Take a minute today and call/write your Senators and Rep

and ask them to look into what Codrea has been calling Project Gunwalker. I've mentioned it before, but the problem is greater now(as if' that's possible) because at least some of the Senators contacted just don't seem too interested, which is disgusting.

More at Sipsey Street, where Senators Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Charles Grassley of Iowa are specifically named as being contacted, and, well,
Folks, this has been a frustrating morning. Senate staffers who have been completely briefed on the Project Gunwalker scandal over the last few weeks are deliberately not answering their phones. Others, including Charlie Harmon, the chief of staff of Saxby Chambliss, the U.S. Senator from Georgia, told one of his constituents, "We're on it." Yet, when pressed about the urgency of the matter, said "these guys need to get a lawyer."

No, Charlie, right now they need a Senator with a spine and a pair to do his damn job. The agents need a Senator to COME TO THEM. There are ongoing investigations, the main thrust of which, in my opinion, is to cover up the circumstances of Project Gunwalker and the death of Border Patrol agent Terry. To volunteer to go to the press during an ongoing investigation can end their careers or put them in jail themselves. Yet some are willing to do so, if forced by the inaction of your elected senators and representatives. The tools that the agency, Main Justice and the White House have at their disposal to shut these agents up are many and powerful. These guys need whistleblower protection NOW.

So Kevin had words with a socialist(who probably calls herself

a good liberal) and conversation ensues. Go read. I'll just point to one particular bit:
We elect the people whom we believe to be the most competent, people who are supposed to have our best interests in mind (ideally), and we elect them so that they may govern the masses.
?
Bleep.
Lady, Deity-DAMNED if I've ever voted for someone to 'govern the masses'; I elect someone who's supposed to represent me. People who want to govern in that way want to rule us, and us nasty conservative/libertarian types do not hold with that. It makes us think of tar, feathers and ropes.

Have you noticed that wen an awful lot of liberals defend Sarah

Palin, they can't simply say "What you're doing is wrong" or something of the sort? Nooo, they have to throw in all kinds of caveats and "She's stupid and a Republican" crap to note just what good liberals or progressives or whatever they are, but they're above the nastiness enough to defend her anyway.

I'd have a lot more respect for them if they could simply say "Hey, blaming her for 'X' is incorrect, and idiotic and just wrong" and stop there.

What's that line somebody came up with, "Palin isn't a politician, she's a Rorschach blot"?

I'm going to start this with one of the more pisses-me-off things

I've seen in a while: at the MLK Day observance, the NAACP just had to show its contemptThat's George Washington they couldn't stand to look at.


Don't know about you, but I don't generally drink that much whiskey at a time; I have this problem with unconsciousness and alcohol poisoning.


Besides the fact that NOBODY should hold an office for that long, one of the changes I want to see is a bill proposed to end all pensions for members of the House and Senate, and no pension for the President; you want to stay in office, you should not forever get a pension paid for by the public for having stayed there.


Theo had this posted:
Ever seen anything like that before?


Well, Mumbles, got news for you: 'fine young man' and 'poor judgement' do not go together with 'dealing drugs while working for the Mayor'.


Damn. Hope somebody takes the critter in.


No. NO. HELL NO.
Federalized security screening at airports has been such a success that President Obama wants to apply the same government "expertise" to the realm of online commerce and commentary. The White House cybersecurity adviser joined Commerce Secretary Gary Locke on Jan. 7 to announce what amounts to a national ID card for the Internet.
A: Anybody who says the TSA and airport screening is a sales recommendation is a moron.
B: I want the GOVERNMENT to control my access?
C: The chances for abuse are scary as hell.


And last, a slightly different viewpoint on 'fascism' vs. 'communism':

Comrades! This cat was troubled for a while by the question of why do we, the Progressives, despise Fascism, even though it is so similar to Communism. True, many of the rank-and-file members of our glorious community are too busy raising awareness to educate themselves on the details of what they are denouncing. But the community organizers ought to know — and yet, Fascism is recognized as an evil regime. This seemed unfair until suddenly I understood...

Fascism is evil — a "cheap imitation" — because it does not go far enough. Indeed, although not a free marKKKet, it still leaves much industry and commerce in the private hands (even if those are the hands of government cronies). This makes it nicely inefficient economically (and thus producing less light- and noise-pollution), but nowhere near as great as Communism.

And I do now have a new pc; much faster than the old. And looks like I had the important stuff backed up(yay!) and what wasn't won't be too much of a pain to put back together.

River rescue as sex toy ditches rider

That got your attention, didn't it?
A bizarre decision to ride an inflatable doll down a flood-swollen Yarra River blew up in a woman's face yesterday when she lost her latex playmate in a rough patch.

The incident prompted a warning from police that blow-up sex toys are "not recognised flotation devices''.
Ya think maybe?

Bleep.

Bleeping bleep-of-a-bleep.

Go read. And Sergeant Blanton? We ever meet, I'll buy drinks.

City Councilmen Sam Bowman and Pete White: proof that gun bigots

reside in Oklahoma, too:
Oklahoma City councilman Sam Bowman made it clear at Tuesday's city council meeting where he stands on gun control. He favors it. Especially when it comes to assault rifles like the kind used last summer in an ambush that wounded city police officer Katie Lawson.

Bowman's stance and applause for Police Chief Bill Citty's call for registration of assault rifles got councilman Brian Walters standing up for the 2nd amendment. "I wanta commend our chief for not only the courage to step forward on this but to make such a statement," proclaimed Bowman who called them knock off military M-16 type rapid fire assault guns. "There's no place for that kind of weapon in our civil communities."
By the way, Chief Citty is the clown who announced a couple of years ago that he wants tighter rules and regulations on the sale of firearms and the registration of those firearms," Citty said.

Oh, but it's not an attack on the 2nd, oh no:
Bowman contended he's not attacking the 2nd amendment. "I would hope this would have nothing to do with the argument about 2nd amendment rights to bear arms. It's not about the right to own a weapon to protect your own home."
I'm very sure you HOPE it's not seen as the attack it is, but we see what you're doing and saying. And note the new goalpost: the right to own a weapon to protect your own home. "No, it's not an attack on the 2nd Amendment, it's just wanting to change what it means."

As to White,
City Councilman Pete White supported Bowman and Chief Citty. "Chief Citty needs to be complimented for the courage that it took to even bring that up," he said in referring to Citty's weekend comments calling for registration of such assault rifles.
So we've got a police chief and two councilmen who're first-class gun bigots who don't think we should be allowed to own guns that scare them, but will settle(for now) for registration.

I think we need a new COP and some new councilmen at the next election.

Speech and anti-gun astroturf, all in one post

First, words for all the lefties decrying nasty speech:
Last week, the left quickly blamed the right for the national tragedy of a shooting spree by a madman who never watched Fox News, never listened to Rush Limbaugh and likely did not know who Sarah Palin is.

Fortunately, the American public rejected out of hand that idiotic notion that the right was responsible.

Rather than apologize, the left wants to change the tone of the political debate.

The left suddenly wants civil discourse.

Bite me.

The left wants to play games of semantics.

Bite me.

The left wants us to be civil — after being so uncivil for a decade.

Bite me.
...
Lefties were too busy celebrating the 2008 election to listen.

When people protested lefties made vulgar remarks about tea-bagging and giggled.

So screw you and your civil discourse.

I don’t want to hear it.

I have been screamed at for 10 years.

It’s my turn now. I am not going to scream back. But I refuse to allow anyone to dictate what I say or how I say it. I refuse to allow the same foul-mouthed, foul-spirited foul people who dumped on me to now try to tell me what I may or may not say.

My free speech matters more than the feelings of anyone on the left. You don’t like what I say? Tough.
As they say, read the whole thing.


As to the astroturf, remember the American Hunters and Shooters Assn.? That was a front group for Helmke & Co.?
The answer, would obviously be this person is not an unknown blogger, but a false flag; someone flying under the banner of being pro-Second Amendment while in truth being no such thing. Google shows the truth:

So it would seem that Tracee Larson is previously associated with the false flag operation American Hunters and Shooters Association. This woman has no credibility as a pro-gun spokesman, and it’s quite likely the NPR interviewers are aware of that. It’s also likely that perhaps Helmke either got to pick his opponents here, or it was arranged to be softball interview. What better people to use on the pro-gun side than Bob Levy, who endorses magazine restrictions, and Tracee Larson, who is an AHSA shill flying a false flag.

Had a chance to shoot a new something today

a Marlin 39A lever-action .22. Similar to this picture of the new production


Differences:
Owner believes is is a 1950's production
No checkering
Missing front sight hood
And at some point a previous owner installed a Lyman receiver sight, one with target adjustment knobs.
Ok, just found a much more similar picture:
This one had most of its bluing intact, and from the marks either wasn't used much or was very well-cared-for; the action was actually a touch tight still. That long barrel & mag tube would probably make Rep. McCarthy soil her undies, as it holds, as I recall 18 .22lr cartridges; that's a lot of levering to empty it. And see that knob on the side of the receiver? Unscrew it and the rifle separates, the action coming apart in left & right sides(left holds the bolt, right holds the lever & trigger & stock). Very tight lockup, no wiggle at all.

This was indoors at H&H this morning, so not the most helpful of rest & lighting for trying to check grouping, but if I did my part it kept all of two magazines worth in a 3" bull at 30 yards, what it'll do from a solid rest with better light would be interesting. I love aperture sights, and I become more fond of them with every passing year, the one on this was a compact unit that didn't spoil the lines and gave a very nice way to aim.

I would love to grab it and run like hell borrow such for further testing; maybe I'll get the chance later. A fine old rifle, it was.

The electric car future?

In its obsessive desire to promote the virtues of electric cars, the BBC proudly showed us last week how its reporter Brian Milligan was able to drive an electric Mini from London to Edinburgh in a mere four days – with nine stops of up to 10 hours to recharge the batteries (with electricity from fossil fuels).
I'll let you read the piece for the 1830's tech that beats that time; my own comment is:
I checked, and London to Edinburgh is 332 miles, roughly the distance from my house to a friend's house in Waco, TX. In my truck, doing a little over 60 for best mileage, I can make that trip in 5-6 hours(depending on how often I stop to get rid of excess liquid or if I stop at Cabela's on the way). So the electric Mini took FOUR FREAKIN' DAYS, with NINE refueling stops... And let's note that the vaunted windmill 'green' energy isn't much available(especially when it's really cold) so they're still dependant on coal, oil, gas or nuke plants for electricity; but they still think these battery-powered roller skates are the future?

I've said it before, I'd love to find some fuel or form of energy generation that would make the oil ticks once again the lords of nothing more than the world's biggest litter box, but we ain't got it yet. And windmills and other 'green' energy(since the eco-jerks refuse to even consider nukes green) won't make up what we need, whether they like to admit it or not.

Bleah. I've got to go computer shopping, among other things. In a vehicle that uses gas but won't need refueling during the running around.

Attention Guardian: the only possible response

is 'No. HELL no. And screw you.'

Free speech can’t exist unchained. US politics needs the tonic of order<>

Didn’t guys named “Benito” and “Adolph” say much the same thing in the last century?
Why yes, they did. I think Lenin and Stalin & Co. were big on it, too.

You want some really good EUnuch values?
Foreigners are always surprised by the US's capacity to speak right but somehow not do it. Washington must contain more wisdom and talent than anywhere on earth, yet it contrives the disaster zone that is American foreign policy. This is normally put down to such impediments as the US constitution, the silent majority, sheer bigness and freedom of speech.

Today's culprit is freedom of speech, or at least the speech of the American right and its broadcast cheerleaders.
Let's put it more bluntly: fuck you, you statist asshole. That Constitution you hold in such low regard, we're rather fond of it and part of the reason is the restrictions it places on the government, which is why we- unlike you- still have actual freedom of speech. Of course, YOU consider that a bug, not a feature.

Free speech is a Hobbesian jungle. It requires a marketplace where the trade in information, ideas and opinion has a framework of rules, including rules that maintain fair and open competition. Most will be voluntary, but others need enforcement.
Translation: we should, like the Brits, have government censors telling us what speech is allowable.

I repeat: Screw you, Jenkins, and your little dreams of government control of speech.

Somehow, I do not think this is the best of advice

Over at VFR World, ran across a thread on 'Is it ever too cold to use a battery tender?' Two of the answers were
It is too cold when the battery has cracked in half and is in two pieces.
That means you must be in North Dakota.
followed by
I would say -273K (-459F). At that temp your battery and the wiring all go superconductive, so you'd be ok and not need a battery tender.
And I stopped reading at
Never used a battery tender but I know that at absolute zero resistance is futile.

"Which right-winger said these horrible things?

Oh, wait..."


One of Ronald Reagan's offspring is a vile little bastard; wonder what happened to him? Maybe he just likes all the 'right' party invitations he'll get for trashing his father.


Here’s how: note carefully what happens at exactly 1:20 in the video. You’ll notice that the lights which had been illuminating Roy Wilson are suddenly turned off, right when it becomes obvious that he’s going to continue his inappropriate political rant. What you’re seeing at that moment is a TV camera crew, which had been filming Roy Wilson’s speech for possible use as a soundbite in that evening’s news broadcast, realizing that the guy was going off-message — so they simply switched off the camera’s photo lights and stopped filming him because his speech no longer fit the media’s predetermined narrative. They went to the vigil to report on a “respectful” event, and by golly they were going to bring back a report about a “respectful” event, regardless of what actually occurred.


Seems the latest attempt of the gun bigots so smear us is that a CCW guy who ran to the sound of the shots to help 'almost' did something bad; as Roberta points out,
I wonder if any of them realize that on that basis, they were probably "almost shot" last time they got a speeding ticket? Do they think Officer Friendly always rests his right hand on the butt of his gun?


And finally the Sensitized Modern Version: Huckleberry Finn in Comics

After an argument the other day with a friend

I've come to the conclusion that Insty is right: I'm not sure overall why(some points I know), but Sarah Palin just flat drives a lot of lefties so nuts they cannot seem to use their brain when her name comes up. And they like to bring it up for some reason, just can't shut up when they have a chance to, they HAVE to bring her into it.

And then they bitch when she answers. She's 'making it about her', she's 'jumping on the bandwagon' and every other bit of "She should shut up and not answer" idiocy you can think of.

That last was what the argument just had on Facebook* with a friend boiled down to; he flat hates Palin, and somehow her being accused of responsibility in these murders and daring to successfully smack the moles back into their holes meant 'she was making this about her and she shouldn't do that' (I'll note that he also managed to throw in 'Alaskans aren't like us', 'Republicans don't like uppity women' and other such bullshit; got to keep the narrative going, y'know. Oh, and if you're of conservative bent you HAVE to be a Republican, etc.)

Another thing I've noted: you might never have said one word in support of Palin, but by pointing out their bullshit you're labeled as a total Palin supporter; it's like they cannot understand "Whether I like her or not doesn't matter, the fact is this was unfair".


* I know, I know. If I didn't have a couple of friends who're hard to contact any other way, I'd drop it.

Joy, joy

This morning the pc decided to start continually acting like it'd just been turned on, and nothing I tried could break it out. So it's going to be looked at by someone I know, and- happily- I still had my old pc set aside.

Damn, it seems slow now.

Few days ago-

before it got so bloody cold- was able to use the bike for some running around. Heading west on I40 I got caught in some nasty traffic and opened up the throttle to get clear of it.

Shortly thereafter I noticed
The traffic snarl was gone
I was doing 90
And it didn't feel that fast.

At 90 the engine was turning a whole 6000 or so rpm, as I recall; redline is almost 12000.

I repeat, if this is the detuned version of the racing engine the original must be a scary bastard. And I'd really like to find a track to try it out on.

Ah, the PC bigotry of NPR

It's safe to say there was a collective sigh of brown relief when the Tucson killer turned out to be a gringo. Had the shooter been Latino, media pundits wouldn't be discussing the impact of nasty politics on a young man this week — they'd be demanding an even more stringent anti-immigrant policy. The new members of the House would be stepping over each other to propose new legislation for more guns on the border, more mothers to be deported, and more employers to be penalized for hiring brown people. Obama would be attending funerals and telling the nation tonight that he was going to increase security just about everywhere.
Ah, Miss Hernandez, you hit all the points, didn't you? 'Gringo', 'anti-immigrant', 'deporting mothers', 'hiring brown people' you managed to stuff the whole works into this piece of crap.

Got that, folks? You can't be against illegal immigration, you're against ALL immigration. And brown people. Etc., etc., etc.

You're a nasty little bigot and a liar, Miss Hernandez. Or, if you actually believe this crap, a bigot and a fool.

Wonder if she's got some MEChA stickers or posters around?

Speaks for itself

For the other, I haven't gotten around to figuring out rollovers, so go to Sondra's and see her contribution

The wonderful reasoning of liberal/progressive dirtbags

I linked earlier to a YouTube video montage of death wishes tweeted about Sarah Palin after various bloggers maliciously linked Palin's electoral target map to the Tucson shooting.

Now YouTube is threatening to pull the video because one of the people who sent a tweet has complained that the video violates her privacy.
He has a screenshot of the tweet by the effing moron who's whining that people seeing the tweet that she SENT OUT ON THE INTERNET is violating her privacy.

How's that for an interesting reasoning process?

Back to the evils of communism, and those who apologize or excuse it

Foreign communists in the Soviet Union, witnesses to the famine, somehow managed to see starvation not as a national tragedy but as a step forward for humanity. The writer Arthur Koestler believed at the time that the starving were "enemies of the people who preferred begging to work." His housemate in Kharkiv, the physicist Alexander Weissberg, knew that millions of peasants had died. Nevertheless, he kept the faith. Koestler naively complained to Weissberg that the Soviet press did not write that Ukrainians "have nothing to eat and therefore are dying like flies." He and Weissberg knew that to be true, as did everyone who had any contact with the country. Yet to write of the famine would have made their faith impossible. Each of them believed that the destruction of the countryside could be reconciled to a general story of human progress. The deaths of Ukrainian peasants were the price to be paid for a higher civilization. Koestler left the Soviet Union in 1933. When Weissberg saw him off at the train station, his parting words were: "Whatever happens, hold the banner of the Soviet Union high!"
Also from Bloodlands

Uncle points to a case where the officers should have to personally

pay up. For being arrogant dumbasses who happen to wear badges while abusing their authority.
"The caller indicated that Sutterfield was not being disorderly, disruptive, or committing any criminal acts," the complaint states. "The call was dispatched. The dispatcher did not indicate that Sutterfield was being disorderly, disruptive, or committing any criminal acts."

When police arrived, Sutterfield was driving out of the church parking lot, the plaintiffs said. Palick stopped her.

"Defendant Palick drew his gun and pointed it at Sutterfield," the complaint asserted. "Defendant Bethia also arrived on scene, drew his gun, and pointed it at Sutterfield."

Palick required Sutterfield to get out of the car, and proceeded to search it without her consent, the complaint continues. The officer subsequently found Sutterfield's handgun in the car, enclosed in an opaque case which was zipped closed.

"Before the search, Defendant Bethia handcuffed and physically held Sutterfield," the complaint states. "Mork physically searched Sutterfield and removed her car keys from her pocket without her consent and over her repeated objections."
So far, bad. What makes it worse:
Mork also removed a loaded magazine from Sutterfield's holster, again without her consent and over her objections, the complaint continued. Yet another officer, Tushaus, arrived on the scene and gave Palick approval to arrest Sutterfield for illegally transporting a firearm.

According to the complaint, illegally transporting a firearm is not an arrestable offense in Wisconsin.

"Defendants were made aware that it is not an arrestable offense via a memo from their Chief of Police, dated April 22, 2009," the complaint states.

Nonetheless,the officers took Sutterfield to the Brookfield Police Department, where she was questioned, booked, and released.
So they knew damned well that their charge was bullshit, and put her through all this anyway. Agree with Uncle, I'd have added some zeroes to the settlement. And the dumbasses with badges should have to pay at least some of it out of their own pockets.

It being- woo hoo!- an entire degree wamer than this time yesterday,

making it a somewhat less frostbitten 12 degrees, I am still staying inside. Which gives me time to look at some things and yell about them. Like the call to police your speech by the Chancellor of UC Berkeley,Robert J. Birgeneau; I'll let the response from FIRE speak to this:
Chancellor Birgeneau's e-mail is very ill-considered for a variety of reasons.

First of all, there is so far no evidence that a "climate of demonization," "mean-spririted xenophobia," or "hateful speech" had anything to do with alleged killer Jared Loughner's apparent decision to try to assassinate Giffords and kill or injure many others. The supposition that political expression created a climate that led Loughner to his choice is an idea that seems to have sprung from whole cloth out of the minds of people who likely were upset beforehand about "rhetoric" and "hateful" speech, including, apparently, Chancellor Birgeneau. Nevertheless, it has quickly become the driving force in the national discussion about the shooting.
...
Finally, Birgeneau's e-mail, if taken to its logical conclusion, seems to imply that minority groups and undocumented students at UC Berkeley might become violent if people in the campus community do not support the DREAM Act and if other examples of "hateful speech" go unchallenged on campus. While he avoids an outright call for censorship of certain opinions—such as opposition to the DREAM Act—he makes it clear that he would not be surprised if the voicing of these opinions led to another incident like that in Arizona. Birgenau thus implies that such expression is therefore both morally wrong and likely to endanger people's lives through its very utterance.

It is within the Chancellor's rights to officially encourage people at Berkeley to act and speak in accordance with the university's officially sponsored moral principles. Yet, does the Chancellor really think students on his campus are so fragile, psychologically weak, and prone to violence that the campus is less "safe" when they see mean graffiti, experience racism, or hear "virulent" language against Israel? Even if someone on campus is truly so unstable and unsafe—a possibility in any institution as large as UC Berkeley—taking the steps necessary to ensure that such a person is never "set off" by speech he or she finds offensive would result in a campus that one would not even recognize as a part of America.

Adopting the logical if unstated conclusion of the Chancellor's argument here (as some lawmakers and commentators appear to be ready to do) would result in the imposition of a variation on the "heckler's veto," where the most violent person in the community gets to decide who may speak and what they may say, on threat of violence. As UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh wrote yesterday for The Volokh Conspiracy, there is no First Amendment exception that would leave speech unprotected when "the concern is simply that a few kooks or extremists might be moved to commit a crime at some indefinite time as a result of seeing the speech." If we are to have a free society, the boundaries of acceptable speech must not be determined by what might spark the murderous rage of the craziest and/or most violent person.
What I can add is that to a lot of 'higher' education people would LOVE to be able to shut down whatever they personally label 'incendiary' or 'hate' or 'divisive' speech; they do not WANT open, free speech on all subjects, they want people conditioned(for the public good, of course) to only speak in the approved PC ways. And they're using the actions of a demented human in AZ to push that on people.


Speaking of the desire for speech codes,
A “McKinley moment”? Meaning what? An occasion for self-censorship because of the insinuations and false allegations raised against them in the aftermath of the shootings in Tucson–much as false allegations were raised against Hearst following McKinley’s slaying?

Not only is “McKinley moment” an imprecise construct: It suggests that using smears to batter foes into silence is somehow worthy or admirable.


In globular warmering news,
In an almighty battle to salvage credibility three British government institutions are embroiled in a new global warming scandal with the BBC mounting a legal challenge to force ministers to admit the truth. Sceptics ask: Is the UK government’s climate propaganda machine finally falling apart?

Last week the weather service caused a sensation by making the startling claim that it was gagged by government ministers from issuing a cold winter forecast. Instead, a milder than average prediction was made that has been resoundingly ridiculed in one of the worst winters in a century.


Speaking of the sorry excuse for a lawman running Pima County,
Sheriff's Department and community-college officials in Pima County are refusing to release a wide range of public documents about the man charged in Saturday's shooting rampage that left six dead and more than a dozen wounded.

The Pima County Sheriff's Department and Pima Community College have declined to release documents that could shed light on run-ins they had with 22-year-old Jared Loughner in the months prior to the shooting.

The Arizona Public Records Law requires that records be "open to inspection by any person at all times" unless officials can prove releasing the information would violate rights of privacy or confidentiality or otherwise harm the best interests of the state.
Yeah, does make you think he doesn't want the information getting out, doesn't it?


Courtesy of Theo,


On a personal note, dogs are nuts. The Security Staff have a doghouse made nice & warm, they have a garage. Where are they? Snoozing in the back yard in the sun. At bloody 12 F.

And that's it for now. Stay warm.

Well, this is encouraging

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates confirmed Sunday that U.S. intelligence agencies underestimated China's progress in developing a new stealth jet fighter.
...
Asked about recent disclosures on China's Internet of a prototype fifth-generation jet, dubbed the J-20, Mr. Gates said U.S. intelligence has been "watching these developments all along.

"We knew they were working on a stealth aircraft," he said. "I think that what we've seen is that they may be somewhat further ahead in the development of that aircraft than our intelligence had earlier predicted."
In other news,
"They clearly have potential to put some of our capabilities at risk," Mr. Gates said, according to a Pentagon transcript of his remarks."We have to pay attention to them, we have to respond appropriately with our own programs."
Actually, I'd be much happier if they were having to respond to our developments, Mr. Gates.

But have no fear, because talking is the answer!
Mr. Gates, who arrived in Beijing on Sunday, said he hopes that closer military relations with China's communist-controlled armed forces will produce a strategic dialogue that might reduce China's need for "some of these capabilities."
Yes, because communist dictatorships always respond to kind words, right?

Found over at Ace, where there are some other thoughts on this.

Rep. Peter King(Stupid Party-NY) if a friggin' moron

if he seriously means this.
New York Republican Rep. Peter King said Tuesday that he will introduce legislation to ban the carrying of any firearm within 1,000 feet of what he described as “high-profile government officials.”
Ok, let's ignore the "You could be arrested for having a gun two blocks away on the other side of a damned building" bullcrap; this is more "Us public officials should get special consideration because we're more important than the peasants" garbage.

No, you're not, Mr. King and Mr. Clyburn; you're just a couple of public employees with delusions of importance; and if you actually believe you should get these special considerations, you should be removed from those offices. Get it straight: YOU ARE NOT OUR DAMNED BOSS, and we're pretty damned sick of you thinking you are.

My ex has a couple of chihuahuas, one of which

I rather like; but this is just too good to pass up:


Found at Rodger's place;
occasionally not really SFW

Couple of things on the current "We must tone down

the talk" noise that's going around. First, from Jack Shafer:
Embedded in Sheriff Dupnik's ad hoc wisdom were several assumptions. First, that strident, anti-government political views can be easily categorized as vitriolic, bigoted, and prejudicial. Second, that those voicing strident political views are guilty of issuing Manchurian Candidate-style instructions to commit murder and mayhem to the "unbalanced." Third, that the Tucson shooter was inspired to kill by political debate or by Sarah Palin's "target" map or other inflammatory outbursts. Fourth, that we should calibrate our political speech in such a manner that we do not awaken the Manchurian candidates among us.

And, fifth, that it's a cop's role to set the proper dimensions of our political debate. Hey, Dupnik, if you've got spare time on your hands, go write somebody a ticket.
(But writing tickets doesn't get him on the national news, so...)
The great miracle of American politics is that although it can tend toward the cutthroat and thuggish, it is almost devoid of genuine violence outside of a few scuffles and busted lips now and again. With the exception of Saturday's slaughter, I'd wager that in the last 30 years there have been more acts of physical violence in the stands at Philadelphia Eagles home games than in American politics.

Any call to cool "inflammatory" speech is a call to police all speech, and I can't think of anybody in government, politics, business, or the press that I would trust with that power. As Jonathan Rauch wrote brilliantly in Harper's in 1995, "The vocabulary of hate is potentially as rich as your dictionary, and all you do by banning language used by cretins is to let them decide what the rest of us may say." Rauch added, "Trap the racists and anti-Semites, and you lay a trap for me too. Hunt for them with eradication in your mind, and you have brought dissent itself within your sights."
Exactly. Remember the bit I noted on Rep. Brady's desire to make it a federal crime to use language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against a federal official or member of Congress? Just how big is the truck you can drive through that description? Calling for someone to be thrown out of office, voted out of office, etc., could be defined as 'threatening'; and if you think there aren't politicians and some LE clowns who would do it, you're dreaming.

So we're looking at Don't Say Nasty Things Because Someone Might Do Something Stupid combined with calls for You Can't Say Something That Makes The Politician Lose Bladder Control laws. To borrow from Insty,
Anyone else find it creepy that new standard what me may and may not say is: How will it affect the behavior of an abviously crazy person who may or may not hear it?

Hehehehehe.....

A pistol to a foot soldier is not a piece of equipment for winning a war, but rather for saving his life. Only a country that actually valued the lives and safety of its individual troopers would have, and indeed could have designed and mass produced such a pistol.

By way of comparison, we may take note of the Walther P38, whose designers seem to have expended a lot of effort to prevent their soldiers from shooting themselves in the foot. Which seems like a strange decision for a master race to make.

Communists are as bad as Nazis,

and their defenders and apologists are as bad as Nazis’ defenders, but far more common. When you meet them, show them no respect. They’re evil, stupid, and dishonest wrote Insty a while back. Just recently I saw a book mentioned and found it at the library: Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. Only about sixty pages in, and one of the things it's convinced me of is that Stalin and the communist True Believers were(some still are) even more evil than I would have believed. And I do not use that word lightly. This is part of what really got me, referring to the famine Stalin ordered in the Ukraine:
As Stalin interpreted the disaster of collectivization in the last weeks of 1932, he achieved new heights of ideological daring. The famine in Ukraine, whose existence he had admitted earlier, when it was far less severe, was now a "fairy tale", a slanderous rumor spread by enemies. Stalin had developed an interesting new theory: that resistance to socialism increases as its successes mount because its foes resist with greater desperation as they contemplate their final defeat. Thus any problem in the Soviet Union could be defined as an example of enemy action, and enemy action could be defined as evidence of progress.

Resistance to his policies in Soviet Ukraine, Stalin argued, was of a special sort, perhaps not visible to the imperceptive observer. Opposition was no longer open, for the enemies of socialism were now "quiet" and even "holy". The "kulaks of today," he said, were "gentle people, kind, almost saintly." People who appeared to be innocent were to be seen as guilty. A peasant slowly dying of hunger was, despite appearances, a saboteur working for the capitalis powers in their campaign to discredit the Soviet Union. Starvation was resistance, and resistance was a sign that the victory of socialism was just around the corner. These were not merely Stalin's musings in Moscow; this was the ideological line enforced by Molotov and Kaganovich as they traveled through regions of mass death in late 1932.

Stalin never personally witnessed the starvations that he so interpreted, but comrades in Soviet Ukraine did: they had somehow to reconcile his ideological line to the evidence of their senses. Forced to interpret distended bellies as political opposition, they produced the utterly tortured conclusion that the saboteurs hated socialism so much that they intentionally let their families die. Thus the wracked bodies of sons and daughter and fathers and mothers were nothing more than a façade behind which foes plotted the destruction of socialism. Even the starving themselves were sometimes presented as enemy propagandists with a conscious plan to undermine socialism. Young Ukrainian communists in the cities were taught that the starving were enemies of the people "who risked their lives to spoil our optimism."
Evil. There is no other word for this. Millions dead, God alone knows how many physically and/or mentally damaged for life. And we've still got fools who defend it. Make excuses for it.

This is going to be as hard to read as The Black Book of Communism.

Take a look at this

Note the 'fly over the tank and detonate over the turret' action, so it'll strike down at the thinnest armor on the vehicle. Impressive

Speaking of tar & feathers, or at least removal from the office

he's been infesting for so long,
A top House Democrat said the attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) should change how members of Congress are screened at airports.

“I really believe that that is the place where we feel the most ill at ease, is going through airports,” Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who serves as assistant minority leader in the House, said on "Fox News Sunday."

Clyburn called for the Transportation Security Administration, which administers airport security checkpoints, to interact “a little better” with the Capitol Hill Police.

“We’ve had some incidents where TSA authorities think that congresspeople should be treated like everybody else,” he said. “Well, the fact of the matter is, we are held to a higher standard in so many other areas, and I think we need to take a hard look at exactly how the TSA interact with members of Congress.”
At least this bastard is open about it: he thinks politicians should be given special treatment, better than what the peasants get.

Oh, and that 'higher standard', do you mean the one that kept Rep. Rangel out of jail, for instance?

And they want to make it illegal for us to say things like "You miserable little canker on the ass of the nation, you should be thrown out of that office. Preferably through a window", because it makes them all poo-poo undies and all.

Hey, Rep. Brady(NSD-PA), you pass laws to restrict

my speech, I think you should be dragged out of your office and tarred & feathered.

There, that should get me on the list. If I wasn't already.

Deity, what a bunch of wimps and tyrant wannabes.

Rest well, Major Winters

You damned well earned it

Ref the 'If only we had proper gun control!' stuff you knew was coming,

Confederate Yankee has some updates; easiest to just go there and start scrolling down. However, I will point out one post in particular, in which he points out that Salon flat lied, repeatedly, about the murders and the Clinton AWB.

Add them to the other liars.

Having listened to some of the statements made

by the Sheriff Clarence Dupnik of Pima County, I have a couple of thoughts:
First, the voters need to get this clown out of office at the first opportunity, and replace him with somebody who has a brain that includes a 'mute' setting, and knows when to use it. For the chief LE officer of the county to go on the air and make some of the statements he did... Unprofessional at least, idiotic at best. First, a LE officer is not supposed to be playing politics on something like that(at all, preferably, but for damned sure not on something like this). Second, the Chief LE Officer Of The County is NOT supposed to be making a defense argument for the accused. Either of these things ought to get him thrown out of office.

Second, I just read a couple more things. This and This, to be precise(thanks to Insty for pointing to them). Read this:
Jared Loughner has been making death threats by phone to many people in Pima County including staff of Pima Community College, radio personalities and local bloggers. When Pima County Sheriff’s Office was informed, his deputies assured the victims that he was being well managed by the mental health system. It was also suggested that further pressing of charges would be unnecessary and probably cause more problems than it solved as Jared Loughner has a family member that works for Pima County. Amy Loughner is a Natural Resource specialist for the Pima County Parks and Recreation.
If this is indeed the case, then this may partly be why the Sheriff has such a case of oral diarrhea; he's got a bad link to this mess.

Daniel Hernandez

Vet acts in time of need; anybody surprised?

I've heard variations on this before,

but not this particular one:
"Men are basically smart or dumb and lazy or ambitious. The dumb and ambitious ones are dangerous and I get rid of them. The dumb and lazy ones I give mundane duties. The smart ambitious ones I put on my staff. The smart and lazy ones I make my commanders." attributed to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and a few other German Generals. If anybody knows who said it first I'd love to know.

A really good thing, and what I hope

is the start of a REALLY good thing.
First, the good:
The University of Virginia (U.Va.) had stalled since last year in handing over its record relating to accusations against a former academic employee implicated in the Climategate controversy of November 2009.

The researcher in the hot seat is global warming doomsayer, Professor Michael Mann who now works at Penn. State University. Mann, a Lead Author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been under increasing scrutiny since the climate fraud scandal hit the headlines over a year ago.

The latest story appears on the SPPI website which reports, “Court records reveal that counsel for the University has indicated instead that the Mann-related records do in fact exist, on a backup server. To avoid University delay or claims for huge search fees, today’s request specifically directs the school to search that server.”
Oh yeah, Mann's got to be so happy he could pass a gallstone over this. As to the University, along with a general "No, you can't hide the information" matter, there's this:
According to Horner U.Va. has offered "a series of twists" on a novel defense of 'academic freedom.' It has spent half a million dollars on legal fees trying to prevent Virginia’s Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli acquiring any access to the records. Cuccinelli filed his petition for access on behalf of the state’s taxpayers last year.
Maybe parents and students paying Bleep-knows-what for tuition ought to file for the University to show where that half-million came from; "If any of it was from my tuition or fee payments, I want it back!".


The hopefully-will-become REALLY great thing:
Egypt’s majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside.

From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.

“We either live together, or we die together,” was the sloganeering genius of Mohamed El-Sawy, a Muslim arts tycoon whose cultural centre distributed flyers at churches in Cairo Thursday night, and who has been credited with first floating the “human shield” idea.
This, I think, is a Very Good Thing. Got to be lots and lots of muslims in other places as well who are sick of the murders and tortures and abuse. May they all show this kind of courage in demonstrating such.

A weather scare sequence

Week or so back the "Nasty horrible arctic cold coming! Be warned!! Be scared!!!" stuff started. Which is my signal to 'ignore local weather weenies for a while* and check other sources'. So I did, and checked further as it approaches. It went from the above-mentioned "YOU MAY DIE!! IF YOU DON'T LISTEN TO US!" to "It'll get pretty cold for a few days, be some snow in some areas so be ready if you have to travel in it." At least what I've found from the NWS and such; I still haven't gone back to listening to the local people; in severe thunderstorm conditions they're pretty good(though still doing some "We need to scare you" stuff, but in winter they can be a pain in the ass.


*Yes, I do make some preparations this time of year, just to be safe, but I refuse to listen to the crap they throw out.

Said it before: SWAT teams, used properly,

are a valuable tool; used improperly they're a threat.
The fatal shooting of an innocent 68-year-old man by Framingham police reignited debate among law enforcement experts yesterday over the role of heavily armed, specialized units for routine drug busts.
Got curious and looked, and Balko has some more here and here. Including this bit from the Framingham Police Chief:
...During the service of the search warrant Mr. Eurie Stamps was tragically and fatally struck by a bullet which was discharged from a SWAT officer’s rifle.
Interesting wording, isn't it?

In between getting ready for the snow they're saying

should come in Sunday(or maybe Monday) and general "Bleep, where did all this mess come from?" cleaning, I found a few things to talk about. Ref the clown Colman McCarthy who has demonstrated his contempt for members of the US Military, two bits from Confederate Yankee's response:
Even so, Mr McCarthy’s appreciation for the ethic of the warrior remains undiminished: “In recent years, I've had several Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans in my college classes. If only the peace movement were as populated by people of such resolve and daring.” Hmm. Perhaps Mr. McCarthy might want to consider that those who are truly resolved and daring tend to involved themselves in callings and endeavors where resolve and daring are required and appreciated, endeavors such as actually fighting for peace rather than talking about it. Could this be why Mr. McCarthy finds himself surrounded by weak-minded milquetoasts?
My thought: "Mr. McCarthy, if you can't find people of such resolve and daring in your 'peace movement', why aren't you asking yourself why you don't?
The next bit:
Mr. McCarthy saves his big guns--please pardon the military metaphor; I can’t help myself--for last: “ROTC and its warrior ethic taint the intellectual purity of a school, if by purity we mean trying to rise above the foul idea that nations can kill and destroy their way to peace.”

“The intellectual purity of a school?!” No. That’s too easy. Readers who wish to discover the level of intellectual purity on contemporary “elite” campuses have only to research names such as Bill Ayers, Cornel West or Ward Churchill.
Indeed.


My oh my, this will stir some things up:
Magnus v. U.S., decided today, concludes that a defendant who pled guilty in 1996 to violating D.C. handgun ban can now have that plea set aside given D.C. v. Heller, assuming his conduct was indeed protected by the Second Amendment (and didn’t, for instance, involve the possession of a gun to facilitate an illegal drug transaction). “A conviction for conduct that is not criminal, but is instead constitutionally protected, is the ultimate miscarriage of justice,” and a defendant can therefore ask to have it set aside (via a petition for coram nobis relief) even many years later.

and so will this:
Right Turn has obtained the first oversight letter from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) issued to the Justice Department. While he was in the minority, Smith labored, largely unsuccessfully, on the committee to convince the Democratic chairman to investigate a range of issues, including detainee policy and New Black Panther Party case. He now has the authority to schedule hearings, call witnesses and subpoena documents.
Don't you know there were some major pucker moments in Holder's office when the Tea Party people won enough elections to take the House?


So, is Pelosi just so stuck on parroting the "It's the fault of BUSH!" line that she can't stop, or is she actually certifiable?


Obama didn't make Traver a recess appointment(you can just hear somebody on the staff saying "How many people do you really want to piss off this way right now?"), and has re-nominated him. I kind of like this idea:
While I really don't think Traver can get approved by the Senate given his record of anti-gun activism, I think his renomination actually can serve a useful purpose for gun rights. The confirmation hearings will be an opportunity to air much of ATF's dirty laundry which has been ignored by the mainstream media. These range from gross mismanagement in the upper levels of the bureau to allegations of looking the other way to AR's being smuggled into Mexico so that they could be traced back to the U.S.
Oh yeah, start bringing ALL this up and asking Traver "Were you aware of this? Really? You were in WHAT position for HOW LONG and you say you know nothing about this? Is your real last name Schultz?"


And finally, thanks to Theo,

On the Erik Scott case, more up over at

Confederate Yankee, here and here. I want to post a couple of bits, for the full impact you really need to read them entire. First, from the first link,
MINDSET: Most interesting--and disturbing--is the response of the Metro police, as communicated by their Union President Chris Collins, who represents approximately 2,800 officers. According to Collins, not only will officers--even those who merely witnessed the actions of fellow officers--fail to testify at inquests, they will refuse to make statements to investigators--usually Metro homicide detectives--after a shooting or death caused by other means. Apparently Collins has gone so far as to suggest that officers will refuse to honor subpoenas.
That one piece, all by itself, says the union needs cleaning out. Or being abolished. And any officer who refuses a subpoena, or refuses to speak to investigators, should be treated just like Joe or Jane Citizen is treated.
Collins objected to the idea that officers might have to repeatedly testify about their actions. Remember that in the past, officers have typically had to testify only at an inquest, and even so, their testimony, as in the Erik Scott case, has been less than complete. “now we’re saying ‘screw it’--you only have to answer twice instead of four times: Answer in the deposition and the federal case and skip the homicide investigation and skip the inquest,” Collins said.

Collins apparently believes that all officers will have to do is to simply inform the judge and prosecutor before the inquest that they won’t answer questions--in essence telling them that they intend to take the Fifth--and they’ll be able to ignore subpoenas. Collins said that skipping inquests will be good for officers because it will allow them to avoid the embarrassment and discomfort of pleading the Fifth Amendment to every question from the witness stand.
A: Toss Collins out on his ass.
B: Inform all officers that if they act as Collins says(Because God forbid officers should face repeated questioning, as if they were just plain citizens or something) that they'll be treated- prosecuted if called for- just like any other citizen.


The second post has a lot on how Sheriff Gillespie wants to keep control of things in inquest procedures for the benefit of the police(screw the citizens). What I want to borrow from this one is the statement from the Scott family:
SCOTT FAMILY STATEMENT: The family of Erik Scott has issued a press release to the Las Vegas media. The media has reproduced only a portion of the release in the stories linked at the beginning of this update, so as a public service, I reproduce the press release, in its entirety, here:

“The stated PPA [Las Vegas Metro Police Protective Association] policy of having law enforcement union members refuse to cooperate with investigations of officer-involved shootings and other potential abuses of police power invokes the image of a grade-school playground bully demanding that only his version of the fight be related to the principal, or the bully and his gang will refuse to cooperate at all. If that’s the way Southern Nevada police officers choose to behave, so be it. That’s perfectly fine with us and other victims’ families.

Such petulant, childish refusals to cooperate with already-questionable internal investigations may finally stimulate two backlash responses from incensed citizens and lawmakers:

• Institute a system whereby ALL officer-involved shootings that result in death must be investigated by an outside agency, ideally a U.S. Justice Department version of the National Transportation Safety Board. This federal body will have the authority to solicit testimony from any person involved in the shooting, including all officers involved.

• Pass a Nevada law similar to California Government Code 3300-3311, the “California Peace Officers Bill of Rights.” Under this statute, California police officers can elect to not cooperate with an investigation of potential police misdeeds, but, in making that choice, risk being charged with insubordination and subsequent dismissal. Officers have the right to invoke their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, but may lose their job, if warranted.

Las Vegas-area police unions are accustomed to having complete control of homicide investigations involving officers for so long that they cannot conceive of being held accountable for their actions, under the new coroner’s inquest ordinance. But in refusing to cooperate, those unions are prompting even more outrage and wrath from their employers, the citizens who pay police salaries. When will the unions realize that those halcyon days of Southern Nevada cops doing whatever they please—and getting away with it—are over?”

Og has a bathroom story

over here, which reminded me of my own; no sex, but plenty of potential for embarrassment.

Back when was married to first wife we'd stopped at a fabric store to look for some costume material. It was after lunch, and suddenly the digestive tract advised me that lunch needed to exit. Now. So I headed for the back.

Go through the door into the back and there's not much light, I look around and see 'Restrooms' on a sign and head that way, through the door and into a stall and- with literal great relief- sit. About halfway through I heard the door open and footsteps that sounded a little odd. Door opens in the stall next to mine, closes, I glance down.

At an obviously female foot in a brown high heel shoe, said foot attached to a leg that was obviously coming out of a skirt. Bleep.

I sat there very quietly until she finished and left, very quickly washed hands and got the hell out, after peeking out to see if anybody was in the back.

And yeah, there were two doors. I checked. They needed more light back there.

One of the benefits of having the part-time job turn

into a full-time for the past month was I was able to buy the new seat for the bike as my Christmas present to myself; got a Sargent when I found it on sale(the economy makes some things more affordable while screwing you in everything else). Today was the first time I've been able to ride for more than a few miles, and the difference between this and the factory seat is incredible.

Same thing on the Vulcan I used to own. I made my first trip on it(Dallas) and by the time I got back swore there wouldn't be another until it had a better saddle; I swear the bastard who designed the factory seat didn't like the customers. That bike got a Mustang, and it was wonderful; better designed, better padding.

Kind of amazing: someone makes a really nice bike and sticks a piece of crap on it for the rider to sit on. Bad idea, guys.

If this is true, heads at BATFE need to roll.

Possibly literally if people are dead because of it.
Coming next will be more info on what the agents refer to as the Phoenix ATF office "walking across" ARs and AKs to pad their statistics and especially the one that may have killed the BP agent.
For the moment ignore the other stuff in that article and focus on this; followup here and here. From the last,
I’ve just been provided some additional details. The essence of what I’ve been told:

ATF’s Phoenix office allowed the guns to go across the border.

The ATF office in Mexico was denied permission to share this information with their Mexican counterparts. Believing this was wrong, they went over the heads of the Phoenix office and requested permission directly from headquarters in DC.

The higher-ups sided with the Phoenix decision to withhold the information from Mexican authorities.

That would make this an international law enforcement incident, would it not?
Uh, yeah, at the very least. Hey, new Congress, you want something else that needs real investigation? Here it is.


I'll now make note of something else from the first article:
Then there's this: An ATF Special Agent who went undercover in the Hells Angels is compelled to inform a dozen U.S. Senators of his ongoing legal battle against ATF senior management, including some startling and disturbing (to put it mildly) allegations:

[I]n retaliation for a settlement with the government, ATF recalled covert identification documents from me and my wife, and as a Significant Investigative Report, obtained only through discovery, demonstrates, the Hells Angels became the lead suspects in discovering the location of my home and burning it down with my wife and children inside. In the process, ATF scuttled the investigation and let the suspects go, never even questioning them. ATF has taken the process of retaliation to a new level, letting go of suspects of attempted murder against an agent’s family.

This mess has been around for a while. This guy managed to actually become a patched member of the Hells Angels, gathered evidence and testimony of everything from murder to drugs to prostitution to illegal arms dealing; then the BATFE brass and prosecutors managed to screw up the cases so badly that many of the accused went free, and some who were convicted were able to plead to much lesser charges. And then the HA found out who he was and went after him and his family, and BATFE did- well, I'd say 'squat to protect them' but that would give the agency too much credit. Considering how this agency treats honest cops, it's amazing there are still any in it.

No, I can't say "A few bad ones in the agency cause this" because it's been going on for too long in, from the sound of it, just about all branches; that's not a few bad apples, that's an agency with a very bad attitude.

Let's begin this with "If I'd ever done anything APPROACHING this level of

idiot, I'd have been fired on the spot":
The Punchbowl restaurant does not serve bacon or pork in accordance with Islamic law, and one employee can be heard saying "we don't have bacon" before the other begins yelling.

"Don't record me bitch!" he screams as he approaches the counter. "Don't f---ing record me!"

The employee continues to yell and smacks the cash register display on its side, before other workers grab him and lead him outside.

"I'm gonna f---in break your head bro," he says to the person filming as he is led around the corner out of sight.
Ah, but we must be sensitive and caring:
A spokesman for KFC Australia told ninemsn the employee had been suspended over the incident and offered counselling.

"KFC Australia strongly condemns the behaviour of the team member who appears in the clip and sincerely apologises for this very inappropriate reaction," the spokesman said.
because it's apparently not possible to expect muslims to behave like civilized human beings, so you have to hold them to lower standards.
What was that line about 'the bigotry of low expectations'?


What, you expected anything else from the High Court of the People's Republic of Maryland?

Speaking of the PRoM,
Alcohol may soon come with a new kind of high. It’s not stronger proof. It’s a higher tax.

Alex DeMetrick reports supporters of a “Dime a Drink Tax” think they have a shot at making it happen in Maryland.
Yes, because nothing helps recovery like higher taxes.


This is going to make some lefty heads implode:
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has decided to send an additional 1,400 Marine combat forces to Afghanistan, officials said, in a surprise move ahead of the spring fighting season to try to cement tentative security gains before White House-mandated troop reductions begin in July.


Yeah, trust the media to bury this part of it way down in the story:
FBI special agent Manuel Johnson said the incident occurred at around 3. a.m. local time.

“Border Patrol agents were attempting to arrest alleged drug smugglers. …when bystanders began to throw rocks” at them, Johnson said. “A Border Patrol agent responded by firing a shot at an alleged rock thrower.”

Frustrated by tighter security on the U.S.-Mexico border, illegal immigrants and drug traffickers regularly pelt U.S. agents with rocks, take shots and even throw gasoline bombs.


About what you'd expect from Salon: ...then sword violence starts to look like a problem. A small problem, and a weird problem, but a problem nonetheless. So let's ban them!


And last this morning, yesterday a local radio station had the usual suspects hyperventilating because a Arizona-style law on illegal immigrants is going to be offered in the new legislature; "It will scare away (apparently only)Latinos from Oklahoma, hurt the economy", all the usual. Well, if someone is here legally it wouldn't be a problem, now would it? And if they're not, then leave. There are major highways going in various directions, and if you go south don't fall in the Red when you cross the border into Texas.
'Course, Texas isn't going to be all that welcoming, either.

Every time I think I've heard one of the more idiotic things ever

I find that I just wasn't waiting long enough. Remember the Zionist Attack Sharks? Well,
A vulture tagged by scientists at Tel Aviv University has strayed into Saudi Arabian territory, where it was promptly arrested on suspicion of being a Mossad spy, Israeli and Saudi media reported Tuesday.

The bird was found in a rural area of the country wearing a transmitter and a leg bracelet bearing the words "Tel Aviv University", according to the reports, which surfaced first in the Israeli daily Ma'ariv.

Although these tags indicate that the bird was part of a long-term research project into migration patterns, residents and local reporters told Saudi Arabia's Al-Weeam newspaper that the matter seemed to be a "Zionist plot."

The accusations went viral, with hundreds of posts on Arabic-language websites and forums claiming that the "Zionists" had trained these birds for espionage.
And with visions of "I'm gonna find a baby bumblebee..."* floating through my mind, I'll leave this.


*If you've never seen the cartoon, I'm not explaining it

I got into a bit of an argument on Facebook

(yes, I know, just kind of happened) over WMDs and Iraq in which various people laughed that there were still people deluded enough to think there had been any. Well, among other things,
But, as Wired reports, the WikiLeaks documents clearly show "for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction. . . . Chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield. Remnants of Saddam's toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict — and may have brewed up their own deadly agents."

One of the things derided in the argument was that Iraq had anything to sneak into Syria:
Of note too is a January 2004 revelation by Syrian journalist defector Nizar Nayuf. He reported there were three locations in Syria where Iraqi WMDs had been transported prior to the 2003 invasion and were being stored. He also revealed some of these sites were being built with North Korean cooperation. This explained why three years later Israel attacked a nuclear facility being built in Syria by Pyongyang — and Syria’s subsequent failure to criticize Israel for fear of drawing further international attention to what Damascus had been doing.
And, which nobody wanted to remember,
Five years after Joe Wilson’s op-ed claimed no yellowcake was sold to Iraq — the ease with which Saddam could have snapped his fingers and reinstituted his nuclear program became apparent. In July 2008, in an operation kept secret at the time, 37 military air cargo flights shipped more than 500 metric tons of yellowcake — found in Iraq — out of the country for further transport and remediation to Canada.

Gee, I wonder why most of the media isn't talking about this part of the released documents?
(Yes, I know, that question is about as useful as an argument on Facebook)

Remember I mentioned I picked up a neat little flashlight at Tulsa?

You didn't? Well, it's one of these
Found the pic here; and it's something. It's about an inch longer than the AAA battery that powers it; 3 light levels, turn it on by turning the head and then bump it off & on to go to the next brightness. I've been using it off & on since mid-November and the battery is still going strong.

And if you decide to put together a mini emergency kit similar to this, it'll fit in.


I originally saw a link to a kit like that at someone's blog(I think Tam's, but can't find it right now) and it was more of a 'carry around with you kit'. If I can find that, I'll add it

The University of Utah has created a secret policy

whereby its police officers are instructed in how to harass and intimidate law abiding gun owners by trumping up non-gun charges for perfectly lawful conduct. This policy violates both the letter and spirit of State Law and binding State Supreme Court ruling. Keeping such a policy secret violates sound notions of openness and transparency in government.

Ok, two things:
First, this kind of crap NEVER stays secret. Never. Ever.
Second, were these friggin' idiotsthe campus brass wanting to get the university sued? Because when word of this did get out, it was just about bound to happen.

PS: Marxism is intellectualism

for stupid people – and, believe me: if you’ve got books by Stalin in your library and you’re using those books to look for ideas… yes, you are a stupid person.
Insty adds Or, you know, evil.

From Robb Allen on the new Ruger

At 2:00, Ruger plans on announcing their newest line of KelTec Clones. But what makes this revolutionary is not the pistol, but their patented “Precall” system.

5 minutes before the official release, Ruger will be recalling the LC9, signaling an unprecedented commitment to customer support.

I for one am amazed!
That there is some high-grade snark.

When he gets rolling...

(Pelosi)She is crazy, batshit crazy! I guarantee you that woman sleeps upside down!

That's found right at the end of this video; earlier he probably guaranteed himself a fatwa.

On the Wikileaks stuff,

I didn't see any legitimate way for us to prosecute him; foreign national, was not in the US, etc.(Manning, on the other hand, we can legitimately hang). There may be some kind of espionage law that can be used against him, but I don't know enough on the subject to say.

On the other side, I can definitely say Assange is a vile piece of dog vomit who was so busy playing games and pretending to be someone important that he couldn't take the time to, say, redact names and such that would get people killed. Or, more likely, he didn't care. "Not my problem, and I'm getting the publicity I want!" For example:
And so, where Mugabe's strong-arming, torture and assassination attempts have failed to eliminate the leading figure of Zimbabwe's democratic opposition, WikiLeaks may yet succeed. Twenty years of sacrifice and suffering by Tsvangirai all for naught, as WikiLeaks risks "collateral murder" in the name of transparency.

Oh, and let's not forget 'journalists' like the NYE' Times who've had no problem publishing all his releases(but wouldn't publish any of the CRU e-mails because 'they were wrongly obtained).

My God, that Ashley Smithwick is a threat! She actually

PUSHED ANOTHER STUDENT a year ago!

What do you want to bet this getting out was the somewhat veiled threat from the school weenies? Except she released the records herself, taking the fangs out of that.

This is what caused this line?
Dr. Moss said he read these records numerous times before making his decision about Smithwick, a decision he said is fair.
The earlier decision that, for a lunch bag mixup, she should be thrown out of school? That 'fair' decision?

I shall lead off this morning with a question

If this is so environmentally-friendly a way to dispose of your body, does a unicorn piss out the liquid nitrogen? Do the chemicals to dissolve the body magically appear in a jar, and go away in the same manner?


I'm not sure who ought to replace Michael Steele as head of the Stupid Party, but he SHOULD be replaced. Not only is he a dirtbag who helps the other side, he's apparently trying to claim some credit for the tea party movement(well, pissing people off to that level definitely helped the movement, but still).
And, just in case the Stupid Party hasn't figured this out, if they put another left-leaning Steele-type in the position, they can count on donations dropping even more.



Under the headline, "Construction Stops at Physician Hospitals," Politico reports today that "Physician Hospitals of America says that construction had to stop at 45 hospitals nationwide or they would not be able to bill Medicare for treatments." Stopping construction at doctor-owned hospitals might not seem like the best way to boost the economy or to promote greater access and choice in health care, but that exactly what Obamacare is doing.


And after that, I've got nothin'. Which usually doesn't stop me from making noise, but it has this time.

I've come to the conclusion that Japete isn't confused

or uncertain of the facts; she's a damned liar, period.

Airsoft, for Deity's sake!

I looked at the comments, and the last one was her: after multiple times having it pointed out how horrendously expensive any actual automatic or select-fire weapon is(let alone things like grenade launchers and grenades), the background checks and taxes and so on, she says she 'hopes' that things like this are hard to obtain...

Yeah, for law-abiding people, they are. For drug cartels who import them from overseas or further south(Central & South America), not so much.

In the last two days gas went up

another dime/gallon.

But we're not allowed to explore, let alone drill, in vast amounts of our territory*. While Obama helps Brazil drill, while Cuba and China are drilling in the Gulf.

Salazar ought to be incorporated into a drilling bit. And Sheriff Joe and Obama given- ah, let's not go there, I'm too pissed to be delicate in my language.


*And let us not forget, that in some places where it's not banned, they're effectively carrying out a ban by simply not giving approval to start drilling.

Schwarzenegger takes a tip from Obama

Obama sent Empty-Hat Salazar out to say "Oh, we decided to ban oil & gas exploration & drilling in these areas after all"; Schwarzenegger demonstrates a fine manner of cowardice and dirtbaggery in doing this:
So, how did Schwarzenegger leave office? By committing one last shameful act of back-scratching politics as usual and granting a commutation to the son of a Democrat political crony, former California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (his longtime collaborator on job-killing environmental regulations) .

Nunez’s privileged son, Esteban, was serving 16 years (already a reduced sentence resulting from a plea bargain) for his role in the vengeful stabbing/manslaughter of a college student, Luis Santos. Nunez and other defendants were involved in a conspiracy to cover up the crime, according to another member of their gang. Before he pleaded guilty, Nunez had his lawyers trying to blame the victim for his death. Oh, and there’s this damning piece of responsibility-evading crap from Nunez that was admitted as evidence before Nunez ducked trial:

“Gangsta rap made us do it.”
The family of the murder victim?
Santos, a software engineer in Concord in Northern California, said Esteban Nuñez “had already gotten lucky once” when prosecutors accepted a plea bargain that allowed him to avoid standing trial on murder charges, which could have led to a life sentence.

He said the family was not warned about the impending commutation and learned about it Sunday from reporters.

Absolutely friggin' disgusting.

Interesting piece of hardware

to be sure. I have a hard time buying the 'exact location' and 'even if the enemy moves' stuff. But giving troops a reasonably close vector toward where the shot came from, maybe even a range estimate... possible, I'd guess.

Remember Bill Holda? The university president

who made false statements about the Luby's massacre(among other things)?

Tam points to information that at least, unlike so many academics, he's apparently actually dealing with the facts and learning about guns.
However.
Tam, you don't have to worry about crow. To borrow from AT in comments,
This gentleman is an academic. An intelligent man in a responsible position who probably makes official position statements to his board, his faculty, his student body - and the media - on a regular basis.

So either he does so entirely out of his ass (idiot), or he intentionally makes false statements when he believes the ends justify his means (liar).

I applaud popgun for reaching out to give the doctor some actual experience and knowledge, and the doctor for taking it. Let's hope there has been a real change in his perspective that he will use to guide the young minds over which he has substantial sway, making "factual" statements backed by actual facts instead of the partisan dogma that so thoroughly saturates his profession.

But that doesn't mean he wasn't an idiot, or a liar, or both...when he gave that teevee interview.

And it doesn't mean you were wrong to say so.
Indeed. Yeah, maybe a bit harsh, but pretty accurate.