Saturday, January 01, 2011
It's cold out there.
Stuff to take care of, so just two things to point out at this time.
First, some more cases like this just might clear up some of the SWAT idiocy:
An Ecorse couple won a $215,000 judgment Tuesday against the city, retired Police Chief Jerry Copeland and two police officials stemming from a drug raid executed against the wrong house in 2008.
The Phelps accused the city, Copeland and others of executing a search warrant on the wrong house in September 2008. The lawsuit claims Sgt. Cornelius Herring and Cpl. Timothy Sassak obtained a search warrant to raid the home next door based on a tip from a confidential informant.
Instead, the Phelps home was raided — a mix-up that happened during a SWAT team briefing session during which the wrong house was identified, according to the lawsuit.
Officers threw the couple to the floor, pushed Michael Phelps' head and face with the barrel of a gun and handcuffed his wife, according to the lawsuit.
"Don't use the SWAT team unless it's actually needed. And make damn sure you have the right house before you kick in the doors and scare hell out of people."
Second, if you hadn't heard about a guy named Ezra Klein who said 'The Constitution is too old and confusing for people to understand', go here for a bit more on the matter.
Awright, one more: some of the latest "You will do what you're told, serf!" dirtbaggery from the TSA. You know, at some point they're going to do something so offensive that not only will the victim deck the offending bastard, but when they pile on the victim some of the other passengers are going to pile on the TSA; it's going to get especially interesting after that.
From one of the comments:
You do not have a right to fly. Our founding fathers wanted you to have the freedom to travel, state to state, but they never said you had a guaranteed right to any advancement in travel. Horse and buggy, or walking, was good enough for them, as it is for you. They could've no more predicted airplanes than the internet. You're free to waive your right to get on that airplane. Nobody is forcing you. This isn't like a search and seizure at your residence. I agree that nobody should be criminally charged for refusing the pat down. They just shouldn't be allowed to fly.
Which is like saying "They never foresaw the internet and the personal computer, so it doesn't really count in the 1st." And again, for how long was air travel just a travel option? Now we have government assholes telling us "We think it's a privilege for which we'll demand you give up your rights." And a bunch of people saying things like this to excuse people being felt up and irradiated by machines that haven't been properly tested.
Friday, December 31, 2010
A: I don't really like crowds, especially crowds with lots of drunks,
B: It's going to drop to 17 tonight(it's 25 as I write this), and
C: I've had a scratchy throat and aches all day; it may be just lack of sleep and the weather changing again, but I'm not pushing it.
So I made a good dinner, and I'll have a drink or two before I go to bed. Good enough.
Oh, and let us not forget "I don't like driving around wondering if that clown weaving a bit is drunk." Especially if said vehicle is heading in my direction.
When the discussion arose about the Smithwicks providing a written release, the Superintendent said that he would not, in their place, give a release to the press, because he would not want the press to be rooting around in his child’s records. That struck me as an implied threat. Don’t sign a release, or we’ll plaster every little detail of her records all over the news.
When bureaucrats start this kind of crap, it's time to change them for the same reason you toss the diaper from the baby with diarrhea.
I hope her parents blew a gasket and called the lawyers in; that may be the only thing that will get through to these idiots.
I think I must be partly immunized. Back when I lived in Lawton you got used to rumbles and the ground shaking a touch every time the redlegs at Fort Sill started practicing. 155mm was nothing but background after a while, though when they(rarely) cut loose with the 8" guns...
Which is why Traver and the other gun-control types have focused their attention instead on gun dealers, provoking sufficient controversy to distract the public from such uncomfortable questions as: “Why exactly was a felon with a 17-count criminal history walking abroad to rob and murder?”
On then to McCarthy’s penultimate paragraph, in which he expresses his admiration for soldiers everywhere:
To oppose ROTC, as I have since my college days in the 1960s, when my school enticed too many of my classmates into joining, is not to be anti-soldier. I admire those who join armies, whether America’s or the Taliban’s: for their discipline, for their loyalty to their buddies and to their principles, for their sacrifices to be away from home.
See there, Mr. U.S. Marine Captain — McCarthy doesn’t hate you. Why, he thinks you’re every bit as respectable as a Taliban.
McCarthy concludes with this:
ROTC and its warrior ethic taint the intellectual purity of a school, if by purity we mean trying to rise above the foul idea that nations can kill and destroy their way to peace. If a school such as Harvard does sell out to the military, let it at least be honest and add a sign at its Cambridge front portal: Harvard, a Pentagon Annex.
And I’ll conclude with this.That is the warrior ethic, Mr. McCarthy — and Harvard could stand a good deal more of it.
To borrow a phrase, people like Colman McCarthy aren't for 'peace'; they're on the other side.
UPDATE: Transparency! Sorrentino follows up: “The first and only thing that was said was for the Vice Chair, John T Bonardi to move to go to closed session. They are currently in closed session upstairs to discuss ‘information not subject to public records,’ and to ‘preserve the attorney client privelige.’ There’s still time for more Sanford locals to show up.” They sound nervous. As, it seems, they should be.
I've said it before: Zero-Tolerance isn't really about student safety, it's about protecting bureaucrats from having to actually think and make judgements.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
“Temperatures will be down again by Sunday, with nights below freezing and daytimes below average at 3C to 5C. Our outlook forecast to January 26 shows temperatures 2C or 3C below average, frost and ice likely and the highest chance of snow or sleet over the northern half of the UK.”
Although official weather records only go back to 1659, weather experts said the centuries from 1100 to 1500, dubbed the “Medieval warm period”, would not have produced winters as cold as today.
So 2011 could end up being the coldest winter of the last millennium.
I can't recall the exact number of times I have eaten a meal in the immediate company of a man, or men, with shooters on their hips in plain view. For me, I am always equal parts spellbound and queasy.
Spellbound because there is something so fundamentally cowboy and western about it. Guns, freedom, country music and the Second Amendment. It is Texas after all. Yeeha!
Try to recall the exact number, Ms. Stewart. Because funny thing about Texas, besides that “Yeeha!” stereotype you ridicule them with. From Open Carry.org:
Texas is not a traditional open carry state. They also do not allow open carry, or even printing, by those who have a concealed carry permit.
And from NRA-ILA’s “Firearms Laws for Texas”:
It is unlawful to intentionally, knowingly or recklessly carry on or about one’s person a handgun in a motor vehicle if the handgun is in plain view…
Whole piece here
Output from major wind farms fell to as low as 2.5 per cent of their potential generation capacity during the cold snap as power demand rose to close to the highest level yet recorded, new figures have revealed.
And why might that be? No surprise to most of you:
Meteorologists say extremely cold temperatures can occur only when there is little or no wind and icy pockets of air are trapped close to the ground, prompting accusations from anti- wind-farm campaigners that wind power cannot be relied on to meet Scotland's electricity needs in the depths of winter.
Over here the government is saying "We did not!"; however,
The data, charted on the Balancing Mechanism Reporting System website, which the National Grid uses to monitor UK power generation, also revealed that at times when wind energy was at its lowest, back-up power had to be piped in from France, where the majority of electricity is nuclear-generated.
And Scotland is planning on closing down the two nuke plants they do have and forbidding any more being built. Glad I don't live there.
Also from across the pond, some slight problems showing up with the new "You can ONLY install one of these!" heating systems.
However, the recent cold snap has revealed a major problem with them. Tens of thousands of people found themselves shivering as their shiny new boilers cut out without warning.
British Gas is understood to have had 60,000 call-outs in Yorkshire alone. And the cost to call out a plumber? It can be between £200 to £300 on a bank holiday. And don’t forget about VAT.
That would be the Value Added Tax that a bunch of our politicians want to stick us with, and that the Brits have been getting screwed by for a long time.
Selfish Sanitation Department bosses from the snow-slammed outer boroughs ordered their drivers to snarl the blizzard cleanup to protest budget cuts -- a disastrous move that turned streets into a minefield for emergency-services vehicles, The Post has learned.
"They sent a message to the rest of the city that these particular labor issues are more important," said City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Queens), who was visited yesterday by a group of guilt-ridden sanitation workers who confessed the shameless plot.
Halloran said he met with three plow workers from the Sanitation Department -- and two Department of Transportation supervisors who were on loan -- at his office after he was flooded with irate calls from constituents.
Also, Halloran should be informed that calling drivers who tell you about this kind of crap 'snitches' isn't real bright.
Second, this crap:
Banovac was back at the Will Rogers Airport Tuesday and once again, security says she can't board her flight back home to Phoenix.
Last month security denied her access because they said they found traces of nitrate somewhere on her body.
Now, it's something near her bottom that is raising a red flag.
"The stated reason was there was... They were unable to clear an unusual contour of my buttocks area," said Banovac.
TSA goes after a pilot for posting video of things that anybody can look out a window and see; think they're not going to screw with her for causing them a problem?
Oh, and I still think the sheriff's office that helped TSA with this crap and seized the guys carry permit ought to be nailed for it, too.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Read that again.A paroled career criminal, he had a history of violent theft: two decades ago he was convicted of stealing $86,000 worth of jewels in a downtown Boston store and shooting a security guard in the chest during a scuffle. As a teenager, Cinelli stabbed a man in the chest, police said. Both victims survived.
In 1986, he pleaded guilty to five armed robberies committed after he failed to return from a one-day furlough from the Worcester House of Correction. According to a 2008 Parole Board decision, Cinelli was serving three concurrent life sentences.(bold mine)
The Parole Board released him in March 2009, saying the lifelong drug and alcohol abuser had completed several prison treatment programs for substance abuse and alternatives to violence and earned his GED.
and he was out on the street with a gun.
I can't buy a new 12 round magazine for my Smith & Wesson, but this violent career criminal was let out of jail on a GED and a successful completion of a substance abuse program? Are they for real? As stories like these increase in frequency it will become a spiraling problem - more and more folks are going to disobey the law, because punishment is a joke and actually incarceration is practically non-existent.
Massachusetts registers firearm owners, it registers firearms, it registers firearm carriers, it registers all firearm transfers between people (even private sales), it even requires registration to possess a single piece of expended brass – an object that poses no threat to anyone older than two (choking hazards and all that). And yet here we have an individual officially judged unsuitable for firearm ownership due to repeated (and serious) mental illness issues, and he still owned firearms. He was ordered to turn those firearms in, and he still owned them. The police knew where he lived, knew that he owned firearms, knew that he had not turned them in, and he still owned firearms – the very firearms he used to murder those seven people.
From the linked post:
There's a good bit missing from the retrospective. First, Brad points out this nugget:
Despite the passage of time, Stephen C. Doherty, the now-retired Wakefield police chief who rushed to the company minutes after shooting erupted in the usually placid town, said his memories of the carnage surface almost every day.
(emphasis mine). Minutes. When seconds count, police are only minutes away. We repeat this mantra often, at the risk of losing sight of what it represents. This is the very reason we carry our own guns - by their very nature, the police cannot be everywhere at once.
Ref that last, I'm going to bring up one of Robert Peel's 9 Principles:
7) Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
And it was an expected thing that a citizen had the right of self-defense, and the right to use the tools necessary to defend; a part of the Principles that far too many LE and politicians really don't want people to think about, or consider.
Speaking of the last, Lawdog noted that BBC did a series of shows based on Sherlock Holmes and Doc Watson, updated to current days; I've seen two of them, and they were good. What comes to mind right now is from the first, when Watson realizes he's in a situation were things are getting very odd and somewhat dangerous and asks the people giving him a ride "Can we make a stop so I can pick something up?" They stop at the place where he's been staying and he goes in, digs out the pistol he snuck back from 'Stan, checks the mag and slips it under his belt, under his sweater; don't you know a bunch of people at BBC and in the Brit government shit bricks when they saw that? I'm really surprised it made it in.
“But sometimes the two parties get together and do something really stupid and evil. We call that ‘bipartisanship.’”
Chris Christie wasn’t appeasing the NRA or 2012 Republican primary voters. And sadly, he isn’t anything resembling a “friend” to gun owners. A northeast Republican, Christie’s stance on firearms is as draconian as that of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The simple fact of the matter is that if Christie’s views on firearms were widely known, his chances of capturing the 2012 Republican primaries would go up in smoke.
How bad is Christie’s record?
Yesterday happened to have some of Glenn Beck's show on for background noise, and the stand-in host was talking to a security and training guy who said we need to give TSA a break because 'they're professionals doing their job', etc.
On to the fact that a bunch of idiots of muslim persuasion take this
as reason for this:
Three of the suspects are Swedish residents and reportedly arrived in Denmark last night, and PET said the attack was to be carried out “in the coming days”.
All four suspects have Middle-Eastern or North African backgrounds.
In addition to the arrests in Copenhagen, Swedish officials arrested a fifth suspect in Stockholm at the same time.
During the arrests, Danish police found an assault rifle and silencer, ammunition, as well as plastic strips, which are often used by police as hand restraints.
According to PET, the group planned to kill as many people as possible in the building that houses Jyllands-Posten.
Over some bloody cartoons. Because the whole damn world is supposed to do whatever it takes to accommodate their tender sensitivities.
Speaking of vile dirtbags, the family of this murdered state trooper should do everything they can to pull the names of the people involved in this dirtbag being on the street out in public. And demanding to know why this piece of crap wasn't behind bars. And hounding them with the consequences of their actions. Preferably for a long, loooong time to come.
No wonder Nanny Bloomberg was so upset by people who didn't want the Ground Zero mosque built; they were defying what The Mayor and Chief Nanny wanted:
In fact, it turns out that Team Bloomberg was heavily involved in operating the political machinery needed to ensure that various regulatory agencies approved the controversial project -- which has rightly drawn the ire of many 9/11 survivors and victims' families.
Even to the point of pressing Community Board 1 to cast an approving vote -- so that the chairman of the Landmarks Preservation Commission could be given the "political cover" he so urgently sought before his agency denied landmark status to the existing building.
Bloomberg's community affairs commissioner even ghost-wrote a letter to CB1 on behalf of Daisy Khan, wife of mosque promoter Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Meanwhile, officials intervened to obtain permits so that prayers could be conducted at the site.
A: this is dusgusting
B: since when is 'Polish' a race?
Oh, I wish I'd seen this before Christmas!
An official staff visit by LtGen Claus is expected at this base on 25 Dec. The following directives govern activities of all personnel during the visit:
- Not a creature will stir without permission. This includes Officers, Warrant Officers, Staff Non-commissioned Officers, Noncommissioned Officers, and mice. Marines may obtain special stirring permits for necessary tasks through the Battalion S-1 Office (See Company Office for PAR).
The lady speaks on the latest idiocy of Incompitano:
That’s right boys and girls, the groping and the porno scans that haven’t caught a single terrorist have made aviation objectively better. Because it’s really the breast feeding mothers, amputees, and nuns that were the real threat anyway.
So will there be a list of things I can and cannot carry on my person at the mall? Will I be frisked before checking into a hotel? And what if I just went to the mall and purchased a sword at that little shop near the restrooms? Or a chainsaw at Sears? Or what if the whole reason I’m staying at some hotel is for my hunting trip? Is it suddenly far too dangerous for me to keep that high-powered rifle in my hotel room?
One more example of Zero-Tolerance Idiocy in schools. Much easier to screw somebody over blindly following the rules than to actually think about what to do, isn't it? Southern Lee High School officials, you should be ashamed of yourselves. Assuming you HAVE any shame, that is.
Insty pointed to this guy; I hope he's wrong, or not right about the level. But this is beginning to sound like the backstory of Fallen Angels.
Thanks to Uncle, some of the idiot crooks out there. Couple of years ago I read a piece by a prosecutor in Texas who said it'd become policy for them to, immediately after an arrest, check Facebook and Myspace to see if the clown had an account; said it was amazing how many people posted brags on the robbery/burglary/whatever they'd just committed. Sometimes with pics or video.
Unrelated to news, I tried something new for the kitchen not long ago. I've got a FoodSaver, which has been handy, but the thing's been acting up. And I'm low on bags, which are expensive. So decided to try the Ziplock vacuum pump and bags(which were actually cheaper at a local store); so far, working great. Seal well, hold vacuum and easier to wash and reuse. Now I need to stick something steel in one and repeat the 'bury it in the garden' test.
Son started back to his base today after the Christmas visit. Mentioned this before, kids grow up and sometimes you get that odd double-vision. I remember the Sergeant as a kid with a lapful of kitten, same as I remember daughter as a 8yoa on an elephant ride where the critter kept stretching her trunk back to sniff daughter's leg, causing a large amount of giggling. Time do go by, do it not?
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
My only statement on this:
You don't like the 1911? Don't carry one. And, put bluntly, piss off; I hate those posts.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Gingrich, for having that commercial with Pelosi on AGW and various other things, no. HELL no. Gingrich, if you run you're screwing the Stupid Party and conservatives just to stroke your ego.
McCain, you not only ran a lousy campaign last time, but you've proven we can't trust you. And we don't. Only reason you'd run again is that you, for some reason, think it's OWED to you to be President, or it's your turn or something. No damned way you'd get my vote.
Ever since then, all the floods,volcanic eruptions, precipitation,quakes,anomolies have increased between 350 -4000 %. Also the jet stream and ocean conveyor belts have been destroyed.
So there you have it: Man-Caused Globular Warmering also causes earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and anomalies(?) AND has destroyed the jet stream and-
I can't go on, the level of stupid is just too much.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
ICE AGE: Columbia, SC has first Christmas snow since records first kept in 1887...
Atlanta's First Since 1882...
Commentary by Swampy: