Monthly Archives: September 2004

Keep doing things that don’t work

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What was that again?  Insanity is expecting a different result when nothing has changed?  Well, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence must be insane then.  This is a recent press release of theirs:

For more than 25 years, the District’s handgun and assault weapon bans have helped reduce the risk of deadly handgun violence. The citizens of the District support these laws and should be permitted to determine for themselves the policies that govern their homes, streets, and workplaces. This attempted repeal is being brought by members of Congress who don’t represent DC and who don’t care about public safety.

For years D.C. has been the murder capital, or very close, of the U.S.   Just a stone’s throw away in Virginia where it’s legal to use the best available defensive tools the murder rate is much lower.  These lunatics want to continue with the proven failures of victim disarmament.

Self defense insurance is expensive

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I don’t know what data they base their risk on but it sure seems to me that someone is either trying to make a lot of money or they don’t have a good idea of what their risks are.  The bottom line is that if you are a NRA member you can buy insurance to cover lawyer and liabilty costs if you use your firearm in self defense.  For a $100K benefit it cost $165/year and for a $250K benefit it costs $254/year.

 

Star Trek like phasors to be deployed soon

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It has been in the public news for a while then I heard other “whispers” and saw some photographs about it via other channels just recently.  Very cool stuff.  Set your phasors to stun…

… Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems (XADS), based in Anderson, Indiana, will be one of the first companies to market another type of wireless weapon. Instead of using fibres, the $9000 Close Quarters Shock Rifle projects an ionised gas, or plasma, towards the target, producing a conducting channel. It will also interfere with electronic ignition systems and stop vehicles.

“We will be able to fire a stream of electricity like water out of a hose at one or many targets in a single sweep,” claims XADS president Peter Bitar.

…

The gun has been designed for the US Marine Corps to use for crowd control and security purposes and is due out in 2005. It is based on early, unwieldy technology and has a range of only three metres, but an operator can debilitate multiple targets by sweeping it across them for “as long as there is an input power source,” says Bitar.

XADS is also planning a more advanced weapon which it hopes will have a range of 100 metres or more. Instead of firing ionised gas, it will probably use a powerful laser to ionise the air itself. The idea has been around for decades, says LaVerne Schlie, a laser expert at the US Air Force Research Lab in Kirtland, New Mexico. It has only become practical with advances in high-power solid-state lasers.

“Before, it took a laser about the size of two trucks,” says Schlie. “Now we can do it with something that fits on a tabletop.”

South Korean Spy gave money to Kerry

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Apparently the South Koreans “can’t stand” Bush and want Kerry elected.  They gave money to the Kerry campaign and when it became public Kerry gave it back.

The AP first reported this spring that Yi and other Kerry fund-raisers and donors had met with Chung, but at the time Chung was identified only as a diplomat. Yi resigned from Kerry’s campaign after the story, and Kerry returned $4,000 in donations he had solicited because of concerns about their origins.

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The U.S. officials said Chung had registered with the Justice Department as a friendly foreign intelligence agent on U.S. soil, and that his activities had raised concern he or his government had tried to influence the fall presidential election through “extracurricular activities.”

I’m wondering who North Korea and China are donating money to.  Kerry already has the endorsement of communist and socialist organizations so one would think he would have the advantage over Bush for these two countries.

Pathetic anti-gun turnout

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Time after time I have seen this happen.  But this is one of the few times I have seen it mentioned in the news.  I’ve been a counter protester when the pro-freedom people outnumbered the anti-freedom people 10:1.  A “gun violence educational” (it really was a group of people wanting to register and ban guns) presentation where all the people in the audience were firearms instructors.  This time the paper gives them lots of coverage as usual but also mentioned they only had nine people show up.  They pointed out that there was a big sign saying they didn’t want any input from the pro-freedom side, and they include information in the article that shows they aren’t even consistent — are these military weapons as the speaker says?  Or are they different as an anti-gun web site (correctly) says.

NEW PORT RICHEY – Art Hayhoe can’t fathom why a 10- year ban on semiautomatic weapons was allowed to expire this month.

…

“Who in God’s name wants to sell civilians fully militarized weapons of war that are designed to kill as many people [as possible] as fast as possible?” he said to an audience of nine.

According to information distributed by the Violence Policy Center, semiautomatic weapons are more accurate than machine guns and military assault weapons. The center is a national nonprofit organization that works to establish policies that reduce “gun-related death and injury.”

Unlike machine guns and military assault weapons, which can fire bullets as long as the trigger is pulled and the ammunition lasts, triggers of semiautomatic weapons must be pulled every time a round is fired, according to the Violence Policy Center.

I believe the anti-freedom people are falling apart along the with the left in general and the press is finally starting to realize they have been lied to and the anti-freedom people are morally bankrupt.  Our job is to keep up the pressure up and push these people into political extinction.

More beheadings this week

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Grisly news.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 21 — An Islamist group said today that it had beheaded the second of two Americans seized with a Briton last week, according to a Web site that has proven reliable in such matters.

The Islamist Web site said that the killing of the hostage, Jack Hensley, had been announced in a statement from the group and that a video of the execution would be posted later in the day. Western news agencies and the Arab news service Al Jazeera also carried reports of the killing, citing statements posted on the Internet.

“The lions slaughtered the second American hostage after the end of the deadline,” one such statement attributed to the group said.

The families of Mr. Hensley and the Briton, Kenneth Bigley, had pleaded earlier in the day for officials to help get the men released hours after the group beheaded the other American, Eugene Armstrong.

The Islamist group, One God and Holy War, led by the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, posted an Internet video after midnight showing the decapitation of Mr. Armstrong, a 53-year-old engineer kidnapped from his home in the capital last Thursday. The group threatened that the other two men, also engineers, would meet a similar fate in 24 hours if its demands were not met.

[In Washington, a C.I.A. official said that the agency had assessed with “high certainty” that the voice of the man who carried out the beheading on the first videotape, showing Mr. Armstrong’s death, was that of Mr. Zarqawi.]

I’ve heard of people wanting to nuke Mecca for this sort of thing.  There are other people suggesting even worse things on a global scale.  I think it’s unlikely we will, or should, do either.  But either the U.S., the Russians or some other nation state will get very, very heavy handed if this sort of thing continues much longer.  After the election Bush will likely not be nearly so restrained.  The problem is that we don’t have many options.   There is nothing to negoitate when someone insists you must convert to Islam or fight.  I’ve mentioned some of the things here before that have crossed my mind.  From the rational to the angry and vengeful.  There is another way that probably would work and would save Islam from being targeted for extinction one way or another.  If the vast majority of Muslims would publically denounce the beheading and the taking of innocent hostages.  The Islamic culture as a whole, must turn on the extremists that cannot tolerate non-believers and point them out to the authorities for capture or extremely close observation.  If they don’t the civilized world will be convinced of the necessity to destroy the entire religion.

Cat Stevens gets stopped at the border

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I used to have a Cat Stevens tape and really liked his music.  Kind of a shock to find out he converted to Islam.

Here’s the story from the NY Times:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 – The Department of Homeland Security ordered a United Airlines jet flying from London to Washington rerouted to Bangor, Me., on Tuesday afternoon so it could intercept a passenger, Yusuf Islam, the musician formerly known as Cat Stevens, two government officials said.

Mr. Islam was “denied entry into the United States,” said an official, and was in the custody of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. The plan on Tuesday evening was to deport Mr. Islam, who is a British subject, the officials said.

The officials, both of whom said they could not be named because this was a security issue, said Mr. Islam was a financial supporter of groups believed to be linked to terrorism. Mr. Islam’s Web site lists him as a supporter of many charities.

…

After the interception of Mr. Islam on Tuesday, one of the government officials said, “He is not on a watch list for making verbal threats.”

Mr. Islam was deported from Israel in July 2000 because he was believed to be a supporter of Hamas, the terrorist group.

What is probably most interesting to me is the different coverage given this story by different news outlets.  Compare the above to this one from ABC and The Associated Press:

WASHINGTON Sept. 21, 2004 — A London-to-Washington flight was diverted to Maine on Tuesday when it was discovered passenger Yusuf Islam formerly known as singer Cat Stevens was on a government watch list and barred from entering the country, two federal officials said.

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The two federal officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, identified the passenger as Islam. They said Islam was denied entry on national security grounds, but had no details about why the peace activist might be considered a risk to the United States.

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Islam, who was born Stephen Georgiou, took Cat Stevens as a stage name and had a string of hits in the 1960s and ’70s, including “Wild World” and “Morning Has Broken.” Last year he released two songs, including a re-recording of his ’70s hit “Peace Train,” to express his opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

He abandoned his music career in the late 1970s and changed his name after being persuaded by orthodox Muslim teachers that his lifestyle was forbidden by Islamic law. He later became a teacher and an advocate for his religion, founding a Muslim school in London in 1983.

He has criticized terrorist acts by Muslims, including the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the school seizure in Beslan, Russia, earlier this month that left more than 300 dead, nearly half of them children.

In a statement on his Web site, he wrote, “Crimes against innocent bystanders taken hostage in any circumstance have no foundation whatsoever in the life of Islam and the model example of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.”

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Islam issued a statement saying: “No right thinking follower of Islam could possibly condone such an action: The Quran equates the murder of one innocent person with the murder of the whole of humanity.”

Next door neighbor girl makes national news

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We always called her ‘CC’, but in the news they call her Celia.

A boy who said on the Internet that he planned to bomb his high school was turned in by the 16-year-old daughter of a university police officer who heads a cyber crimes unit, authorities said.

Authorities credited Celia McGinty of Moscow, Idaho, with foiling a plot to bomb Chippewa Valley High School outside Detroit.

Police said a search of 17-year-old Andrew Osantowski’s home last week turned up instructions for making a bomb and videotapes of him with assault weapons.
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She said Monday on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that the boy — who started at Chippewa Valley High School on August 31 — was very specific about how he would take revenge on teachers and schoolmates.

She is sixteen now, and was only about five or six at the time, but it was after she got into some things that we thought were hidden fairly well in our bedroom that I had sufficient motivation to buy a gun safe.

Good job CC.

Boomershoot prep and Xenia’s birthday

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A very busy day for me.  I picked up Ry shortly after 0800 and went to the Taj Mahal to clean up the mess after the last Boomershoot, do inventory, and prepare for the next one.  Mice had destroyed a few minor things and made a mess.  I killed four of the eight we saw with my (gloved) hands by throwing them against the ground then stomping on them.  Ry was concerned I would injury my knee or something because of the vigor with which I stomped on them.  I also ended up killing a dozen or so yellowjackets that swarmed around us.  Very annoying.

We at lunch at Mom and Dad’s and said hi to Doug.  Mom gave me some cucumbers and a couple cards for Xenia (who turns 16 tomorrow).  We borrowed a few things and went back to work.  We make a few targets for a Boomershoot Adventure for some friends at work who will be driving over next weekend.  We fixed up the geocache, It’s a Blast, that was falling apart, took things back to Dad and zoomed home just in time for Xenia’s birthday party.

The vocabulary we use

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A month or so ago I got some mail from the ATFE.  I am always apprehensive when I get something from them but that is based on zero real life experience with them.  The worst I can say about the material I receive from them was that it didn’t apply to me.  Most of the time it is, “Hmmm… okay.  That makes sense.“  This time I was actually impressed.  I had decided to not say anything about it in public but then I found it on their web site so I decided to go ahead and talk about it.  They sent me some material put out by “The Fertilizer Institute” in cooperation with the ATFE.  It was about how to make our country safer.  How to prevent explosive materials from getting into the hands of the wrong people.  Hundreds of millions of tons of ammonium nitrate (AN) are used annually on our farms.  AN is the primary component of the “reactive targets” I build for the boomershoot as well as being used in the Oklahoma City bombing and numerous other international terrorist bombings.  With all that AN being used each year in 100’s of thousands of locations how can you secure it such that a few hundred pounds (500 pounds could make a very serious bomb) doesn’t get out?  Well… when I read the material presented it really clicked.  It reminded me of when I worked on a political campaign to oppose a anti-gun initiative (I-676) a few years ago.  The people on the phone lines would tell stories about the anti-gun people that would call and try to get information about our plans.  You only had to ask one or two questions and the anti-gun people would, figuratively, fall in heap on the floor.  If the lines weren’t very busy then they would play with them for a few minutes and have more material for the story telling later that evening.  They would just ask something like, “What type of gun do you have?“  “What caliber is it?“  They would get answers like “Glock“ and “.357 Magnum“ (only revolvers shoot .357 Magnum and Glock doesn’t make any revolvers).  Or “Shotgun, I’m not sure who makes it, but it’s a 9mm.”  With a little bit of suggestive questioning you could get them to agree to the most incredibly outrageous things.  It was great sport making fun of the people that were trying to do us harm and now I realize that it can be more than just sport.  It can be a deadly serious means to save lives.  This is the brochure I received.  Growing up on a farm the questions and idle chatter that happens with other farmers and our suppliers which seem perfectly reasonable would throw my wife or kids for a total loop and would be a HUGE warning flag.  And that is just for someone with a fair amount of contact with a working farm and someone who grew up on a farm.  Here are the items from the brochure:

Stranger
Unfamiliar to area or to you.

Doesn’t know much about farming/fertilizer
Doesn’t answer questions about acreage, crops, soil composition, etc. in a specific, knowledgeable way.

Insistent about ammonium nitrate
Will not consider other products you recommend. Is only interested in ammonium nitrate.

Doesn’t want product delivered
Insists on taking product now. Asks for it in bags, not bulk.

Hesitates/hedges when asked for information
Name, address, signature, photo ID, etc.

Acts nervous
Avoids eye contact. Seems jittery, uneasy, vague.

Pays in cash
Won’t write a check or use credit. Has no credit account with your or other ag businesses in the area.

After reading this I also remembered a story about someone that flew from Israel back to the U.S. after delivering a paper at a conference.  The security people did a one-on-one interview with every single passenger.  It took about 10 minutes for each passenger and went something like this for this guy,

I see that you visited here for a week.  Please tell me the purpose of your visit.  Describe the topic of your paper please.  Give me the lecture you gave the conference on this paper. <listens for about two minutes>  Please explain to me what ““ means.

In short, they can ask very innocent questions and unless you actually were there for the purposes you claim you will quickly get into trouble.  In this case it’s actually sort of a reverse vocabulary test.  The security agent will most likely not have the vocabulary of the paper presenter and expects to find words and phrases that are unknown to the average person.  The presenter, if they are the expert they claim to be, should be able to define the words and phrases in a manner that is consistent and sensical even to someone not skilled in that particular field.

Every group has their own language and culture.  You couldn’t fake being in the military with another military person for more than about 30 seconds before they would find you out if they wanted to test you.  A chess player, a quilter, or football fan–if you don’t belong to the group your vocabulary will expose you as a phony.

It turns out the reverse is also true.  If you speak the vocabulary you can gain the almost immediate trust of people that shouldn’t trust you.  It’s called “social engineering” in the security field and those are some of the most difficult attacks to defend against.

New Orleans may have to face reality

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Hurricane Ivan could put much of New Orleans underwater.  Not just a few inches, but many feet.  In some places the water could be 20 feet deep.  How can this be?  How much rain is Ivan going to dump?  It turns out that the rain isn’t the problem.  It’s that New Orleans is below sea level.  The entire city was built on silt the Mississippi river has dumped over several thousand years.  That silt that is several miles deep.  That silt gradually compacts and “squishes out” and the surface drops.  If left on it’s own the “big muddy” would replenish the silt to above sea level every few years as it overflows it’s banks during high water times.  But levees were built to protect the city from the flooding.  Unfortunately it’s only the battles of the first couple hundred years that can be won.  Eventually the “war” against the river will be lost.  Not only does the city continue to sink but silt from the river is dumped further and further out to sea (something like a thousand tons per day is dropped).  This decreases the slope for the river from New Orleans (and upstream) to the sea.  This means the velocity of the river decreases.  As the velocity decreases the river drops more silt in it’s channel and furthermore it must be either deeper or wider to carry the same amount of water.  Everything is working against New Orleans remaining at it’s current elevation.  This is not like Holland which is also below sea level.  The soil is much different and we have a river running through the city that is raising it’s bed every day.

It will cost billions to put up a mediocre defense against the threat.  One could argue that we should just let the city deal with it on it’s own or move.  The problem is that there is a tremendous amount of shipping that goes on through the Mississippi from the heartlands of the country to the rest of the world and New Orleans is the port that makes it all happen.  If left to it’s own devices the river would have rerouted itself a hundred miles or so to the west years ago.  It’s only the Corp of Engineers that have kept it within the current channels.  Will Ivan be the last battle?  Will this week start the journey for New Orleans to become a silt covered archeological site for some graduate students 50,000 years from now?  What will be the impact on our economy?  How will this affect the election?  Will Kerry claim Bush could have prevented it (hmmm…. I wonder what a small nuke would do to a hurricane out at sea)?

My belief is that long term the people and businesses of New Orleans should close up and move out.  Barring some extraordinary technological breakthroughs in earth moving (I’m talking raising an entire city from deep down under the water soaked earth) and/or lowering the sea this battle cannot be won.  It’s better to surrender gracefully than to let the enemy annihilate you.  Spend the billions on salvage and rebuilding in another location, but surrender the current New Orleans to it’s muddy grave.

Intelligence agencies reorganization

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Technically speaking, I’m part of the “intelligence community” in this country.  My involvement is very minimal and I really don’t know how the reorganization recommended by the 9-11 commission would affect “our“ effectiveness from an insider viewpoint.  However, [Deleted on May 18, 2005 in an attempt to please PNNL management] a friend running for U.S. Congress asked me for my thoughts on the issue so I’m going to do my best.  My “position” inside the intelligence community contributes essentially zero to this.  My position would be the same even if I were still working on the “outside”.  [Deleted on May 18, 2005 in an attempt to please PNNL management]

The specific questions I was asked were:

  • Would you favor consolidating intelligence-gathering into an agency independent of the Pentagon?
  • Do you believe the chief of any such agency should also be independent of the White House?
  • What one measure most needs to be enacted to make our nation more secure?

The U.S. intelligence agencies are tasked (and rightly so) with invading the privacy of people and countries who might wish to do us harm.  Information is a very powerful thing and extreme power needs to be carefully controlled.  The U.S. military is the primary consumer of the information because they are tasked with preventing harm to us.  So having them control the intelligence agencies seems to me to be a good idea.  Furthermore the U.S. military is specifically forbidden from acting against U.S. citizens (the National Guard is under the authority of the individual states) .  This is a very good thing.  Many other countries do not have this restriction on their military and this has lead to some very serious problems (genocide). 

But what about gathering information on people that are in our country already and wish to do us harm?  The FBI and other law enforcement people have to “jump through hoops” to gather information — probable cause for search warrants signed by judges, that sort of thing.  The NSA and the CIA don’t bother with such niceties (although I suspect they have their own internal controls).  As severe as I think the threat from terrorists is I still fear our own government more.  A look at history will show that more innocent, non-combatant, people have been killed by their own government that by the governments of others.  And the terrorists that confront us now do not have the capacity to kill millions (as much as they would like to).  I believe the wall between the law enforcement and intelligence agencies is a long term good thing even though short term is it seen as a hindrance to security.  The wall doesn’t need to be complete, there should be information shared but it must exist and having the military in control of the intelligence side of the house is a good way (in my mind) to help keep an appropriate wall in place.

As to “What one measure most needs to be enacted to make our nation more secure?“ Security might be enhanced by deporting anyone professing Islamic faith.  But that would be a violation of the 1st amendment.  Security might be enhanced by eavesdropping on all electronic communication but that would violate the 4th amendment.  But the one thing we can do that will not infringe on anyone’s inalienable rights is to enable preventive measures that would have stopped the 9-11 attacks and have stopped the attack on the school children of Russia the other day.  Enforce the restriction imposed by the Second Amendment on the states, cities, and agencies of the U.S. government.  The 2nd amendment says “… the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”  The 14th Amendment says the states, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States…“  The States and government regulations that prohibit adults from carrying firearms and other defensive tools in schools and on airplanes should be immediately abolished.  We don’t want any more commercial airplanes used as guided missiles or our schools used as killing fields.  Allow people to defend themselves and the lives of other innocent people.  Enforce the 2nd amendment through the use of the 16th amendment.  Any government employee who violates the 2nd amendment rights of a citizen under the color of law should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

So…. to answer the questions:

  • No.  I am not in favor of consolidating the agencies independent of the Pentagon.
  • If such a consolidation were to occur I would want it to be independent of direct political control.  I think we learned that lesson with Richard Nixon.  If he had an first class intelligence agency rather than second rate burglars to spy on his political opponents he would have violated the rights of a lot more people and probably gotten away with it.
  • Abolish all gun laws against law abiding adult citizens.

Happy day — end of the ‘assault weapon ban’

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The ATF posted this on it’s web site:

Semiautomatic Assault Weapon Update

By statute, the prohibitions relating to semiautomatic assault weapons and large capacity ammunition feeding devices expired on September 13, 2004. As a result, certain sections of the Gun Control Act, 18 U.S.C. Chapter 44, and its implementing regulations, 27 CFR Part 478, are no longer in effect.

I celebrated by assembling some full capacity magazines for my competition handgun out of parts I had laying around. The anti-freedom crowd are whining to such an extent that it is almost deafening. Here is something the Violence Policy Center put out:

Soon after its passage in 1994, the gun industry made a mockery of the federal assault weapons ban, manufacturing “post-ban” assault weapons with only slight, cosmetic differences from their banned counterparts. The VPC estimates that more than one million assault weapons have been manufactured since the ban’s passage in 1994.

It appears the VPC has a problem defining words. By the definitions they helped create for the ’94 law the manufactures complied with the law. Congress and the anti-freedom people were told again and again their definition of “assault weapon” was meaningless. It nothing to do with the function of the firearms. Their concern was all about cosmetics. Then when the manufactures changed the cosmetics they complained that they were still making “assault weapons”. Well… we on the pro-freedom side of the fence never could figure out what you were calling an “assault weapon” other than by the cosmetics as defined in the law.

The questions a rational person has to ask are, “What definition of ‘assault weapon’ are you using now?” and “If the definition that Congress used wasn’t what you meant why didn’t you complain about it then?” You got what you wanted at the time. You made all kinds of claims about how wonderful it was to have the law passed, the studies were done as per the law and they found out EXACTLY what we were saying at the time–the law will not make any difference in violent crime. I made an appearance on a television show in August of ’95 saying some of this if anyone wants to check this out I’ll let them see the video. And more importantly you can’t change the definition of ‘assault weapon’ to fit whatever is convenient at the time. For example they say about one out of five police officers are killed with an ‘assault weapon’. Well…. they don’t tell you what their definition of an “assault weapon” is for that number to be true. It’s abundantly clear that it’s NOT the definition used in Federal law.

Oh well… it’s all part of the meltdown of the liberals–Clinton and “what your definition of ‘is’ is.” and all that.  And then Dan Rather and CBS are the laughing stock of the nation today.  As my friend Sean says: “Today is Happy News Day.”

Boomershoot in Outside Magazine

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As Ry already reported, the October issue of Outside Magazine with the article on Boomershooting is out.  It is a nice article.  Lisa Anne Auerbach did a good job on it — considering the premise she had to work with.  The issue was “The Sex & Sin Issue” and Lisa had to spice it up a little with lines like:

It sounds so wrong on so many levels–the guns, the noise, the NRA–but what can I say?  Sometimes a girl just has to get the kinks out, and firing guns is a great way to do it.

It was a positive article and I’m pleased to get the attention.  My disappointment is that Ry was not mentioned.  Tim, Lisa, and their kids were there too and were not mentioned either, but I could see dropping them in an article tight for space.  But Ry was such a major part of the entire experience that it wasn’t really right to not mention him.  There wasn’t a link to either of the boomershoot web sites either (boomershoot.org and boomershoot.com).  And there were no pictures published.  There were lots of pictures taken, but nothing made it into the magazine.

Oh well.  I’m happy about it.  I was a bit apprehensive that some of Ms. Auerbach’s anti-gun feelings would come through but they did not.   Thank you Lisa.

European Union seeks diplomatic solution to Islamic terrorism

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I had never really followed the EU much.  It was sort of, okay, whatever.  Others complain about them being a bunch of wimps and various other derogatory things.  I didn’t really have an opinion — then I read the following:

The European Union, already at odds with the Bush administration over pre-emptive military strikes, reacted warily to a warning from Moscow that it too reserved the right to neutralize terror threats anywhere in the world.

Col. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, the chief of the general staff of Russia’s armed forces, said Wednesday that “we will take all measures to liquidate terrorist bases in any region of the world.”
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The European Union argues that a policy of pre-emptive strikes is too risky. A security strategy paper approved by EU governments last year said emphasis should be placed on diplomatic and political solutions.

“Diplomatic and political solutions” often work if you are dealing with a nation state.  I think it was 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11/2001 were from Saudi Arabia.  Should we have started negotiations with Saudi Arabia to find out why they attacked us?  No?  Why is that?  Oh, because it was Osma bin Laden that was the top leader of that attack not the Saudi government.  So perhaps we should negotiate with him.  He sent us an open letter after the attack, clearly spelling out the conditions required before the attacks would stop.  I commented on this letter before so I don’t need to do that in depth here, but the bottom line is that we need to convert to Islam and stop the immorality and debauchery including fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling, and trading with interest.  We need to rule ourselves under the laws of Shariah of Allah rather than invent our own laws.  If we fail to respond to all (emphasis added) these conditions then we will need to fight the Islamic Nation. 

Okay, so tell me how we can find a diplomatic solution to this position of our adversary?  Who wants to give up the U.S. Constitution and turn our justice system over to Islamic Clerics?  Maybe we could just reinstate prohibition and execute homosexuals.  Does anyone think that perhaps this would be sufficient to satisfy them? Does anyone think that is an acceptable compromise?  I don’t, and I’m not a homosexual and only very rarely drink any alcohol.  If those laws were passed it would only have the most minor of immediate effects on me and my lifestyle.  But it still is totally and completely unacceptable to me.  I would rather imprison and/or kill a hundred thousand Islamic extremists and loose another thousand U.S. lives than agree to that one point.  And what cost do you think we should be willing to pay to avoid the rule of “Shariah of Allah”?  I’d rather start up special pig (and web) farms for the Islamic terrorists we need to “process”.  As sad and as distasteful as it may be it would be better to run a million Islamic extremists through the pig farms than for the world to live under an Islamic theocratic rule.

So, IMHO, the EU is a bunch of totally clueless wimps.  If they want to “place emphasis on diplomatic and political solutions” then I would like to suggest they pursue that path with the Russians.  I think perhaps the Russians would agree to let the EU leaders shovel their pig manual.

Dealing with Islamic extremists

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The whole Russian schoolchildren thing really upset me.  I still cry every once in a while when I’m tired.  I end up thinking about solutions to the problem every time something reminds me of them drinking their own urine to avoid dehyridation or being shot in the back as they tried to escape.  On the reality front I’m giving a couple presentations to the Air Force tomorrow on ideas for defending against some of the attacks used by the people we are fighting.  In my fantasies I think along the lines of what to do with those that kill children and behead civilians workers and reporters and sometimes post the video tape on their web sites.  This is my latest thought which should, of course, be video taped for our web sites and the news.

  1. Strip them naked.
  2. Stake them to ground in a pen full of hungry pigs.
  3. Let them be eaten alive (or dead if they had previously absorbed excess lead).
  4. There should be close ups of their genitals being ripped off and chewed by the pigs.
  5. Close ups as the manure with bits of hair and bone come out the other end.
  6. Package up the manure and put it in “bombs“.  We were using laser guided concrete “blocks” during parts of the war so this should be easy enough.
  7. Drop the bombs on their mosques.

This should apply to the following groups of people:

  1. Anyone who deliberately injures or threatens to injure innocent life.
  2. Any enemy combantant (with some possible exceptions for those that have been extremely helpful and appear to have given up their religious beliefs) whose release is demanded by those that make the threats or injures innocent life.

So much for fantasies.  I need to get some rest so I can wake up early enough to do a good job with reality tomorrow.

Almost weird

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I was listening to a “book on CD” on the way to work this morning — Every Man a Tiger.  It’s about the Air Force general who directed the air war in the first US/Iraq war.  Very interesting stuff.  I really like it.  James and Barb tried listening to it when they went to Sacramento a few weeks ago and didn’t care for it.  Barb gave it to me saying that they thought I would like it.  I didn’t even know what it was about other than it was Tom Clancy book.  I expected fiction instead of something more like a biography.  Then not long after I got to work some strange guy shows up in my office and starts talking to me.  It turns out he is a Air Force Reserve Major.  I don’t recall the last time I talked to someone in the Air Force but it has been years. 

Anyway we talked about the meeting with the Air Force he is arranging/hosting which I’m presenting at tomorrow.  We also talked about Boomershoot stuff for a while.  He plans to attend the next one if he is back from Iraq in time.  He shoots thousands and thousands of rounds a year – certainly a lot more than I have recently.

Suggestion to potential schoolyard terrorists

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If any Islamic extremists are considering doing a repeat of the little number they did in Russia last week with us in the U.S. they should do it in major city many, many  miles from the nearest farms.  If you do it near a farming community your bodies (living or dead) will likely be fed to the pigs.  If your family wants to bury your remains they will have to pick the bone fragments out of the pig manure.