Lots of sad clowns among the "We don't want to take your guns

(as long as you're paying attention) boobs, as Sebastian notes.

“People do not want to be on the wrong side of this particular cultural divide,” said Rep. David Price, D-N.C., who supports tougher gun controls. “It’s too bad there’s not a more responsible national organization” to counteract the NRA, he said.

Ouch, that’s gotta hurt. Even I wouldn’t be that harsh. The Brady’s were worthy opponents in their heyday, it’s just that once the grass roots gun owners got pissed off and fired up, they had nothing to counter it.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey of California is another Democrat frustrated by the gun debate. When she asks colleagues why they don’t support tougher restrictions, she said, they reply, “You just don’t get it, Woolsey. You don’t have our districts.”

Now, as someone in comments points out, that "You don't have our districts" comment could be taken one of two ways:
It could mean they understand the people who elected them don't like the idea, or
It could mean they're standard "I want to stay in this office no matter what" politicians who won't vote for gun bans and restrictions unless they think it won't affect their future election chances to do so.
If it's the latter, those Democrats need to be watched closely, and reminded at every opportunity that voting for personal disarmament/restriction laws will get their fat ass thrown out of that office at the first opportunity.


Uncle points to this article on more women buying firearms and taking carry classes, which fits right in with the above: when women realize that a gun can be the best self-defense tool they can have, and they want them, they won't look kindly on politicians who want to take them away.


On a personal note, a while back I mentioned my daughter is going to New Orleans this summer on vacation, causing various people to enter comments along the lines of "You're letting her go THERE?!?" Well, a few days ago at the range I was speaking with one of the staff who used to be with the U.S. Marshall's Service. I mentioned it to her, and she told me the 'suggestions' her group had been given a couple of years back when they had a meeting down there: "Stay on brightly-lit streets, and stay in groups of at least three if possible" among others. And her first question: "Does she have a gun?" When I said yes, gun and a carry permit, she looked relieved. And yes, I did report this to daughter.

Clayton Cramer has two posts I'll point to: first, on the idiotic reaction of a bunch of locals to an armed robber being killed:
About 10 minutes before 6 p.m., Ersland said, two robbers wearing ski masks waited for someone to leave the pharmacy and then grabbed the open door and threw down a board to stop the door from closing.

The robbers went in cursing and yelling, ordering employees to give them money and drugs, Ersland said.

Two women who were working behind the counter ran for a back room where they would be safe, but Ersland said he couldn’t run. Ersland said he’s a veteran with disabilities from wounds he received in Operation Desert Storm, wears a cumbersome back brace and just had his latest back surgery six weeks ago.

"All of a sudden, they started shooting,” he said. "They were attempting to kill me, but they didn’t know I had a gun. They said, ‘You’re gonna die.’ That’s when one of them shot at me, and that’s when he got my hand.”
Ersland managed to shoot one goblin, who expired from wounds received, and ran the other off. Also their driver:
Outside the pharmacy, he said he saw what he thought was a third black male in a car with the engine running and reaching for what appeared to be a shotgun.

"I pulled out my ‘Judge’ and pointed it right between his eyes and he floored it,” Ersland said.
So you've got three people planning an armed robbery for money and drugs, and when people didn't cooperate(i.e., cower and plead) started trying to kill everyone; good guy fights back and wins. So what's the downside?
He also recalls the angry voices of people who gathered outside the pharmacy Tuesday night, shouting that he was a racist who unnecessarily took a life of the Seeworth Academy charter school student, Antwun Parker.

"There were a lot of black people gathered out there yelling and everything at my boss,” Ersland said.
These people are, to put it bluntly, a bunch of fucking idiots, semi-pro race warlord poverty pimps. Never mind the robbery, never mind trying to kill everyone in the store, a nasty white man had the nerve to defend himself and his employees and, because the dirtbags were black, that makes him a 'racist'. I'll bet you that if someone of his staff had been injured or killed and he decided to move the pharmacy, these same bastards would be calling him a racist for moving. Kind of like the idiots after the King riots in LA who burned and looted all the stores, and then whined and bitched because there was no place left to cash their welfare checks.

On the off-chance that one of you morons happens to run across this, I'll spell it out: when you offer violence to someone, they don't really care what color your skin is; they care about protecting themselves and those who depend on them. So screw you, you miserable bigots.


Next, he notes more on the sad clowns in the gun-ban movement:
A majority of Democrats in the House and Senate still typically come down on the side of gun control. But the fact that they have been outmaneuvered by Republicans on gun issues is rooted in the fact that recently swollen Democratic ranks include senators and House members who represent Western states and more rural areas where gun ownership is popular and deemed sacrosanct.

When those Democrats team up with Republicans, they constitute a clear majority in the House and Senate.
Translation: those Democrats ran saying they would, among other things, not strike at the 2nd Amendment, and they know damn well what'll happen if they do. Plus, a lot of those western and rural area Reps and Senators probably do strongly support the 2nd; some probably only got support from the national level Evil Party because they desperately wanted more 'D' labels in Congress, and right now I bet some of the Evil Party bigshots are regretting it.

I'll throw in another thought: a lot of those first-time Reps and Sens are catching hell over the bullcrap Obama & Co. have pushed on the budget, and the tea parties clued them in to just how pissed-off people are; you think they want to piss them off even more just to make Pelosi and Reid and Obama happy?


Ok, there's a third: he notes some information on the sideshow of 'stopping southbound guns at the border:
The findings? Wads of U.S. currency headed for Mexico, wedged into car doors, stuffed under mattresses, taped onto torsos, were sniffed out by dogs, seized by agents and locked away for possible investigations. No guns were found as the reporters watched; they rarely are.

"I do not believe we can even make a dent in [southbound smuggling] because that assumes the cartels are complete idiots, which they're not. Why in the world would they try to smuggle weapons and currency through a checkpoint when there are so many other options?" said Border Patrol Agent T.J. Bonner, president of the agents' union.
Why, indeed.

Also, note this on things seized March 12 to April 30:
• Fifty-one pieces of ammunition, weapons parts and guns, a fraction of the 2,000 weapons the Mexican government estimates are smuggled south every day.
We already know the Mexican government is full of crap. And 'pieces of ammunition, weapons parts', that sounds suspicious as hell. It's been noted that having a fired .22 casing in your vehicle will cause the Mexicans to arrest you; are they counting things like that, or a loose cartridge in this? Wouldn't surprise me. And 'weapons parts', that's an awful wide possible category; that could include a spring someone claims is a recoil or mag spring, for instance. These may be legitimate seizures, but until I know more I'd be very suspicious of wording like this.


Another personal note: for most practice I use handloads, with a mag or so of carry-equivalent ammo each session; keeps costs down and is easier on my hands. For quite a while I was using Hodgedon Clays powder, but I was running into a problem: I'd get some cartridges that had obviously gotten less powder, causing problems. I don't blame the press, it's that powder, I ran into the same thing using my Hornady powder measure and the single-stage press. With the single-stage, as charging preceeded setting a bullet in each case before seating you could hold the loading block up and look at powder levels to see if any looked a touch low, with the Dillon that's not an option. It did give some failure-drill practice when something didn't eject fully, but it was a pain. So I looked in the book and decided to try AA#5; it's a ball powder, which usually meters much more smoothly. About 150 rounds later, problem solved.

I'll note that other powders are as bad or worse than Clays. Unique, the powder I use for the factory-equivalent carry loads, is about as bad. I load those on the single-stage specifically so I can look at the cases and spot any low charges and re-throw them.

I think that about wraps it up for tonight.

Memorial Day

The lady calls her post on this "Don't talk to the furniture",

which pretty much covers this idiocy:
When the landlady of my Toronto apartment building said an outraged neighbour had filed a complaint about me over an apparently inappropriate hallway interaction with his wife, my mind raced through the countless conversations I've had with fellow tenants, none of which seemed a possible source of offence.

It turns out, it wasn't a salacious transaction that had caused the complaint, but rather a neighbourly and -- to me -- entirely forgettable greeting, little more than a brief "good morning" as I passed my neighbours on the way to work.

Still, it was enough of an affront for the man -- once a doctor somewhere in the Middle East, my landlady clarified -- to feel I had broken a cultural taboo. The incident started an awkward feud which has involved warnings not to repeat my indiscretion and one face-to-face shouting match, which included allusions to my impending death.
Oh, GOD! He said GOOD MORNING to the woman! He should die for that! Etc.
His Muslim upbringing has ingrained in him a sense of entitlement to demand I not speak directly to his wife; and my prairie upbringing has ingrained in me a duty to strive for polite cohesion with my neighbours.
'Multiculturialism' my ass; this guy moved to another country and is demanding that everyone conform to what HE wants. Which is, no other term for it, bullshit. And threatening the guy? I'm tempted to say that only happens in places where the moron figures the authorities are so 'PC at any cost' that they'll back him up instead of the one he threatened; in other places, it might happen once. Upon which the one threatened would inform the moron that if he tried something, he'd be leaking air and bodily fluids through numerous mid- to large-caliber punctures. Or if he simply called them, the police would say something like "I don't care what it's like back where you came from, you can't threaten people's lives here for saying 'Good morning' to your wife."

My landlady, who has handled the complaint with tittering trepidation, hasn't helped dispel the friction. She has told me to adhere to the demands because the man "could be dangerous," directing me to literally turn my back to the couple as they pass, never make eye contact and never hold the elevator for them, no matter what.
Which indicates to me that the guy scared hell out of her, possibly threatened her; we'll never know.

This is absolute garbage, and brought on by well-meaning and/or submissive fools who think the way to deal with a threat is to bend over. Which is fine for a servant or a slave, not for one man or woman to another.

Found thanks to Five Feet of Fury

I have no idea who to thank for dinner, (updated)

as I saved the recipe but forgot where it was.

Yesterday, somebody pointed to somebody doing interesting things with meat and tomatoes and such, so I hied myself over there and found a recipe for carne guisada, which I've never had. And it sounded good. So I checked the freezer and found a chunk of rump roast(a little bigger than called for, but what the hell), and picked up some tomatoes- had everything else- and made it today. Which is why I'm stuffed; it was good. And there's leftovers for tomorrow at work, which makes it even better.

I'm not going to post the recipe, as I'm hoping desperately to find the blog again so I can point you there. I will say he used meat cut to bite-size pieces; I think next time I'll make long thin slices and make the gravy thicker, the better to wrap up in the tortilla with a pile of cheese.

Update: it's here, found thanks to James. After the sauce was simmering, I added a can of chopped green chilis and a little of Dad's jalapeno relish, just to tweak the flavor a bit.

It seems Rep. Waxman(Socialist Weenie-CA) is an even bigger

jerk than I thought.

A major critic of the guidance, Rep Henry Waxman (D-Calif), chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, urged the Obama administration “to carefully reexamine” the policy. Waxman accused Bush’s political appointees of giving drug companies “a long-coveted parting gift.”

“Despite revelations that drug companies manipulate medical journal articles to exaggerate the benefits and downplay the risks of their drugs, the guidance gives companies a green light to promote unapproved uses of their products by handing out these journal articles,” he said. “This fun­da­mentally undermines the requirement that companies prove to the FDA that each new use is safe and effective.”

If I may enlighten Mr. Waxman: When the FDA approves a drug they have already determined, within rather narrow though not infallible limits, that the drug is safe and effective; off-label use is an attempt to leverage that approval to treat additional ailments that are currently inadequately treated by approved medications. Waxman seems to operate under a sophisticated moral guidance system: Drug companies bad, FDA good. The pace of innovation in Medicine is already much slower than our technological progress would suggest it should be because of our regulatory environment. If drug companies are going to be required to spend billions to justify off-label uses of their products, even greater stagnation will ensue.

Yes, but it'll be stagnation that Waxman & Co. will be in charge of; and even if it screws things up, they want desperately to be in charge of it(and anything else they can be). And when they screw things up, why, they'll blame the companies(again) and threaten them(again) and deny any culpability in screwing it up.

Kind of like Barney Frank & Co. and the Fannie & Freddie mess.

The Humane Society of the United States:

"Don't you talk about us, unless it's good!"
To back up a bit, for some time now, I have been concerned about the radical animal rights philosophy being mainstreamed by HSUS. (I'm hardly alone.) Among other things, HSUS President Wayne Pacelle has said he wants to stop all hunting, and has spoken in favor of getting rid of all domestic animals:

We have no ethical obligation to preserve the different breeds of livestock produced through selective breeding. ...One generation and out. We have no problems with the extinction of domestic animals. They are creations of human selective breeding...Wayne Pacelle - Former National Director of Fund for Animals.

Under Pacelle, the HSUS hired notorious former Animal Liberation Front activist JP Goodwin, ("arrested and convicted for being the ringleader of a crew that vandalized fur retailers in multiple states during the 1990s") and placed him in a prominent position.

What annoys me the most about the HSUS, though, is not the pronouncements of its president or his hiring practices, but the fact that a lot of people still think the HSUS runs your local humane society, and that money given to them goes directly to animal care. Nothing could be further from the truth. HSUS is a PETA-style lobbying group, except they've got a wonderfully mainstream-sounding name and are therefore largely unburdened by the baggage that PETA's brand name carries.
...

WSB-TV is a local ABC affiliate in Atlanta, and not long after their story on HSUS aired, all hell broke loose. Not only was the story was taken down from YouTube for "copyright" issues, but the written report was pulled from the affiliate's website:

A cone of silence continues to descend over the original WSB-TV story on HSUS fundraising practises that continues to support the rumor of the unleashing of the HSUS legal team on WSB-TV for their researched & fact-supported story.

As I previously mentioned, the original story been removed from the WSB-TV website. When I wrote to WSB-TV that I was saddened to see the story removed from their website, I received the following response. A response that has been sent out to others who wrote in to WSB-TV over their disappointment as seeing the story vanish from view.

"Thank you for writing to Talk2Us. We appreciate hearing that you were engaged by the report about HSUS. We put up and pull down stories as part of our daily editorial process. We are working on an additional story about HSUS. - WSB-TV"

Its an odd response. How often does a network pull a story after less than 24hrs where the viewing is accelerating and the comments are still being logged at a rapid pace. (mostly supporting the article I might add. I have copies of the comments, just in case this is contested) Furthermore, the Youtube copies of the WSB-TV video have all been taken down by WSB-TV request through a copyright claim. Funny thing though, at last my count there were 254 Youtube video links that were WSB-TV video. Yet the video that they have taken down is the one with the HSUS investigation? Considering the current evidence, I fear a much less accurate follow up. I hope to be wrong.

The author's claim about other WSB YouTube video links being untouched is absolutely correct; there are hundreds of WSB videos, and many of them are over a year old. If the issue is "copyright," why is it being enforced selectively, and only with a story considered sensitive by a gigantic lobbying organization?

Take a look at the whole thing; I'd heard some bits & pieces about this organization, but nothing like this; even forcing the Google cache of this stuff to be removed? Damn, they really don't want people to hear anything they don't like, do they?

Rep. Henry Waxman

(Evil Party Enviroweenie Statist), it seems, is rather foggy on the details of the Rape The Economy & Control The PeopleCap & Trade bill he's sponsoring, and doing his best to shove through no matter what anyone thinks.

Don't you just love it that these clowns want to shove this crap down our throats in such a hurry that they can't even bother to read the damn thing themselves? Or even, y'know, know what's in it?

104, 366 reasons the US has no damn need to apologize

to Europe.

Thanks to James for the link.

Remember the H-S Precision idiocy?

Stingray talked to them- if you can call it that- at the convention. They said "It didn't happen."
“No comment. That never happened. He was never affiliated with us. No comment. Move along. We do not include product testimonials.” Added emphasis mine. He continued to chant the “no comment” talisman while making sure the other two H-S Precision employees got the notion that they should keep quiet too.
So I guess that wasn't actually a testimonial on their publication?
“What about the apology? Your company didn’t even — ” At this point, a white haired gentleman male stepped forward, visibly angry.

“What about an apology? Did they apologize for killing a US Marshall?”
“Did Vickie Weaver shoot him? Did the baby do it?”
“Well she was there! She knew damn well — ” at this point he was very animated and going red in the face. The original company spokesman tossed a few more “No comment!”s at me and physically removed the other individual to the back of the booth. The product rep I originally spoke to informed me that the interview was over and told me to leave the booth.
Wonderful isn't it? Just a bit, ah, testy about the non-existent testimonial, aren't they? It's apparently done something for business, all right:
It’s also worth noting that at the H-S Precision booth all I had to do to speak to a representative was interrupt his coffee and conversation with the other reps. At the McMillan booth, they were popular enough that even though they had roughly four times the staff, I still had to wait about five minutes before it was my turn to get anybody’s ear. I had a good view of H-S Precision’s booth for a solid 20 minutes while standing in a line for something unrelated to this post, and during that entire time I still didn’t see anybody approach them.

It's still amazing to me that someone in such a company didn't tell whoever had the idea of that testimonial "Sir, have you considered the possible reaction to this?" Or that, if someone raised it, they discounted it. Either case, they're paying the price.

"We're from the government,

you're screwed."
Finally, we had turned to the EPA for help figuring they would know who they licensed to haul these materials, and could point us to the closest one. 'We understand your situation' they said. They'd come and help us, they said. When they got here, they didn't help at all. What they did was count barrels, and slapped a fine on us for each barrel over our licensed limit, and left telling us that they'd be back next month, for another round of fines if we couldn't prove we'd gotten rid of them legally."


Is it just me, or is there an object lesson there? "We're from the government. We're here to help."
Read the whole damn thing, lost jobs and all.

Long, busy day so far,

and whether it's from doing, from not enough sleep or the weather changing, I ache from roughly mid-back to my feet. And since I haven't caught anyone sneaking around hitting me with a stick, has to be one of the above.

Rafferty the found puppyis doing well. Just slightly bigger than before, but now starting to eat softened dry food, actually playing with Itzl the long-hair chihuahua and generally acting like a 5-6 week puppy. I tried to get one of him and Itzl playing, but couldn't catch them still long enough for my camera to click before they'd move. Sometimes a considerable amount. That's daughter's hands, to give you an idea of size.

I have discovered that if, after scratching his back, I grab him around the body and wobble him a bit, he starts making noises that sound like he's off his meds(maybe a relation to Lawdog's kitten?) I am informed that if rolled on his back and suitably annoyed, he opens his mouth, sticks out his tongue and generally sounds and looks like a stand-in from The Exorcist. Which is kind of disturbing in a critter I can hold in both hands with room to spare.


I mentioned I was going to make a set of smooth walnut grips for the Victory Model, and they're coming along pretty well. I decided to make a set for the Target Masterpiece, too; the originals* just don't fit my hand very well. Here's the progress so far, Target on top:
The Victory grips have a couple of coats of my favorite finish**, the Target grips are just as I finished sanding them today.

It's been a fair while since I did a set of these, and they're not fitted as nicely as they should be. Nothing horrible, but definitely not quite right. They lock solidly into place, and fit the hand nicely, so I'll just do a bit of trying and sanding on the Target grips and then finish them, also. What I really need for this is an old Model 10 frame that's cracked and unusable for a firearm, so I can mount the grips on the frame and do a lot of the sanding/scraping without worrying about scratching the metal.

The Paseo Arts Festival is on this weekend in the Paseo District(also known- at least by me- as the Artsy Sector, or the Artsy-Fartsy District when annoyed). Usually a fairly nice fair, but about the time I was thinking of going this evening I heard thunder. It being a holiday weekend WITH a festival, of course Ma Nature has to remind us of her august presence, but why she has to do it by peeing all over us, I don't know; that hardly seems very august.

And the storm is moving northeast to southwest, the reverse of usual direction. Is Ma Nature bipolar?


Ever see Special Unit 2? Was only on for one season. SU2 is a unit of the Chicago PD(why is it always Chicago? Does the Daley presence bring even supernatural dirtbags to the area?) that deals with 'links'; their name for vampires, godlets, scarecrows and other critters of all sorts that show up in the area. Friend, a while back when the Sci-Fi Channel was showing it, taped a bunch of episodes for me(daughter says "That's the job I want!"); last night was watching one, where the male lead has been sentanced to an anger management class. Which led to things like
Pretty Psychologist: "And what happened?"
Cop: "Well, I ran this obnoxious, smelly, disgusting little... troll down the alley-"
PS: "You see, when you call someone names, you dehuminize them, to excuse your violence."
Pause
Cop: "What if he really IS a troll?"
Various discussion, ending with "So I hung him from a lamppost and used him for a speed bag."
PS: "What did you feel when you hit him?"
Cop: thoughtful pause, "A dull thud."

And later,
PS: "Officer, what do you think brought you here?"
Cop: "Honestly?... Witnesses."
Not a bad show, wish I could get the season on DVD.

Speaking of tv, when the Digital Revolution came along, I decided to give it a couple of weeks and see if I missed it enough to buy either a converter box(and I've heard some bad stories about how well they work) or a new tv. So far, the only thing I miss is Big Bang Theory on Mondays, and that's not worth buying the stuff for. Especially since I can just get it on DVD in a few months. I wonder if the networks have any idea how many people just said "Screw it" and gave up the tv for anything other than playing DVDs and tapes? And I wonder what it's costing them in the long run? Or if they really care?

Ok, the weather weenies are currently saying 40% chance of rain through Monday, which basically means "We don't know if it will or not." Considering the aches, I know if I'm going out tonight. Zorba's Mediterranean restaurant has flamenco dancers on Friday night, belly dancers on Saturday, but I'd have to shower to be presentable in company, and tonight it's just not worth it.


*Yes the originals- and on the TM they ARE the originals- are being carefully bagged and stored.
**Minwax Antique Oil Finish. No stain, just a finish that actually soaks into the surface, doesn't just wipe on top. Takes about a week to do the full job with it, but it's hard, protective and brings out the grain nicely.

As I recall, isn't Sen. Barbara Boxer(Hypocrite-CA)

one of those "I think guns are awful and should be banned" politicians who turned out to have a carry permit? Makes her saying crap like this even more interesting*:

“It is a shame,” said Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California. “But you have to come to a realization around here that at this point in time, the NRA gets the votes.”

She goes on to add, "I will just vote my conscience on those amendments and speak out until people get a hold of their senses."

You mean, gets hold of their senses and see what a miserable sad clown you are? And throw your butt out of that seat?

Every time you hear of some new treaty or UN idea a politician wants us to bow down to,

I want you to think of this:
...But it is the absence of power, it seems to me, that is an important part of public outrage. Westminster has given up so much power - to Europe, to quangos, to judges - that people wonder what they are paying for. Half the time, a big issue comes up and politicians say it's not their responsibility...

The readiness of politicians to relinquish power amazes me. Take the European constitution, now rebranded as the Lisbon treaty. I read all the drafts of that document, spoke to lawyers and became convinced that its calculated opacity was a charter for the creeping takeover of national policy by bureaucrats and judges. There were brilliant MPs who could debate every inch of the detail - David Miliband, Gisela Stuart, David Heathcoat-Amory, Chris Huhne. But I met others who hadn't even read the document and looked incredulous that I had...

Many decent MPs are dismayed at being lumped together with the crooks. But one of the reasons public anger goes a lot deeper than Sir Peter Viggers's duck pond is because we feel we can no longer change our laws by voting out politicians. The EU machine marches on, constraining everything from the future of the Post Office to what vitamins we can take. The promised referendum on the Lisbon treaty has been ditched. The quango nanny state has acquired a momentum of its own. Politicians have given away powers that they held in trust for the people. They cannot be altogether surprised if people now lump them all together in impotent fury.

and this:
Eighteen "phantom" MEPs [Members of the European Parliament] will be elected on full pay and perks next month despite not being able to start work for up to two years due to Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon Treaty. The extra candidates will be chosen in the European Union elections on June 4 despite the agreement, which increases the number of MEPs from 736 to 754, remaining unsigned. Amid confusion over when and how they will take up their seats, the European Parliament has decided to give the MEPs only "observer" status from next year. The deal will mean they can draw full salaries and allowances at an annual cost of over £6 million without any legislative duties to carry out. The 18 MEPs, from 12 EU countries, including Britain's West Midlands region, will be paid more than £76,000 a year, with staff and office allowances worth £210,000. They will also be entitled to tax-free allowances of £255 for every day of their limbo existence in Brussels and can claim back business class travel. Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, said: "Welcome to virtual politics, this has to be the political expenses scandal to end all expenses scandals. "The perfect politician for today's elite, one that takes wages and does no work at all."

This is the kind of crap that Obama and the 'progressives' would LOVE to tie us up in.

Damn, it's a hard time on the critters

Daughter's cat died last night. Keegan was a big orange furball she'd found dumped as a kitten. Had some kind of apparent birth defect in his hips that caused his legs to splay out a bit. Which didn't keep him from being able to get on the couch, bed, etc., and play once he'd grown a bit.

She's taking this hard, and I've got to help bury him. Pretty good critter overall, he'll be missed.

A few things I have to point out,

as my contribution to the "LOOK AT THIS CRAP!!" factor of the blogosphere. First, the Federal Trade Commission is mulling over guidelines that would require bloggers to disclose when they're writing about products they've been given, sponsor's products, or are getting paid to write about a particular product. The FTC says the new rules are necessary because people are increasingly turning to blogs for product information, and their unregulated nature makes them ripe for abuse.
Translation: "There's somebody out there doing something and we have no control over it! We've got to do something!"


Heard about this yesterday but forgot: Obama approves UAE civil nuclear deal. As the man says, They get cheap great nuclear power. We get conservation, windmills, solar panels, and silly lightbulbs.


Breda had a fun time with those wonderful people of the TSA. She has the followup on it. As Oleg Volk put it,


Commonsense also takes note of a review of the new Honda smugmobile:
So here goes. It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more.
The biggest problem, and it’s taken me a while to work this out, because all the other problems are so vast and so cancerous, is the gearbox. For reasons known only to itself, Honda has fitted the Insight with something called constantly variable transmission (CVT).
But wait! There's MORE!
And the sound is worse. The Honda’s petrol engine is a much-shaved, built-for-economy, low-friction 1.3 that, at full chat, makes a noise worse than someone else’s crying baby on an airliner. It’s worse than the sound of your parachute failing to open. Really, to get an idea of how awful it is, you’d have to sit a dog on a ham slicer.


I have come to the conclusion that there must be interbreeding between New Orleans PD and Chicago PD:
Chicago police have issued Mark Geinosky 24 parking tickets in 16 months. They've given him as many as four in one day, and all have been issued to a vehicle he no longer owns and tag that is no longer active. Geinosky has gotten them all dismissed. But he says someone is out to get him, and he wants to know why. Chicago Tribune columnist Jon Yates reports 13 of the tickets were written by one officer, all at exactly 10 p.m., and all 13 were sequential in number, meaning the officer ticketed no one but Geinosky from that ticket book over a period of several months.


And finally, just to tick off the PC-types, some background on the (un)sainted Milk:
The bottom line is that Milk gets too much credit simply for being gay and too little credit for being just another creep politician.

It's just so wonderful out there,

what with the FCC saying your router may give them the 'right to enter your house, Obama's defensive speech on Gitmo and interrogation, more information on the people in NYC who wanted to kill Jews and American troops, and all the other stuff.

The FCC, you say?
Have a Wi-Fi router? If you do — and it uses an unlicensed frequency — you could be subject to a warrantless search of your home.

Federal Communications Commission guidelines stipulate that the agency can enter property when it suspects radio frequency energy is being abused. The provision, which was originally intended to aid the monitoring of unlicensed radio and tv stations, now has a broader range of application as more consumers join the wi-fi ranks.

“Anything using RF energy — we have the right to inspect it to make sure it is not causing interference,” FCC spokesman David Fiske told Wired for an article Thursday. The FCC spokesman said the scope included Wi-Fi routers.
Mr. Fiske, that's not a 'right': you're claiming the POWER to invade someone's home because of their router("All power to the Government!", etc.). Which, I can tell you, will not go over well.


On the NYC terrorists,
Payen was apparently staying in a rundown house that neighbors say was known as a home for parolees. Penniless and jobless, he had been fighting deportation and seeking custody of his 3-year-old son, said Hamin Rashada, an assistant imam at the Masjid al-Ikhlas mosque, where authorities say the informant first met Cromitie in June 2008.(so he wasn't here legally? Wow, illegal alien terrorists, who'd imagine such a thing?)

Cromitie was burning with anger about the U.S. war in Afghanistan, where his parents had lived before he was born, according to the criminal complaint. He told the informant he was interested in jihad and "doing something to America" and was crestfallen that "the best target (the World Trade Center) was hit already," the complaint said.

In the same conversation, Cromitie said: "I hate those mother-------, those f------ Jewish b------ .... I would like to get (destroy) a synagogue," according to the complaint.

In one conversation, Cromitie said he longed to shoot Jews in the head as they walked on the street near a synagogue, the informant told authorities. In another conversation with the informant, Onta Williams said the U.S. military was killing Muslims, "so if we kill them here with IEDs and Stingers, it is equal," according to court papers.

And isn't it interesting we keep hearing things like this in connection with people like these:
New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said he believed the defendants knew each other from their time behind bars. Relatives said Payen, David Williams and Onta (AWN'-tay) Williams were introduced to Islam in prison, where conversion to the faith is common.

"The Onta I know wouldn't do something like this, but the new Onta, yeah," said Richard Williams, an uncle. "He wasn't raised this way. All this happened when he became a Muslim in prison."


I will leave it to JustOneMinute to deal with Obama's speech.
I have just flipped on the live coverage of The One's speech on national security and my goodness - peevish Obama seems really irritated with us for expecting him to deal with these issues. As a good (and now abashed) citizen I almost want to send him some sort of apology note. Almost.


Connected to the NYC terrorists and Obama wanting to (just like Bush) keep the Gitmo detainees somewhere, Michelle Malkin has this:
A brief refresher course for the Left’s amnesiacs about the festering jihadi virus in our jails and overseas:

In 2005, Bush administration officials busted a terrorist plot to attack infidels at military and Jewish sites in the Los Angeles on the fourth anniversary of 9/11 or the Jewish holy days. It was devised by militant Muslim converts of Jam’iyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh (Arabic for “Assembly of Authentic Islam”) who had sworn allegiance to violent jihad at California’s New Folsom State Prison.

Jose Padilla, the convicted terror conspirator, converted to Islam during a stint at a Broward County, Fla., jail and reportedly fell in with terrorist recruiters after his release. Convicted Shoe Bomber Richard Reid converted to Islam with the help of an extremist imam in a British prison.

Aqil Collins, a self-confessed jihadist turned FBI informant, converted to Islam while doing time in a California juvenile detention center. At a terrorist camp in Afghanistan, he went on to train with one of the men accused of kidnapping and beheading Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

In East Texas, inmates were recruited with a half-hour videotape featuring the anti-Semitic rants of California-based Imam Muhammad Abdullah, who claims that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were actually carried out by the Israeli and U.S. governments.

Federal corrections officials told congressional investigators during the Bush years “that convicted terrorists from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing were put into their prisons’ general population , where they radicalized inmates and told them that terrorism was part of Islam.”


And now, it being that time of year, I must go out and make tactical strikes on some of the stuff that, growing like the weeds some of them are, is getting into and through the fence and otherwise being naughty vegetation.

Been kind of busy, so a number of things to catch up on(bad language alert for the first part)

So the editors in Congress have passed 'credit card reform', which is causing the companies to think about screwing people who actually pay in full and on time. Yeah, that's going to work.
People who routinely pay off their credit card balances have been enjoying the equivalent of a free ride, he said, because many have not had to pay an annual fee even as they collect points for air travel and other perks.
To Mr. Robertson, and every clown saying things like this: fuck you. Every time someone uses a card, you make money from the fee you charge the merchants(that's why a lot of places which sell firearms and ammo have two prices: cash and credit card, the latter to cover the fee for the credit card company). You, you miserable little worm, have been 'making out like a bandit' for years, and now you want to insult me and screw me over for handling my debts on time? I repeat, fuck you. You start charging me interest from the moment I buy something? You start charging me an annual fee? I'll cut up the card, close the account and use either a debit card or cash, and then you're getting NOTHING from me.

YOU are the people who decided to give points and whatever; if it's not affordable anymore, then inform every customer "We're not going to give points for purchases anymore." The 'perks' aren't affordable? Inform your customers, and drop them. Stop playing the Obama game and telling me that because I don't spend money I don't have, and don't make payments late, and don't default on what I owe, that I'm going to be screwed to take care of the people who do. You'll lose me as a customer, and then you get squat.


Someone who, more than 90% of the time, I'm very happy to call one of my senators, has given the Brady Ban Guns Group and the Violence Policy Center a massive case of hemorrhoids:
The Bush Administration rule required among other things that:
The gun owner have a concealed carry license.
The gun owner carry a handgun concealed.
The state in which the park was located had to allow carry in state parks. (Not 100% sure about this).

The Brady Campaign sued and successfully blocked this in the federal courts.

Coburn’s amendment goes much further:

The Secretary of the Interior shall not promulgate or enforce any regulation that prohibits an individual from possessing a firearm including an assembled or functional firearm in any unit of the National Park System or the National Wildlife Refuge System if–
(1) the individual is not otherwise prohibited by law from possessing the firearm; and
(2) the possession of the firearm is in compliance with the law of the State in which the unit of the National Park System or the National Wildlife Refuge System is located.

Thus Arizonans without a license can now carry any firearm openly in their national parks and Texans can now carry rifles and shotguns openly (and handguns in their cars without a license) in their national parks since those activities are in compliance with the law outside the Park.

This must burn up the Brady Campaign - they won a battle and lost a much bigger war!
As I recall, the measure to ban any new machine guns from becoming available to citizens was passed by slipping it into another bill; so the same method screws the gun-banners. It comes around, people.


Let's see, an extortionist uses Alinsky tactics to mess with bankers. And I'm sure feels all warm and snuggly inside that he's screwing with people in the name of deadbeats. Note this from the comments:
Mr. Marks had better pray that the lenders he demonizes never wake up one days and decide, yeah, they’re really as eeeeeeevvilll as Marks claims they are. Because, if they do, Marky-Mark may well end his days in a car trunk out in the Jersey weeds.

Unwritten Alinsky rule: Your tactics will only work as long as the other side is willing to play by them. The day two large guys named “Paulie” and “Sal” show up in your driveway, all bets are off.
One of these days, an awful lot of 'activists' are going to find out that this crap works both ways; they're going to start finding their personal lives and connections being plastered all over town. And it wouldn't surprise me of some who get particularly nasty find themselves facing the same kind of crap from people sick of them.

Speaking of 'sick of them', a while back I read A Slobbering Love Affair, Bernard Goldberg's book on the major media and their sucking up to Obama. This is near the end:
Caddell worries that some day a demagogue is going to come along, somebody who makes Huey Long look like a shut-in. Somebody, Caddell told me, “who gets up at the start of his campaign and says, ‘I want you to see the press. They are the enemy of the American people. They will do everything they can to stop me because they want to stop YOU.’ And the American people will believe it. What if this is the most dangerous man that ever came along? Nobody will care what the press says.”

And THAT, my friends, is why the corruption of the media matters. The press has constitutional protections for one man reason: to keep watch over a powerful government. The fundamental job of journalists is to look out for US- the American people! If nobody cares what the press says, journalists will be watchdogs in name only. They may bark from time to time, but nobody will listen. And their weakness will make it easy for a corrupt government to get away with murder. THAT is the danger we all face when the mainstream media go on a noble mission to make history. THAT is what can happen when the media, like that liberal professor at American University in Washington, believe that their role is not simply to report the news, fairly and accurately, but to EFFECT THEIR KIND OF CHANGE IN SOCIETY.

This time, they really screwed up!
Yeah, they did. Some of them have known for years that they(up to that point) and their colleagues(still) did; many are still doing it, because they either don't care that more and more people discard them as untrustworthy, or think that The Obama will somehow make it right by screwing with the new media. And some see themselves as 'saving us from ourselves' by slanting the news/selective reporting; after all, they know what we should be allowed to hear. Some, I think, have truly realized how they've screwed the pooch and are really worried about it. But, like I told the kids years ago, when you destroy the trust someone had in you, it takes a long damn time to try to get it back; you may never get it back. And it's your own damn fault.

And, as various people have pointed out, what happens when these media weenies start facing the same kind of crap they pull? When some politician or businessman or plain guy who's been screwed over by them starts investigating the reporter'sjournalists' private life? And starts spreading everything that can be found about his finances and his personal life and his family around?* They're not going to like it, and they won't have a leg to stand on for bitching about it, because it's simply the same garbage they use on people, used on them. There's been a few bits and pieces of it, like when Ann Coulter put out the facts on that jackass Olbermann's 'ivy-league school'; the one he actually attended, not the one he kept claiming. Bastard didn't like it; neither will a lot of other media weenies when someone starts digging.


A plot to bomb Jewish centers and military targets broken up by the NYPD and FBI doing the kind of thing they're actually supposed to do, and are good at when they do it.
Agents and police watched Wednesday night as the suspects allegedly planted what they thought were bombs outside two Jewish community centers in Riverdale, a Bronx, New York neighborhood. In one case the suspected terrorists planted a bomb inside a parked car. However, officials said the suspects were actually using fake explosives given to them in an earlier sting operation to make sure they didn't get their hands on real bombs.

"The bombs had been made by the FBI technicians, they were totally inert, no one was ever at risk," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
...
The FBI said the Muslim suspects were angry and full of hate for America.

"Hatred of the West. The leader of the group, James Cromitie was concerned about deaths at the hands of the U.S. military in Afghanistan," and also expressed anti-Jewish sentiment, Joseph Demarest the head of the New York FBI said.
The fun part about this?
"It shows you can't let your guard down," Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said. "They did intend to use car bombs by remote control but the bombs the informant sold them were duds."

“I have spoken to both the New York office of the FBI and Commissioner Kelly and I want to commend them both on an outstanding job. They have told me they have been monitoring this group for some time and that the men arrested did not have any connection to other terrorists," Schumer added.
Yeah it's great when something in NYEffin'C is stopped, isn't it, Schumer? So why do you so bitch and whine and threaten about trying to find and track terrorists the rest of the time?


Let's note that while the Obama administration is basically renaming lots of Bush policies and keeping them, he's also nominating people like Koh to positions where they can screw this country over.


"Was it something I said? Or wrote?"


On a personal note, I'll be retiring soon from the place I've been working for a bunch of years. Which is nice, though it's going to be strange. I have noticed, however, that when a lot of people find out you hear the story about "George, he retired a while back. Was really happy, then he had that stroke/heart attack/died." Kind of "You'll enjoy it, right up until they bury you. Or check you into the care facility."

Ah well, I've got grocery shopping to do.


*These people we'll have to call 'journalists'; they're very sorry excuses for reporters.

How the government bailout works

Greener Grass...

It’s important in life to reach out, to strive for greater achievements, to go for that greener grass that is on the other side of the fence. But one must also be careful,
Sometimes you can reach too far!

But when you find yourself over-extended and you're stuck in a situation that you can't get out of, there is one thing you should always remember.......

Your Government is behind you, and there to help bail you out, in their own special way!

I'd not read any of Terry Pratchett's work before

Night Watch, but I'm going to have to look up more of his work. One of the reasons is things like this Watchman ruminating on his situation:
Swing, though, started in the wrong place. He didn’t look around, and watch, and learn, and then say, “This is how people are, how do we deal with it?” No, he sat and thought: “This is how people ought to be, how do we change them?” And that was a good enough thought for a priest but not for a copper, because Swing’s patient, pedantic way of operating had turned policing on its head.

There had been that Weapons Law, for a start. Weapons were involved in so many crimes that, Swing reasoned, reducing the number of weapons HAD to reduce the crime rate.

Vimes wondered if he’d sat up in bed in the middle of the night and hugged himself when he’d dreamed THAT one up. Confiscate all weapons, and crime would go down. It made sense. It would have worked, too, if only there had been enough coppers- say, three per citizen.

Amazingly, quite a few weapons were handed in. The flaw, though was one that had somehow managed to escape Swing, and it was this: criminals don’t obey the law. It’s more or less a requirement for the job. They had no particular interest in making the streets safer for anyone except themselves. And they couldn’t believe what was happening. It was like Hogswatch every day.

Some citizens took the not-unreasonable view that something had gone a bit askew if only naughty people were carrying arms. And they got arrested in large numbers. The average copper, when he’d been kicked in the nadgers once too often and has reason to believe that his bosses don’t much care, has an understandable tendency to prefer to arrest those people who won’t instantly try to stab him, especially if they act a bit snotty and wear more expensive clothes than he personally can afford. The rate of arrests shot right up, and Swing had been very pleased about that.

Admittedly, most of the arrests had been for possessing weaponry after dark, but quite a few had been for assaults on the Watch by irate citizens. That was Assault On A City Official, a very important and despicable crime, and, as such, far more important than all these thefts that were going on everywhere.

It wasn’t that the city was lawless. It has plenty of laws. It just didn’t offer many opportunities not to break them. Swing didn’t seem to have grasped the idea that the system was supposed to take criminals and, in some rough-and-ready fashion, force them into becoming honest men. Instead, he’d taken honest men and turned them into criminals. And the Watch, by and large, into just another gang.
Damn, that sounds familiar, doesn't it?

President Obama has a history of not seeming to understand

that there really is reason for him to control what he says, as in the fact that the President jokingly threatening people with the IRS isn't very damn funny. And V-P Biden has a history of spouting off in inappropriate and sometimes downright stupid ways. Which now include letting out classified information, apparently without a second thought.

And, considering Biden, do we have any idea what else he may have blown the cover on that the media just hasn't reported on?