And apparently the Effing.B.I. was using the same method
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Why the Department of Homeland Security missed Hasan
And apparently the Effing.B.I. was using the same method
It appears that the need of a bunch of people to refuse to even mention
Reagan in connection with the Wall coming down is, well, it's at the level of a mental disorder for a good many.
And while we're on the subject of PC morons who hate troops,
can it at least be made not-a-crime for a parent to beat hell out of Code Pinko when they do shit like this?
Right at the moment, I'm of the mind that every FBI, Army and any other 'intelligence'
or LE agency who knew about the murderer Hasan's contacts should be fired. And possibly hanged, seeing as how they've turned out to be accomplices to mass murder.
Army officials strongly deny any suggestion that Hasan's religion resulted in his being given special treatment. But one officer who attended the Pentagon's medical school with Hasan disagrees. "He was very vocal about being a Muslim first and holding Sharia law above the Constitution," this officer recalled. When fellow students asked, "How can you be an officer and hold to the Constitution?," the officer said, Hasan would "get visibly upset — sweaty and nervous — and had no good answers." This medical doctor would only speak anonymously because his commanders have ordered him not to talk about Hasan, he said.
This officer said he was so surprised when Hasan gave a talk about "the war on terror being a war on Islam" that he asked the lieutenant colonel running the course what Hasan's presentation had to do with health care. "I raised my hand and asked, `Why are you letting this go on — this has nothing to do with environmental health.' The course director said, `I'm just going to let him go.'" The topic of Hasan's presentation, the officer says, had been approved in advance by the lieutenant colonel.
So let's add to the list officers who knew this bastard was doing things he shouldn't and didn't have the integrity or balls to officially say or do anything.
WASHINGTON – Finger-pointing erupted between federal agencies Tuesday over Fort Hood shooting suspect Nidal Hasan. Government officials said a Defense Department terrorism investigator looked into Hasan's contacts with a radical imam months ago, but a military official denied prior knowledge of the Army psychiatrist's contacts with any Muslim extremists.
"Don't blame US, WE didn't know anything about this! It was somebody else's fault!"
The assessment concluded Hasan did not merit further investigation — in large part because his communications with the imam were centered on a research paper about the effects of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and the investigator determined that Hasan was in fact working on such a paper, the officials said.
And, of course, it never occurred to these clowns to wonder why, in researching such a paper, he'd contact an imam who preaches death to and murder of American troops and Americans in general... Sure, first guy he'd contact; after all, this bastard offspring of a rabid pig was counseling American troops, so why wouldn't he contact someone who wants us all dead for research 'about the effects of combat' ?
Of course, we also have idiotic statements like Hasan has not been formally charged but officials plan to charge him in military court, not a civilian one, a choice that suggests his alleged actions are not thought to have emanated from a terrorist organization. He could face the death penalty. Hey, moron, how 'bout a military court because he was/is a serving military officer? You jackass.
The fact is, we've got a bunch of politicians and people in influential groups who'd rather see more of us dead than admit that being muslim does indeed represent a serious data point in watching out for these murderers. And lots of politicians in uniform who'll do just about anything to keep said politicians happy; that seeming to be far more important to them than, say, the lives of fellow soldiers.
Can we borrow some parts of the Tower of London for a while? Assuming the equipment still works.
Army officials strongly deny any suggestion that Hasan's religion resulted in his being given special treatment. But one officer who attended the Pentagon's medical school with Hasan disagrees. "He was very vocal about being a Muslim first and holding Sharia law above the Constitution," this officer recalled. When fellow students asked, "How can you be an officer and hold to the Constitution?," the officer said, Hasan would "get visibly upset — sweaty and nervous — and had no good answers." This medical doctor would only speak anonymously because his commanders have ordered him not to talk about Hasan, he said.
This officer said he was so surprised when Hasan gave a talk about "the war on terror being a war on Islam" that he asked the lieutenant colonel running the course what Hasan's presentation had to do with health care. "I raised my hand and asked, `Why are you letting this go on — this has nothing to do with environmental health.' The course director said, `I'm just going to let him go.'" The topic of Hasan's presentation, the officer says, had been approved in advance by the lieutenant colonel.
So let's add to the list officers who knew this bastard was doing things he shouldn't and didn't have the integrity or balls to officially say or do anything.
WASHINGTON – Finger-pointing erupted between federal agencies Tuesday over Fort Hood shooting suspect Nidal Hasan. Government officials said a Defense Department terrorism investigator looked into Hasan's contacts with a radical imam months ago, but a military official denied prior knowledge of the Army psychiatrist's contacts with any Muslim extremists.
"Don't blame US, WE didn't know anything about this! It was somebody else's fault!"
The assessment concluded Hasan did not merit further investigation — in large part because his communications with the imam were centered on a research paper about the effects of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and the investigator determined that Hasan was in fact working on such a paper, the officials said.
And, of course, it never occurred to these clowns to wonder why, in researching such a paper, he'd contact an imam who preaches death to and murder of American troops and Americans in general... Sure, first guy he'd contact; after all, this bastard offspring of a rabid pig was counseling American troops, so why wouldn't he contact someone who wants us all dead for research 'about the effects of combat' ?
Of course, we also have idiotic statements like Hasan has not been formally charged but officials plan to charge him in military court, not a civilian one, a choice that suggests his alleged actions are not thought to have emanated from a terrorist organization. He could face the death penalty. Hey, moron, how 'bout a military court because he was/is a serving military officer? You jackass.
The fact is, we've got a bunch of politicians and people in influential groups who'd rather see more of us dead than admit that being muslim does indeed represent a serious data point in watching out for these murderers. And lots of politicians in uniform who'll do just about anything to keep said politicians happy; that seeming to be far more important to them than, say, the lives of fellow soldiers.
Can we borrow some parts of the Tower of London for a while? Assuming the equipment still works.
A cop writes on her experience with TSA
and it ain't flattering.
"Do I have the right to refuse this search?"
TSA doesn't understand what 'random' means
"Do I have the right to refuse this search?"
TSA doesn't understand what 'random' means
CNN: Slanting information and sliming people
who say what they don't want to hear:
Update: Turns out the "C" stands for "cover-up". CNN has deleted the story and replaced it with another one at the same url. No doubt that can be explained as a "re-write" - of course, no explanation is provided. (Common practice among news organizations these days.) That first mistake was not a transcription error or a typo, nor was Pvt Foster's meaning unclear. Two comments delivered two minutes apart were combined to make one that meant exactly the opposite of what he said.
However. the same passage can still be found in this CNN report (for now) - they really wanted people to get the message.The original CNN story (headlined Fort Hood Shooting Suspect Conscious, Talking, Hospital Says) can still be found at other locations.
...
From the day this story broke, CNN has run with a storyline that the killer's actions are typical of all military members - that he's a typical soldier - which means his victims were just like him.
As evidence to the contrary mounted they ignored it, but here they willfully and intentionally re-wrote an eyewitness account to make it fit their narrative - something altogether different. This isn't the only example from the Ft Hood story that proves once again if you get your news from television and newspapers you're getting something other than news.
Update: Turns out the "C" stands for "cover-up". CNN has deleted the story and replaced it with another one at the same url. No doubt that can be explained as a "re-write" - of course, no explanation is provided. (Common practice among news organizations these days.) That first mistake was not a transcription error or a typo, nor was Pvt Foster's meaning unclear. Two comments delivered two minutes apart were combined to make one that meant exactly the opposite of what he said.
However. the same passage can still be found in this CNN report (for now) - they really wanted people to get the message.The original CNN story (headlined Fort Hood Shooting Suspect Conscious, Talking, Hospital Says) can still be found at other locations.
...
From the day this story broke, CNN has run with a storyline that the killer's actions are typical of all military members - that he's a typical soldier - which means his victims were just like him.
As evidence to the contrary mounted they ignored it, but here they willfully and intentionally re-wrote an eyewitness account to make it fit their narrative - something altogether different. This isn't the only example from the Ft Hood story that proves once again if you get your news from television and newspapers you're getting something other than news.
Well, so they wanted information from Indymedia
including "all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us" on June 25, 2008. It instructed Clair to "include IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information," including e-mail addresses, physical addresses, registered accounts, and Indymedia readers' Social Security Numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and so on. AND ordered them not to tell anybody about it.
And then dropped it when challenged.
Wonder just what they were actually after?
And then dropped it when challenged.
Wonder just what they were actually after?
Couple of interesting things on the science front
First, on a volcano in Italy:
TO ANCIENT Romans the Phlegraean Fields hosted the entrance to Hades. In modern times it is better known as the site of a "supercolossal" volcanic eruption 39,000 years ago.
Will we see the next disaster coming? That's one of the questions an ambitious drilling project hopes to answer by sinking boreholes into Campi Flegrei, as the giant collapsed volcanic crater is now called. Starting as early as next month, the Campi Flegrei Deep Drilling Project is planning to drill seven holes in the region (see map).
Interesting project. There's concern that if they drill into- or close enough to- a magma chamber it could cause a problem, up to and including the possible triggering of a eruption
Several incidents have plagued similar projects. In June, the Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP), which aims to tap geothermal energy from hot magma, had to be stopped. At 2104 metres down, magma streamed into the borehole, causing a small explosion as the drilling fluid vaporised. That project is on hold, though it will start again in 2011 with a new borehole, says Guðmundur Ómar Friðleifsson of the IDDP. And in 2005, researchers working on a drilling project in Hawaii got a fright when magma hotter than 1000 °C leaked into the borehole.
"Under unfavourable conditions, contact of the drilling fluid with magma could be very dangerous," says Ralf Büttner, a volcanologist at the University of Würzburg in Germany. "It is even theoretically conceivable that, ultimately, a major eruption could result."
the all the arguing you could expect about the idea. Which leads to this statement:
In any case, the Campi Flegrei drilling is unlikely to hit magma. Boreholes are expected to reach a maximum depth of 4 kilometres, around half the depth of any known reservoirs, according to Jörg Erzinger of the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam (GFZ). Even if magma flows into a borehole, Ulrich Harms, another GFZ scientist, argues it would not necessarily be dangerous. "Situations like that provide exceptional insights," Harms says.(bold mine)
Please understand, I like the idea of research into how things work, and when they might; it's just that this causes me to imagine one of those "Uh, pro- PROFESSOR!" moments.
The other is light sail research. Which is a good idea; EVERY way of going out there should be worked on. My only problem is the pessimism of the guy:
Whether humans could ever take these trips depends on just how starry-eyed one’s view of the future is.
Dr. Friedman said it would take too long and involve too much exposure to radiation to sail humans to a place like Mars. He said the only passengers on an interstellar voyage — even after 200 years of additional technological development — were likely to be robots or perhaps our genomes encoded on a chip, a consequence of the need to keep the craft light, like a giant cosmic kite.
I think that, if after 200 years, we're still at the point of "We can only send instruments out", we're screwed. Of course, he may just be playing "Let's not push this thing too hard right now"; I hope so.
TO ANCIENT Romans the Phlegraean Fields hosted the entrance to Hades. In modern times it is better known as the site of a "supercolossal" volcanic eruption 39,000 years ago.
Will we see the next disaster coming? That's one of the questions an ambitious drilling project hopes to answer by sinking boreholes into Campi Flegrei, as the giant collapsed volcanic crater is now called. Starting as early as next month, the Campi Flegrei Deep Drilling Project is planning to drill seven holes in the region (see map).
Interesting project. There's concern that if they drill into- or close enough to- a magma chamber it could cause a problem, up to and including the possible triggering of a eruption
Several incidents have plagued similar projects. In June, the Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP), which aims to tap geothermal energy from hot magma, had to be stopped. At 2104 metres down, magma streamed into the borehole, causing a small explosion as the drilling fluid vaporised. That project is on hold, though it will start again in 2011 with a new borehole, says Guðmundur Ómar Friðleifsson of the IDDP. And in 2005, researchers working on a drilling project in Hawaii got a fright when magma hotter than 1000 °C leaked into the borehole.
"Under unfavourable conditions, contact of the drilling fluid with magma could be very dangerous," says Ralf Büttner, a volcanologist at the University of Würzburg in Germany. "It is even theoretically conceivable that, ultimately, a major eruption could result."
the all the arguing you could expect about the idea. Which leads to this statement:
In any case, the Campi Flegrei drilling is unlikely to hit magma. Boreholes are expected to reach a maximum depth of 4 kilometres, around half the depth of any known reservoirs, according to Jörg Erzinger of the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam (GFZ). Even if magma flows into a borehole, Ulrich Harms, another GFZ scientist, argues it would not necessarily be dangerous. "Situations like that provide exceptional insights," Harms says.(bold mine)
Please understand, I like the idea of research into how things work, and when they might; it's just that this causes me to imagine one of those "Uh, pro- PROFESSOR!" moments.
The other is light sail research. Which is a good idea; EVERY way of going out there should be worked on. My only problem is the pessimism of the guy:
Whether humans could ever take these trips depends on just how starry-eyed one’s view of the future is.
Dr. Friedman said it would take too long and involve too much exposure to radiation to sail humans to a place like Mars. He said the only passengers on an interstellar voyage — even after 200 years of additional technological development — were likely to be robots or perhaps our genomes encoded on a chip, a consequence of the need to keep the craft light, like a giant cosmic kite.
I think that, if after 200 years, we're still at the point of "We can only send instruments out", we're screwed. Of course, he may just be playing "Let's not push this thing too hard right now"; I hope so.
If you think Obamacare is really about health care,
I point you to a couple of things:
Before the House vote last Saturday, Obama made two key political points to Democratic House members. First, they needed to vote for health care because it would motivate the party base in 2010. Second, those who think they can run away from the president by voting against his signature legislative effort are kidding themselves.
This is about control of our lives, at any cost. The Evil Party, and a bunch of RINOs in the Stupid Party, like having control of us; it makes them feel less threatened by voters. And, note, he's not phrasing this as "It's better for people"; he's pushing this as "It's good for the Party. And maybe I can help you stay in office for a long time." Which is one more reason I've come to be real interested in term limits.
Second, the Evil Party desperation to keep a 'public option' in the bill:
That approach appeals to moderates such as Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. “If the private market fails to reform, there would be a fallback position,” Landrieu said last week. “It should be triggered by choice and affordability, not by political whim.”
Lieberman said he opposes the public plan because it could become a huge and costly entitlement program.
For now, Reid is trying to find the votes for a different approach: a government plan that states could opt out of.
There is absolutely no reason that any actual 'health care reform' needs the government taking over insurance. And all these 'options'- like the 'opt-out' where a state would still have to pay for it even if they opt out, and the 'triggered by' crap, are just ways to get a government takeover through so they can then change it, or interpret it, to allow complete takeover(anyone think Landrieu's 'choice and affordability' wouldn't be defined specifically to allow the feds to take over as soon as possible?)
Make no mistake, this is about control, nothing more.
Before the House vote last Saturday, Obama made two key political points to Democratic House members. First, they needed to vote for health care because it would motivate the party base in 2010. Second, those who think they can run away from the president by voting against his signature legislative effort are kidding themselves.
This is about control of our lives, at any cost. The Evil Party, and a bunch of RINOs in the Stupid Party, like having control of us; it makes them feel less threatened by voters. And, note, he's not phrasing this as "It's better for people"; he's pushing this as "It's good for the Party. And maybe I can help you stay in office for a long time." Which is one more reason I've come to be real interested in term limits.
Second, the Evil Party desperation to keep a 'public option' in the bill:
That approach appeals to moderates such as Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. “If the private market fails to reform, there would be a fallback position,” Landrieu said last week. “It should be triggered by choice and affordability, not by political whim.”
Lieberman said he opposes the public plan because it could become a huge and costly entitlement program.
For now, Reid is trying to find the votes for a different approach: a government plan that states could opt out of.
There is absolutely no reason that any actual 'health care reform' needs the government taking over insurance. And all these 'options'- like the 'opt-out' where a state would still have to pay for it even if they opt out, and the 'triggered by' crap, are just ways to get a government takeover through so they can then change it, or interpret it, to allow complete takeover(anyone think Landrieu's 'choice and affordability' wouldn't be defined specifically to allow the feds to take over as soon as possible?)
Make no mistake, this is about control, nothing more.
But as he heads to Japan,
Obama he promised a reporter that he will visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki sometime in his presidency.
Hey, visiting the ceremony of the falling of the Berlin Wall would have been uncomfortable for him; he probably wishes the Soviet Union was still operating and crushing freedom. Whereas if he goes to these cities he can make some references to how mean and nasty the US was to Japan, which would fit right in as a continuation of his Apology Tour.
Hey, visiting the ceremony of the falling of the Berlin Wall would have been uncomfortable for him; he probably wishes the Soviet Union was still operating and crushing freedom. Whereas if he goes to these cities he can make some references to how mean and nasty the US was to Japan, which would fit right in as a continuation of his Apology Tour.
How 'bout some legal news?
Like how the St. Louis DA, Bob McCulloch, seems to be trying to cover for the SEIU thugs who beat up Kenneth Gladney?
The Gladney beating took place at a forum on ‘Aging’, sponsored by Rep. Russ Carnahan. Carnahan had been caught flat-footed by earlier protests. This time he was more prepared; the day before the forum, Sara Howard took over as his communications director. Ms. Howard is a veteran leftist activist, holding senior positions with SEIU.
SEIU and partisan hacks like Media Matters have tried to spin away the Gladney beating. They would have you believe a 130 lb diabetic, recovering luekemia patient, picked a fight with men almost twice his size. The police report puts an end to that lie.
So if the police report shows the facts of the Gladney case, why isn't McCulloch filing-hell, why hasn't that already been done- charges?
Looks like the Chicago prosecutors are more interested in scaring off people who check back on cases than in the idea of justice:
Protess and his students spent three academic years investigating the case of Anthony McKinney, a suburban Chicago man serving a life sentence for killing a security guard in 1978. After interviewing witnesses and inspecting documents, they're convinced that McKinney had nothing to do with the murder.
Several witnesses told the students that they implicated McKinney in the murder only after they were beaten by police. Northwestern's legal clinic filed a petition seeking a new trial.
Prosecutors conceded a hearing was warranted but also sought all the students' notes, unpublished memos and reimbursements for their expenses. Daly insists the subpoenas are justified because of information that Alvarez's office has uncovered, but would not elaborate.
Unless they have some really interesting reasoning, the only reason I can see for this is "You're making us look bad, and we want to stop you from doing it again."
Northwestern's lawyers have filed a motion to quash the subpoenas, and the judge may act on that Tuesday when a hearing is set to hear arguments about whether there should be a new trial in the case. In the prosecution's response, they argue that Protess and his students aren't journalists and therefore aren't protected by reporters' privilege.
John Lavine, dean of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, considers that argument chilling.
Which is, I'd say, exactly the idea.
Meanwhile, prosecutors have declined to release records of the police officers who were involved in McKinney's case, and have also rebuffed a Protess offer to release students' grades in exchange for prosecutors' performance reviews.
Benn, the former Protess student, said he thinks the prosecutors' motives are clear.
"The state's attorney's office is trying to save itself from the embarrassment of students finding another innocent man in prison," he said.
I'd think the records of the officers in the case are far more relevant than the student's grades; and so are the prosecutors records. But then, I'm just a layman. And haven't, quite possibly, stuck another innocent man in prison.
The Gladney beating took place at a forum on ‘Aging’, sponsored by Rep. Russ Carnahan. Carnahan had been caught flat-footed by earlier protests. This time he was more prepared; the day before the forum, Sara Howard took over as his communications director. Ms. Howard is a veteran leftist activist, holding senior positions with SEIU.
SEIU and partisan hacks like Media Matters have tried to spin away the Gladney beating. They would have you believe a 130 lb diabetic, recovering luekemia patient, picked a fight with men almost twice his size. The police report puts an end to that lie.
So if the police report shows the facts of the Gladney case, why isn't McCulloch filing-hell, why hasn't that already been done- charges?
Looks like the Chicago prosecutors are more interested in scaring off people who check back on cases than in the idea of justice:
Protess and his students spent three academic years investigating the case of Anthony McKinney, a suburban Chicago man serving a life sentence for killing a security guard in 1978. After interviewing witnesses and inspecting documents, they're convinced that McKinney had nothing to do with the murder.
Several witnesses told the students that they implicated McKinney in the murder only after they were beaten by police. Northwestern's legal clinic filed a petition seeking a new trial.
Prosecutors conceded a hearing was warranted but also sought all the students' notes, unpublished memos and reimbursements for their expenses. Daly insists the subpoenas are justified because of information that Alvarez's office has uncovered, but would not elaborate.
Unless they have some really interesting reasoning, the only reason I can see for this is "You're making us look bad, and we want to stop you from doing it again."
Northwestern's lawyers have filed a motion to quash the subpoenas, and the judge may act on that Tuesday when a hearing is set to hear arguments about whether there should be a new trial in the case. In the prosecution's response, they argue that Protess and his students aren't journalists and therefore aren't protected by reporters' privilege.
John Lavine, dean of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, considers that argument chilling.
Which is, I'd say, exactly the idea.
Meanwhile, prosecutors have declined to release records of the police officers who were involved in McKinney's case, and have also rebuffed a Protess offer to release students' grades in exchange for prosecutors' performance reviews.
Benn, the former Protess student, said he thinks the prosecutors' motives are clear.
"The state's attorney's office is trying to save itself from the embarrassment of students finding another innocent man in prison," he said.
I'd think the records of the officers in the case are far more relevant than the student's grades; and so are the prosecutors records. But then, I'm just a layman. And haven't, quite possibly, stuck another innocent man in prison.
Monday, November 09, 2009
One last thing has to be put up tonight
There is no context, there is no nuance, there is no circumstance that will EVER make the good General’s words or the like to be correct. And if I hear one … just one … more person say that the “real” victims here are the American Muslims I will punch them squarely in the face.
I think I shall close this evening with a note of two politicians, (updated)
one disgusting little suckup of the Stupid Party,
This is the oldest trick in the book, and one all conservatives are rightly furious at. We all know that any prominent Republican can gain that Strange New Respect from the liberal media simply by running down his fellows. We all know this. We all know how ineffably easy it is to acquire the personal fondness of the liberal media -- all this is necessary is some quick and easy slanders of everyone else in the party.
In case Michael Steele didn't notice, the job of GOP chairman is to promote the party. Promote the party. Promote the party. Promote the party Promote the party.
And one flat amazingly disgusting little egomaniac of the Evil Party:
There was one world leader absent for today’s commemorations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Surprisingly enough, it’s President Barack Obama, who found time last year to give a campaign speech there last year, which Der Spiegel summed up as “People of the World, Look at Me”.
The White House has cited a packed schedule, though looking at it he had nothing much on yesterday (brief chat to reporters about healthcare – by far his biggest priority) and just blah briefings and a bill signing today until a metting this evening with Benjamin Netanyahu. This time, Der Spiegel has reported it as “Barack Too Busy”.
Hey, he was busy visting the wounde- oh, that's right. Never mind. I guess he was worn out figuring how to say "The fall of the Berlin Wall actually happened to pave the way for me to become President of the World."
Update: found the wording from his recorded speech:
Even as we celebrate these values, even as we mark this day, we know the work of freedom is never finished. In a Berlin under siege, President Kennedy said, “Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.” Few would have foreseen on that day that a united Germany would be led by a woman from Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent. But human destiny is what human beings make of it.
YOU DON'T HAVE A DAMNED THING TO DO WITH IT, YOU DIRTBAG! But you've just got to insert your greatness into EVERY DAMNED THING, don't you?
This is the oldest trick in the book, and one all conservatives are rightly furious at. We all know that any prominent Republican can gain that Strange New Respect from the liberal media simply by running down his fellows. We all know this. We all know how ineffably easy it is to acquire the personal fondness of the liberal media -- all this is necessary is some quick and easy slanders of everyone else in the party.
In case Michael Steele didn't notice, the job of GOP chairman is to promote the party. Promote the party. Promote the party. Promote the party Promote the party.
And one flat amazingly disgusting little egomaniac of the Evil Party:
There was one world leader absent for today’s commemorations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Surprisingly enough, it’s President Barack Obama, who found time last year to give a campaign speech there last year, which Der Spiegel summed up as “People of the World, Look at Me”.
The White House has cited a packed schedule, though looking at it he had nothing much on yesterday (brief chat to reporters about healthcare – by far his biggest priority) and just blah briefings and a bill signing today until a metting this evening with Benjamin Netanyahu. This time, Der Spiegel has reported it as “Barack Too Busy”.
Hey, he was busy visting the wounde- oh, that's right. Never mind. I guess he was worn out figuring how to say "The fall of the Berlin Wall actually happened to pave the way for me to become President of the World."
Update: found the wording from his recorded speech:
Even as we celebrate these values, even as we mark this day, we know the work of freedom is never finished. In a Berlin under siege, President Kennedy said, “Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.” Few would have foreseen on that day that a united Germany would be led by a woman from Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent. But human destiny is what human beings make of it.
YOU DON'T HAVE A DAMNED THING TO DO WITH IT, YOU DIRTBAG! But you've just got to insert your greatness into EVERY DAMNED THING, don't you?
It seems Chris Matthews still has that thrill so far up his leg over Obama
that it's reached into his ass and scrambled his brain:
Chris Matthews: "It's not a crime to call Al Qaeda, is it? I mean, where do you stop the guy?" Matthews spins on behalf of his wannabe-boyfriend Obama and the incompetents in the federal government.
Chris Matthews: "It's not a crime to call Al Qaeda, is it? I mean, where do you stop the guy?" Matthews spins on behalf of his wannabe-boyfriend Obama and the incompetents in the federal government.
Funny, seems to me that after 9/11, National Security Concern Trolls like Chris Matthews were pretty sure we should have rolled up the Mohammad Atta cell based upon pilot-training inquiries.
But now we have a guy in the army calling Al Qaeda on the phone and Chris Matthews is generally perplexed as to what we could have possibly have done to stop this.
And now, from the Effing.B.I, the excuse is
"We didn't think he was actually dangerous or anything, so we didn't go any further."
Intelligence agencies intercepted communications last year and earlier this year between Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who is accused of shooting to death 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., and a radical cleric in Yemen known for his incendiary anti-American teachings. But federal authorities dropped an inquiry into the matter after deciding the messages warranted no further action, government officials said on Monday.
...
But federal officials briefed on the case said their decision to break off the investigation was reasonable based on the information about Maj. Hasan that was compiled at the time, which they said gave no indication he was likely to engage in violence.
Let's see, who was he contacting? Guy named al-Awlaki:
“There is good reason to believe Anwar Aulaqi has been involved in very serious terrorist activities since leaving the United States, including plotting attacks against America and our allies.”
But a serving military officer exchanging e-mails with this bastard was no cause for concern? For an in-depth investigation? Even when combined with all the other crap they knew about him?
Yeah.
You Effing.B.I morons, I hope you're real happy about your actions, because you had a hand in allowing the murders and woundings at Fort Hood to happen.
Of course, the Effing.B.I. clowns who screwed up in the days leading up to 9/11 didn't get fired, or even really disciplined that we know of, so hey, you're good, right? After all, if they didn't get fired or prosecuted after 3,000 dead, why would the bureau do anything to you for a lousy baker's dozen?
Intelligence agencies intercepted communications last year and earlier this year between Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who is accused of shooting to death 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., and a radical cleric in Yemen known for his incendiary anti-American teachings. But federal authorities dropped an inquiry into the matter after deciding the messages warranted no further action, government officials said on Monday.
...
But federal officials briefed on the case said their decision to break off the investigation was reasonable based on the information about Maj. Hasan that was compiled at the time, which they said gave no indication he was likely to engage in violence.
Let's see, who was he contacting? Guy named al-Awlaki:
“There is good reason to believe Anwar Aulaqi has been involved in very serious terrorist activities since leaving the United States, including plotting attacks against America and our allies.”
But a serving military officer exchanging e-mails with this bastard was no cause for concern? For an in-depth investigation? Even when combined with all the other crap they knew about him?
Yeah.
You Effing.B.I morons, I hope you're real happy about your actions, because you had a hand in allowing the murders and woundings at Fort Hood to happen.
Of course, the Effing.B.I. clowns who screwed up in the days leading up to 9/11 didn't get fired, or even really disciplined that we know of, so hey, you're good, right? After all, if they didn't get fired or prosecuted after 3,000 dead, why would the bureau do anything to you for a lousy baker's dozen?
The kind of thinking you may be paying big dollars
to a university for:
Students constructed a memorial to the victims of socialism as a stark reminder of the horrors of socialism, and of its victims.
...
YAL leader John Burns reported on the event today.
The university shut it down… It was too offensive.
Let's see, Yale won't print the Mohammed cartoons, Washington U thinks informing people of the horrors of communism is 'too offensive'(I wonder if the millions of dead victims are offensive to them, or just part of making the omelette?), conservatives and libertarians get either shouted down or 'disinvited' by the administration of many universities... Tell me again how it's us nasty conservative tea party types who hate free speech?
Students constructed a memorial to the victims of socialism as a stark reminder of the horrors of socialism, and of its victims.
...
YAL leader John Burns reported on the event today.
The university shut it down… It was too offensive.
Let's see, Yale won't print the Mohammed cartoons, Washington U thinks informing people of the horrors of communism is 'too offensive'(I wonder if the millions of dead victims are offensive to them, or just part of making the omelette?), conservatives and libertarians get either shouted down or 'disinvited' by the administration of many universities... Tell me again how it's us nasty conservative tea party types who hate free speech?
A little bit from the lady on our media and the military
"Back in 2005 I conducted a little thought experiment. I went to America's leading newspapers and searched on the names of American heroes. What I found out won't surprise you if you've been paying attention. Mentions of Cindy Sheehan were thick upon the ground. Mentions of American heroes? Not so much:
Sgt. Rafael Peralta didn't have to become a United States Marine. And he didn't have to go to war. That's just the kind of man he was.
...
Most Americans have never heard of Rafael Peralta, and they never will.
In past wars, he would have been a hero. His name would have been a household word, his deeds an inspiration to small boys, their eyes growing wide with amazement at his sacrifice. The chests of old men would have puffed out in pride. Crusty veterans would have stood a bit taller, remembering their own service. Women would have grown misty-eyed, and young girls would have laid flowers on his grave, wiping away a tear as they dreamed of handsome heroes.
But they will never hear of him - his voice has been silenced. The mainstream media does not consider the sacrifices of men like Sgt. Rafael Peralta "newsworthy". The media do not seem interested in talking to Sgt. Peralta's family. Instead, we get to hear about Cindy Sheehan all day, every day."
Yeah, and they'll- hell, go read it.
Sgt. Rafael Peralta didn't have to become a United States Marine. And he didn't have to go to war. That's just the kind of man he was.
...
Most Americans have never heard of Rafael Peralta, and they never will.
In past wars, he would have been a hero. His name would have been a household word, his deeds an inspiration to small boys, their eyes growing wide with amazement at his sacrifice. The chests of old men would have puffed out in pride. Crusty veterans would have stood a bit taller, remembering their own service. Women would have grown misty-eyed, and young girls would have laid flowers on his grave, wiping away a tear as they dreamed of handsome heroes.
But they will never hear of him - his voice has been silenced. The mainstream media does not consider the sacrifices of men like Sgt. Rafael Peralta "newsworthy". The media do not seem interested in talking to Sgt. Peralta's family. Instead, we get to hear about Cindy Sheehan all day, every day."
Yeah, and they'll- hell, go read it.
Since I didn't sleep well, and I'm in a bad mood anyway,
let's lay into the Clown in Chief and his use of our troops blood to push socialized medicine:
I'm trying to imagine the political environment that Washington Democrats occupy. A President glibly lays out that analogy, and it is received — without any wincing or taint of disgust — as awesome inspiration. These are the minds that will be making decisions for us for quite a while.
Don't you just love it that a bunch of politicians seem to consider "I might not keep this office!" as a 'sacrifice'? News for you, you bastards, you're not SUPPOSED to stay there as a damned lifelong career; the fact that you consider it such means you shouldn't be there in the first place.
And I'll note in the comments you have lots of lefties who seem to have completely blanked out eight years of "Bushitler!" and other such bullcrap. As usual.
From the lady at Villainous Company,
Life is full of mysteries, but chief among them in this Marine wife's mind at the moment is, "Just how stupid does this White House think we are?" If the events of the past few months have shown us anything, it's that Barack Obama has little enthusiasm for - or interest in - one of the most important duties of an American President: his role as Commander in Chief of the nation's armed forces.
and she notes this:
The lady closes with this:
Obama doesn't "get" the military because with every step they take, whether it's on prosthetic legs or the steely sinews of a combat hardened Marine, their strength and independence give the lie to his defeatest rhetoric. All those unbowed shoulders, unbeaten spirits and uplifted heads make him profoundly uncomfortable.
As well they should. Americans don't need to be rescued by the government. We have each other.
I'm trying to imagine the political environment that Washington Democrats occupy. A President glibly lays out that analogy, and it is received — without any wincing or taint of disgust — as awesome inspiration. These are the minds that will be making decisions for us for quite a while.
Don't you just love it that a bunch of politicians seem to consider "I might not keep this office!" as a 'sacrifice'? News for you, you bastards, you're not SUPPOSED to stay there as a damned lifelong career; the fact that you consider it such means you shouldn't be there in the first place.
And I'll note in the comments you have lots of lefties who seem to have completely blanked out eight years of "Bushitler!" and other such bullcrap. As usual.
From the lady at Villainous Company,
Life is full of mysteries, but chief among them in this Marine wife's mind at the moment is, "Just how stupid does this White House think we are?" If the events of the past few months have shown us anything, it's that Barack Obama has little enthusiasm for - or interest in - one of the most important duties of an American President: his role as Commander in Chief of the nation's armed forces.
and she notes this:
Instead of comforting his troops, President Obama decided to spend the weekend at Camp David.(And, I suspect, he realizes that dragging the whole damned press corp along to take pictures wouldn't be well-received; and if he can't get publicity shots, he just doesn't think it's worth going)
Even if one were inclined to give President Obama the benefit of the doubt and assume that he had asked Former President Bush and Mrs. Bush to visit the wounded soldiers because the Bushes live in Texas, why would he ask this of his predecessor and not get on Air Force One overnight to get down there himself?
Why would he not go to be with those whom he is charged to send into battle and who were so horrifyingly betrayed by one of their own?
Because he doesn't give a rat's backside, that's why not.
The lady closes with this:
As well they should. Americans don't need to be rescued by the government. We have each other.
A bit more information from Steyn
"A coherent strategy to address 21st century threats to the United States, one that treats national and homeland security as a seamless whole, has yet to emerge... To help fuel this process, in April 2008 The George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) established the Presidential Transition Task Force, comprised of national and homeland security experts, policymakers and practitioners... The goal was to determine the top strategic priorities to advance the nation’s security in the coming decade...
Event Participants:
...Amanda Halpern
U.S. House of Representatives
Beth Hampton
Homeland Security Institute
Nidal Hasan
Uniformed Services University School of Medicine
Donald Hawkins
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Eric Heighberger
Homeland Security Council...
That's quite the company for a deranged misfit loner whacko of no broader significance."
The idiocy about the Fort Hood jihadist just gets better
and better:
U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.
It is not known whether the intelligence agencies informed the Army that one of its officers was seeking to connect with suspected al Qaeda figures, the officials said.
One senior lawmaker said the CIA had, so far, refused to brief the intelligence committees on what, if any, knowledge they had about Hasan's efforts.
Number one: if they didn't inform the Army, why the hell not? Second, they 'refuse' to brief them? Really. I can think of several responses to that that do not involve violent conduct(think there's be a problem finding someone to swing a flagrum right now?), so I'd say at least one of them needs to be done. At least first.
Second, while the speaker for IVAW is throwing out bullshit like this:
Selena Coppa, an activist for Iraq Veterans Against the War, said: “This man was a psychiatrist and was working with other psychiatrists every day and they failed to notice how deeply disturbed someone right in their midst was.”
their little 'nobody noticed' is kind of contradicted by things like
One Army doctor who knew him said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim soldier had stopped fellow officers from filing formal complaints.
and this
Another, Dr Val Finnell, who took a course with him in 2007 at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Maryland, did complain about Hasan’s “anti-American rants.” He said: “The system is not doing what it’s supposed to do. He at least should have been confronted about these beliefs, told to cease and desist, and to shape up or ship out. I really questioned his loyalty.”
So while General Casey is saying thing like ...the Army’s Chief of Staff, said it was “speculation” that military authorities failed to pick up on warning signs. “I don’t want to say that we missed it,” he said.
(Oh, God, you REALLY don't want to say you missed it; but you did), we're dealing with the fact that a good number of people who did notice the problems with this murderer refused to make an official report because they knew the Diversity Police would quite possibly ruin their career for doing so.
“It’s too early to draw conclusions but we will ask ourselves the hard questions about what we are doing and the changes we should make as a result of this.”
How about making sure that devotion to political correctness and 'diversity' does NOT trump intelligence and good sense? Seems like that might be a change to make, General. So we don't have to read things like this:
Danquah assumed the military’s chain of command knew about Hasan’s doubts, which had been known for more than a year to classmates in a graduate military medical program. His fellow students complained to the faculty about Hasan’s "anti-American propaganda," but said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim student kept officers from filing a formal written complaint.
AFTER a terrorist murders American troops.
U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.
It is not known whether the intelligence agencies informed the Army that one of its officers was seeking to connect with suspected al Qaeda figures, the officials said.
One senior lawmaker said the CIA had, so far, refused to brief the intelligence committees on what, if any, knowledge they had about Hasan's efforts.
Number one: if they didn't inform the Army, why the hell not? Second, they 'refuse' to brief them? Really. I can think of several responses to that that do not involve violent conduct(think there's be a problem finding someone to swing a flagrum right now?), so I'd say at least one of them needs to be done. At least first.
Second, while the speaker for IVAW is throwing out bullshit like this:
Selena Coppa, an activist for Iraq Veterans Against the War, said: “This man was a psychiatrist and was working with other psychiatrists every day and they failed to notice how deeply disturbed someone right in their midst was.”
their little 'nobody noticed' is kind of contradicted by things like
One Army doctor who knew him said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim soldier had stopped fellow officers from filing formal complaints.
and this
Another, Dr Val Finnell, who took a course with him in 2007 at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Maryland, did complain about Hasan’s “anti-American rants.” He said: “The system is not doing what it’s supposed to do. He at least should have been confronted about these beliefs, told to cease and desist, and to shape up or ship out. I really questioned his loyalty.”
So while General Casey is saying thing like ...the Army’s Chief of Staff, said it was “speculation” that military authorities failed to pick up on warning signs. “I don’t want to say that we missed it,” he said.
(Oh, God, you REALLY don't want to say you missed it; but you did), we're dealing with the fact that a good number of people who did notice the problems with this murderer refused to make an official report because they knew the Diversity Police would quite possibly ruin their career for doing so.
“It’s too early to draw conclusions but we will ask ourselves the hard questions about what we are doing and the changes we should make as a result of this.”
How about making sure that devotion to political correctness and 'diversity' does NOT trump intelligence and good sense? Seems like that might be a change to make, General. So we don't have to read things like this:
Danquah assumed the military’s chain of command knew about Hasan’s doubts, which had been known for more than a year to classmates in a graduate military medical program. His fellow students complained to the faculty about Hasan’s "anti-American propaganda," but said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim student kept officers from filing a formal written complaint.
AFTER a terrorist murders American troops.
Sunday, November 08, 2009
I'm not as polite as the guy posting the list; here's some crap-eating blue lapdogs
that need to be remembered for rolling over for Pelosi:
Congressman Arcuri - New York's 24th congressional district - R+2.
Congressman Baca - California's 43rd congressional district - D+13.
Congressman Berry - Arkansas 1st congressional district - R+8.
Congressman Bishop - Georgia's 2nd congressional district - D+1.
Congressman Boswell - Iowa's 3rd congressional district - D+1.
Congressman Cardoza - California's 18th congressional district - D+4.
Congressman Carney - Pennsylvania's 10th congressional district - R+8.
Congressman Cooper - Tennessee's 5th congressional district - D+3.
Congressman Costa - California's 20th congressional district - D+5.
Congressman Cuellar - Texas' 28th congressional district. - EVEN.
Congresswoman Dahlkemper - Pennsylvania's 3rd congressional district - R+3.
Congressman Donnelly - Indiana's 2nd congressional district - R+2.
Congressman Ellsworth - Indiana's 8th congressional district - R+8.
Congresswoman Giffords - Arizona's 8th congressional district - R+4.
Congresswoman Harman - California's 36th congressional district - D+12.
Congressman Hill - Indiana's 9th congressional district - R+6.
Congressman Mechaud - Maine's 2nd congressional district - D+3.
Congressman Mitchell - Arizona's 5th congressional district - R+5.
Congressman Moore - Kansas 3rd congressional district - R+3.
Congressman Murphy - Pennsylvania's 8th congressional district - D+2.
Congressman Pomeroy - North Dakota's at-large congressional district - R+10.
Congressman Salazar - Colorado's 3rd congressional district - R+5.
Congresswoman Sanchez - California's 47th congressional district - D+4.
Congressman Schiff - California's 29th congressional district - D+14.
Congressman Scott - Georgia's 13th congressional district - D+15.
Congressman Space - Ohio's 18th congressional district - R+7.
Congressman Thompson - California's 1st congressional district - D+13.
Congressman Wilson - Ohio's 6th congressional district - R+2.
Normally I'd just post the link, but I think these named need to be put up as much as possible.
Oh, and let us not forget,
RELATED: Congressman Cao is a backstabbing SOB!
Congressman Arcuri - New York's 24th congressional district - R+2.
Congressman Baca - California's 43rd congressional district - D+13.
Congressman Berry - Arkansas 1st congressional district - R+8.
Congressman Bishop - Georgia's 2nd congressional district - D+1.
Congressman Boswell - Iowa's 3rd congressional district - D+1.
Congressman Cardoza - California's 18th congressional district - D+4.
Congressman Carney - Pennsylvania's 10th congressional district - R+8.
Congressman Cooper - Tennessee's 5th congressional district - D+3.
Congressman Costa - California's 20th congressional district - D+5.
Congressman Cuellar - Texas' 28th congressional district. - EVEN.
Congresswoman Dahlkemper - Pennsylvania's 3rd congressional district - R+3.
Congressman Donnelly - Indiana's 2nd congressional district - R+2.
Congressman Ellsworth - Indiana's 8th congressional district - R+8.
Congresswoman Giffords - Arizona's 8th congressional district - R+4.
Congresswoman Harman - California's 36th congressional district - D+12.
Congressman Hill - Indiana's 9th congressional district - R+6.
Congressman Mechaud - Maine's 2nd congressional district - D+3.
Congressman Mitchell - Arizona's 5th congressional district - R+5.
Congressman Moore - Kansas 3rd congressional district - R+3.
Congressman Murphy - Pennsylvania's 8th congressional district - D+2.
Congressman Pomeroy - North Dakota's at-large congressional district - R+10.
Congressman Salazar - Colorado's 3rd congressional district - R+5.
Congresswoman Sanchez - California's 47th congressional district - D+4.
Congressman Schiff - California's 29th congressional district - D+14.
Congressman Scott - Georgia's 13th congressional district - D+15.
Congressman Space - Ohio's 18th congressional district - R+7.
Congressman Thompson - California's 1st congressional district - D+13.
Congressman Wilson - Ohio's 6th congressional district - R+2.
Normally I'd just post the link, but I think these named need to be put up as much as possible.
Oh, and let us not forget,
RELATED: Congressman Cao is a backstabbing SOB!
So Italy is going down the PC toilet along with so many other
places. You can argue about the actual question here, the Crucifix being displayed in schools, but the actual intent of these people is well-displayed:
Calling the crucifix a “small body on two wooden sticks,” and “a miniature cadaver,” Smith and UOMII lobbied hard for their removal. Also on their agenda was the removal of an “offensive” 15th century Giovanni di Modena fresco in the Bologna cathedral and the deletion of Dante’s Divine Comedy from the school syllabus.
This wasn't simply "You shouldn't have one religion favored" type argument; this was a "You can't have anything we don't like" power grab.
Calling the crucifix a “small body on two wooden sticks,” and “a miniature cadaver,” Smith and UOMII lobbied hard for their removal. Also on their agenda was the removal of an “offensive” 15th century Giovanni di Modena fresco in the Bologna cathedral and the deletion of Dante’s Divine Comedy from the school syllabus.
This wasn't simply "You shouldn't have one religion favored" type argument; this was a "You can't have anything we don't like" power grab.
You aren't going to see too many bloggers commenting on this
shocking poll result, nor will you see the media do anything but shy away from any criticism that could even vaguely be misrepresented as racist, but seriously... what kind of plantation mentality is this?
Some good questions from Confederate Yankee
Some good questions from Confederate Yankee
Oh, just friggin' wonderful; among the things the FBI missed
by not having an 'official' investigation,
Hasan, the sole suspect in the massacre of 13 fellow US soldiers in Texas, attended the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, in 2001 at the same time as two of the September 11 terrorists, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. His mother's funeral was held there in May that year.
The preacher at the time was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Yemeni scholar who was banned from addressing a meeting in London by video link in August because he is accused of supporting attacks on British troops and backing terrorist organisations.
Now, I realize I'm not a G-Man, a (so very)Special Agent of the Eff Bee Aye*; nor am I a Trained Professional in Army CID; but I, a dumbass in Oklahoma, do think that finding out things like this about a serving officer WHO ALSO WAS PRAISING SUICIDE BOMBERS WHO KILL AMERICAN TROOPS- and saying crap like THIS- just MIGHT have been important.
But in this case, there appears to be a legitimate question whether political correctness has infected the Army to a degree that has endangered military personnel. That possibility deserves a sober and serious investigation. No damned question; but do you think we'll actually get that with our 'racial cowards' AG and President Obama? Hell, he's too busy using their blood to shove his socialized medicine scheme down our throats to actually worry about things like this.
For that matter, he hasn't managed to find time in his schedule to, y'know, visit the wounded; I guess using their blood for political purposes is just so much more important...
*For a good many in that agency, I'm convinced that one of the translations of their initials is properly 'Effing Bunch of Incompetents'.
Hasan, the sole suspect in the massacre of 13 fellow US soldiers in Texas, attended the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, in 2001 at the same time as two of the September 11 terrorists, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. His mother's funeral was held there in May that year.
The preacher at the time was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Yemeni scholar who was banned from addressing a meeting in London by video link in August because he is accused of supporting attacks on British troops and backing terrorist organisations.
Now, I realize I'm not a G-Man, a (so very)Special Agent of the Eff Bee Aye*; nor am I a Trained Professional in Army CID; but I, a dumbass in Oklahoma, do think that finding out things like this about a serving officer WHO ALSO WAS PRAISING SUICIDE BOMBERS WHO KILL AMERICAN TROOPS- and saying crap like THIS- just MIGHT have been important.
But in this case, there appears to be a legitimate question whether political correctness has infected the Army to a degree that has endangered military personnel. That possibility deserves a sober and serious investigation. No damned question; but do you think we'll actually get that with our 'racial cowards' AG and President Obama? Hell, he's too busy using their blood to shove his socialized medicine scheme down our throats to actually worry about things like this.
For that matter, he hasn't managed to find time in his schedule to, y'know, visit the wounded; I guess using their blood for political purposes is just so much more important...
*For a good many in that agency, I'm convinced that one of the translations of their initials is properly 'Effing Bunch of Incompetents'.
I repeat, every politician who voted for Pelosi's socialized medicine bill
ought to be dragged out into the street and horsewhipped. And removed from the office. Hey, Louisiana, you've got a dirtbag with an 'R' after his name- Joseph Cao- who sold out(and cheap, too); you need to have words with this jerk.
And the Republican Party is continuing to demonstrate why its proper name is the Stupid Party.
And to all of you whose Democrat representative voted for a bill that includes you getting fines and jail time for not buying insurance like the Dear Leader and his minions want, how's that Hope! and Change!! working for you?
Also on the Stupid Party, the RINO Lindsey Graham is still working hard to screw the whole country over.
Y'know, there's got to be at least a couple of hundred lampposts in DC...
And the Republican Party is continuing to demonstrate why its proper name is the Stupid Party.
And to all of you whose Democrat representative voted for a bill that includes you getting fines and jail time for not buying insurance like the Dear Leader and his minions want, how's that Hope! and Change!! working for you?
Also on the Stupid Party, the RINO Lindsey Graham is still working hard to screw the whole country over.
Y'know, there's got to be at least a couple of hundred lampposts in DC...
Saturday, November 07, 2009
Please note the sympathetic words of a member of the mosque outside Fort Hood:
Duane : I'm not going to condemn him for what he did. I don't know why he did it. I will not, absolutely not, condemn him for what he had done though. If he had done it for selfish reasons I still will not condemn him. He's my brother in the end. I will never condemn him.
Gavin Lee : There might be a lot of people shocked to hear you say that.
Duane: Well, that's the way it is. I don't speak for the community here but me personally I will not condemn him.
Gavin Lee : What are your thoughts towards those that were victims in this?
Duane : They were, in the end, they were troops who were going to Afghanistan and Iraq to kill Muslims. I honestly have no pity for them. It's just like the majority of the people that will hear this, after five or six minutes they'll be shocked, after that they'll forget about them and go on their day.
No, Duane, you traitorous piece of hog feces, we will not forget about them. And we damned well will not forget about you, either.
We see that you've got your talking points down: the troops murdered and wounded weren't 'believers', so they don't count, you hate Christians and Jews and anybody else not a muslim, if any muslims had been among the dead and wounded you'd have considered them traitors for being in the Army, and you think the only reason we're in Afghanistan and Iraq is to kill muslims; yeah, al Jazeera will be real proud of you, you offspring of a syphilitic whore and a distempered dog.
Yes, I'm sounding downright pissy toward the religion of submission today; I'm sick of the claims of victimhood, I'm sick of the excuses for murder and rape and abuse. You read something like this at Crittenden:
Officials at the Worcester Islamic Center, where Mehanna taught, said yesterday in a statement they are in a “state of shock” over the allegations. “We are confident that the truth of these matters will surface in due course,” they added.
And the accusations that Mehanna was hell-bent on gunning for mall shoppers in a random ambush left Muslims reeling.
“As Muslims, we condemn the planning or committing of any acts of violence or terrorism,” Kaleem added. “We are particularly appalled by the prospect of random violence against our families, our friends and our neighbors in public areas.”
Thank you, Bilal Kaleem. I like a concerned American who isn’t afraid to speak out. I assume you know there are countries were you would put your life in danger, saying things like that.
And yes, thank you Bilal Kaleem, and every other American muslim who actually gives a damn about being an American, and living in a free society. Problem is, we're expected to believe that NOBODY at the mosque, NOBODY in the muslim community Mehanna was a part of knew anything about this? After the cases where somebody has been caught planning mass murder and the mosque and community insisted it was all faked, no truth to it, none of them went to the cops with a warning? Thing is, we know there are far too many in the mosques and communities who may not personally approve of such, but won't raise a damn finger to stop it. And we cannot ignore it. Just like we cannot ignore the members like the porcine-loving Duane who make it plain that they hate anyone not muslim.
I've got a headache, and I'm pissed, and I'm tired, physically and mentally. And really, really sick of our PC-at-any-cost media and politicians and these traitors in our midst.
Gavin Lee : There might be a lot of people shocked to hear you say that.
Duane: Well, that's the way it is. I don't speak for the community here but me personally I will not condemn him.
Gavin Lee : What are your thoughts towards those that were victims in this?
Duane : They were, in the end, they were troops who were going to Afghanistan and Iraq to kill Muslims. I honestly have no pity for them. It's just like the majority of the people that will hear this, after five or six minutes they'll be shocked, after that they'll forget about them and go on their day.
No, Duane, you traitorous piece of hog feces, we will not forget about them. And we damned well will not forget about you, either.
We see that you've got your talking points down: the troops murdered and wounded weren't 'believers', so they don't count, you hate Christians and Jews and anybody else not a muslim, if any muslims had been among the dead and wounded you'd have considered them traitors for being in the Army, and you think the only reason we're in Afghanistan and Iraq is to kill muslims; yeah, al Jazeera will be real proud of you, you offspring of a syphilitic whore and a distempered dog.
Yes, I'm sounding downright pissy toward the religion of submission today; I'm sick of the claims of victimhood, I'm sick of the excuses for murder and rape and abuse. You read something like this at Crittenden:
Officials at the Worcester Islamic Center, where Mehanna taught, said yesterday in a statement they are in a “state of shock” over the allegations. “We are confident that the truth of these matters will surface in due course,” they added.
And the accusations that Mehanna was hell-bent on gunning for mall shoppers in a random ambush left Muslims reeling.
“As Muslims, we condemn the planning or committing of any acts of violence or terrorism,” Kaleem added. “We are particularly appalled by the prospect of random violence against our families, our friends and our neighbors in public areas.”
Thank you, Bilal Kaleem. I like a concerned American who isn’t afraid to speak out. I assume you know there are countries were you would put your life in danger, saying things like that.
And yes, thank you Bilal Kaleem, and every other American muslim who actually gives a damn about being an American, and living in a free society. Problem is, we're expected to believe that NOBODY at the mosque, NOBODY in the muslim community Mehanna was a part of knew anything about this? After the cases where somebody has been caught planning mass murder and the mosque and community insisted it was all faked, no truth to it, none of them went to the cops with a warning? Thing is, we know there are far too many in the mosques and communities who may not personally approve of such, but won't raise a damn finger to stop it. And we cannot ignore it. Just like we cannot ignore the members like the porcine-loving Duane who make it plain that they hate anyone not muslim.
I've got a headache, and I'm pissed, and I'm tired, physically and mentally. And really, really sick of our PC-at-any-cost media and politicians and these traitors in our midst.
It has to be asked: does this President actually give a rat's ass
about the troops? At all? For anything except a photo op?
The President's official spokesjerk is either a fool
or a downright horrible liar:
"I will continue to say what I've said before. You hear in this debate, you hear analogies, you hear references to, you see pictures about and depictions of individuals that are truly stunning, and you hear it all the time. People -- imagine five years ago somebody comparing health care reform to 9/11. Imagine just a few years ago had somebody walked around with images of Hitler.
Apparently all the pictures and posters and dolls of Bush made up as a Nazi or with a swastika on his face and so forth didn't really happen or something.
"I will continue to say what I've said before. You hear in this debate, you hear analogies, you hear references to, you see pictures about and depictions of individuals that are truly stunning, and you hear it all the time. People -- imagine five years ago somebody comparing health care reform to 9/11. Imagine just a few years ago had somebody walked around with images of Hitler.
Apparently all the pictures and posters and dolls of Bush made up as a Nazi or with a swastika on his face and so forth didn't really happen or something.
Everyone who votes for Pelosi's bill
should be dragged into the street and horsewhipped.
Today, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp (R-MI) released a letter from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) confirming that the failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the Pelosi health care bill (H.R. 3962, as amended) could land people in jail. The JCT letter makes clear that Americans who do not maintain “acceptable health insurance coverage” and who choose not to pay the bill’s new individual mandate tax (generally 2.5% of income), are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years.
Today, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp (R-MI) released a letter from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) confirming that the failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the Pelosi health care bill (H.R. 3962, as amended) could land people in jail. The JCT letter makes clear that Americans who do not maintain “acceptable health insurance coverage” and who choose not to pay the bill’s new individual mandate tax (generally 2.5% of income), are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years.
You know, every time I think of the FBI saying
they never opened an 'official investigation' of the murdering scumbag, it pisses me off even more.
Over at Advice Goddess, in the comments to this post you have variations on this one:
So you really think it's a good idea for the government to surveill individual political speech and open formal investigations based on the content of that speech?
Which overlooks a very important point: He's a serving officer in the United States Military, not just some guy spouting off. When you put on that uniform and take that oath, you know damned well that things you might say as a civilian with no harm WILL have an effect on your career. And the Army and the FBI fell flat on this because there are two very good reasons for a formal investigation to have been made:
First, if he actually held these views, it very much affected his ability to serve, and affected every troop he had power over, and
Second, if he did not say them, and if he was not the author of the posts, he needed to be cleared of the suspicion.
But they didn't properly investigate, and no proper action was taken, and it's likely all these people are dead and wounded because of it. I'm with Peters, heads should roll. They'd better.
And for those PC-obsessed officers and gummint weenies who'll play the "We mustn't be nasty to muslims" card, guess what? If this guy had been investigated and dealt with, there might have been a news story and some bitching, but that'd have been it; NOW you have the fallout of a muslim left in a place he shouldn't have been because you effed up and people are dead. You actually think this is better?
Over at Advice Goddess, in the comments to this post you have variations on this one:
So you really think it's a good idea for the government to surveill individual political speech and open formal investigations based on the content of that speech?
Which overlooks a very important point: He's a serving officer in the United States Military, not just some guy spouting off. When you put on that uniform and take that oath, you know damned well that things you might say as a civilian with no harm WILL have an effect on your career. And the Army and the FBI fell flat on this because there are two very good reasons for a formal investigation to have been made:
First, if he actually held these views, it very much affected his ability to serve, and affected every troop he had power over, and
Second, if he did not say them, and if he was not the author of the posts, he needed to be cleared of the suspicion.
But they didn't properly investigate, and no proper action was taken, and it's likely all these people are dead and wounded because of it. I'm with Peters, heads should roll. They'd better.
And for those PC-obsessed officers and gummint weenies who'll play the "We mustn't be nasty to muslims" card, guess what? If this guy had been investigated and dealt with, there might have been a news story and some bitching, but that'd have been it; NOW you have the fallout of a muslim left in a place he shouldn't have been because you effed up and people are dead. You actually think this is better?
Here's a judge who needs a boot inserted rectally to jar his brain
into working:
Paul and Theresa Taylor were married for 17 years. He was an engineer for Boston's public-works department, while she worked in accounting at a publishing company. They had three children, a weekend cottage on the bay and a house in the suburbs, on a leafy street called Cranberry Lane. In 1982, when they got divorced, the split was amicable. She got the family home; he got the second home. Both agreed "to waive any right to past, present or future alimony."
But recently, more than two decades after the divorce, Ms. Taylor, 64, told a Massachusetts judge she had no job, retirement savings or health insurance. Earlier this year, the judge ordered Mr. Taylor, now 68 and remarried, to pay $400 per week to support his ex-wife.
Bovine-effing- excrement from a clapped-out bull. Ms. Taylor is a bitch, and the judge is a moron. There is no damned way for her to legitimately argue this, period.
Tar, feathers, rail...
Paul and Theresa Taylor were married for 17 years. He was an engineer for Boston's public-works department, while she worked in accounting at a publishing company. They had three children, a weekend cottage on the bay and a house in the suburbs, on a leafy street called Cranberry Lane. In 1982, when they got divorced, the split was amicable. She got the family home; he got the second home. Both agreed "to waive any right to past, present or future alimony."
But recently, more than two decades after the divorce, Ms. Taylor, 64, told a Massachusetts judge she had no job, retirement savings or health insurance. Earlier this year, the judge ordered Mr. Taylor, now 68 and remarried, to pay $400 per week to support his ex-wife.
Bovine-effing- excrement from a clapped-out bull. Ms. Taylor is a bitch, and the judge is a moron. There is no damned way for her to legitimately argue this, period.
Tar, feathers, rail...
Speaking of socializing medicine,
I wonder if the politicians in charge and the bureaucrats who'd manage it have considered something:
Sooner or later, someone is going to be told "Yes, you mother/father/wife/husband needs this surgery, but since they're 69 they're past the age at which the formula allows them to have it. So they'll be given medication instead" and is going to react. Badly. And since it's the bureaucrat telling them "They're going to die and get out of the way, but we'll make them comfortable" it'll probably be the bureaucrat who winds up bleeding.
Or, quite possibly, it'll be one of the politicians who assured us "This is a wonderful plan, now shut up and take the medicine you're told to" who winds up, ah, suffering. And the potential from there is for things to become very interesting for a lot of bureaucrats and politicians.
Sooner or later, someone is going to be told "Yes, you mother/father/wife/husband needs this surgery, but since they're 69 they're past the age at which the formula allows them to have it. So they'll be given medication instead" and is going to react. Badly. And since it's the bureaucrat telling them "They're going to die and get out of the way, but we'll make them comfortable" it'll probably be the bureaucrat who winds up bleeding.
Or, quite possibly, it'll be one of the politicians who assured us "This is a wonderful plan, now shut up and take the medicine you're told to" who winds up, ah, suffering. And the potential from there is for things to become very interesting for a lot of bureaucrats and politicians.
Socialism has an almost magical quality:
it can make anything rare, and blame it on capitalism/ists.
CARACAS -- Compulsory cuts in water supplies began Monday in this city and other areas of Venezuela, leaving residents and businesses with little choice but to do without for periods of up to 48 hours at a stretch. The objective of all this is to slash consumption by 20% because water is in short supply.
The cause of the shortages is a matter of dispute. For President Hugo Chavez, who's now in his tenth year in power, the root problem(here it comes) lies in the shortcomings of capitalism. "With what do they fill the swimming pools of the rich?" he recently demanded to know. "With the water that they deny to the poor barrios. This is the capitalism of the lack of feelings, the lack of humanity."
Please note: this little commie has been in power for ten years, and he's still blaming 'capitalism' for every problem he's caused or made worse. Even though
...That said, water taps in poor districts are known to run indefinitely, or until they dry up, because nobody can turn them off.
Which raises the other villain of this piece. The government's critics claim that the real cause of the trouble is years, if not decades, of inadequate maintenance, or none at all. Be that as it may, Hitcher says the shortages will be in force until the official end of the dry season (which in prior days would soon be getting underway) in May next year.
So the Glorious Socialist Gummint of Venezuela doesn't bother to, or can't, maintain the water systems. But- of course!- it's The Capitalists At Fault, So Don't Blame The Revolution.
But the problem isn't just water but electricity, too. This is an important consideration given that electricity is used to pump water from street level to water tanks on the roofs of apartment and office blocks.
While a program of power cuts apparently isn't officially on the cards -- or at least not yet -- Chavez has decreed into existence a new Electric Energy Ministry to oversee austerity measures. These will include measures to cut consumption including, it's said, a supposedly much less glitzy line in what's permitted in the way of street decorations during the approaching festive season.
Which means Chavez will use this as an excuse to seize more private property and businesses and tighten his hold over people, and he'll be a good little Castro buttmonkey and blame everyone else- the US at the top of the list- for the problem. Venezuela is rich in oil, but they're short of power? Gee, I wonder why... Which brings us to
Again, there's argument about the cause of this strife. Officials point to sharply surging electricity demand, which they estimate is rising at an annual rate of six percent. Others say the real problem is on the supply side of the equation and, again, they argue that the cause of this is a poor investment record. "Years of not enough investment and lack of maintenance to the distribution lines and power generations systems," says Bottome.
The government, which nationalized electricity in 2007, appears to have taken this on board. Officials say $18 billion is to be invested to put things right and boost generation capacity by MW10,480 by 2014.
Uh huh. Except that, being run by a bunch of socialists, the money will disappear, capitalists will be blamed, and things will fall further behind.
But Obama assures us that Chavez is a great leader, andsoon monkeys will fly out of his ass and start turning the turbines soon will make it all better. Just like Obama will make health care all better by taking control of it.
Such a comforting thought, isn't it?
CARACAS -- Compulsory cuts in water supplies began Monday in this city and other areas of Venezuela, leaving residents and businesses with little choice but to do without for periods of up to 48 hours at a stretch. The objective of all this is to slash consumption by 20% because water is in short supply.
The cause of the shortages is a matter of dispute. For President Hugo Chavez, who's now in his tenth year in power, the root problem(here it comes) lies in the shortcomings of capitalism. "With what do they fill the swimming pools of the rich?" he recently demanded to know. "With the water that they deny to the poor barrios. This is the capitalism of the lack of feelings, the lack of humanity."
Please note: this little commie has been in power for ten years, and he's still blaming 'capitalism' for every problem he's caused or made worse. Even though
...That said, water taps in poor districts are known to run indefinitely, or until they dry up, because nobody can turn them off.
Which raises the other villain of this piece. The government's critics claim that the real cause of the trouble is years, if not decades, of inadequate maintenance, or none at all. Be that as it may, Hitcher says the shortages will be in force until the official end of the dry season (which in prior days would soon be getting underway) in May next year.
So the Glorious Socialist Gummint of Venezuela doesn't bother to, or can't, maintain the water systems. But- of course!- it's The Capitalists At Fault, So Don't Blame The Revolution.
But the problem isn't just water but electricity, too. This is an important consideration given that electricity is used to pump water from street level to water tanks on the roofs of apartment and office blocks.
While a program of power cuts apparently isn't officially on the cards -- or at least not yet -- Chavez has decreed into existence a new Electric Energy Ministry to oversee austerity measures. These will include measures to cut consumption including, it's said, a supposedly much less glitzy line in what's permitted in the way of street decorations during the approaching festive season.
Which means Chavez will use this as an excuse to seize more private property and businesses and tighten his hold over people, and he'll be a good little Castro buttmonkey and blame everyone else- the US at the top of the list- for the problem. Venezuela is rich in oil, but they're short of power? Gee, I wonder why... Which brings us to
Again, there's argument about the cause of this strife. Officials point to sharply surging electricity demand, which they estimate is rising at an annual rate of six percent. Others say the real problem is on the supply side of the equation and, again, they argue that the cause of this is a poor investment record. "Years of not enough investment and lack of maintenance to the distribution lines and power generations systems," says Bottome.
The government, which nationalized electricity in 2007, appears to have taken this on board. Officials say $18 billion is to be invested to put things right and boost generation capacity by MW10,480 by 2014.
Uh huh. Except that, being run by a bunch of socialists, the money will disappear, capitalists will be blamed, and things will fall further behind.
But Obama assures us that Chavez is a great leader, and
Such a comforting thought, isn't it?
Friday, November 06, 2009
One more thought from Tam, this one on the terrorist attack
at Fort Hood:
3) The cherry on the icing of the cake of the night was the mealy-mouthed General Cone simpering from the lectern about "We don't go armed around here, this is our home," which caused me to look at the loaded pistol on the nightstand in bafflement.
3) The cherry on the icing of the cake of the night was the mealy-mouthed General Cone simpering from the lectern about "We don't go armed around here, this is our home," which caused me to look at the loaded pistol on the nightstand in bafflement.
Another fine phrase from Tam, this time referring to
actors who seem to think they have some moral standing to lecture us on, well, everything:
Lastly, we circle back around to one of the big problems in our society, which is the idea that line-memorizing clothes horses have anything more valid to say about politics, science, or current events than the hippie on the street corner with a guitar case. The Romans had the right position in society for actors: Above cesspit cleaners, but not as well-respected as a decent whore.
Lastly, we circle back around to one of the big problems in our society, which is the idea that line-memorizing clothes horses have anything more valid to say about politics, science, or current events than the hippie on the street corner with a guitar case. The Romans had the right position in society for actors: Above cesspit cleaners, but not as well-respected as a decent whore.
The murdering little jihadi fornicator of swine was brought down
by Sgt. Kimberly Munley. Hit multiple times and she still stood her ground and made the shots. She needs to be properly recognized for getting the job done.
Ralph Peters has some words for the Army brass who fell down on the job.
Now 12 soldiers and a security guard lie dead. 31 soldiers were wounded, 28 of them seriously. If heads don’t roll in this maggot’s chain of command, the Army will have shamed itself beyond moral redemption.
There’s another important issue, too. How could the Army allow an obviously incompetent and dysfunctional psychiatrist to treat our troubled soldiers returning from war? An Islamist whacko is counseled for arguing with veterans who’ve been assigned to his care? And he’s not removed from duty? What planet does the Army live on?
For the first time since I joined the Army in 1976, I’m ashamed of its dereliction of duty. The chain of command protected a budding terrorist who was waving one red flag after another. Because it was safer for careers than doing something about him.
Get ready for the apologias. We’ve already heard from the terrorist’s family that "he’s a good American." In their world, maybe he is.
But when do we, the American public, knock off the PC nonsense?
I'm sure Mr. Peters is aware that a lot of people don't buy it, many never did; the problem is sticking a cattle prod sufficiently far up the ass of the politicians to give them the message that we're tired of it.
Or maybe we should just go with the tar, feathers and ropes; it'd be simpler, and far more certain.
Ralph Peters has some words for the Army brass who fell down on the job.
Now 12 soldiers and a security guard lie dead. 31 soldiers were wounded, 28 of them seriously. If heads don’t roll in this maggot’s chain of command, the Army will have shamed itself beyond moral redemption.
There’s another important issue, too. How could the Army allow an obviously incompetent and dysfunctional psychiatrist to treat our troubled soldiers returning from war? An Islamist whacko is counseled for arguing with veterans who’ve been assigned to his care? And he’s not removed from duty? What planet does the Army live on?
For the first time since I joined the Army in 1976, I’m ashamed of its dereliction of duty. The chain of command protected a budding terrorist who was waving one red flag after another. Because it was safer for careers than doing something about him.
Get ready for the apologias. We’ve already heard from the terrorist’s family that "he’s a good American." In their world, maybe he is.
But when do we, the American public, knock off the PC nonsense?
I'm sure Mr. Peters is aware that a lot of people don't buy it, many never did; the problem is sticking a cattle prod sufficiently far up the ass of the politicians to give them the message that we're tired of it.
Or maybe we should just go with the tar, feathers and ropes; it'd be simpler, and far more certain.
So some Evil Party members aren't real trusting of Pelosi's intentions
and Pelosi is a liar; anyone surprised about either of those?
The White House and the congressional leadership saw this coming, and it is why Speaker Nancy Pelosi is force-marching her health bill to a vote tomorrow. She's not about to give her members time to absorb the ugly results, or to be further rattled by next week's Veteran's Day break, when they go home for a repeat of the August furies. If not now, she knows, maybe never.
Yeah, can't let the minions hear the words of the people who actually vote, and pay the bills, y'know; might make them less minioney.
Look for it, nonetheless, to be a squeaker. A lot of Democrats are getting a sneaky suspicion Mrs. Pelosi is willing to sacrifice their seats on the altar of liberal government health care. Combined with the election results and Mr. Obama's falling poll numbers, this is no recipe for loyalty. Hello, tipping point. Hello, even crazier Washington.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that the speaker will not allow the final language of the health care to be posted online for 72 hours before bringing the bill to a vote on the House floor, despite her September 24 statement that she was "absolutely" committed to doing so.
...
Hmmm. Socialist politician lies. Surprised I'm not.
The White House and the congressional leadership saw this coming, and it is why Speaker Nancy Pelosi is force-marching her health bill to a vote tomorrow. She's not about to give her members time to absorb the ugly results, or to be further rattled by next week's Veteran's Day break, when they go home for a repeat of the August furies. If not now, she knows, maybe never.
Yeah, can't let the minions hear the words of the people who actually vote, and pay the bills, y'know; might make them less minioney.
Look for it, nonetheless, to be a squeaker. A lot of Democrats are getting a sneaky suspicion Mrs. Pelosi is willing to sacrifice their seats on the altar of liberal government health care. Combined with the election results and Mr. Obama's falling poll numbers, this is no recipe for loyalty. Hello, tipping point. Hello, even crazier Washington.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that the speaker will not allow the final language of the health care to be posted online for 72 hours before bringing the bill to a vote on the House floor, despite her September 24 statement that she was "absolutely" committed to doing so.
...
On September 24, Speaker Nancy Pelosi told THE WEEKLY STANDARD that she was "absolutely" committed to putting the text of the final House bill online for 72 hours before the House votes:
TWS: Madam Speaker, do you support the measure to put the final House bill online for 72 hours before it's voted on at the very end?
PELOSI: Absolutely. Without question.
But tonight, when asked if Speaker Pelosi will leave the bill online for 72 hours after we see what's in the rule, Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly replied in an email: "No; [the] pledge was to have manager’s amendment online for 72 hours, and we will do that."
Apparently Pelosi's agreement to leave the "final" bill online "at the very end" of the process wasn't such a straightforward pledge.Hmmm. Socialist politician lies. Surprised I'm not.
Either very badly worded, or an admission of idiocy
I asked what the policy was about having cameras in the office. "Only credentialed media. And I'm sure you know about the rules in the House regarding credentialed press," he replied. Were media cameras allowed into the office? "Yes, throughout the day." But what was the impetus about having her remove her own camera? "It was a decision we made. There was no reasoning behind it."
Kind of like an awful lot of what comes out of Congress, huh?
Kind of like an awful lot of what comes out of Congress, huh?
A bit of commentary on the Obama actions on Honduras
The bottom line: the Obama team picked the wrong horse, found itself in a diplomatic dead end, found a mechanism to abandon its failed gambit, and now supports elections — the very position that the Honduran interim government and the administration’s critics have been urging from the beginning. Well, in fairness, it is a display of diplomatic genius compared with Obama’s Middle East policy.
A little more on the murdering muslim slimeball* at Fort Hood (updated)
Patterico's thoughts:
"Regardless of what Hasan’s motivation turns out to be, this information is relevant to the overall assessment. It could turn out that Hasan’s motivations have nothing to do with the war or Islam. Based on what I’m reading tonight, that appears unlikely . . . but I’m not jumping to any conclusions.
But the fact that we don’t know his motivations yet with crystal clarity is no excuse for burying the facts I have just related to you. As we try to figure out what’s going on, those facts matter. If you read Hot Air (or this site) you’re learning those facts. If you read the L.A. Times, they are being hidden from you.
And it’s quite clear why: political correctness. The L.A. Times will bury this as long as they can — probably until they’re embarrassed into revealing it due to its clear relevance. They will applaud themselves for being sober and cautious — something they would never do if the shooter were an aficionado of Rush Limbaugh instead of Allah and anti-American rants."
From what I'm hearing and reading, a lot of other major media is refusing to mention these non-pc things; so much better to blame the Army and the other soldiers for 'bullying', etc. For instance,
The evasiveness of media in the immediate wake of the Fort Hood murders is astonishing. The ABC’s Lisa Millar opened her midday report claiming to have “learned quite a lot about the gunman”, then revealed very little of it – apart from that Malik Nadal Hasan had “attracted a lot of harassment because of his last name” and “family background”. This came about, Millar reported, despite Hasan being born and raised in the US. Not mentioned in eight minutes of coverage: Hasan’s faith, which in a case like this is surely of interest. America’s ABC eventually gets around to it, after listing various other biographical details. In descending order of interest to that network:• Hasan was an “army psychiatrist”
• He’d trained in Maryland
• He didn’t get good reports while assigned to Walter Reed
• He wasn’t married
• No kids
• His parents came from Jordan
Oh, and by the way …
"Regardless of what Hasan’s motivation turns out to be, this information is relevant to the overall assessment. It could turn out that Hasan’s motivations have nothing to do with the war or Islam. Based on what I’m reading tonight, that appears unlikely . . . but I’m not jumping to any conclusions.
But the fact that we don’t know his motivations yet with crystal clarity is no excuse for burying the facts I have just related to you. As we try to figure out what’s going on, those facts matter. If you read Hot Air (or this site) you’re learning those facts. If you read the L.A. Times, they are being hidden from you.
And it’s quite clear why: political correctness. The L.A. Times will bury this as long as they can — probably until they’re embarrassed into revealing it due to its clear relevance. They will applaud themselves for being sober and cautious — something they would never do if the shooter were an aficionado of Rush Limbaugh instead of Allah and anti-American rants."
From what I'm hearing and reading, a lot of other major media is refusing to mention these non-pc things; so much better to blame the Army and the other soldiers for 'bullying', etc. For instance,
The evasiveness of media in the immediate wake of the Fort Hood murders is astonishing. The ABC’s Lisa Millar opened her midday report claiming to have “learned quite a lot about the gunman”, then revealed very little of it – apart from that Malik Nadal Hasan had “attracted a lot of harassment because of his last name” and “family background”. This came about, Millar reported, despite Hasan being born and raised in the US. Not mentioned in eight minutes of coverage: Hasan’s faith, which in a case like this is surely of interest. America’s ABC eventually gets around to it, after listing various other biographical details. In descending order of interest to that network:• Hasan was an “army psychiatrist”
• He’d trained in Maryland
• He didn’t get good reports while assigned to Walter Reed
• He wasn’t married
• No kids
• His parents came from Jordan
• A cousin describes him as “a pious lifelong Muslim”.
Two more things I'll note: the first from this article:
An imam from a mosque Hasan regularly attended said Hasan, a lifelong Muslim, was a committed soldier, gave no sign of extremist beliefs and regularly wore his uniform at prayers.
Well, imam, to put this bluntly, I don't believe you; we've heard too many imams say the same type of thing about people caught making plans for mass murder, the imam often being a slimeball who'd been preaching "Death to the Great Satan" and so forth. Your group in general has used up all presumption of truth.
Second, something I can't quite describe:
"I was confused and just shocked," said Spc. Jerry Richard, 27, who works at the center but was not on duty during the shooting. "Overseas you are ready for it. But here you can't even defend yourself."
It's a sorry fact, and it sucks.
Update: Found this at Malkin:
U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, a Republican from Austin, was briefed by military officials and said Hasan had taken some unusual classes for someone studying about mental health.
“He took a lot of extra classes in weapons training, which seems a little odd for a psychiatrist,” McCaul said.
Which indicates to me that he deliberately worked up to this, planned for it.
*And yes, I am out of all patience and tolerance for these people
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Can this bastard not even make a statement
deploring or condemning the murders without throwing this other crap in? And FIRST, at that?
I'm taking a break from the Fort Hood murders to post on something much happier
I met the new daughter-in-law. Very smart, capable, and that picture did not do her justice; this girl is seriously pretty. And she and son can talk cars and engine & tranny mods(I got lost in part of it, that's not been one of my big interests). I think he got a real good one.
If you haven't heard about the Fort Hood murders,
here's some places with info:
Driscoll
This Ain't Hell
I just linked to TAH main because you really ought to scroll down and see what the parasites and 'journalists' are doing with this.
The parasites:
Doug Zachary is another one of those Vietnam Veterans Against the War who never went to Vietnam - he got booted from the Marines for being a derelict. Now he’s an IVAW straphanger - he hangs out where he smells money. Here’s the email he sent out to friends to raise money for “Under the Hood Cafe”, the anti-war coffee house in Killeeen, TX outside the Fort Hood gate;
and the 'journalists':
Despite all the evidence this guy never deployed and was in fact a mental health professional, CNN is gamely driving on by interviewing a psychiatrist about the mental health issues faced by returning veterans.
HEY SHITDICKS- look at the actual shooter and stop maligning my brothers and sisters in arms who served overseas.
and remember that part about 'mental health professional', because
“I’m very upset. I’m at the point of tears,” said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, who lives in Austin.
“We warned the military about this. We warned the military about the need to increase the number of mental health care providers. We warned the military about lowering recruiting standards, about the medical exams for soldiers coming back from the war and needing mental health care and brain injury exams.”
I guess they're taking a page from Rahm, can't let a crisis go to waste.
And since we're sure to be told it's a 'tragedy' and so forth, let's take note of this from Driscoll:
Hunt said his son told him he loaded up many of the wounded and drove them to the hospital. The wounded relayed what they saw inside when the shooting happened.
“They were telling him that one guy was shouting something in Arabic while he was shooting,” Tom Hunt said. “He couldn’t say much more than that.”
and
Update: Shepard Smith of Fox News interviews a former colleague of Hasan at the psych ward at Fort Hood who claims Hasan made statements along the lines of “Maybe the Muslims could stand up and fight against the aggressor”, as the person who uploaded the clip to YouTube notes:
And, if this is true, there should be heads rolling:
Federal law enforcement officials say the suspected Fort Hood, Texas, shooter had come to their attention at least six months ago because of Internet postings that discussed suicide bombings and other threats.The officials say the postings appeared to have been made by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who was killed during the shooting incident that left least 11 others dead and 31 wounded. The officials say they are still trying to confirm that he was the author. They say an official investigation was not opened.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.
One of the Web postings that authorities reviewed is a blog that equates suicide bombers with a soldier throwing himself on a grenade to save the lives of his comrades.
Number one, anybody who calls this a 'tragedy' should be kicked in the nuts; this was a mass murder, committed by a follower of the Religion of Submission('Peace' my ass); this was an atrocity, a terrorist attack. And I want a really good answer why there was no official investigation opened; bullshit excuses need not apply.
Also need not apply, the FBI & Co. announcing that "He had no known links to ( ), so it was not considered a terrorist attack."
Driscoll
This Ain't Hell
I just linked to TAH main because you really ought to scroll down and see what the parasites and 'journalists' are doing with this.
The parasites:
Doug Zachary is another one of those Vietnam Veterans Against the War who never went to Vietnam - he got booted from the Marines for being a derelict. Now he’s an IVAW straphanger - he hangs out where he smells money. Here’s the email he sent out to friends to raise money for “Under the Hood Cafe”, the anti-war coffee house in Killeeen, TX outside the Fort Hood gate;
and the 'journalists':
Despite all the evidence this guy never deployed and was in fact a mental health professional, CNN is gamely driving on by interviewing a psychiatrist about the mental health issues faced by returning veterans.
HEY SHITDICKS- look at the actual shooter and stop maligning my brothers and sisters in arms who served overseas.
and remember that part about 'mental health professional', because
“I’m very upset. I’m at the point of tears,” said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, who lives in Austin.
“We warned the military about this. We warned the military about the need to increase the number of mental health care providers. We warned the military about lowering recruiting standards, about the medical exams for soldiers coming back from the war and needing mental health care and brain injury exams.”
I guess they're taking a page from Rahm, can't let a crisis go to waste.
And since we're sure to be told it's a 'tragedy' and so forth, let's take note of this from Driscoll:
Hunt said his son told him he loaded up many of the wounded and drove them to the hospital. The wounded relayed what they saw inside when the shooting happened.
“They were telling him that one guy was shouting something in Arabic while he was shooting,” Tom Hunt said. “He couldn’t say much more than that.”
and
Update: Shepard Smith of Fox News interviews a former colleague of Hasan at the psych ward at Fort Hood who claims Hasan made statements along the lines of “Maybe the Muslims could stand up and fight against the aggressor”, as the person who uploaded the clip to YouTube notes:
And, if this is true, there should be heads rolling:
Federal law enforcement officials say the suspected Fort Hood, Texas, shooter had come to their attention at least six months ago because of Internet postings that discussed suicide bombings and other threats.The officials say the postings appeared to have been made by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who was killed during the shooting incident that left least 11 others dead and 31 wounded. The officials say they are still trying to confirm that he was the author. They say an official investigation was not opened.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.
One of the Web postings that authorities reviewed is a blog that equates suicide bombers with a soldier throwing himself on a grenade to save the lives of his comrades.
Number one, anybody who calls this a 'tragedy' should be kicked in the nuts; this was a mass murder, committed by a follower of the Religion of Submission('Peace' my ass); this was an atrocity, a terrorist attack. And I want a really good answer why there was no official investigation opened; bullshit excuses need not apply.
Also need not apply, the FBI & Co. announcing that "He had no known links to ( ), so it was not considered a terrorist attack."
Posted before, but worth a repeat:
AK vs. AR vs. MN
For extra credit, go look at the shirt
| Stuff you know if you have an AK | Stuff you know if you have an AR | Stuff you know if you have a Mosin Nagant |
| It works though you have never cleaned it. Ever. | You have $9 per ounce special non-detergent synthetic Teflon infused oil for cleaning. | It was last cleaned in Berlin in 1945. |
| You are able to hit the broad side of a barn from inside. | You are able to hit the broad side of a barn from 600 meters. | You can hit the farm from two counties over. |
| Cheap mags are fun to buy. | Cheap mags melt. | What's a mag? |
| Your safety can be heard from 300 meters away. | You can silently flip off the safety with your finger on the trigger. | What's a safety? |
| Your rifle comes with a cheap nylon sling. | Your rifle has a 9 point stealth tactical suspension system. | You rifle has dog collars. |
| Your bayonet makes a good wire cutter. | Your bayonet is actually a pretty good steak knife. | Your bayonet is longer than your leg. |
| You can put a .30" hole through 12" of oak, if you can hit it. | You can put one hole in a paper target at 100 meters with 30 rounds. | You can knock down everyone else's target with the shock wave of your bullet going downrange. |
| When out of ammo your rifle will nominally pass as a club. | When out of ammo, your rifle makes a great wiffle bat. | When out of ammo, your rifle makes a supreme war club, pike, boat oar, tent pole, or firewood. |
| Recoil is manageable, even fun. | What's recoil? | Recoil is often used to relocate shoulders thrown out by the previous shot. |
| Your sight adjustment goes to "10", and you've never bothered moving it. | Your sight adjustment is incremented in fractions of minute of angle. | Your sight adjustment goes to 12 miles and you've actually tried it. |
| Your rifle can be used by any two bit nation's most illiterate conscripts to fight elite forces worldwide. | Your rifle is used by elite forces worldwide to fight two bit nations' most illiterate conscripts. | Your rifle has fought against itself and won every time. |
| Your rifle won some revolutions. | Your rifle won the Cold War. | Your rifle won a pole vault event. |
| You paid $350. | You paid $900. | You paid $59.95. |
| You buy cheap ammo by the case. | You lovingly reload precision crafted rounds one by one. | You dig your ammo out of a farmer's field in Ukraine and it works just fine. |
| You can intimidate your foe with the bayonet mounted. | You foes laugh when you mount your bayonet. | You can bayonet your foe on the other side of the river without leaving the comfort of your hole. |
| Service life, 50 years. | Service life, 40 years. | Service life, 100 years, and counting. |
| It's easier to buy a new rifle when you want to change cartridge sizes. | You can change cartridge sizes with the push of a couple of pins and a new upper. | You believe no real man would dare risk the ridicule of his friends by suggesting there is anything but 7.62x54r. |
| You can repair your rifle with a big hammer and a swift kick. | You can repair your rifle by taking it to a certified gunsmith, it's under warranty! | If your rifle breaks, you buy a new one. |
| You consider it a badge of honor when you get your handguards burst into flames. | You consider it a badge of honor when you shoot a sub-MOA 5 shot group. | You consider it a badge of honor when you cycle 5 rounds without the aid of a 2x4. |
| After a long day the range you relax by watching "Red Dawn". | After a long day at the range you relax by watching "Blackhawk Down". | After a long day at the range you relax by visiting the chiropractor. |
| After cleaning your rifle you have a strong urge for a stiff shot of Vodka. | After cleaning your rifle you have a strong urge for hotdogs and apple pie. | After cleaning your rifle you have a strong urge for shishkabob. |
| You can accessorize you rifle with a new muzzle brake or a nice stock set. | Your rifle's accessories are eight times more valuable than your rifle. | Your rifle's accessory is a small tin can with a funny lid, but it's buried under an apartment building somewhere in Budapest. |
| Your rifle's finish is varnish and paint. | Your rifle's finish is Teflon and high tech polymers. | Your rifle's finish is low grade shellac, cosmoline and Olga's toe nails. |
| Your wife tolerates your autographed framed picture of Mikhail Kalashnikov. | Your wife tolerates your autographed framed picture of Eugene Stoner. | You're not sure there WERE cameras to photograph Sergei Mosin. |
| Late at night you sometimes have to fight the urge to hold your rifle over your head and shout "Wolverines!" | Late at night you sometimes have to fight the urge to clear your house, slicing the pie from room to room. | Late at night, you sometimes have to fight the urge to dig a fighting trench in the the yard to sleep in. |
For extra credit, go look at the shirt
Yeah, 'space' is why they don't want Reagan's portrait
displayed.
But as he rushed to finish the portraits, Twitchell said he was told by organizers that he could leave one of the paintings in his studio: There was no room for both.
"They said there would only be room for one and they just assumed it would be Kennedy," the disappointed artist said this week as he continued to work at putting the final touches on the Reagan one.
...
But Jampol said presidential preferences never played a role.
"I would take either one," he said. "It's just really a space issue, and Kent happened to do the Kennedy one first."
Am I the only one thinking "Bullshit!" ?
But as he rushed to finish the portraits, Twitchell said he was told by organizers that he could leave one of the paintings in his studio: There was no room for both.
"They said there would only be room for one and they just assumed it would be Kennedy," the disappointed artist said this week as he continued to work at putting the final touches on the Reagan one.
...
But Jampol said presidential preferences never played a role.
"I would take either one," he said. "It's just really a space issue, and Kent happened to do the Kennedy one first."
Am I the only one thinking "Bullshit!" ?
Standard current Democrat policy: lie about what you're doing
and lie about your justification:
...What does the Constitution say? To provide for the health, welfare and the defense of the country.”
Someone must have pointed out that the word 'health appears nowhere in that document. So they went to
James O’Connor, Burris’s communications director, later told CNSNews.com that although the word “health” does not appear anywhere in the Constitution, the senator was referring to the Preamble of the Constitution…
Uh, no. Here's the preamble:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
I'm guessing they're claiming that 'general Welfare' translates to "We have the power to order you to get what insurance we decide on, and fine and tax the life out of you if you don't." At least under their 'living document' bullcrap. I'd guess that's what Pelosi meant when someone asked her where Congress got the authority to mandate insurance and she got that shocked look on her face(maybe the only one it can show anymore) and said "Are you serious?" Twice.
...What does the Constitution say? To provide for the health, welfare and the defense of the country.”
Someone must have pointed out that the word 'health appears nowhere in that document. So they went to
James O’Connor, Burris’s communications director, later told CNSNews.com that although the word “health” does not appear anywhere in the Constitution, the senator was referring to the Preamble of the Constitution…
Uh, no. Here's the preamble:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
I'm guessing they're claiming that 'general Welfare' translates to "We have the power to order you to get what insurance we decide on, and fine and tax the life out of you if you don't." At least under their 'living document' bullcrap. I'd guess that's what Pelosi meant when someone asked her where Congress got the authority to mandate insurance and she got that shocked look on her face(maybe the only one it can show anymore) and said "Are you serious?" Twice.
State officials deliberately underestimated the cost
of Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s plan to lure green energy companies to Oregon with big taxpayer subsidies, resulting in a program that cost 40 times more than unsuspecting lawmakers were told, an investigation by The Oregonian shows.
Warren Buffet, proponent of higher taxes
that he then makes every effort to avoid having to pay. As I recall, when he was pushing for death taxes on estates, someone dug around and found that he had put billions of what will be his estate in shelters and investments specifically to avoid having to pay the taxes he thinks everyone else should pay.
Damn, if they've found this many,
how many other schools are doing/did 'Praise the Dear Leader' shows?
An interesting comparison of Hollywood and Islam
at Instapunk. Including
The second point has to do with the real bond between Hollywood and Islam -- the twisted sexuality that has produced both the casting couch and honor killings, ...
May add to this later, some thinking to do
The second point has to do with the real bond between Hollywood and Islam -- the twisted sexuality that has produced both the casting couch and honor killings, ...
May add to this later, some thinking to do
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
To start with, I guess you could call this
'trolling'. Technically.
And Chris talks about Finland and Finns. That the proper name would be Suomi, among other things, and as a reference to the Winter War and the general dumbness of starting a fight with them he has this(which I posted once before, but it's worth another):
There's a bill in Canada to dump the worthless(and hugely expensive) long gun registry; take note of this:
There are a lot of anti-C-391 pieces appearing in the media this morning, some of it making flagrantly untruthful claims such as that C-391 is going to dismantle the licensing system or that if it passes the police will have no way to tell whether somebody owns a gun.
Yep, it's an international standard: the hoplophobes lie.(personal thought: it's nobody's damned business, cops included, if I own a gun. Or two)
The People's Republic of MA; wonderful frikkin' place, isn't it?
Yes, the brave artistic types in Hollywood; the courage just overflows, doesn't it?(kind of like Yale University...)
I've got some stuff to clean up and put away; son & new daughter-in-law are on leave and coming up tomorrow. Be nice while I'm away.
And Chris talks about Finland and Finns. That the proper name would be Suomi, among other things, and as a reference to the Winter War and the general dumbness of starting a fight with them he has this(which I posted once before, but it's worth another):
There's a bill in Canada to dump the worthless(and hugely expensive) long gun registry; take note of this:
There are a lot of anti-C-391 pieces appearing in the media this morning, some of it making flagrantly untruthful claims such as that C-391 is going to dismantle the licensing system or that if it passes the police will have no way to tell whether somebody owns a gun.
Yep, it's an international standard: the hoplophobes lie.(personal thought: it's nobody's damned business, cops included, if I own a gun. Or two)
The People's Republic of MA; wonderful frikkin' place, isn't it?
Yes, the brave artistic types in Hollywood; the courage just overflows, doesn't it?(kind of like Yale University...)
I've got some stuff to clean up and put away; son & new daughter-in-law are on leave and coming up tomorrow. Be nice while I'm away.
Speaking of "I see racism EVERYWHERE!!!" morons,
African-American politicians have long complained that they’re treated unfairly when ethical issues arise. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus are still fuming over Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to oust then-Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) from the House Ways and Means Committee in 2006, and some have argued that race plays a role in the ongoing efforts to remove Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) from his chairmanship of that committee.
Let's see, Jefferson was caught on tape taking bribes, was caught with the cash, but booting him off the committee was 'race-based'. Rangel is a corrupt tax-dodging dirtbag, but investigating him is 'racist'.
These people are flat disgusting.
Let's see, Jefferson was caught on tape taking bribes, was caught with the cash, but booting him off the committee was 'race-based'. Rangel is a corrupt tax-dodging dirtbag, but investigating him is 'racist'.
These people are flat disgusting.
And the EUnuchs take over
So ends an eight-year journey. The treaty started life as a constitution but it was rejected by the French and Dutch. It was re-born as a treaty although it was largely the same document. It had been shorn of some references that implied Europe was growing closer to being a federal state.
The British goverment, who promised the people a vote, changed its mind. The treaty was described as a technical change that did not require a referendum. All the indications were that the British people wanted their say and most likely would have rejected the treaty.
And so the backstabbing power-hungry socialists have taken over. I can hope, 'For now', but I'm not holding my breath.
Whereas over here,
In sum: A bad night for advocates of gun show restrictions. Another fine night (as were election nights 2006 and 2008) for Democrats with A ratings from NRA. And good news for Second Amendment advocates in blue New Jersey and purple Virginia.
I guarantee, the politicians pushing that 'small arms' treaty don't like this at all.
The British goverment, who promised the people a vote, changed its mind. The treaty was described as a technical change that did not require a referendum. All the indications were that the British people wanted their say and most likely would have rejected the treaty.
And so the backstabbing power-hungry socialists have taken over. I can hope, 'For now', but I'm not holding my breath.
Whereas over here,
In sum: A bad night for advocates of gun show restrictions. Another fine night (as were election nights 2006 and 2008) for Democrats with A ratings from NRA. And good news for Second Amendment advocates in blue New Jersey and purple Virginia.
I guarantee, the politicians pushing that 'small arms' treaty don't like this at all.
I can see Obama not wanting word on this to get out,
but to claim keeping it quiet was for 'national security' reasons?
The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:
* * That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.
* * That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.
And it goes on from there.
Pointed to by Insty
The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:
* * That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.
* * That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.
And it goes on from there.
Pointed to by Insty
Still, I’m not so interested in how Gore made his fortune,
or even the ethics involved of barnstorming the planet in a first wave of scare tactics, then following up with a second wave of financial reaping from what his fear mongering had sown—but rather instead the divide between the world he advocates and the life he lives. After all, with cap-and-trade, our energy is going to go a tad higher—the rich oblivious to the cost, the poor to be recipients of government subsidized help.
To distill Gorism is to live in a 1,000 sq. ft. solar house, bike to work, and take the train on long distances; but to promote Gorism, one lives in a mansion, jets on private planes, and is chauffeured from airport to conference center—a rather heavy carbon footprint indeed. I mention that because this week he has insisted that he only invested in what he believes in and is thus not a hypocrite—sort of like a 1990s Fannie or Freddie director saying he is only taking mega-bonuses because he believes in public support for housing.
...
Rev. Wright is back in the news. In Animal Farm, pigs-on-two-legs fashion he is sermonizing on the joys of socialism as he is ensconced in a three-story, 10,000 sq. ft. mansion, paid for by his relatively modest flock in thanks to his virulent race-baiting (the real story of his Fox-news-aired clips was not his racism or anti-Americanism, but the standing ovations he received from his congregation for his unadulterated hate.). A Nancy Pelosi shouts slogans from the barricades, while her husband subsidizes her aristocratic liberalism through a network of arcane deal-making. Chris Dodd worries about the roguery of credit card companies while he finagles an Irish getaway “cottage” through influence peddling. The list could go on.
Speaking of this kind of crap,
Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and his wife failed to pay more than $239,000 in taxes over a three-year period and have had a lien slapped on their property by the Internal Revenue Service, public records show.
Dellums, 73, and his wife, Cynthia, 55, who acts as his unpaid adviser, are named in an IRS lien filed with the Alameda County recorder's office Oct. 14. A lien naming Ron Dellums was also filed Oct. 22 in Washington, D.C., where he lived for more than 30 years as a member of Congress and a lobbyist.
The Alameda County lien says the couple failed to pay $124,198 in federal income taxes in 2005, $66,554 in 2006 and $48,246 in 2007, the year Dellums took office as mayor.
This is the man often known as Red Ron for being such a commie cheerleader.
To distill Gorism is to live in a 1,000 sq. ft. solar house, bike to work, and take the train on long distances; but to promote Gorism, one lives in a mansion, jets on private planes, and is chauffeured from airport to conference center—a rather heavy carbon footprint indeed. I mention that because this week he has insisted that he only invested in what he believes in and is thus not a hypocrite—sort of like a 1990s Fannie or Freddie director saying he is only taking mega-bonuses because he believes in public support for housing.
...
Rev. Wright is back in the news. In Animal Farm, pigs-on-two-legs fashion he is sermonizing on the joys of socialism as he is ensconced in a three-story, 10,000 sq. ft. mansion, paid for by his relatively modest flock in thanks to his virulent race-baiting (the real story of his Fox-news-aired clips was not his racism or anti-Americanism, but the standing ovations he received from his congregation for his unadulterated hate.). A Nancy Pelosi shouts slogans from the barricades, while her husband subsidizes her aristocratic liberalism through a network of arcane deal-making. Chris Dodd worries about the roguery of credit card companies while he finagles an Irish getaway “cottage” through influence peddling. The list could go on.
Speaking of this kind of crap,
Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and his wife failed to pay more than $239,000 in taxes over a three-year period and have had a lien slapped on their property by the Internal Revenue Service, public records show.
Dellums, 73, and his wife, Cynthia, 55, who acts as his unpaid adviser, are named in an IRS lien filed with the Alameda County recorder's office Oct. 14. A lien naming Ron Dellums was also filed Oct. 22 in Washington, D.C., where he lived for more than 30 years as a member of Congress and a lobbyist.
The Alameda County lien says the couple failed to pay $124,198 in federal income taxes in 2005, $66,554 in 2006 and $48,246 in 2007, the year Dellums took office as mayor.
This is the man often known as Red Ron for being such a commie cheerleader.
The Pope and Nancy Pelosi
are on stage in front of a huge crowd. The Pope leans towards Mrs. Pelosi and said, "Do you know that with one little wave of my hand I can make every person in this crowd go wild with joy? This joy will not be a momentary display, like that of your followers, but go deep into their hearts, and for the rest of their lives whenever they speak of this day they will rejoice!"
Pelosi replied, "I seriously doubt that; with one little wave of your hand? Show me."
So the Pope slapped her.
Pelosi replied, "I seriously doubt that; with one little wave of your hand? Show me."
So the Pope slapped her.
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Snork
Cops based near Oxford in the UK have revealed that they are unable to to use flashing blue lights on their new electric car - in case it drains too much power from the battery.
Maybe they need a squirrel in a cage hooked to a generator.
Maybe they need a squirrel in a cage hooked to a generator.
Yeah, we can change the face of things...
Using newly gathered seismic data from 2005, researchers reconstructed the event to show the rift tore open along its entire 35-mile length in just days. Dabbahu, a volcano at the northern end of the rift, erupted first, then magma pushed up through the middle of the rift area and began "unzipping" the rift in both directions, the researchers explained in a statement today.
New ocean, they say in a million years or so; or maybe next week?
Be a bad time to be crossing the lowlands.
New ocean, they say in a million years or so; or maybe next week?
Be a bad time to be crossing the lowlands.
Monday, November 02, 2009
Well, crap. Dead bearing on the lathe.
It's actually a bushing, but in any case it's shot. Yes, there's a place that has parts for a Sears 109 lathe. And they cost forty dollars.
Dammit.
Dammit.
Reminder: Project Valour-IT funraiser is on
Take a look here; lots of ways other than direct donation to help
Somebody ask Newt if this is the action
of a good Republican Party member who could have been trusted in office. And just how he feels now about having gone out on a limb for this turncoat. And just look who she's working with:
Patrick Gaspard, who has a long history of working with ACORN-affiliated organizations, was behind the scenes this weekend persuading former GOP candidate Scozzafava to endorse democrat Bill Owens in the NY-23 race.
The Washington Post reported:
And as for her "I've always been a Republican" words,
Scozzafava had already taped robocalls in support of Bill Owens by Sunday night. Her husband, a top union official, was in talks months ago with Democratic operatives about her switching parties.
Yeah, Newt, you were pushing a really good one, there.
Among the reasons I wouldn't vote for Romney is- again- that(far as I know) he's still pushing this horrible statist mess as a 'good idea conservatives should like'. His past hostility toward the 2nd is enough on its own, really; add this to it...
It must be nice not to be one of the peasants.
If I saw that coming out of the woods at night, I'd shoot it.
What was that line, 'From tiny ACORNs, mighty corruption grows'?
A City Council hopeful won’t cough up documents related to whether the Working Families Party is scamming the campaign finance system — because the case could involve “criminal liability,” according to documents released yesterday.
The bombshell development was revealed at a court hearing where lawyers for the WFP and the campaign of Staten Island candidate Debi Rose tried to get a suit against them tossed.
Former Giuliani administration Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro, the lawyer opposing the Rose campaign, called it an “extraordinary development.”
So Russia was practicing for another invasion of Poland, including nuke drills; hasn't Obama done a wonderful job with them?
Son starts leave today, so in a few days should meet the new daughter-in-law for the first time. And the lathe is acting odd, so- after some shopping and cleaning- I need to work on it. See you later.
Patrick Gaspard, who has a long history of working with ACORN-affiliated organizations, was behind the scenes this weekend persuading former GOP candidate Scozzafava to endorse democrat Bill Owens in the NY-23 race.
The Washington Post reported:
And as for her "I've always been a Republican" words,
Scozzafava had already taped robocalls in support of Bill Owens by Sunday night. Her husband, a top union official, was in talks months ago with Democratic operatives about her switching parties.
Yeah, Newt, you were pushing a really good one, there.
Among the reasons I wouldn't vote for Romney is- again- that(far as I know) he's still pushing this horrible statist mess as a 'good idea conservatives should like'. His past hostility toward the 2nd is enough on its own, really; add this to it...
It must be nice not to be one of the peasants.
If I saw that coming out of the woods at night, I'd shoot it.
What was that line, 'From tiny ACORNs, mighty corruption grows'?
A City Council hopeful won’t cough up documents related to whether the Working Families Party is scamming the campaign finance system — because the case could involve “criminal liability,” according to documents released yesterday.
The bombshell development was revealed at a court hearing where lawyers for the WFP and the campaign of Staten Island candidate Debi Rose tried to get a suit against them tossed.
Former Giuliani administration Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro, the lawyer opposing the Rose campaign, called it an “extraordinary development.”
So Russia was practicing for another invasion of Poland, including nuke drills; hasn't Obama done a wonderful job with them?
Son starts leave today, so in a few days should meet the new daughter-in-law for the first time. And the lathe is acting odd, so- after some shopping and cleaning- I need to work on it. See you later.
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Due to circumstances somewhat beyond my control,
but which I'm not bitching about, I had a chance to try something I'd never had before: Bushmill's 16-year old single-malt.
If you look at their site there's a bunch of verbiage about 'treacle, toffee and something' about the taste; I'll just say this stuff is good. Very good.
To you know who you are: my taste buds thank you.
If you look at their site there's a bunch of verbiage about 'treacle, toffee and something' about the taste; I'll just say this stuff is good. Very good.
To you know who you are: my taste buds thank you.
The jungle is full of hazards
Sleep was impossible. You would spend an hour in your tent, bashing everything you could find over the head with a shoe until you were convinced all was well, and then you’d lie down and close your eyes and, within a minute, you’d sense that a JCB was driving up your leg. This is extremely frightening.
Bashing rainforest insects over the head with a shoe is pointless. It just makes them sad. Setting them alight doesn’t work either.
At one point I ignited the spray from a can of deodorant and used the whole lot on a particularly stubborn cockroach that looked a bit like Sean Connery. Only with curly hair. Net result: he survived intact, I smelt nasty the next day and my tent caught fire.
Bashing rainforest insects over the head with a shoe is pointless. It just makes them sad. Setting them alight doesn’t work either.
At one point I ignited the spray from a can of deodorant and used the whole lot on a particularly stubborn cockroach that looked a bit like Sean Connery. Only with curly hair. Net result: he survived intact, I smelt nasty the next day and my tent caught fire.
Why dogs hate Halloween
Yes, you; you know who I'm talking to, you're responsible for things like this.
You should be ashamed.
You should be ashamed.
I was taken to task the other day for my comments about Obama showing up
to salute the returning dead; the commenter thought I was nit-picking. Well, I found this at Stormbringer:
Friday afternoon I became aware of some facts: Barack Obama showed up at Dover AFB at 1230 and hung around until 0445; he asked all the families if he could be photographed beside their family members remains as they were being unloaded. 17 of the 18 families refused; so he hung around until he finally got permission; then he got the photo and he was out of there.
So what's going on here?
A) Obama went to Dover AFB to honor the dead, and he brought along the Whitehouse press pool & photographers to witness the event,
B) the President of the United States waited planeside for over four hours in order to receive a family's permission to be photographed saluting their boy's casket, and
C) a man with zero military experience is photographed executing a picture perfect parade-ground salute right out of Field Manual 3-21.5 Drill and Ceremony . . .
At STORMBRINGER we don't believe in coincidences, especially triple redundancy coincidences. Obama is a very shrewd operator; that everything he does is carefully calculated for pure political benefit.
Friday afternoon I became aware of some facts: Barack Obama showed up at Dover AFB at 1230 and hung around until 0445; he asked all the families if he could be photographed beside their family members remains as they were being unloaded. 17 of the 18 families refused; so he hung around until he finally got permission; then he got the photo and he was out of there.
So what's going on here?
A) Obama went to Dover AFB to honor the dead, and he brought along the Whitehouse press pool & photographers to witness the event,
B) the President of the United States waited planeside for over four hours in order to receive a family's permission to be photographed saluting their boy's casket, and
C) a man with zero military experience is photographed executing a picture perfect parade-ground salute right out of Field Manual 3-21.5 Drill and Ceremony . . .
At STORMBRINGER we don't believe in coincidences, especially triple redundancy coincidences. Obama is a very shrewd operator; that everything he does is carefully calculated for pure political benefit.
'It was necessary to release the Lockerbie bomber for compassionate reasons'
Right.
The health of the Lockerbie bomber has "not deteriorated" since his release from prison three months ago – despite doctors' assessments that he would have died by now, a senior source has told The Sunday Telegraph.
And about those assessments,
But Prof Sikora admitted that the Libyans had encouraged him to conclude that Megrahi had just three months to live following his examination.
"The figure of three months was suggested as being helpful [by the Libyans]," he said. "To start with I said it was impossible to do that but, when I looked at it, it looked as though it could be done – you could actually say that."
While one of the doctors in the team was apparently 'more vague' about putting a limit on Megrahi's life expectancy, a third doctor, Professor Ibrahim Sharif, a Libyan oncologist from the Tripoli Medical Centre, agreed Megrahi had 'about three months'.
Other doctors have been reluctant to put a specific time-frame on life expectancy in patients suffering prostate cancer.
To the justice minister of Scotland Kenny MacAskill: Fuck you, you miserable little socialist terrorist suckup. And the same to every sorry politician from Gordon Brown on down who had a part in this.
The health of the Lockerbie bomber has "not deteriorated" since his release from prison three months ago – despite doctors' assessments that he would have died by now, a senior source has told The Sunday Telegraph.
And about those assessments,
But Prof Sikora admitted that the Libyans had encouraged him to conclude that Megrahi had just three months to live following his examination.
"The figure of three months was suggested as being helpful [by the Libyans]," he said. "To start with I said it was impossible to do that but, when I looked at it, it looked as though it could be done – you could actually say that."
While one of the doctors in the team was apparently 'more vague' about putting a limit on Megrahi's life expectancy, a third doctor, Professor Ibrahim Sharif, a Libyan oncologist from the Tripoli Medical Centre, agreed Megrahi had 'about three months'.
Other doctors have been reluctant to put a specific time-frame on life expectancy in patients suffering prostate cancer.
To the justice minister of Scotland Kenny MacAskill: Fuck you, you miserable little socialist terrorist suckup. And the same to every sorry politician from Gordon Brown on down who had a part in this.
I guess Obama's so busy trying to help keep that sleaze Corzine in office
it's no wonder it may take a few weeks more for him to make up his damn mind:
President Barack Obama is still weeks away from deciding whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, the White House said Sunday amid pressure from lawmakers to settle on a war strategy despite muddled politics and concerns of corruption in Kabul.
Top White House advisers said Obama's painstaking review, ongoing since early September, would not be hampered by Sunday's announcement from the top challenger in the Afghan presidential runoff election that he would withdraw from a race he was likely to lose.
"I expect the president will make a decision within weeks," senior Obama adviser David Axelrod said. "As you know, he has gone through a very rigorous process because the goal here is not just to make an arithmetic judgment about the number of troops, but to make sure that we have the right strategy."
'Rigorous process', huh? And it's still going to take weeks longer?
Yeah, that Hopey!Changey! is working out real well, isn't it?
President Barack Obama is still weeks away from deciding whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, the White House said Sunday amid pressure from lawmakers to settle on a war strategy despite muddled politics and concerns of corruption in Kabul.
Top White House advisers said Obama's painstaking review, ongoing since early September, would not be hampered by Sunday's announcement from the top challenger in the Afghan presidential runoff election that he would withdraw from a race he was likely to lose.
"I expect the president will make a decision within weeks," senior Obama adviser David Axelrod said. "As you know, he has gone through a very rigorous process because the goal here is not just to make an arithmetic judgment about the number of troops, but to make sure that we have the right strategy."
'Rigorous process', huh? And it's still going to take weeks longer?
Yeah, that Hopey!Changey! is working out real well, isn't it?
I wonder how long it took before the Democrats in WA hit the phone
screaming to Obama to make that nasty company stay in their state and be screwed?
Wednesday the company announced they were going to ignore the demands of the Washington Machinists Union and go with a non-union shop in South Carolina to build their future 787 Dreamliner. The stock price went decisively upwards.
The 2008 strike was Boeing’s fourth in just two decades, and, at 57 days, the longest since the 69-day strike in 1995, which “poisoned morale for years.” According to the AP, the 2008 strike cost Boeing $100 million a day in deferred revenue and postponement of the 787. That kind of loss won’t be recouped for years.
Boeing’s final offer to the machinists prior to last year’s strike included a 14 percent monthly pension increase, a 2008 lump-sum bonus worth about $3,900 on average, a generous new incentive-pay plan and other perks. All told, Boeing estimated the package was worth an additional $34,000 in extra compensation to the machinists over three years.
But it wasn’t enough.
I'd imagine a lot of the sane union people are sitting somewhere saying "We're screwed, and these idiots did it. I wonder if we could move?"
Wednesday the company announced they were going to ignore the demands of the Washington Machinists Union and go with a non-union shop in South Carolina to build their future 787 Dreamliner. The stock price went decisively upwards.
The 2008 strike was Boeing’s fourth in just two decades, and, at 57 days, the longest since the 69-day strike in 1995, which “poisoned morale for years.” According to the AP, the 2008 strike cost Boeing $100 million a day in deferred revenue and postponement of the 787. That kind of loss won’t be recouped for years.
Boeing’s final offer to the machinists prior to last year’s strike included a 14 percent monthly pension increase, a 2008 lump-sum bonus worth about $3,900 on average, a generous new incentive-pay plan and other perks. All told, Boeing estimated the package was worth an additional $34,000 in extra compensation to the machinists over three years.
But it wasn’t enough.
I'd imagine a lot of the sane union people are sitting somewhere saying "We're screwed, and these idiots did it. I wonder if we could move?"
Hey, Newt, is this the kind of 'party loyalty' you were demanding of people?
PROVING HER CRITICS RIGHT: Scozzafava Endorses Democrat.
So the only question is whether this is just what a RINO she is, or if she's mad that she can't get the office and is pissing on the people who wouldn't support her?
To borrow a comment from Insty, UPDATE: Reader Erik Fortune writes: “Scozzafava hasn’t just proven her critics right, she’s also made fools of the GOP establishment that backed her. The establishment argument for supporting Scozzafava boiled down to an appeal to party loyalty, and Scozzafava just demonstrated that she has none. Gingrich et al asked voters to compromise their values on behalf of a candidate who turned on them the first chance she got. The voters won’t forget that.” Ouch.
So the only question is whether this is just what a RINO she is, or if she's mad that she can't get the office and is pissing on the people who wouldn't support her?
To borrow a comment from Insty, UPDATE: Reader Erik Fortune writes: “Scozzafava hasn’t just proven her critics right, she’s also made fools of the GOP establishment that backed her. The establishment argument for supporting Scozzafava boiled down to an appeal to party loyalty, and Scozzafava just demonstrated that she has none. Gingrich et al asked voters to compromise their values on behalf of a candidate who turned on them the first chance she got. The voters won’t forget that.” Ouch.
Among other things, we have a preview
of government-run health care:
Major Diana Haynie, a spokesman for the Joint Task Force at Gitmo, explained the decision this way.
"Detainees at JTF Guantanamo are considered to be at higher risk and therefore they will be offered the H1N1 vaccination."
Really? Higher risk than who? Pregnant women are six times more likely than others to have a fatal bout of swine flu -- and yet some of them have been unable to get a shot. The shortage is so severe that state and local health officials have been forced to cancel and reschedule vaccination clinics, and to adjust their strategies about who gets a shot and when. According to this article:
'Higher risk' my ass; this is the kind of political bullshit the health care system already has too much of, and if Pelosi & Reid & Obama(LLC) get their way, it'll be how everything is run.
Speaking of giving terrorists & their buttmonkeys extra lattitude, the flying imams have now had a judge give them a pass for deliberately acting to scare hell out of a planeload of people. Wonderful judges we have.
Leftie columnist Frank Rich is just horribly bent out of shape that people outside New York took an interest in the NY-23 election; no word on if he's as upset with ACORN and vote fraud. And trying to take over Oklahoma government.
By the way, did Newt Gingrich just lose his mind? Or is he such a 'The Party above all' clown now that he'll do anything to put another (technically)'R' in an office, even if they're actually a Democrat? and screw the people who actually believe in what that 'R' is supposed to stand for?
A little more on the imam the FBI whacked a few days ago.
Ok, yesterday I walked into the house with my sunglasses on, took them off, and they've performed a ninja-like feat of disappearance. As in the bastards are vanished, and I still can't find them.
I hate this crap.
Major Diana Haynie, a spokesman for the Joint Task Force at Gitmo, explained the decision this way.
"Detainees at JTF Guantanamo are considered to be at higher risk and therefore they will be offered the H1N1 vaccination."
Really? Higher risk than who? Pregnant women are six times more likely than others to have a fatal bout of swine flu -- and yet some of them have been unable to get a shot. The shortage is so severe that state and local health officials have been forced to cancel and reschedule vaccination clinics, and to adjust their strategies about who gets a shot and when. According to this article:
'Higher risk' my ass; this is the kind of political bullshit the health care system already has too much of, and if Pelosi & Reid & Obama(LLC) get their way, it'll be how everything is run.
Speaking of giving terrorists & their buttmonkeys extra lattitude, the flying imams have now had a judge give them a pass for deliberately acting to scare hell out of a planeload of people. Wonderful judges we have.
Leftie columnist Frank Rich is just horribly bent out of shape that people outside New York took an interest in the NY-23 election; no word on if he's as upset with ACORN and vote fraud. And trying to take over Oklahoma government.
By the way, did Newt Gingrich just lose his mind? Or is he such a 'The Party above all' clown now that he'll do anything to put another (technically)'R' in an office, even if they're actually a Democrat? and screw the people who actually believe in what that 'R' is supposed to stand for?
A little more on the imam the FBI whacked a few days ago.
Ok, yesterday I walked into the house with my sunglasses on, took them off, and they've performed a ninja-like feat of disappearance. As in the bastards are vanished, and I still can't find them.
I hate this crap.
The saying, as I recall, is 'The power to tax
is the power to destroy', but there's a corollary: The power to tax is the power to rob.
Starting Sunday, cash-strapped California will dig deeper into the pocketbooks of wage earners -- holding back 10% more than it already does in state income taxes just as the biggest shopping season of the year kicks into gear.
Technically, it's not a tax increase, even though it may feel like one when your next paycheck arrives. As part of a bundle of budget patches adopted in the summer, the state is taking more money now in withholding, even though workers' annual tax bills won't change.
Think of it as a forced, interest-free loan: You'll be repaid any extra withholding in April. Those who would receive a refund anyway will receive a larger one, and those who owe taxes will owe less.
Yeah. Right. A state that was paying refunds the past while with vouchers, which the state would not accept as payment, is going to give you a bigger refund. Uh huh. Pull the other one, etc. And I love the 'forced' part; if someone did this on the street it'd be called armed robbery, but when the government does it it's a 'forced, interest-free loan'.
The provision is one of numerous maneuvers state lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger approved in the summer to paper over the state's deficit. Many of the changes, including the extra withholding, were little noticed outside of Sacramento.
I wonder, did any of the major media professionals notice this at all? If they did, the apparently didn't bother to mention it since it was so 'little noticed'.
But(of course) at least some of the experts are saying it's no big deal:
But Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy, wasn't so sure.
"It's having a relatively small impact on people's income," Levy said, pointing out that many families will receive only $12 to $40 less each month.
Maybe this jackass has never been there, but I've had months where losing $12 to $40 bucks would have ruined me; I(and I include back when still married and the kids were small) often finished the month with nothing as was; having that much less to start with...
And they do this at the start of the holiday shopping season; aren't they a bunch of geniuses running the People's Republic of California?
Starting Sunday, cash-strapped California will dig deeper into the pocketbooks of wage earners -- holding back 10% more than it already does in state income taxes just as the biggest shopping season of the year kicks into gear.
Technically, it's not a tax increase, even though it may feel like one when your next paycheck arrives. As part of a bundle of budget patches adopted in the summer, the state is taking more money now in withholding, even though workers' annual tax bills won't change.
Think of it as a forced, interest-free loan: You'll be repaid any extra withholding in April. Those who would receive a refund anyway will receive a larger one, and those who owe taxes will owe less.
Yeah. Right. A state that was paying refunds the past while with vouchers, which the state would not accept as payment, is going to give you a bigger refund. Uh huh. Pull the other one, etc. And I love the 'forced' part; if someone did this on the street it'd be called armed robbery, but when the government does it it's a 'forced, interest-free loan'.
The provision is one of numerous maneuvers state lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger approved in the summer to paper over the state's deficit. Many of the changes, including the extra withholding, were little noticed outside of Sacramento.
I wonder, did any of the major media professionals notice this at all? If they did, the apparently didn't bother to mention it since it was so 'little noticed'.
But(of course) at least some of the experts are saying it's no big deal:
But Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy, wasn't so sure.
"It's having a relatively small impact on people's income," Levy said, pointing out that many families will receive only $12 to $40 less each month.
Maybe this jackass has never been there, but I've had months where losing $12 to $40 bucks would have ruined me; I(and I include back when still married and the kids were small) often finished the month with nothing as was; having that much less to start with...
And they do this at the start of the holiday shopping season; aren't they a bunch of geniuses running the People's Republic of California?
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Look at one of the clowns in charge of helping Obama screw Honduras
The Obama Latin America Team is composed of: Thomas Shannon, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs; Frank Mora, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs and most importantly Dan Restrepo, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs at The National Security Council… Since assuming the presidency in January of 2009, the Obama White House mainly follows the expertise of Mr. Daniel Restrepo on issues pertaining to Latin America.
Dan Restrepo and The Center for American Progress
Prior to moving to the National Security Council, Dan Restrepo was the director of the Americas Project at the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank, whose President and Chief Executive Officer is John Podesta, who served as chief of staff to then President Bill Clinton. This think tank has become so influential making personnel appointments in the Obama Administration that Time Magazine recently declared “there is no group in Washington with more influence at this moment in history.” [8]
One of CAP’s main contributors is billionaire speculator, George Soros. In fact, some independent groups that are more transparent, such as the Sunlight Foundation and the Campaign Legal Center, criticize the Center’s failure to disclose its contributors, particularly since it is so influential in appointments to the Obama administration.
Trick or effing Treat, huh?
Pelosi's 'health care' bill is in part the "Trial Lawyer Protection Act",
it seems:
Section 2531, entitled “Medical Liability Alternatives,” establishes an incentive program for states to adopt and implement alternatives to medical liability litigation. [But]…… a state is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on the books that limits attorneys’ fees or imposes caps on damages.
Tam started with a slightly off-angle reaction
to this story, so of course I had to go read it. Short version, girl hiking in woods attacked by a pack of tricksters, and died about twelve hours later. Nasty way to go, sad story. Until I got to this:
"We take a calculated risk when spending time in nature's fold -- it's the wildlife's terrain," Emily Mitchell's statement continued. "When the decision had been made to kill the pack of coyotes, I clearly heard Taylor's voice say, 'please don't, this is their space.' She wouldn't have wanted their demise, especially as a result of her own. She was passionate about animals, was an environmentalist, and was also planning to volunteer at the Toronto Wildlife Centre in the coming months."
Oh, for (your favorite bleep's) sake. Lady, maybe you and your daughter wouldn't want the critters whacked; I doubt many other people would agree, especially those with kids. Especially when, if they've done it once, they'll do it again.
That's one of the idiocies that bothers me when a bear or a cougar or whatever eats someone and the immediate cry of the Bambiists is heard: "They were here first! It's their world!! It's our fault for being in the woods!" So many of these clowns have decided that it's perfectly acceptable for the carnivores to eat other people, and if you disagree you become The Hatemonger Bigoted Speciest Destroyer of Mother Earth. On a pogo stick. With herpes.
Screw you people. I like humans being on the top of the predator pyramid. Jeez. I wonder if she'd be willing to lecture some parents, after the pack eats their kid, about how "After all, it's the coyote's space, and you can volunteer at the nature center in memory of your child."
"We take a calculated risk when spending time in nature's fold -- it's the wildlife's terrain," Emily Mitchell's statement continued. "When the decision had been made to kill the pack of coyotes, I clearly heard Taylor's voice say, 'please don't, this is their space.' She wouldn't have wanted their demise, especially as a result of her own. She was passionate about animals, was an environmentalist, and was also planning to volunteer at the Toronto Wildlife Centre in the coming months."
Oh, for (your favorite bleep's) sake. Lady, maybe you and your daughter wouldn't want the critters whacked; I doubt many other people would agree, especially those with kids. Especially when, if they've done it once, they'll do it again.
That's one of the idiocies that bothers me when a bear or a cougar or whatever eats someone and the immediate cry of the Bambiists is heard: "They were here first! It's their world!! It's our fault for being in the woods!" So many of these clowns have decided that it's perfectly acceptable for the carnivores to eat other people, and if you disagree you become The Hatemonger Bigoted Speciest Destroyer of Mother Earth. On a pogo stick. With herpes.
Screw you people. I like humans being on the top of the predator pyramid. Jeez. I wonder if she'd be willing to lecture some parents, after the pack eats their kid, about how "After all, it's the coyote's space, and you can volunteer at the nature center in memory of your child."
By the way, if someone starts the 'We have lousy health care!' noise,
point them to this:
American health care is simply the best in the world, and by many measures ithe competition isn't even close:
American health care is simply the best in the world, and by many measures ithe competition isn't even close:
U.S. does 2x as many transplants as OECD average
U.S. has best cancer survival rates in OECD
Death panels in Britain are putting people to death who could have recovered
Death panels: now in kids' sizes too! Infants being left to die.
And remember, this is what the socialists in the Evil Party, and a few in the Stupid Party, want to take over and screw up.Friday, October 30, 2009
Among this evening's news, the Obama Administration lied
(big surprise, huh?) about being involved in the 'subvert the NEA' action:
Former actor and present White House associate director of public engagement Kalpen Modi was directly involved in planning the controversial conference call hosted by a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) flack to encourage tax-supported artists to create propaganda for President Obama, according to emails obtained by Judicial Watch via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
The piece of walking excrement who was convicted the other day in the Newsom/Christian murders is sentenced to death. With the usual "Please spare him" crap being thrown out:
Foster mother Flo Rudd and group home mother Alice Rhea told jurors Davidson was worth saving despite the fact that he turned to robbery and, ultimately, murder despite their efforts to rescue him from a troubled upbringing.
"He's my son," Rhea said. "I love him. He has such potential. If you put him in a structured environment, he does everything he should. I think he can be an influence to young men for years to come."
Yeah, I bet he'd be an influence; to a whole 'nother bunch of raping murderers. Ms. Rudd and Rhea, it may have escaped you but they discovered that one reason so many violent criminals do so well at the 'rehabilitation' game is that when they're in a highly-structured environment- like a prison- they play the game well and behave; and then when they get out- parole or escape- they commit more violent crimes. This piece of garbage can play 'bad childhood' all you want, it doesn't change what he is, and that he had some say in it. You'd better deal with that.
Insty points to Peggy Noonan discovering that having a bunch of socialists, commies and fascists in the White House and Congress is a Bad Thing; how could she every have managed this great discovery?[/sarcasm]
Hell with it, I've got dishes to wash. And I need to find something to get the bad taste out of my mouth.
Former actor and present White House associate director of public engagement Kalpen Modi was directly involved in planning the controversial conference call hosted by a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) flack to encourage tax-supported artists to create propaganda for President Obama, according to emails obtained by Judicial Watch via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
The piece of walking excrement who was convicted the other day in the Newsom/Christian murders is sentenced to death. With the usual "Please spare him" crap being thrown out:
Foster mother Flo Rudd and group home mother Alice Rhea told jurors Davidson was worth saving despite the fact that he turned to robbery and, ultimately, murder despite their efforts to rescue him from a troubled upbringing.
"He's my son," Rhea said. "I love him. He has such potential. If you put him in a structured environment, he does everything he should. I think he can be an influence to young men for years to come."
Yeah, I bet he'd be an influence; to a whole 'nother bunch of raping murderers. Ms. Rudd and Rhea, it may have escaped you but they discovered that one reason so many violent criminals do so well at the 'rehabilitation' game is that when they're in a highly-structured environment- like a prison- they play the game well and behave; and then when they get out- parole or escape- they commit more violent crimes. This piece of garbage can play 'bad childhood' all you want, it doesn't change what he is, and that he had some say in it. You'd better deal with that.
Insty points to Peggy Noonan discovering that having a bunch of socialists, commies and fascists in the White House and Congress is a Bad Thing; how could she every have managed this great discovery?[/sarcasm]
Hell with it, I've got dishes to wash. And I need to find something to get the bad taste out of my mouth.
It's kind of amazing how it freaks out liberals- modern version-
when someone says "I will hold to my oath. No matter what."
And how paranoid is the group? The list of commands its members have pledged to refuse includes some that don't strike me as likely, e.g., "orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people." But it also includes commands that are easier to imagine -- or which have already become standard operating procedure. One item on the list is "orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances." Maybe Waters and Potok haven't noticed, but American police forces infringe on free speech and free assembly at pretty much every major political summit. I wish there had been some Oath Keepers on the force in Pittsburgh during the G20 meeting last month, or at the Republican National Convention last year.
If you review Rhodes' writings online, you'll find complaints about the militarization of police work, a process he links to both the war on drugs and the war on terror; about the expansion of federal power in wartime; about the illegal disarmament of civilians after Hurricane Katrina. In other words, normal civil libertarian concerns about policies already in place, not frantic speculation about the apocalypse to come. (Note that two of the last three links go to essays Rhodes wrote during the Bush presidency. The Oath Keepers were founded this year, but the organizers behind them didn't need a Democratic president to discover the dangers of state power.)
This is the group that has the Southern Poverty Law Center invoking the specters of fascism and terrorism: a network of present and former public employees who are vigilant about the state of our civil liberties. If their vigilance sometimes shades over into paranoia, well, that's a hundred times truer of the SPLC.
And how paranoid is the group? The list of commands its members have pledged to refuse includes some that don't strike me as likely, e.g., "orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people." But it also includes commands that are easier to imagine -- or which have already become standard operating procedure. One item on the list is "orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances." Maybe Waters and Potok haven't noticed, but American police forces infringe on free speech and free assembly at pretty much every major political summit. I wish there had been some Oath Keepers on the force in Pittsburgh during the G20 meeting last month, or at the Republican National Convention last year.
If you review Rhodes' writings online, you'll find complaints about the militarization of police work, a process he links to both the war on drugs and the war on terror; about the expansion of federal power in wartime; about the illegal disarmament of civilians after Hurricane Katrina. In other words, normal civil libertarian concerns about policies already in place, not frantic speculation about the apocalypse to come. (Note that two of the last three links go to essays Rhodes wrote during the Bush presidency. The Oath Keepers were founded this year, but the organizers behind them didn't need a Democratic president to discover the dangers of state power.)
This is the group that has the Southern Poverty Law Center invoking the specters of fascism and terrorism: a network of present and former public employees who are vigilant about the state of our civil liberties. If their vigilance sometimes shades over into paranoia, well, that's a hundred times truer of the SPLC.
If the Annointed Oneess has this, what does The One have
taking care of him?
Michelle Obama, as we reported on July 7, is not served by twenty-two attendants who stand by to cater to her every whim.
She is served by twenty-six attendants, including a hair dresser and make-up artist.
The annual cost to taxpayers for such unprecedented attention is approximately $1,750,000 without taking into account the expense of the lavish benefit packages afforded to every attendant.
Little did American voters realize the call for “change” would result in the establishment of an Obama oligarchy.
Uh, guy? Some of us were expecting crap like this; unfortunately, too many fell for the 'Change!' bullcrap and desperate hopes, and we've got this socialist(or would fascist be more accurate?) clown in the Oval Office.
I rather doubt stories like this would be coming out about McCain & wife, which is one of the few ways he'd have differed from this pair of hypocrites.
Michelle Obama, as we reported on July 7, is not served by twenty-two attendants who stand by to cater to her every whim.
She is served by twenty-six attendants, including a hair dresser and make-up artist.
The annual cost to taxpayers for such unprecedented attention is approximately $1,750,000 without taking into account the expense of the lavish benefit packages afforded to every attendant.
Little did American voters realize the call for “change” would result in the establishment of an Obama oligarchy.
Uh, guy? Some of us were expecting crap like this; unfortunately, too many fell for the 'Change!' bullcrap and desperate hopes, and we've got this socialist(or would fascist be more accurate?) clown in the Oval Office.
I rather doubt stories like this would be coming out about McCain & wife, which is one of the few ways he'd have differed from this pair of hypocrites.
Senator Baucus(Evil Party Sleaze-MT) needs to be dragged into the town square
and horsewhipped. And then charged extra- excuse me, taxed- on any medical supplies used on his sorry ass.
When Sen. Max Baucus, Montana Democrat and Senate Finance Committee chairman, proposed taxing medical devices to raise $40 billion over the next 10 years for his health care plan, opponents started digging in and looking at what would be taxed.
It turned out feminine products, like tampons, were classified as "class I medical devices" and thus, the "tampon tax" was born.
The backlash was quick and severe enough against the idea that the committee quickly drafted new language that would exempt those necessities from the tax, along with all other class I devices, like tongue depressors, and decided to only tax class II medical devices and higher that cost more than $100.
Hey, almost nothing will cost more than that, so it'll be a tax that rarely hits people, right?
Not exactly.
But, just wait for the revolt to start again because women will still pay a price under the new structure, such as new moms who want to use a powered breast pump to bottle milk for their babies. Those devices, labeled class II, typically retails for more than $100.
And all the rest of the more expensive, higher-class medical devices used by both men and women - such as pacemakers, ventilators, X-ray machines, powered wheelchairs and surgical needles - will also be taxed whether purchased by patients or doctors.
So for daring to need the Nanny State-provided 'high-class' devices(SURGICAL NEEDLES?!?), Baucus and the other tax monkeys want to rape you; somehow, in their minds, it's only fair after all, to screw you so they can have more of your money to entrench themselves in power wi- er, take care of you with.
Hey, Montana, he's YOUR senator; what'cha gonna do?
Found at Sondra's place
When Sen. Max Baucus, Montana Democrat and Senate Finance Committee chairman, proposed taxing medical devices to raise $40 billion over the next 10 years for his health care plan, opponents started digging in and looking at what would be taxed.
It turned out feminine products, like tampons, were classified as "class I medical devices" and thus, the "tampon tax" was born.
The backlash was quick and severe enough against the idea that the committee quickly drafted new language that would exempt those necessities from the tax, along with all other class I devices, like tongue depressors, and decided to only tax class II medical devices and higher that cost more than $100.
Hey, almost nothing will cost more than that, so it'll be a tax that rarely hits people, right?
Not exactly.
But, just wait for the revolt to start again because women will still pay a price under the new structure, such as new moms who want to use a powered breast pump to bottle milk for their babies. Those devices, labeled class II, typically retails for more than $100.
And all the rest of the more expensive, higher-class medical devices used by both men and women - such as pacemakers, ventilators, X-ray machines, powered wheelchairs and surgical needles - will also be taxed whether purchased by patients or doctors.
So for daring to need the Nanny State-provided 'high-class' devices(SURGICAL NEEDLES?!?), Baucus and the other tax monkeys want to rape you; somehow, in their minds, it's only fair after all, to screw you so they can have more of your money to entrench themselves in power wi- er, take care of you with.
Hey, Montana, he's YOUR senator; what'cha gonna do?
Found at Sondra's place
'DNA sample may be required for hiring'
The new rules at Akron were adopted by the Board of Trustees in August, but most faculty members only learned of them in a recent e-mail list of announcements sent by the university to all employees. The rules state that background checks will be performed on all candidates selected for employment and that all offers will be "contingent on successful completion" of the check. Further, they state that all applicants "may be asked to submit a DNA sample." The rules specifically state that all employees, including faculty members, are covered.
Laura Martinez Massie, spokeswoman for Akron, said that the university would not comment on the resignation of Williams. She also said that to date, the university has not collected DNA and has no plans to do so, but is "merely reserving the right to do so."
'Merely reserving the right', yeah. And they wouldn't do that if they didn't have plans to use it.
Pointed to by Insty
Laura Martinez Massie, spokeswoman for Akron, said that the university would not comment on the resignation of Williams. She also said that to date, the university has not collected DNA and has no plans to do so, but is "merely reserving the right to do so."
'Merely reserving the right', yeah. And they wouldn't do that if they didn't have plans to use it.
Pointed to by Insty
Since the word on Honduras has already ruined the morning,
here's something that's slightly better, except for the background: they've arraigned four in the gang-rape. That they've got four of them is good; that these miserable little excuses for humans did this at all, and a bunch of people stood around approving- some joining in- is truly disgusting. Were it possible I'd like to see everyone who just stood around also charged and prosecuted.
I'll make a wager: an investigation will show either no fathers in the homes, or 'fathers' who change around depending on who the mother is sleeping with currently and who's in jail. A lot of the people whining and moaning about 'hate against women', etc., are- many of them- people who've insisted for years that fathers aren't necessary, marriage is slavery and so forth. And this is part of the end result of their work. They ought to be happy in one way: it gives them more ways to talk about how horrible males are.
Hey, wait, wouldn't that make them guilty of a hate crime, with all the hating on men?
Oh, that's right, women and minorities can't be guilty of such; I forgot. Unless they're white women hating on a minority, then they can. Sometimes.
I'll make a wager: an investigation will show either no fathers in the homes, or 'fathers' who change around depending on who the mother is sleeping with currently and who's in jail. A lot of the people whining and moaning about 'hate against women', etc., are- many of them- people who've insisted for years that fathers aren't necessary, marriage is slavery and so forth. And this is part of the end result of their work. They ought to be happy in one way: it gives them more ways to talk about how horrible males are.
Hey, wait, wouldn't that make them guilty of a hate crime, with all the hating on men?
Oh, that's right, women and minorities can't be guilty of such; I forgot. Unless they're white women hating on a minority, then they can. Sometimes.
Worst news of all:
supposedly Thomas Shannon has been pressuring the congressmen to vote for the restoration of Zelay or else! The exact words were that “Shannon scared the living hell out of everyone here including Micheletti.” Yeah, remember the press conference? “We’re just here to help. We aren’t going to intervene. We’ll respect any decision that the Hondurans make.” Yeah, right. Now they are even threatening elected Honduran officials that they won’t recognize elections unless they vote yes. I’m sure there must be economic threats as well.
El Heraldo (in Spanish) makes it clear that US State Dept. envoy for Latin America Thomas Shannon went to Honduras to twist arms: his position was that the November 29 elections would not be recognized unless Zelaya was returned to power. I guess nothing ensures democracy like restoring to power the guy who did his outmost to undermine democracy, at least in Shannon’s eyes.
So Obama has shown his true colors, if there were any doubt: he and his striped-pants thugs in the State Department(headed by Hillary Clinton, let us not forget) has forced a communist Chavez thug back into power; he must be so proud, now he can feel like he deserves a real pat on the head from Hugo and Fidel. I'll bet his tail is wagging fast enough to start a small dust devil.
El Heraldo (in Spanish) makes it clear that US State Dept. envoy for Latin America Thomas Shannon went to Honduras to twist arms: his position was that the November 29 elections would not be recognized unless Zelaya was returned to power. I guess nothing ensures democracy like restoring to power the guy who did his outmost to undermine democracy, at least in Shannon’s eyes.
So Obama has shown his true colors, if there were any doubt: he and his striped-pants thugs in the State Department(headed by Hillary Clinton, let us not forget) has forced a communist Chavez thug back into power; he must be so proud, now he can feel like he deserves a real pat on the head from Hugo and Fidel. I'll bet his tail is wagging fast enough to start a small dust devil.
One of the end results of the 'self-esteem at any cost-
bullcrap is whining like this:
The thug rang us and said: "I'm going to sue. I've got everyone staring at me because of this.
"He should be apologising to me. What have I got to apologise for ? I got arrested for it at the time and I got a fine. Now I feel all depressed."
Well, boo-freakin'-hoo. If you've not run across this before, here's what brought this on:
After complaining to police FIFTY times in a year, the 15st karate and jiu-jitsu black belt snapped when Andrews swore and pushed him on his doorstep.
Yesterday Jason said: "These thugs repeatedly abused me and my family and damaged our property. I've never gone out looking for trouble but think you've got to be able to defend yourself." He has now moved away from the estate with daughter Boudiccia, 22 months, and wife Rebecca, 23.
Attention British Police: If you don't do the damned job, people are going to start doing it themselves. In this case, the troublemaker got decked; if things get worse, it wouldn't surprise me if clowns like this started turning up dead. Or just disappearing(shallow graves, LOTS of watery places in Britain, etc.) Because there are a lot of people in Britain who DO remember something about being British.
The thug rang us and said: "I'm going to sue. I've got everyone staring at me because of this.
"He should be apologising to me. What have I got to apologise for ? I got arrested for it at the time and I got a fine. Now I feel all depressed."
Well, boo-freakin'-hoo. If you've not run across this before, here's what brought this on:
After complaining to police FIFTY times in a year, the 15st karate and jiu-jitsu black belt snapped when Andrews swore and pushed him on his doorstep.
Yesterday Jason said: "These thugs repeatedly abused me and my family and damaged our property. I've never gone out looking for trouble but think you've got to be able to defend yourself." He has now moved away from the estate with daughter Boudiccia, 22 months, and wife Rebecca, 23.
Attention British Police: If you don't do the damned job, people are going to start doing it themselves. In this case, the troublemaker got decked; if things get worse, it wouldn't surprise me if clowns like this started turning up dead. Or just disappearing(shallow graves, LOTS of watery places in Britain, etc.) Because there are a lot of people in Britain who DO remember something about being British.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Asset forfeiture, British style,
and just as effed-up as it often is here; but rarely on such a scale.
The police rolled through London in a convoy: scores of patrol cars, armed-response vehicles, outriders on their bikes, vans with their windows shielded by metal cages. With a Met film unit recording everything, detectives forced their way past startled security guards, demanding receptionists open the secure doors that led to the normally hushed strong rooms, which in the three centres housed 6,717 safety deposit boxes
...
There was a lot at stake. Never before had the British police been granted a warrant as broad as this. The raids had been made possible under a controversial law, the Proceeds Of Crime Act (POCA), which came into being in 2002 and introduced an array of wide-ranging new powers to seek out and confiscate dirty money - the houses, cars and boats bought by criminals.
However, lawyers watching the police operation unfold were quick to warn that the strong-arming of these vaults and the crashing into each and every box was tantamount to the police having obtained permission to smash down the doors of an entire housing estate.
David Sonn, of Sonn Macmillan Walker, one of the largest criminal defence practices in London, says, 'POCA was never intended for this. No one objects when criminals are caught and their assets seized - but shaking down everyone to get to them is specifically not what lawmakers wanted.'.
Big raid, lots of rehearsal, lots of evidence found. But there's a slight problem:
However, by talking to scores of box-holders, none of whom have spoken before, Live has uncovered a different version of Operation Rize, one that shows how the vast majority of those caught up in the raids were innocent. They have had their lives turned upside down over the past 17 months. Many have struggled to recoup their money and possessions, been forced into legal trench warfare with police lawyers and told they must prove how they came by the contents of their boxes.
This is also a story told through secret legal papers, including confidentiality agreements struck with some vault depositors whose cases threatened to topple the entire operation. Although the police told a judge that 'nine out of ten' of all of the thousands of box-holders were probably criminally minded, criminally connected or felons, the paper trail reveals that perhaps only as few as ten per cent of the boxes have any connection to serious crime.
Which is bad enough, but when you get further in, you run into the same mindset we run into over here:
Many of the clientele were families who had fled turmoil, pogroms, coups and wars and long had a cultural preference for locking away money and jewels, building up a vehement distrust for the integrity of traditional banks. Here, stepping down the spiral staircase at the back to the darkened boxes below, they felt reassured that their most important possessions were safe.
One survivor of Nazi Germany in his seventies told us how he had placed a bag of diamonds there - security if ever he or his descendents needed to run again.
...
A Hindu priest described to Live how his family's valuables had been carried in the Sixties from Madhya Pradesh, India, to London 'in a gunny sack'.
Among the possessions seized by the police were elaborate handcrafted bracelets, gold rings set with uncut stones, and a bejewelled wedding tikka ornament to be draped on the forehead of a new bride. 'These items had always been in our family,' the priest said, 'We had cash in there too. But now we had to prove how we bought them and where that money, saved over the years, had come from.'
There've been lots of horror stories over here about police seizing property and, if you could not prove it was 'innocent' they assume it's illegal profits/property and they keep it. Same thing here, and just as disgusting: how does someone prove that property that may have been in the family for years, or generations, is yours? How do you 'prove' to people convinced you're a crook that the cash you saved over years, sometimes decades, is honestly gained?
And it's not just money and valuables seized:
One angry box-holder rented Box 73 at the Park Lane depository. Alexander Temerko, formerly a vice president of Russian oil giant Yukos, whose billionaire boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky had fallen foul of President Putin, had fled to London as Khodorkovsky was jailed for eight years in Russia.
On his arrival in the UK, Temerko had locked five crates of legal documents into his safety-deposit box. However, as a result of Rize, the papers were now in the hands of the Met, which claimed they were evidence of an alleged criminal conspiracy whose participants were British, obliging the police to investigate.
Depending on your situation, records like that can be worth far more to you than money. This was one of the people who were able to hire serious legal assistance:
Montgomery and Burton highlighted case law that specifically stipulated 'fishing expeditions' were barred to the police, even under POCA. In other words, the police were not allowed to seize property in the hope that it would later prove to be criminal. The legal team also demanded sight of the police evidence that had convinced the judge to issue the warrant in the first place.
And here's where the story starts coming out in ways the Met had tried very hard to prevent:
The Met hired Kennedy Talbot, one of Britain's most experienced barristers dealing with POCA. Talbot approached a senior judge at Southwark Crown Court in November 2007. But Southwark rejected the request. The police application was also riddled with simple errors, according to the skeleton document, including a claim by undercover officers that there were 18,000 boxes, three times the actual number.
Police also named Leslie Sieff as a director, when available records showed that he had sold the majority of his shareholding as far back as 1998 and would soon resign as a director.
And on:
Having amended the number of safety-deposit boxes to a correct 6,717, and after admitting 'there is a lot we don't know', the police claimed to have found a shredded list behind one of the centres that when reconstituted revealed the identities of boxholders. SCD6 had analysed it and concluded that in a sample of 391 names between '82 per cent and 90 per cent were suspicious or connected to crime'.
A statistician was then hired who used this sample of only five per cent of the total client base to conclude that nine out of ten of all of the thousands of box-holders were probably criminally minded or felons, an opinion later expressed more stridently with Judge Macrae, who was told that 'all of the boxes might contain criminal property'. Macrae was swayed. He authorised a warrant under POCA on May 30 2008.
And on:
Minutes had been taken of the judge's meetings with Talbot and Ponting. They tell how the Rize plan had been rejected by one senior judge only to be put to a second who was wooed with statistics rather than hard new evidence. Other court documents obtained show that the legal teams preparing their judicial reviews took the 32-page transcript to pieces and in so doing lambasted the whole Rize operation.
'The warrant was extraordinarily broad,' Temerko's team warned, and 'completely unprecedented', representing the widest ever seen by lawyers in Britain, one that on this ground alone was liable to be quashed by High Court judges. The police had only provided the court with 'bare assertions' rather than hard evidence.
A High Court judge was advised, 'The gross interference in privacy outweighed any benefit to the investigation.'
And friggin' on:
Siobhan Egan from lawyers Lewis Nedas added: 'The police had also made some bizarre errors.' The POCA legislation barred the seizing of legal papers but they had five crates belonging to Temerko.
The police changed course. They notified Temerko's legal team that they were now acting under the Criminal Justice and Police Act, which allowed such privileged documents to be held.
'However, this law can only be invoked when a written notice has been given to everyone, box-holders and vault owners,' said Egan. Alerted, the police ran around serving the directors of the Park Lane vault and their box-holders with written notices - without realising that the law could not be applied retrospectively, and that the notice had to be handed over 'at the time' of the raids.
'Coverup after the fact', anyone? And it gets even worse.
Eight out of ten box owners were provably innocent. Taylor said: 'Of the £53 million in cash that the police took, £20 million has also been given back and £33 million is now being referred to as "under investigation", of which only £2.83 million has been confiscated or forfeited by the courts.'
This figure represents just over five per cent of the total money stored in the vaults, although the Met has 690 ' suspect' boxes that it is still investigating.
That means of the total number of boxes, around ten per cent are being probed for villainy, a long way from the nine out of ten cases the Met surmised they would find while wooing Judge Macrae.
Lawyers have seen their Rize cases squeezed and intimidated. Sara Teasdale revealed how the police were first adamant that her client's money was criminal cash, threatening forfeiture, only to try and turn the box-holder's business partner against him, enticing him to wear a wire so as to entrap him into admitting it was also money stolen from his own company.
Teasdale said: 'They first tried "wrong money". Then it was company money. Even when they dropped criminal proceedings against him in February 2009, they inexplicably continued with civil forfeiture proceedings.' The Yard was trying all it could to get the cash.
'They were sitting on almost £1 million, and having referred to my client anonymously in press releases as an example of why they had raided, they needed to win.'
But this case was recently lost by the Met too, leaving the box-holder with £200,000 in fees, money he is now seeking back from the police.
To make very bad even worse, the inevitable:
One goldsmith from north London fought for over a year to get his £40,000 cash and valuables back, then claimed it was not all there. He has now filed an o fficial complaint.
'The police kept saying, "Why have you got all this cash?" and I showed them my books.'
His premises were raided twice, the second time by 20 o fficers.
'They found nothing because I had done nothing and eventually this summer, everything was returned to me. But £10,000 was gone - and my wife's diamond earrings.'
...
The Met has strenuously denied all allegations of theft, pointing out that anyone stealing from the boxes would have been caught on camera since offi cers videoed the entire operation.
Another box-holder who is alleging theft, a wealthy Russian émigré party-planner from north London, who had £64,000 in cash and £250,000 worth of jewellery, including heirlooms from Russia, successfully challenged the police to produce the video.
'I am meticulous,' she said. 'I have a receipt for everything. When I got my box back, £9,000 cash and some smaller items of jewellery were missing - a gold baby's bracelet and an 18-carat gold ring.'
The initial police footage, she claims, had a time code and showed her box being carried to a table. But then the tape was interrupted and when it restarted the footage was being shot from a new camera, at a diff erent angle and without a time code, with real time having moved on many seconds.
She told Live: 'It only takes seconds for a small envelope of cash or a gold ring to be swiped from the table and into someone's pocket. I was staggered.' After failing to get adequate answers from the Met's own Directorate of Professional Standards, her lawyers have gone to the independent Police Complaints Authority, along with 70 other box-holders.
So now you've got either messed-up procedure on documenting the process, or deliberate gaps in the recordings. And accusations of missing property. With the Met still claiming it was an 'absolute success', of course. This part near the end points to the same mindset that leads to so many of the problems here:
Facing hefty fees for defending itself before two Judicial Reviews, being pursued for millions of pounds in legal fees by innocent box-holders, and now facing inquiries into theft, the political, judicial and financial costs of the operation are beginning to stack up.
And yet when it first kicked o ff, one of the things that had endeared Rize to everyone was its revenue-earning capacity, something revealed in a tucked-away minute of the Metropolitan Police Authority from September 2008.
Warning that the police were lagging behind in meeting targets set to seize criminals' assets, it stated: 'To achieve the target a further £36.6 million of assets need to be seized in the remaining nine months.' This was 'a challenging target'. However, 'with the emerging results from Operation Rize, the seizures are likely to make a major contribution toward the final total.'
Just effing wonderful. Deliberately setting targets of 'assets' to seize is a serious indication of trouble in the making, because if you aren't near your target, there's going to be real pressure to do things you probably shouldn't to meet the target. Which looks like was a big factor in this mess.
I'd suggest reading the whole article; it's worth the time. One thing that really surprise me was this line: Determined to clear their names, the Selts put up the £50,000 needed to launch their own Judicial Review that also focused on the lawfulness of the original warrant.
So not only do you have to find a way to prove your money and possessions are really yours, and legitimate, you have to come up with a serious amount of cash to get this type of review started. Which makes it even harder for you, and even easier for the government to keep your property; wonderful thing for official thieves, isn't it?
The police rolled through London in a convoy: scores of patrol cars, armed-response vehicles, outriders on their bikes, vans with their windows shielded by metal cages. With a Met film unit recording everything, detectives forced their way past startled security guards, demanding receptionists open the secure doors that led to the normally hushed strong rooms, which in the three centres housed 6,717 safety deposit boxes
...
There was a lot at stake. Never before had the British police been granted a warrant as broad as this. The raids had been made possible under a controversial law, the Proceeds Of Crime Act (POCA), which came into being in 2002 and introduced an array of wide-ranging new powers to seek out and confiscate dirty money - the houses, cars and boats bought by criminals.
However, lawyers watching the police operation unfold were quick to warn that the strong-arming of these vaults and the crashing into each and every box was tantamount to the police having obtained permission to smash down the doors of an entire housing estate.
David Sonn, of Sonn Macmillan Walker, one of the largest criminal defence practices in London, says, 'POCA was never intended for this. No one objects when criminals are caught and their assets seized - but shaking down everyone to get to them is specifically not what lawmakers wanted.'.
Big raid, lots of rehearsal, lots of evidence found. But there's a slight problem:
However, by talking to scores of box-holders, none of whom have spoken before, Live has uncovered a different version of Operation Rize, one that shows how the vast majority of those caught up in the raids were innocent. They have had their lives turned upside down over the past 17 months. Many have struggled to recoup their money and possessions, been forced into legal trench warfare with police lawyers and told they must prove how they came by the contents of their boxes.
This is also a story told through secret legal papers, including confidentiality agreements struck with some vault depositors whose cases threatened to topple the entire operation. Although the police told a judge that 'nine out of ten' of all of the thousands of box-holders were probably criminally minded, criminally connected or felons, the paper trail reveals that perhaps only as few as ten per cent of the boxes have any connection to serious crime.
Which is bad enough, but when you get further in, you run into the same mindset we run into over here:
Many of the clientele were families who had fled turmoil, pogroms, coups and wars and long had a cultural preference for locking away money and jewels, building up a vehement distrust for the integrity of traditional banks. Here, stepping down the spiral staircase at the back to the darkened boxes below, they felt reassured that their most important possessions were safe.
One survivor of Nazi Germany in his seventies told us how he had placed a bag of diamonds there - security if ever he or his descendents needed to run again.
...
A Hindu priest described to Live how his family's valuables had been carried in the Sixties from Madhya Pradesh, India, to London 'in a gunny sack'.
Among the possessions seized by the police were elaborate handcrafted bracelets, gold rings set with uncut stones, and a bejewelled wedding tikka ornament to be draped on the forehead of a new bride. 'These items had always been in our family,' the priest said, 'We had cash in there too. But now we had to prove how we bought them and where that money, saved over the years, had come from.'
There've been lots of horror stories over here about police seizing property and, if you could not prove it was 'innocent' they assume it's illegal profits/property and they keep it. Same thing here, and just as disgusting: how does someone prove that property that may have been in the family for years, or generations, is yours? How do you 'prove' to people convinced you're a crook that the cash you saved over years, sometimes decades, is honestly gained?
And it's not just money and valuables seized:
One angry box-holder rented Box 73 at the Park Lane depository. Alexander Temerko, formerly a vice president of Russian oil giant Yukos, whose billionaire boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky had fallen foul of President Putin, had fled to London as Khodorkovsky was jailed for eight years in Russia.
On his arrival in the UK, Temerko had locked five crates of legal documents into his safety-deposit box. However, as a result of Rize, the papers were now in the hands of the Met, which claimed they were evidence of an alleged criminal conspiracy whose participants were British, obliging the police to investigate.
Depending on your situation, records like that can be worth far more to you than money. This was one of the people who were able to hire serious legal assistance:
Montgomery and Burton highlighted case law that specifically stipulated 'fishing expeditions' were barred to the police, even under POCA. In other words, the police were not allowed to seize property in the hope that it would later prove to be criminal. The legal team also demanded sight of the police evidence that had convinced the judge to issue the warrant in the first place.
And here's where the story starts coming out in ways the Met had tried very hard to prevent:
The Met hired Kennedy Talbot, one of Britain's most experienced barristers dealing with POCA. Talbot approached a senior judge at Southwark Crown Court in November 2007. But Southwark rejected the request. The police application was also riddled with simple errors, according to the skeleton document, including a claim by undercover officers that there were 18,000 boxes, three times the actual number.
Police also named Leslie Sieff as a director, when available records showed that he had sold the majority of his shareholding as far back as 1998 and would soon resign as a director.
And on:
Having amended the number of safety-deposit boxes to a correct 6,717, and after admitting 'there is a lot we don't know', the police claimed to have found a shredded list behind one of the centres that when reconstituted revealed the identities of boxholders. SCD6 had analysed it and concluded that in a sample of 391 names between '82 per cent and 90 per cent were suspicious or connected to crime'.
A statistician was then hired who used this sample of only five per cent of the total client base to conclude that nine out of ten of all of the thousands of box-holders were probably criminally minded or felons, an opinion later expressed more stridently with Judge Macrae, who was told that 'all of the boxes might contain criminal property'. Macrae was swayed. He authorised a warrant under POCA on May 30 2008.
And on:
Minutes had been taken of the judge's meetings with Talbot and Ponting. They tell how the Rize plan had been rejected by one senior judge only to be put to a second who was wooed with statistics rather than hard new evidence. Other court documents obtained show that the legal teams preparing their judicial reviews took the 32-page transcript to pieces and in so doing lambasted the whole Rize operation.
'The warrant was extraordinarily broad,' Temerko's team warned, and 'completely unprecedented', representing the widest ever seen by lawyers in Britain, one that on this ground alone was liable to be quashed by High Court judges. The police had only provided the court with 'bare assertions' rather than hard evidence.
A High Court judge was advised, 'The gross interference in privacy outweighed any benefit to the investigation.'
And friggin' on:
Siobhan Egan from lawyers Lewis Nedas added: 'The police had also made some bizarre errors.' The POCA legislation barred the seizing of legal papers but they had five crates belonging to Temerko.
The police changed course. They notified Temerko's legal team that they were now acting under the Criminal Justice and Police Act, which allowed such privileged documents to be held.
'However, this law can only be invoked when a written notice has been given to everyone, box-holders and vault owners,' said Egan. Alerted, the police ran around serving the directors of the Park Lane vault and their box-holders with written notices - without realising that the law could not be applied retrospectively, and that the notice had to be handed over 'at the time' of the raids.
'Coverup after the fact', anyone? And it gets even worse.
Eight out of ten box owners were provably innocent. Taylor said: 'Of the £53 million in cash that the police took, £20 million has also been given back and £33 million is now being referred to as "under investigation", of which only £2.83 million has been confiscated or forfeited by the courts.'
This figure represents just over five per cent of the total money stored in the vaults, although the Met has 690 ' suspect' boxes that it is still investigating.
That means of the total number of boxes, around ten per cent are being probed for villainy, a long way from the nine out of ten cases the Met surmised they would find while wooing Judge Macrae.
Lawyers have seen their Rize cases squeezed and intimidated. Sara Teasdale revealed how the police were first adamant that her client's money was criminal cash, threatening forfeiture, only to try and turn the box-holder's business partner against him, enticing him to wear a wire so as to entrap him into admitting it was also money stolen from his own company.
Teasdale said: 'They first tried "wrong money". Then it was company money. Even when they dropped criminal proceedings against him in February 2009, they inexplicably continued with civil forfeiture proceedings.' The Yard was trying all it could to get the cash.
'They were sitting on almost £1 million, and having referred to my client anonymously in press releases as an example of why they had raided, they needed to win.'
But this case was recently lost by the Met too, leaving the box-holder with £200,000 in fees, money he is now seeking back from the police.
To make very bad even worse, the inevitable:
One goldsmith from north London fought for over a year to get his £40,000 cash and valuables back, then claimed it was not all there. He has now filed an o fficial complaint.
'The police kept saying, "Why have you got all this cash?" and I showed them my books.'
His premises were raided twice, the second time by 20 o fficers.
'They found nothing because I had done nothing and eventually this summer, everything was returned to me. But £10,000 was gone - and my wife's diamond earrings.'
...
The Met has strenuously denied all allegations of theft, pointing out that anyone stealing from the boxes would have been caught on camera since offi cers videoed the entire operation.
Another box-holder who is alleging theft, a wealthy Russian émigré party-planner from north London, who had £64,000 in cash and £250,000 worth of jewellery, including heirlooms from Russia, successfully challenged the police to produce the video.
'I am meticulous,' she said. 'I have a receipt for everything. When I got my box back, £9,000 cash and some smaller items of jewellery were missing - a gold baby's bracelet and an 18-carat gold ring.'
The initial police footage, she claims, had a time code and showed her box being carried to a table. But then the tape was interrupted and when it restarted the footage was being shot from a new camera, at a diff erent angle and without a time code, with real time having moved on many seconds.
She told Live: 'It only takes seconds for a small envelope of cash or a gold ring to be swiped from the table and into someone's pocket. I was staggered.' After failing to get adequate answers from the Met's own Directorate of Professional Standards, her lawyers have gone to the independent Police Complaints Authority, along with 70 other box-holders.
So now you've got either messed-up procedure on documenting the process, or deliberate gaps in the recordings. And accusations of missing property. With the Met still claiming it was an 'absolute success', of course. This part near the end points to the same mindset that leads to so many of the problems here:
Facing hefty fees for defending itself before two Judicial Reviews, being pursued for millions of pounds in legal fees by innocent box-holders, and now facing inquiries into theft, the political, judicial and financial costs of the operation are beginning to stack up.
And yet when it first kicked o ff, one of the things that had endeared Rize to everyone was its revenue-earning capacity, something revealed in a tucked-away minute of the Metropolitan Police Authority from September 2008.
Warning that the police were lagging behind in meeting targets set to seize criminals' assets, it stated: 'To achieve the target a further £36.6 million of assets need to be seized in the remaining nine months.' This was 'a challenging target'. However, 'with the emerging results from Operation Rize, the seizures are likely to make a major contribution toward the final total.'
Just effing wonderful. Deliberately setting targets of 'assets' to seize is a serious indication of trouble in the making, because if you aren't near your target, there's going to be real pressure to do things you probably shouldn't to meet the target. Which looks like was a big factor in this mess.
I'd suggest reading the whole article; it's worth the time. One thing that really surprise me was this line: Determined to clear their names, the Selts put up the £50,000 needed to launch their own Judicial Review that also focused on the lawfulness of the original warrant.
So not only do you have to find a way to prove your money and possessions are really yours, and legitimate, you have to come up with a serious amount of cash to get this type of review started. Which makes it even harder for you, and even easier for the government to keep your property; wonderful thing for official thieves, isn't it?
So this is the kind of foreign policy advice Sen. John Effing Kerry
(Evil Party Slimeball-MA) is giving the President: (Updated)
A month ago, the Law Library of Congress reviewed the removal of Manuel Zelaya from his post as President of Honduras, an act that the Obama administration called a “coup” and demanded reversed for its illegality. To the embarrassment of the White House and State Department, the Congressional body determined that Honduras acted lawfully in removing Zelaya for his crimes against their constitution, although they determined that his exile broke Honduran law. Now John Kerry wants the Law Library to retract its findings, apparently trying to rewrite history to hide the facts of the case:
Wonderful, isn't it?
Update: Sailor Curt has a lot more detail, go take a look.
A month ago, the Law Library of Congress reviewed the removal of Manuel Zelaya from his post as President of Honduras, an act that the Obama administration called a “coup” and demanded reversed for its illegality. To the embarrassment of the White House and State Department, the Congressional body determined that Honduras acted lawfully in removing Zelaya for his crimes against their constitution, although they determined that his exile broke Honduran law. Now John Kerry wants the Law Library to retract its findings, apparently trying to rewrite history to hide the facts of the case:
Wonderful, isn't it?
Update: Sailor Curt has a lot more detail, go take a look.
Ok, what the hell is the Attorney General doing?
President Obama isn’t taking kindly to a television ad that criticizes his opposition to a popular scholarship program for poor children, and his administration wants the ad pulled.
Former D.C. Councilmember Kevin Chavous of D.C. Children First said October 16 that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder had recently approached him and told him to kill the ad.
Former D.C. Councilmember Kevin Chavous of D.C. Children First said October 16 that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder had recently approached him and told him to kill the ad.
Apparently the Reclusive Leftist doesn't like questions
She has a post up on the Protected Species Crime Bill(no, she doesn't call it that) the Evil Party tacked onto the defense bill, and how there should have been more noise made about protecting women from hate crime. So I asked a question in comments: Why hate crime laws? Why not prosecute a rape as a rape, murder as murder, etc.? Why screw around with 'hate crime' legislation?
I just checked back, and the comment/question has been deleted. Apparently you're not supposed to question the need for some groups to receive special protection. Which is exactly what this crap is, you're saying that some groups are more human, or more important than others, therefore a crime against the protected species is worse than a crime against a plain old not-as-important human.
I just checked back, and the comment/question has been deleted. Apparently you're not supposed to question the need for some groups to receive special protection. Which is exactly what this crap is, you're saying that some groups are more human, or more important than others, therefore a crime against the protected species is worse than a crime against a plain old not-as-important human.
I was going to say 'well done' to Obama for meeting the returning dead,
until I read this:
Meanwhile, he managed to slip off to Dover AFB between 12:30 and 4 AM last nightto greet returning caskets of 18 servicemen recently killed in Afghanistan. Despite the late hour, the event was anything but discreet. Turns out they managed to get a family of one, Army Sargent Dale R. Griffin, to agree to allow press coverage of the 15 minute ceremony, securing an inspiring photo op for the event.
Damn the bastard. He can screw around for months trying to decide whether or not to take Gen. McChrystal's call for more troops("Because I care about them"), and then he does this. For a God-cursed photo op, to show how much he 'respects' the troops. If he actually had any respect for them, he'd do the same thing I've heard Bush often did: meet the incoming with no media and keep it quiet. I'm still mad as hell at Bush for a number of things, but this damn sure ain't one of them.
Meanwhile, he managed to slip off to Dover AFB between 12:30 and 4 AM last nightto greet returning caskets of 18 servicemen recently killed in Afghanistan. Despite the late hour, the event was anything but discreet. Turns out they managed to get a family of one, Army Sargent Dale R. Griffin, to agree to allow press coverage of the 15 minute ceremony, securing an inspiring photo op for the event.
Damn the bastard. He can screw around for months trying to decide whether or not to take Gen. McChrystal's call for more troops("Because I care about them"), and then he does this. For a God-cursed photo op, to show how much he 'respects' the troops. If he actually had any respect for them, he'd do the same thing I've heard Bush often did: meet the incoming with no media and keep it quiet. I'm still mad as hell at Bush for a number of things, but this damn sure ain't one of them.
This kind of idiocy ought to come up on a Monday
Taking a hot shower is harmful to Mother Gaia, and the enviroweenies want you to stop. Hey, they want to use cold water only when it's coming out of the tap at make-your-balls-disappear temperature, they're welcome to.
Connections, connections... and this is the kind of thing that makes me think that, whatever it is, there's something at least highly embarrassing(to them at least) in the documents.
Hey, if Obama can blame all his problems on Bush, Anita Dunn can blame hers on a dead Republican.
Who's lying to who? Interesting question. Did Gingrich just not make sure of the facts, or is there some idiot reason he's pushing the liberal?
Hmmm. US federal agents said they shot dead the leader of a radical fundamentalist Islamist group after he refused to surrender on several criminal charges. The US attorney’s office said Luqman Ameen Abdullah, 53, was killed while exchanging gunfire with agents yesterday at a warehouse in Dearborn, near Detroit.
Ok, if this little bastard Levi Johnston wants to make veiled threats, maybe someone should start digging into everything about him. For starters, is he paying child support out of all this money he's making?
If only they reacted so swiftly to developments in other wars, such as in Afghanistan. They seem to care more about their own political image than they do about our military.
Now while they claim these job numbers are being corrected, their own web site still has what they claim is the wrong information.
Oops.
Like he says, Hey, AP, welcome to the enemies list!
Question has become not "Will the Brits reach a tipping point?", but "Did it pass and they let it?"
A council has banned parents from supervising their children in public playgrounds until they have undergone criminal record checks.
Adults have been excluded from two adventure play areas in Watford, apart from a handful of council-vetted 'play rangers' who will assist youngsters, it emerged today.
Parents will be forced to watch their children from outside the perimeter fence.
Watford Borough Council claims it is just following Government guidelines and cannot allow adults to walk around playgrounds 'unchecked'.
The Nanny State has your own interests at heart. And control of your kids. Wonder what these kids are hearing at school?
She said: 'Sadly, in today's climate, you can't have adults walking around unchecked in a children's playground and the adventure playground is not a meeting place for adults.
Actually, for parents it often is, while the kids play; just because you don't like it doesn't make it untrue.
And get this part:
'We have reviewed our procedures, so although previously some parents have stayed with their children at the discretion of our play workers, this is not something we can continue to do.
So they're claiming that even before this, their 'play workers' had the power to tell parents to leave their kids. Isn't socialism wonderful, where Great Britain used to be?
Even more risible, though, is the claim that the administration “is going to speak truth to power.” Hello, Valerie? Your boss is the president of the United States! No one is more powerful. As we suggested Friday, it really seems as if Obama and his men do not understand what it means to be president. Because their power is constrained–thank you, Founding Fathers!–they labor under the delusion that they are powerless.
Yet while this is all hilarious, it is also scary when you think it through. Great power entails great responsibility. There is little to suggest that Obama and his aides appreciate their responsibility, and much, including their incessant complaining that the previous president did a lousy job, to suggest an attitude of total irresponsibility.
The job of those in power is not to “speak truth to power,” though it would be nice if they spoke the truth once in a while.
Yeah. From the comment Insty published,
But he’s finding out that governing by fiat doesn’t work for long in this country. The tags for his presidency so far seem to be Radical, Naive, FDR, Jimmy Carter, Socialism and Screw Up.
I'd change that slightly, to 'Screw You'.
Here's a bit more on the islamist in Detroit; think the AG will charge them with hate crimes over this language?
The complaint says that the imam or leader of the group, Luqman Ameen Abdullah, repeatedly used rhetoric that urged Muslims to seize power with violence and establish a society where Muslims would rule over non-Muslims.
“America must fall,” Abdullah said, according to the complaint. At another point, he “told followers that they need to be with the Taliban, Hizballah, and with Sheikh Bin Laden.”
“We should be figuring out how to fight the Kuffar,” Abdullah said at another point, the indictment states. Kuffar “is a highly derogatory term” used to describe non-Mulisms, the document states.
Nah, I don't think so either; how can he charge a protected species with a hate crime, racial coward that he is?
Gee, it's nice that Obama nominates such wonderful people for such critical offices...
FBI interview summaries describe Stephanie Villafuerte as saying she had “no conversations” with anyone at the DA’s office about the illegal immigrant, Carlos Estrada-Medina.
But the FBI apparently never asked Villafuerte, the former chief deputy DA who was then working for Bill Ritter’s campaign, why she left a phone message for DA spokeswoman Lynn Kimbrough that Kimbrough noted was about Estrada-Medina. The FBI also apparently never asked her about the nature of a series of phone calls she exchanged over the next two days with Kimbrough and First Assistant DA Chuck Lepley. Those calls came both before and after an order by Lepley to a subordinate to run a criminal history check of Estrada-Medina in a restricted federal database.
And, as I've pointed out many times,
It can be a crime to access the National Crime Information Center computer for a non-law-enforcement purpose.
So not only did President Obama's appointee lie- under oath, yet- about matters, the FBI failed to do their damn job right. Wonderful, isn't it, how some questions don't get asked of Obama appointees? Of course, it's possible this was simply incompetence, but I doubt it.
The Working Families Party, yeah; breaking the law fortheiryour own good...
Lots of links from Malkin today.
I noticed the other day that while the defense appropriations bill being signed was reported, most media stressed the Special Protected Species "They're more human than you" Hate Crimes Law" that was tacked onto it; probably because if you actually talk about the bill, you might have to discuss all the slimy politicians raiding the troops funds for vote-buying earmarks.
Oh, goody. Maybe they'll call the company Jackson's Whole. And start farming clones for parts.
Bleah. I need tea. And it's raining, again, and a front coming in this afternoon just to chill things again. Talked to son last night, and daughter-in-law is sick, and it's worse than it should be because she didn't want to go to the doctor for days; yeah, she'll fit right into the family.
Connections, connections... and this is the kind of thing that makes me think that, whatever it is, there's something at least highly embarrassing(to them at least) in the documents.
Hey, if Obama can blame all his problems on Bush, Anita Dunn can blame hers on a dead Republican.
Who's lying to who? Interesting question. Did Gingrich just not make sure of the facts, or is there some idiot reason he's pushing the liberal?
Hmmm. US federal agents said they shot dead the leader of a radical fundamentalist Islamist group after he refused to surrender on several criminal charges. The US attorney’s office said Luqman Ameen Abdullah, 53, was killed while exchanging gunfire with agents yesterday at a warehouse in Dearborn, near Detroit.
Ok, if this little bastard Levi Johnston wants to make veiled threats, maybe someone should start digging into everything about him. For starters, is he paying child support out of all this money he's making?
If only they reacted so swiftly to developments in other wars, such as in Afghanistan. They seem to care more about their own political image than they do about our military.
Now while they claim these job numbers are being corrected, their own web site still has what they claim is the wrong information.
Oops.
Like he says, Hey, AP, welcome to the enemies list!
Question has become not "Will the Brits reach a tipping point?", but "Did it pass and they let it?"
A council has banned parents from supervising their children in public playgrounds until they have undergone criminal record checks.
Adults have been excluded from two adventure play areas in Watford, apart from a handful of council-vetted 'play rangers' who will assist youngsters, it emerged today.
Parents will be forced to watch their children from outside the perimeter fence.
Watford Borough Council claims it is just following Government guidelines and cannot allow adults to walk around playgrounds 'unchecked'.
The Nanny State has your own interests at heart. And control of your kids. Wonder what these kids are hearing at school?
She said: 'Sadly, in today's climate, you can't have adults walking around unchecked in a children's playground and the adventure playground is not a meeting place for adults.
Actually, for parents it often is, while the kids play; just because you don't like it doesn't make it untrue.
And get this part:
'We have reviewed our procedures, so although previously some parents have stayed with their children at the discretion of our play workers, this is not something we can continue to do.
So they're claiming that even before this, their 'play workers' had the power to tell parents to leave their kids. Isn't socialism wonderful, where Great Britain used to be?
Even more risible, though, is the claim that the administration “is going to speak truth to power.” Hello, Valerie? Your boss is the president of the United States! No one is more powerful. As we suggested Friday, it really seems as if Obama and his men do not understand what it means to be president. Because their power is constrained–thank you, Founding Fathers!–they labor under the delusion that they are powerless.
Yet while this is all hilarious, it is also scary when you think it through. Great power entails great responsibility. There is little to suggest that Obama and his aides appreciate their responsibility, and much, including their incessant complaining that the previous president did a lousy job, to suggest an attitude of total irresponsibility.
The job of those in power is not to “speak truth to power,” though it would be nice if they spoke the truth once in a while.
Yeah. From the comment Insty published,
But he’s finding out that governing by fiat doesn’t work for long in this country. The tags for his presidency so far seem to be Radical, Naive, FDR, Jimmy Carter, Socialism and Screw Up.
I'd change that slightly, to 'Screw You'.
Here's a bit more on the islamist in Detroit; think the AG will charge them with hate crimes over this language?
The complaint says that the imam or leader of the group, Luqman Ameen Abdullah, repeatedly used rhetoric that urged Muslims to seize power with violence and establish a society where Muslims would rule over non-Muslims.
“America must fall,” Abdullah said, according to the complaint. At another point, he “told followers that they need to be with the Taliban, Hizballah, and with Sheikh Bin Laden.”
“We should be figuring out how to fight the Kuffar,” Abdullah said at another point, the indictment states. Kuffar “is a highly derogatory term” used to describe non-Mulisms, the document states.
Nah, I don't think so either; how can he charge a protected species with a hate crime, racial coward that he is?
Gee, it's nice that Obama nominates such wonderful people for such critical offices...
FBI interview summaries describe Stephanie Villafuerte as saying she had “no conversations” with anyone at the DA’s office about the illegal immigrant, Carlos Estrada-Medina.
But the FBI apparently never asked Villafuerte, the former chief deputy DA who was then working for Bill Ritter’s campaign, why she left a phone message for DA spokeswoman Lynn Kimbrough that Kimbrough noted was about Estrada-Medina. The FBI also apparently never asked her about the nature of a series of phone calls she exchanged over the next two days with Kimbrough and First Assistant DA Chuck Lepley. Those calls came both before and after an order by Lepley to a subordinate to run a criminal history check of Estrada-Medina in a restricted federal database.
And, as I've pointed out many times,
It can be a crime to access the National Crime Information Center computer for a non-law-enforcement purpose.
So not only did President Obama's appointee lie- under oath, yet- about matters, the FBI failed to do their damn job right. Wonderful, isn't it, how some questions don't get asked of Obama appointees? Of course, it's possible this was simply incompetence, but I doubt it.
The Working Families Party, yeah; breaking the law for
Lots of links from Malkin today.
I noticed the other day that while the defense appropriations bill being signed was reported, most media stressed the Special Protected Species "They're more human than you" Hate Crimes Law" that was tacked onto it; probably because if you actually talk about the bill, you might have to discuss all the slimy politicians raiding the troops funds for vote-buying earmarks.
Oh, goody. Maybe they'll call the company Jackson's Whole. And start farming clones for parts.
Bleah. I need tea. And it's raining, again, and a front coming in this afternoon just to chill things again. Talked to son last night, and daughter-in-law is sick, and it's worse than it should be because she didn't want to go to the doctor for days; yeah, she'll fit right into the family.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Ah yes, the mindset of our cultural elite...
In September, director Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland for leaving the U.S. in 1978 before being sentenced to prison for raping a 13-year-old girl at Jack Nicholson’s house in Hollywood. During the time of the original incident, you were working in the industry, and you and Polanski had a common friend in theater critic and producer Kenneth Tynan. So what’s your take on Polanski, this many years later?
I really don’t give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?
I’ve certainly never heard that take on the story before.
First, I was in the middle of all that. Back then, we all were. Everybody knew everybody else. There was a totally different story at the time that doesn’t resemble anything that we’re now being told.
What do you mean?
The media can’t get anything straight. Plus, there’s usually an anti-Semitic and anti-fag thing going on with the press – lots of crazy things. The idea that this girl was in her communion dress, a little angel all in white, being raped by this awful Jew, Polacko – that’s what people were calling him – well, the story is totally different now from what it was then.
That's the quote Sondra had; I'd like to point out this one:
Well, Obama actually wrote them himself.
I’m sure he did. He’s highly educated – and rather better than a country like this deserves. Put that in red letters.
And we're supposed to look up to these morons?
The huge increases in migrants over the last decade
were partly due to a politically motivated attempt by ministers to radically change the country and "rub the Right's nose in diversity", according to Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett.
Well, isn't that just so Special? So progressive?
He wrote: "Earlier drafts I saw also included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural.
"I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended – even if this wasn't its main purpose – to rub the Right's nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date."
So making the UK 'truly multicultural' included letting lots of illegals in, refusing to actually enforce the law, and doing it to try to make the Labour Party stay in power forever... Isn't the mindset of socialists wonderful?
There's a very telling quote further on in this:
"But ministers wouldn't talk about it. In part they probably realised the conservatism of their core voters: while ministers might have been passionately in favour of a more diverse society, it wasn't necessarily a debate they wanted to have in working men's clubs in Sheffield or Sunderland.
Translation: "We don't want to have to talk to the common rabble about this; they won't understand that it's for the proper progressive ends!" In plain language: "The peasants won't want us to do this, so we'll just not let them know about it."
And the current excuses and bullshit from the politicians behind this:
“Britain's borders are stronger than ever before and we are rolling out ID cards to foreign nationals, we have introduced civil penalties for those employing illegal workers and from the end of next year our electronic border system will monitor 95 per cent of journeys in and out of the UK.
“The British people can be confident that immigration is under control.”
Which explains all the islamists calling for death and sharia who are there illegally and won't be deported, and all the other illegals currently and previously snuck in who won't be deported; that's the progressive version of 'under control'.
Which sounds an awful lot like what Ted Kennedy and Obama and McCain and all those other slimy politicians wanted to shove down our throats. Hell are still trying to shove down our throats, preferably without us knowing until it's too late. Just like their progressive brethren in Britain, the bastards.
Well, isn't that just so Special? So progressive?
He wrote: "Earlier drafts I saw also included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural.
"I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended – even if this wasn't its main purpose – to rub the Right's nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date."
So making the UK 'truly multicultural' included letting lots of illegals in, refusing to actually enforce the law, and doing it to try to make the Labour Party stay in power forever... Isn't the mindset of socialists wonderful?
There's a very telling quote further on in this:
"But ministers wouldn't talk about it. In part they probably realised the conservatism of their core voters: while ministers might have been passionately in favour of a more diverse society, it wasn't necessarily a debate they wanted to have in working men's clubs in Sheffield or Sunderland.
Translation: "We don't want to have to talk to the common rabble about this; they won't understand that it's for the proper progressive ends!" In plain language: "The peasants won't want us to do this, so we'll just not let them know about it."
And the current excuses and bullshit from the politicians behind this:
“Britain's borders are stronger than ever before and we are rolling out ID cards to foreign nationals, we have introduced civil penalties for those employing illegal workers and from the end of next year our electronic border system will monitor 95 per cent of journeys in and out of the UK.
“The British people can be confident that immigration is under control.”
Which explains all the islamists calling for death and sharia who are there illegally and won't be deported, and all the other illegals currently and previously snuck in who won't be deported; that's the progressive version of 'under control'.
Which sounds an awful lot like what Ted Kennedy and Obama and McCain and all those other slimy politicians wanted to shove down our throats. Hell are still trying to shove down our throats, preferably without us knowing until it's too late. Just like their progressive brethren in Britain, the bastards.
Hannah Giles has some questions about ACORN coverage
- or the lack thereof- from the major media. Like
· Baltimore-Why no mention of the toddlers that were in the room while James and I were being counseled on how to manage our underage prostitution ring?
· San Bernardino-The content of this video was largely ignored except for the part where Tresa Kaelke mentions she shot her husband. What about when she told us not to educate our sex-slaves because they won’t want to work for us? Or when we talked about making more money off clients who are permitted to physically abuse the girls? What about the whole transport-the-girls-in-a-school-bus-to-avoid-suspicion discussion?
and
· San Bernardino: What happened to the list of politicians that Ms. Kaelke rattled off when she spoke of her ACORN office’s community involvement and influence? Has anyone set out to uncover just how close these politicians relationships are with the San Bernardino ACORN? Does anyone even remember the names?
· San Diego: Has anyone questioned why Juan Carlos would want to help smuggle girls across the Mexican border right after an ACORN-sponsored immigration parade???
Damn. It's like the mm doesn't WANT to investigate, or something...
· Baltimore-Why no mention of the toddlers that were in the room while James and I were being counseled on how to manage our underage prostitution ring?
· San Bernardino-The content of this video was largely ignored except for the part where Tresa Kaelke mentions she shot her husband. What about when she told us not to educate our sex-slaves because they won’t want to work for us? Or when we talked about making more money off clients who are permitted to physically abuse the girls? What about the whole transport-the-girls-in-a-school-bus-to-avoid-suspicion discussion?
and
· San Bernardino: What happened to the list of politicians that Ms. Kaelke rattled off when she spoke of her ACORN office’s community involvement and influence? Has anyone set out to uncover just how close these politicians relationships are with the San Bernardino ACORN? Does anyone even remember the names?
· San Diego: Has anyone questioned why Juan Carlos would want to help smuggle girls across the Mexican border right after an ACORN-sponsored immigration parade???
Damn. It's like the mm doesn't WANT to investigate, or something...
So some of the socialized medicine plan is rationing
by taxes:
The more the fiscal details of the healthcare bills emerge, the more appalling they seem. The Senate Finance Committee bill includes a broad provision taxing all manner of medical devices. This tax includes such frivolous luxuries as pacemakers, stents, artificial heart valves, defibrillators, automated wheelchairs, mechanized artificial limbs, replacement hips and knees, surgical gurneys, laparoscopic equipment and the like.
Isn't that just wonderful, that The Obama and the socialists in Congress care so much that they want to tax people to death for things like that?
The more the fiscal details of the healthcare bills emerge, the more appalling they seem. The Senate Finance Committee bill includes a broad provision taxing all manner of medical devices. This tax includes such frivolous luxuries as pacemakers, stents, artificial heart valves, defibrillators, automated wheelchairs, mechanized artificial limbs, replacement hips and knees, surgical gurneys, laparoscopic equipment and the like.
Isn't that just wonderful, that The Obama and the socialists in Congress care so much that they want to tax people to death for things like that?
Another of the miserable excuses for humans in the Christian/Newsom murders
gets guilty verdicts. Which means this lower-than-pond scum being will get to sit on death row, eating well and breathing, for at least ten years before he actually faces the penalty.
I scanned through the comments, and there's the usual leavening of 'Forgiveness is called for' stuff.
Forgiveness needs to be asked for. For real.It's not something that's due to the bastard. And it's real easy to sit far removed from the families of the victims and lecture on forgiveness.
Hell with it. And him. Which is where he belongs, he and all the others.
Why yes, I am judgmental on things like this.
I scanned through the comments, and there's the usual leavening of 'Forgiveness is called for' stuff.
Forgiveness needs to be asked for. For real.It's not something that's due to the bastard. And it's real easy to sit far removed from the families of the victims and lecture on forgiveness.
Hell with it. And him. Which is where he belongs, he and all the others.
Why yes, I am judgmental on things like this.
So British authorities can't deal with people being robbed and raped
and murdered, and they can't keep crooks from getting guns, but they can do this:
Draconian police powers designed to deprive crime barons of luxury lifestyles are being extended to councils, quangos and agencies to use against the public, The Times has learnt.
The right to search homes, seize cash, freeze bank accounts and confiscate property will be given to town hall officials and civilian investigators employed by organisations as diverse as Royal Mail, the Rural Payments Agency and Transport for London.
I would note that this isn't a 'right'; it's a power, and we know what politicians do with that.
The measure, being pushed through by Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, comes into force next week and will deploy some of the most powerful tools available to detectives against fare dodgers, families in arrears with council tax and other minor offenders.
Can you freakin' believe this?
The radical extension of the Proceeds of Crime Act, through a Statutory Instrument which is not debated by parliament, has been condemned by the chairman of the Police Federation. Paul McKeever said that he was shocked to learn that the decision to hand over “intrusive powers” to people who were not police was made without consultation or debate.
Why debate? They're your progressive masters, and they know best. And if debate were allowed, you might say things they don't want to hear.
And, just like the 'incentives' that have caused property forfeiture to become such a bullshit moneymaking scheme here,
An “explanatory memorandum” says that a swath of financial investigators attached to the newly empowered bodies will be accredited, trained and monitored by another quango, the National Policing Improvement Agency. The memo adds that asset seizure will result in financial rewards: “Investigation bodies will receive a share of money recovered as additional funding to incentivise further work in recovering the proceeds of crime.”
...
“Having these Al Capone powers in the back pocket is very valuable for a senior prosecutor but in the hands of someone less experienced and less skilled, particularly when combined with the incentive of their department collecting a share of the confiscated money, there is the potential for charges to be brought which are intended to maximise confiscation recovery rather than reflect the level of criminality concerned.”
Well, damn, you think maybe?!?
“Far worse is the encouragement being given to non-police bodies to search for what they think are proceeds of crime but may not be and subject the victim to the draconian and manifestly unjust processes of the Proceeds of Crime Act. Does anyone in Government understand that if you give prosecutors, who are supposed to be unbiased ministers of justice, the bribe of a proportion of the money they can find, you are actually poisoning the roots of justice in our society?”
That's a very critical question, which brings up another: what if they WANT to poison the roots?
The defense for this crap?
A Home Office spokesman defended the extension of the powers. “Seizing ill-gotten gains is a key part of the fight against criminals — whether it is from small-time offences or organised crime,” he said.
Methinks the Home Office needs to be dealt with using the same kind of compassion and concern they show for the peasants.
Draconian police powers designed to deprive crime barons of luxury lifestyles are being extended to councils, quangos and agencies to use against the public, The Times has learnt.
The right to search homes, seize cash, freeze bank accounts and confiscate property will be given to town hall officials and civilian investigators employed by organisations as diverse as Royal Mail, the Rural Payments Agency and Transport for London.
I would note that this isn't a 'right'; it's a power, and we know what politicians do with that.
The measure, being pushed through by Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, comes into force next week and will deploy some of the most powerful tools available to detectives against fare dodgers, families in arrears with council tax and other minor offenders.
Can you freakin' believe this?
The radical extension of the Proceeds of Crime Act, through a Statutory Instrument which is not debated by parliament, has been condemned by the chairman of the Police Federation. Paul McKeever said that he was shocked to learn that the decision to hand over “intrusive powers” to people who were not police was made without consultation or debate.
Why debate? They're your progressive masters, and they know best. And if debate were allowed, you might say things they don't want to hear.
And, just like the 'incentives' that have caused property forfeiture to become such a bullshit moneymaking scheme here,
An “explanatory memorandum” says that a swath of financial investigators attached to the newly empowered bodies will be accredited, trained and monitored by another quango, the National Policing Improvement Agency. The memo adds that asset seizure will result in financial rewards: “Investigation bodies will receive a share of money recovered as additional funding to incentivise further work in recovering the proceeds of crime.”
...
“Having these Al Capone powers in the back pocket is very valuable for a senior prosecutor but in the hands of someone less experienced and less skilled, particularly when combined with the incentive of their department collecting a share of the confiscated money, there is the potential for charges to be brought which are intended to maximise confiscation recovery rather than reflect the level of criminality concerned.”
Well, damn, you think maybe?!?
“Far worse is the encouragement being given to non-police bodies to search for what they think are proceeds of crime but may not be and subject the victim to the draconian and manifestly unjust processes of the Proceeds of Crime Act. Does anyone in Government understand that if you give prosecutors, who are supposed to be unbiased ministers of justice, the bribe of a proportion of the money they can find, you are actually poisoning the roots of justice in our society?”
That's a very critical question, which brings up another: what if they WANT to poison the roots?
The defense for this crap?
A Home Office spokesman defended the extension of the powers. “Seizing ill-gotten gains is a key part of the fight against criminals — whether it is from small-time offences or organised crime,” he said.
Methinks the Home Office needs to be dealt with using the same kind of compassion and concern they show for the peasants.
Let's see, let's start this with Obama wanting to give the unions
more of your money by giving another bailout to Government Motors:
The U.S. Treasury Department is in talks with GMAC Financial Services Inc about a possible third cash infusion to the company, an Obama administration official confirmed. The official declined to say how much additional money was under discussion for GMAC, which already has received $12.5 billion of taxpayer funds. The Wall Street Journal said the government may have to inject another $2.8 billion to $5.6 billion into the Detroit-based lender.
It seems that nutcase from Florida, Rep. Grayson(Evil Party Squirrel-FL) may be more than some fries short of his happy meal:
Kipling's statements were chronicled in an interview set to be released on November 5. Kipling stated that while Grayson touted that he was a respected economist he had actually failed an economics course in his sophomore year. In addition, some of Grayson's senior papers were accused of widespread plagiarism.
In addition, Kipling stated that Grayson's campaign had a glaring omission. During 1988, when Grayson had just turned thirty and while working for the Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson law firm, he spent four days in the Psychiatric Institute of Washington. What the cause of this stay was is yet unclear, although testimony from co-workers suggests that Grayson was extremely combative with fellow employees, including slapping a female intern in the face. Grayson was released after PIW doctors declared him "not to be a threat to the public."
Well. I guess compared to that calling a lobbyist a whore is a step up in behavior; at least he wasn't committing assault in the House.
Well, looks like Lieberman isn't going to stay on the reservation:
“I can’t see a way in which I could vote for cloture on any bill that contained a creation of a government-operated-run insurance company,” Lieberman added. “It’s just asking for trouble – in the end, the taxpayers are going to pay and probably all people will have health insurance are going to see their premiums go up because there’s going to be cost shifting as there has been for Medicare and Medicaid.”
Lieberman said he “very much” wants to vote for health care reform but that he’s worried about stifling “the economic recovery we’re in” or adding to the federal debt.
I do have to wonder whether it's actual concern with spending, or people back home telling him they'll throw his ass out if he votes for it; that 'wants to vote for reform' line bothers me.
These people were running a business helping immigrants; gee, isn't that nice?
Two U.S. residents, one an American citizen, one a Canadian citizen, educated and assimilated, and enjoying a nice enough living to be able to afford to fly to Denmark to kill a couple of guys over a cartoon. In the long run, Afghan cave-dwellers and Waziristani goatherds are less of a threat than fellows like Messrs Headley and Rana. The company name — "First World Immigration Services" — is a rather droll jest.
A study has discovered that most guys don't like women who look like they're starving to death; isn't that a damn surprise? What was the first clue, I wonder; maybe the guys saying the chick from the 'Pirates' movies needs to start eating, maybe?
Let's see, the social justice(i.e., "We'll take all your money and use it better because We're Progressive!") groups want to use the FCC to silence people who disagree with them. And the Obama buttmonkey in the FCC wants to help. Yeah, great regard they have for the 1st Amendment, huh?
La Raza president Janet Murguia called for TV networks to keep immigration enforcement proponents off the airwaves and argued that hate speech should not be tolerated, “even if such censorship were a violation of First Amendment rights,” according to the NYTimes.
So a racist member of a real racist organization wants to trash the Constitution because it prevents them from silencing opponents... Yeah, real progressive of them, isn't it?
I've noticed that ammo supplies are getting better; not a whole lot, but definitely better.
Got something to read; this looks interesting...
The U.S. Treasury Department is in talks with GMAC Financial Services Inc about a possible third cash infusion to the company, an Obama administration official confirmed. The official declined to say how much additional money was under discussion for GMAC, which already has received $12.5 billion of taxpayer funds. The Wall Street Journal said the government may have to inject another $2.8 billion to $5.6 billion into the Detroit-based lender.
It seems that nutcase from Florida, Rep. Grayson(Evil Party Squirrel-FL) may be more than some fries short of his happy meal:
Kipling's statements were chronicled in an interview set to be released on November 5. Kipling stated that while Grayson touted that he was a respected economist he had actually failed an economics course in his sophomore year. In addition, some of Grayson's senior papers were accused of widespread plagiarism.
In addition, Kipling stated that Grayson's campaign had a glaring omission. During 1988, when Grayson had just turned thirty and while working for the Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson law firm, he spent four days in the Psychiatric Institute of Washington. What the cause of this stay was is yet unclear, although testimony from co-workers suggests that Grayson was extremely combative with fellow employees, including slapping a female intern in the face. Grayson was released after PIW doctors declared him "not to be a threat to the public."
Well. I guess compared to that calling a lobbyist a whore is a step up in behavior; at least he wasn't committing assault in the House.
Well, looks like Lieberman isn't going to stay on the reservation:
“I can’t see a way in which I could vote for cloture on any bill that contained a creation of a government-operated-run insurance company,” Lieberman added. “It’s just asking for trouble – in the end, the taxpayers are going to pay and probably all people will have health insurance are going to see their premiums go up because there’s going to be cost shifting as there has been for Medicare and Medicaid.”
Lieberman said he “very much” wants to vote for health care reform but that he’s worried about stifling “the economic recovery we’re in” or adding to the federal debt.
I do have to wonder whether it's actual concern with spending, or people back home telling him they'll throw his ass out if he votes for it; that 'wants to vote for reform' line bothers me.
These people were running a business helping immigrants; gee, isn't that nice?
Two U.S. residents, one an American citizen, one a Canadian citizen, educated and assimilated, and enjoying a nice enough living to be able to afford to fly to Denmark to kill a couple of guys over a cartoon. In the long run, Afghan cave-dwellers and Waziristani goatherds are less of a threat than fellows like Messrs Headley and Rana. The company name — "First World Immigration Services" — is a rather droll jest.
A study has discovered that most guys don't like women who look like they're starving to death; isn't that a damn surprise? What was the first clue, I wonder; maybe the guys saying the chick from the 'Pirates' movies needs to start eating, maybe?
Let's see, the social justice(i.e., "We'll take all your money and use it better because We're Progressive!") groups want to use the FCC to silence people who disagree with them. And the Obama buttmonkey in the FCC wants to help. Yeah, great regard they have for the 1st Amendment, huh?
La Raza president Janet Murguia called for TV networks to keep immigration enforcement proponents off the airwaves and argued that hate speech should not be tolerated, “even if such censorship were a violation of First Amendment rights,” according to the NYTimes.
So a racist member of a real racist organization wants to trash the Constitution because it prevents them from silencing opponents... Yeah, real progressive of them, isn't it?
I've noticed that ammo supplies are getting better; not a whole lot, but definitely better.
Got something to read; this looks interesting...
So Ahnold can screw honest gun owners with no problem,
and be part of the big damned mess in CA budgeting(if you can call it that), but he gets kind of thin-skinned about someone being nasty to him. Wonderful.
Hey, Ahnold? As to your bitching about the Legislature 'kicking the can down the alley', you're part of the bullshit. Ever heard of a 'veto'?
To San Francisco: maybe this was a substantive bill here that would have helped San Francisco; well, maybe if the Governor had been far more willing to tell cities "No, you can't loot the pockets of the whole state to help yourself", or if cities and counties had been less willing to screw the rest of the state for their own goodies, you wouldn't be in the mess you are. Hard as that may be for such a progressive place to understand.
As is, you keep raising taxes and regulating to death, and people keep moving to other states. Bitch at yourself in the mirror, dumbass, as you're the damn problem.
Hey, Ahnold? As to your bitching about the Legislature 'kicking the can down the alley', you're part of the bullshit. Ever heard of a 'veto'?
To San Francisco: maybe this was a substantive bill here that would have helped San Francisco; well, maybe if the Governor had been far more willing to tell cities "No, you can't loot the pockets of the whole state to help yourself", or if cities and counties had been less willing to screw the rest of the state for their own goodies, you wouldn't be in the mess you are. Hard as that may be for such a progressive place to understand.
As is, you keep raising taxes and regulating to death, and people keep moving to other states. Bitch at yourself in the mirror, dumbass, as you're the damn problem.
A while back in a Range Day post I indicated 'more to come';
here 'tis.
I don't have an AR15. Thought about it a few times, but A: expense and B: another cartridge. Which got kind of hard to find for a while there, as well as the price going up. Well, last month Dad came up for a gun show, and when we broke for lunch we went over to H&H to check for reloading gear(they've expanded what they carry a lot) and Dad wanted to see one of the S&W .22 rimfire rifles. They had two. Dad looked one over and bought it; and due to circumstances(like not much at the show, and I had some retirement money left), I made one of the sillier buys ever.
So I have a S&W M&P 15-22 rifle.
Few days later I had time to hit the range, so gathered up some of every .22 ammo I had and tried it out.
It's quite accurate. With two of the brands(Centurion and Federal 36-grain hollowpoints) I got several 1" and less groups at 50 yards.
Good sights. Front & rear will take off the rail if you want to mount optics, and the rear has both large and small apertures.
Good trigger. It's not a match rifle, trigger's a bit heavy and there's a touch of creep; on the latter, little enough that unless you're on a rest and looking for such you wouldn't notice it.
Fun to shoot.
But ran into one problem: 3-5 times out of every magazine an empty wouldn't eject from the receiver, it'd stay in and block the bolt from closing. Which might be fine for practicing failure drills, but otherwise it's a pain in the ass. Especially if you got it for target and general plinking use. This didn't help shooting for groups either, as I kept trying to see if the empty ejected, which takes away from concentration on the sights.
There's always the chance that it was a break-in thing, so I ran a bit over 200 rounds through, cleaned and lubed it at home and waited for another range day. Where it did the same thing, with all five brands of ammo*. So I called S&W, they e-mailed a shipping label and off it went.
It came back a touch over two weeks from the time they received it. AND they threw in two new magazines. I gathered ammo for it and some other stuff and headed to H&H.
All the letter that came with it said was "Repaired: Updated to latest spec.", so no idea just what they did. Whatever it was, it ran through everything with no failures except one Remington that got the rim caught in the magazine top in a very weird way; I have to lay that one on the magazine or some oddity with that cartridge, and it didn't happen again. More than 200 rounds, all ejecting with no problem. Actually, it was better than before in another way: before originally it didn't much like Remington Golden Bullet ammo, which often wouldn't feed properly; now the stuff ran right through.
Overall, I like the thing. It's light, handy, fun to shoot(now) and surprisingly accurate; with ammo it likes and a scope I think I can consistently get groups under an inch at 50. And if you have an AR, since the controls are the same it's a good practice rifle with much cheaper ammo**. I'm told most AR accessories will fit***; be interesting if they'd threaded the muzzle, as this thing would be fun with a suppressor(of course, any good gunsmith with a lathe could take care of that for you; I know the NFA permit is $200, what's a good .22 suppressor cost?).
That's the original post I put together. Since then I've had it to the range another time with probably another 200-250 rounds through(don't you love .22's?) I had one FTF(again with Remington Golden Bullet; it's the only brand it's had any feeding problems with) and no other problems. It was windy as hell and gusting, so it was hard to get really good groups(for me, anyway), but the accuracy of the thing continues to impress; I really need to put a scope on it for some accuracy tests. I also noticed that when it was zeroed at 50 yards with the large aperture, the small aperture put it dead-on at 100, which is nice; and even with all the wind I had no trouble keeping all shots in a 6" bull at 100, which for me with combat-type iron(well, plastic) sights ain't bad.
I will compliment S&W customer service: there was no BS or argument, heard what the problem was, got my e-mail for the return label, told me to include the ammo information in my cover letter and that was it. It was taken care of and shipped back quickly, which if you do have a problem is what you want. I will, however, advise you to call if you need help; I tried their customer service e-mail twice before I called, and never got a reply. I don't know if they don't check it or what, but it's a pain, and they do need to fix that.
So that's the 'more that was coming'. I will add that Dad has had no problems with his, so I guess I- same as with the Trailside- am the guy who got The one with Problems.
*I used Centurion, Federal hollowpoints, Winchester 36-grain hollowpoints, Remington GB and Federal Champion. The GB I already mentioned; the Winchester and Champion didn't have enough oomph to consistently cycle the action(as in 'almost never', making it a straight-pull bolt rifle). The Centurion and Federal hp both gave the best groups.(After the repairs, it shoots the Champion with some FTF, but the Winchester 36-grain still won't cut it)
**Dad took his to the range when he qualified and tried it out; the rangemaster runs training for the local PD and went nuts over it; he wants a few for training.
*** Salesman at H&H said one of the guys there put in a AR15 match trigger; dropped right in and doubled the cost of the rig right there.
I don't have an AR15. Thought about it a few times, but A: expense and B: another cartridge. Which got kind of hard to find for a while there, as well as the price going up. Well, last month Dad came up for a gun show, and when we broke for lunch we went over to H&H to check for reloading gear(they've expanded what they carry a lot) and Dad wanted to see one of the S&W .22 rimfire rifles. They had two. Dad looked one over and bought it; and due to circumstances(like not much at the show, and I had some retirement money left), I made one of the sillier buys ever.
So I have a S&W M&P 15-22 rifle.
Few days later I had time to hit the range, so gathered up some of every .22 ammo I had and tried it out.
It's quite accurate. With two of the brands(Centurion and Federal 36-grain hollowpoints) I got several 1" and less groups at 50 yards.
Good sights. Front & rear will take off the rail if you want to mount optics, and the rear has both large and small apertures.
Good trigger. It's not a match rifle, trigger's a bit heavy and there's a touch of creep; on the latter, little enough that unless you're on a rest and looking for such you wouldn't notice it.
Fun to shoot.
But ran into one problem: 3-5 times out of every magazine an empty wouldn't eject from the receiver, it'd stay in and block the bolt from closing. Which might be fine for practicing failure drills, but otherwise it's a pain in the ass. Especially if you got it for target and general plinking use. This didn't help shooting for groups either, as I kept trying to see if the empty ejected, which takes away from concentration on the sights.
There's always the chance that it was a break-in thing, so I ran a bit over 200 rounds through, cleaned and lubed it at home and waited for another range day. Where it did the same thing, with all five brands of ammo*. So I called S&W, they e-mailed a shipping label and off it went.
It came back a touch over two weeks from the time they received it. AND they threw in two new magazines. I gathered ammo for it and some other stuff and headed to H&H.
All the letter that came with it said was "Repaired: Updated to latest spec.", so no idea just what they did. Whatever it was, it ran through everything with no failures except one Remington that got the rim caught in the magazine top in a very weird way; I have to lay that one on the magazine or some oddity with that cartridge, and it didn't happen again. More than 200 rounds, all ejecting with no problem. Actually, it was better than before in another way: before originally it didn't much like Remington Golden Bullet ammo, which often wouldn't feed properly; now the stuff ran right through.
Overall, I like the thing. It's light, handy, fun to shoot(now) and surprisingly accurate; with ammo it likes and a scope I think I can consistently get groups under an inch at 50. And if you have an AR, since the controls are the same it's a good practice rifle with much cheaper ammo**. I'm told most AR accessories will fit***; be interesting if they'd threaded the muzzle, as this thing would be fun with a suppressor(of course, any good gunsmith with a lathe could take care of that for you; I know the NFA permit is $200, what's a good .22 suppressor cost?).
That's the original post I put together. Since then I've had it to the range another time with probably another 200-250 rounds through(don't you love .22's?) I had one FTF(again with Remington Golden Bullet; it's the only brand it's had any feeding problems with) and no other problems. It was windy as hell and gusting, so it was hard to get really good groups(for me, anyway), but the accuracy of the thing continues to impress; I really need to put a scope on it for some accuracy tests. I also noticed that when it was zeroed at 50 yards with the large aperture, the small aperture put it dead-on at 100, which is nice; and even with all the wind I had no trouble keeping all shots in a 6" bull at 100, which for me with combat-type iron(well, plastic) sights ain't bad.
I will compliment S&W customer service: there was no BS or argument, heard what the problem was, got my e-mail for the return label, told me to include the ammo information in my cover letter and that was it. It was taken care of and shipped back quickly, which if you do have a problem is what you want. I will, however, advise you to call if you need help; I tried their customer service e-mail twice before I called, and never got a reply. I don't know if they don't check it or what, but it's a pain, and they do need to fix that.
So that's the 'more that was coming'. I will add that Dad has had no problems with his, so I guess I- same as with the Trailside- am the guy who got The one with Problems.
*I used Centurion, Federal hollowpoints, Winchester 36-grain hollowpoints, Remington GB and Federal Champion. The GB I already mentioned; the Winchester and Champion didn't have enough oomph to consistently cycle the action(as in 'almost never', making it a straight-pull bolt rifle). The Centurion and Federal hp both gave the best groups.(After the repairs, it shoots the Champion with some FTF, but the Winchester 36-grain still won't cut it)
**Dad took his to the range when he qualified and tried it out; the rangemaster runs training for the local PD and went nuts over it; he wants a few for training.
*** Salesman at H&H said one of the guys there put in a AR15 match trigger; dropped right in and doubled the cost of the rig right there.
Israel better be making preparations, because if this doesn't tell them
Obama doesn't care what happens to them, nothing else will:
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is quietly laying the groundwork for long-range strategy that could be used to contain a nuclear-equipped Iran and deter its leaders from using atomic weapons.
U.S. officials insist they are not resigned to a nuclear Iran and are pressing negotiations to prevent it from joining the world's nuclear club. But at the same time, the administration has set in place the building blocks of policies to contend with an Iran armed with atomic weapons.
"Oh no, we're not giving up; we still have great hopes that Ahmadogcrap will come to the table and recognize the holiness of The Obama and do what He wants." Despite being lied to and ignored and laughed at...
In recent weeks, U.S. diplomats have pushed with its international partners to nudge Iran into agreeing not to use its nuclear facilities to build atomic weapons.
Uh huh. Like leaving the Poles and Czechs hanging in the name of 'better missile defense' that won't be, but makes the Russians happy because it reduces the defenses of the Poles and Czechs. And won't help them against Iranian missiles, but since Obama is into appeasing the 12th Imam nutcases, so that's a small price!(to Obama)
And at the end,
Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human rights advocate and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said in an AP interview that Washington is mistaken in insisting that it would be intolerable for Iran to have nuclear weapons.
"Just as the world tolerates North Korea and Pakistan it would have to tolerate Iran as well," she said.
Exactly. Pakistan at least had the point of being run by people who weren't willing, for instance, to see half or more of their people dead in the name of killing Jews; North Korea has been run for decades by first-class communist dirtbag murderers, and nobody likes them but nobody wants to deal with them, either. And if the mullahs in Iran pop a couple of nukes at Israel, the EUnuchs and company will whine and moan and bitch, and I'd estimate at 90%+ that they'll actually do nothing. And Iran knows it.
Hell, Obama doesn't even like the word 'victory' when he's the CIC of American troops in battle; does anyone actually think he has the balls, integrity or will to stand up to Iran?
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is quietly laying the groundwork for long-range strategy that could be used to contain a nuclear-equipped Iran and deter its leaders from using atomic weapons.
U.S. officials insist they are not resigned to a nuclear Iran and are pressing negotiations to prevent it from joining the world's nuclear club. But at the same time, the administration has set in place the building blocks of policies to contend with an Iran armed with atomic weapons.
"Oh no, we're not giving up; we still have great hopes that Ahmadogcrap will come to the table and recognize the holiness of The Obama and do what He wants." Despite being lied to and ignored and laughed at...
In recent weeks, U.S. diplomats have pushed with its international partners to nudge Iran into agreeing not to use its nuclear facilities to build atomic weapons.
Uh huh. Like leaving the Poles and Czechs hanging in the name of 'better missile defense' that won't be, but makes the Russians happy because it reduces the defenses of the Poles and Czechs. And won't help them against Iranian missiles, but since Obama is into appeasing the 12th Imam nutcases, so that's a small price!(to Obama)
And at the end,
Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human rights advocate and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said in an AP interview that Washington is mistaken in insisting that it would be intolerable for Iran to have nuclear weapons.
"Just as the world tolerates North Korea and Pakistan it would have to tolerate Iran as well," she said.
Exactly. Pakistan at least had the point of being run by people who weren't willing, for instance, to see half or more of their people dead in the name of killing Jews; North Korea has been run for decades by first-class communist dirtbag murderers, and nobody likes them but nobody wants to deal with them, either. And if the mullahs in Iran pop a couple of nukes at Israel, the EUnuchs and company will whine and moan and bitch, and I'd estimate at 90%+ that they'll actually do nothing. And Iran knows it.
Hell, Obama doesn't even like the word 'victory' when he's the CIC of American troops in battle; does anyone actually think he has the balls, integrity or will to stand up to Iran?
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
So either they think they can do whatever they want,
or know it's a very dangerous question.
Q: I just want to know where, in your opinion, does the Constitution give specific authority for Congress to give an individual mandate for health insurance?
LEAHY: What — we have plenty of authority. Are you saying there is no authority?
Q: I’m asking –
LEAHY: Why would you say there is no authority? I mean, there’s no question there’s authority. Nobody questions that.
Q: But where — I mean, which –
LEAHY: Where do we have authority to set speed limits on an interstate highway?
Q: Well, the states do that.
LEAHY: No, no, the federal government does that.
No, it doesn’t. But that’s not important now. There’s something missing there–did you catch it?
By my count, that was three Bare Assertion Fallacies, two of which are also False Generalizations, and three Answering a Question with a Question, one of which is also a Red Herring. And a partridge in a pear tree.
Followed by
CNSNews.com: “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?”
Pelosi: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”
CNSNews.com: “Yes, yes I am.”
Pelosi then shook her head before taking a question from another reporter. Her press spokesman, Nadeam Elshami, then told CNSNews.com that asking the speaker of the House where the Constitution authorized Congress to mandated that individual Americans buy health insurance as not a “serious question.”
“You can put this on the record,” said Elshami. “That is not a serious question. That is not a serious question.”
It’s not a serious question–but you assigned lawyers to research and prepare a booklet on the subject subject?
And it IS a very dangerous question; they're- at the least- wildly overstepping their legitimate authority, as is Obama on a number of things.
I wonder what'll be the first lawsuit someone files on exactly that?
Quote of the day
The question he raises is this: if philosophers themselves argue that man is no more valuable than an animal, then how much longer before the state starts calculating the cost of bullets?
More hate mail to Larry from the "Because you suck
and we hate you" post:
So apparently it is now illegal to even TOUCH the majesty that is HK, unless you have a license so special that it doesn’t actuallyEXIST. So, help me out here, do if a regular person goes to the range and rents a full auto weapon, does he have to get a provisional imaginary license to shoot it?
Holy crap, exercise some critical thinking skills once in awhile.
So apparently it is now illegal to even TOUCH the majesty that is HK, unless you have a license so special that it doesn’t actuallyEXIST. So, help me out here, do if a regular person goes to the range and rents a full auto weapon, does he have to get a provisional imaginary license to shoot it?
Holy crap, exercise some critical thinking skills once in awhile.
How're those British gun-control laws working out?
Not too well.
Gun crime has almost doubled in the last decade despite high profile Government campaigns to tackle the problem.
Offences involving firearms have increased in all but four police areas in England and Wales since 1998, figures obtained by the Tories reveal.
One part of the country has seen the problem increase almost seven fold as the availability of guns, and criminals' williness to use them rises.
One of the standard noises we hear in the US is "We need to have laws like Britain does to control crime"; as I say, that's not actually working out.
There were 9,865 firearm offences in 2007/08, a rise of 89 per cent on the 5,209 recorded in 1998/99.
Lancashire Police saw a 598 per cent increase from just 50 to 349 over the period while Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Essex all saw five fold increases.
In total, 21 forces saw offences at least double over the decade while just four, Cleveland, Humberside, Cambridgeshire and Sussex, saw the number fall.
It should be pointed out that the 'saw the number fall' has to be viewed with suspicion; the Brit government has been caught cooking the books to make things look better far too many times. Speaking of which,
A Home Office spokeswoman said: "It is misleading to compare figures for 2007 / 08 with those from 2002 and before, due to changes in recording practices.
"There has been an 11 per cent fall in gun crime since 2005 and provisional figures for firearm offences recorded by the police show they account for 0.2 per cent of all recorded crime.
Yeah, it's 'changes in recording practices' that makes it look bad, uh huh.
So, once again, it's demonstrated that on an island they can't keep bad guys from getting arms; they can only disarm the honest citizen.
Ah, just looked at Kevin for the first time in a few days, and I find this post, which includes this reaction to armed police on patrols:
Gun crime has almost doubled in the last decade despite high profile Government campaigns to tackle the problem.
Offences involving firearms have increased in all but four police areas in England and Wales since 1998, figures obtained by the Tories reveal.
One part of the country has seen the problem increase almost seven fold as the availability of guns, and criminals' williness to use them rises.
One of the standard noises we hear in the US is "We need to have laws like Britain does to control crime"; as I say, that's not actually working out.
There were 9,865 firearm offences in 2007/08, a rise of 89 per cent on the 5,209 recorded in 1998/99.
Lancashire Police saw a 598 per cent increase from just 50 to 349 over the period while Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Essex all saw five fold increases.
In total, 21 forces saw offences at least double over the decade while just four, Cleveland, Humberside, Cambridgeshire and Sussex, saw the number fall.
It should be pointed out that the 'saw the number fall' has to be viewed with suspicion; the Brit government has been caught cooking the books to make things look better far too many times. Speaking of which,
A Home Office spokeswoman said: "It is misleading to compare figures for 2007 / 08 with those from 2002 and before, due to changes in recording practices.
"There has been an 11 per cent fall in gun crime since 2005 and provisional figures for firearm offences recorded by the police show they account for 0.2 per cent of all recorded crime.
Yeah, it's 'changes in recording practices' that makes it look bad, uh huh.
So, once again, it's demonstrated that on an island they can't keep bad guys from getting arms; they can only disarm the honest citizen.
Ah, just looked at Kevin for the first time in a few days, and I find this post, which includes this reaction to armed police on patrols:
"No one asked us or the people I represent if this was acceptable and when they do I shall tell them it isn't. It isn't acceptable to throw away the principle of policing by consent," she said.Soooo, you're saying that having armed foot patrols in the area might "escalate the situation"? Who do you represent, Ms. Marshall-Andrews? The residents or the thugs?
Gill Marshall-Andrews, chairwoman of the Gun Control Network campaign group, described the routine arming of officers as a "very retrograde step" and warned that it could lead to higher levels of gun crime.
"This is likely to raise the stakes and encourage more criminals, especially young criminals, to arm themselves," she said.
Found two bits that just keep dragging at me
in the comments of this post:
...Reminds me of the story of how men felt during the Atlanta sniper crime spree. Many men were surprised at how ‘vulnerable’ they felt because at any given moment, no matter what they were doing, they could be victimized. Sound familiar?? Welcome to our world. Sucks to have to always assume that those with penises will hurt those of us with vaginas, but hey, that’s the way it is, isn’t it?...
and
Yep. Same thing happened during 9/11. All of a sudden men knew what it was like to feel vulnerable.
In case you don't want to go through it all, the story is here; girl was gang-raped, and then individually raped by some who came upon the scene. And, just to make it even better, other people who walked by couldn't be bothered to call the cops. Horrible thing. Problem is, the post is basically "Oh yes, she had a drink and ventured out, so of course she was asking for it" bullcrap.
Two things: First, there is no excuse for this kind of crime. Period. The penalty should be severe for any actual rape. Period.
Second, if you place yourself in a dangerous place, you do have responsibility for having done so. Period. That's not excusing the crime, and it goes for men or women. Guy goes to a bar where he knows there are lots of fights and other badness and gets caught up in one and gets hurt, or is beaten and raped(not real common but does happen) the same thing goes: putting yourself in a bad place was not a real smart thing to do. Neither is drinking to the point of passing out in company of people you don't know. Yes, you should be able to go anywhere you want and drink all you want without being in danger; that's the absolute view, and it ignores reality.
Which is getting away from the main point: do these women actually believe that A: ALL men are looking to hurt women? and B: do they actually believe that men- outside of extraordinary situations- never feel vulnerable? 'A' speaks to a level of hatred of males that's just downright scary, and sad; 'B' is just idiotic. Both speak of a level of "Womyn are ALWAYS victims!" that's just... not sure of the proper words for that.
...Reminds me of the story of how men felt during the Atlanta sniper crime spree. Many men were surprised at how ‘vulnerable’ they felt because at any given moment, no matter what they were doing, they could be victimized. Sound familiar?? Welcome to our world. Sucks to have to always assume that those with penises will hurt those of us with vaginas, but hey, that’s the way it is, isn’t it?...
and
Yep. Same thing happened during 9/11. All of a sudden men knew what it was like to feel vulnerable.
In case you don't want to go through it all, the story is here; girl was gang-raped, and then individually raped by some who came upon the scene. And, just to make it even better, other people who walked by couldn't be bothered to call the cops. Horrible thing. Problem is, the post is basically "Oh yes, she had a drink and ventured out, so of course she was asking for it" bullcrap.
Two things: First, there is no excuse for this kind of crime. Period. The penalty should be severe for any actual rape. Period.
Second, if you place yourself in a dangerous place, you do have responsibility for having done so. Period. That's not excusing the crime, and it goes for men or women. Guy goes to a bar where he knows there are lots of fights and other badness and gets caught up in one and gets hurt, or is beaten and raped(not real common but does happen) the same thing goes: putting yourself in a bad place was not a real smart thing to do. Neither is drinking to the point of passing out in company of people you don't know. Yes, you should be able to go anywhere you want and drink all you want without being in danger; that's the absolute view, and it ignores reality.
Which is getting away from the main point: do these women actually believe that A: ALL men are looking to hurt women? and B: do they actually believe that men- outside of extraordinary situations- never feel vulnerable? 'A' speaks to a level of hatred of males that's just downright scary, and sad; 'B' is just idiotic. Both speak of a level of "Womyn are ALWAYS victims!" that's just... not sure of the proper words for that.
Want to know exactly why I flat cannot agree with so many on the left?
But in my opinion, the Republican agenda — even the basic beltway GOP agenda — is batshit. “Small government, local government, free markets, and individual liberty” are euphemisms for irresponsible and grossly unfair policies that have no place in the modern world. In my opinion. So when I say Republican ideas are batshit, that’s what I mean.
There you have it. Violet, those are not just Stupid Party agenda items; there's an awful lot of people who are members of the Evil Party who believe in the same things, and not as 'euphimisms' for anything; they believe those are important things.
I'm writing this without knowing what she considers them euphemisms for; I've written asking. I'll be curious to see what she says.
There you have it. Violet, those are not just Stupid Party agenda items; there's an awful lot of people who are members of the Evil Party who believe in the same things, and not as 'euphimisms' for anything; they believe those are important things.
I'm writing this without knowing what she considers them euphemisms for; I've written asking. I'll be curious to see what she says.
Where to start... I guess with Sen. John Effing Kerry
and his speech: (updated)
And Kerry's argument for a more limited approach than more troops would provide Obama political cover.
...
Sounds remarkably similar to the Obama argument after killing the Bush-initiated Eastern European missile defense shield: Not less defense, but a cheaper, smarter defense. Remember, Obama opposed Bush's 2007 troop surge in Iraq. The ex-senator could try the same argument in favor of dispatching a fraction of McChrystal's request.
Or as Kerry puts it: "It’s not how many troops that matters most – it’s what they do."
And what they want the troops to 'do' is provide political cover for Obama & Co.; which means, I'm convinced, "How do we cut and run without actually owning up to it?"
At this point I'm convinced Obama & Co. flatly do not want to win; they are not only uncomfortable with the word 'victory', they do not want that. Victory would mean the US smashes the Taliban & AQ in 'Stan, the US wins; and they don't want to. The only 'victory' they want is screwing up the US military and letting the bad guys take over so they can concentrate on trying to completely socialize(in a USSR fashion) the US.
Yeah, that is a fairly nasty indictment, and I'm not happy about it for a variety of reasons. Here's a President who's 'uncomfortable' with victory, who refused to 'officially' accept McChrystal's report for, what, a month? and is STILL 'thinking about it'. And so on. Actual troops are fighting and dying and these people stall, and delay, because they don't want to have to announce an actual decision of doing anything. See, if you say "All right, if we don't actually win the Taliban will take over Afghanistan again and plan and run more major and minor terrorist attacks from there, so we have to stomp them and win" the left- which in far too many cases actually means the communists and socialists who hate America- will piss and moan and not kiss his ass, and he wants their support more than anything else. And if he cuts and runs like he plainly wants to, always has, everyone else will blow up; and if you add that to his trying to take over our health care and take over industry, he's screwed. So, rather than actually announce either way and take the heat(requires integrity and balls, and he has neither apparently) he leaves the troops hanging- and bleeding- while he plays games. After all, he doesn't really give a crap about those troops(I've become convinced*), so what's the downside of them bleeding, as long as it gives him time?
A bit drastic? Unfortunately, I don't think so, based on his own past words and actions and the people he surrounds himself with:
Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to "change the United States of America," the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country.
Jeremiah Wright said it with words: "God damn America!" Bill Ayers said it with bombs that he planted. Community activist goons have said it with their contempt for the rights of other people.
Among the people appointed as czars by President Obama have been people who have praised enemy dictators like Mao, who have seen the public schools as places to promote sexual practices contrary to the values of most Americans, to a captive audience of children.
Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated those people more thoroughly before appointing them are missing the point completely. Why should we assume that Barack Obama didn't know what such people were like, when he has been associating with precisely these kinds of people for decades before he reached the White House?
Update: Uncle Jimbo speaks to JEffin'K:
John Kerry spoke today at the Council on Foreign Relations on his cunning plan for A-Stan. He is not a bright or wise man and his plan basically involves kicking the can down the road and then cutting and running sometime before the next election, or 2012 at the latest.
and it goes from there.
*He might have somewhat greater regard for them if he thought they were a bunch of drones who'd blindly follow all orders; that would mean he could use them however he chose. Unfortunately, most of the troops, from the privates on up, hold a high regard for their country and their oath, so he can't use them that way.
And Kerry's argument for a more limited approach than more troops would provide Obama political cover.
...
Sounds remarkably similar to the Obama argument after killing the Bush-initiated Eastern European missile defense shield: Not less defense, but a cheaper, smarter defense. Remember, Obama opposed Bush's 2007 troop surge in Iraq. The ex-senator could try the same argument in favor of dispatching a fraction of McChrystal's request.
Or as Kerry puts it: "It’s not how many troops that matters most – it’s what they do."
And what they want the troops to 'do' is provide political cover for Obama & Co.; which means, I'm convinced, "How do we cut and run without actually owning up to it?"
At this point I'm convinced Obama & Co. flatly do not want to win; they are not only uncomfortable with the word 'victory', they do not want that. Victory would mean the US smashes the Taliban & AQ in 'Stan, the US wins; and they don't want to. The only 'victory' they want is screwing up the US military and letting the bad guys take over so they can concentrate on trying to completely socialize(in a USSR fashion) the US.
Yeah, that is a fairly nasty indictment, and I'm not happy about it for a variety of reasons. Here's a President who's 'uncomfortable' with victory, who refused to 'officially' accept McChrystal's report for, what, a month? and is STILL 'thinking about it'. And so on. Actual troops are fighting and dying and these people stall, and delay, because they don't want to have to announce an actual decision of doing anything. See, if you say "All right, if we don't actually win the Taliban will take over Afghanistan again and plan and run more major and minor terrorist attacks from there, so we have to stomp them and win" the left- which in far too many cases actually means the communists and socialists who hate America- will piss and moan and not kiss his ass, and he wants their support more than anything else. And if he cuts and runs like he plainly wants to, always has, everyone else will blow up; and if you add that to his trying to take over our health care and take over industry, he's screwed. So, rather than actually announce either way and take the heat(requires integrity and balls, and he has neither apparently) he leaves the troops hanging- and bleeding- while he plays games. After all, he doesn't really give a crap about those troops(I've become convinced*), so what's the downside of them bleeding, as long as it gives him time?
A bit drastic? Unfortunately, I don't think so, based on his own past words and actions and the people he surrounds himself with:
Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to "change the United States of America," the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country.
Jeremiah Wright said it with words: "God damn America!" Bill Ayers said it with bombs that he planted. Community activist goons have said it with their contempt for the rights of other people.
Among the people appointed as czars by President Obama have been people who have praised enemy dictators like Mao, who have seen the public schools as places to promote sexual practices contrary to the values of most Americans, to a captive audience of children.
Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated those people more thoroughly before appointing them are missing the point completely. Why should we assume that Barack Obama didn't know what such people were like, when he has been associating with precisely these kinds of people for decades before he reached the White House?
Update: Uncle Jimbo speaks to JEffin'K:
John Kerry spoke today at the Council on Foreign Relations on his cunning plan for A-Stan. He is not a bright or wise man and his plan basically involves kicking the can down the road and then cutting and running sometime before the next election, or 2012 at the latest.
and it goes from there.
*He might have somewhat greater regard for them if he thought they were a bunch of drones who'd blindly follow all orders; that would mean he could use them however he chose. Unfortunately, most of the troops, from the privates on up, hold a high regard for their country and their oath, so he can't use them that way.
Monday, October 26, 2009
What just might happen in Britain would be a rerun of
Mussolini and Hitler in some ways, it seems:
Via Instapundit comes a disturbing report that one-fifth of the British electorate would consider voting for the British Nationalist Party (BNP), which is considered by almost everyone left or right to be a genuine fascist party.
How did Britain come to this state?
Short version: the government has been playing socialist and PC games and screwing over people who actually work, and make a country work, and that pushes people who see little or no hope into reaching out to someone they normally wouldn't. I'll excerpt this part:
By smearing as racist everyone concerned with illegal immigration and the overboard tolerance for radical Islam, the British left is desensitizing everyone to the legitimate charge when it is directed at the BNP. People think, “Well, I’m concerned about illegal immigration, Islamists, the white poor, etc., and I’m not a racist so maybe the BNP isn’t either.” The overuse of the left’s catch-all denunciation deprives it of meaning and force. People may simply stop listening to the left’s warnings because they’ve so many times labeled people with legitimate concerns as racist. By their own narcissism, self-righteousness and contempt, the left is actively driving people to fascist solutions just as their more radical ideological ancestors did back in the 1920s.
Worse, entire generations of Britons have been conditioned to believe that the state has a mo26ral obligation to care for them cradle-to-grave. It is a short step from there to the belief that the government has a moral obligation to care for native Britons first and foremost before all others. Such a longstanding belief in Germany certainly made National Socialism an easy sell to the German working class and poor.
Remember the sign the guy had at a tea party? "No matter what the sign says, they'll call it racist." He was right, and in the longer term this is the outcome. One of them, anyway.
Via Instapundit comes a disturbing report that one-fifth of the British electorate would consider voting for the British Nationalist Party (BNP), which is considered by almost everyone left or right to be a genuine fascist party.
How did Britain come to this state?
Short version: the government has been playing socialist and PC games and screwing over people who actually work, and make a country work, and that pushes people who see little or no hope into reaching out to someone they normally wouldn't. I'll excerpt this part:
By smearing as racist everyone concerned with illegal immigration and the overboard tolerance for radical Islam, the British left is desensitizing everyone to the legitimate charge when it is directed at the BNP. People think, “Well, I’m concerned about illegal immigration, Islamists, the white poor, etc., and I’m not a racist so maybe the BNP isn’t either.” The overuse of the left’s catch-all denunciation deprives it of meaning and force. People may simply stop listening to the left’s warnings because they’ve so many times labeled people with legitimate concerns as racist. By their own narcissism, self-righteousness and contempt, the left is actively driving people to fascist solutions just as their more radical ideological ancestors did back in the 1920s.
Worse, entire generations of Britons have been conditioned to believe that the state has a mo26ral obligation to care for them cradle-to-grave. It is a short step from there to the belief that the government has a moral obligation to care for native Britons first and foremost before all others. Such a longstanding belief in Germany certainly made National Socialism an easy sell to the German working class and poor.
Remember the sign the guy had at a tea party? "No matter what the sign says, they'll call it racist." He was right, and in the longer term this is the outcome. One of them, anyway.
I think this will be Beat On The Socialist Bureaucrat Day
due to bullcrap like this on the swine flu:
As evidence continues to mount that swine flu is more of a piglet than a raging razorback, why isn’t curiosity mounting as to why the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic? And definitions aside, why does the agency continue to insist we’re going to get hammered? The answers have far less to do with world health than with redistribution of world wealth.
Medically, the pandemic moniker is unjustifiable. When the sacrosanct World Health Organization (WHO) made its official declaration in June, we were 11 weeks into the outbreak, and swine flu had only killed 144 people worldwide — the same number who die of seasonal flu worldwide every few hours. The mildest pandemics of the 20th century killed at least a million people worldwide. And even after six months, swine flu has killed about as many people as the seasonal flu does every six days.
So how could WHO make such an outrageous claim?
Simple. It rewrote the definition of "pandemic."
The socialists making use of a 'crisis' for a power grab:
What may be surprising is that it wants to use that power to help bring about a global economic and social revolution--and that Director-General Chan was so blunt about it in a speech in Copenhagen last month.
She said "ministers of health" should take advantage of the "devastating impact" swine flu will have on poorer nations to tell "heads of state and ministers of finance, tourism and trade" that:
* The belief that "living conditions and health status of the poor would somehow automatically improve as countries modernized, liberalized their trade and improved their economies" is false. Wealth doesn’t equal health.
* "Changes in the functioning of the global economy" are needed to "distribute wealth on the basis of" values "like community, solidarity, equity and social justice."
* "The international policies and systems that govern financial markets, economies, commerce, trade and foreign affairs have not operated with fairness as an explicit policy objective."
Splendid! So let’s put the WHO in charge of worldwide economic and social engineering.
So who listened to who first: WHO or Rahm the Crisis Monger?
Then we have this from Kaus:
...Indeed, NBC promiscuously conflates a) swine flu (H1N1); b) regular flu and c) "flu like symptoms" which may not be any kind of flu at all. ... That may be because the CDC itself has decided to conflate at least the first two categories, as noted in this seemingly damning CBS story and confirmed in the CDC report itself:
This new system was implemented on August 30, 2009, and replaces the weekly report of laboratory confirmed 2009 H1N1-related hospitalizations and deaths that began in April 2009. Jurisdictions can now report to CDC either laboratory confirmed or pneumonia and influenza syndromic-based counts of hospitalizations and deaths resulting from all types or subtypes of influenza, not just those from 2009 H1N1 influenza virus. [E.A.]
"You can't let a crisis go to waste, even if you have to create it yourself."
Couple of months ago I spoke with my secret contact in the state health department and asked what the word was on H1N1; they just about blew a gasket. "It's classified as 'mild flue', but we've got all these idiots trying to scare people to death over it!" And some of those people will be helpingruinrun your health care if Obama & Co. get their way.
As evidence continues to mount that swine flu is more of a piglet than a raging razorback, why isn’t curiosity mounting as to why the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic? And definitions aside, why does the agency continue to insist we’re going to get hammered? The answers have far less to do with world health than with redistribution of world wealth.
Medically, the pandemic moniker is unjustifiable. When the sacrosanct World Health Organization (WHO) made its official declaration in June, we were 11 weeks into the outbreak, and swine flu had only killed 144 people worldwide — the same number who die of seasonal flu worldwide every few hours. The mildest pandemics of the 20th century killed at least a million people worldwide. And even after six months, swine flu has killed about as many people as the seasonal flu does every six days.
So how could WHO make such an outrageous claim?
Simple. It rewrote the definition of "pandemic."
The socialists making use of a 'crisis' for a power grab:
What may be surprising is that it wants to use that power to help bring about a global economic and social revolution--and that Director-General Chan was so blunt about it in a speech in Copenhagen last month.
She said "ministers of health" should take advantage of the "devastating impact" swine flu will have on poorer nations to tell "heads of state and ministers of finance, tourism and trade" that:
* The belief that "living conditions and health status of the poor would somehow automatically improve as countries modernized, liberalized their trade and improved their economies" is false. Wealth doesn’t equal health.
* "Changes in the functioning of the global economy" are needed to "distribute wealth on the basis of" values "like community, solidarity, equity and social justice."
* "The international policies and systems that govern financial markets, economies, commerce, trade and foreign affairs have not operated with fairness as an explicit policy objective."
Splendid! So let’s put the WHO in charge of worldwide economic and social engineering.
So who listened to who first: WHO or Rahm the Crisis Monger?
Then we have this from Kaus:
...Indeed, NBC promiscuously conflates a) swine flu (H1N1); b) regular flu and c) "flu like symptoms" which may not be any kind of flu at all. ... That may be because the CDC itself has decided to conflate at least the first two categories, as noted in this seemingly damning CBS story and confirmed in the CDC report itself:
This new system was implemented on August 30, 2009, and replaces the weekly report of laboratory confirmed 2009 H1N1-related hospitalizations and deaths that began in April 2009. Jurisdictions can now report to CDC either laboratory confirmed or pneumonia and influenza syndromic-based counts of hospitalizations and deaths resulting from all types or subtypes of influenza, not just those from 2009 H1N1 influenza virus. [E.A.]
"You can't let a crisis go to waste, even if you have to create it yourself."
Couple of months ago I spoke with my secret contact in the state health department and asked what the word was on H1N1; they just about blew a gasket. "It's classified as 'mild flue', but we've got all these idiots trying to scare people to death over it!" And some of those people will be helping
Yes, I'm back to looking at all the usual crap
good and bad. Had a good weekend with people I hadn't seen in a while, and met a couple of new. Lucked out today and found some stuff I needed and some I wanted. Now, for some of the daily
bitching I know some of you come here for,
In case anyone needs to know, Eliot Spitzer is still a miserable, two-faced disgusting example of a hypocritical nanny-state politician.
Speaking of crooked, hypocritical politicians, look who's working to keep Rep. Charles Rangel(Slimy Taxdodger-NY) afloat and in office;
The lobbyists, including former City Council Speaker Peter Vallone Sr., "bundled" more contributions for Rangel than for any other member of Congress in the last quarter, enabling the Harlem Democrat to raise hefty sums without lifting a finger.
Federal Election Commission records show that Rangel has received more than $213,000 in donations bundled by lobbyists since new rules requiring disclosure of those donations went into effect at the beginning of the year. Last quarter alone, Rangel, beset by tax woes despite heading the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, got $125,000 in bundled donations.
Makes you wonder how many donations were received and how many favors doled out before, doesn't it?
Blackfive has a letter to the Procrastinator-in-Chief(at least in military matters):
Mr. President, deciding to do nothing is still a decision.
I demand, decency demands, Americans who believe in victory demand, and most importantly, the American families with family members in the fight, who certainly have the most invested and unquestionably the most to lose demand that the politics, excuse making and dithering end and that you give the necessary support to the men and women who are bearing the battle and taking the fight to our enemies. I am not asking, I am telling you to listen to those with the knowledge and skills that can turn the tide of this rapidly resurgent enemy we face and to give them the resources they ask for.
A-bloody-men.
Oh. Oh, God-DAMN the Park Service, those slimy little bastards, they're still screwing around with the Flight 93 'Memorial'; maybe a number of bureaucrats need to be added to the 'introduce to a rope' category.
Dammit, that just ruined a good mood. More later.
bitching I know some of you come here for,
In case anyone needs to know, Eliot Spitzer is still a miserable, two-faced disgusting example of a hypocritical nanny-state politician.
Speaking of crooked, hypocritical politicians, look who's working to keep Rep. Charles Rangel(Slimy Taxdodger-NY) afloat and in office;
The lobbyists, including former City Council Speaker Peter Vallone Sr., "bundled" more contributions for Rangel than for any other member of Congress in the last quarter, enabling the Harlem Democrat to raise hefty sums without lifting a finger.
Federal Election Commission records show that Rangel has received more than $213,000 in donations bundled by lobbyists since new rules requiring disclosure of those donations went into effect at the beginning of the year. Last quarter alone, Rangel, beset by tax woes despite heading the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, got $125,000 in bundled donations.
Makes you wonder how many donations were received and how many favors doled out before, doesn't it?
Blackfive has a letter to the Procrastinator-in-Chief(at least in military matters):
Mr. President, deciding to do nothing is still a decision.
I demand, decency demands, Americans who believe in victory demand, and most importantly, the American families with family members in the fight, who certainly have the most invested and unquestionably the most to lose demand that the politics, excuse making and dithering end and that you give the necessary support to the men and women who are bearing the battle and taking the fight to our enemies. I am not asking, I am telling you to listen to those with the knowledge and skills that can turn the tide of this rapidly resurgent enemy we face and to give them the resources they ask for.
A-bloody-men.
Oh. Oh, God-DAMN the Park Service, those slimy little bastards, they're still screwing around with the Flight 93 'Memorial'; maybe a number of bureaucrats need to be added to the 'introduce to a rope' category.
Dammit, that just ruined a good mood. More later.
Martywd,
message received. And you should have a reply back to your address of origin.
And damn, thank you!
And damn, thank you!
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Busy with friends,
so not much to post the next day or so.
I will say Leather Factory is having a sale; AND on stuff I needed! That's not common.
I will say Leather Factory is having a sale; AND on stuff I needed! That's not common.
Friday, October 23, 2009
I'm wondering when the various administration lackeys
are going to wind up facing a question in court: "You have no authority under the Constitution to do this, so why should we listen to a word you say? Let alone follow your orders?"
Yes, I realize an awful lot of Obama buttmonkeys have little to no regard for that document that a good many of them have sword to uphold and defend(tells us what their word is worth, doesn't it?). I also realize that a lot of these companies, for various reasons, don't want the noise of actually challenging the administration on this. But sooner or later somebody will, loudly(I'm aware of the challenge on Obama's trashing of contract law, but there should be- I hope will be- more challenges).
Know what'd be funny as hell? Some company holding a press conference to say exactly that: "The Pay Czar(or whichever weenie) has ordered us to do X. However, we find no authority in law for them to give such orders, so we're not going to do it. If they want to force us, they're going to have to go to court and show where they have the legal authority to do so, and we will fight it." Can you imagine the noise from various heads exploding?
Yes, I realize an awful lot of Obama buttmonkeys have little to no regard for that document that a good many of them have sword to uphold and defend(tells us what their word is worth, doesn't it?). I also realize that a lot of these companies, for various reasons, don't want the noise of actually challenging the administration on this. But sooner or later somebody will, loudly(I'm aware of the challenge on Obama's trashing of contract law, but there should be- I hope will be- more challenges).
Know what'd be funny as hell? Some company holding a press conference to say exactly that: "The Pay Czar(or whichever weenie) has ordered us to do X. However, we find no authority in law for them to give such orders, so we're not going to do it. If they want to force us, they're going to have to go to court and show where they have the legal authority to do so, and we will fight it." Can you imagine the noise from various heads exploding?
One story that didn't really make the news, one that did,
and both involve the same religion.
PEORIA, Ariz. — Police in a Phoenix suburb are looking for a father suspected of running down his daughter because she was becoming too "Westernized" and was not living according to their traditional Iraqi values.
Police say 48-year-old Faleh Hassan Almaleki of Glendale allegedly ran his daughter down Tuesday at an Arizona Department of Economic Security parking lot in Peoria.
The victim, 20-year-old Noor Faleh Almaleki of Surprise, remains hospitalized with life-threatening injuries.
A second woman, 43-year-old Amal Edan Khalaf, also of Surprise, suffered non-life threatening injuries. Police say the women are roommates.
We have the 'honor' murders in Texas, now this; how many more we don't know about, at least as yet?
According to authorities, a friend of Mehanna's who is cooperating with the investigation but is not accused of participating in the alleged plot said Mehanna told him it was "unfathomable" that the United States has military bases in the "heart of the Muslim world" and that the "land of Mohammad ... is being used as a military base to attack Muslims."
Mehanna also told the friend that in the United States he feels "like a fish out of water," according to an affidavit filed in court.
Prosecutors say Mehanna and his friends used code words such as "peanut butter and jelly" for fighting in Somalia and "culinary school" for terrorist camps, and talked extensively of their desire to "die on the battlefield."
He was allegedly part of a conspiracy between 2001 and 2008 that intended to "kill, kidnap, maim or injure" soldiers and two politicians who were members of the executive branch but are no longer in office. Authorities refused to identify the politicians, who they said were never in danger.
Acting U.S. Attorney Michael Loucks said the men justified the planned attacks on malls because U.S. civilians pay taxes to support the government and are "nonbelievers," Loucks said. He refused to identify the targeted malls.
The family and friends all assure us this is a mistake, of course. Fact is, they may not know about these activities, or- in bits they did know- couldn't believe it really was this; jihadis have demonstrated great ability to hide things from family and friends who don't share the opinion.
One interesting point, Authorities said Wednesday that Mehanna and the other alleged conspirators had contacted Maldonado about getting automatic weapons for their planned mall attacks, but he told them he could only get handguns. Well, of COURSE that's bull; machineguns and hand grenades are so common they're smuggled by the thousands into Mexico! The Brady Group told us so! Etc.
An ongoing problem has been the willingness of the major media to avoid reporting on muslims with, lets us say, attitude problems; I wonder if they've ever considered the long-term problem with that? Yes, it allows them to try to protect muslims from dealing with some nasty questions, but in doing so it has helped keep them from dealing with nasty problems. When you help someone keep saying "Yes, we disapprove of this, but..." over and over with as little attention as possible, or with condemnation of anyone who yells about it, it causes a lot more problems in the long run. If they were having to deal with the nasty questions more openly it would put a lot more of them in the position of answering the question: Which side are you on? And you can't say 'both'. It'd mean more yelling and noise now, but might prevent a lot more later. And just might cause a lot of muslims who've been willing to 'yes, but' for the terrorists to put a lot more thought into what that 'but' winds up meaning, for them and for this country where they live.
PEORIA, Ariz. — Police in a Phoenix suburb are looking for a father suspected of running down his daughter because she was becoming too "Westernized" and was not living according to their traditional Iraqi values.
Police say 48-year-old Faleh Hassan Almaleki of Glendale allegedly ran his daughter down Tuesday at an Arizona Department of Economic Security parking lot in Peoria.
The victim, 20-year-old Noor Faleh Almaleki of Surprise, remains hospitalized with life-threatening injuries.
A second woman, 43-year-old Amal Edan Khalaf, also of Surprise, suffered non-life threatening injuries. Police say the women are roommates.
We have the 'honor' murders in Texas, now this; how many more we don't know about, at least as yet?
According to authorities, a friend of Mehanna's who is cooperating with the investigation but is not accused of participating in the alleged plot said Mehanna told him it was "unfathomable" that the United States has military bases in the "heart of the Muslim world" and that the "land of Mohammad ... is being used as a military base to attack Muslims."
Mehanna also told the friend that in the United States he feels "like a fish out of water," according to an affidavit filed in court.
Prosecutors say Mehanna and his friends used code words such as "peanut butter and jelly" for fighting in Somalia and "culinary school" for terrorist camps, and talked extensively of their desire to "die on the battlefield."
He was allegedly part of a conspiracy between 2001 and 2008 that intended to "kill, kidnap, maim or injure" soldiers and two politicians who were members of the executive branch but are no longer in office. Authorities refused to identify the politicians, who they said were never in danger.
Acting U.S. Attorney Michael Loucks said the men justified the planned attacks on malls because U.S. civilians pay taxes to support the government and are "nonbelievers," Loucks said. He refused to identify the targeted malls.
The family and friends all assure us this is a mistake, of course. Fact is, they may not know about these activities, or- in bits they did know- couldn't believe it really was this; jihadis have demonstrated great ability to hide things from family and friends who don't share the opinion.
One interesting point, Authorities said Wednesday that Mehanna and the other alleged conspirators had contacted Maldonado about getting automatic weapons for their planned mall attacks, but he told them he could only get handguns. Well, of COURSE that's bull; machineguns and hand grenades are so common they're smuggled by the thousands into Mexico! The Brady Group told us so! Etc.
An ongoing problem has been the willingness of the major media to avoid reporting on muslims with, lets us say, attitude problems; I wonder if they've ever considered the long-term problem with that? Yes, it allows them to try to protect muslims from dealing with some nasty questions, but in doing so it has helped keep them from dealing with nasty problems. When you help someone keep saying "Yes, we disapprove of this, but..." over and over with as little attention as possible, or with condemnation of anyone who yells about it, it causes a lot more problems in the long run. If they were having to deal with the nasty questions more openly it would put a lot more of them in the position of answering the question: Which side are you on? And you can't say 'both'. It'd mean more yelling and noise now, but might prevent a lot more later. And just might cause a lot of muslims who've been willing to 'yes, but' for the terrorists to put a lot more thought into what that 'but' winds up meaning, for them and for this country where they live.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
So Taser now says there's the 'slight chance' of a problem...
PHOENIX - Taser International is advising police agencies across the nation not to shoot its stun guns at a suspect's chest.
The Arizona-based company says such action poses a risk — albeit extremely low — of an "adverse cardiac event."
Well, isn't that interesting after all the denials and noise of the past?
There's a reason the proper wording of the term is 'less-lethal weapon'.
The Arizona-based company says such action poses a risk — albeit extremely low — of an "adverse cardiac event."
Well, isn't that interesting after all the denials and noise of the past?
There's a reason the proper wording of the term is 'less-lethal weapon'.
"Well, I have to blame SOMEBODY
for it!"
The mother of a Miles City Mavericks baseball player who died after being hit in the head with a batted ball during a 2003 game in Helena is seeking damages from the makers of Louisville Slugger bats in this civil trial, sure to draw national attention and stoke the discussion of whether aluminum bats create an unfair advantage or are too dangerous.
...
According to the plaintiff's attorneys, Patch's death was caused by the defective and unreasonably dangerous product because the bat was designed and manufactured to allow the ball to be hit with such significant force as to endanger the safety of those playing the game. No warnings were given to adequately provide sufficient notice to users such as Patch of the dangerous propensities of these products, the suit alleges.
I have to call this absolute bullshit. I understand she's hurting; that doesn't change that this "I have to blame somebody for this!" attitude sucks. "...the bat was designed and manufactured to allow the ball to be hit with such significant force as to endanger the safety..." for God's sake! It's a BASEBALL BAT; it- and wood ones- are designed to HIT THE BALL AND MAKE IT FLY A LONG WAYS. This suit should be thrown out, and personally I think the lawyer should be be removed from the bar. Preferably with a bat shoved up his ass.
I wonder how much the lawyer stands to make if this suit were won?
Found at Uncle
The mother of a Miles City Mavericks baseball player who died after being hit in the head with a batted ball during a 2003 game in Helena is seeking damages from the makers of Louisville Slugger bats in this civil trial, sure to draw national attention and stoke the discussion of whether aluminum bats create an unfair advantage or are too dangerous.
...
According to the plaintiff's attorneys, Patch's death was caused by the defective and unreasonably dangerous product because the bat was designed and manufactured to allow the ball to be hit with such significant force as to endanger the safety of those playing the game. No warnings were given to adequately provide sufficient notice to users such as Patch of the dangerous propensities of these products, the suit alleges.
I have to call this absolute bullshit. I understand she's hurting; that doesn't change that this "I have to blame somebody for this!" attitude sucks. "...the bat was designed and manufactured to allow the ball to be hit with such significant force as to endanger the safety..." for God's sake! It's a BASEBALL BAT; it- and wood ones- are designed to HIT THE BALL AND MAKE IT FLY A LONG WAYS. This suit should be thrown out, and personally I think the lawyer should be be removed from the bar. Preferably with a bat shoved up his ass.
I wonder how much the lawyer stands to make if this suit were won?
Found at Uncle
I miss whisky
Specifically, the Glenfiddich I used to drink. Haven't bought or drunk any since word came out about Scotland turning the Lockerbie mass-murderer loose in order to suck up to Libya.
Yeah, it keeps money from going to the people who work in the distillery; it also keeps money out of the hands of the socialist bastards running the country.
But I do miss the taste.
Yeah, it keeps money from going to the people who work in the distillery; it also keeps money out of the hands of the socialist bastards running the country.
But I do miss the taste.