So the next time someone starts the "Warren Buffett says rich people

aren't taxed enough!" crap, bring up some of this. Here's one of my favorites:
Did you know that the life insurance lobby is actively lobbying to restore the estate tax?

Why would the life insurance industry care about that? It turns out that ten percent of life insurance industry revenue is related to the estate tax. Wealthy people take out life insurance in order to reduce estate taxes because when you die, your life insurance payout doesn't count as part of your estate.

Did you know that Warren Buffett owns six life insurance companies? Did you know he supports the estate tax? You do now.

Warren Buffett isn't just noted as an owner of life insurance companies and a supporter of the estate tax. He's also noted as a buyer of family businesses. As Dick Patten shows, these two business strategies support each other.

Couple of notes from (fG)Britain

First, it's supposed to be IMPOSSIBLE! for this to happen; such arms are banned from all but the government!

Second, a flat horrible multiple murder; no guns involved, so apparently(according to some) that makes it not as bad.


And unrelated to the above, but I want to post it before I lose it,
I note that the Federal government managed to put together a raid on an organic food outfit that sells only to selected customers who know precisely what they are buying, and dumped 800 gallons of raw milk that no one claimed was contaminated: but it wasn’t licensed. Your Deficit Dollars at work. We had to borrow money from the Chinese to protect you from that raw milk and all those vegetables.

Hadn't thought about it but that IS

a pretty good idea

Isn't it wonderful what the left has planned

for September?
The term “Day(s) of Rage” is the product of Chicago’s Weathermen, led by Obama workmate Bill Ayers and cohabitants.

This Day of Rage speaks of non-violence, yet plays up the violent terrorism of the current rioting proceeding in Great Britain. It is eschewed by a disclaimer put up since this article first posted, but it is featured, pronounced, highlighted, and utilized on the Europeanrevolution.net site. It’s kind of like “good cop, bad cop,” only played by the robbers.
And arsonists and vandals.

Especially on the bike, I get nervous when I see a vehicle in front of me

run over something that bounces. Or skids. After seeing this

I'm even nervouser


Found at that somewhat unsocialized Irishmans place

"President Obama’s approval ratings are so low

now, Kenyans are accusing him of being born
in the United States ....”

Rough terrain

Sondra pointed to this story: Boy Scout got separated from his group and lost, but did some right things and is fine. Brought a couple of things to mind.

I've heard people express amazement that someone could actually get really lost in Oklahoma; for some reason they think it's all rolling hills. Well, depending on where you are we've got some actual sandy desert, dry rocky hills(worn down over ages from mountains), grassland and in the east/southeast some of the nastiest forested hill country you'll run into. Also some pretty swampy areas, and did you know we have alligators?

In 1977 three Girl Scouts were murdered at a camp in northeast OK; there was a suspect, but through a combination of terrain, him knowing how to live in the woods and a lot of Indians suspected of giving at least passive help("I haven't seen anything") trying to catch him was a first-class cast-iron bitch. At one point they found a little cave where he'd been hiding for a while, and a bunch of media weenies started demanding to see it and "Why didn't you find this before?" So they drove them to the nearest point a road came to it and led them through the hot, humid, stickery, mosquito/chigger/tick-infested woods(we'll ignore the snakes for now*) to the place. After which one reporter(who was from OK and should've know better, but apparently had never actually been in the woods or looked around) asked "How the hell can you find ANYTHING out here?"
Yes, they caught him. No, it wasn't a good ending. If you're interested, here's a book that covers it.


The other was back when the son was in Civil Air Patrol. A plane went down in southeast OK, and CAP was involved in the search. Which went on for something like two-three weeks. His unit was next in rotation to go and help out when they found it.
Take what I mentioned about northeast OK forest above; now add in hills and valleys and streams with lots of very steep slopes and dropoffs. Let me put it this way: as you drive along you'll see a sign indicating a curve and saying '25MPH' or something similar; you'd damn well better pay attention, because on the far side of that guard rail may well be 50, some places about 100 feet before you hit the rocks, and you may well be under trees that prevent your remains from being seen from the road. Someone reports a hole in a guard rail, the sheriff's office goes out to see just what hit the ground down there and call the proper people to pull it out if they can.

How'd they find it? One of the search planes caught a flash through some trees. He circled back and got ground observers to mark the spot as best they could, then the ground teams went in. This was a twin-engine plane, but between breaking up on impact and being covered by the trees, if he hadn't seen that flash there's no telling how long it would've taken to find it.

That's not Utah, that's just southeast OK. Roads all over, but people do get lost there, regularly. And with terrain like that, sometimes you don't know a storm's coming until it comes over the ridge and hits you(been there). Try making your way downhill when the slope is covered with loose rock, under leaves, and it's all wet from the fog that just kind of appeared when the cold front came through; it's downright nasty.

You don't have to get hurt, or dead, and you won't if you have some idea what to do and don't forget it. I guarantee that scoutmasters and others all over will be using every detail of this kids' story they can get to point this out to the kids.


*Ignore them because that crew was making enough noise to run them all off.
Just to add to the fun, the biggest copperhead I've ever seen (the scaly type, not the Democrat type) was right here in Oklahoma City, in a drainage ditch near some apartments.

Quotes of the Day

The trouble with "letting the Police do their job" is that in the precise spot in which you happen to live, or used to live, their job probably won't start, if it ever does start, for about a week. In the meantime, letting the Police do their job means letting the damn looters and arsonists do their job, without anyone laying a finger on them, laying a finger on them being illegal. This is a doomed policy. If most people are compelled by law to be only neutral bystanders in a war between themselves and barbarism, barbarism wins. The right to, at the very least, forceful self defence must now be insisted upon. The Police, as we advocates of the don't-disarm-the-victims-of-crime policy have been pointing out for decades, can't be everywhere. They cannot instantaneously attend every crime, and magically prevent it. Only the potential or actual victims of crime can sometimes immediately prevent or immediately punish crime, provided only that they are not forbidden to.
and
I recall reading about a yob who stole something from a street stall in Nigeria, many years ago. He was promptly set upon by a mob, of stallholders and their customers, and beaten up. Are you civilised? It depends which side your mobs are on. All our mobs, except the little mobs that are the Police, are anti-civilisation.

Assuming you could get the Presidents' terrorist friends

Ayers and Dohrn to talk, I wonder what they might know about this?
In 1975, “we” (President Gerald Ford, under Henry Kissinger’s influence) allowed foreign branches and subsidiaries of U.S. companies to trade freely with Cuba and persuaded the Organization of American States to lift its sanctions.

Result: Castro started his African invasion and tried to assassinate Ford. You read right. On March 19, the Los Angeles Times ran the headline “Cuban Link to Death Plot Probed.” Both Republican candidates of the day, President Ford and Ronald Reagan, were to be taken out during the Republican National Convention. The Emiliano Zapata Unit, a Bay area radical group linked to the Weather Underground, would make the hits.

Insty notes the government WANTS you on the terrorist suspect list

So it would seem:
SO THE OTHER DAY I HAD A STORY ABOUT THE FBI TREATING “PREPPERS” AS POTENTIAL TERRORISTS, and then when I was in the car yesterday I heard a PSA from the Department of Homeland Security pitching . . . disaster preparedness via its Ready.gov site. So if you do what Homeland Security recommends, the FBI will wonder if you’re a terrorist. Sweet.
I just took at look at the government site, and let's see... buying stuff like MREs or match containers and masks 'in bulk'(whatever the hell that really means to them) makes you suspicious, yet on their site where it recommends a kit,
Food, at least a three-day supply of non-perishable food
Battery-powered or hand crank radio and a NOAA Weather Radio with tone alert and extra batteries for both
Flashlight and extra batteries
First aid kit
Whistle to signal for help
Dust mask, to help filter contaminated air and plastic sheeting and duct tape to shelter-in-place
Infant formula and diapers(if you have a baby or two and 'stock up'...)
From the original 'You should report possible terrorists to us' list:
Weatherproofed ammunition or match containers
Meals Ready to Eat
Night Vision Devices; night flashlights; gas masks
So. You've got a family so you buy half-a-dozen match safes, a case or two of MREs, you grab a bunch of spare batteries for thel ights and hey! if a dust mask is good a couple of these gas masks couldn't hurt! and Presto!! You're on the Feeb Terrorist Watch list for having followed their suggestions!

You have to wonder if some of the weenies in on this are deliberately trying to make a self-perpetuating list of 'possible terrorists' so they can either justify their existence or create more possible 'enemies', or both.

Various people keep telling me 'the science is settled' and

'all SERIOUS scientists agree' and so forth; so why do these people not want all the data examined?
This week four groups, whose boards represent a distinctly liberal worldview and who oppose scrutiny of taxpayer-funded science by academics, asked the University of Virginia to disregard its agreement before the court with American Tradition Institute to provide the records of former climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann, which belong to the public. The groups, led by the far-left Union of Concerned Scientists, sent a letter to University president Teresa Sullivan on Tuesday complaining the agreement gives ATI’s in-house lawyers “needless access” to documents its Environmental Law Center requested, and the agreement “threatens the principles of academic freedom protecting scholarly research.”
There's an amount of 'those nasty liberals!' here, but the base information is disgusting from people who talk about 'scholarly research' and 'academic freedom'. One of the basic requirements of science is that experiments have to be repeatable by others than the one who originally did it, and the information has to be released for review; not just by some selected group but- unless something like actual security needs are involved- any interested party, which includes the general public. This "These people don't need to see all the research, all the data" crap stinks of coverup.

Which would fit right in with a lot of Mann, supporters, wouldn't it?

I can't think of any fancy way to introduce this

Just go read.

Kind of felt that way a few times myself

So the Washington Post may well have had knowledge

of Gunwalker,
Can an American news agency that knew that Operation Fast and Furious was "walking" thousands of firearms to Mexican drug cartels face criminal and civil charges for their role in covering up the program?

That is a question the Washington Post, its editors, reporters, and lawyers should be sweating, as evidence emerges that the newspaper may have been aware of the multi-agency "Gunwalker" program that led to the deaths of an estimated 150 Mexican police and soldiers or more, the shooting of three American federal agents, and countless casualties on both sides of the border.
And, on the subject of Gunwalker Houston,
Congressional investigators are researching an initiative that sounds very, very familiar.

...congressional leaders want to know if similar problems happened in Houston during an investigation done under the auspices of an ATF initiative called "Gunrunner." The operation targeted "straw buyers" in border states recruited to legally purchase handguns and high-powered rifles only to hand the weapons over to members of the drug cartels.

"The ATF agents encouraged them to go through with the sales," said Houston attorney Dick DeGuerin, who represents Carter's Country, the largest independent gun retailer in our region.

DeGuerin said starting in 2006, Houston ATF agents asked Carter's Country for help by alerting agents when a suspicious gun buyer tried to purchase multiple weapons. DeGuerin referred to this effort as a "stall and call."

"Stall the purchaser, call the ATF, let an ATF agent come out and watch the sale so they could follow it," DeGuerin said.

"Did the ATF always show up?" asked Local 2 Investigator Robert Arnold.

"No, they didn't," DeGuerin said.

If that sounds familiar, it should... Carter's Country is the exact same gun shop savaged by the Post reporting team in the article that drew McCabe’s attention at Human Events.

Carter's Country is now in a legal battle with the ATF, with the ATF attacking the gun store for supplying weapons to straw purchasers which found their way south to the cartels, and the gun store claiming that it was doing exactly what the ATF asked it to do.

DeGurein claims to have documentation that correlates their version of events, and ATF Houston has declined to talk.(bold mine)
If they have proof of ATF telling them to make the sales, then ATF blaming THEM for the operation not only falls apart but shows ATF as trying to throw Carter's Country under the bus as part of a coverup.

Steyn thoughts on the British riots

and the PC/socialist idiocy that led to them. Including
As part of my promotional efforts, I chanced to find myself on a TV show the other day with an affable liberal who argued that what Obama needed to do was pass another trillion-dollar – or, better yet, multi-trillion – stimulus. I think not. The London rioters are the children of dependency, the progeny of Big Government: they have been marinated in "stimulus" their entire lives. There is literally nothing you can't get Her Majesty's Government to pay for. From page 205 of my book:

"A man of 21 with learning disabilities has been granted taxpayers' money to fly to Amsterdam and have sex with a prostitute."

Hey, why not? "He's planning to do more than just have his end away," explained his social worker. "Refusing to offer him this service would be a violation of his human rights."
The human rights of the actual working people being looted to pay for this crap don't count, of course.
Yet a police force all but entirely useless when it comes to preventing crime or maintaining public order has time to police everything else. When Sam Brown observed en passant to a mounted policeman on Cornmarket Street in Oxford, "Do you know your horse is gay?", he was surrounded within minutes by six officers and a fleet of patrol cars, handcuffed, tossed in the slammer overnight, and fined 80 pounds. Mr. Brown's "homophobic comments," explained a spokesmoron for Thames Valley Police, were "not only offensive to the policeman and his horse, but any members of the general public in the area." The zealous crackdown on Sam Brown's hippohomophobia has not been replicated in the present disturbances. Anyone who has so much as glanced at British policing policy over the past two decades would be hard pressed to argue which party on the streets of London, the thugs or the cops, is more irredeemably stupid.


Theodore Dalrymple chimes in, too.
The ferocious criminality exhibited by an uncomfortably large section of the English population during the current riots has not surprised me in the least. I have been writing about it, in its slightly less acute manifestations, for the past 20 years. To have spotted it required no great perspicacity on my part; rather, it took a peculiar cowardly blindness, one regularly displayed by the British intelligentsia and political class, not to see it and not to realize its significance. There is nothing that an intellectual less likes to change than his mind, or a politician his policy.
If you have a chance, and you're not familiar with his books, I'd suggest looking them up; Life At The Bottom, for instance.

On what seems to be one of the big 'responses' in Britain

to the rioting:
Looking at limits on Twitter and Facebook? That's your answer? Buddy, I hate to break it to you, but they almost burned Los Angeles down back in the '90s, when cell phones were the size of bricks and didn't even have custom ring-tones, let alone 3G internet connections. Hell, the Watts Riots of the '60s happened half a decade before you could play Space War over ARPANET, let alone Farmville on Facebook.

If this simpering twit had been running things during the Blitz, he would have formed a committee to study the feasibility of outlawing Nazi bombers. (The Department of Transport would have grounded the Spitfires and Hurricanes as being too dangerous and insufficiently bulletproof.)
Not to mention that someone loudly proclaiming that allowing the subjects to own arms and USE them in self-defense will probably have him in the lead of condemning such as horrible and nasty and unthinkable(and effective, but he won't mention that); it appears that most Brit politicians will forever think that burning in your home or business, or being assaulted in the streets because the cops can't or won't get there is far preferable than the subjects getting uppity and thinking self-defense, including with arms, is an idea whose time has come again.

Oh, if I had a big-enough yard...

These guys in positions on one side, and these in suitable shambling advance... the possibilities are great, especially closer to Halloween

Ok, back to Gunwalker

I'm going to use links here to original stories, for those who have reason not to go to Sipsey Street or Examiner; but it should be remembered that these people have dug/are digging out a LOT of stuff that's led to these stories; if you can, check them regularly for updates and new stuff.

It appears Hoover is talking. A lot. Like Melson, there's an emphasis on "I tried to save things!" and/or "I didn't realize how bad it was!", which- considering other things that've come out- has to be taken as ass-covering; it's still information coming out to add to the pot. For instance,
Worse, the weapons had turned up at crime scenes in Mexico and the ATF official was worried that someone in the United States could be hurt next.
Which sounds to me like "People getting whacked in Mexico is ok, but we'll be in real trouble if these guns are linked to people getting hurt or killed here." Combine this with that one supervisor being delighted that Gunwalker guns were being found at crime scenes in Mexico...
Then there's this:
The memo did not suggest agents purposely allow illegal purchasers to walk away with guns, and Justice Department officials insist they never approved the "operational" concept for Fast and Furious. Nevertheless, the ATF viewed the memo as marching orders.

Kenneth E. Melson, the ATF acting director, told investigators that his subordinates took the memo and came up with "tactical strategies" that created Fast and Furious. "We have to go after the cartels to stop the flow of guns," he said.

William D. Newell, then the special agent in charge of the ATF field office for Arizona and New Mexico, said "the memo fitted into how we were going to address this" problem. Fast and Furious was launched the following month, November 2009, and was run out of Newell's field office.
Consider: A: this is despite the fact that they KNEW there was no 'iron river' flowing to Mexico, they KNEW there were no bigtime gun smugglers. B: Melson, YOU WERE THE DIRECTOR OF ATF, yet you still claim you didn't know about a lot of this? And for some reason, when you found out, didn't actually do anything about it? Really? C: The DoJ is claiming "We didn't know about THIS part!", but we're expected to believe that this agency AND THE OTHERS INVOLVED started doing this without having something concrete from above on it? Bullcrap.


Connected: on BP Agent Terrys' death, and his family being further crapped on:
The family asked to intervene as victims in the case against Jamie Avila, the 23-year-old Phoenix man who purchased the guns allegedly used to kill Terry. Such motions are routinely approved by prosecutors, but may be opposed by defense attorneys.

Agent Brian A. Terry, 40, was killed on Dec. 14 near Rio Rico, Ariz., according to a statement released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials. (FNC)

However in this case, U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke argues because the family was not "directly or proximately harmed" by the illegal purchase of the murder weapon, it does not meet the definition of "crime victim" in the Avila case. Burke claims the victim of the Avila's gun purchases, "is not any particular person, but society in general."
Sipsey's referring to Burke as "Mr. Banality of Evil himself", which seems, from this, to be a pretty good description. A member of your family is murdered in this mess, but you can't be considered a 'crime victim'; however, society in general' can... Can you say 'corrupt lawyer trying to help give cover for things'?
I knew you could.


And Sen. Cornyn is demanding answers about gunwalking actions in Texas.
Cornyn today sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder requesting information about any gun walking operations in Texas.

“Unfortunately, the Department of Justice has been less than forthcoming during congressional investigations into the failed ‘Operation Fast and Furious,’” Cornyn wrote. “I believe it is important that you promptly disclose the details of any past or present Texas-based ATF ‘gun-walking’ program similar to ‘Operation Fast and Furious.’ My constituents deserve a full accounting of any such activities in Texas.”
Makes you wonder which Obama will consider more important: keeping Holder as AG so as to help try to cover things up and protect Obama, or throwing him out to take the blame for everything.



Now, as to the Feds playing "Let's have everybody watch for PC terrorists instead of actual ones:
“An FBI Denver Joint Terrorism Task Force handout being distributed to Colorado military surplus store owners lists the purchase of popular preparedness items and firearms accessories as ‘suspicious’ and ‘potential indicators of terrorist activities,’” an exclusive report by Oath Keepers reveals.

Essentially, the government is conflating Americans who believe in being prepared for disruptions in normal circumstances with potential domestic enemies who bear scrutiny, and are recruiting those they patronize to spy and snitch on their customers. As potential terrorists. For such suspicious activities as buying storable food. And paying in legal tender.
Buy a case of MREs for emergency food? You'd be on the list. Find magazines on sale and buy a few? You're on it. Pay cash? Ooooh, why would anybody non-suspicious do that? Etc.

The FBI handout, entitled “Communities Against Terrorism: Potential Indicators of Terrorist Activities Related to Military Surplus Stores” also instructs surplus store owners to:

“Require valid ID from all new customers.

Keep records of purchases.

Talk to customers, ask questions, and

listen to and observe their responses.

Watch for people and actions that are out of place.

Make note of suspicious statements, people, and /or vehicles.

If something seems wrong, notify law enforcement authorities.”
First question: where the hell does the EffingBI get the authority to 'instruct' people to do this? Second, notice the 'new customers'; is this a "Don't worry about old customers", or is this a "See, we didn't ask you to fink on EVERYBODY who does something we think suspicious!" escape clause?
The handout also instructs surplus store owners to consider as “suspicious” anyone who “demands identity ‘privacy’” or anyone who expresses “extreme religious statements” and those who “make suspicious comments regarding anti-US, [or] radical theology.”
...
Some of the activities, taken individually, could be innocent and must be examined by law enforcement professionals in a larger context to determine whether there is a basis to investigate. The activities outlined on this handout are by no means all-inclusive but have been compiled from a review of terrorist events over several years.
"Don't try to think for yourself, you need to give everything to The Professionals to determine if your customer is a Bad Guy." Yeah, we're really going to trust that.

As Bob G pointed out, if they try this in Utah they're liable to have a bunch of stores tell them to go to hell; lots of Mormons in Utah and they're very big on disaster preparation(any other place with a bunch of Mormons either). And with the economy being as bad as it is, lots of people who really didn't worry about things before are buying some 'just in case' supplies; think most of them will like the idea of being put on a list to hand over to the Feds? Add to the general 'just in case' you have people looking at the riots in Greece and Britain, and the gang attacks on people here in the US and deciding "Maybe I'll get that CCW permit after all, and a few extra magazines" and you've got a lot more people who aren't going to be real happy about being considered terrorism suspects, or being on a list to be 'examined by law enforcement professionals'.
Be it noted, lots of semi-auto pistol magazines, the standard size- sometimes from a long time back- are now considered 'high-capacity' by the clowns, which means buying a regular mag- or a few, you found a sale- for your Glock or Springfield or Hi-Power would put you on the list.

I do have to wonder, will they decide that people buying a few gallon jugs of water(let alone the bigger jugs) are 'buying in bulk' and suspicious? How about a couple of jars of peanut butter, or cans of stew or meat, when you don't have a large family?

I didn't know vampires had their own strain of rabies;

might explain some of the Twilight crap.
A teenager from Mexico became the first person in thUnited States to die after being bitten by a vampire bat and infected with rabies, US health authorities said on Thursday.


Well, Obama DID say that under his plans energy costs would 'necessarily skyrocket'; so he's keeping his word there. Hope! and CHANGE!!!


I've got a friend who insists ACORN 'was cleared' of vote-fraud; not exactly.


More on the "Polar bears are drowning due to AGW!" scientist, who's in real trouble from the sound of it.


Yeah, we did fight a war with this being one of the reasons

I just went over for the first time in a few days

and Sipsey and Codrea both have a lot of new stuff on Gunwalker. Right now it's late, I'm tired and you'll have to browse over there yourself; I'll post something on all this in the morning.