Month: June 2010

More Climate Change as a Religion

Borepatch has a nice post showing yet another link between the followers of Al Gore’s Apocalypse and other mainstream religions. This time it’s a comparison of Catholicism (the church in which I was raised) and their use of the Index Liborum Prohibitorum, a list of books ostracized by the Church, and the Worshipers of Al Gore’s new mechanism trying to silence those who dare question the wisdom of The Gory One.

It’s amazing how much time Al Gore and his posse spend trying to discredit the people who oppose them instead of trying to discredit the research done by the people who oppose them. That, tied with the amount of money to be made off of the carbon credit scheme, ultimately is the reason I don’t buy Al Gore’s bullshit.

Sitting on Your Butt Doesn’t Equal Doing Work

So I’m watching Gun Owner’s of American’s (GOA) feed on Facebook and the following popped up:

Gun Owners of America elosi Trying to Shove DISCLOSE Act through Congress Once Again
— NRA remains on the sidelines – http://gunowners.org/a062210.htm

First of all I notice they couldn’t both proof reading their post as Pelosi has a ‘P’ in it. Second if you click on the link nothing is mentioned about what GOA is doing to fight this. The only two things they state are first asking you to call your representatives (which you already have I’m sure) and second call the National Rifle Association (NRA) and tell them to change their position.

Now I don’t agree with the NRA’s position but alas I disagree with GOA’s constant attacking the NRA while doing nothing themselves even more. I’m sorry I really want to like GOA as they are a pro-rights organization but unlike most organizations fighting for the right to keep and bear arms GOA spends most of their time attacking another organization instead of doing anything to preserve our rights (that I’ve seen and nobody so far has provided me citation of GOA doing anything major).

Once again I ask those of your disenfranchised with the NRA to ignore GOA and look at another organization like the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) who are spending their time and resources fighting bad gun control laws.

Rolling Advertisements and the Lead Ammunition Loophole

Very seldom can you get two completely unrelated topics into one news article. But that’s what I found. The main gist of the story is talking about how California is planning to make money. They’ve tossed around tons of ideas but this one most certainly takes the cake. California is looking into using electronic license plates so they can turn your car into a rolling billboard. The idea is if the car is stopped for more than four seconds the license plate goes from your standard license plate to a billboard displaying advertisements.

I’m sure no mechanism would be introduce to opt out of certain adds leading some hilarity such as a car with an anti-gun bumper sticker displaying an add for the NRA or visa versa. Oh wait this California they probably won’t allow the NRA to advertise. Either way not only would you get the privilege of paying California for a new license plate but you would also get to be an advertisement system for them.

Things I’m curious about are how do they plan on updating the ads? Cellular connection maybe? So then California would have to pay up for cellular data plans to one or more of the big carriers. I also couldn’t wait to see some ingenious hacker get into their electronic license plate and display far more fun and interesting things.

But that’s not all this other little quip was in the same news article:

Lead ammunition would be banned completely from state wildlife management areas under a bill by Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara. While state law already requires hunters to use nontoxic shot to hunt waterfowl and big game, certain migratory birds and small game species are not protected. Nava’s AB2223 seeks to close that loophole. He says lead ammunition can spread through the food chain when animals ingest the casings. The bill is scheduled to be heard Tuesday in the Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee.

Emphasis mine. Once again the anti-gunners are claiming a law is a loophole and it needs to be closed. I wonder what got them started with this word. Did Mr. Hennigan open up a dictionary one day and randomly come across this word? Did he think, “Gee golly that’s a neat word. It’s pretty long too so I bet I’d sound smart saying it.”

Also I find it funny how lead ammunition can spread through the food chain by animals ingesting casings. I would think that would happen if the animals ingested the lead shot not the plastic casings. It’s almost as if the person talking about this doesn’t actually know anything about the subject at hand. But that’s impossible, nobody would hire somebody who didn’t know anything about guns to write a law involving guns… oh wait.

Tornado Destruction

So we had some harsh weather here in Minnesota last night. In fact said harsh weather canceled the USPSA match. Wadena and Albert Lea didn’t have a fun night as their towns were messed up by tornadoes. Three people were killed by Mother Nature and 20 others were treated for mostly minor injuries.

Thankfully Governor Pawlenty is taking time off from his job his presidential campaign to size up the damage. Hey he still might not be doing his job but at least he’s in the state which is a huge improvement.

HTTPS Everywhere

I like this idea a lot. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has released a new plug-in for Firefox that attempts to encrypt every web page you visit via HTTPS. This prevents people from being able to sniff your web traffic when you’re browsing sites. Obviously I’m going to install it and give it a spin then let you know how well it works.

Another Senator Shows Great Ability to Manage Money

Senator Dodd sure knows how to use money. According to an article I found via Dvorak Uncensored Senator Dodd just awarded $54 million in stimulus money to a very profitable casino. Here’s the gist of it:

The tribe runs the sprawling Mohegan Sun casino, halfway between New York City and Boston, which earned more than $1.3 billion in gross revenues in 2009. Each tribe member receives a cut of the profits, a number a tribal official said was “less than $30,000” per capita per year. The stimulus money is a loan from a U.S. Department of Agriculture rural development program that is meant to help communities of less than 20,000 people that have been “unable to obtain other credit at reasonable rates and terms and are unable to finance the proposed project from their own resources.”

So some of our tax money just went to another country. Although somebody is going to yell racism because I’m bringing this up some education is truly in order. Native American (I’m not using this name to be politically correct, I’m using it so there isn’t confusion with people from India) reservations are sovereign soil, not part of the United States. We gave them land after we took it from them as compensation for practically wiping them out. Part of this compensation is the fact the land given back to them was not part of the United States but sovereign soil for the Native American tribes.

Because of this people living on Native American reservations do not pay taxes to the United States (unless they buy goods and services off of reservation land in which case they have to pay that state’s sales tax). This makes sense because they are not in the United States while on their reservations. Likewise as a mechanism for generating wealth most reservations have built casinos. Gambling is usually restricted or outright banned in most states making casino construction difficult if not impossible. Since Native Americans are not bound by the laws of the state their reservations are in they are able to build casinos.

Here’s my problem, that stimulus money is tax money. It’s money stolen by the government from it’s citizens. Now it’s being given to another nation whom do not contribute to said taxes. So I don’t care if each member of the tribe is getting less than $30,000 they shouldn’t be getting tax money since they don’t pay taxes (and they shouldn’t have to as they aren’t members of our country).

Oh I love this one:

“As with all beneficiaries of funding through this program,” said DeJong, “the loan will be repaid to USDA with interest.

Hopefully by that they don’t mean the loan will be repaid by taking government from another source as with GM.