Gate Rape Lite

Taken by surprise, I found myself hustled through the Porn Scan at San Jose, then (because I'd kept my metal-free wallet) given the Gate Rape Lite on my right side..,things are hanging a little further to the left, damn the TSA.

I was tired, have a cold, and was a tad impatient...so didn't think to give the writhing, moaning, orgasmic performance appropriate to the situation.

In theory, we still live in a free country where the inquiry "Papers, please" before we are allowed to travel should be a foreign concept. Where either a warrant or probable cause must be shown prior to a search....oddly lacking in the TSA rituals running so counter to our nations founding document.

The LEAST we can do is to try and make it as unpleasant as possible within the law for the petty tyrants, criminals, goons, and desperately rationalizing appeasers inflicting these infringements upon a once free nation.

I shall try to do better next time - and hope you do as well. Tiny acts of courage can have great effects.....

About that equality thing...

In Dayton, they administer a civil service test for aspiring police officers. Everyone gets the same test, and is thus held to the same standard. Equality. All good.

Comes the Holder Justice Department, and apparently not so much. Not enough black applicants have passed, thus the test must be revised until they do...

Read the story...

Makes my head hurt that our first black President, and his black Attorney General, have such an astonishing lack of confidence in the members of the black community to compete successfully on an equal playing field. Sad, really.

And that they'd risk the lives and safety of an entire community on their lack of confidence by lowering the standard to which police officer applicants are held...well...

The NAACP, oddly enough, seems to hold much the same view...

It seems a mighty strange way to define equality...

Ah, Wisconsin...

Back in November of 2011 (you know, last year?) there was an *election*. In Wisconsin, even. And guess what? The Democrats lost, and lost big with both houses of their legislature going over to the GOP, as well as the Governors Mansion.

Seems Wisconsin is facing a massive shortfall of $5 billion and some.

In recent weeks we've observed how well the current crop of Democrats handle the consequences of losing (lots and lots of things that they don't like getting passed) - they scream, throw a hissy, and try to game the system by denying the WI Senate the quorum needed to handle financial issues (bills that spend money, like, say, the state budget).

In short, they took their ball and hid out in Illinois rather than staying and trying to fight...also known as "doing their job".

They then attempted mob rule by summoning (I can only assume pentacles, candles, and really unfortunate aesthetic events occurred - after all, Michael Moore appeared amonst the horde) and bussing in thousands of "protesters" that proceeded to attempt a takeover of the WI Capitol in an attempt to prevent the legislature from doing business.

After three weeks of this silliness, the GOP Senators broke the stalemate. They met, stripped all fiscal provisions from the bill in question, and voted through (i.e., as they were hired to do - show up, and however distasteful, represent your constituents - or resign, and let someone else) the bill the Dem kiddo's and union shills were having a hissy-fit over.

The demonstrators went simply ape, and graphic death threats (and yet more)began to flow in to GOP Senators like turds from a cattle herd - big, frequent, and floppy. Today we have police and fire unions attempting protection racket tactics.

And, just to be sure we don't miss the "knuckle under or else" message sent by Dem and Union leaders, we have Jesse Jackson having at a good run of "incitement to riot". In other words, "do what we say or we'll burn out your cities".

The Dem's pretty much surrendered any moral high ground in the original argument when they chose a strategy of flight combined with "nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah-nyah". And by busing in protesters to astroturf the media, and now with death threats and protection racket methodology (after their rather questionable strategy, based in assumptions of GOP spinelessness, blew up in their faces) are busy salting the earth upon which any future claims to legitimacy might be sown - even with eager MSM shills.

Having lost at the game called "democracy", they are indulging in thuggery and intimidation, sure in the belief that their President won't let anything bad happen to them.

I expect and hope that they are wrong.

Dedication...

Nimby's on the rampage. Whiners.

Hints you've given someone too much authority...

You can tell by the way they use it...h/t to SayUncle

In the fullness of time...

Even a blithering idiot will eventually get something right - or to use the classical example, "give a million monkeys a million typewriters and a thousand years and they'll give you the complete works of Shakespeare".

A more immediate application of the truism is provided us by Random Nuclear Strikes, that graciously points us to just such an instance over at HuffPo (just this once, I'll link) courtesy of Mark Penn.

Just maybe it IS time for the first 21st Century Amendment - one forever barring the government, at all levels, from censoring or denying access to the Internet...that modern-day, new and improved, super-spiffy printing press available to us all - today.

While you're going shopping

Right now I don't much advocate most shopping. I favor purchases of rural land, food, and necessities as the price for necessities looks to be about to skyrocket (as fuel prices rise, the price of food and most everything else produced with the aid of, or transported by devices using, fuel will ALSO tend to rise).

And when prices rise, in an already depressed economy, the potential for civil unrest increases at just about the same rate - at the same time any potential economic recovery is effectively crushed.

There are advantages to being where you can grow your own food...

But when you DO shop...consider the items listed here as *do-buy*...if only to rile the PC.

Dark times coming...

History isn't just about pointing of fingers and making laudatory statements about long-passed characters and events - it is much more vital when considered as a study in "gee, that was a good idea, we should keep doing that" and "good lord, no matter what kind of crack they were smoking, that was a HORRIBLE notion and we want to be on guard against even the precursors of such horror!!"

With that in mind, why does the "Union Fisting" logo being distributed by thuggish union sorts in Wisconsin make me think of a sort of reverse Kristallnacht? A sort of warm-up by way of a heavy-handed protection racket to a purge of the "not-pc"?

Or from our own nations history, the less-dramatic coercive Blue Eagle of the National Recovery Administration, that emblem of a misbegotten national program to coerce cooperation with Roosevelts ill-concieved New Deal programs - by coordinating a national and local boycott of businesses that did not play along.

The tool of the tyrant is to con the masses into some group action against a designated goat, and allow said tyrant exciting new powers and authority, is always suspect - because it always, always, ends in trampling (at an absolute minimum) the rights of the individual...usually in service of some alleged ("SAVE THE CHILDREN") good cause.

Once upon a time, unionization was a good thing. It balanced the worst excesses workers faced from industrial barons, and served to broaden the American middle class. But like anything, in sufficiently large doses, it becomes toxic. Say, in Wisconsin...

Tell me this isn't toxic...

And then tell me that folks aren't starting to get fed up, and aren't starting to contemplate "doing something" about this as it places their immediate safety and future prosperity at risk for limited economic gain by folks who already have it pretty darned good.

Dark times coming...

Cults of Personality

I keep the Day By Day Cartoon strip at the top of my blog because it's funny and author Chris Muir slips in a fair amount of insight while he's doing the funny bits. However, the translation between blogger.com and the cartoon server is less than ideal..and Sundays, the "big strip" tends to get clipped.

This one is a little to insightful to risk folks missing due to that clipping.



Personality cults, as Muir points out, never end well. And "but we're doing it HARDER this time" (or that timeless variant "BUT THIS IS DIFFERENT") somehow palls as an argument after sufficient tragic failures fill the killing fields.

Well, maybe there's a more basic problem here...

Read a headline about a kid getting suspended from school for opening a door at his school for a gal he knew who had her arms full...

Initially thought it was "suspension for insufficient PC", and was moderately annoyed.

On reading the story, I find that this school district has hauled off and installed a prison grade security system that sets off alarms and whistles if folks don't jump through the hoops *just right* - students and staff are locked in during school hours...

I'm thinking there may be a somewhat more basic problem here...

High Points...

Wyoming Senate shoots down, barely, a rather vile anti-gay bill...

More happily, in New York, a state legislator proposes that bicyclists using the roads get to pay the fees, carry insurance, and be licensed to operate on the roads - just like every other user of the roads.

Since dealing with Critical Mass and their spiritual brethren, arrogant do-gooding elitist bastards so wrapped in their alleged "rightness" as to be devoid of logic, sense, or morals...I've moved more toward a position of "you want equal access - then pony up equal legal and fiscal obligations".

In an interesting move, a bill is before the Tennessee legislature to bar the practice of some forms of Sharia, the body of traditional Islamic law. This faces both some serious Constitutional issues, and goes much farther (at least according to the article) than other attempts to simply bar state courts from considering Sharia in their deliberations. Worth following, and doing your own research and making up your mind on this issue.

In cheerier news from New Hampshire, that fine states legislature is considering making felons of TSA grunts that are unduly frisky or invasive without the courtesy of a search warrant. GO NEW HAMPSHIRE!

In related news, Alan shares the TSA admitting they are unnecessary...now, if they'd just all quite and go home.

Another brighter point, the Wyoming Governor today signed into law the statute making Wyoming the fourth state in the Union to recognize constitutional carry - making carry licenses optional.

I've never much liked buying guns made in Massachusetts - one of the most anti-gun states in the nation. I'd rather spend my money where the taxing authorities weren't out to destroy that which I care about. No Lawyers and Snowflakes in Hell reveal a micro-stamping bill before that states collection of idiots and clowns legislature which, if passed, should effectively drive gun manufacturers out of that benighted state in droves. I expect they'd make a welcome addition to the economy of a number of right-to-work states.

Some days, one longs for the ability to apply the Stick Of Wisdom without consequence to oneself.

Milestones

Back in February of 2006, I had a little adventure. Osteomyelitis, MRSA-origin, of the right clavicle and sternum. Oopsie.

Big chunk of right clavicle and sternum went away, but given the alternatives....not such a bad thing. And I hit pay dirt, and recovered 90% use of my right arm, much to the surprise of all involved - but with various and sundry wee warnings.

By December of 2006, I'd moved to Seattle...and before terribly long, I'd taken action on my realization that .45-70 was *not* a good thing for a right-side dominant shooter with a fragile right shoulder, and the Marlin got sold and I was resigned to pistols as the only practical option.

November of 2008, some lovely people in a wee town in the SouthWest invited myself and a number of others to a tiny gathering...where, surrounded by decades of firearms, emergency medicine, and training experience...I was persuaded to play with a series of AR-15's.

A tad nervous, I lit off the first round of .223...and rapidly realized there WAS a centerfire cartridge I could get away with. And fell quietly in lust.

Various realities being in play, I put an AR variant well down on the want list...until August of 2009, when a friend offered a free upper if I'd do the rest of the build. My excuses to KEEP the AR-15 on the want list, rather than the reality list, kind of evaporated.

By November, a lower appeared ...and the last parts arrived on Saturday. I am *most* pleased and grateful.



Now...to find a range, some ammunition, and start stocking up on magazines. YAY!