BOHICA

Yep, friends, Bend Over, Here It Comes Again.

Not so much the fact that a hurricane has the potential to enter the Gulf. After all, that's only been happening for the last several thousand years or so.

But more for the breathless, please please please let there be destruction news media who will be covering this storm like there's no tomorrow.

Here's some predictions from ole Catfish:

- There will be live, on the ground coverage in New Orleans. As part of this coverage, there will be interviews with people still trying to recover from Katrina.
- There will be live, non stop, 24/7 coverage of this storm the instant in hits the Gulf (if indeed it makes it into the Gulf of Mexico.
- There will be non stop coverage of just what FEMA is going to do to help anyone potentially displaced by this storm.
- There will be the obligatory global warming interviews all over the news, explaining that all these major hurricanes are essentially man-made.
- The news media will essentially create a state of panic.

Please feel free to add your own. This should be a good one, as the media has been frothing at the bit since last year when there weren't any hurricanes to worry about.

Visitors

Had this fellow come visit me at work today. He was kind enough to hang out while I ran to get my camera. We sat around and looked at each other for about 20 minutes or so this morning.

Hugo Chavez to unveil proposal tonight

If anyone doubts that a democracy can fall into despotism, please take a moment to consider what is happening in Venezuela tonight.

President Hugo Chavez will present his blueprint for constitutional reform Wednesday, proposing sweeping changes expected to allow him to be re-elected indefinitely.

I'm not so naive as to posit that Venezuela has enjoyed any form of real democracy during Chavez's reign, but now the sham is being exposed for what it really is: a full-blown dictatorship, thinly disguised with the benign name of "constitutional reform." If by "reform" you mean "disposal," then it's on the money. Of course, Chavez has answers for critics:

Chavez rejects allegations that he poses a threat to democracy.

The Venezuelan leader predicted that most people would support his proposal to reform the constitution, but he also forecast the beginning of a tenacious political battle with the nation's opposition.

"I have faith that we are going to convince the immense majority of Venezuelans of the necessity and the immediate benefits that this is going to bring the country," Chavez said during a televised interview.

"Tomorrow our great battle begins," Chavez said. "They are going to launch a campaign tomorrow to try to distort the text and the spirit of the proposal."

A reform proposal, my fanny. Look at the propaganda machine in full swing, and look at his supporters. There are masses of people in Venezuela who are actually proponents of this change. Here's the great irony of the whole thing:

National Assembly President Celia Flores said lawmakers could finish the reform debate within two months. Under the constitution, the final draft of the proposal must be approved by voters in a referendum.

That's right - the people must vote to relinquish their democracy. And you just watch - they'll do it cheering all the way to the polls.

But that could never happen here, could it? Yes, people ARE that stupid.

Suspected DUI Driver Jumps From Car, Flees With Beer In Hand

'There was a 12-pack of Corona he was working on in the front seat,' Orange County sheriff's Cmdr. Jeff Stonebreaker said. 'He decided to take one of those over the fence with him. So, he bails out of the car and runs from the deputies with a beer in his hand.'

It's all about the beer.

Cmdr. Jeff Stonebreaker? Sounds like an action figure.

Now what?

(AFP/Wissam al-Okaili)

In this photo (ED:it's been removed from Yahoo's site - here's the cached version) you'll see an Iraqi woman who claimed the two bullets she's holding in her hand hit her house.

Coupla problems here from a gun nut's perspective.

1. The only way those bullets (cartidges to be precise) could have hit her house was if someone threw them or they fell out of a passing helicopter ferrying troops around.

2. Looks like .223/5.56 rounds. Now the stickler here is that as far as I know, standard US Army issue 5.56 rounds are the SS109 round. They have a very distinctive green tip. You'll note on the photo that the bullets in question (BIQ) are lacking a green tip. The BIQ look like plain jane FMJ to me.

Now there's all sorts of possible explanations - perhaps the Iraqi army isn't issued the 109 rounds, or our own forces aren't utilizing them exclusively (can anyone confirm or deny this one?); perhaps the rounds came from one of many contractors in Iraq now - Blackwater, Triple Canopy, etc... Or perhaps the rounds just came off the open gun market in Iraq, which I understand is thriving.

One thing IS clear, however. The BIQ that this woman is holding were not fired out of a gun at her house. Thrown, dropped, whatever. But they weren't shot. You'd be hard pressed to understand that if you didn't understand weapons or at least have a BASIC understanding of how firearms work. But oh, I guess that describes the vast bulk of the media right there...

Invitation to endorse the International Tribunal on Hurricanes Katrina & Rita

I wonder if this is for real, or just a really bad joke. Are people really this crazy/racist/whatever?

The People’s Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF), US Human Rights Network (USHRN), Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM) and the Mississippi Disaster Relief Coalition would like to formally invite you to be one of the endorsers of the International Tribunal on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Current co-conveners include former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, Brazilian trade unionist Edenice Santa de Jesus and Algerian Parliamentarian Louisa Hanoune. The Tribunal is going to be held in New Orleans, Louisiana August 29th through September 2nd, 2007. This event will call into question the ongoing ethnic cleansing of New Orleans and commemorate the lives of the 2,000 people killed or missing, the 800,000 people displaced, and the additional 3,000 people who have died post Katrina-Rita as a result of ongoing human rights violations.

The International Tribunal on Hurricane Katrina and Rita is an outgrowth of the demand for justice and restitution called for by the more than two hundred Survivors gathered at the first Survivors Assembly held in December 2005 (http://www.peopleshurricane.org/assembly-call).

We consider you an ardent and unwavering supporter of human and civil rights in the US, we would be honored if you would join us in this initiative to hold the U.S. government accountable for the crimes. Your support will increase the fighting capacity of the survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Cynthia McKinney??? Doesn't the state of Georgia have enough problems without exporting her brand of racist insanity? Ethnic cleansing? This has GOT to be a bad joke.

Hmm, I wonder

I wonder how big the hole in the ground will be? Will he bounce, or just splat all over the place?

The big story you're not hearing

It would seem that two young muslim men (and I use the term "men" only to describe their gender) were stopped speeding in South Carolina on August 4. The local gendarmes happened to find pipe bombs and "related material" in the car with them. And oh, yes - they were caught fairly close to a US military facility that has been used to house some of the bad boys caught in the war on terror. I'm sure, however, that there was no connection.

Today, the FBI searched the home of the turds in a suburb of Tampa, Florida. The interesting connection to Tampa and these two "misunderstood youths" is one Sami Al-Arian, a former professor at the college in Tampa, the University of South Florida.

Records show the owner of that house is Sameeh Hammoudeh, a co-defendant in the trial of Sami Al-Arian. Al-Arian is the former USF professor who was acquitted on most charges of funding terror-related organizations. He pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to provide services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Both of the clowns caught in South Carolina attended classes at USF. Again, I'm sure there's no connection there and it's just my paranoia at work. As usual when it comes to this kind of thing, Michell Malkin is all over this story, doing the job that CNNCBSABCNBCFOX won't do.

We can't have anyone thinking that muslim males are a problem now, can we?

Perfection

Panache.

Look it up.

A little shooting fun

While Dan and JR were out hiding from the heat today, The Girl, D and I were out having fun with the North Texas Practical Shooters. Plenty hot today, I know I went through over 4 liters of water.

Kids

Ah, the joys of having a teenage daughter...



At least you can't tell the yard needs mowing.

6ft tent pole spears girl of 16

Props to Fark on perhaps the best headline EVAR:

More fun than you can stake a chick at.

DON'T CLICK THIS LINK!

If it saves one child...

I'm sure many of you will remember those calls for gun control, in the name of our children. The squeaky voices on the left calling for an end to private gun ownership were/are constantly telling us that if we think ONE child's life is worth saving, we must ban all guns and do it now!

Where are those same voices of "reason" when it comes to illegal immigrants? In New Jersey, we learn that the person who executed 3 young people was not just an illegal immigrant. In addition,

FOX News has learned Carranza, who has a fake Social Security number, had been arrested on charges of raping a 5-year-old girl and then threatening the child and her parents. In that case he faced a 31-count indictment.
In another, he was arrested on assault charges stemming from a bar fight.

So here we have a first class scumbag. He's ALREADY under indictment for RAPING A FIVE YEAR OLD GIRL. Yeah, a five year old. He's ALREADY been arrested for an assault in a bar. Someone, anyone please tell me why this asshole was still in the country which enabled him to kill 3 college kids.

It's bullshit like this that absolutely drives me insane.

NASA quietly fixes flawed temperature data

WHAT? Some of the numbers used to stir up the BS global warming debate were cooked?? Turns out that the warmest years in recent history were back in the 30s, contrary to what the eco-clowns would have us believe. For you see, the decades after the 30s are when the eco-nazis tell us that man made carbon emissions started to take effect and ruin the environment. By cooking the numbers to make it appear that the warmest years on record were in the last few years (and not in the 1930s), the clowns supplemented their bogus argument with bogus facts.

How long before we'll see this story on CNNCBSNBCABCFOX????

Algore? Algore? Algore?

Surely this must be another sign of the Bush/Haliburton conspiracy.

Government forecasters minimally reduced their prediction for the Atlantic hurricane season Thursday, but said that up to nine hurricanes and up to 16 tropical storms are expected to form, still a busier-than-average season.

WHAT? I thought Algore promised us busier and busier hurricane seasons, with years of Katrina type storms. Yet, since Algore opened the pie-hole that is his mouth, I don't believe we've seen his predictions come true. You will recall, I'm sure - the predictions last year that said we'd get plastered again; which were then continually downgraded throughout the year as the doom and gloom predictions didn't come to fruition.

Yeah, I know. The "busiest" time of year for hurricane season is coming up. But it makes you wonder, doesn't it? If the "best and brightest" can't properly predict what's going to happen over the next two months with any sort of certainty - and failed miserably last year, why would anyone trust the climate change freaks when they tell us what's going to happen in 10-20 years? Hell, they can't even predict what's going to happen this weekend!!

why the gun is civilization

From The Munchkin Wrangler:

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gangbanger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed. People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.

Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser. People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level. The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weightlifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.

When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation...and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.

Too much security can be overbearing: Microsoft | APC Magazine

I'd like to invite you all to take a look at the article I've linked to above. It's a report on one of Microsoft's security strategists. Here's what got my attention...one of the kids that has ostensibly made Windows Vista security SO invasive is belly-aching about our nation's policy on national security and the war on terror. First of all, I'm not sure that his extrapolation from software security to national policy is relevant, much less worth consideration. In fact, what I see is that this kid has an opinion about the current policy, and has used his position to forward his political views. Get a blog to do your soap-boxing, okay? If I'm paying money to attend Tech.Ed, and you're espousing politics, well - give me my money back. Second, the position that we're no safer as a result of certain security measures and the war on terror just doesn't hold water. We've dismantled and disabled enemy assets, and forced them to cower in caves. As long as they're doing that, then we ARE safer. I agree that taking my shoes off is a pain in the ass, but there IS a precedent for it (does the name Richard Reid ring a bell?).

I do like his philosophy about recognizing methods of attack. However, this doesn't mean you can discount the focus on stopping the tools of attack. You have to address both, and that's what some people just can't seem to grasp, mostly because it inconveniences them.

Here's a case in point: I get pretty aggravated whenever I open up the Control Panel on my own desktop, and get prompted by a security pop-up. It seems stupid and useless to me, since I'm already logged in and authenticated. Yes, I'm sure, so open the damned thing! However, I recognize that it's there for a reason, and I just tolerate it. It seems hypocritical to me that someone who (presumably) helped design this approach has a problem with taking off shoes and passing through a metal detector.

Swedish grandmother hospitalised after beaver attack

"The beaver attacked the grandmother. She was seriously hit by the animal's tail and received a number of bites and scratches," an officer told the newspaper.

I have had an encounter with an overly aggressive, giant, hairy beaver before, and it has left me scarred for life. I was hit by her large tail, bitten, scratched, and damn near smothered.

The authorities have decided to kill the dozen or so beavers living near the beach to eliminate any further risk to local bathers.

"Beaver Shot at Swedish Beach!" will be the next headline.

Look, a monkey!

So how, in this day and age of being practically strip searched in airports does this guy manage to smuggle a monkey on to a plane? OK, it's a really cute monkey, and I assume "spirited" doesn't mean it was the poo-flinging variety, but still...