Category Archives: Current News

This is about stuff in the mass media that generally has a short interest life span. Speculation about an election outcome a few days before the election is an example.

Securing your arms

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It’s funny how the anti-rights cultists always have exceptions for governments and their minions. We peons are expected to just suck it up, because we are not as professional, as well trained in their use, and as well screened for psychological problems, and all the rest. Then we see cases like this, where the FBI SWAT team loses a couple of their rifles, and M16 and a “sniper rifle,” and they are considering if they should be charged with “improper storage.” Duh, ya’ think? This being Mass people freaked of course, and they also offered $20k for a reward for less than $5k worth of guns.It looks like the guns have been recovered, but the FBI isn’t saying anything, saying it’s because it’s an ongoing investigation, not just that it’s full-on CYA.

H/T to Paul.

11th day of the 11th month

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It’s Veterans day, commemorating the end of world War One, The Great War. It’s good that it ended, but because the politicians didn’t know much about psychology or economics, they ended it badly, guaranteeing  a rematch. Ouch. In any case, just a few thoughts.

I volunteered and served in the Army Reserve. Drove boats for them – at the time is was MOS 12C (bridge crewman) a subcategory of combat engineer specializing in bridging. Also spent time packing an M60 around. I was in during the first Gulf War but not deployed. I did my six years and got out. My dad and his brother were both drafted around the Korean War, served their time, got out. My mom’s brother was career Air Force, and her dad was in during the 30’s (army, horse- and mule-back unit) and WW II (coastal patrol, kind of vague on navy vs coastguard). My brother in law is retired regular AF, now in the AF reserves as an E9, senior NCO on the airbase. A great uncle was in the Spanish American war. My wife’s “adoptive” dad was a gunner in WW II on a troop transport, saw kamikaze attacks landing troops on Okinawa. [Later edit: Oh, yes, I don’t want to forget the great aunt that was a WAAC. She wound up in North Africa in WW II]

I always thought it interesting that there was never much talk about “duty” and all, no strong service rivalry. It was just sort of a “respectable thing to do if it was a good fit” sort of thing, but it still rubbed off on me that it was more of a “very good thing to do unless it was a very bad fit.” I know it’s not for everyone. But it is done for everyone, even those that hate the military – and I think that’s one of those things that galls the peace-niks on the left most. They can’t stand the idea that maybe the military where they couldn’t or wouldn’t serve MIGHT be necessary, and really MIGHT be doing it for them as well, and that level of selflessness from people they despise and look down on just totally rubs them raw. On the other side of the coin, for all the inter-service rivalry, trash-talking and  competition, at the end of the day they all respect each others signing up and going through it.

But it seems like there are increasingly two Americas, one that doesn’t expect it deserves anything, and as a result it volunteers and serves (or at least supports and understands those that do), and those that expect to be given a lot, have a sense of entitlement, and at the some time don’t serve or honestly respect those that do. Not sure what it all means, or where that’ll lead, but it doesn’t strike me as a good thing.

Those those that served, cheers! To those that understand, thanks for your support.

ACA leads toward divorce

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Remember what I posted a little while ago? Looks like it’s going mainstream as a consideration. No, I’m not predicting a sudden tsunami of two-income divorces, but society changes a bit at a time, incrementally, at the margins. And at the margins, ObamaCare makes divorce look like an economically sensible thing to do, and it’s yet another drag on the economy and social stability as people try to game the system for personal benefit at the expense of “the greater good.” The incentives in the law are really insane.

Chilling effect

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New York City recently had its “stop and frisk” policy struck down as violating the Fourth Amendment. The city has not implemented a “monitor” of the program as the court ordered. Now New York City senior attorney Celeste Koeleveld says Judge Scheindlin’s order has had a “chilling effect” on police officers.

And her point is? Does she have a concern about the “chilling effect” of the Fifth Amendment not allowing police officers to torture suspects for confessions? How about the “chilling effect” of the Eight Amendment on Judges because of the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments in the Eighth Amendment?

The entire intent of the Bill of Rights was and is to have a “chilling effect” on the power of government. In U.S. law the phrase “chilling effect” refers to the stifling effect that vague or excessively broad laws may have on legitimate … activity. A “chilling effect” only exists when government passes laws that private citizens have to obey. Not when government is overstepping bounds that have been in place for hundreds of years. It appears Koeleveld either does not understand government is a servant of the people or she wishes to change the relationship.

One big happy family

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This ought to make you feel all warm and fuzzy.

The same company that made the healthcare.gov website (on a no-bid contract, naturally) is the same one that created the Canadian gun registry that cost roughly twenty times the original estimate and got scrapped a decade later after being found to be both useless and seriously defective.

But they want us to just trust their good intentions, ’cause they are so smart and transparent. Yeah, riiiight.

Ever had a cell phone get strange on you?

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Ever heard of “carrierIQ?” Its an “app” on most cell phones (one that is hidden) that’s sort of part of the OS. It sends stuff to the carriers. It can also execute commands that someone texts to your phone by intercepting them before you see them. It has bugs, and might get a buffer overflow and blow chunks on your phone. Or it might just execute the code, and send a keylog or your current location or contact list back, then delete the text message so you never see it.

As a friend of mine that has been doing software research for years said, it’s basically a trojan that gets loaded by your phone manufacturer, and yes it’s been hacked more than once. (Of course I’m sure a software researcher would never hack the OS of a phone, any more than they’d see if they could run UNIX on an XBox 360, and here of course I’m just making up hypotheticals that no one would ever do.)

Just thought you’d like to know. Sleep well.

Incentives

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Incentives matter. People pay attention to them. The larger the incentive, the more effective it is. Look at Obamacare. You get heavy subsidies right up to exactly 400% of the poverty line. Then you get nothing, you go directly from being heavily subsidized to being the subsidy, all for that extra dollar in income. This might easily mean for a married couple that they pay an extra $10,000 a year for the same health insurance policy (more or less depending on specifics, but this number is not atypical). Then look at the fact that a lot of employers are shifting to providing employee-only health insurance, and dropping coverage for spouses and dependents.

If a working couple are each making $30k a year, they receive a significant subsidy. If one gets a promotion that comes with a 10% raise ( $3,000), then it kicks them into zero-subsidy land and the net loss of $7,000 a year. The incentive for divorce in order to make ends meet is powerful, because if they divorce, then they both qualify for a bunch of other programs, too, which would effectively boost their effective incomes considerably. Meeting bills vs not meeting bills, being able to afford vacation vs not… This ACA thing is a powerful incentive that, if it stands more than two years, will drive a HUGE boom in divorce and application for “single parents with kids needing government assistance.”

ObamaCare is the most destructive bill to American society I’ve ever witnessed pass congress.

No More!

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I got this circular from some GOP Senate twerp;

“Lyle,

In 8 days, we’ll hit an important fundraising deadline. How much we raise will have a big impact on whether or not our candidates are set up to succeed, so every dollar counts. I’m so committed to helping us reach our goal that I’ll match 3 times your donation.

As the last few weeks have made crystal clear, our country desperately needs new leadership in the Senate. It’s plain to see that Harry Reid just isn’t up to the job. Under his tenure, the Senate has become a dysfunctional disaster — plagued by political games, partisan stalemate, and constant finger pointing. We can break the mold, but we’ll need your help to do it.

With 7 seats up in states Mitt Romney won, combined with the Democrats’ failure to recruit competitive candidates, the political map shows we can win in 2014. Now we’re counting on you to help us make it happen.

Harry Reid and his left-wing special-interest groups are already raising millions to protect their majority. They’re desperately doing everything they can to out raise us. We simply can’t allow that to happen.

Will you please contribute $100, $50, $25, or whatever you can afford today and help us take back the Senate?

Again, donate before the deadline and I’ll personally make sure your donation is triple matched.

Thanks,

Senator Roy Blunt”

To which I replied;

“Roy,

This plea of yours reads like a joke. In fact, the GOP has become a dysfunctional disaster — plagued by political games, ideological hypocrisy, and constant finger pointing. I’ve been saying for years that we must first defeat the GOP before we can defeat the Progressive movement and the Democrats, that the GOP has been a major obstacle standing in our way.

That fact is, right now, more blatantly obvious than ever. I will be working to convince as many people as possible that it is time to defund the GOP, and stop being fooled by the pseudo conservative pap that is being fed to us as a ruse. I’m sick and tired, and I am DONE having my own money used against the principles I hold dear by the very people who have pledged to uphold them!

After the despicable performance of the Republican senate leadership these last weeks, I am insulted by your request for money. You apparently take your voter base for gibbering fools, but to some extent I can understand your confusion being that against our better judgment we have supported you so much in the past. Well, Sir; No More!

Lyle”

I don’t know Roy Blunt from Adam, and I don’t care to know him or any other GOP hack.

If you want to throw money at the problem, don;t send it to the GOP and don;t send it to any candidate– some of that money always goes to the Party even if you gave it to a candidate. Send it to Freedom Works or some other group you know for a fact doesn’t play games. At this stage I think it’s better to send no money rather than risk one dime going to game-players, “the wizards of smart” and Progressives.

Besides; money is far from being that which defines victory. There may even be an inverse relationship. If the GOP dorks want to win, all they really have to do is stand up for the principles we elect them to stand up for. In that case they wouldn’t need any money. We’d be able to see them as people we want representing us, just by their actions. It’s free.

Don’t fall for the crap anymore. We’ve tried it too many times and seen it thrown back in our faces already. The enemy (The Bloods) of my enemy (The Crips) is NOT my friend! Same goes for the Dems and Reps. I think we have yet to learn this lesson properly.

Update, 10/23/13; My reply to Senator Twerp at the NRSC was bounced, so they want your money but they don’t want to be bothered hearing from you. It seems to me I’ve gotten replies through to them in the past. I’ll look for his own e-mail address and get this to him that way.

Why Republicans are not cowards

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You must have principles before you can fail to stand up for them.

Park Service Milgram Failure

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The National Park Service is failing a giant national-scale Milgram obedience to authority experiment. They are doing things, blocking off people from open air parks like the WW II memorial, even while individual rangers are saying that it turns their stomachs. Yet they still do it, saying they were told to, and they had no choice. It’s so bad even the Legacy Media is being forced to cover it and acknowledge it’s happening. This is government by spite, pure and simple. And the uniforms carry out their orders, even while complaining about it. And people say “you will never need guns, it can’t happen here.” Sorry to say this, but… it IS happening here, right now.

The rangers, and the rest of the government employees, DO have a choice. A hard choice to be sure, but it’s a choice they MUST make. And they are choosing poorly.

Quick update: Other than massive civil disobedience, and semi-politely getting in their faces and telling them personally they are failing the Milgram test badly, that they have become a cancerous tentacle of political dysfunction that is TRYING to infect and damage the population for spite, and calling / writing your congress-critters, what’s the best response to these toxic leprechauns?

9mm vs 45

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Another example of a thief making a bad choice. Car thief drives a stolen car to the scene, accomplice / girlfriend with him. Tries to steal a truck. Owner of said truck confronts him. Guns were drawn, shots fired. Oh, did I mention the truck owner was a former marine? A story with a happy ending, because hits with a 9mm are a more convincing argument than misses with a .45.

UPDATE: Another story with more info. Looks like the former marine drew first in an attempt to stop the thief. Legally, that make his position more dicey. OTOH, the cops may look at the dead perp’s rap sheet, the rap sheet of of accomplice / girlfriend, and weigh it against a former marine with Iraq service and a valid CPL, and say “Who are we kidding? Good job, carry on.”

Fading fast

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Looking at the headlines, it looks like the Navy Yard shooter is fading from the above the fold news with incredible speed, considering the number of bodies he left in his wake. I wonder (rhetorically) if it’s because it doesn’t fit the left’s narrative on guns and race? He’s black, obviously crazy, and used a PC weapon (a pump shotgun, perhaps purchased on “Sheriff” Joe Biden’s recommendation). So, they “see nothing to be learned,” and much egg of their face from the early blather reporting.

Say WHAT?

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They just keep coming.

I’m still wondering about Fast and Furious, and we’re what, a couple dozen scandals removed from that now, each one taking the former one off the main headlines? You couldn’t make this stuff up– It would be taken as way too far beyond believability.

Quiz

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1. In your best, logical assessment, America’s enemies would rather see American citizens;
A) armed.
B) disarmed.

2. In your best, logical assessment, America’s enemies would rather see U.S. Military personnel;
A) armed while on and off duty inside U.S. military installations.
B) disarmed while on and off duty inside U.S. military installations.

3. In your best, purely logical assessment, America’s enemies;
A) approve of the second amendment to the U.S. constitution and would like to see it protected and enforced.
B) disapprove of the second amendment to the U.S. constitution and would like to see it limited, eroded and degraded as much as possible.

4. In your best, purely logical, most detached and rational assessment, America’s enemies would rather see American citizens generally;
A) capable in the use of arms, having arms and ammunition of their own, being self sufficient and largely independent individually, largely fearless and moral, hopeful, principled, and more able to help their friends and neighbors in times of need such that outside help from official authorities is not crucial to survival.
B) ignorant in the use of arms, having no arms or ammunition of their own, being largely dependent on government programs for their sustenance, medicine, energy, education, transportation and protection, largely fearful and demoralized, unprincipled, and less able to help their friends and neighbors in times of need such that outside help from official authorities is crucial to survival.

You will be graded on your answers.

Words mean things

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I think that’s a Rush Limbaugh quote, to give credit where I believe credit is due, but maybe he got it somewhere else.

The shipyard shooting was described on the news tonight as having taken place in a “heavily secured” area. Has the term “heavily secured” been redefined while I wasn’t looking, or is that a blatantly moronic description?

Yet another mass shooting in what amounts to a gun free zone, in a long line of mass shooting in gun free zones, but in this case it can be said that this was a “heavily secured gun free zone”. In other words, the shooting took place inside a real live, physical, three-dimensional contradiction in terms. Which of course is the problem.

Last time this happened I had military vets tell me that trusting kids on the military bases with guns is not practical, which is either coming from a mental position of pre-conditioned, certain defeat, or it means we don’t have a military, which is certain defeat. Sorry guys; that’s insane. You may believe it with every fiber of your militarily experienced being, but it’s insane.

One would think we should have learned this lesson, that military bases can and do come under attack, in, say, December of 1941, but then people do forget. Fort Hood on the other hand, was in the news just within the last few weeks due to the trial. Is anyone in the military feeling a clue coming on yet, or are we simply going to ramp up the stupid, as I predict?

If we had sanity in our military, every low level grunt, every secretary, every truck driver, etc., would be a rifleman first and a whatever else, a floor polisher or cook, second. Militaries are for killing people and breaking things, and so if you don’t have the ability to kill people and break things on short notice, on any base or any boring flower planting assignment in some peaceful corner of the world, you’re not military material. (By the way there are no peaceful corners of the world. There are only places wherein the violence is taking a break and readying itself for the next push)

Which, practically, means we need the CMP back in full force and effect, jr high and high school shooting teams should be reinstated, and of course the NRA needs to be doing more of what it was born to do. If our government and military are tying their own hands, we’ll have to do it on our own.

It is being reported that the DC metro police were called in……….to protect a military installation against a single attacker (or maybe two we don’t know for sure yet). A civilian force had to go in and help save a United States military installation from one or two dumbshits.

Let that sink in for bit. We’re now telegraphing to the world, AGAIN, that a single trained squad, or two, could likely dominate an entire base inside the U.S. Could it get any worse, Mr. commander in Chief? How f-ing lame is that, you generals?

And their response appears to be that we need more restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms, i.e. more of the kind of poison that made this latest act possible. They want restrictions on the provision in the constitution that was designed to foster the security of a free state.

You know the saying; once is happenstance, twice is coincidence… Well the Fort Hood shooting was enemy action or worse. This last one (maintaining the conditions that made the Fort Hood shooting possible) borders on treason, or it leaps over that border. Conspiracy theories abound in regard to the lack of preparedness in Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. This is at least as bad, considering that Ft Hood was in the lime light just this summer.

What caliber for rampaging boat?

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A shotgun worked in this case.

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More on voter suppression

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Heh!

We’re being asked (told?) to believe that the voters who wanted Progressives in office “couldn’t get to the polls” (Where are they? I don’t know. What IS a poll anyway? Where am I? Who am I? Who are you? What planet is this? Vote for Who? Why? What’s happening and is there any way of stopping it?) while those who wanted freedom didn’t have any trouble at all finding those pesky, shifty, sneaky, evasive polls, even after the Progressives massively out-spend those who prefer freedom.

Well there you have it. When Progressives win it’s grass-roots democracy in action– a beautiful expression of The American Way and what could ever be better or more wonderful than that. When Progressives lose it’s big money corporate-funded voter suppression by mean people who suck and are probably terrorists.

The police are the only ones

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The police are not “the only ones qualified to handle guns”.

This appears to be a training issue:

When one of the women involved in the brawl took off running across the street, the officer jumped out of his patrol car and pursued her on foot and approached the woman in the parking lot of a nearby business.

In the lot, the woman refused to show her hands and show she was not armed, prompting the officer to draw his firearm. While drawing his gun, the officer unintentionally fired one shot, striking the woman in the leg.

Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot.

There have been many times I’ve had a gun go off unexpectedly but only when I was planning to shoot anyway. Your training should include drawing a gun without actually firing. And when you do plan to actually shoot you draw while keeping your finger off the trigger until the sights are on the target.

Why would you need a gun at the Dollar Store?

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From the Seattle Police Department:

A 53-year-old man set off an intensive three-hour search by police Friday after he was spotted growling, performing martial arts moves and brandishing a machete outside a dollar store on Lake City Way.

…

Officers found the man near 125th and Lake City Way, arrested him, and seized what one officer described as a “big machete.” Police intend to book the man into the King County Jail for a weapons violation, and are still looking for other victims the man may have threatened.

You can be certain the police were glad to possess firearms when dealing with this guy and his victims would have been safer if armed as well.

Ammo arrival

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The UPS guy showed up the other day. I didn’t remember ordering anything recently, so I briefly wondered what the spousal unit bought. Then I saw the box, and I had to chuckle. It was a MidwayUSA box. With some ammo. That I had ordered last year. Now that’s a backorder.