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.

They caught him

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A couple weeks ago I posted about a guy staying out in woods and damaging logging equipment.  The suspect is in the local county jail now.  I’m glad no one got hurt as it seemed likely at the time.  The suspect said he wanted to kill some cops.  I had done some brainstorming with my brother about this and hadn’t come up with the solution they used although one would have thought that two electrical engineers would have been the first to thing of it.  From the Lewiston Morning Tribune:

Sheriff reels in Weippe suspect


By DAVID JOHNSON
of the Tribune

“He took the bait.”

That’s how Clearwater County Sheriff Alan Hengen Tuesday described the early morning arrest of 34-year-old David Pruss in the woods about one and a half miles northwest of Weippe.

“We knew he liked coffee.”

Pruss, who’d been wanted for the better part of three months on a warrant for alleged malicious destruction of property and burglary, remained in the county jail at Orofino Tuesday night and could face additional charges, Hengen said.

The sheriff and his deputies had been chasing a suspect since early June who allegedly had shot up some logging equipment, broken into a number of cabins and buildings and otherwise eluded authorities.

Hengen said deputies learned that the suspect seemed to always steal coffee when he had a chance. So they placed a “signaling unit” in the bottom of a plastic can of coffee, and put the can in a building where the suspect had previously entered several times.

“We tried a lot of things, but that one worked,” Hengen said. Within a week, the can of coffee was gone. Homing in on the signal from the coffee can, deputies were able to triangulate an approximate location, said Hengen, and Tuesday’s predawn raid was organized. Two dog teams and 17 enforcement officers entered the forested area and closed in on the location, the sheriff said. They found a hut made of poles that were tied together and covered with pine boughs.

“We got him while he was sleeping,” Hengen said. He said Pruss at first refused to come out of the hut and deputies used pepper spray. According to a press release from the sheriff’s office, Pruss was “believed to have been reaching” for a Mac-90 assault rifle that was found underneath him. Hengen said a .357-caliber magnum revolver also was found.

“He had like a tent in there,” Hengen said of the hut, which he described as about 6-feet square.

Deputies also found military and SWAT-type clothing, said Hengen, similar to clothing worn by a suspect that appears in a surveillance camera photo taken more than a month ago where logging equipment had been shot up. According to the press release, other items allegedly taken from the logging site were found where Pruss was arrested.

Pruss, formerly of Utah and Montana, came to Weippe about a year ago, according to residents in town. Authorities said he is thought to have ties to fringe militia groups. Hengen said earlier this month that he feared the suspect they were seeking was trying to lure his deputies into an ambush. According to the news release, Pruss “is believed to have told others his intent was to damage public infrastructure in order to lure Clearwater County Sheriff’s Deputies into the woods for the purpose of picking them off.”

Since the first week in June, Hengen’s department had been investigating several burglaries and reports of property being destroyed. There had been damage to power transformers, phone pedestals, a small hydroelectric plant and the logging equipment, according to the news release. Several businesses and residences also had been burglarized, authorities said.

Total damage is estimated to have exceeded $100,000, Hengen said.

Weippe residents earlier this month voiced mixed thoughts about the suspect, some saying he was harmless and others expressing disgust that someone was shooting up logging equipment. Many people said they were locking their doors for the first time.

Hengen said the destruction of property seemed to trail off over the past few weeks and he thinks the suspect was “just trying to wait us out.” Most of the logging equipment that had been damaged belonged to Kenneth Miller, whose equipment and vehicles had been located at a site in the Winters Creek area near Weippe.

In addition to sheriff deputies, Hengen said U.S. Forest Service personnel and members of Clearwater County Search and Rescue participated in numerous searches for the suspect.

Authorities ask that anyone finding more hut-like structures in the woods around Weippe call the sheriff’s office and stay away from the structures. The same goes for any equipment, clothing or other stored items that might be found.

Quote of the day–Employees at A.J.’s Produce Co.

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You loot, we shoot!

Employees at A.J.’s Produce Co.
A spray-painted bright-red warning for would-be thieves on the sides of the building on Chartres Street in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans.
From 2TheAdvocate.com
August 31, 2005

Now do you believe me?

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Michelle Malkin gives a good overview of the situation in New Orleans with links to pictures and video.  There is massive flooding with both airports underwater, the mayor estimates 80% of the city is underwater–some of it 20 feet deep, at least one major bridge was destroyed, etc, etc. 

Steve Sabuldowsky of BayouBuzz.com says:

Unless the two block breach in Bucktown is fixed, New Orleans which is already 80% flooded according to Mayor Nagin will destroy the City of New Orleans.  In my view, that includes the CBD and French Quarter.

…

New Orleans might not be able to survive the total inundation of water that is rising so quickly and causing so much damage.  With Slidell, St. Bernard and other cities and Parishes so completely devastated it will take more than a Marshall Plan to restore Louisiana to its glory.  It will take a miracle for the city of the Saints.

One of the commenter’s to a previous post of mine asked, “Do you really think that it’s possible that the entire city will be completely gone after this hurricane?”  Yes, it’s possible.  It almost for certain will not be completely gone this time, but it is possible it will happen next time.  Next time could be next month, next year, or 10 years from now.  It won’t wait 50 years, the technology just doesn’t exist and almost for certain won’t exist in time to save this city.  This time it will just be 20% (a number I pulled out of the air, or should I say water?) of the net worth of the city will be destroyed.  Someday, in the not too distant future, New Orleans will be a water and silt filled archaeological site.

Serious consideration should be given to only rebuilding enough of New Orleans to use the port temporarily.  Spend the money saved on building a new port where the Mississippi natural outlet is (something like 100+ miles to the west).  Move the people in the path of the new waterway out of there.  Then gradually over a course of days, weeks, months, whatever, allow the river to change it’s course.  Then tell people in the firmest terms available that if they build below sea level they are asking for Darwin Awards.  If they persist then let them collect their awards.

Update: I’m not the only one talking about giving up on New Orleans.

Update2: Novel application of a shotgun:

People used axes, and in at least one case a shotgun, to blast holes in roofs so they could escape their attics. Many who had not yet been rescued could be heard screaming for help, police said.

But is this allowed under the “sporting purposes” criteria of GCA 68?

Another shot at New Orleans

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I commented on this sort of thing last September.  New Orleans had a miss then when Ivan came to town.  But it appears Ivan was a poor shot and minor caliber compared to Katrina–scheduled to hit tomorrow morning:

Hundreds of thousands of New Orleans residents fled inland on Sunday as Hurricane Katrina strengthened into one of the fiercest U.S. storms ever seen and barrelled towards the low-lying Gulf Coast city.

…

Katrina had a central pressure — a measure of a storm’s intensity — of 902 millibars, which would make it one of the four strongest storms on record. The Labour Day hurricane of 1935 that hit the Florida Keys, killing some 600 people, was the strongest with a minimum central pressure of 892 millibars on landfall.

They are evacuating the city.  It’s quite possible this will be the last evacuation.  The city is below sea level and it is only going to get worse as time goes on.  As I said last year:

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

This could be the end of New Orleans.  Interesting times we live in.

Update: I’ve been reading some of the articles about Katrina and New Orleans.  They are incredibly sobering. 

No surprise here

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From World Net Daily:

TEL AVIV – Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei and members of various Palestinian terror groups this week decided at a meeting “resistance” against Israel would continue and would be coordinated at the national level until the Jewish state evacuates “all territories,” WND has learned.

Earlier this week, it was reported Qurei held a private conference in Damascus with leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. According to media reports, the parties reached an agreement under which the PA would not attempt to disarm the terror groups in spite of recent U.S. and Israeli calls for the groups to be dismantled after the Gaza evacuation.

…

But security sources close to the meeting told WND agreements reached at the conference went one step further – it was concluded the Palestinians would continue to use “resistance” against Israel until the Jewish state leaves “all occupied territories” – code for the destruction of Israel. The resistance, the sources said, is to be coordinated between the Palestinian groups and based on the foundations of Palestinian unity.

…

Afterward, the Battalions held a press conference in which a spokesman stressed his group’s determination to “do whatever it took” to liberate the “rest of our land,” including kidnapping Israelis and committing “resistance attacks.”

How many times do we need to learn this lesson?  Their extremist culture must be destroyed.  They give us no alternatives but our own destruction.

Update: That didn’t take long:

Driving home fears Palestinian terror groups will use land gained by Israel’s Gaza evacuation to launch rockets deeper inside the Jewish state, two Qassams today were fired at western Negev towns as Israeli troops prepared the Gaza Strip for handover in the next few weeks.

Bias in the news?

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I have been reading the U.S. news media accounts of the battle in Falluja with a fair amount of interest but nearly all acounts were the same.  But thanks to Kim du Toit I got a pointer to a British account of the battle.  The difference is amazing.

On one extreme there is MSNBC:

As battles go, Fallujah has been a big disappointment to the U.S. military, which had wanted to draw the Iraqi insurgents into a cataclysmic mistake: a “fair” fight. Not that any officer relished the prospect of a Stalingrad- or Hue-like street-to-street, house-to-house blood-letting. But the alternative has even less to recommend it: a continuing series of roadside bombings and mortar and grenade ambushes that bleed American forces and frustrate efforts to secure Iraq ahead of January’s elections.

Unfortunately, from a military standpoint, the latter, less attractive option is the reality, and the choice was never the U.S. military’s to make. Iraq’s insurgents, with weeks to react as U.S. forces gathered and postured about what was about to happen in Fallujah, decided against turning it into al-Alamo. They saw the folly of taking on the Americans on their own terms, and they did what intelligent, determined guerrilla movements have always done in the face of overwhelming force: They faded away and lived to fight and kill and maim another day

On the other extreme is the Daily Telegraph:

American troops scored one of their biggest successes in the battle for Fallujah when an estimated 70 foreign fighters were killed in a massive precision artillery strike on a building in a mosque complex.

Military intelligence officers were last night trying to confirm that a “high-value target” or HVT died in the attack. The man is suspected of being a key lieutenant of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted man in Iraq, and responsible for marshalling hard-line insurgence from other Arab countries.

…

A Humvee from Phantom troop fitted with a Long Range Acquisition System (LRAS) was moved to within two kilometres of the mosque, well inside its maximum range of 15km, to get a second opinion on what was happening. “The strike was so sensitive that it took more than an hour to approve it,” said Maj John Reynolds, operations officer for 2-2. “Normally it happens in minutes.”

American tanks engage insurgents on the streets of Fallujah
Lt Prakash was asked to provide a grid co-ordinate, accurate to within a metre, to minimise the chance of hitting the mosque, about 50 metres from the building.

At about 3pm, the higher authorisation came through and Lt Col Pete Newell, commanding 2-2 and with the call-sign Ramrod 6, gave the order to fire a barrage of 20 155mm high-explosive shells from howitzers about three miles away from the mosque.

Specialist James Taylor, manning the LRAS, watched the burst of shells hit.

“They landed on the left side of the building and I saw three bodies fly into the air,” he said. “It was awesome.”

Lt Prakash radioed that the rounds were right on target and requested 10 more to ensure maximum killing effect.

“One of the men was in a sniper position on the building,” said Lt Prakash. “I saw him fall off, hit the ground and bounce up. There were about five bodies that went three, four, five storeys up in the air. I’d already counted between 40 and 50 men going into that building. There were men running out, coughing and doubling over. The second lot of rounds took them out and all those who had been crossing the road.

Yes, I know completely different focus.  One is talking about the big picture and one is talking about the mechanics of one skirmish.  But my point is that MSNBC is entirely negative and that there are some very positive results available to report if they wanted to report them.  I mean 70 enemy, including a HVT, were precisely killed from afar without them even knowing they were in danger is as Specialist Jame Taylor says, “Awesome”.

Democrats on the run

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I’m not a big fan of Republicans but I’m certainly an opponent of the Democrats.  It’s with great pleasure that I see the Democrats lost seats in both houses of congress.  It appears Kerry will loose his bid for the White House.  And with 94% of the SD votes counted it appears that Daschle will lose.  With Daschle being booted out they lose their most powerful player in politics.

The impact of this could be major.  The Democrats have to be incredibly demoralized.  Their agenda is increasingly rejected.  After the 1994 ‘revolution’ in the House there were Democrat representatives that switched parties so they could be in the majority.  What will happen this time?  How much energy will they have for fighting essentially a delaying action for the Republican agenda?  Can we find a roadmap to drive this party into extinction?  My fantasy now is to have the second party in this country be the Libertarians.  To have to choose between the Libertarians and the Republicans would be a much more pleasant choice than what the realistic choices are now.

And finally I want to congratulate Stephanie Sailor (Libertarian and Boomershoot PR director) on getting 12% of the vote while spending 0 (yes ZERO) dollars on her campaign for U.S. Congress.  Roughly 27,000 people voted for her.

Why the election related violence?

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There is talk of riots if the Kerry-Edwards team doesn’t win.  There have been shootings and trashing of campaign offices.

On Monday, the Bush campaign provided a list of more than 40 examples it said had occurred since July, including the burglary from campaign offices of several items: two laptop computers in Seattle; a banner in Thousand Oaks; petty cash in Spokane, Wash.; as well as break-ins last Friday in Flagstaff, Ariz., and Cincinnati.

Also included were examples of lesser crimes including the defacement or theft of supporters’ lawn signs as well as broken windows, slashed tires, shots fired, bullet holes and thrown eggs at campaign offices.

In response to the Bush campaign’s incident list, Democrats countered with a list of 19 incidents aimed at the campaign of Sen. John Kerry, including a bullet that was fired into a supporter’s house, graffiti at campaign offices, the smashing of a mailbox bearing Kerry campaign stickers and the theft of a laptop in Norristown, Pa.

I don’t recall this happening on this scale before.  Is my memory off?  Or is something else going on?  I remember when I was involved on the no on I-676 campaign that there were lots of complaints of our yard signs being stolen (Boomershooter Steve M. was losing about three or four a week) but our offices were never broken into and there weren’t any reports of intimidation by either side.  But election violence, in other countries, is actually quite common according to what some people tell me.

So why the change in our country now?  My hypothesis is that people are getting violent because the government has more control than it used to.  It used to be the government stayed within the bounds of the constitution to a greater extent than now.  When the consequences of a change in power of the government was highly constrained it just didn’t matter that much who was in power.  But now that the Federal government is involved in so many things it didn’t use to have control over such as health care, education, firearm ownership, gay marriage, etc. the consequences of “your side” loosing are significant enough that people can justify, in their own minds, the violence.  This is just as people in other countries with few limits to government control can justify their violence.

It is my prediction that as the power of government increases the frequency and intensity of election related violence will increase.  Vote Libertarian and stop the violence.

Bobby Fischer

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Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer was arrested in Japan on Tuesday.  I used to play a lot of chess.  That was pretty much all I did in high school and the first year or so of college.  Bobby Fischer won the world championship in ’72 (I think) when I was very much into the game.  I feel a fair amount of attachment to him for what he did for chess.  It makes me sad to read stuff like the following:

 

Mr. Fischer’s legal troubles date back to 1992 when he emerged from hiding to play a highly publicized match against Russian Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia, then at war with Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Mr. Fischer won the competition, earning a prize of more than $3 million, but he was indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury for violating United Nations sanctions against Yugoslavia by playing the match there.

…

“I think the U.S. is not going to exist much longer,” Mr. Fischer said. “I think everybody is going to be surprised at just how soon the U.S. collapses and the U.S. becomes history.”

In other such interviews, Mr. Fischer has praised the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

 

Barb and I were talking the other day about how famous people are often strange.  She was reading a book on John Lennon and asked, “Does becoming famous make people strange or is it that only strange people become famous?”  My answer was, “I don’t know.  But my hypothesis is that in order to be famous most people will have to be ‘different’ in some way.  Smarter, greater motivation, extrodinary talent, something like that.  Whatever it is that made them different may also have a tendency to make them strange.  And of course there are a fair number of examples of people that appear to be ‘nice’ and manage to handle fame fairly well.  But you are correct, it does seem like there is some sort of correlation.”

Bobby Fischer is possibly the greatest chess player that has ever lived and it’s possible that whatever it was that made him such a good player also made him more than a little bit strange.