Friday, October 12, 2012

Satoshi Kanazawa: Evolutionary Psychologist and Intelligence Researcher, London School of Economics

Roundabout via Matthew 

Very interesting.


Prepare to be offended.

ATF Whistleblower Vince Cefalu Fired in Parking Lot

On Wedhesday ATF (Alcohol, Tabacco, Firarms & Explosives) Special Agent Vince Cefalu was fired in the parking lot of a Denny’s restaurant near Lake Tahoe. After being in the Bureau for more than 25 years and being involved in the whistle blowing that took place regarding Operation Fast and Furious, he was asked to meet with Special Agent in Charge of the San Francisco Field Division Joseph Riehl, where he was served termination papers.

What was unknown to Mr. Riehl, was that the entire episode was captured on video.

Tan Canh 1972: First use of the Sagger


The South Vietnamese developed an interesting and apparently effective tactic to defend against the Sagger.  An operator controlled the Sagger with a joystick connected to the launcher by a 15-meter control wire.  When a puff of smoke from the launcher warned ARVN tanks that a Sagger had been fired,  all ARVN tanks other than the targeted vehicle would fire all over the area 15 meters around the plume of smoke emitted at the launcher, with the intent to kill or at least disrupt the operator.  The target tank counted to five and then made a sudden move in any direction-an evasive maneuver requiring strong nerves and quick reaction by the targeted tank crew.

Page 103, KONTUM, The Battle To Save South Vietnam, Thomas P. McKenna

Robert E. Lee funeral and Lee Chapel 142 years ago today

Via Calvin Johnson


Man Sought for Questioning in Savannah Murder

Via Nancy

Amber Deloach   


I'm, totally shocked viewing the suspect.  Who would have thunk'........

Yuma ATF Office Mysteriously Closed

Via Don


 The ATF office in Yuma, Arizona, a town 40 miles from the border, is also empty.

The Reno Gazette-Journal discovered Yuma's closing during their investigation of the ATF Reno/US Attorney case.  However, the reasons behind the Yuma closing aren’t known yet.

Ron Gissendaner, a manager at Sprague’s Sports in Yuma and a federal firearm licensed gun dealer, told the RGJ it was because the federal prosecutors wouldn’t take the ATF’s cases. He and his staff worked well with the ATF to make sure guns were sold to good guys, not bad guys.

The Yuma ATF was having a positive impact on the town and stopped gun trafficking across the border. Since the prosecutors wouldn’t take these cases, the agents quit. Mr. Gissendaner said one agent quit and is working at a local law enforcement agency in another state. He also said that it’s tough to report suspicious activity in the area. Now people have to travel to Phoenix to report criminal activity, which is three hours away.

More @ Breitbart

Message From an Australian: America is Still The Greatest Nation on Earth

My 5 cents: Thoughts from a Russian immigrant

Via Terry

CDA Press

I was asked  to write this column, and truthfully, I have been seeking a way to tell people my views before it is too late. So here it is - hopefully worth a little more than 2 cents.

These past 20 years in the United States proved that the fairy tale land I've heard about is still the land of opportunity. This is the country where everyone has a chance for a good living, if they work at it. In the country I came from we worked hard, but to no avail. The system did not reward the hard work, it favored those who sought well-being by becoming a part of the system, manipulating the system, or becoming Communist Party members.
Veins Clinic_IS

When I came to the United States in 1991 I couldn't wait to get my "green card" to be able to start working. Neither my lacking English nor my inability to drive could stop me from getting a job. I walked! With my master's degree I was proud to get my first job in America at McDonald's. But this letter is not about me, it is about my concerns about the direction this country is heading.

Since most of my life I lived in a country where socialism was at a very mature stage of 70 years, I experienced, firsthand, the way of living under such a system. Young American people have no idea how unfair and inefficient it is. They hear these loud slogans of fairness and sharing, but they do not take time to learn why the idea DOES NOT work. I experienced it on my own skin for 26 years.

I am not here to talk about politics and advantages or disadvantages of one economic system over another. I just want to share some of my memories of growing up all the way to my adulthood in Russia.

Looking back through a prism of 20 years in the United States I am starting to understand the reasons why those colorless pictures with gloomy faces flash through my memory.

Working hard in Russia was a way of living; it was necessary for simple survival. There were no opportunities for government assistance unless one was totally disabled. Actually, it's not true. The whole country and every citizen was on a "welfare" hand-out, only we still had to work to get paid. The amount of our wages was just enough to barely make ends meet. We would not get paid, if we did not have a job. Obviously, all jobs were government jobs with standard low wages. One could achieve a slightly higher wage by obtaining some kind of higher education and hopefully getting a job as a manager somewhere. However, all good positions with "benefits" were taken by Communist Party members and people who knew people.

Important to understand that due to standard wages across the board as there was only one employer - the government - people usually tried to look for jobs with "benefits" to better their lives. Benefits in Russia implied opportunities to bring home something extra besides low wages, like a gallon of milk if you worked at a milk factory, or a loaf of bread if you worked at a bakery. So, when I was making my decision about my career, I chose to stay in the food industry and pursued a degree in Management of Public Catering.

My family lived in a small Siberian town, more like a village. Everyone in the village had to grow fields of potatoes and different vegetables that we preserved in large amounts for the winter. In the summer we also lived off the forest. I loved picking berries and hunting for mushrooms.

Twice a month, if we were lucky, a truck with supplies would reach our village. We always knew what everyone would have for dinner that night. Not many people owned a refrigerator those days. So, if the truck brought chicken, we had to enjoy it that night. Every family in the village had a fair share of the sausage, sugar, apples or popular condensed milk cans according to their family size. Often we had to give up our portion as we could not afford to buy it.

Other items we were looking forward to arrive were shampoo, socks and underwear. Yes, shampoo was in deficit. Not a certain type of a shampoo, but just a shampoo of any kind. As for socks, I learned to knit socks, when I was 12. Our old neighbor lady knew how to make yarn, so I groomed our fluffy dog and gave her the wool. I had socks for everybody in the family, but it did not work so well for us in the summer. Eventually I learned to knit almost anything. It was much harder to deal with the underwear situation, as we had no stretchy fabric to make it from.

The reason I share these memories with you is to show what kind of life can be, when government controls every aspect of your life. Since there was no competition to produce more or better, or less expensive goods, industries had little concern in producing quality or a variety of products. They had to produce quantity, however, to keep their workers somewhat in shape. When I first came to America I was overwhelmed to the point of frustration with selection of vegetable oil brands, for example. Later I understood why it is so great to be able to have a CHOICE.

When my father, at age of 36, had a stroke and after a few weeks in the hospital we were told that he needed to go home, as he was incurable, we were dumbstruck but had no choice, nor did we have the right to seek another opinion. We had to accept the fate, as we were assigned to the only clinic in the area according to our residence. After suffering for eight years, my father passed away at 44.

The socialistic regime did collapse, proving that it does not work. You might ask why people did not stand up for themselves sooner?

Well, first of all, they could not rebel due to the fact that Russian people have never had the right to bear arms and therefore they all were totally defenseless. All we could do is scream out our frustrations at a kitchen table.

The other reason is Russian propaganda machine was state of the art. People knew about the outside world only what they were supposed to know; they have been fed lies for 70 years and our children were raised by the government, brainwashed with images of baby Lenin since birth.

There was an important celebration in first grade, when each student was presented with a special star that had a face of Lenin when he was a child. We were proudly called "Oktjabrenok" after the October Revolution. At age 10 we all were honored with a red scarf that we could proudly wear from that point on and call ourselves "Pioner" (a pioneer). At age 14 we had a chance to become a Komsomol Party member, a necessary step, if you plan to become a Communist Party member later on. It was highly encouraged and presented as a high privilege to achieve it. Komsomol was the Communist Party's child.

If we continue the route set about four years ago, the life I briefly described above will be a reality in America. It won't happen very fast and won't be in such a severe form. The government in Russia had control over all industries right after the 1917 Revolution. Here, in the United States, the control will be taken peacefully through a number of steps, like raising taxes on businesses, implementing regulations to the point of making environment so unfriendly for businesses to exist, that people will stop any kind of entrepreneurship. They will be looking for government jobs. But the result will be the same - deterioration in each and every way of living.

It's heartbreaking to see how unaware people are willing to give their freedom away for government hand-outs, which lead to dependency, cripple people, kill their spirit of reaching for the stars and eventually annihilate the sense of responsibility for their own lives.

And the last point I need to make: There obviously is a need for some social programs in a society. Any civilized society needs to provide support for the less fortunate, like people with disabilities, who cannot provide for themselves. And this country has an abundance of such programs.

What is admirable about people in this country is how compassionate and giving Americans are. Not because they were told by the government to give, but because they want to help. How many nonprofit organizations, not subsidized by the government are in the United States? Think about it. And I am not saying that Russian people are not compassionate or not giving. It's not true. But when we are all equally poor, we have nothing to give.

Luba Wold is a Coeur d'Alene resident.

We Agree!




Writes Roland Walkenhorst:

    Here’s my analysis, which I sent this morning to a Republican friend who has been struggling to convince me to vote.

    1. Foreign policy--We agree. We love American military power and will extol it every chance we get to score points with patriotic voters. America should continue to police the world, bully other nations, and fight undeclared wars.

    2. Unemployment--We agree. It is government’s role to manage the economy and create jobs. What kind of nut case doesn’t know that?

    3. Medicare and Social Security--We agree. We love them. Taxing young people to pay for old people’s retirement checks and government-rationed medical care is the American way. We should continue it forever.

    4. Taxes--We agree. We love them. We will always claim that we’ll give the middle class a break because that’s where the votes are. People are too stupid to understand that “loophole” is just another name for “deduction,” so it’s a slam dunk that they will cheer when we promise to get rid of them. Then – surprise! – their taxes go up even though the rate went down! Such a deal! We will fiddle with the tax code to get votes and to manipulate people’s economic behavior, but the one thing we will never do is question the morality or efficacy of taxing the pants off of productive people in the first place.

    5. Afghanistan--We agree. Our troops are wonderful. Voters feel good when we say that. Did we mention how brave they are? With just a little more training, the people whose country the US government invaded and is now occupying will be able to provide their own security so we can leave – sort of. Foreigners love it when we help them like this. Fragging is but one way they show their appreciation.

    6. Syria and Libya--We agree. Khadafy had to go. Assad has to go. Voters think we’re cool when we say somebody “has to go.” Phrases like “slaughtered his own people” help too. Supporting killers in other countries at the expense of productive Americans is a splendid idea, especially when we aren’t sure who the killers are, who they might kill, or what they aim to accomplish. If we assure voters that we won’t put “boots on the ground,” they’ll think we are soooo reasonable and restrained. A nice bonus is that these adventures always create more instability that we will have to fix later. Hey defense contractor campaign contributors, can we hear a big “cha-ching” from ya?

    7. Abortion--We agree. We love this issue because we know that questions about the role of government in this will never be resolved, since they boil down to a fundamental disagreement over what constitutes an individual life. Thank goodness this tool will always be there when we need it to demonize opponents and whip up our base.

    8. The tone of the campaign--We agree. God bless the hero who asked the question. Hero, hero, hero! We never get tired of saying that word. Voters get tears in their eyes when they hear it, and voters with tears in their eyes tend not to notice that our policies are exactly the same. Only the other guy engages in negative campaigning. Our side simply cites the record and tells the truth.

    9. What I could give to this country that no one else could--That would be my unique ability to manage the biggest government in the history of the planet so it can fix all problems. Unemployment, poverty, the shrinking wealth of the middle class – government can fix those things and more if you’ll just put my team in charge. Hey, how about that, we agree!

    In conclusion We agree! Things are bad. But cheer up: government can fix it! More debt! More deficits! More deceit! More drones! More dead foreigners! God bless America! Oh, and remember: there is a huge difference between Republicans and Democrats. Never in the history of Our Sacred Democracy have there been differences that are more differenter, so everybody vote!

Camp Lawton dig, artifacts

Via Carl
 A tourniquet buckle would have been used during amputations.

 The SDYC was held at Fort Lawton in 2008

Pictures From The Sam Davis Youth Camp 2008

This marker is in front of the administration building


 Archaeologists have located the stockade walls that once surrounded Camp Lawton, a Confederate prison camp that housed thousands of captured Union soldier

Thomas Peterffy - Freedom To Succeed


Tough Enough: 1936

Full size



Roberson School, a Brief History and Legacy

TARBORO — Note: The Edgecombe County School Board, at its April 9, 2012 meeting, approved the closure of the Roberson Center for Educational Achievement. Final approval by the State Board of Education is expected. Future use of the building has not yet been determined.

The first Roberson School, a three-teacher wooden school, was located next to old Mayo Chapel Church, about half a mile northeast of Mayo Crossroads on NC 42. The school, like other African-American schools across the county, served a rural, low-wealth, and agarian population, mostly sharecroppers and small farmers.

The principals who served this first Roberson School included Sam. A. Gilliam (1938-39 to 1940-41), Powell Woodson (1941-42), and Louella W. Dickens (1942-43 to 1947-48).

In the late 1940s, on the recommendation of Superintendent E. D. Johnson, the Edgecombe County Board of Education decided that the smaller elementary schools in the county should be consolidated into more comprehensive elementary schools in order to stay abreast of progressive changes in education. Deterorating buildings, the need for new buildings, overcrowded classrooms, and anticipated cost savings were all factors that helped to persuade the Board to make this decision.

World Economic Freedom: U.S. Drops to 18th

Mother of slain State Dep't official is tired of being ignored by Obama Admin

Post Debate Polls: Ryan Beats Sitting Vice President


A CNN focus group of undecided likely voters split their votes evenly. 1/3rd Biden, 1/3rd Ryan, 1/3rd Undecided.

CNN just announced the results of their scientific post-debate poll. That also showed Ryan winning 48 - 44%.

Our Blood On Their Hands: North Carolina PATCON