The View From North Central Idaho

Have you ever spent any time fighting fire? In the woods or maybe a grass fire? If you have you know you need to jump on things as soon as you can. Extinguish it while it is still small. A spark might start something on the other side of your fire break and if you don't put it out soon it will quickly get as big as the original blaze.

John Snyder is helping us by dealing with a spark from the mostly contained, but still burning fire, of the gun control movement. The Vatican is supporting gun control at the UN:

The St. Gabriel Possenti Society, a Virginia-based organization devoted to protecting the individual's right to self-defense, criticized statements by Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Holy See's representative at the UN, endorsing "the promotion of disarmament" and calling for stiffer international controls on the sale and possession of firearms.

John Snyder, the founder and chairman of the St. Gabriel Possenti Society, said the archbishop's words pointed to a "terribly misguided secular political initiative." He urged Catholics in the US to protest that initiative.

This isn't the first time I've mentioned Mr. Snyder. He was dealing with another small fire a few months ago.

You should also know that John Snyder isn't just some random person. He's also the Capital Hill Editor of Gun Week.

Some of the first evidence in the Miami Muslims case is coming out. I'm sure bringing down the tallest building in the U.S. would get the attention of neighbors:

A man accused of leading a group that authorities said was plotting to blow up the Sears Tower wanted to create a distraction so he could free Muslim prisoners at a nearby jail, a prosecutor said Friday.

Narseal Batiste, 32, who is accused of leading the group, was recorded as he spoke to an FBI informant who was posing as an al-Qaida operative, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacqueline Arango.

He said that his plan was to blow up the Sears Tower, distract law enforcement and break into a nearby jail to set his "Muslim brothers" free, Arango said.

The video tape is going to be tough to refute:

During a video clip from surveillance footage played by the prosecution, Batiste said that he wanted to start "a real ground war." Arango said Baptiste likened bin Laden to "an angel" at another meeting.

My impression of these guys is that they were sincere in their stated desire to kill Americans but they were incompetent. But it could be the FBI just wants the general public to believe they were incompetent. That would give other terrorists reason to be less cautious. The desired mindset might be, "Those bozos got caught because they were stupid.  We just need to be smarter and we will be fine."  Rather than, "We need to be exceedingly careful. Those Miami dudes were no dummies and still got caught."

It's hard to say.

It doesn't give me a lot of confidence that the first terror cell caught, at least publicly, in a long time appears to be incompetent. It may mean that there are lots of others operating out there that are competent and just aren't being detected by our law enforcement people.

From Britain:

Train fares double in secret deal by ministers
By Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent

THE Government struck a secret deal with Britain’s biggest train company to double fares on some routes as the cheapest way of reducing overcrowding.

...

A spokesman for the department said: “We accepted that this was a good commercial solution to the problem of overcrowding.”

He admitted that the department had not been as transparent as it could have been but the decision about when to make the increase had been left to First.

Asked whether similar increases would be imposed at South West Trains, the spokesman said: “We are open to any innovative solutions which can reduce overcrowding on SWT.”

Prices might increase in a free market too--if there were significant barriers to increasing the capacity. But you don't "solve the problem" of more demand for your product than you can supply by increasing the price. You increase the supply! But the socialists seem unable to learn from history. A friend who was in the USSR in the '80s told me of the long lines of people waiting for toilet paper, sugar, shoes, butter, and just about everything. The demand far, far exceeded the supply yet they could never figure out how to solve the problem.

One of my favorite examples of the failures of government is that the USSR, a socialist system of government, tried for 80 years to increase food production enough to feed their own people. For the last 75 years the U.S., a capitalist society, tried to decrease food production enough for the prices to increase. Both failed.

I just got some new software for my cellphone and I can now login to my blog and post using it. Very cool! It's not fast but I can do it.

This post was done using my cellphone while at James place and using his WiFi network.

The main topic of this article is Osama bin Laden grieving over the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. I'm so sad for him--I wish someone would just put him out of his misery. We do have some more 500 pound bombs, right? Even a properly placed 168 grain bullet would end his suffering.

But that's not the most interesting point in the article to me.  This is interesting:

"I say to Bush, you should deliver the body (of al-Zarqawi) to his family, and don't be too happy. Our flag hasn't fallen, thanks be to God. It has passed from one lion to another lion in Islam," the message in Arabic says, according to a translation by Octavia Nasr, CNN's senior editor for Arab affairs.

"We will continue, God willing, to fight you and your allies everywhere, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan, until we drain your money and kill your men and send you home defeated, God willing, as we defeated you before, thanks to God, in Somalia."

Notice that you can thank Bill Clinton for contributing to this war because of what he did in Somalia.  He encouraged the Muslim extremists by tucked his tail between his legs and running away.

But this is the most interesting:

The U.S. government has never given a public accounting of what happened to al-Zarqawi's body after the autopsy.

Perhaps the pig hasn't finished digesting him yet so we can send the remains home.

I been wondering if the U.S. quietly slipped the leash off of Israel and said, "KILL!". They sure have been aggressive in the last few days. Here is the latest story:

Israeli warplanes struck the Palestinian Interior Ministry early Friday, setting it ablaze as Arab leaders tried to forge a deal that would halt the Israeli offensive and free a 19-year-old soldier held by gunmen allied with the ruling Islamic Hamas.

The bombing was one of more than a dozen across the Gaza Strip after midnight, though Israel called off a planned ground invasion of northern Gaza on Thursday in order to give diplomacy another chance.

If Israel were to draw some of the fighters from Iraq and Afghanistan into Gaza for extermination it wouldn't hurt my feelings any. Show us how it is done. Just let us know if we are going to be downwind of any hazardous dust.

I stumbled across some old work of mine yesterday.  I was just one of a few that provided comments to the King County (Seattle area) Board of Health in January of 2000. They announced they were going to hear a report on "Firearms as a Public Health Issue" and public input was welcome. I and a few other good guy activists showed up to give our input. The procedure was rather odd. We had to give our input before we heard their report. We also had to sign up ahead of time and they called our names one at a time to talk to the board about our topic. Another odd thing was there were none of the bad guys signed up to testify as the cutoff time came and went.  IIRC Joe Waldron speculated they figured it was a slam dunk and they didn't need to bother showing up.

But what to say? We hadn't heard the report, so how could we comment? We had some hints though. The "public health" meme was probably at it's peak about then and the arguments were well known. I had my laptop with me and started writing up a little speech. I took the laptop to the podium with me and read from the screen. I forget how much time I had, something like two minutes or so.

Here are the official meeting notes. Here is what the notes say about my input:

Joe Huffman lives in Moscow, Idaho, but also maintains a home in Redmond, Washington.

Any study of gun ownership and use must take into account the benefits. He is concerned that in the report to the Board, they're unlikely to see the lives saved, the rapes stopped, and all the other millions of times each year that firearms are used by private citizens for self-defense. Ninety-eight percent of the time, that's without a single shot being fired. You might think he exaggerating when he says millions of times each year, but he's not. Numerous peer reviewed studies by criminologists put the number literally as high as 2.5 to 3 million times per year. When the people here today listen to the report, he'd like them to remember the silent benefits of gun ownership. Ask if it includes the health benefits as well as the trauma, crippling, and deaths that are caused by firearms. Ask if the trauma and deaths are police shootings that are completely justified or are accidents or criminal acts. If they don't include the benefits, ask why not. Ask if they can point to a single place or time where reducing the availability of weapons had made the common people safer. Mr. Huffman has been asking that question in debates for years, and has yet to hear a verifiable affirmative response. If the report is only on the costs and not on the benefits, ask why they don't have an interest in the benefits. Ask if it would be appropriate to report on the 100,000 medical accidents each year that result in death without noting the millions of lives saved and improved. Of course, it wouldn't be appropriate, but yet it's the same thing.

After our testimony we got to listen to the report being presented. It wasn't as bad as it could have been. You can read about it in the notes.

Then a most outrageous thing happened. Pam Eakes, President of Mothers Against Violence in America was invited to speak even though she hadn't signed in before the deadline, didn't get there until after most of us had spoken, and then she was given more time than any of the good guys were. I suspect she was called when the input was all going against them and she rushed into town to try and help.

That evening I heard my voice on the radio.  The meeting was recorded and the radio station had extracted a few sound bites. I provided the sound bite for the good guys.

At that time many gun rights leaders thought we were just fighting to slow them down as best we could. They didn't say that in public of course.  But in private, when no one was within earshot they would tell the insiders, the people whose loyalty wasn't in question and asked the right questions. They told me it wasn't going to be possible to stop them or reverse the tide. We were fighting a lost battle they said. Another 10 years and it would all be over except for the shouting. The courts wouldn't help us and the 2nd Amendment would just be a vestigial organ that in another 10 or 20 years after that no one really knew what it had ever meant.

Today, as near as I can tell, Mothers Against Violence in America doesn't exist anymore (http://www.mavia.org was their website). I'm pretty sure Ms. Eakes was the founder and the only public face to that organization. She got lots of media attention. I suppose it wasn't really a fair fight. Ms. Eakes against the millions of NRA members, hundreds of thousands of members in SAF and CCRKBA, the JPFO and dozens of other organizations. The media tried to even things up by giving her far more than her fair share of coverage. But in a fight of millions against a handful it's generally safer to bet on the millions.

Even though I was, and am, just one of millions of people that contributed to some of our recent victories for the right to keep and bear arms I'd like to think I contributed a measurable part in stopping the bad guys in King County Washington that day. And mostly it was because I, an Idaho resident living 300 miles from the battle front that day, bothered to show up. You can show up and make a difference too. Ry and I were talking about this on Wednesday. Human nature applies to gun (and anti-gun) activists too. If you can just show up you can make a much bigger impact than you might imagine because most of the time showing up is 90% of the battle.

For all their grunting and hawing about how bad criminals are, the gun lobby actually has a pretty good deal going with murders and illegal gun traffickers. The gun industry sells guns to the criminals, and the criminals get in trouble for it. The gun lobby gets paid, and they set up the laws so that the penalties go only to the person who uses the gun, and no further.

Gun Guys
The NRA Sees "Value" in Protecting Illegal Gun Traffickers
June 29, 2006
[When they say things like that I don't think I need to explain how these Gun Guys have mental problems.--Joe]

He is not immune, no matter where he is. He definitely is in our sights, just as every terrorist, every person who operates against us by means of terror, is a target.

Haim Ramon
Israeli justice minister
June 29, 2006
Warning that Israel could target Khaled Meshaal, Hamas' exiled political chief, based in Damascus, Syria, who has been blamed for blocking Shalit's (a kidnapped Israeli soldier) release by the militants in Gaza.
[Israel also bombed the electrical power generation capabilities of Gaza, and took out three bridges, and arrested dozens of politicians. I say it's a good first step. I still think feeding them to the hogs is the right way to handle the Islamic extremists.--Joe]

Mr. Sugarmann has a post about how terrible the NRA and their lapdogs in the U.S. House are. There is something you need to know about Sugarmann.

In this post he keeps talking about "guns traced to crime". Don't think that slightly odd wording wasn't given very careful thought by Sugarmann.  It implies "guns used in the commission of a crime" but that isn't what is being discussed. The data the ATF has on gun traces includes guns that are stolen property. It's inseparable from the guns used to commit crimes. Sugarmann knows this and deliberately misleads the ignorant.

This type of behavior isn't anything new from Sugarmann. He distorted the truth to pursue his agenda on "assault weapons" and admitted it in the planning of that assault on our liberties.  From the VPC web site:

Assault weapons—just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms—are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.

See also his distortions connecting guns to murder-suicides.

So you think the New York Times are opposed to our war against terrorists? Do you think they are giving aid and comfort to the enemy?

And your point is?

It's what they do:

Even after the failed coup attempt of July 20, 1944, the New York Times commented reproachfully that the conspirators had plotted for an entire year "to kidnap or kill the head of the German state and commander in chief of the Army," something one would not "normally expect within an officers' corps and a civilized government.

From Plotting Hitler's Death: The Story of the German Resistance by Joachim Fest page 165.

Update: Answering questions about the context--the point of that section of the book was that the German resistance against Hitler was unable to even get lip service support. This wasn't limited to just the NYT. It was sort of like they viewed an uprising by the people of Germany to be "unsporting conduct" or something. Here is the additional context from the book ("these Germans" refers to the people plotting to kill and/or overthrow Hitler):

Most of the politicians and military leaders who they unsuccessfully courted in London, The Hague, and Washington still believed, however, that these Germans were committing "treason" and therefore regarded them with contempt. There was no appreciation of the fact that the opponents of the Nazi regime felt guided by new principles and laws whose legitimacy did not end at national borders. Even after the failed coup...

There is nothing more in the book to shed light on what the intent of the NYT was. Was it they wanted really wanted Germany to win? Were they opposed "on principle" to war and believed there would be less fighting/killing if Hitler were left in power even if he was "less than perfect"?  Or was it some sort of "honor" thing the German resistance had violated? A trip into the archives for the original NYT is probably the only way to clarify it further.

Off topic: Welcome to all the visitors brought here by the post on The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler.  I received more visits in one day for this one post than I normally receive for everything in a week. You might also be interested Boomershoot (fun with guns and explosives).

Thanks to Ry for pointing this out.

Some things don't change even in over a 100 years. It's a bit long but it contains background and support for this gem:

And this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully catch hold and lift, are the things that put pure Socialism so far into the future. If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all? A first-mate with knotted club seems necessary; and the dread of getting "the bounce" Saturday night, holds many a worker to his place.

Socialism and communism are doomed to failure because of this fatal flaw in human nature. All successful organizations must address reality and human nature is part of reality. Whether it's socialists, communists, or bigoted anti-gun nuts, they all live in a dream world where human nature is what they wish it to be rather than what it is.

Late in our senior year of college when my wife and I first drove into Seattle for my interview with Boeing Mt. Rainer looked like this.  We were enchanted.

Thanks for the memory Shyam.

I'm only about a year late on this. I'm not big on anniversaries and generally only pay attention if it's socially required behavior.

Alex St. John wrote an article on the 10 year anniversary of Direct-X. I had a minor role in the development of Direct-X 1 and a few of the later versions. What our son James didn't know was that his precious XBoxes were originally intended to be the game console known as "DirectXBox". I told him last night as we were watching another few episodes of Star Gate SG-1 using his XBox 360 as a DVD player. He thought it was quite a let down to know it was named over something as mundane as that.

I should take his autographed (by Eric Engstrom) copy of Renegades of the Empire away from him.

Suppose you could mount a red-dot scope securely on the top of an AK rifle. What would that do for you in terms of target acquistion speed and accuracy? 

The answer is AK clays (~60 MByte .MOV file) are a reality.

Brought to you, in more ways than one, by UltiMAK.

One of these days we are going to make Boomer Clays work.  If nothing else I'm going to fill a milk jug with Boomerite and lob it into the air with giant slingshot for Lyle to shoot.

We recognize the rights of the oppressed to defend themselves against tyrannical and genocidal regimes and oppose a blanket ban on non-state actors.

Robert Joseph
U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control
June 27, 2006
Speaking at the U.N. conference on "illegal small arms".
[Expressed only slightly more forcefully, "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."--Joe]

Last night while helping James put together some of his new furniture for his apartment he asked me, "Are there any sane women out there?" I had to laugh. That's a great question. I laughed even harder when I saw this post by Heather this morning (check out the pictures at the bottom of the post).

I told James I sometimes wonder about that myself. I remember after Barb went through nearly 24 hours of labor, a C-section, having her abdomen opened up with her uterus flopped out on her stomach in a cold room while it was being flushed with saline solution, put back together, numb from the nipples down (the spinal), and was shaking from the cold so bad (and she HATES being cold) that she could barely hold James, her first born.  I was pretty wiped out from just watching it all happen and Barb could tell it was hard on me.  Through her chattering teeth she reassured me, "It will be easier next time."

NEXT TIME?

It could be the hormones or something but women are not sane. If they were it would mean the end of our species. James, you can either isolate yourself or you can try to enjoy the ride. It can be wild at times and it can be great at times but never expect sanity.

The idea is just plain stupid:

Safety catches do not always prevent firearm accidents and even newfangled biometric guns, which check the identity of a user by their fingerprint, cannot stop thieves from using stolen ammunition in other weapons.

The way to make firearms really safe, says Hebert Meyerle of Germany, is to password-protect the ammunition itself.

Meyerle is patenting a design for a modified cartridge that would be fired by a burst of high-frequency radio energy. But the energy would only ignite the charge if a solid-state switch within the cartridge had been activated. This would only happen if a password entered into the gun using a tiny keypad matched one stored in the cartridge.

The people in the comments get it right. The commenters missed (as of my last reading) another concern of mine that the communication between the gun and the ammo might also be electronically jammed.

An idea doesn't have to have a market to patentable and a patent was granted on this bad idea.

I have to wonder why Russia is somewhat supportive of Iran. Iran backed terrorists just killed four Russian diplomats claiming it was because of the Russian involvement in Chechnya. Diplomats! Not just some low life engineers (like me) or soldiers, but diplomats--the official representatives of the Russian government. And with Iran helping with the conventional bomb building in Iraq what do you think will happen if Iran can produce nukes? And if nukes for Iraq isn't worrisome enough for them what makes Russia think that Iranian nukes won't be showing up in Chechnya and Russia?

Now Iran is saying the offer by Russia, the U.S., China, France, and Germany will be responded to in late August. The deadline given to Iran to accept or reject the offer was June 29. That's two months to closer to having a nuclear bomb.

They are stalling for time. Time is something they must not be allowed to have. Perhaps Russia is getting a clue about that.

From the Seattle Times:

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear arguments on whether the federal government must regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant, a case that could have broad implications for utilities, auto manufacturers and other industries nationwide.

The high court agreed Monday to consider whether the Bush administration must regulate carbon dioxide in order to combat global warming.

CO2?????  If it weren't for it being a violation of the various rights (sometimes I wonder why I should respect the rights of those that don't respect my rights to keep and bear arms) the way I would reduce CO2 emissions would be to encourage the environmental wackos to stop breathing.  This attack from the wackos is not about "global warming" or "climate change".  The man-made effects on the global climate are so small it's almost impossible to measure.  Therefore the motivation for these attacks can only be attributed to something else.  Possible candidates for the real reason include anti-capitalism, a scam to make money by the proponents of these claims, and mental disorders.  I'm partial the mental disorder hypothesis myself--When Prophecy Fails successfully explains many of these nut cases.

Did you know that water vapor is a bigger contributor to the green house effect than CO2?  See also Jeff's post on this subject.  And that when gasoline or diesel is burned it produces more water vapor (by volume, not mass) than it does CO2?  Of course we could always limit water vapor emissions from the wackos as well.

The UN claims to serve human freedom and dignity, but gun control often serves as a gateway to tyranny. Tyrants from Hitler to Mao to Stalin have sought to disarm their own citizens, for the simple reason that unarmed people are easier to control. Our Founders, having just expelled the British army, knew that the right to bear arms serves as the guardian of every other right. This is the principle so often ignored by both sides in the gun control debate. Only armed citizens can resist tyrannical government.

Rep. Ron Paul, Texas
June 26, 2006
The Worldwide Gun Control Movment in Texas Straight Talk
Also: June 27, 2006
The Worldwide Gun Control Movement in The Sierra Times

I just finished listening to a book on tape, Hannibal: One Man Against Rome, and I can't help but wonder if some of the methods the Romans used wouldn't be effective in dealing with the "religion of peace" that does things like this:

• 4 Russian hostages executed in Iraq (three beheadings and one shooting, video available if you want it)
• 'Driller killers' spread a new horror in Iraq (toture and killing by "The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq")
• Horror show Iraq's descent (more torture including using electric drills on the eyes and skulls of children)

After all the "religion of peace" appears to be stuck hundreds of years in the past.  Perhaps some ancient methods for dealing with insurrections would be effective.

The passage of the Brady foolishness was a foregone conclusion in Washington - despite its blatant unconstitutionality - as soon as we lost the election of `92, thus it comes as no surprise. What is really awful is the unblushing profession that while the bill itself will do nothing at all, it is still necessary to "make a statement," as if the legislators meant that they were going to do something. You and I will not be inconvenienced by any five day waiting period, since we already have our guns, as all proper members of the United States Militia must have. The idea that our lawmakers can profit from doing something silly, and admitting that it is silly, makes one more than ever doubtful about the merit of the democratic process. Alcibiades pointed out that it would never work, and that was some four-hundred years before Christ. Perhaps he was right after all. 

Jeff Cooper
Jeff Cooper's Commentaries
Vol. 1, No. 11
10 December 1993
[I don't think it can seriously be claimed that the democratic process "will never work".  It doesn't work as well as we would like but it does work better than anything else that has ever been tried.  Unfortunately human nature is such that those that crave the power of government seldom have the strength of character to abide by the restrictions placed upon them by the same laws that give them their power.--Joe]

There once was a young man named Gene
who invented a screwing machine.
Concave and convex,
it served either sex,
and it played with itself in between.

Ho-hum.  This guy is worried about a "code of ethics" for robots:

THE race is on to keep humans one step ahead of robots: an international team of scientists and academics is to publish a “code of ethics” for machines as they become more and more sophisticated.

Although the nightmare vision of a Terminator world controlled by machines may seem fanciful, scientists believe the boundaries for human-robot interaction must be set now — before super-intelligent robots develop beyond our control.

“There are two levels of priority,” said Gianmarco Verruggio, a roboticist at the Institute of Intelligent Systems for Automation in Genoa, northern Italy, and chief architect of the guide, to be published next month. “We have to manage the ethics of the scientists making the robots and the artificial ethics inside the robots.”

...

“Security, safety and sex are the big concerns,” said Henrik Christensen, a member of the Euron ethics group. How far should robots be allowed to influence people’s lives? How can accidents be avoided? Can deliberate harm be prevented? And what happens if robots turn out to be sexy?

...

Other dilemmas may arrive sooner than we think, says Christensen. “People are going to be having sex with robots within five years,” he said. So should limits be set on the appearance, for example, of such robotic sex toys?

People have been having sex with machines for decades.  I've commented on this before:

• Neal Boortz on the history of the vibrator
• Pushing the technological envelope with teledildonics
• A better mouse trap

Ethics for robots?  That's a nice thought but futile.  If a market exists it will be met.  If whether it's to wage war, perform assassinations, or brothels filled with mechanical sex machines there will be some to supply the programming to accomplish the task if there is enough money on the table for the task.  Asimov's three laws will be simply commented out in the code.

I just stumbled (with the help of Joel Rosenberg) onto something very interesting.  The bigoted "Gun Guys" (and their Orwellian named Freedom State Alliance umbrella organization) I mention far too frequently are supported by a $650,000 grant (over 18 months) from the Joyce Foundation.  This grant money is to Mark Karlin & Associates:

To support the continued efforts of its Freedom States Alliance, a project to promote financial self-sufficiency and effective media, public, and policy-maker education efforts among gun violence prevention groups, especially those in Illinois and Wisconsin.

I have often wondered how, with such small memberships, these anti-gun groups can afford to do what they do. Now we know. I wish I could get $400K/year to run some pro-gun websites and blog about gun rights.

To further emphasis their Orwellian nature read the Freedom States Alliance news release:

“But the energy we're seeing from communities that are rising up against the gun lobby is amazing.  Yes it will take time to take back our country held hostage by gun violence, but if it's one thing Americans are good at, it's fighting for our freedom. We're here to declare our freedom from gun violence and our Internet strategy is going to carry that message like never before.”

"Fighting for freedom" by attempting to ban guns.  You can't get much more Orwellian than that.

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta just resigned. Now if they would just get rid of the rest of the Mineta minions.  These anti-gun bigots made it extremely difficult for airline pilots to carry firearms and in general have no clue about airplane or even security in general.  As Michelle Malkin says, "Finally."

The great object is that every man be armed.  Everyone who is able may have a gun.

Patrick Henry
In the Virginia Convention on the ratification of the Constitution

Brady Campaign Dismisses Influence of College Gun Clubs.  It sounds like a sour grapes story to me.

This picture was sent to me by Red.

It's not that I have any great love for the repressive, socialist pit of Chicago but I am glad they arrested these threats to humanity before they blew up the Sears tower:

MIAMI — Seven people were arrested Thursday in connection with the early stages of a plot to attack Chicago's Sears Tower and other buildings in the U.S., including the FBI office here, a federal law enforcement official said.

As part of the raids related to the arrests, FBI agents swarmed a warehouse in Miami's Liberty City area, using a blowtorch to take off a metal door. One neighbor said the suspects had been sleeping in the warehouse while running what seemed to be a "military boot camp."

The official told The Associated Press the alleged plotters were mainly Americans with no apparent ties to al-Qaida or other foreign terrorist organizations. He spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to pre-empt news conferences planned for Friday in Washington and Miami.

Miami U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta said in a statement that the investigation was an ongoing operation and that more details would be released Friday.

...

The men slept in the warehouse, said Tashawn Rose, 29. "They would come out late at night and exercise. It seemed like a military boot camp that they were working on there. They would come out and stand guard."

She talked to one of the men about a month ago: "They seemed brainwashed. They said they had given their lives to Allah."

Just last Friday I talking to someone that grew up in Lebanan and he used the same phrase in regards to the Muslim extremists, "brainwashed".

I was going to comment on this but Jeff did a better job that I would have.  I've commented on her so many times before I would just be repeating myself.

These are not the usual sort of Darwin stories of people too stupid to live.  This is entirely different.  They people are too mentally whacked to have sex.

First this nut case from England:

Hunt, who made his fortune with his eponymous television fishing series, last month tearfully confessed to cheating on his wife in a tabloid newspaper interview and later on his radio station. Hunt said he paid up to $1000 a week for sex...

...

"But there were no regular payments. There was a sum paid, when I handed over the notes and tape - a taped conversation, little love notes, Christmas wishes, notes to help me buy a car - I was asked to hand them over, which I did," Ms Hood said.

"I was offered a sum (to end the relationship) but it wasn't $50,000."

She said she had been questioned by police and the prostitutes collective after the story broke and that the revelations had shattered her life.

However, she was happy to reveal intimate details of their mostly public encounters in which she remained clothed but he would strip naked.

"He would arrange to meet me - usually in a laneway - always somewhere public ... I believe he got off on the fact that we might get caught," she said. "I was to look him straight in the eyes and to breathe on him.

"I would tell him he was wonderful, then he would work himself into a state of excitement, shouting: 'Oh my God, you are going to kill me; you're going to give me a heart attack'. "He was affectionate, very touchy-feely leading up to this. Then he'd either, in the car or out of it, depending on how cold it was, fling off all his clothes. The more public, the greater the danger and the more exciting Rex apparently found it," Ms Hood said.

So he paid large sums of money for sex but never got around to actually having sex--he just took his clothes off.

Next we have the entire nation of Japan that is dying off because having a relationship is "tiresome":

MORE sex. That's what one expert says is needed to solve Japan's baby shortage.

"Japanese people simply aren't having sex," Dr Kunio Kitamura, director of the Japan Family Planning Association, was quoted as saying by the Japan Times, an English language daily.

An association survey of 936 people between the ages of 16 and 49 showed 31 per cent had not had sex for more than a month "for no particular reason" – a condition known as "sexless".

"As much as subsidies and welfare programs are important, sexlessness is also a critical issue in this problem."

Japan's fertility rate – the average number of children a woman bears in her lifetime – fell to an all-time low of 1.25 last year. Demographers say a rate of 2.1 is needed to keep a population from declining.

...

44 per cent of the people who said they were not having much sex felt that having a relationship with the opposite sex was "very tiresome" or "tiresome".

Their is a technical term used to describe the end point these sort of behaviors lead to--extinction.

It's already against the law to commit violent acts against innocent civilians.  More laws and/or treaties won't help.  Allowing civilians to defend themselves is the only effective way for civilians to be protected.  Just the opposite of what the U.N. bigots are trying to accomplish:

Amnesty International, Oxfam International and the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) are pushing for a treaty to "protect civilians from armed violence."

Those three groups -- which have formed a coalition called the Control Arms Campaign -- say their goal is to reduce arms proliferation and misuse -- "and to convince governments to introduce global principles to regulate the transfers of weapons." They are urging the United Nations to impose a "binding arms trade treaty."

These guys want guns to remain in the hands of the governments.  And governments were the biggest perpetrators of violence against innocents in the last century and I expect they will be in this century too.  The right to keep and bear arms is an inalienable right.  It can only be infringed, not granted or denied.

Alan Gottlieb, of course, gets in right (in the same article):

Had it not been for America, all of Europe might be speaking German. Were America not the 'great arsenal of democracy' that President Franklin D. Roosevelt described in 1940, the world would be a far different place, and the sanctimonious bureaucrats at the U.N. might instead be working in labor camps.

...

We have done much for the U.N., and in return, the organization has hosted despots, tyrants and dictators whose record of human rights abuses, aggression and genocide speaks for itself.

Refuse to be a victim.  That's something our TSA apparently doesn't understand.  China is teaching their flight attendants to do some serious ass kicking.  I think I'd add an on-board pig to start the clean up before the plane reached it's destination though.  Allowing the passengers to be armed is also high on my list.  What we have now is just a joke.

If this ever happens to me or anyone I care about I will utilize 20 pounds of HE to demonstrate my displeasure with their toys.  Anyone that tries to stop me will have their bullet riddled carcass used for charge confinement.  The video of THAT will then be posted on the Internet.

The right to private property is the Englishman’s right to his castle. This looks to me like the point where Labour has overstepped the mark into behaving more like a dictatorship than a democratic government.

I think anybody whose property is seized under this law should go straight to court to see if a judge thinks it should stand.

Robert Whelan
Representative of Civitas
From Homes of the dead to be seized by the state
June 17, 2006, Daily Mail
[Perhaps Mr. Whelan is using English understatement because in my viewpoint the English politicians started behaving like a dictatorship when they started putting restrictions on firearms.  And when they seize the property of the dead, remove the contents, and rent it out for their own gain it's way past the point of "seeing a judge things it should stand".  It's time to exercise your right to keep and bear arms.  But the people are just now realizing they waited too long to do that.  HT to Ry for pointing this out.--Joe]

Lyle (and I think Meredith) wanted a penis cake. Enjoy.

{Thank you Xenia for the link.}

...there's no reason to have a gun around in the first place. A gun isn't used to protect anything. It's used to kill.

Your Gun Guys Daily Update
June 21, 2006
Email from The Gun Guys
[This nutcase must think all policemen carrying guns are government assassins.  This is a reminder that most anti-gun people have mental problems.-Joe]

Barbarism:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 20 — The American military said today that it had found the remains of what appears to be the two American soldiers captured by insurgents last week in an ambush south of the capital, and a senior Iraqi military official said the two men had been "brutally tortured."

Major General William B. Caldwell IV, the American military spokesman, said "the remains" of what are believed to be the two Americans were found near a power plant in the vicinity of Yusefiya, about three miles from the site were they had been captured by insurgents.

General Caldwell declined to speak in detail about the physical condition of those who had been found, but he said that the cause of death could not be determined. He said the remains of the men would be sent to the United States for DNA testing to determine definitively their identities. That seemed to suggest that the two Americans had been wounded or mutilated beyond recognition.

Maj. Gen. Abdul Azziz Mohammed Jassim, the chief of operations of the Ministry of Defense, said that he had seen an official report and that he could confirm the two Americans had been "killed in a very brutal way and tortured."

"There were traces of torture on their bodies, very clear traces," General Jassim said. "It was a brutal torture. The torture was something unnatural."

If those are the rules they are playing by then we should play by the same rules.  Unless they surrender and/or cooperate with allied forces our treating of their dead, wounded, and captured "with respect" makes us appear weak to them. Our rules of war lower the "cost" for them to be at war with us.  The lower the cost for them the longer we will be at war and the more dead of our own we will have to endure.  We need to raise the cost.  Feed them to the hogs and prevent them from getting their 72 virgins.  We need to maximize their cost in every way we can.

This barbaric act will virtually ensure that no more U.S. soldiers will be taken alive or at least conscious.  They will fight to the last bullet and last ounce of strength.

We announce the good news to our Islamic nation that we executed God's will and slaughtered the two crusader animals we had in captivity. And God has given our Emir, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, the good fortune of carrying out the legitimate court's command in person.

Mujahedeen Shura Council
A group linked to al Qaeda
CNN June 20, 2006
U.S.: Two missing soldiers found dead
[The Geneva and Hague Conventions do not apply to these Muslim extremists who do not abide by it themselves.  We need to start feeding them, dead or alive, to the hogs.--Joe]

The gun registry registers legal guns. Gangsters don't register their guns.

Tony Warr
June 18, 2006
Toronto's deputy police chief
Gun Control System Targeted in Canada

Ms. Cuiker made a slip of the tongue (or pen) and said the following in an LA Times article about the Canadian gun registry:

Although it doesn't directly address the problem of illegal handguns, the registry helps create a culture in which guns are seen as dangerous...

As gun rights activists have been saying for years, they want to demonize us.  It's not about saving lives or facts, these laws they want passed are about demonizing gun owners.  It's about creating the appearance of danger in spite of the facts.

If you want a gun, you can get one in a day, a couple of hours maybe.  The gun registry hasn't made any difference on that.

Andrew Bacchus
Founder of Toronto's Vice Lords gang who is now working with Breaking the Cycle, a gang-exiting program
June 18, 2006
Gun Control System Targeted in Canada

To hell with the 72 virgins.  I don't want to be a martyr if that's the case.  Give me three good whores.

Marty Smith
June 17, 2006

The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.

Abbie Hoffman
[I admire his insight, his energy and his ability to accomplish things even though many of his goals were misguided.--Joe]

You just have to be thankful he wasn't an underwear bomber.

Bruce Schneier
TALES FROM THE CRYPT(OGRAPHER)
Bostons weekly dig
In response to a comment about the TSA requiring the removal of shoes at airport "security" check points because there was one Islamic extremist that tried to blow up a plane with a bomb hidden in his shoe.
[Bruce agrees with me that existing airport "security" is less than worthless.  Read the article.--Joe]

It's the knife culture that is out of control!  Not the gun culture!  And it's in the anti-gun bigot Bloomberg's city too:

NEW YORK — Police suspect a knife-wielding homeless man went on a rampage, stabbing four people in a bloody 12-hour span, including two Canadian tourists, before police finally nabbed him early Wednesday.

Kenny Alexis, 21, was taken into custody about 4:15 a.m. outside a fast-food restaurant in midtown Manhattan shortly after the two Canadian women were stabbed, police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.

The women were identified as Melanie Carrier, 22, and Audrey Perrier, 25, both of Montreal.

Carrier remained in hospital Wednesday afternoon, awaiting surgery on her lower back, police said. Perrier was treated and released.

The other two victims, a man from Texas and another man not identified, were in hospital. All of the victims are expected to survive.

Police say Alexis had in his possession the knife used in the attack on the two women and investigators were attempting to link it to two separate subway ambushes that took place earlier.

They complain about "silencers" and "high capacity guns" but they don't seem to realize a knife is a lot like a suppressed (very short ranged) gun you don't have to stop and reload.

I've updated the Bomb Help 2005 web page.  There are a lot more I need to put up--including a bunch from 2006.  I just haven't gotten around to getting their email and my responses on the website.  I just hadn't felt like responding to these clueless twerps for the last year.  I'd look at their messages and draw a blank so they just queued up in my "Bomb help" folder until today.  Then I sort of cut loose when a new one came in today.  Altogether, I think there was 23 of them I responded to today. The people on the Bomb Help Fan Club email list probably thought I was spamming them. 

My favorites from this batch are here:

• A little fun
• Enemy at school
• big 1s

Oh, I'm getting responses back from some of them too.  This could be lots of fun.

Ry has put up a video documenting some people with their first experience. They seem to like it. I know I do. It's safe for work in all but the most bigoted of work environments.

Overtime has both it's advantages and disadvantages.  The increased pay is nice but the extra hours are seldom fun even if you enjoy your work.  In this case I'm sure it literally sucks:

BERLIN: Sex workers in Berlin have gone into extra time at the World Cup and are doing double shifts to cash in, a German newspaper said on Wednesday.

“Berlin’s hookers are groaning - all brothels are creaking at the seams,” mass daily Bild reported. “In some establishments the girls already have to put in double shifts owing to the World Cup,” the paper added, saying clients were virtually queuing up to get in to the host nation’s ‘Freudenhauser’ (literally, joy houses). One taxi driver was quoted as saying he had taken a fare from four would-be customers of some of the capital’s estimated 8,000 prostitutes.

“But they were turned away. The places are too full.” German police said last week there were no signs of forced prostitution being on the rise. Be that as it may, with around a million fans having come over for the month-long football showpiece and with prostitution legal in Germany, supply is clearly meeting demand. Bild quoted Josephine Conte of Berlin’s upmarket Bel Ami establishment, one of 400 “joy houses” in the city, as saying demand had gone through the roof and that her employees were having to put in “special shifts.”

She explained: “We have VIP reservations right through to the end of the tournament. Sometimes we don’t know where to put all the men!” According to ‘Joy’, a 21-year-old woman doing the morning shift with seven colleagues, “the guys come for a massage as they want to relax before the game.” But “the guests must be patient with waiting times of up to two hours,” according to Conte. It’s hard work, says another ‘Joy,’ a blonde aged 23 who says she sometimes puts in a 16-hour day, though some of that is on call after a regular shift.

“We are earning as much in one day as we normally would in a week. “But after the World Cup I’ll need a holiday.”

A high school teacher posts on his blog a picture of a cake one of his female students decorated as a vagina during menstruation.  Only some sort of pervert that would do this, right? 

Context is important. It was from Xenia's anthology.  I'm fine with it.  Anyone going moonbatty on this guy will get my ridicule (okay, so it's not that big of a threat).

I got an email at work yesterday saying I needed to update all my Windows machines.  I did so and it seemed like there were a LOT of updates.  I updated my boxes at my "home" in the Seattle area and had James (who is staying with me until he can move into his new apartment tomorrow) do the same.  It turns out there were a very large number of updates released by Microsoft yesteday and a lot of them were for security vulnerabilities.

The vulnerabilities being fixed makes them known to attackers. If you haven't updated your computer after the fixes have been released then you are, in most cases, more vulnerable than before they were released. Update your computer now.

The right of citizens to be safe in their homes and communities can never be subject to a popular vote.

It is astonishing that in a city where the leaders preach how open they are to diversity, they encouraged voters to blindly march to the polls last November to practice a blatant, egregious and despicable form of social bigotry against their neighbors and fellow citizens.

Working to deprive others of their property and their right to self-defense just because you don't like firearms is morally repugnant, and with today's ruling, the people who pushed Proposition H last fall should feel ashamed of themselves.

Alan Gottlieb
Second Amendment Foundation
June 13, 2006
Judge Rejects San Francisco's Handgun Ban
[I'm pleased SAF/CCRKBA is continuing to push the bigotry meme.  Also of interest is the city bigots announced today they are going to appeal the decision.--Joe]

It would be unreasonable to expect the HTML parser to be able to understand every language both present and future. (At least not until clairvoyance has been perfected.)

Raymond Chen
June 5, 2006
[I absolutely love this quote.  Understatement in the first sentence followed by the only known exception to the stated rule.  Succinct yet complete encapsulation of the situation.  Some people get annoyed at me when I find exceptions to their overly broad generalizations but I think they are an essential component of understanding the situation and almost always just trying to help.  Today, as most days, Raymond is my technological and word-smithing hero.-Joe]

You probably have to be a numbers geek to enjoy this but since this is my blog and I am a numbers geek you get the "benefits".  Clayton Cramer computes how hated you are based on the number of crimes committed against various groups (racial, sexual orientation, and religious belief) as compared to what is to be expected from your representation in the population.  So for example, if the group you belong to composes 10% of the U.S. population yet suffers 20% of the hate crimes you are hated more than a group that composes 80% of the population and suffers 40% of the hate crimes. 

What group do you think is the most hated?  Blacks maybe?  They used to get lynched for looking at white women "the wrong way".  Nope, not the most hated anymore.

What about Jews?  They were considered the "spawn of the devil", "controlled the banks", and "vermin that spread disease."  Nazi Germany was implementing the "Final Solution" just 65 years ago.  There still must be a lot of residual hate for them, right?  Not all that much in this country anyway.  In the Mideast I'm sure it's tough to top their score.

Maybe it's the Muslims.  It was Muslim extremists that perpetrated 9-11, the first World Trade Center bombing, the Beslan school hostage crisis, and nearly all the casualties of our armed forces in the last few years.  Surely they are the most hated.  Nope.

What about homosexuals?  The Pink Pistols haven't really caught on enough to prevent gay bashing, right?  I'm not sure about the effect of the Pink Pistols on hate crimes against gays but homosexuals only come in at number two.

The most hated group is not identified by religion or sexual orientation.  This group is identified by "race" (the definition of "race" is a topic for another time) and I'm a member.  Read the Clayton's post for details.  This runs counter to the Seattle School Districts definition of racist however.

Update: I fixed the example in the first paragraph.  I was in a hurry and made a major error in my haste which defeated my attempt at clarification.

Sarah Thompson, M.D. gives us an expanded version of the mental issues of the anti-gun bigots I posted about a year ago.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, al Qaeda has taken a stand.

They know that if progress and democracy take root in those two previously failed and terrorized states, then their values of violence and hatred against those who disagree with them will in turn be uprooted.

That's why they fight and why they will continue to fight very hard.

For three years, al Qaeda have sought to murder innocent people, promote sectarian killing and wreck the democratic process in Iraq.

This terrorism is a global movement. Their attack in Iraq has only ever been part of a wider attack that they have carried into conflicts and countries the world over.

Indeed, there is barely a major nation in the world that has not felt the outreach of their evil.

Defeat them in Iraq and we will defeat them everywhere.

We need to do so armed, of course, with weapons, but also with one simple idea -- that where people want to live in freedom and be governed by democracy, they should be able to do so and the world should stand united behind them.

In Iraq today, that idea has shown its worth.

Tony Blair
Prime Minister of Britain
June 8, 2006
Blair: Blow to al Qaeda everywhere
CNN

That' my youngest daughter behind the camera and my (so called) adopted daughter in front of the lens.  I'm impressed by both.  My favorite of the collection:

Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and ... know nothing but the word of God.

Martin Luther
[I admire Luther for his honesty even though I dispise his contempt for reason and truth. Most present day haters of reason, nearly all advocates of gun control, are not nearly so open about it.--Joe]

In the U.S. we have a gun culture--NRA, SAF, CCRKBA, GOA, KABA, JPFO, USPSA, bloggers, and even Boomershoot and I are a small part of it. And even though all the these organizations and people only advocate legal activities we still get blamed for the illegal use of guns. Our culture is under attack by bigots with mental problems who can't answer Just One Question. 

But have you wondered what the bigots would say if our gun culture was abolished? Would they then be happy and stop their whining about freedom? In England nearly all guns are banned yet they still have violent crime. So what do the like-minded bigots say there? No big surprise--it's the knife culture:

...he was appalled at Britain's knife culture.

Kamondo Mulumbu said: "Knives are out of control. Most young people are walking around with them."

These bigots are people that cannot tolerate freedom. They demand their freedoms be taken from them and others. They yearn for a utopia that cannot exist and paradoxically the perceived path to an Elysium Field is the path to a hell on earth. You can chose to fight them now on the gun issue or you can attempt to fight them later when even knives have been abolished. Adapt Churchill's quote to the situation as necessary. It's not just gun or knife culture that is under attack, it's the culture of freedom.

Ry says awesome.  That is an understatement.  Among the usual things to wonder about in this video I wonder about the air density.  How did he know it would be safe at that altitude?  The glide ratio is going to be severely affected compared to doing the same stunt at sea level.

Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but -- more frequently than not -- struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.

Martin Luther
[The benefits of socialism, communism, and gun control are faiths as well.  Factual data and reason are hated by most, no matter how well intentioned, promoters of those belief systems.--Joe]

Some moderate Muslims in Canada are asking for help in preventing their youth from becoming extremists.  This is a good sign:

OTTAWA—Canada's Muslim community is asking for high-level political assistance, including the help of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, to weed out extremists who are preying on young people.

"We're not here to say we don't have an issue. Of course we have an issue, but we can't deal with it ourselves," social worker Shahina Siddiqui, president of the Islamic Social Services Association, told a news conference yesterday.

"We are part of the Canadian society and so we demand that the Canadian society come forward and help us to root out this."

All the alternatives to a large majority of Muslims helping to end the violence of the extremists are very unpleasant.

Given:
Bush derangement syndrome describes some of the symptoms in general terms. It does not explain why it occurs and hence is of little use in prevention and cure.  Other, more specific, examples of irrational beliefs include:

• Grumpy Old Man--How the next election will be won
• Michelle Malkin--I CALL IT "HATE COUTURE"
• Expose the left--Nick Berg’s Father Blame Bush For His Son’s Beheading, Not Zarqawi (VIDEO)
• It's hopeless
• Elections, Cease Fear, and The Pink Pistols
• The Gallery of "Bush = Hitler" Allusions
• Barking Moonbat Early Warning System

1. Easily available weapons is good public policy because they enable innocent people to defend themselves against violent criminals.
2. Easily available weapons is poor public policy because they enable violent criminals to commit violent acts against innocent people.

Some people promoting hypothesis 1 go beyond claiming they are trying to save lives by enabling self-defense.  These people may claim their opponents have the intent to enable evil acts (socialism, communism, genocide, etc.)  Some people promoting hypothesis 2 go beyond claiming they are trying to save innocent lives by removing weapons from potential criminals.  These people may claim their opponents do not care about the loss of innocent lives and are motivated by money from gun and ammunition sales or the mere enjoyment of their hobby.  

In the process of promoting their beliefs both sides will make predictions (prophecies) about the consequences of agreeing and/or not agreeing with them.  When those predictions fail to come about they are in the situation of a failed prophecy as described by the book.  Those people, given certain conditions, will not admit they were wrong and change their beliefs but will instead increase their promotion (proselyting) of their belief system and make new, typically even grander, predications of the adverse results if people fail to adhere to their belief system.  

Hence, people opposed to the Bush administration end up claiming President Bush is the equivalent of Adolf Hitler and the gun controller types ban certain types of clothes when gun bans fail to reduce crime.

We want to give you the joyous news of the martyrdom of the mujahed sheik Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The death of our leaders is life for us. It will only increase our persistence in continuing holy war so that the word of God will be supreme.

Abu Abdel-Rahman al-Iraqi
Identified as the deputy "emir" or leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.
June 6, 2006
Quad Cities Times--Spiritual adviser led to al-Zarqawi
[Note the goal, that the word of his God to be supreme and hence the end of human rights as we know them.  It also sounds to me like a example for When Prophecy Fails.--Joe]

We already know The Gun Guys have mental problems, but beyond the known problems there is even more.  Which do you think it is?  Do they have reading comprehension problems? Arithmetic problems? Or maybe both? Here's the evidence, you decide, from an email I received today:

But the most important of these is definitely the "one handgun every three months" law.  Currently, anyone legally able to buy one gun can legally buy any number of them-- illegal gun dealers know this, and therefore use it to buy weapons in bulk, which they then sell to criminals.  This law cuts that right out, and doesn't come close to bothering "law-abiding gun owners,"  Who legitimately needs to buy 36 new guns every year?  A similar law is being worked on in Pennsylvania right now, which would actually limit the purchase of handguns to one every month.  And if you really need to buy more than 12 handguns per year, you should get another hobby.

If he didn't understand one "handgun every three months" meant something different than "three handguns every month" it was a reading comprehension problem.  If he mixed up multiplication and division then it is a serious arithmetic deficiency.  I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming he knows better than to believe there are 58 months in a year but with all the mental problems he has the possibility exists he could be living in some sort of imaginary alternate universe.

If you are ever asked why limiting your purchase rate is a bad idea here are some answers:

• Registration:  In order to enforce laws such as these registration of all (hand)gun sales with automated retrieval of the data is required.  If you don't understand what is wrong with that then you have more reading to do (also here and Molon Labe). 
• Legitimacy:  The constitution (Federal and most states) protect the right to keep and bear arms.  Where did they acquire the authority to ignore the constitution?  And if they claim "reasonable regulation" such as "shouting fire in a crowded theater" comparing it to the First Amendment you answer that if they are allowed the power to restrict you to one gun a month then they also have the power to restrict it to one per year, one per lifetime, or ownership of only one gun at a time.  A better comparison would being only allowed one letter to your congress critter each year, or one blog posting per week.
• Effectiveness: It's already illegal for convicted felons to own firearms.  A law prohibiting you and I from buying more than one gun every N units of time will not matter to them.  Such a law would not be any more effective than the current laws against the manufacture, sale, purchase, and use of some recreational drugs.

And the best answer is, "It's a bad idea because no one has yet answered Just One Question."

Fortunately the two 500 pound bombs didn't reduce him to his molecular components:

In fact he lived for a few minutes after the bombs blew the house into rubble.  In his last minutes he had the opportunity to see the faces those who he should have worshiped--those who brought the fist of god down upon his head:

The house, and all inside it, was wiped out. However, Jordanian sources last night said Zarqawi did not die instantly. Though mortally wounded, he was alive when Iraqi and US troops arrived on the scene. His brutal reign ended 10 minutes after the bombs fell. Ten others died with him, among them a chief aide and two women.

There is video showing the bombs being dropped but the video I really want to see publicized is that of his remains being excreted from the ass of a pig.

I've been hearing about the 7.62x39 ammo shortage and high prices for sometime now.  I didn't realize it was Hillary Clinton's fault and wouldn't have believed if I didn't have these additional details:

American defence officials have secretly requested a "prodigious quantity" of ammunition from Russia to supply the Afghan army in case a Democrat president takes over in Washington and pulls out US troops.

The Daily Telegraph can disclose that Pentagon chiefs have asked arms suppliers for a quote on a vast amount of ordnance, including more than 78 million rounds of AK47 ammunition, 100,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 12,000 tank shells - equivalent to about 15 times the British Army's annual requirements.

The Bush administration is said to want the deal because of worries that the next president could be a Democrat, possibly Hillary Clinton, who may abandon Afghanistan.

...

Defence specialists said Russian arms chiefs at first "fell about laughing" because they thought the order was a joke when it arrived this month.

But with the Americans said to be pressing for a price and earliest delivery date, the request is being rapidly processed and exports could begin before the end of this year.

The "decade's worth" of ammunition will give the Afghan National Army a vast arsenal to deal with Taliban or drug warlords if Washington withdraws its troops.

...

The order also suggests the Afghan army will be equipped with T62 tanks, Mi24 Hind attack helicopters and Spandrel anti-tank missiles.

If fully trained it will provide a formidable force against insurgents and potential foreign aggressors, including Pakistan where tensions are high on the southern border.

"This is completely refitting the Afghan army for the long term and it should stop a resurgence of the Taliban in its tracks," a British arms expert said. "The order will take a year to make and deliver but the Russians are used to large quantities."

...

Some observers pointed to the irony of the deal, because when the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan the Americans sold Stinger surface-to- air missiles to the Mujahideen to enable them to shoot down Moscow's aircraft.

Al-Zarqawi was eliminated.

Nouri al-Malki
Prime Minister of Iraq
June 8, 2006
Top terrorist killed in air raid
See also:

• Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Killed in Bombing Raid
• Iraq says tip on Al-Zarqawi' whereabouts provided by natives
• Jordan provided information that helped lead the U-S to al-Zarqawi
• Jordan Intelligence Helped U.S. Track Al-Zarqawi
• Blair: Blow to al Qaeda everywhere
• President Bush on the Death of Zarqawi

[There was no competition for today's "Quote of the day".--Joe]

Via Bruce Schneier.

In this case the experts are the people that make a living selling the fake cards:

(AP) Luis Hernandez just laughs as he sells fake driver's licenses and Social Security cards to illegal immigrants near a park known for shady deals. The joke _ to him and others in his line of work _ is the government's promise to put people like him out of business with a tamperproof national ID card.

"One way or another, we'll always find a way," said Hernandez, 35, a sidewalk operator who is part of a complex counterfeiting network around MacArthur Park, where authentic-looking IDs are available for as little as $150.

Basically it's a unsolvable problem that, even if successful, won't solve the problems the government wants it to solve.

Hey PNNL felons!

Remember the email you sent to the Department of Energy?  The one where you said I used government computers for hosting personal websites?  You might want to read this.  Plus I know another lie too--a much bigger and more blatant lie by one of your felonious coworkers.  I'm just not telling you the details of what I know about it right now.

The recent arrests of Muslim extremists in Canada weren't isolated and weren't limited to just that country:

AN INTERNET trail left by a British computer expert has led investigators to an intricate terror network spreading from the backstreets of Baghdad through cells of young militants living in European capitals to Islamic extremists plotting car-bomb attacks in North America.

For nine months police and intelligence agents in eight countries have patiently worked through a forest of e-mails and intercepted telephone calls that have so far led to the arrest of up to 30 men.

...

A senior security source told The Times that there is a far greater number of terror networks operating in Britain than had been thought, all using the internet to plot attacks here and abroad.

A series of criminal trials in Britain, the US, Canada and Bosnia over the coming months will determine whether the much maligned Western security agencies have successfully disrupted a dangerous ring of al-Qaeda sympathisers or been duped by faulty intelligence.

...

The arrest of 17 suspects, many of them teenagers, picked up in the suburbs of Toronto at the weekend is said to be the latest stage in dismantling a terrorist nexus that, worryingly, has its links with one of the world’s most wanted men — Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

On his website al-Zarqawi has encouraged young Muslims to take up the fight in their own countries and spread his religious war further than Iraq and Afghanistan.

One aim is to create an army of “white-skinned” militants, men born in Europe and America who can convert to Islam and become harder for the authorities to detect as they cross the world on their missions, including suicide attacks. Using skilled computer operators around the world, al-Zarqawi’s outfit passes on bombmaking manuals, advice on how to sustain terror cells and even ways to use credit card fraud to hack into vital internet sites.

...

A series of raids in recent months in a number of Europe’s capitals and in Atlanta in the US has passed virtually unannounced.

One US official told the Wall Street Journal: “We let the operation run as long as we had to make sure we could identify as many would-be terrorist operators as we could and then picked them off one, two, three and finally 17 at a time.”

What will it take for people to realize we are in the middle of WW III with the front lines in our own cities?  And furthermore our enemy is composed of up to a billion people.

One might assume Mr. Brown thinks there should be some "common sense" restrictions on our rights guaranteed by the First Amendment:

In a highly unusual instance of a United Nations official singling out an individual country for criticism, Mr. Malloch Brown said that although the United States was constructively engaged with the United Nations in many areas, the American public was shielded from knowledge of that by Washington's tolerance of what he called "too much unchecked U.N.-bashing and stereotyping."

"Much of the public discourse that reaches the U.S. heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News," he said.

Mr. Brown forgets that in the United States we are not subjects of the politicians or "The Crown".  Here the politicians are the servants of the citizens.  But I guess that is understandable, the politicians here frequently forget it also.  This is why we have the Second Amendment--our other communication tool (as Ry once described the pistol on my belt next to my cellphone).

Thanks to Michelle Malkin for bringing this to my attention.

One of my children's favorite high-school teachers (and a former Marine and a Boomershooter), Mr. Kaag, wrote to tell me:

I know that you probably have the complete Heinlein in a jumble of various paperback and hardback editions, as I do.

Did you know that after The Master died, Virginia renewed all of the copyrights? The lady has a whim of steel---as the most popular Science Fiction writer ever, his publisher wanted to continue to print copies of the canon, and when they asked her for permission, she acceded. But, and here's the kicker, she politely required they put back in all of the stuff they had taken out because it wasn't "politically-correct", like the pro-gun parts of "Red Planet". So the Heinlein published in the last 5 years or so is all unexpurgated. You might want some new copies. There's a bunch more to "Stranger", for example.

And speaking of which, Virginia is no longer among us and the Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Foundation has done a joint venture with Meisha-Merlin Books, and is publishing the complete collection of Heinlein, including some previously-unpublished articles and speeches, in a fine leather-bound collection for about $2500 on up.

Here's the URL: www.meishamerlin.com

I am saving up my shekels.

With a $2200 minimum entry price I'm going to have to pass but I'll do some drooling.

The National Firearms Assocation (Canada) explains why the anti-gun bigots at the UN are nuts:

As you have probably noticed, the UN methods of "eliminating the illegal circulation of small arms and light weapons" have been quite unsuccessful. This paper explains some of the reasons why that is so.

...

The Programme of Action suffers, in this writer's opinion, from a prejudice. It seems to have been written by someone who assumed that it is the availability of a weapon that causes violent criminal acts. That is an untrue assumption. If it were true, every nation would have to mount continuous campaigns to deter husbands and wives from quarrelling in the kitchen, because knives are readily available in every kitchen. That is not necessary because ordinary people do not become murderous criminals simply because a weapon is easily available.

...

Now let us look at the Programme of Action. It is unfortunate, but true, that attempts to deal with complex situations are usually coloured by the type of expertise available. In this case, the type of expertise available when the Programme of Action was drafted and then adopted was apparently administrative expertise, not likely to produce successful ways of dealing with situations that range from quasi-legal to flatly illegal. Administrative methods are good for dealing with legal transactions by persons firmly determined to stay within the law. They are remarkably poor at dealing with illegal ownership, illegal procuring, illegal sales, illegal trades of goods for goods, illegal shipments, smuggling, and other illegal transactions.

...

So--what are the actual effects of laws based on the British theory and the American theory, as opposed to the anticipated effects, now that we have had a few years to study them?

In the U.S., the latest FBI annual report statistics showed that the overall national violent crime rate for 2004 had decreased for the thirteenth consecutive year (starting in 1991), and had reached a 30-year low. As a check, the latest Bureau of Justice statistics showed that the overall national violent crime rate had reached a 32-year low in 2004.

The FBI data also show that in 2004, murder rates hit a 39-year low, robbery rates a 37-year low, and aggravated assault rates a 20-year low. All forms of violent crime have been steadily decreasing since 1991. Between 1991 and 2004, violent crime declined by 39 per cent, murder by 44 per cent, rape by 24 per cent, robbery by 50 per cent, and aggravated assault by 33 per cent.

Those are very good numbers, and the period from 1991 to 2004 has also been one with a steadily increasing number of states that feature mandatory concealed carry laws. Additionally, the American approach has been particularly good for women, as women are the preferred (even if not the most numerous) targets of violent criminals. Knowing that some women are able to protect human life from criminal violence has had a noticeable effect, reducing crimes against women. Causing violent criminals to fear women results in a desirable check on violent crime rates, as Paxton Quigley says in her excellent book, Armed and Female.

The British picture is quite different.

The British Home Office Statistical Bulletin, "Crime in England and Wales, 2004/2005," tells us that their national violent crime rate increased by 109 per cent from 1995 to 2004/2005.

Between 2003/2004 and 2004/2005, reports of "threat or conspiracy to murder" went up by 31 per cent in the "top nine [police] forces (those that did the best reporting)" and up 3 per cent in "other forces." Less serious woundings reports went up 25 per cent from the top nine and 12 per cent from the other forces. Possession of weapons reports went up 13 per cent from the top nine and 0 per cent from the other forces. Harassment reports went up 58 per cent in the top nine and 22 per cent in the other forces. Reports of sexual offences increased 17 per cent in 2004/2005, but this figure was confused by a change in the definition of "sexual offence" that occurred within the two reporting periods.

"Crime involving firearms" has been rising steadily since 1998/1999 (more than doubling), in spite of the total "elimination" of handguns imposed by a total ban on the private ownership and possession of handguns in 1995. One conclusion is inescapable: British violent criminals are experiencing no difficulty in acquiring and using as many illegal handguns as they want.

Read those figures and draw your own conclusions. In this writer's view, the American approach is working, and the British idea is failing.

Give yourself thirty minutes to an hour to read the whole thing.

No.  This is not via John Lott.  From NSSF via their June 5th news release--Gun Sales Rise as Crime and Accident Rates Fall:

NEWTOWN, Conn.--New statistics show that firearm and ammunition sales are on the rise, coinciding with steady downward trends in gun crime, suicide and accident rates, in the U.S.

...

According to figures from government and independent sources, firearm crimes, suicides and accidental fatalities, including accidents among youth, are all trending downward.

"Reductions in gun crimes and accidental fatalities have been documented for many years, even as gun sales and ownership in our country continue to rise," said Doug Painter, president of NSSF. "However, today’s anti-gun organizations rake in lots of cash by perpetuating the myth that more guns equals more bad news. Clearly, there is no relationship between gun ownership and firearm misuse."

Cybercast News Service: What do liberal environmentalists have against toilets that use water?

Ann Coulter: They admire the living situation of the earthworm and believe humans should emulate it.

This is why they adore primitive societies where people crap in holes behind their mud huts. They pray that these primitives never leave the mud huts -- unless it's to come clean their designer spa bathrooms "off the books."

Cybercast News Service: Do you think any of them has ever used the type of dry toilet that they advocate?

Ann Coulter: Well, that would certainly explain why they're so cranky all the time. Dry toilets are worthless. You can't even use them to destroy a copy of the Koran. And believe me, I've tried.

Ann Coulter
June 6, 2006
CNSNew.com
[There are a lot of things I disagree with Coulter about but she does have a wicked sense of humor and a complete lack of mercy for her victims.  I admire both of those traits.--Joe]

The Muslim extremists in Canada probably figure people should trust them too.  They only planned to do a few bombings and beheadings:

RAMPTON, Canada -- Some of the 17 men and youths arrested in a suspected terrorism plot had planned to storm the nation's Parliament, take politicians hostage and behead Prime Minister Stephen Harper unless their demands for a withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan and the release of Muslim prisoners were met, prosecutors said Tuesday.

...

In his comments before the judge, Batasar said the prosecution was contending the defendants planned to invade the Parliament building in Ottawa and take hostages to demand that Canadian forces leave Afghanistan; about 2,300 serve under international mandate with the Kabul government's consent. The defendants, according to prosecutors, planned to demand the release of unspecified Muslim prisoners and to bomb the Parliament building and decapitate Harper and other political leaders if their demands were rejected.

They say Islam is the religion of peace and if you don't agree with them they will kill you.

The two Muslims the Brits captured the other day were probably intending to use sarin in a train carriage:

Terrorists were planning a chemical attack in London similar to that on the Tokyo subway, police and the security services said.

MI5 agents suspect that al-Qaeda sympathisers intended to produce a nerve agent - probably sarin - and release it in a confined space, such as a train carriage, to maximise the number of casualties.

Just in case you don't know about sarin:

Initial symptoms following exposure to sarin (and other nerve agents) are a runny nose, tightness in the chest and contraction of the pupils. Soon after, the victim has difficulty breathing and experiences nausea and drooling. As the victim continues to lose control of bodily functions, he vomits, defecates and urinates. This phase is followed by twitching and jerking. Ultimately, the victim becomes comatose and suffocates in a series of convulsive spasms.

Sarin is a highly volatile liquid. Inhalation and absorption through the skin pose a great threat. Even vapour concentrations immediately penetrate the skin. People who absorb a nonlethal dose but do not receive immediate appropriate medical treatment may suffer permanent neurological damage.

Even at very low concentrations, sarin can be fatal. Death may follow in one minute after direct ingestion of about 0.01 milligram per kilogram of body weight if antidotes, typically atropine and pralidoxime, are not quickly administered. Atropine, an acetylcholine inhibitor, is given to treat the physiological symptoms of poisoning. Pralidoxime can regenerate cholinesterases if administered within approximately five hours.

It is estimated that sarin is more than 500 times as toxic as cyanide.

Death from 10 micro-grams per kilogram of body weight.  A 110 pound person (women and children would likely be on the train carriage) would have to ingest less than 1/2 of a milligram.  A baby aspirin is 81 milligrams--over 160 times as massive as a lethal dose of sarin.

And the Muslims want the British people to trust them?  When they start turning in people planning atrocities such as these then the trust can be slowly restored.

I wonder if he was wearing a glove?  And if he was, did it fit?  O.J. sex video:

LIFE STYLE EXTRA (UK) - A sex tape allegedly starring O.J. Simpson has been leaked onto the internet.

The home movie features a man with more than a passing resemblance to the star and two women.

However, Simpson's lawyer, Yale Galanter, has branded the tape fake.

He told America's New York Daily News newspaper "While my client may appear fully clothed in portions of the tape, the man having sex is an impostor.

"This tape is garbage and we can prove it. O.J. wouldn't do anything like this."

The man selling the film, David Hans Schmidt, stands by the claim that it is the sporting legend in the movie.

He said: "O.J. is welcome to say that's not him on the tape, just like he said he didn't murder Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman but there's no question in my mind the real O.J. is having sex on this tape.

England afraid to fly its own flag:

Following warnings by extremist Islamic group al-Muhajiroun, in which the group said that the red cross in the England flag symbolizes the 'blood thirsty crusaders' and the occupation of Muslims, some of the largest companies in England have ordered their workers not to wave the flags.

The flag has recently appeared in England on everything from bikinis to cars, and sold in endless versions in stores.

But the Islamic protest forced some corporations, such as cable companies NTL, and even the Drivers and Vehicles Licensing Agency to ban the flag in every form due to fears from reactions of Muslims.

The Sun tabloid newspaper has in recent days launched a campaign to bring back the flag, and has published a blacklist of companies preventing their workers from expressing their patriotism at work.

The Sun said that a large pub network has banned drinkers from entering with symbols of the national team.

The hero of the day is a two year-old toddler, who was thrown out with his parents from Leicester, because he wore the England team's uniform.

Blood thirsty?  I keep thinking of the  British aid worker Marget Hassan, director of CARE international who was killed by Muslim extremists in Iraq.  I keep thinking of the slaughter houses they found where the Muslim extremists made videos as they beheaded people.  Muslims have no high moral ground when it comes to "blood thirst". 

The people of England need to grow a spine.

We have long known they have mental problems. Bloomberg is just insisting everyone be aware of his mental defects:

..a ban on the use and sale of gun coloration kits, which are used to paint guns in "toy-like" colors, and the introduction of a one handgun every-three-month purchase limit.

I would have never guessed they would come up with a ban on paint as a means of gun control.  But then I keep making the mistake of thinking they are rational.

Update: The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms has something to say about Bloomberg too:

"Maybe somebody stole Mikey's crayons when he was young," Gottlieb suggested. "Or perhaps he was overcome by paint fumes as a youth. What else could explain this new phobia over firearms that just makes him purple with rage?

"Singing the blues about pastel pistols," he concluded, "is nothing but a political red herring."

The danger is the trust between the community and the police may be broken. The community feels very vulnerable.

Muhammad Abdul Bari
Muslim Council of Britain leader
Terror raid could 'damage trust' 
BBC News--June 6, 2006
[And I thought that trust was broken July 7, 2005 when Muslim extremists blew up trains in The Tube and a bus.  Trust, but verify.  That's my advice.--Joe]

There's a power struggle going on over control of the human consciousness.  We are a cell of health surrounded by plague.  It's not men's minds that are at stake, but their consciousness, their awareness.  This isn't a struggle over a market area.  Make no mistake about it.  This is a struggle over what's to judged valuable in our universe.

Dr. Larry Piaget
A character in The Santaroga Barrier by Frank Herbert
[There is great subtleness in this book.  There is vast room for interpretation as to who the "good guys" and who are the "bad guys".  Some call Herbert a prophet in this book.  I can see why.--Joe]

Verbal Target Indicator: Yelling without reason in a fight or when someone says something stupid like, "Hey, my gun is not loaded!" in a fight.

From the Greg Hamilton to English Dictionary by Meredith Robinson

There are a couple things that come to mind when I read this:

TORONTO (Reuters) - A group of Canadian residents arrested for "terrorism related offenses" were inspired by al Qaeda, had amassed enough explosives to build huge bombs and were planning to blow up targets in densely populated Ontario, police said on Saturday.

Mike McDonell, assistant commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, said the group had acquired three metric tons of ammonium nitrate -- or three times the amount used in the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City -- as they sought to "create explosive devices."

The first thing I wonder about is will this cause people to walk up any?  Or will they just figure, "Oh, it's our fault for being in the mid-east, if we weren't there it would have happened."  People can't seem to realize that the Islamic extremists have been trying to convert the world to Islam by force for several hundred years now.  It's not going to stop anytime soon.

The second thing I wonder about is ammonium nitrate readily available in Canada?  If so I wonder if I can pick myself up a 1000 pounds or so for Boomershoot 2010 or whenever it is that I will exhaust my current supply.

There is a jar of red rain water in India that some are speculating may contain alien life:

As bizarre as it may seem, the sample jars brimming with cloudy, reddish rainwater in Godfrey Louis’s laboratory in southern India may hold, well, aliens. In April, Louis, a solid-state physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University, published a paper in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Astrophysics and Space Science in which he hypothesizes that the samples—water taken from the mysterious blood-colored showers that fell sporadically across Louis’s home state of Kerala in the summer of 2001—contain microbes from outer space.

Specifically, Louis has isolated strange, thick-walled, red-tinted cell-like structures about 10 microns in size. Stranger still, dozens of his experiments suggest that the particles may lack DNA yet still reproduce plentifully, even in water superheated to nearly 600˚F. (The known upper limit for life in water is about 250˚F.) So how to explain them? Louis speculates that the particles could be extraterrestrial bacteria adapted to the harsh conditions of space and that the microbes hitched a ride on a comet or meteorite that later broke apart in the upper atmosphere and mixed with rain clouds above India. If his theory proves correct, the cells would be the first confirmed evidence of alien life and, as such, could yield tantalizing new clues to the origins of life on Earth.

500x magnification

A few years ago I read a book in which the author(s) claimed to prove that intelligent alien life had an extremely small chance of existing.  They went through all kinds of different conditions that were "essential" for intelligent life or life of any sort for that matter.  A good friend of mine had recommended it to support his view that the Milky-way Galaxy and perhaps the entire universe was just waiting for humans to claim--no need to conquer it. 

I eagerly read the book but was extremely annoyed.  They made all these claims like "the temperature must be between X and Y degrees", and the radiation level must be below such and such a level.  Just because life as we know it requires these conditions doesn't mean all life has to require similar conditions.  In fact, why couldn't life have evolved that required high levels of radiation?  Why not life that used radiation as an energy source?  Why not life that thrived in boiling water?  In fact there is life that thrives in "boiling" water.  There are certain organisms that live near geothermal vents on the ocean floor at temperatures above the normal 212 F temperature of boiling water.  The water isn't boiling because of the great pressure but the temperature isn't killing them.  And there are microbes, which evolved rather rapidly by the way, that eat stuff that is toxic to nearly all other life.  So why not alien life that thrives in environments that are impossible all life forms we know of?  No need to just "push the envelope" some in a direction or two.  Life, given enough time, could have evolved that is completely outside our realm of experience.

Think of it this way--We are immersed in an environment with rather tight constraints on it.  The temperature ranges from about -70F to about 120F.  Water is present at least in small quantities nearly everywhere.  Ionizing radiation is rare.  Sunlight of a particular spectral content and intensity is common.  How much experience do we have with conditions outside that realm?  It would be difficult for a water based creature, such as a dolphin or whale, to imagine how life could function on dry land.  They just don't have the experience with it.  Or as one wag put it, "We don't know who discovered water but we know it wasn't a fish."  The same with us and other, totally out of the box, environments.

This jar of red rain water may be enough to break a few boxes.

Mr Blair has murdered more than 100,000 people in Iraq and the Iraqi people are an occupied people, illegally invaded. They have the moral and legal right to resist that occupation.

Why would that right be restricted to the poor, bloody infantry that Mr Blair sent into the streets of Iraq?

If the Iraqis have the right, as they do under international law and under any moral philosophy, to resist foreign invaders of their country (then) that must include the man who is giving the orders.

George Galloway
Friday May 26, 2006
The Guardian
Speaking from Cuba, where he earlier in the week shared a TV stage with President Fidel Castro.
[The irony of it all...happy with Castro while advocating the murder of a leader that helped save so many people from a murderous tyrant.--Joe]

Putting guns back on the street after they've seen the police station is just asking for more trouble.  Every single gun seized by the police should find its end in a furnace.  Anything less is nothing more than a contribution to the gun violence our nation is currently suffering from.

The Gun Guys
Your Gun Guys Daily Update (daily email)
June 1, 2006
[I understand now. He is in favor of the death penality on the first offense--for the gun instead of the criminal. The "Gun Guys" have mental problems.--Joe]

From Alan Korwin--tactics that work in the fight to defend the right to keep and bear arms.  As he says, "Easy, fun, and it helps save the planet by golly!"

I kept forgetting to post this.  A couple weeks ago Ry told us about a some changes announced at a company meeting at Microsoft.  One of the things he didn't mention that struck me the most was the reason Bill Gates didn't attend the meeting.  Bill had just finished up a CEO summit meeting he had hosted and he and his good friend Warren Buffet were going to play poker that afternoon. 

OMG. 

I wonder what the ante for one of those games is. Would it be $100K, $1M, or a penny?  What would it mean to the future of the world if both of them pushed all their chips into the center of the table?

Canada is resisting the identity card system required by U.S. law to enter our country:

Canada will not embark on an untested identity card system to meet U.S. border concerns, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said yesterday.

His government has told the Americans it prefers not to create such a card and wouldn't do so until the American government has convinced itself it is effective, Harper told reporters.

ID cards are not effective in solving the problems they are claimed to address.  Mandatory ID cards are a bad idea.

New Orleans is sinking.  Anyone who looked at the problem and had more than two brain cells to rub together knew that.  What wasn't known was that parts of the city are sinking at a rate of over one inch per year.

Add in the inability to get pumps installed in a timely matter (it's a tough problem, the Corp of Engineer's has my sympathy) and my advice is they should spend their money on abandoning the city.

Dr. Joe's cure for everything is more sex.  It also works as preventative medicine.  Jamie Fox uses it to prevent obesity:

Jamie Foxx has sex every day for 30 minutes to keep in shape.

The 'Ray' star revealed that daily love making is the best way to stay slim.

He said: "We should all do something for 30 minutes every day to get the heart pumping. I make love to stay in shape."

The discovery of sugar powder was a landmark event in the history of the Benson family.  In total significance, it ranked right up there with Pearl Harbor and catching our first mink.  For my brother and I, it certainly was the moral equivalent of our first piece of ass.

Ragnar Benson
Chapter 7, page 85
Ragnar's Guide to Home and Recreational Use of High Explosives
[Sugar powder is a substitute for black powder made from household sugar and potassium chlorate.--Joe]