Nothing, That's What.

I'm a Christian, and I can't eat candy because it's poison and I have bad teeth besides.

My halloween plans include letting my sandwich settle a little in my stomach, and going back to bed because I didn't sleep well last night. Our porch light will be off, as usual, and street-facing curtains will be drawn. No candy.

Go teach your children to beg for hand-outs at somebody else's house, you pagan!

HOW Can People Deny Global Warming?

I mean, it's not like they are just making these numbers up!

. . . Oh, wait . . .

San Francisco Bay Bridge Shut Down. Again. Indefinitely.

The Bay Bridge got a boo-boo and a band-aid was put on it.

The band-aid fell off again last week, and they're not sure how long it will take to fix.

You know, maybe this would never have happened if the parts for the bridge were not MADE IN CHINA* by people turning out work which was rejected at a rate of 65%. Excuse me.

Please pardon me for noticing. I shall go flog myself anon for being hateful, in accordance with the new hate crimes act, which penalizes right thinking.

********

::Yoo bye Chinese bridge part! Verry good kworrity! You like! You buy, you like!::

********

*Apparently, there are no companies in the USA that can weld. Who knew?

More Good News On "Healthcare" Bill!

No, not good for you, silly! Good for special interests with Democrats in their pockets, and the International Socialist Movement.

It was just over 1,000 pages last time it was rejected by the Senate due to overwhelming public outcry.
Now it's 10 pages shy of 2,000 pages, and let me tell you that's not an extra 900 pages of Goodness For You.

The Fair Tax proposal, by the way, is under 200 pages, and would actually make life better for everyone in the country and return power to the People.

Matthew Sheppard Hate Crimes Prevention Act Non-Hate Disclaimer

This is a supplement to the regular, annual, VFD disclaimer. This would be unnecessary, but somehow our President is a Constitutional Scholar who doesn't know what the First Amendment is there for.

********

It was going nowhere until it was amended onto the Defense Appropriations bill, but the leftists finally managed to get the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act signed into law the other day.

This is a Very Bad Thing.

First, the people who murdered Shepard are both in prison until they die, even though this hate crimes law was not in effect when they killed him. They killed him and are being punished for it. Hate law not required, justice system clearly not broken.

Second, the killing of Shepard was not a hate crime. His murderer had been awake (high on meth) for a week, and beat Shepard in a drug-related rage. He admitted to having beaten even his best friends before, while coming down off a meth high, and he also beat another person that night (when the killers went to rob Shepard's apartment). The whole story about Shepard being killed because he was queer is blatantly false and based ONLY on speculation, AND goes contrary to the testimony of the principals in the case.

The law was passed under false pretenses. Guess what happens when you start from a lie?

********

God told his prophet:
"Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins."

God also said, and I challenge you to find ambiguity here, that buggery is a Very Bad Thing: "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination . . ."

God considered it so severe an offense that he further said:
". . . they shall surely be put to death . . . . *

Here are the easiest two examples to find, of why every Christian and Jew has an obligation not only to condemn homosexuality, but to condemn it publicly and even to the face of the sinner. Even if it hurts their feeeeeelings. God did not say anything about not hurting someone's feeeelings when telling them they were in the wrong.

To restate more clearly: anyone who believes that the Bible is God's word to the world, and believes in the moral code outlined in the Bible, is exercising a religious conviction against homosexuality, not committing a hate crime, when they say that buggery is wrong.

For the Congress of the United States to pass a law prohibiting hurting someone's feeeeelings because that someone happens to be overly-sensitive to criticism of queers, therefore, is a blatant violation of the Constitutional prohibition that says:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"

It is also a prior restraint on speech which, aside from hurting someone's feeeelings, is harmless. The Constitution also says:

"Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech . . . ."

There will be a very nasty legal case to arise, very soon, because of someone prosecuted under this new Act. That case has the potential to go all the way to the supreme Court, unless the defense is completely worthless. If there is any hope for the future of America at all, the relevant portions of the Act will be declared unconstitutional. It might also be held not applicable and the case dismissed. It might also be upheld as constitutional and the Revolution will draw that much nearer.

The grand experiment in human liberty *may* have just failed. We shall see if it is revived, or if we are now in the death throes of the Republic.

********

Nota bene: This law was the source of a minor controversy a few months ago, and the controversy prevented the passage of the Act. The problem is, it protects with federal guns people with devious sexual proclivities who act out on their impulses in public.

If a child molester's sexual orientation is toward your daughter, who is 9 years old, and he does Very Bad Things to her, and you object, you are now a federal hate criminal. You have committed the ultimate civil sin of condemning someone else because of how they feeeeel. YOU are the one who goes to court to defend yourself, when you scream at your priest to leave your little boy alone.

If an exhibitionit's sexual orientation is to flash his nakedness at your grown-up female eyes when you are walking through the park, and you hit him with your purse, YOU are the federal hate criminal. He has not committed indecent exposure, no, his now-protected sexual orientation requires that sort of thing.

This is not a joke. I wish it were. I can't say we couldn't see it coming.

I hope that our country can survive until the 2010 elections. I am increasingly unsure that it will.

********

*The Jewish legal code of the Old Testament is no longer binding upon God's servants, having been replaced with the New Testament relationship between God and Christians. The MORAL code in the Old Testament was reinforced by the same Jesus who did away with the old legal code. We are no longer to kill queers for buggery. Jesus wants us to love the sinner, but still to hate the sin.

This article could have been considerably longer if we went into the difference between protecting people for inherent, immutable characteristics vs. protecting actions based on desires, but that will wait for another day.

Thanks to Moonbattery for the link to the 20/20 story.

Great Success Last Night!

I mentioned it was tamale-making night last night. I didn't mention we had a Mexican-from-Mexico couple over to our house making the tamales with us my wife (I was watching the Zoo). I strapped on the G22 a little while after I came home, and it was hanging out OWB under my T-shirt for a few hours. Somewhere around 23:30 as I was saying it was time to go to bed, the wife of this couple made me (finally) and was surprised. She didn't much like the idea of me having a gun @ home. I had to go to bed a little later than I was hoping to, but after a four-way conversation she finally came out and said it was a good thing for me to have a gun.

+1 more.

Sorry Bout That

Regular blogging to resume shortly. I'd have hit you up with the post I teased yesterday, but when I got home, it ended up being tamale-making time until WAY past bed time.

Busy. No Blogging. Come Back Later.

Too busy @ work. I'm working up a post about the passage of the new thought hate crime law. Please stand by.

We Lose Huge, We Win Temporarily Small.

The effort is well underway to OUTLAW speech against islam and queers. In Europe and . . . drumroll . . . here, also. Will you stand for it? Will you at least send your Elected Heroes a frikken EMAIL?

Because the force of his will is not strong enough to overcome America's collective common sense (drastically weakened though it is), The Obama was not able to get cap & tax passed in the US Senate before the upcoming Copenhagen climate conference. Have you ever seen a housecat, tossed in disgust out of someone's lap, land on the floor, sit down, and procede to bathe itself, as if the whole action were the cat's idea? Yeah, that's what Obama is doing, saying the conference is not a "head of state affair" so he's not going. More like, you couldn't force your agenda through and the REAL major world polluters decline to attend. Can't be seen as a naked tyrant just yet, eh BHO?

Aaaand one more Atlas Shrugs link for the threepers, ALSO something you didn't get from the nightly shill media network news: Obama declares Janet Napolitano's H1N1 Mexican "swine" flu a national emergency. That would be, the kind where we can roll out the troops and start rounding people up in concentration (death) camps, or giving mass injections of a vaccine full of poison against their will. Hint: CARRY YOUR GUNS PEOPLE! One commenter said they heard ALL flu will be reported as H1N1 because they just stopped testing for H1N1 specifically . . . astonishing if true, but it wouldn't surprise me, and you can expect a huge spike in H1N1 and none of anything else this winter if it's so.

One last note, and one you can actually do something concrete about: When you get the H1N1 vaccination, get it in an individual syringe package. The bulk pack contains thimerosal, the individual syringe-packaged doses do not.

Email Subject Lines.

Chances are approaching 100% that I don't know you, and don't recognize your email address.

I get a lot of spam emails.

Put these two together, and it means I have missed probably several of your valid comments or questions.

I got an email today with a username of somebody's first name, and the subject line is a single word. I sent it straight to /dev/null. Do not pass go, do not collect $200 I will NEVER see an email that is not obviously NOT spam.

FYI.

You Have a Wheeze In There.

Quoth my Darling Wife last night, as she lay her head on my chest. Today I feel closer to $1000 than $1,000,000. Getting that "fish out of water" feeling, actually. I need to hit up the guaifenesin/pseudoephedrine combo when I get home. That's on top of the regular Loratadine 10mg.

LB and MM sound like they have emphysema, and Company Owner #2, who refuses to take drugs, sounds like he has the flu.

Why? Because the mold count is off the chart, literally:



Tomorrow's Allergy Report looks exactly the same, with this additional note: "molds will remain high. Red Berry Juniper from the Texas Panhandle may briefly show up after cold frontal passages late this week and early next week."

The red berry juniper riding South on cold fronts is why LB sounds like he's an old, sick man. The next couple days are going to deplete my drug stores significantly. I just hope it's enough. Thank God for drugs!

More News From The Place Where England Used To Be

Seen at Say Uncle.

You have cash. You put your cash in a safe deposit box. The government takes it by force without notice to or consent by either you OR the safe deposit box site owner. The cash is now property of the Crown, unless you can prove that it was carried by your grandfather across Europe as he fled without papers from the Nazi uprising, and settled in London under an assumed name.

Welcome to the Brave New World of the United Kingdom, where the people, liberated from the danger of their own personal, private guns, cannot effectively protest this sort of treatment of OVER 6,700 safe deposit box owners.

These are the sorts of stories which, in America, might end up with a few perforated crania at our equivalent of Scotland Yard, and a general apology and reversal of the government's evil actions.

In UK, the police have dug in their heels, hoping that the 90% of people whose valuables were in safe deposit boxes were legitimately-gotten, will just shut up and go away. A few highlights (there is MUCH more in the linked article):

"A Hindu priest described how his family's valuables had been carried in the Sixties from Madhya Pradesh, India, to London 'in a gunny sack'. Among the possessions seized by the police were elaborate handcrafted bracelets, gold rings set with uncut stones, and a bejewelled wedding tikka ornament to be draped on the forehead of a new bride. 'These items had always been in our family,' the priest said, 'We had cash in there too. But now we had to prove how we bought them and where that money, saved over the years, had come from.'"

"Lawyer Sara Teasdale, of City practice Roiter Zucker, whose client had kept more than £900,000 in his box at the vaults in Edgware as cash flow for his business leasing black cabs, said: 'The police are "deep-pocketing" - hauling people through a protracted legal process that they know is so costly that most will roll over.'"

"'This is a remarkable and untenable case of guilt by association' that trampled on rights to privacy enshrined by Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. This guarantees all individuals the right to privacy, barring states from intruding unless serious crimes have been committed. Siobhan Egan from lawyers Lewis Nedas added: 'The police had also made some bizarre errors.' The POCA legislation barred the seizing of legal papers but they had five crates [of legal documents] belonging to [their client]."

" . . . law that specifically stipulated 'fishing expeditions' were barred to the police, even under POCA. In other words, the police were not allowed to seize property in the hope that it would later prove to be criminal."

"Of the 6,717 boxes targeted by detectives in the biggest raid in the Met's history, just over half were occupied. And of those that were full, 2,838 boxes were now handed back, a figure that represents 80 per cent of the number of boxes seized. Eight out of ten box owners were provably innocent. . . ."

But VFD! The Police will eventually return all the legitimately-owned goods, right? I mean, they wouldn't STEAL from the boxes! They were on film for crying out loud!

Yeah, right. One guy who was missing a nice car's worth of cash and a bit of jewelery finally got the film. There was a gap in the film several seconds long, after which the film resumed from a different camera at a different angle.

But VFD! The Police wouldn't harass innocent people, would they?

"One goldsmith from north London fought for over a year to get his £40,000 cash and valuables back, then claimed it was not all there. He has now filed an official complaint. 'The police kept saying, "Why have you got all this cash?" and I showed them my books.' His premises were raided twice, the second time by 20 officers. 'They found nothing because I had done nothing and eventually this summer, everything was returned to me. But £10,000 was gone - and my wife's diamond earrings.'"

********

This is going to cost the Crown millions more pounds to contest the legitimate lawsuits brought by righteously-indignant property owners than it will have netted in forfeited assets. The fun part is, according to the minutes of a 2008 Police meeting, they were looking to fix a budget problem with the seized assets.

Fail.

Liberty? What's that? Rights? Sure, the Crown has some. You? You want rights? In England?

Why Non-Austinites Should Read The Travis Monitor:

Because everyone likes pretty charts & graphs that are easy to understand, and I haven't seen these anywhere else besides The Travis Monitor. Sure he got 'em somewhere else, and he gives full credit on his blog posts. Me? I say go find them on his blog if you want accreditation, I found them over there, and you can too.

Texas Constitutional Amendment Election November 2009 Voter's Guide

Below is the text of each proposed Amendment to the Constitution of the State of Texas, followed by the Official Endorsement of VoteForDavid's entire editorial and legal staff (read: me).

Proposition 1
"The constitutional amendment authorizing the financing, including through tax increment financing, of the acquisition by municipalities and counties of buffer areas or open spaces adjacent to a military installation for the prevention of encroachment or for the construction of roadways, utilities, or other infrastructure to protect or promote the mission of the military installation."

Vote NO (and HECK NO!) on Proposition 1. Please read the previous statement of my position on this Proposition (by clicking here) Cliff's notes: Proposition 1 means taking money from homeowners (as taxes), only to give it back as a consolation prize for forcing people out of their homes and businesses, so the military will feeeeel better about the areas surrounding military bases.


Proposition 2
"The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the ad valorem taxation of a residence homestead solely on the basis of the property's value as a residence homestead."

Please vote YES on Proposition 2.
Proposition two will stop the evil practice of telling property owners "well, you could build a mall here, and that would get the State much more tax revenue, so instead of taxing the ranch and little tiny ranch house on your land, we'll tax it like a mall. Thanks for giving us your money when we point our guns at you. Luv 'n' kisses, Texas." The Austin Chronicle says this proposition is "Just another backdoor way to slash taxes on valuable property, thereby undermining the public schools and other community needs." I ask the Chronicle, "Who the heck are you to say we shouldn't tax what IS (vs. what could be) because you think the community needs more money? Who died and made you God, anyway?"


Proposition 3
"The constitutional amendment providing for uniform standards and procedures for the appraisal of property for ad valorem tax purposes."

Please vote YES on Proposition 3.
All the districts in the State put property tax money into the public schools, but not all the districts appraise property values in the same way. This is not fair. If the rules made under the uniform standards turn out to be unfair or otherwise stinky, we can change them later. For now, let's start by making the rules in the first place.


Proposition 4
"The constitutional amendment establishing the national research university fund to enable emerging research universities in this state to achieve national prominence as major research universities and transferring the balance of the higher education fund to the national research university fund."

Please vote NO on Proposition 4.
We have THREE world-class research institutions at Texas universities: A private one at Rice, one at UT, and one at A&M. It's great to have world-class research facilities in your State, isn't it? Yeah, except that we are currently in a budget-destroying Recession right now, and university research departments don't operate on the cheap. We can't go spending MORE money on MORE tier-one schools right now. Let the proponents of this amendment ask again once the GDP number no longer has a (-) sign in front of it. When we're knee-deep in cash, maybe we will feel like having a dozen, brazillion-dollar research labs around the state. For now, we are struggling to fund the ones we already have.


Proposition 5
"The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to authorize a single board of equalization for two or more adjoining appraisal entities that elect to provide for consolidated equalizations."

Please vote NO on Proposition 5.
This gives me the creeping willies. If all the adjoining appraisal review boards (read "board of equalization") in the State get together and hold hands and sing Kum Bah Yah, we'll have ONE board of equalization. Does anybody really trust the government in (name a city across the State from your hometown) to know how much your property is worth, better than (your city name goes here)'s board of equalization does? No? Me neither. Sure, some of the districts are sparsely populated, or whatever the problem is. Let the locals handle it. Local control is BETTER than centralized control for almost everything, including LOCAL property value appraisals.


Proposition 6
"The constitutional amendment authorizing the Veterans' Land Board to issue general obligation bonds in amounts equal to or less than amounts previously authorized."

Please vote NO on Proposition 6.
Well, you think to yourself, that sounds harmlessly ambiguous, doesn't it? Sure it does, until you realize that we are talking about borrowing money our children haven't earned yet, to pay for stuff we won't own when the bill comes due. Wait! It's for the VETERANS! Don't you care about THEM? Of course I do; I am one myself, and so is my Darling Wife. Veterans are people too, and they can get financing if they are creditworthy. This measure doesn't mean "Loans vs. No Loans" for Veterans trying to get a house fresh back from Afghanistan. This proposition means we could issue $2Billion in bonds right now, instead of in increments of up to $500Million as we have done (repeatedly) before. It also means the State wouldn't have to ask you again, when they want to borrow another $2Billion. The money for these bonds is pretty sure to be paid back, I'll grant you. But you will have to grant me that the voters of Texas don't seem to have much difficulty approving more bonds for the funds as required. I'm not a big fan of automatic checks for paying my bills, and I'm not a big fan of writing automatically-renewing bond authorizations for the State of Texas, either.


Proposition 7
"The constitutional amendment to allow an officer or enlisted member of the Texas State Guard or other state militia or military force to hold other civil offices."

Please vote NO on Proposition 7
Let's say Texas State Guard Colonel Jones runs for Dog Catcher in (your city's name here). He's such a great guy, he wins. Then the State Guard needs him. He's deployed to (a city across the state from you) for 6 months. Then who will be your dog catcher? What if half of your local School Board (the half with brains) gets called up for duty? This is a really dumb idea. The reason this prohibition is in place, is because smart people thought of it a long time ago. On this issue, we should keep what makes sense. The main argument FOR this proposal is "everybody else can do it," and this reasoning is as simple-minded as it sounds.


Proposition 8
"The constitutional amendment authorizing the state to contribute money, property, and other resources for the establishment, maintenance, and operation of veterans hospitals in this state."

Please vote YES on Proposition 8.
There are only nine veterans' hospitals in the State, serving 1.7 Million veterans. Veterans are often a special kind of broken, and (trust me, I know first-hand) your local hospital probably doesn't play nice with their insurance. We shouldn't have those of our veterans broken for our sakes, jumping through extra hoops just to get their war wounds tended, should we? I'm not for going in to debt to pay for a new one, but if we have land we're not using I don't see a problem giving it up to allow a hospital to be put on it. If we have the money, I'm not even against paying some to help the Feds get a hospital going. I hope the People of Texas will have enough on the ball to require a bond issue to go to a vote before we go borrowing money, but that is a question for next year.


Proposition 9
"The constitutional amendment to protect the right of the public, individually and collectively, to access and use the public beaches bordering the seaward shore of the Gulf of Mexico."

Please vote YES on Proposition 9.
People that live right next to the beach don't like this idea, because you clutter up "their" beach frontage. The only problem with that is the actual beach is public land. In a hundred years, their beach frontage will be under water. Building right on the beach is a horrible idea, and everyone with property there knew it when they built their vacation home. The State lays claim to the water's edge for several very good reasons. When your property is a moving target, telling the rest of the citizenry to keep away because you don't like them near it is silly.


Proposition 10
"The constitutional amendment to provide that elected members of the governing boards of emergency services districts may serve terms not to exceed four years."

Please vote NO on Proposition 10
They serve two-year terms right now. Shorter is better, and if someone is doing a good job they can get re-elected. If not, four years may be three-and-a-half too many. Longer terms means less control over elected officials by the people who put them in office.


Proposition 11
"The constitutional amendment to prohibit the taking, damaging, or destroying of private property for public use unless the action is for the ownership, use, and enjoyment of the property by the State, a political subdivision of the State, the public at large, or entities granted the power of eminent domain under law or for the elimination of urban blight on a particular parcel of property, but not for certain economic development or enhancement of tax revenue purposes, and to limit the legislature's authority to grant the power of eminent domain to an entity."

Please vote YES on Proposition 11.
The anti-eminent-domain movement began when a bunch of people including an old lady named Kelo were to be kicked off their land so a mall could be built. The mall would make lots more money for the state than a silly little old lady's HOUSE. Off you go lady, like it or not. That case went all the way to the supreme Court and they said it was okay to do this sort of thing. Let's make sure the State knows that we don't like having our land stolen and given to somebody else for their own (private) profit. There are minor issues with the wording of the bill . . . those can be fixed later. Until then, I'm willing to trust that a minimum of 2/3 of both houses in the legislature won't go nuts creating new "entities".

********

For a more thorough explanation of both sides of each issue, please read the House Research Organization's Focus Report, which I found at The Travis Monitor, where you can find some additional comments on this and other worthy topics, as well.

Maybe Obama Will Nominate Her To A Cabinet Post

You know, in the spirit of honor among thieves bipartisanship.

Moonbattery.com has the story for you: Scozzafava went to the Barney Frank & Tim Geithner School of Tax Law Compliance.

Newt, are you ready to drop her yet, or is she still too cool since she wears the blazer with an "R" on the front?

Madness @ Work!

A recent conversation in LB's work area:

VFD: It smells like rat poo back here.
LB: No it smells like a dead rat. I know there's a dead rat in here.
VFD: No, it does smell like a dead rat. Probably in the ceiling, it drowned in the ceiling*
LB: Aaaaaaaah daaaang! (looks at the ceiling)

A hunt ensued. It turned out there was a dead rat. It was not in the ceiling. LB came around and teased me, waving the rat's corpse around, asking if I still wanted to work here. He was making fun of the only female we ever had here, that did the same job I do, who quit after seeing one rat in the room where she was working. What a gurl.

Dang, now my room stinks of dead rat.

Update, later the same day: my area smells like usual, and LB's room smells much better.

*(we have a leaky flat roof, and the cieling in LB's room had to have a hole poked in it to relieve the standing water. Think, lancing a boil)(We also have a bunch of holes in the exterior walls, slowly being repaired as Maintenance Dude finds them. At least the ones racoons were using have been closed up. The rat-sized holes, still apparently open.)

It's Not About You, Lady.

The woman man who was raped (and pretty atrociously raped, at that) as a 13 year-old girl by a sleaze 30 years ago, does not want to be dragged into the limelight. Her lawyer says she wants the legal charges against her assailant to be dropped because "Leave her alone."

This is an understandable impulse, but to actually act on it is moral cowardice on her part.

Fortunately for the cause of Justice, her input is not required. She has already testified in this matter, and it seems to me that the prosecution could proceed without her. The judge should tell her "Ma'am, this is not about you. This is about a monster who should have been in jail instead of fleeing the country and getting famous for making shitty movies."

That said, the media SHOULD leave her alone. She should be pissed off rather than ashamed, but she should be given the respect due to the victim of an horrible crime, and the paparazzi should get off her lawn. Give the poor woman her privacy, for crying out loud!

Slobbering Barney Knows Better Than You!

Barney Frank, the same cat who defaulted on $80,000-ish of credit card debt, has introduced a bill to give Uncle the ability to seize any business that gets too big to fail, as designated by the government, regardless of whether or not they too bailout money.

Because he knows better than you how to run your company.

The REAL Problem With Nationalized "Healthcare"

(alternate title: Quote of the Weekend)

When somebody had the unmitigated GALL to question Queen Pelosi as to where in the Constitution she reads the Congress making us buy health insurance, she said

"Are you serious? Are you serious?"

And moved on to the next question. Thanks.

Yes, he was serious. When the specter of Hillarycare loomed large on the horizon in 1994, the Congressional Budget Office made a keen point:

“The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States. An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government.”

What's wrong with that, VFD?

Get off my Internet! If you don't understand that it is evil to require people to buy something (especially something expensive) in order to be a lawful citizen of the country you are pretty dum. This type of thing is an ANTI-AMERICAN, anti-liberty power grab of epic proportion.

You do know, do you not, that certain of your Elected Heroes have gone on record to state that, as long as you got enough "benefits" from the government, it would be fine to take 100% of your earnings from you at gunpoint. That would be, enough benefits according to some petty tyrant bureaucrat in D.C.

If you think it's outrageous to propose taking 100% of your earnings from you and give you whatever they like back, why is it less-bad to take the 50% they currently take from you? Why is it OK to take from you without your permission at all? When is it okay to take from you without your permission (at gunpoint)?

Is it okay if you are 24 years old, healthy as a horse, and don't need health care, for them to take 1/4 of your salary to pay for health care payment insurance?

If you haven't recently, and especially if you are represented by Democrats, call your Congressman and Senators and tell them NO to any systematic overhaul of healthcare in America.

********
The CNS News article from which this tangent launched was seen at Say Uncle.

Bee Pollen Tastes Like POO!

Depending, of course, where your bees collected their pollen; the flavor is supposed to range from bitter to sweet.

The pollen I got is (mostly) brilliant yellow and dissolves like an Alavert on the tongue. My initial response is that it also has almost the exact same flavor as the smell that came off the "organic particulate" filters we had on our backyard fish pond when I was a kid. The taste of this pollen is 98% the same as the smell of fresh koi FISH POO. Talk about your negative connotations!

So I dissolved the next dose in water. Still tates like poo, but there is much more "plant" flavor to it. I don't much like eating things which taste like plant OR poo, but I suppose I can get used to it. bleh. We'll see if it helps with the allergies.

Pro Tip: Turning Off Your House Alarm.

Since before reveille this morning, our neighbor across the street has been having trouble with her house alarm going off, she resets it, and it goes off again.

Ours was doing that one time. I pulled out the telephone cord, and disconnected the speaker. It was still going off, but nobody knew or cared. Now we just have to be careful what buttons the baby presses on the remote control for the alarm . . .

Blow'd Up Real Good-Like. :(

My little circuit board controlling the thermostatically-controlled heated test bed thingy I was working on? The one I mentioned I had spent an hour getting good data from it? Yeah, I blew it up a little bit. Serves me right for making connections with power applied.

I have spare boards, since they were pulled from nearly-identical devices ages ago and I just kept them around, but it takes swapping the parts out. Oh well. Onward and upward.

By the way, that would be the SECOND thing that I caused to explode internally (no flying chunks yet thanks God! ) during the course of this project. Sigh.

At least I haven't tripped the 100-ampere circuit breaker on the 3-phase 230VAC service at work yet, while 3 other guys have.

Greedy Health Insurance Companies Disseminating Propaganda!

Nevermind that your ladies' make-up manufacturer makes 50% profit on stuff made from whale fat.

No, it's the profits the INSURANCE companies make that are evil. Nevermind that they are only netting single-digit profit margins.

Of course, you couldn't tell the difference in a profit and a profit margin to save your life, because you went to government schools in America, and were robbed of anything like an education.

How could their profit margins be so low? Don't they make fat bank off my premiums?

Yours, yes. Old, sick peoples' premiums, not so much. Besides, due to the fact that you actually do have Choice and Competition* when it comes to choosing your health insurer, they have to strive for low prices. They have to see how low they can cut their margins just to get you in the door.

********

*There are 1,300-something evil, greedy health insurance companies operating in the USA today. The President wants you to be able to choose between the government as your health care payor, or nobody.

1300 or 1, which number of options affords you the most "Choice and Competition?"

********

And if you were wondering if they get that 5% profit margin by denying claims, just remember: the highest percentage of denied claims from any large insurer are denied BY MEDICARE, which is run by _________ (fill in the blank)!

The Real Reason To Not Worry About Global Warming:

According to the Bible, the world ends in fire anyway, but that's not the reason for today. The reason today is: there will be at least another 1,007 years until the world ends, again according to the Bible.

What?

7 years' tribulation, and 1,000 years' reign of Christ the King of kings.

So, no worries!

********

Yes, I know you thought I was going to mention glowbull wormening. I didn't because it's not happening, and if it were, there's nothing you could do about it, so you may as well save your worry for something you can do something about.

Pro Tip: Childrens' Birthday Parties

We went to a birthday party for a 5 year-old yesterday. It was actually not too bad, for two main reasons:

2) the children big enough to play largely unattended were outside
1) enough interesting adults were there to speak to. I spent a good portion of the time speaking with an engineer and his wife whose youngest child is old enough to have children.

Pro Tip: Invite interesting people to your child's birthday party, even if they don't have small children. For the sake of the parents who bring the children and stay for the free food party.

You Want A Mall? No? Too Bad!

Congratulations! You also now own a deserted mall with an oil well in the parking lot.

No, you do not own the mineral rights.

You Want Some Hogs? No? Too Bad!

The country is in a Depression. People are buying less pork. Farmers are still raising lots of pigs. Price of pork is through the floor.

The obvious solution: Steal money from taxpayers (read: YOU) at gunpoint and buy hogs, then not feed them to anyone. You know, to keep the price artificially high. That would be, instead of (as in a capitalist society) letting the weaker hog farms die off, and the remaining farms sell pork for whatever they can get for it.

Captialism means you can succeed OR fail. Of course, with the current crop of communists in the capitol, you wouldn't expect them to care about the latter, only the former.

Not that anybody cares, but wild (feral) hogs are actually considered a shoot-on-sight PEST in large swaths of the American heartland. They are breeding in the wild in such numbers as to make farming profitable crops difficult, because they destroy whole fields of (e.g.) corn in no time flat.

We have too many pigs, political, feral, and farm-raised, in America. It is time for the price to fall.

********

P.S. if anybody in or around the Central Texas region needs someone to come shoot at some hogs, email me at the address at the bottom of this page.

Madness @ Work!

So I walk in to the main production area at work this morning, and what greets my ears?

"CUT YOUR BALLS OFF AND DIE!"

oooookay, no, thanks. Good morning to you too. I think I missed half of that conversation!

I Reported Something to flag@whitehouse.gov . . .

I am very concerned about what must be a false rumour, so I sent the following to flag@whitehouse.gov:

********

President Accused of Conspiracy to Commit Treason!

It is reported that President Obama is going to sign on to the global climate treaty at the upcoming Copenhagen Climate Conference. If that treaty were signed by the President of the United States, this would be a treasonous, impeachable offense.
Trying to improve our climate and participating in the Copenhagen Climate Conference later this year is a good thing . . . but it is against the spirit and letter of American law for him to sign us up for an unelected, unaccountable foreign governmental body with the power to tax the People of the United States without their consent! Surely this was a false rumour? Of course President Obama knows this would be treason!

Please look into it!

-(my realname goes here)

***
Jesus loves you.

Did you know I have a blog?
http://votefordavid.blogspot.com

********

Sure, I pointed them right back here. It's my standard signature line and I don't mind going on the we don't have an enemies list. I mean, what's the worst that could happen?

If I'm not careful, my tongue might wear a hole in my cheek if I keep delivering lines like that.

*******

Update the next day: Yahoo! reported a delivery failure. flag@whitehouse.gov is shut down? Aren't they concerned about "fishy" emails anymore?

Pseudoephedrine For Nausea?

I would have said no, yesterday. Today I'm not so sure. Icky biology story follows, you have been warned.

The allergies, they are bad this year. We were feeling under the weather, and that included a nasty-feeling stomach that wasn't quite bad enough to make us puke. I think it was all the phlegm from the sinus cavities, draining to the gut, and making it all funky down there.

So, pseudoephedrine dries up the goo, and the gut clears up. I'll leave the really icky details for your imagination, but it appears to be working, thank God.

Oops? Did I do that? ;)

Under the old name Diebold, some computerized voting machines were made. Apparently, one of the features in the software was the ability to erase votes without leaving a log entry about it.

What could possibly go wrong?

The better question is:

WHY THE [expletive delted] don't they all make a paper copy of the ballot when it is cast?

It's pretty easy to lose a box of copies, sure, but it's pretty neat to be able to just "oopsy" elect the candidate of your choice instead of, you know, counting ballots. What a mess.

They'll Be Clamoring For The Mark of The Beast.

In this story, we read about a car chase that never got very far, because OnStar was able to disable a stolen truck. The police caught the carjacker after he ran, jumped a residential fence, and fell into a swimming pool. Sounds great, right? I mean, you get your car back unmolested, and a Bad Guy got caught! Win-Win!

Hold on there.

First problem: a driver was rolling around UNARMED. The driver said they saw the goblin approaching their car with a gun in hand. Right there is where I show them the business end of my own gun, and my problem is solved. Not the case here, so the story continues. The driver and cousin are relieved of their phone, wallets, and a GM truck. The carjacker decides not to shoot them after they willingly exit the car. They had no guarantee of life after surrender, but they were fortunate enough to get it. Okay fine, the carjacker drives off in a stolen truck. The police are called, and OnStar is called. The thief finds his gas pedal increasingly ineffective, and the car stops. He gets out, is chased, and is caught.

So what's the matter with the OnStar folks being able to disable the stolen car? Isn't that a good thing?

No. It's a Very Bad Thing and here's why. Some of us are not confident that the system is un-hackable. This could forseeably be seen in use by a ring of car thieves. Figure out that disable signal and you're able to stop and steal GM cars to your heart's content, by forcing the legitimate owners to find another way to get where they are going, leaving the car unattended. That's one reason. The real reason is that I don't trust "the government" to have this power over my car. What's to keep Them from stopping Mike Vanderboegh with this, and disappearing him from the middle of Nowhere when he takes a road trip? What if you are fleeing from the agents of an oppressive regime?

VFD, you're a paranoid delusional nutjob on this one buddy!

Okay, then does this become a problem for you, if the Police gain the authority to MAKE your car stop at a DUI checkpoint? How about a seatbelt checkpoint? How about a checkpoint because we feel like having a checkpoint?

This is not a technology conducive to continued liberty in a country where the people are increasingly disinterested in liberty.

If I could afford to buy it, or afford to put gas in it, I would have a car with a carburetor and points ignition. Drive-by-wire? How about a LINKAGE for the steering, gas, clutch, and brakes? Hit me with a portable radio-controlled car carrying an EMP bomb? Hah! OnStar? Sure they can help you . . . to stop someone ELSE. If you want to stop me, you'll have to do it the hard way!

But I'm stuck in debt, and also not someone likely to need a car like the one I just described.

Hat tip to Uncle.

On This Day In History . . .

. . . 1805 . . .

The national hero of England was lost, and his battle won, on the same day. This is one of the more easily-understood commentaries on the Battle of Trafalgar I have found online. It ends:

"The ultimate outcome of the victory was to secure the supremacy of the British navy on the high seas for the next hundred years, and the end to any threat of invasion from France. It lead Napoleon to his Continental strategy, and possibly to his disastrous campaign against the Russians in 1812."

Colonel Cooper on: Liberty, Freedom, and Equality

The following are a few snippets lifted from various of Col. Jeff Cooper's Commentaries.

"Liberty and equality are irreconcilable opposites. The only place you can have both at once is on a desert island."

"It would help our understanding of the problem if people would cease confusing liberty and freedom. These words are not interchangeable. Freedom is a condition, whereas liberty is a political ideal. Our constitution was designed to secure the blessings of liberty upon ourselves and our posterity. It says nothing about freedom. Patrick Henry did not exclaim, "Give me freedom or give me death." That statue in the harbor is not the Statue of Freedom. It would be nice if we learned how to say exactly what we mean."

"This preoccupation with equality is another symptom of the degeneracy of The Age of the Common Man. In the first place it is an illusion, since men are not created equal, except in the political sense. Everyone is better or worse than someone else in a particular example of his capacities, and pretending that this is not so is simply silly. Excellence, not mediocrity, should be everyone's goal, and it is hard to think of anything, from gardening to crossword puzzles, at which someone may not excel. In some cases, such as Benjamin Franklin or Theodore Roosevelt, excellence is quite obvious. But excellence need not be obvious in order to be worthy.

"This dim-witted passion seems to be a product of the French Revolution, but it diminished in the 19th century, and did not reappear with full virulence until about the time of the Vietnamese War. It is the battle cry of the losers, who do not want anyone to appear good at anything, lest that make some other person feel bad. These people value "self-esteem" as anyone's individual prerogative, rather than "self-respect," which must be earned; and self-respect is by definition not something which may be granted by other people. Self-respect, like happiness, is a by-product of accomplishment, and accomplishment is available to all in some line of endeavor. But accomplishment does not come without effort, and the person who gives up because the struggle is hard deserves neither achievement nor happiness."

(emphasis in the last quote is mine)

BREAKING NEWS! FIRST RESPONDERS ON SCENE!

A car has been pulled over! Details pending anything actually happening. Film at 11!

Hat tip to Moonbattery

Do You Ever Have This Dream?

Tam said something snarky about dreams, and I remembered a snippet that happens a lot in my own dreams. Background: I likes me some warm feet when I am sleeping. I wrap the bottom of the blankets around my tootsies almost every night.

For whatever reason, in a dream, I want to be running. To/From/Away/Towards, doesn't matter. I have a marked tendency in my dreams to be unable to run without tripping over my own feet. I don't fall, but the steps are mincing and clumsy, with my feet running in to each other.

Gee, I wonder what that could mean . . .

Col. Cooper on Introducing Children to Firearms

In his September 2004 Commentary, Jeff Cooper wrote:

"People keep asking about the proper age at which to introduce children to firearms. Since people are as different as they are, there is no conclusive answer to this. There is first of all the matter of bone structure. Most young people do not achieve enough length of bone until about age 14 to handle a rifle. With the pistol this is less important, but since the pistol is a more demanding instrument, generally speaking, I cannot really approve of starting under age ten, as some friends of ours have done. This is not to say it cannot be done, and I congratulate the parent who brings it off successfully, but there are other considerations apart from body size. Judgment is the most important of these. Mature judgment is probably the most significant element of the subject, and both children and their parents vary enormously in this department. There are truly precocious children who think like adults at age 14, and conversely there are people who never grow up at all and should not be allowed to vote, still less handle lethal weapons. I do not know the best age at which a youngster should start shooting, so I must beg the question. This matter of judgment must be left up to you.

"I do not think it is a matter of gauge or caliber. It is generally accepted that one should start with a 22, and while I have no objection to this, I know of some very excellent practitioners who began with full caliber weapons and suffered no damage therefrom. This bothers some people more than others, but recoil should not be given too much concern here. Recoil varies, of course, but the blow delivered by the butt of full caliber rifle or shotgun is not greater than that received in any backyard contact sport.

"Some recommend that the novice be introduced carefully under supervision to the old man's guns and observed to see just what sort of judgment he displays. The ownership of personal weapons is a very proper right-of-passage for a boy. With girls it is optional. Any man must know how to manage firearms if he pretends to be a man. A girl may be allowed to find her own speed here, and only commence the exercise when she really wants to. With either boy or girl the novice must not be pushed, but must display genuine and sincere desire before taking up arms."

My only additional comment is that we now able to purchase Cricket brand single-shot .22s for our children, so being too small for a rifle is much less of a problem. My daughter wants a pink one.

Can You Cut The Hammer Spring On An SKS?

Yes. I did, as part of my DIY SKS trigger job.

This is what happens to the "hard" military primer on Wolf 7.62x39mm when fired from my rifle. There is exactly ONE coil cut off of the hammer spring:

(it's more impressive in person)


I measured the firing pin mark. It's a solid 0.050" deep. Tell me that's a light strike.

Ruger 10/22 DIY Tuning/Modification List

Seen at The Firearm Blog:

You have a 10/22 and want it to be better? Click on through to this (probably woefully incomplete but still pretty good) modification list at Suburban's Domain.

Media Bias? What Media Bias?

Read all about it at the Examiner, because the Orlando Sentinel doesn't deserve your click-through.

Seen at Say Uncle

Colonel Cooper on Front Sights

Jeff Cooper was not a fan of telescope sights for dangerous game rifles. He departed the scene just as the current crop of high-quality low-magnification 'red dot' sights were coming on line, so his comments on those are few. Given a decade of good service, I like to think the Colonel would have endorsed (e.g.) the ACOG. It is no secret that his preference was for high quality, sturdy "ghost ring" rear sights. Regarding the front sight, he said:

"I like a broad, heavy, black ramp with a narrow median strip which projects about an 1/8" above the ramp and is by choice filled with flash orange pigment. The shoulders of the base ramp offer quite good protection against bumps and jars. The square inner post offers good vertical precision and the center "flash strip" offers practically instantaneous pick up. There are no ears and no hood to pick up trash. When combined with a proper rear ghost-ring, this is the best answer for "up close and personal" situations."

New German Automotive Tech: You're Doing It Wrong.

This is a sad commentary on the quality of drivers on the street today. Mercedes-Benz, long an innovator in the realm of automotive safety, comes up with a system to stop your car for you at a red light. Because you are expected to suck at driving too much to do it for yourself. And because you would never, ever have a need to run a light, like a medical emergency or fleeing from agents of an oppressive government. Because the German health care system has eliminated all lesser races diseases, and the German government would never want to oppress it's people.

Say it with me now, class: "Mechanical safety devices breed complacency."

Because this post has too little controversial material in it, I'll leave you with this: There is a certain amount of goodness to things that kill unskilled operators.

New German Automotive Tech: You're Doing It Right!

Do you like fuel cell cars but hate that pesky "running out of juice in the middle of nowhere and can't keep driving" part?

Do you love the convenience of being able to pump a few gallons of liquid into your car but hate turning it into pollution to get rid of it?

The latest cool thing is to go to a fuel station to dump off your old, used-up fuel cell juice, and refill your fuel cell with the ease of a regular petrol fill-up. And do it with a fuel cell that gives the same range as current-generation Li-ion car batteries.

This, I like.

Misery Loves Company . . .

. . . and right now, everybody has plenty of both misery and company.

Literally everyone I know has some degree of sinus congestion, ranging from "I thought it was easier to breathe than this" to "I thig I hab duh flew."

A radio newsbreak a few minutes ago said "If you think you have a cold, it might just be allergies" and they said the cold front that just blew in brought a metric shit-ton of allergens with it. Just kidding, we use standard shit-tons around here.

Anyhow, I'm glad that I am relatively asymptomatic (thanks God!) and it is at least a good reminder to keep washing my hands, using hand sanitizer, and not touching my head (eyes, ears, mouth & nose) to prevent infection with something nastier than a pollen. For some people, it would actually be better if it were a cold. Allergies will come back annually, and symptoms last as long as the stuff is in the air. A cold, at least you wouldn't catch again next time around.

Welcome to Central Texas, everybody!

Actual Progress On A Project? Can It BE?!

I spent almost an hour working on a project today. This, for those of you readers who are not yourselves parents, homeowners, car mechanics, plumbers, landscapers, veterinarians, and full-time employees, is a rare thing.

About *mumble* years ago, I started work on a piece of test equipment for characterizing transistors. It went through several revisions, and was actually completely functional at one point . . . until an overlooked connection caused a minor explosion in one of the power supplies. Thus discouraged, it sat there mostly untouched for the last year-ish.

Part of this tester is a heated, thermostatically-controlled test bed so the transistors I will test will be nice and comfy and cozy warm. I spent just under an hour getting some really good data on how it performs under a few different circumstances. The control is pretty tight for a first-iteration cobbled-together experiment, but I think it can be better. Just around +/-1.5% variation over 4 minutes with no external heating or cooling is not too shabby, but I think it can be better.

Critically Low Levels!

Intravenous caffeine: low
Rest: low
Amount of physical activity: low
Inclination to act: low

Snark: Critically Low!

Beware: Danger of content-free blogging!

Jews Fighting Back: "The Price Tag"

Heard on NPR this afternoon . . .

An "illegal jewish settlement" on the west bank was forcibly evacuated by Israeli troops.

Then the (now homeless) settlers went and burned down an olive grove owned by a 'Palestinian' fellow. A hundred something trees were lost, right before the harvest. Several thousand trees have been burned so far in just this sort of tit-for-tat activity.

This is the price tag for evicting the settlers. It is a new movement and I support it. The Palestinians are a political football for the Arab world, and the Jewish people are a political football for Israel. You want to kick me out of my home again? Well, that's going to cost you.

Note: this is not the same as lobbing a missile into a marketplace.

I support this sort of guerilla action. Once I am elected, I won't be able to say so anymore, but you won't be likely to find me denouncing it like BHO would if he knew about it.

Why The Name of God Is Not Important*

Every day when you return home from work, your darling wife carries your infant daughter to the door to greet you. When the door opens, you are greeted, daily, by the sound of the voice of The Love of Your Life saying "It's DADEEEEEEEE!!!" Your daughter very well might only be able to say one syllable at a time, for many months. During that time, your name will be "DEEEEE" because that is what she hears every day.

If your 11 month-old girl is in her bed in the morning, freshly awoken from a night's sleep (at 05:23 AM) and she sees you come into the room, she will hold out her arms and say "Dee!" and you will smile and pick her up. She can't walk very well, and one day she falls and skins her knee. She cries out Deeee!!! and looks right at you with her eyes moist with tears of pain . . . tell me you will not be emotionally moved by her feeble attempt to communicate with you by calling your name.

If you call me dayvihd, dahveed, dayve, or (as one girl in my kindergarten class did) daybihn, you are referring to myself, regardless of how you pronounce David.

The tetragrammaton is unpronounceable only in part because the vowel points were not recorded. But it does not matter what God said his name is, when he introduced himself to Moses. Regardless of if you say yahweh or jihhohvah or jeezis or yayhohshuah, if you refer to the one true, living God who is self-existent, the creator of all things, who loves grace, mercy, justice, and YOU, you have got the name right because you have got the person right.

If you say God and mean a black stone which has a hateful, capricious, petty, spiteful personality, you have not got it, regardless of how you pronounce it. If you say Jesus and mean a man who was born as a result of sexual congress between two humans, you have not got it. If you say Lord and mean somebody with four or more arms, you have not got it.

Even if the vowel points had been recorded, you would get it wrong. You don't speak Hebrew the way Moses did. And Moses was a stammerer, so he may very well have mispronounced the name, if he had dared to speak it.

It does not matter how His name is properly spoken. It does not matter if you mispronounce it. What matters is that you believe the proper things about the God. Moreover, the pronunciation of the unspeakable name is not something over which Christians should part company. If your otherwise-doctrinally-sound church insists on one pronunciation or another, it is probably well done if you just avoid the subject entirely.

What you need to worry about instead is whether or not you are going to punishments or reward after you die. Are you safe from the punishments coming to you?

You can be, and you can be sure of it.

********
*with the understanding that I am only discussing the controversy over pronunciation of the tetragrammaton here. Taking the name of the Lord in vain is still bad. Cursing it (whatever you think it is) is worse. Words still mean things, but we need not get all wrapped up in a word we cannot pronounce.

P.A. Luty arrested.

The author of an undisclosed number of books on my shelf has been arrested under an anti-terrorism law for inciting crimes.

That would be, a man who told people in other (still-free) countries how to make guns in a home workshop, has finally been put down a black hole by the government in UK.

For disseminating information about machines useful mainly for fighting oppressive governments.

Nobody knew what had happened to him, because he was arrested on undisclosed charges, is being held in an undisclosed location, and the government have generally given the impression they would like to lock him up, throw away the key and shred his file. Only weeks later did friends in other countries find out about his arrest as a terrorist for spreading WORDS and PICTURES. This author just disappeared.

Not in Soviet Russia. Not in Red China. Not under the Khmer Rough, the Nazis, etc.

In the United Kingdom.

********
By the way, word on the street is, he was recently diagnosed with cancer. I'm sure nothing would please the cowards in UK more than that he die anonymously in a prison cell, having never been publicly acknowledged as even being in custody.

Medium-Grade Crazy, That's What She Is.

Boorts mentioned this today, you can google it up if you want. . . .

A woman hires a limo for $900.
To take her to the Burlington Coat Factory store.
Where she announces that she has won the lottery, and will pay for everybody's stuff, up to $500 worth.
Everybody in the store, employees included, is instantly loaded-up with $500 worth of merchandise, and on the cell phone calling everyone they know. . . .

fast forward . . .

500 people inside
1000 people outside
20 cops trying to keep them all under control . . .

A woman says she doesn't need anything from Burlington, but needs help with bills. The generous patroness writes a check on the spot.

The lucky lottery winner announces she has to go to the bank.
She goes.
She comes back.
WITHOUT any money.
She has no money.
hilarity A riot ensues.

Everybody goes nuts. People are running out of the store with arms full of stuff. People are throwing stuff into the aisles. The cops are in way over their heads.
The woman takes off in her limo.
She stiffs the driver.
He calls the cops.

They arrest her on three prior warrants including making fake 911 calls. No charges yet for inciting a riot. She's going to be evaluated to see if she took one too many crazy pills, and maybe she'll have to take some if she hasn't been.

Somebody tell Obama we have a new candidate for Secretary of the Department of Commerce here . . . .

Chinese Drywall = Manufacturer's Problem, Not Insurer's!

People bought houses made with cheap Chinese drywall in the walls.

The stuff emits toxic and corrosive gases that wreck other parts of the house. It was present when a home insurance policy was written for a each brand-spanking new house. From the home insurance company's point of view, it is a pre-existing condition.

If your new car's paint started flaking off, would you call Allstate or would you call Chrysler?

Then why are these people so upset to learn their insurers won't fix what isn't the insurers' problem? And why should they insure a house that is guaranteed to have problems later?

SUE THE BUILDER, PEOPLE!

What, they went out of business? Sucks to be you!



Sometimes, liberty bites you in the ass. The freedom to succeed must meet with the freedom to fail, or you are living in Soviet Russia all over again.

I'm Not A Racist, I Just Don't Believe In Mixing The Races . . .

. . . because of what some other people might say.

Seriously? I thought this sort of thing was a thing of the past! Here's a hint for you, Judge: in 10 years, you'll be dead and one fewer people will give a "mixed" child a hard time.

I for one will be glad when we're almost all a sort of medium-brown and people look back and scratch their heads over that whole races thing.

Stock Markets Rally 50% From Recent Lows!

The Dow Jones is up 50%. The S&P 500 is up 59%.

Surely, VFD, You are not going to say this is bad!

Yes I am, and don't call me shirley.

The S&P is running something like a 140 Price-to-earnings ratio these days. This is not investment-grade. Traditionally, when stock markets made sense, P/E was in the 10 to 15 range. There is, to use a euphemism, quite a ways to fall from here. There is nothing fundamentally supporting this rally, aside from the "what else should I do with my clients' money" type of investment advisor/broker/trader. Demand for pretty much everything has been falling the whole time P/E ratios have been rising. The prices of things (a lagging indicator of deflation) are falling. We are poised on the brink of a full-on economic collapse. Unless the government continues giving away "free" money. Then the collapse is worse, and a few years later.

In eight years, we went from, what, 64% to 72% of GDP (our defecit level) under George Bush. Obama has got us all the way up to 100% in his first two years, and that's just the low-ball projections! The dollar is only not collapsing because everyone else sucks worse.

The main reason my party hat is still gathering dust, however, is this:

Japan had FOUR 50% rallies in the Nikkei on the way down during their famous "two lost decades." I bet my co-worker we would hit DJIA 6000 this year. We may not, but I don't put it out of the question for the next fall-off-a-cliff coming up.

"I KNOW it's true, I read it on the Internet!"

Somebody's Brother Owns A Hotel Chain . . .

Janet Napolitano, perpetrator of the H1N1 (Mexican) "Swine" Flu pandemic on the world, must have a brother in-law with a big chain of hotels, or something. She has announced an intention to take money from you (at gun-point), and buy hotels. She wants to convert them to house "non-criminal" illegal aliens (you figure that phrase out).

In case you missed it, the hotel industry is in the tank right now. Somebody wanted out, so they pitched this scam to DHS and DHS bought it, hook line and sinker.

You read it here first: in less than a year, these former hotels will be either well-run jails or (more likely) completely crapped-out wrecks that will more require funding to somebody's brother in-law's toxic location cleanup company to rehabilitate. They will be restored to a habitable state eventually, only to be demolished as an impediment to the well being of a newly-discovered toad.

If You Drive Like This, You Stink!

As I was driving along the other day at 55MPH in the #1 (of 2) lane on my side of a 4-lane undivided highway . . .

An idiot in a "smart" car (but I repeat myself) came off a sidestreet to my right, and without so much as a pause, merges smoothly through the #2 lane, into the #1 lane, within a yard of my front bumper. I (an alert driver*) was honking from the time she started toward the lane divider. The other driver honked back. Nobody was behind me on the highway.

1/2 a mile down the road, they pulled off into the left-turning lane at an intersection at a red light. That's what was worth risking killing us both over. As I pulled even with the offending car, they honked again, so I passed and then made a feint, as if I were going to cut them off, in the little space in front of them in the left turning lane. This was around 30+MPH, no worries of anyone getting run into as far as I was concerned. I put my wheels onto the lane dividing line, then continued on my merry way in the #1 lane, my point made (and probably completely lost on the other driver).

I traveled a few hundred yards more down the road, when I was cut off by ANOTHER little econobox (a Saturn, I think). At least this driver was courteous enough to give me a car length of buffer room at 50 miles per hour, as they pulled in front of my car going 40-ish. I swerved around into the #2 lane where they should still have been.

As I passed each of these ill-driven cars, I noted a common factor. To quote my Darling Wife:

"Of COURSE it's a woman!"

*Be alert! We need more lerts!

Please Pray for My Sister

One of the ladies at our church has been diagnosed with Janet Napolitano's H1N1. She has a new infant. Christans, please pray for her. Her name is Sapna.

Hillary To Let Russia Examine Our Nukes.

Am I wrong to jump straight to the phallic jokes? Okay, I'll skip it; you can come up with those all by yourself anyhow.

What's the worst that could happen? I mean, we are all totally best-buds with Russia now, so why not let them in to all of our nuclear installations to locate, count, and draw "XOXO love you long time" on all our nuclear weapons?

There is not enough snark in the world to denigrate the weapons-grade stupidity our Secretary of State is showing off here. The President is weak and apparently State is stuck on kindergarten-playtime rules of situational ethics. I said it before, and I reiterate: don't be surprised at anything that happens after a Socialist is elected to President in the United States of America.

Honduras Reverts to Banana Republic?

The poorest second-poorest nation on our side of the world (beating Haiti doesn't say too much for a national economy) had one thing going for them: the rule of law. They had followed their Constitution and were standing on their own honor in spite of the rest of the world pointing fingers and guns at them, and taking money away from them.

Honduras has apparently caved.

Having abandoned honor, they now have nothing left. There is no more Honduras.*

Recall, please, that Zelaya was trying to rig the next election. Recall, please, that the results of the next election were recorded in his favor, on government computers, MONTHS BEFORE the election (which has yet to take place). So now, how is it going to help the People of Honduras to allow Zelaya to be put back into office?

I do not advocate anyone participating in political violence according to rule 308, but if ever there were a good time to do it, this may be it.

Hat tip to Atlas Shrugs

********

* unless Zelaya doesn't win the next election. If it actually goes off like it should, and the international socialists don't turn it into Cuba v2.0, we'll revisit this conclusion. You may guess what I think is going to happen. Chairman Zero of course will be all for the rule of law, once a socialist gets "elected" in Honduras. I could just spit.

Lens Porn: Olympus F1.2 50mm Prime Lens

We got a half-dozen of these in at work today, and they are so beautiful it makes me wish I had a camera, just so I could use one. Just to photograph these was a joy. It didn't hurt that these are faster (way faster) lenses than your average bear, at 1:1.2.

Olympus OM-System Zuiko Auto-S 50mm 1:1.2 lens, coming and going:



The glass on these is literally flawless.



They are completely free of dirt inside. It's like looking down over the side of your boat in the sea off the coast of Belize:




No, these are more clear than that.



In addition to the clarity of the glass, the aperture fairly snaps open and closed. A couple had oil creeping onto the petals of the iris (and the price I put on those reflects it) but most could open and close faster than I could move my fingers to operate them.

These lenses were mounted on a piece of optical test equipment as a fixed-focus focusing element. The aperture was left wide-open. The focus and aperture adjustment rings were held in place with a little daub of silicone, most of which came right off with a razor blade, and the rest will probably come off with a fingernail.



The legends are strikingly clear, except on the circular polarizing filter, which is worth like $10 to us, and I didn't bother cleaning. The ring is a mounting adapter. These were bolted in place.



I wasn't sure how to price these, so I aimed the middle of the road. I hope somebody wants this for $250. If I were looking for this particular prime, I sure would.



********

(P.S. please excuse my blatant copy/paste of the images I put in the ad, including our company watermark)

Madness @ Work

The following is an inordinately-long post. You have been warned.
This showed up in my Instant Messenger the other day:

(12:55:14) RMA Dude: (reference to a specific inventory item): the 4 in the title refers to the bearings, as there are only 2 rails?

I click through our magical inventory machine and find the appropriate ad with the following title: "Lot: 4x Winkel 4.054 Combined Bearings + 25ft. Profile" Failing to see a point of confusion, I read the ad text:

********

You are bidding on a lot of FOUR Winkel Model 4.054 Combined Bearings with two pieces of Profile (approx. 25 feet combined length). These parts are used, with some minor blemishes from use and installation/removal. The bearings roll easily in their profiles; no other testing was done. The ends of the rails are so cut that they can be combined into one continuous rail, or you could use them separately. Length of the shorter rail is approx. 140". The bearings are all welded to flanges that have threaded mounting holes. Note: current MSRP for this lot is just over $1,000. NO manuals or additional accessories are included if not shown. Photos show a typical lot.

Advantages of Combined Bearing Systems:

Reduces design and production costs

Strong profiles for high stat. and dynamic loads

• Load rating (static, to sides of profile): 9,400N
  
• Load rating (static, to depth of profile): 3,100N

Best dispersion of forces in the profiles

Longer lifetime for bearings and profiles

Bearing components are easily exchangeable

And then I looked at the photo showing the whole lot:



And the number of included bearings:


To be fair to the insane other side of the conversation, here are the rest of the images with that lot:






Then the conversation continued:

(13:00:16) VFD: the title says 4 bearings
(13:00:24) VFD: te text says four bearings
(13:00:26) RMA Dude: keep reading
(13:00:50) VFD: failing to see a problem
(13:00:56) RMA Dude: obtuse
(13:01:03) VFD: tired & allergic, thanks
(13:01:05) VFD: what?
(13:01:15) VFD: photos show 4 bearings
(13:01:27) RMA Dude: better title Lot: 4x Winkel 4.054 Linear Bearings 23ft Rails Profile
(13:01:44) VFD: only for blind, non-english speaking customers. change it if you like
(13:02:13) RMA Dude: Dave, you have some confusion about what the task is here, I believe
(13:02:27) RMA Dude: you not sales guy at all
(13:02:30) VFD: I have some lack of seeing what is wrong with a clear title, text, and photograph
(13:02:38) RMA Dude: it is not clear
(13:02:40) VFD: I worked in sales 5 months as a kid & got fired
(13:02:50) VFD: it is clear unless you are dum
(13:03:00) RMA Dude: then you are saying I am dumb
(13:03:05) VFD: I didn't put the sales stuff on my resume BTW
(13:03:10) RMA Dude: but that is always your reaction to crit
(13:03:23) VFD: always is a big word
(13:03:25) RMA Dude: problem is elsewhere
(13:03:30) VFD: it is this time
(13:03:37) VFD: as far as I can tell
(13:04:02) RMA Dude: naturally you are RIGHT
(13:04:11) VFD: :) at least we agree on something
(13:04:22) RMA Dude: (excludes all other viewpoints as inferior)
(13:04:32) VFD: that's racist!
(13:04:35) VFD: >:o
(13:04:43) RMA Dude: if the shoe fits
(13:04:57) VFD: They don't actually, except around the arch, which is why I wear them
(13:05:06) VFD: the heels are wearing funny inside, you want to come & see?

********

Aside from RMA Dude hurting my feelings, by not coming over to examine my shoes, I can't see anything wrong here. Am I crazy, or missing something, or what?

WIC is B.S. Because Money Is Fungible.

Our model family comprises a man with a crappy job and a woman who has birthed 4 children to him. They are up to their eyeballs in "low, low monthly payments" so that they have almost no money left over after debt servicing and bills are taken care of every month.

So their State government steps in with the Women/Infants/Children program (or food stamps, or what-have-you) and flat-out GIVES them hundreds of dollars a month in food and medical benefits. This is upheld as a Good Thing, and an example of the kind-heartedness of the People of the USA.

But money is fungible.

That family now has a couple-hundred more dollars a month to put towards a NEW set of "low, low monthly payments" (a.k.a. more "stuff" or booze or cable TV bills) because they don't have to worry about feeding their children.

How is this different to just giving that family a couple-hundred dollars a month? It is, effectively, not.

Would you be in favor of just handing out a couple hundred dollars to these people because they are (by choice) hard up for cash? If not, then you are a closet conservative. If so, then you are a closet socialist. And, as the examples of history teach us, one of the main problems with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money to give away.

If you do not ever worry about "where does the government get the money?" then you are a [deleted] and you don't even know it, because you were educated in government schools. Feel sorry for yourself, for you are the downfall of your own nation.

Madness @ Work

Warning: the following post may be uncharitable of me.

********

All names have been changed to protect the terminally slow.

So we hired a new employee a week or so ago, to do a job similar to mine. I was doing the job with minimal-to-no supervision or assistance the first day. Here it is after a week of hand-holding and newbie still is struggling with some of the basic concepts.

I just heard the (amazingly patient) Training Dude explain something very well. I was about half-listening, and I got the point first time 'round. He is now on a SIXTH explanation of the point, all from various different angles, and all indications are that newbie will require at least one or two more explanations.

I cannot help but question the profitability of this exercise.

Another Reason to Not Have A Swimming Pool

Aside from the initial and ongoing expenses, which are tremendous. Aside from the liability insurance premiums. Aside from the water bill.

You might just lose your twin daughters to drowning on the same day.

Full article in the San Franfreako Chronicle:

Pellet Rifle Sound Suppressor?

This is just an idea I had. I'm not sure if you would get jacked up by the BATFE for doing it . . . however, considering their shenanigans in the past, I'm probably already a felon by way of constructive possession . . .

A Daisy Model 880 pellet/BB gun has a full-length barrel shroud hiding a small-diameter barrel insert tube. There is around 1/8-1/4" of air around all of the barrel, for almost all of its length. The barrel is secured at the front by the front sight base, which wraps around the muzzle-end of the barrel and fills the gap between the shroud and barrel tube. If you pulled the barrel, drilled a few appropriately-spaced holes at the muzzle end, then rebored the end of the barrel so the actual crown were recessed past all the fresh drilled holes, the reassembled rifle would be venting high-pressure gas into the shroud.

Would that make it quiet? Does that even make any sense?

I think it would make sort of a muffled poof or a reverberating bong, unless you put some baffles in there (like in a proper suppressor).

Schwarzenegger Signs Ammunition Black Market Creation Act.

Wow. I bet all those morons in California who voted for Schwarzenegger over the actual conservative who would otherwise have chased gray-out Davis out of office are real happy about their votes, now

Note to those "independents and conservatives" who voted for The Obama because he is half-black: this is a foretaste. I hope you hate it.

Mark this down as reason number infinity-plus-one why I plan on never going back to California. Ever.

Happy White Racist Oppressor Christopher Columbus Day!

"In fourteen-hundred-ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue . . . "

A man who repeatedly braved the sea and the sailors on it, risked life and limb in pursuit of fortune, glory, and science, made a tremendous discovery, celebrated today. A few hundred years later, people who are his lessers in every way have made him into a villain for what he (allegedly) did to the "natives," completely overlooking the much-worse things that the "indians" did to each other.

Also overlooking the fact that, although the first people in the Americas were "white" caucasians, not "indians" and that although he was not the first explorer who landed over here, he was the first to make such an astonishing commercial success of it.

Happy Columbus Day.

These People Are Racists! Obviously Don't Care For Music!

You remember that creepy cute little song the kindergarteners were taught to sing in praise of The Obama?

Turns out it wasn't the most popular thing that ever happened at that school, according to actual grown-ups. There was a protest over it today. Not that you would know, from watching the 6:00 news tonight.

Obedience To Your National Constitution = Coup now. Good to Know!

What media bias?

The Washington Post repeatedly calls the legitimate actions taken by the Supreme Court and military of Honduras "a coup."

At least give them credit for a passing reference to the complete left-leaning bungling of this affair on the part of the U.S. State department: we have committed "a violation of the first law of diplomacy"

Compare the tenor of that Washington Post article with this one from The Weekly Standard, and tell me these two reporters are not playing from opposing ends of the field.

Bonus points to The Weekly Standard for excellent use of the word defenestration.

Let The Celebrations Commence!

More than 83% of private economists break out party hats, declare end of the Great Recession. Say recovery will be slow. A cricket was heard to chirrup when they were asked about rising mortgage & credit card defaults, tightening of credit to small businesses, and crashing commercial real estate markets around the country.

Overheard @ My House

(at 02:30 this morning)

Darling Wife: What time is it?
VFD: Party Time, obviously!
DW: No really, what time is it?

(later)

DW: I heard somebody holler at them to shut up
VFD: Oh don't worry, in a few minutes they will, and the Police will arrest somebody for Disturbing the Peace.

********

My oh-so-considerate neighbors across the way decided to have a little party last night. Thanks, y'all, it's not like EVERY PERSON IN EVERY HOUSE nearby has to be awake in the next 5 hours to go to work or anything. :(

After approximately one song and one P-ville police response time interval, they did shut up for the night, by the way.

More News From The Place Where England Used To Be

You want your strapping teenaged son to carry the heavier of your two sacks of groceries?

Hold on there!

It's got wine in it. He might drink it! You'll have to carry that your self, madam. It's the rule.

I would never, ever, ever shop there again.

Apparently, Nothing To Do With Arbroath" is a Good Stuff, and I'll be keeping an eye on it.

Socialized Medicine: What's The Worst That Could Happen?

Just ask this guy:



His story is here. That is what happens when you have "Universal Health Care" paid for by the government (or government-run co-ops) and you break your arm. You get denied emergency surgery because you smoke. See, you shouldn't have smoked cigarettes or broken your arm, you lout!

No, he gets no disability payments either.

Seen at Moonbattery.com

The Great Recession. Remember That Phrase.

Depending on your definition of a "depression" and what metrics you are watching, we are smack in the middle of an ugly one.

But nobody wants to admit it. They are calling the current downturn in the global economy a "recession" and nobody is giving any indication of wanting to say

The "D" Word.

So fine, it's not a depression. It's just the worst recession you will ever see in your life. We'll just call it the Great Recession then. You heard it here first.

Change I Can Hope In

In preparation for the upcoming lack of available health care under The Obama, I've done a bit of self-diagnosing. I think I'm working up a case of insulin resistance.

:(

I've always had an aversion to exercise. Now it looks as though I shall have to take it up on purpose. I think I'll ask Listing Buddy to drag me along on his trail runs at lunch time.

Health Update . . .

Thanks for praying, to those who did.

#1 had 3 nights running of fevers up to and above 102ºF, but normal-to-101º daytime temperatures. She seems to have kicked whatever it was she had.

Now I have a very mildly-itchy rash on both arms & my back, a little on the legs, chest, and head. It gets knocked completely down by a child's dose of Benadryl. I don't know what I got into, but I'm glad the reaction to it doesn't itch. I would say it's a food allergy, but I have had a "normal for me" diet. Oh well.

Oh, and it is definitely time for a new mattress. We flipped it and my knees felt good but my Darling Wife couldn't sleep. Then we swapped sides and she could sleep & my knees hurt. New mattress time. It's a good thing they're so affordable. . . oh wait.

Madness @ Work!

Overheard@work.com:

After I put something on extraordinarily ungainly on a shelf, to be put on another shelf by the Big Black Man who does that sort of thing around here:

BBM: Thanks alot, Dave!
VFD: Anytime, BBM, happy to help!
BBM: Thanks for making my life a living hell 8 hours a day, 5 days a week!
VFD: It's only 'cause you're black.
BBM: I know it.
VFD: LOL
BBM: LOL

This place is full of people who have lived up to Martin Luther King's Dream: we make the occasional joke about stereotypes of racists in American society. At each other. Jokes that would stand a good chance of getting us a severe beating if they were cracked to a random person on 6th Street. Then we all get a good laugh, because we know it's kind of the opposite of what we really mean, when we call each other racist. In the words of Little Black Man, after a discussion which made another (more sensitive) white guy even more pale-faced than usual: "Dave, that cracker just ain't as cool as you"