebraska Medicaid provision from the bill and that “he saw no way that he—nor any of the state attorneys general—will support extension of the Cornhusker Kickback to every state nor be a part of a deal like that.”
I damned well hope not. I just wish Governor Henry here in OK had the balls to have the AG here join this suit. But then Henry's a Democrat, so probably no chance of that.

Don't you just love the way Nelson and the others want to 'fix' things by trying to bribe us with our own money?

Since I was reading Dr. Helen,

also ran across this review of a book, The Little Black Book of Violence. From what I've heard, not just from her, it's largely "This is how things develop, here's how to stay OUT of fights, here's some of the consequences if you get in one and it gets nasty."

I'll throw in something I've picked up over time(and happily, I don't know this particular thing from personal experience): if a fight- the real, down and dirty thing- starts, you've only got two choices:
Break contact and get the hell out, preferably without the jerk and/or friends in hot pursuit,
Or win. Whatever it takes. And that tends to get really nasty. And involves serious injury to one or both involved. And can involve getting arrested and going through the whole mess even in cases of clear self-defense, AND can involve the jerk who started it and lost deciding to sue you for injuries he wouldn't have if he hadn't started the fight in the first place. Etc.

If you've got a young relative- male in particular- this might be a good book for him. There's another which I can't remember the title of, something like 'A Bouncer's Guide' I read a few years back that was very good. I found it at a library and checked it out mostly from curiosity; glad I did. A good half of it was recognizing signs that a situation was going bad, someone was working up to whacking you or sizing you up, ways to defuse it and/or get out before things blew. If I can find the title I'll post it.

Dr. Helen pointed to this piece by Steyn, which ends

with this:
So once again we see the foolishness of complaceniks who drone the fatuous cliches about how "in this struggle, scholarships will be far more important than smart bombs." The men eager to self-detonate on infidel airliners are not goatherds from the caves of Waziristan but educated middle-class Muslims who have had the most exposure to the Western world and could be pulling down six-figure salaries almost anywhere on the planet. And don't look to "assimilation" to work its magic, either. We're witnessing a process of generational de-assimilation: In this family, yet again, the dad is an entirely assimilated member of the transnational elite. His son wants a global caliphate run on Wahhabist lines.

Used to know somebody who had- probably still does- bought into the "Poverty leads to terrorism" etc. line. One night she started that and a guy who usually didn't say much upped with "So why were the 9/11 hijackers from well-off families, some of them rich? Why had they gone to good universities?" She tried to deny that, and somebody else came in: "Yes, they were and did; it's in the records, we know who they were." She didn't answer. The look on her face was interesting; I couldn't decide if she was shocked at something she somehow had never heard, or thought she was being ganged up on unfairly. Maybe both.

bin Laden was from a wealthy family*; the heads of Hamas and Hizballah have piles of money and send their kids to Europe to fine universities(where, interestingly- and it's a bad sign- they fit right in) and send somebody else's kids to blow themselves up in the holy struggle against the evil Joooooos. But we still keep hearing the "They do it because of poverty" crap.

Oh, and if it's poverty, why do they do crap like destroy the working greenhouses the Israelis left behind? Instead of using them?

'Course, this also works as the excuse for dumbing down schools and passing kids on when they haven't learned anything: "They're poor, you can't expect them to learn like rich(i.e. have both parents and are expected to learn) children!" So they pass these kids on, they fail, and that's excused by 'poverty' they wouldn't be in if they'd been held to higher standards growing up. And yes, I include their 'parents' on welfare and dealing drugs and thinking prison is no big deal. Question: aside from an apparent desire to destroy everything just because it isn't perfect, WHY do progressives and liberals refuse to see that expecting someone to succeed, to learn, DEMANDING it of them, works? When schools were segregated and most black schools got a fraction of the resources white schools did, and black kids were expected by their parents and community to learn- no excuses- and behave, they did; the combination of more money and lowered standards sucks(not just for black kids, they're just the most dramatic example), but these people just won't recognize it.

*Count me as one who thinks bin Laden is dead. Until I see a video that can be proven to be current(not breaking to a still when current events come up) and him, I'll continue to think so.

I'm going to rest my hands, but first

there are two things to point out. First, from Ace, information on a new "Era of Transparency!" executive order:
Here's what I've found so far that I'm 100% sure of:

-- There's a 10 year "default" on declassifying classified info unless a longer time frame was specified and justified.

-- Unclassified information may BECOME classified upon submission of a FOIA request for it...thus allowing for a public veneer of openness while reserving the right to clam up if said openness should prove inconvenient when someone actually learns of a document's existence and has the nerve to request it.

Second, from Sondra, the lefties are beating the drums of "HE LIED TO US!!!" over Their Chosen One:
It's time to strip the Obama sticker off my car. Obama's escalation in Afghanistan is the last in a string of disappointments. His flip-flopping acceptance of the military coup in Honduras* has squandered the trust of Latin America. His Wall Street bailout leaves the poor, the unemployed, minorities and college students on their own. And now comes the Afghanistan-Pakistan decision... etc. ad bullcrap.
To be clear: [ohdearhevins—copy-catting *that* meme??!?] I’ll support Obama down the road against Sarah Palin, Lou Dobbs or any of the pitchfork carriers for the pre-Obama era. But no bumper sticker until the [Afghanistan] withdrawal strategy is fully carried out.

...This is not like the previous conflict with Bush and Cheney, who were easy to ridicule. Now this orphan of a war has a persuasive advocate, a formidable debater who will be arguing for support from the liberal center--one who wants to win back his Democratic base.
AAAAH! The lefty is going to get rid of the Obama sticker, and he won't replace it until we surrender! Bet HopeyChangeypants is just breaking out in cold sweats at the thought!

Have you noticed that these clowns still play the "He's the Greatest Speaker Ever!" bullcrap even after witnessing what this jerk sounds like with no teleprompter?

And he actually thinks Bush & Cheney are easier to redicule? Damn, if he ever starts paying attention...

*Notice that to these clowns the authorities following legal orders of the government and the Supreme Court is a 'military coup' when it keeps a Chavez buttmonkey commie from seizing power? Hayden is such a frikkin' caricature of a progressive moron it's, well, actually kind of sad.

Chris had a post on

the realization that 1980 was now 30 frikkin' years past,
which caused me to think of something: tech advances. Specifically, telecomm.
specifically...

In 1980 I was ending my first year at the agency I spent the next three decades at, all involved in law enforcement telecomm. When I'd walked in in 1979 I'd learned that keeping this information flowing both ways would involve a LOT of typing. To do EVERYTHING. Because we had one terminal(which epitomized ‘dumb’) that had a screen; yes, you could type out a message on it, but editing meant backspacing all the way to the error and retyping everything. And if you hit a certain character count it sent the message. Whether you wanted it to or not. And it generally sent it to ‘all stations’, which meant instead of you sending a question or response or something to one agency, EVERYBODY IN THE STATE WITH A TELETYPE GOT IT.

Take note of that word ‘teletype’. What we mostly had were ASR28 Teletype machines, which looked remarkably like this:

And ran at the blinding speed of 18 Baud as I recall. I’ll be posting this on a circuit that runs about 52k, 52,000 characters per second, which is a slow line; those terminals sent & received at 18 characters per second.. And there was no screen, the message was printed out on paper- which came on a roll- by a electro-mechanical typewriter. Which didn’t type 18 characters per second, by the way, so it took a while for a long message print.

But wait! There’s MORE!!

Here’s how you sent a message: there was a paper-punching device on one side of the machine, fed by a roll of (I think; it’s been a while)½” or 5/8” paper tape. You sat down at the keyboard,
Ran off a few inches of tape as a leader(purpose to come),
Typed out the address(Start Of Header character, address code, End of Header character), then a few line feeds(you’d better; you’ll see why),
Then typed out the text of the message.
At the end of the message you typed the ‘End of Message’ three-character sequence, then ran off a few inches of tape, and the message was done.

You see, as you were typing the punching machine was punching holes in the tape in a code for each character. Which means no way to edit other than starting over.

Now you tore off the tape, flipped up the cover on the reader, inserted the leader, locked the cover down and threw the ‘transmit’ switch. The reader started pulling the tape through and electrically reading the hole patterns and transmitting the message. On a long message that meant you had a LONG strip of tape and you had to make sure it didn’t get tangled or torn. If it was tangled and you couldn’t untangle before it would hit the reader you flipped the cover open, removed the tape and untangled, then started it again.

What if it tore? You had a few seconds, so if you were careful and fast, as soon as the tear reached the reader you could open the cover, carefully position the end of the tape and lock it back down; if you got it in place and did it fast enough, it would go ahead and send the message. If you didn’t or it wouldn’t accept you had to either
retype the whole damn thing OR
since the typewriter was typing the message as you sent it, figure out where the tear came and cut a new tape from that point on, with a few inches of leader so you could splice it in when the break hit the reader.

If you turned out to have an error in the address, you could cut a new header with some line feeds at the end and send it, then flip up the cover and insert the tape with the message in the line feeds between the original header and text(you DID leave some, didn’t you?) and lock the cover down so it could continue reading and sending; you got good at this after a while.

And it gets even BETTER!!!

Let’s take a message from, say, Texas asking for the drivers license status of someone. That came in on the NLETS machine(National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System) which, for some reason I never heard, used a different format and different width tape. So it typed out, you tore the message off and went to that oh-so-very-dumb terminal and ran the license(yeah, our only line of that type was to the computer that held DL records), then copied off the information and took it to the NLETS machine and cut the tape and transmitted it. Going the other way, someone would send a request for a DL check from Texas to us, we’d take that off the in-state machine and take it over to the NLETS machine and cut the tape and send it. Texas would get it and go through some similar process to ours and then send the information back to us, and we’d take it to one of the in-state machines and retype the response and send it back to whoever.

Did I mention you did a LOT of typing?

And nobody except us had a line to the agency that kept vehicle registration information or dl information, so if a PD or SO here in-state needed that, they sent to us and we sent it to the agency and they looked it up and sent it back to us and we sent that to the people who asked for it in the first place.

This, by the way, wasn’t Oklahoma being behind everybody else: a lot of other states had a very similar setup at the time.

So when we got the funding and got our first actual terminals- dumb terminals but still- we were overjoyed. There was a screen where you could type out the message and edit it, and a regular printer, and this all ran on a 1200-Baud analog line with modems; all smaller, faster and easier to use. It also interfaced with the state drivers license and vehicle files and the NLETS line so we no longer had to do all that relaying requests back & forth. This was, as I recall either late 1980 or early 1981 when we made the changeover.

That’s what that part of that job was like thirty years ago.

And personally I think all that typing on some of that equipment is one reason my hands are so messed up now(it took a while to get this typed out).

Damn, things have changed.

A terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist supporter,

then and now.
Weatherman terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn – close associates for years of President Obama – were involved in provoking chaos on the streets of Egypt the past few days in an attempt to enter the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip to join in solidarity with the territory’s population and leadership.

I notice that this time they don't call them

'disaffected north-African youths', just 'youths'.

This gun is GREAT!

Except when it sucks.

And your ammo sucks, too!

I wonder, is Army CID taking bully lessons from TSA,

or are there simply morons in both organizations?
The Army CID showed more interest in tracking down the electronic route of an unclassified document than tracking down Hasan’s connections with terrorism. One of us had all of his computers confiscated and the hard drive was copied by Army CID, just like the two bloggers in the TSA incident. He noticed that the screen names of the other two bloggers of TAH were on the search warrant - but neither was visited by CID.

So, apparently, this government is more interested in bullying bloggers to keep our traps shut than they are in keeping us safe from terrorists.

Expect more on this story in the future.

I would imagine so

Remember the multiple-murderer in Finland with the name we wondered about?

From Gateway Pundit we come to this:
And, at Origins of Islam, "Alleged Saudi sponsored UCK (Kosovo muslim terrorist org.) mass-murderer Ibrahim Shkupolli allegedly also murders at least five in Finland today."

Ibrahim Shkupolli is a UCK/KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army - i.e. muslim terrorists) veteran. He killed 32 Serb civilians in the Qela village in 1997. Also fought against Serb police. He is wanted in Serbia already since 1995.

That's a translation of Finnish website, and there's speculation this is an unfounded rumor (Serbian source is here, and a link from the comments). But if accurate, Shkupolli could very well have previous ties to Middle East terrorist networks. See, "German Intelligence and the CIA supported Al Qaeda sponsored Terrorists in Yugoslavia":

Both the CIA and German intelligence (BND) supported the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a terrorist organization with links to Al Qaeda...

They also note that the man was a known drug dealer; now I may be going out on a limb, but I rather think the Finns probably don't issue firearms licenses to known druggies, which would mean the firearms he used weren't exactly legally owned...

(Which won't stop the "We need more laws!" people, but then nothing would)

I'm not sure whether to label this as 'Liberal 'thought' ' or just plain disgusting

Remember when dissent was supposed to be patriotic? Well, it seems that only applies when a Republican is president. Now that Barack Obama is in the White House, criticism of him is "un-American" and "traitorous." This new "tolerant" view of dissent comes from Joan Walsh of Salon.Com as you can see in this Hardball video from Wednesday. Below is the Walsh money quote but please be sure to also watch the video since it is important to watch as she drops any facade of liberal tolerance and lets her true dogmatic soul reveal itself in both her face and voice which seems to border on dementia:

The climate right now is that Republicans use everything they can to undermine and delegitimize this president. And it‘s actually un-American. It‘s traitorous, in my opinion. Do you want to give aid and comfort to our enemies? Continue to treat this president like he wasn‘t elected and he doesn‘t know what he‘s doing! He knows what he did. He knows what he‘s doing. I‘m proud of him. I believe that he has the stalwart, resolute nature to get this done...

So now it's official: criticizing Obama when he effs up is 'treason' according to the left. Or the progressives. Or whatever bunch of bigoted fools this clown fits into. As Ace points out, these same clowns were actually hoping for us to lose the war, were hoping for mass casualties among American troops and oh, THAT was fine, THAT was 'patriotic dissent'.

These bastards who cheered when Sen. Reid and Rep. Pelosi(Slimy Backstabbers- NV and CA) called the war a failure and tried to talk us into losing, who tried to- hell, DID screw with the troops funding now accuse anyone who doesn't kiss Obama's ass of 'giving aid and comfort to the enemy'. Just effing brilliant, aren't they?

HEEEE!

"When it was over, I turned to him and asked him if we could now go see New Moon.

"I really don't have any interest," was his reply.

Virginia and I were shocked. As he was leaving the room, we asked in unison, "You didn't like it? Really?"

He turned, eyes bugging out. "THEY. FUCKING. SPARKLED."

But I thought 'gun buy-back' programs were supposed to pay

for guns?
Upon further review, however, I changed my mind.

In light of this photo of the "assault weapons" that accompanied the article, I have now come to the conclusion that the LAPD just used taxpayer money to pay some enterprising young man "thousands of dollars" for some really fancy scrap metal.

If nothing else, you'd think the missing charging handles would be a clue...

A little further on the kind of leader we suffer under

as this kind of expands the "What the #)!*#& is WRONG with these people?!?" from this yesterday. Key bit:
“The official line is the release of Qazali is about reconciliation, but in reality this was a prisoner swap,” a military intelligence official said.

Moore and four members of his personal bodyguard were kidnapped at the Finance Ministry in Baghdad in May 2007 by a group that calls itself the Islamic Shia Resistance, which is in fact a front for the League of the Righteous. The group had always insisted that Qais, his brother Laith, and other members of the Asaib al Haq be released in exchange for Moore and the others. Three of Moore’s bodyguards were executed while in custody, and the fourth is thought to have been murdered as well.

“This was a deal signed and sealed in British and American blood,” a US military officer told The Long War Journal. “We freed all of their leaders and operatives; they [the League of the Righteous] executed their hostages and sent them back in body bags. And we’re supposed to be happy about it.”
This is how Obama sees with the enemy; through Jimmy Carteresque "We can deal with these people" idiocy. And, while Iran sent people and supplies to the insurgents in Iraq, and let them hide hostages in Iran, Obama is 'talking tough'(yeah, right) to the Iranian government while the PRC is sending equipment to help stomp on the protesters:
The armoured anti-riot vehicles have a capacity of 10,000 liters to shoot cold and hot water, and three 100 liter tanks to shoot burning chemical liquids. The water is mixed with paint or tear gas that cannot be washed away. Each vehicle has two guns for shooting liquid up to a distance of 70 meters- it is controlled from inside the cabin. The price tag for each unit is 650,000 dollars. Also, a lot of extra burning liquid, paint, and tear gas was purchased.

It took four months for the delivery of the armoured vehicles, and since the Iranian regime was in a hurry, they had them delivered from China’s army organization- this is rare! China’s government was in as much of a hurry to get these to Iran.


I think Putin is a murderer and Stalin-in-creation; I also think he's rolling Obama like a soccer ball in their 'talks' and deals. Looking at crap like the above and Obama's responses, he must be having a shot of vodka and dancing in glee that this is the US leader he gets to deal with.

Just a couple of things to point to this morning

First, Insty linked to this the other day: nice piece on how scientific research most often works; it's a messy and unpredictable process.
Dunbar came away from his in vivo studies with an unsettling insight: Science is a deeply frustrating pursuit. Although the researchers were mostly using established techniques, more than 50 percent of their data was unexpected. (In some labs, the figure exceeded 75 percent.) “The scientists had these elaborate theories about what was supposed to happen,” Dunbar says. “But the results kept contradicting their theories. It wasn’t uncommon for someone to spend a month on a project and then just discard all their data because the data didn’t make sense.” Perhaps they hoped to see a specific protein but it wasn’t there. Or maybe their DNA sample showed the presence of an aberrant gene. The details always changed, but the story remained the same: The scientists were looking for X, but they found Y.


On Christmas eve first the mother seems to die, then the baby is born apparently dead, then the mother comes back(after minutes with no respiration or heartbeat) and then the baby is revived. The doctor's statement:
"I don't have a great explanation," Martin said. "From my personal perspective, I'll take help wherever I can get it."
Be warned, the site has one of those 'play automatically' video commercials for which the sponsors need to be punished.


TSA is backing off on attacking the bloggers who published some information. Please understand, I'm very much for protecting actual sensitive material. Period. I'm also against these clowns going after bloggers when, if someone like the NYEffin' Times had published it, they'd have done nothing. Just like they did nothing before.


Now I have to go out and hope the dollar store is open, as I seem to have lost both the dustpans I used to have.

Hmmm, how 'bout this: Dustpan, clubBig Broom, Politician: and the river's close by....

Remember when the Democrats were screaming about evil Republicans not caring about DC

residents because- horror!!- they wanted to tell DC to respect residents' 2nd Amendment rights? This makes you wonder if it wasn't in large part "Hey, WE'RE the ones who crap on people in DC!"
The leaders of D.C.’s school choice movement, Kevin P. Chavous (former D.C. Councilman) and Virginia Walden Ford (executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice), today issued the following statement:

“House and Senate Appropriators this week ignored the wishes of D.C.’s mayor, D.C.’s public schools chancellor, a majority of D.C.’s city council, and more than 70 percent of D.C. residents and have mandated the slow death of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. This successful school voucher program—for D.C.’s poorest families—has allowed more than 3,300 children to attend the best schools they have ever known.
Yeah, but it meant they could attend schools the teacher's unions didn't have control over! And the Democrats just can't have that, no matter the price for the kids.

You want a contrast between leaders?

While Obama & Co. are causing crap like this:
BOWMAN: Well, they felt comfortable. They had all the indicators that these guys were insurgents planting a bomb. So they thought about using a machine gun to shoot these guys. There was another combat outpost not too far away. The problem was there was a compound of houses between where the Marines were with their machine gun and the guys planting the bomb.

So then they decided to bring in the helicopters and use the machines guns and the helicopters to shoot these guys. As the helicopters came in, these guys look up in the air and start walking away. One of the guys was carrying a yellow jug - and that's become the icon of the roadside bomb. They mix fertilizer and diesel fuel in this, and that becomes a part of the bomb. And then we saw one of these guys throw this jug into a haystack.

Unidentified Man #2: And hiding the jug into the hay pile right now, and then are walking near the open field, so just wait until�

BOWMAN: And they were gone. It was all over. They could no longer shoot at them.

MONTAGNE: So why didn't they shoot at them?

BOWMAN: Well, they thought that they were still too close to this compound of houses to allow these helicopters to use their machine guns to shoot, so they decided against it.

MONTAGNE: So, in being very, very careful about shooting at what they absolutely believed to be insurgents, they ended up, in effect, losing these guys. How did that make them feel?

BOWMAN: Well, they weren't happy at all. And some of them stormed out of this command center. And we talked with one of them afterwards. This is Lieutenant James Wendy(ph).

Lieutenant JAMES WENDY (U.S. Marines): There's no way that anyone other than the enemy would've been injured.

BOWMAN: So, why weren't you allowed to shoot?

Lt. WENDY: Honestly, I don't know. I'd like to say I wish we could play by the big boy rules, you know, but, you know, it's just the way it is. And if I had known how frustrating it'd be and was able to better prepare myself for that mentally, I think that maybe I would've been better off.
with the guy in charge over there saying things like this
General STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL (U.S. Commander, Afghanistan): I've been at this a long time now, since 9/11, and there were a tremendous number of times when I've seen activities done, which, on the surface of what was seen, looks exactly one way, looks completely convincing. And then in the aftermath, what you saw was incomplete. In fact, what we find is civilian casualties who are unarmed civilians.

I think when we err on the side of maturity and caution, there is a cost. And I know that we're asking an extraordinary amount from them to operate with such restraint and self-discipline, but I think it's how we win the war.
Sounds very nice. Except for the troops who'll wind up bleeding, crippled and dead because of those rules letting the bad guys get away; they're the ones having that cost taken out of them, General. "Maturity", huh? I hope you actually think it's worth it; I doubt the casualties and their friends, officers and family do.


And, on the other side, we have this:

FRENCH JOURNALIST: ...Don't you think that by trying to eradicate terrorism in Chechnya you are going to eradicate the civilian population of Chechnya?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: If you want to become an Islamic fundamentalist and be circumcised, come to Moscow. We are multiconfessional. We have very good specialists. I can recommend one for the operation. He'll make sure nothing grows back.

So we have our troops handicapped on a level that's getting them killed and crippled, a President who's so busy being PC and progressive and lawyerly he doesn't even want to call a terrorist attack what it is, and on the other side you have someone who's brutal and wants to bring back the Soviet Union, but has the brains and nerve to know there's a war on. And wants to win it.
I don't agree with much of Putin's imperial attitude and policies but after watching this video, it is frightening to think how much he must dominate Obama in private negotiations. And what must Putin think about Americans reading Miranda rights to apprehended terrorists?

The Idaho gents pick for Quote of the Day

Why is it that when the gun prohibitionist lobby invites gun owners to sit down and negotiate, they never bring anything to the table other than expectations that gun owners will give up some of their rights?
In the full bit,
Fascitelli is the guy who proposed, back in April 2006 that gun owners come to the table and allow him to “put in writing the right of law-abiding citizens to own handguns and nonmilitary hunting rifles.” That translates to giving up their existing right to own semiautomatic sport-utility rifles, which are used by tens of thousands of Evergreen State residents for competitive target shooting, predator control and hunting, varmint hunting, recreational shooting and home defense.

Besides, gun owners know they have the right to own handguns and rifles, and it is constitutionally protected by Article 1, Section 24 of the state constitution. Of what possible use would it be to write that down again? Washington CeaseFire has no authority to negotiate civil rights.

Why is it that when the gun prohibitionist lobby invites gun owners to sit down and negotiate, they never bring anything to the table other than expectations that gun owners will give up some of their rights?
Because the GFW liberals believe THEY are the only ones who really care; therefore, you should be willing to unconditionally surrender to what they demand.

Which just reminds me of how much that 'Democrats CARE' bumper sticker pisses me off.

It's official: The Obama Administration is staffed by idiots

Demented, appeasement-minded fools who don't care about the lives of our troops. Or anyone else, it would seem, except themselves.
Back in the early summer, I wrote about how, even as the Iranian regime continued killing American troops, the Obama administration had engaged in shameful negotiations with an Iran-backed terror network (the League of the Righteous) in Iraq — negotiations that resulted in the release of Laith Qazali, one of the terrorists responsible for the murders of five American soldiers in Karbala, in exchange for the remains of two British hostages.
Remember that? I do.
Shortly thereafter, the Obama administration released the "Irbil Five," commanders from the Iranian IRGC's elite "Quds Force" who had been captured by our military after coordinating terrorist attacks in Iraq that have killed hundreds of American soldiers and Marines.
I remember that crap, too; got to be nice with the mullahs who murder our troops and murder their own people who dare speak up.
...the administration has now released Qais Qazali, Laith's brother, who is the head of the Iran-backed terror network, in addition to a hundred other terrorists. In violation of the long-standing, commonsense policy against capitulating to kidnappers and terrorists because it just encourages more hostage-taking and murder, the terrorists were released in exchange for a British hostage and the remains of his three contract guards (whom the terrorists had murdered).

Want to make this shit even better?
On December 26, two days after Nigerian Omar Abdulmutallab allegedly attempted to use underwear packed with plastic explosives to blow up the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight he was on, and as it became clear internally that the Administration had suffered perhaps its most embarrassing failure in the area of national security, senior Obama White House aides, including chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and new White House counsel Robert Bauer, ordered staff to begin researching similar breakdowns -- if any -- from the Bush Administration.

"The idea was that we'd show that the Bush Administration had had far worse missteps than we ever could," says a staffer in the counsel's office. "We were told that classified material involving anything related to al Qaeda operating in Yemen or Nigeria was fair game and that we'd declassify it if necessary."
Got that? These bastards will declassify materials if they think it'll make Obama & Co. screwing up look less bad. Great priorities, what?
"This White House doesn't view the Northwest [Airlines] failure as one of national security, it's a political issue," says the White House source. "That's why Axelrod and Emanuel are driving the issue."
Just effing wonderful. These bastards care solely about how this might hurt their image, and screw what damage they have to do to security to try to excuse their actions and inactions.

I'd say something about 'hurting their honor', but they've made it plain they don't have any.

The sun's shining, the birds have emptied the feeder, and Houston PD says

nothing to worry about:
A woman called police on Monday and said a man was forcing his way into her apartment in the 5300 block of Elm Street.

When officers went inside, they found something that made them concerned enough to call the bomb squad.

They found an AT-4 shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. It can shoot a missile nearly 1,000 feet through buildings and tanks.
...
According to court documents, officers also found Jihadist writings that allegedly belonged to Yansane. The woman didn't want to talk to KPRC Local 2 about that, either.
Very likely it was an expended launcher; even then, in connection with 'jihadist writings' it's not a nice thing to find. Although you do then run into "What do they mean by 'jihadist'?"

Sir Robert's Principles just don't seem to get around enough

to the people wearing badges. In particular #7. Here's the offending passage:
One local police chief went against the grain of his fellow panel members and said

"you have to remember that this is a law enforcement matter and it is for the Police to respond to. I know you all want to carry a gun, but let me say this as a Chief of Police I don't even let my wife carry pepper spray nor do my teenage children. Any so called self-defense weapon can be taken from you and used against you and they simply aren't worth the risk."

It was an arrogant and disgusting statement.

In more than one way, and it's in direct violation of #7:
7) Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

The post at Straight pointed to by James

I haven't been around any Episcopal churches,

but I have been around a Unitarian church here, and the number of notices on the boards about 'social justice' this and 'economic justice' that has made it certain that it's not a place I could enjoy being for services(if they're allowed to call them that*).
I was pleased to find an Episcopal church whose website focused on religion, not ObamaCare. I left a message for the priest that I was looking for a church that didn't press a political agenda because I wasn't a liberal.

I received an icy reply from the priest, the Reverend Lucy, who said with barely-contained disgust, "I don't think you should check us out."

Her response left me shaken and angry. I understand that leftists despise conservatives. I have seen that creepy look of pure hatred when I naïvely told a leftist friend about my political conversion.

But an Episcopal priest rejecting me during the holiest time of year? Isn't anything or anyone sacred?
Not to these people. They're like the priests and nuns in Central & South America preaching that there has to be a communist(they prefer to say 'socialist') revolution before Christ can return, so-called liberation theology: if you don't fall into line with the preferred concept, you're an Enemy of the People and deserve to be treated as such.


*The folk dance group I've mentioned meets there; once said something about God and received a lecture from one of the church(?) members about how I shouldn't say that because "Some people don't believe in God." "I can't say 'God' in a church?" "No." Pause. "How 'bout 'goddess' or 'deity'?" "That's ok."

I need one of the nice, rainbow Celebrate Diversity! shirts, if I can find the link. Though there's always solid colors, and this one's nice too. Any of those ought to make some heads explode.

So if getting money from Big Oil means your research is biased and crap,

then the CRU & Co. research is just a big steaming pile:

... The CRU was founded in 1971 with funding from sources including Shell and British Petroleum. At that time the supposed menace to the planet and to mankind was global cooling, a source of interest to oil companies for obvious reasons.

Coolers transmuted into warmers in the early 80s and the CRU became one of the climate modeling grant mills supplying the tainted data from which the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC ) has concocted its reports which have been since their inception – particularly the executive summaries -- carefully contrived political initiatives disguised as objective science. Soon persuaded of the potential of AGW theories for their bottom line, the energy giants effortlessly recalibrated their stance, and as of 2008 the CRU included among its financial supporters Shell and BP, also the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate and UK Nirex Ltd, a company in the nuclear waste business.

You will also note that James Hansen, one of the cheer leaders for global warming, was at one time funded by Enron.
No, I'm not sending this to that friend; she'd either blow a gasket, or throw back some kind of "But their funding is GOOD funding!" crap.

Eeeeasaaargh...

which is about how I sound right now, having woke up with a throat that feels like I'd been gargling gravel.

Dammit, I'd been planning on listening to Boru's Ghost at the New Year's stuff downtown, and then hitting one place or the other to see the Aalim dancers after that.

Anybody know if Ibrahim is a Finnish name?

Keith sent me this story:
Finnish police said they have found a body that they believe to be that of 43-year-old Ibrahim Shkupolli, the man suspected to have killed five people in the city of Espoo today.

Shkupolli apparently shot dead his ex-wife in an apartment before heading to the Sello shopping mall in Espoo dressed all in black.
Yes, it's easy to jump to conclusions; it just makes me wonder.

And, of course, Politicians, social workers and religious leaders have all urged tighter gun laws, more vigilance of internet sites, and more social bonding in a country known for its high suicide rates, heavy drinking and domestic violence.
According to this list from WHO, Finland is 15th on the list; way below a bunch of countries with near- or actual bans on ownership of arms(hey, we're #43! I thought all those nasty guns meant it was worse here...) I know there's a WHO list of violent crime rates, but can't find it right now for some reason; did find this on homicide, and it looks like both the US and Finland have a LOT of countries above us on the list. And I think- it's been pointed to before- these figures are skewed by how things are reported: for instance, in the US if you shoot someone in self-defense(or whack them with a bat or whatever) and they die, that's counted in the 'homicide' numbers(Justifiable Homicide as I recall).

Not that any of that matters to the 'politicians, social workers and religious leaders' who want everyone except minions of the government disarmed.

The same thing holds true with firearms, but-

just like at airports- it's so much nicer and more sensitive to blame objects rather than people. And you get to screw everyone around instead of actually looking for bad guys:
Of course the Israelis check for bombs and weapons too, but always with the understanding that things don't hijack planes, terrorists do -- and that the best way to detect terrorists is to focus on intercepting not bad things, but bad people. To a much greater degree than in the United States, security at El Al and Ben Gurion depends on intelligence and intuition -- what Rafi Ron, the former director of security at Ben Gurion, calls the human factor.
Bold mine.

We KNOW what works and what doesn't in airline security, but we're largely doing Security Theater instead of what works; we've got people who get annoyed and dare to speak being threatened and sometimes arrested on bullcrap charges instead of screening as we should. Kind of like Nanny Bloomberg and Mayors Against All Guns trying to ban guns instead of actually worrying about the people who are the threat; it's so much more politically correct.
Illustration thanks to BH

One of the wonders of the 'Law Enforcement Model of Dealing With Terrorism'

Abdulmutallab remains in a Detroit area prison and, after initial debriefings by the FBI, has restricted his cooperation since securing a defense attorney, according to federal officials. Authorities are holding out hope that he will change his mind and cooperate with the probe, the officials said.
Snort. Heh.. HAHAHAHAHAHA, they're HOPING he'll 'cooperate'!

Somebody done overdosed on that there Hopey-Changey.

And I wonder how many people might wind up dead because of this idiocy?

TSA=Theater, Security Activities

What else would you call this?

Yes, there is a way you could say this is actually 'security related'; but it also has the whiff of "Screw around with anyone who we think makes us look bad."

Finally found something I'd been searching for from Jeff Cooper

This story had stuck in my mind, and I just located it among Cooper's Commentaries; the particular post is here, it's on the subject of 'safety' rules that don't make much sense:
"I met our main body yesterday. They all arrived from the aerial port of delivery (APOD) in (of course) Condition Three. The first thing our unit S-4 (a VMI graduate no less) asked me, `Sir, where is the armory? These Marines have loaded weapons, and we need to turn them in before they have a negligent discharge.'

"I looked at him indignantly and replied, `I'm sorry, Major. I've obviously been misinformed. I thought you were a man of honor, integrity, a fearless warrior, ready and eager to defend our country. I see instead that you are pitiable and afraid of our own guns! No. The Marines will keep their weapons in Condition Three.' Not a word was said in reply, but they all slept with their weapons last night, and there were no NDs. Imagine that!

"Anyway, I wish officers who were afraid of Marines carrying loaded weapons would find another line of work, preferably in the UK. I, for one, wear my (Condition One) pistol constantly. After only one day of being screwed with, my Captains all do likewise. We're slowly spreading the sunshine here!"

In case somebody misunderstands, firearms safety is a very important subject, but it's well-covered by the Four Rules; that there are brass hats out there who don't trust their own troops to keep their arms handy in a friggin' combat zone...

Also from Watts Up,

Yeesh; glad I've got blankets:
Cold event setups in atmospheric circulation patterns are aligning. Two days ago I brought to your attention that there was a strong downspike in the Arctic Oscillation Index and that the North Atlantic Oscillation Index was also negative. See The Arctic Oscillation Index goes strongly negative

Yesterday, Senior AccuWeather meteorologist Joe Bastardi let loose with this stunning prediction on the AccuWeather premium web site via Brett Anderson’s Global warming blog:

What is facing the major population centers of the northern hemisphere is unlike anything that we have seen since the global warming debate got to the absurd level it is now, which essentially has been there is no doubt about all this. For cold of a variety not seen in over 25 years in a large scale is about to engulf the major energy consuming areas of the northern Hemisphere. The first 15 days of the opening of the New Year will be the coldest, population weighted, north of 30 north world wide in over 25 years in my opinion.

Damn. Somebody take Al Gore out and shoot him or lock him up or something; this could be nasty.


Second,
From The Independent on 20 March 2000 we got the headline: “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past”. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
'Rare and exciting', yeah

This is interesting

How can a glacier be a source of the organic carbon? His curiosity peeked [sic], in spring 2009, Hood’s Ph.D. student, Jason Fellman, collected samples from 11 watersheds along the Gulf of Alaska from Juneau to the Kenai Peninsula. The samples were analyzed to determine the age, source, and biodegradability of organic matter derived from glacier inputs.

“We found that the more glacier there is in the watershed, the more carbon is bioavailable. And the higher the percentage of glacier coverage, the older the organic material is – up to 4,000 years old,” said Scott.

Hood and Scott hypothesize that forests that lived along the Gulf of Alaska between 2,500 to 7,000 years ago were covered by glaciers, and this organic matter is now coming out. “The organic matter in heavily glaciated watersheds is labile, like sugar. Microorganisms appear to be metabolizing ancient carbon and as the microorganisms die and decompose, biodegradable dissolved organic carbon is being flushed out with the glacier melt,” said Scott.

How much? “Our findings suggest that runoff from glaciers may be a quantitatively important source of bioavailable organic carbon for coastal ecosystems in the Gulf of Alaska and, as a result, future changes in glacier extent may impact the food webs in this region that support some of the most productive fisheries in the United States,” said Hood.
Bold mine. Now, it would seem that it had to have been warmer at some point for those forests to have grown, then it cooled and the glaciers came down, and now some glaciers are melting; why, it almost sounds like some kind of natural cycle!

Hey, cold sufferers, get ready for some more Hopey-Changey!

The reason: You’re too stupid to figure out how to use Nyquil and other cold and flu relief products.

The drugs that could be pulled off shelves are combination medications, such as Procter & Gamble’s NyQuil or Novartis’ Theraflu, which mix acetaminophen with other ingredients that treat cough and runny nose.

The FDA is not required to follow the advice of its panels, though it usually does. The panel vote is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

Here’s the real reason for the potential Nyquil ban.

Manufacturers could lose hundreds of millions of dollars in sales if combination drugs are pulled from the market. Total sales of all acetaminophen drugs reached $2.6 billion last year, with 80 percent of the market comprised of over-the-counter products.

I tend to think he's right about 'why':
It’s all about crippling the drug companies so that their only source of revenue is from the eventual government-run health care system. When the bulk of your income comes from one source, it’s pretty hard to publicly oppose that source. With over-the-counter remedies removed, drug companies will become more reliant on income from prescription drugs. And the biggest customer for prescription drugs will be the US Government, paying off the tabs of the patients in the government-run option.

Pointed out by Rodger

Over in Iran, a couple of things

in this report: first, note this:
* Hospitals throughout Iran filled with wounded. There are also reports by hospital staff and specifically the Imam Khomeini hospital in Tehran that corpses are being removed by order of the public prosecutor’s office. Staff have been threatened that any report of such incidents would lead be met with severity.
Fairly standard with these people, they've done it before to hide the number of casualties.

Now, down in the 'official' casualties list, note these two:

1. Name unknown, 31 (the regimes security forces claimed that this individual was killed due to knife wounds from plain clothes agents and his name is as of yet unknown!)
2. Unknown woman, 43 (this woman was tossed over a bridge by plain clothes agents of the regime)

Nice people working for the Iranian regime, aren't they?
You know, if things do flat blow, there's going to be a LOT of payback going on.


Found this, too:
Iranian regime-run news agency Fars reports: Gholam-Hossein Elham, official spokesman of the Iranian government announced that during the period of privatization, the Basij militia should do everything to take over factories and the industry sector in Iran. ...at a time like this, we must prevent our capital and trade from falling into the hands of monopolists and financial captains.
Well, 'privatization' by government thugs to keep actual business people from running businesses; no wonder Obama is soft on these clowns, he likes some of their ideas.

Speaking of Obama...

Would somebody please tell these 'officials'

(preferably with a boot in the ass, maybe a club to the head) that it's a bad idea to tell the bad guys what you're doing?

Question: are these morons flapping their lips to show how 'in the circle' they are, because they want to warn the bad guys, or because they're just friggin' stupid?

I hadn't really noticed that AG Holder hadn't been making statements;

but it does seem odd. And maybe this IS why:
There is an additional and intriguing angle involving Yemen, creating a confluence between, that country, Ft. Hood and the Obama administration, in that U.S. AG Holder's former law firm, Covington & Burling, represented a number of Yemeni detainees who are/were being held in GITMO.

It was meddling by committed lefty attorneys which made military prosecution of the GITMO detainees so difficult. Relentless pressure applied by these advocates is what ultimately led to the Hamden decision [Hamden vs. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557, 2006] in which the military tribunal system established by the Bush administration - relying upon long historical precedent - was overturned on a 5-3 Supreme Court decision, which for the first time in American history applied principles codified in the Geneva Accords to terrorists to which Geneva was long understood not to apply.

Added: take note of this:
Al Nashiri [born in Saudi Arabia] is part of a group of 15 Yemeni GITMO detainees who are represented by David Remes a member - until he was either booted or saw the handwriting on the wall and "resigned" on July 18, 2008 - of Attorney General Eric Holder's law firm, Covington & Burling,

"Remes, who represents 15 Yemeni detainees, announced his resignation on July 18, saying that he plans to devote himself exclusively to human rights litigation...My departure is the inevitable outcome of my human rights work at the firm in the past four years, which became a consuming passion," Remes said in a statement."
and combine it with this I just saw at Sondra's place:
David Remes, an attorney who represents Guantanamo detainees, said he fears concerns about the terror threat will block the repatration of any inmates to Yemen, including those already cleared for release.

“In theory, what’s going on in Yemen should have nothing to do with whether these men are transferred,” he said. “The politics of the situation may turn out to be prohibitive, at least in the short run, and that would be a tragedy.”
Wonder of Holder is still communicating with this clown? Be interesting to find out.

Well, we find John Yoo knows where he is

I see various groups are protesting a decision by a California government lawyer to teach a course with you that starts on Jan. 12, claiming he is legitimizing your unethical behavior.
At Berkeley, protesting is an everyday activity. I am used to it. I remind myself of West Berlin — West Berlin surrounded by East Germany during the Cold War.

Are you saying the citizens of Berkeley are Communists, reminiscent of those on the dark side of the Iron Curtain?
There are probably more Communists in Berkeley than any other town in America, but I think of them more as lovers of Birkenstocks than Marx.

I think he's downplaying the number of actual Marx Believers, but otherwise...

Pointed to by Volokh

And San Francisco progressives find out that 'fighting global warmering'

has costs. Isn't that amazing?

Never been there, have talked to a lot of people who've traveled through and lived there, and the cost of living in SF is bloody unbelievable. Few years back a lady(ballet dancer) who occasionally came to folk dance was offered a place in a company in SF. Couple of months later I asked about her and the lady she'd corresponded with said "Oh, she loves it! She and her parents flew out and finally found her an efficiency apartment to stay in, but it's kind of expensive." "How expensive?" "$1400 a month, and they were lucky to find it." "!!!>!!?!" That's about three times more per month- for a tiny little efficiency- than I'm paying for my house here in OK. From what I've read SF discouraged new buildings- apartments and such- and the consequence of that is very high costs and people living outside the city and having to commute. Now, due to playing "We must Stop Globular Warmering even if it's not real!", Californicated- and cities like SF in particular- are going to, if anything, make the problem worse. Nice going, morons.

If every school started stomping on this 'acting white' bullcrap

the students- ALL of them- would be a lot better off.

Tam takes note of a "You don't need spare ammo"

Only One; let's say she's not impressed.

You know why I carry a spare mag? Because I'm scared to death that if a situation goes completely to hell and I don't have a spare, I'll either get a jam and not have the fastest way to clear it or turn out to need a few rounds more and not have them.

About five months ago I watched a lady try out a Springfield 1911 in 9mm she'd borrowed from the rangemaster; pistol and mag both almost new. She loaded it, fired once and then stood there looking at the live round stovepiped in the ejection port. Cleared it(new shooter, did it slowly and carefully with her trainer), tried again, and when the slide cycled the next round in the mag shot up vertically and left her with an empty chamber; once it shot the first round up after the empty and the second stovepiped. The RM swore he'd shot the thing a few days before with no problems, but that mag was well and truly screwed now.

Lawdog writes on the subject here, including
One of the more disappointing, yet amusing, experiences in my little life was slapping a USA Inc magazine into a Smith and Wesson 5900-series and getting this gorgeous brass fountain out through the ejection port before I could hit the slide release.

*sigh*
And if that'd happened in a serious situation...

A spare magazine. Always. If you carry a revolver, a speedloader or speed strip or something.

Things are heating up more in (fG)Britain

We didn't start it. They started it. And as I have no reason to believe our governments or security services have learned a damned thing, it looks all too likely to get ugly.

The gathering is remarkable, as on a match day these men would be fighting each other. But it is politics that has drawn them together. They are headed for Manchester to support a march by the burgeoning English Defence League.

The police are here in force, too. 'Take that mask off,' barks a sergeant to one young man. He does so immediately but protests: 'Why are they allowed to wear burkas in public but we're not allowed to cover our faces?'

'Just do what you're told,' the policeman snaps back.

'It's always the same these days. One rule for them and another for us. I'm sick of this country,' a man standing next to me says in a West Country accent.

From the sound of this, you've got a bunch of people who've decided that since they're going to be called- and treated as- racists no matter what they do or say, they're doing to meet with/work with/talk to various groups they wouldn't have in the past.

Ghost of a Flea's post here.

Couple of things about the Daily Mail article:
In the headline it has This is England: Masked like terrorists, members of Britain's newest and fastest -growing protest group intimidate a Muslim woman on a train en route to a violent demo, with a picture of a woman in hijab below, part of the caption ...while a woman dressed in a black hijab appears intimidated. Then, in the article,
'We had joy, we had fun, we had Muslims on the run,' he starts up. Nobody joins in and a couple of his mates tell him to 'shut up' as they point to a woman dressed in a black hijab sitting at a table.

A man standing close to her is masked and holds a placard. It has a picture of a Muslim woman crying with red blood streaming down her face. 'Sharia law oppresses women!' the slogan reads.
Sounds like a mix of people, some of whom- probably a good many- believe what this EDL leader said:
'For more than a decade now there's been tension in Luton between Muslim youths and whites. We all get on fine - black, white, Indian, Chinese... Everyone does, in fact, apart from these Muslim youths who've become extremely radicalised since the first Gulf War. This is because preachers of hate live in Luton and have been recruiting for radical Islamist groups for years. Our Government does nothing about them so we decided that we'd start protesting.'

It's liable to get real interesting over there. What happens when there's some terrorist attack or open threat to kill people and the government throws some words around and does nothing? And then threatens anyone who speaks out? And people start saying "Screw you! You don't like it, come and get us!"?

So this is progressive thought...

RNS pointed to(Uncle who pointed to) this piece of absolute, steaming, disgusting bullshit. RNS has a very fine take on it which you should read: I'll just quote the way this effing dirtbag ended his article:
But as a progressive, I would sooner lay my child to rest than succumb to the belief that the use of a gun for self-defense is somehow not in itself a gun crime.
Doug van Gorder, you are a fucking disgrace to the human race.


Added: I had to come back to this. I mean, it's so bloody damned disgusting. That this vile being would rather see his own kid dead than use a firearm to protect him? That he'd rather see more kids dead in a school attack than see someone who's faster thinking or running get clear?

There are just no damned words.

This does seem to sum up the Napolitano mindset

rather well:
From the same Fox report above, what her Sunday statement actually reveals is her attitude toward Homeland Security. To Napolitano, it’s the bureaucratic shuffling that takes place after an incident that matters most. Unfortunately, that jibes with the policing, or criminal law, approach also advocated by Obama. Fighting terrorism is not a proactive military quest with this group, it is a reactive policing affair. What that doesn’t do is put America’s security first in our global battle with radical religious terrorists who seek to do America and Americans great harm and cause a large number of our deaths:

I think the important thing to recognize here is that once this incident occurred, everything happened that should have. … We trained for this. We planned for this.

That someone who thinks this way is in charge at DHS is disgusting. And scary. I'm considering 'terrifying', too.

Well, if UC-San Diego has so much free cash they can do

this, then obviously there's some money to be saved by cutting their budget; I mean, if this money was needed for actual school costs that's how they'd spend it, right?

Yeah, 'Media in bed with Administration' is a good way

to put this.
You just never know which story will peak your interest or where the story will lead. Such is the case when I saw this simple wedding announcement between Peter Orszag, the president's budget director, and ABC financial reporter, Bianna Golodryga. So of course I wanted to find out a little bit about the couple. What I was most interested in was the angle that we finally had some proof of the administration literally being in bed with the media.
I'd suggest reading it; some insight into someone working for Obama, and the reporter he married.

It's getting really nasty in Iran,

worse than before:
The evil Khamenei regime thugs are running over freedom protesters in trucks.

Then Insty pointed to this:
Security forces reportedly opened fire against demonstrators and even killed the nephew of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi – and they did it during Ashura. There are few things “supreme guide” Ali Khamenei could have done to enrage religious conservatives and harden them against his regime more than this. As one demonstrator put it, “killing Muslims on Ashura is like crucifying Christians on Christmas.”

“The clock began to tick for Ayatollah Khamenei’s fall from today,” said one of Iran’s few former female members of parliament Fatemeh Haghighatjou. “Killing people on Ashura shows how far Mr. Khamenei is willing to go to suppress the protests. People are comparing him more with Yazid because they consider him responsible for the order to use violence against people.”

A while back there was the letter from the Iranian Army to the government basically saying "There are limits"; now this. In comments at Gateway is this: The regime is going to make the Iranian people so mad, they will resort to the bomb of choice in the Middle East….the ‘IED’. And it wouldn't surprise me.

Vote Fraud:

it's the Democrat way.

Also from the trailer guy,

Brady Bunch Logic:
This truly shows their desparation and just how low they'll stoop.

1. The immunity law still allows lawsuits for defective firearms, as it should.
2. The Brady Center is now forced into taking the ridiculous position that a loaded gun that fires when the safety is off and the trigger is pulled is defective.
3. This implies that a loaded gun which does not fire with the safety off and the trigger pulled is functioning properly.

So much for common sense.

And let due note be taken of what Governor Arnold helped bring about

From the Brady Bunch:

AB 962 was the Brady Campaign’s top priority bill in this year’s legislature.

"Reasonable, Common-sense" gun laws in action.

From Cheaper Than Dirt:

As of January, 2011 we will no longer sell or ship ammunition to residents of California.

Does anything else need to be said?

Sebastian dug up more on the crap Nanny Bloomberg wants

to shove down our throats, including

• Require REAL ID compliant identification for all gun purchasers. Those in non-complying states, which are many, will no longer be permitted to buy firearms.
• Recommends a ban on the importation of all “non-sporting” firearms and ammunition, and specifically calls for banning the FN Five-Seven. Kiss cheap imported rounds of military caliber goodbye. Maybe kiss Glock’s goodbye too. MAIG isn’t all that specific on what would be sporting or non sporting. Also note that MAIG can no longer claim they do not advocate banning guns. They do.
• Calls for keeping records for people who get a NICS default proceed, which means your background check has not “cleared” but you went through the required three day waiting period. These records can be kept for up to 20 years, in the case of someone who’s name matches someone on the “terror watch” list and six months ordinarily. Default proceeds can happen if NICS has incomplete records, or the system is down for a protracted period of time.
• Calls for more enforcement of gun shows using the Richmond model. The techniques used at the Richmond gun shows were bad enough that Congress held hearings about the methods, and demanding ATF put a stop to them. They actually recommend rescinding a number of the changes made to prevent these abuses.
• Recommends ways for the administration to exploit loopholes in Tiahrt to publish information on “problematic” gun dealers (so they can be sued by New York City, no doubt). As we’ve pointed out on this blog before, having a lot of traces doesn’t necessarily mean a dealer is breaking the law.

They know they can't get this crap through the House and Senate, so they want to play 'procedure' games. As Sebastian says,
It this document doesn’t convince you that MAIG is a significantly more serious threat than any other gun control organization out there, nothing will. Whoever wrote this knows ATF very well, and understands federal gun laws well enough to know how to effectively make changes using only administrative and regulatory changes, which do not require action from the US Congress. While some of the 40 recommendations are not objectionable, quite a number of them are.
Which means the Feds have to know that if they start playing these games, lots and lots of Reps and Senators are going to get phone calls and e-mails and visits yelling about it. And will come down on said Feds("If the FBI/ATF has so much free time on their hands, has all actual crime so under control that they have time and money for this, the obviously we need to review how much money they're getting" would be guaranteed to get their attention).

If you hadn't heard of the Richmond bullcrap before, I'm going to borrow this:

• Went to people’s addresses and asked questions of neighbors, family members, about gun purchases, and asking them what they were doing at the gun show.
• Stopped several people with no probable cause, in some cases seized their weapons, and handed them a form indicating they were suspected of committing federal crimes. BATF claimed the letter was meaningless, but only a fool wouldn’t hire a lawyer after getting a letter like that.
• Unlawfully pulled 4473s from dealers without a connection to a specific criminal investigation.
• Detained several people for questioning who were legitimately selling firearms privately.

Took the 15-22 to the range,

and it seems to be functioning properly. Only problems I had were all with some Federal bulk-pack hollowpoints. Partly a few of them not feeding from the mag properly(maybe ammo, maybe mag) and the rest...

Has anyone else noticed how damned variable the things have been lately? All out of one box, in each magazine you'd get some that seemed to have barely enough oomph to fully cycle the bolt, and others that cracked like they were charged a touch on the heavy side. Not real good for either smooth function or accuracy.

By the way, when I sent it back for repair I'd removed the scope and put the original sights back on. After having been removed for a while, then replaced, they were still dead-on when put back on; so was the scope when I took the irons off and replaced it. That's the way it should be.