Chronicling the depravities of the State.
Israel is getting a fancy new rocket defense system and you get to pay for it! And people wonder why I hate paying taxes. Here’s a hint it’s not going to bettering America.
Of course only $2.55 billion out of our trillions spent actually went to directly help fund the military of another country.
There has been a lot of hoopla over Facebook’s privacy practices. Well these two pictures illustrates how simple Facebook’s privacy really is:
See it’s very simple!
You guys better get your butts in gear. Through the NRA-ILA I just found out that AB 1934 just passed committee. AB 1934, if passed, will ban open carrying of unloaded handguns in the communist state of California.
It doesn’t surprise me that the bill is positively huge considering the only thing it’s supposed to accomplish is a ban on the open carrying of unloaded firearms.
This is normally where I’d say get on the horn with your representatives. Seeing as how that didn’t work so well when AB 962 was going through the political pipework I’m not sure what to say. I guess it’s still worth a try. But find out every representative who supports this bill and make sure they get voted out in November.
A fifth knife (meat cleaver actually) attack targeted at a school in two months. Seven children and two adults died while another 11 kids were injured. I don’t know what’s going on over there but there is a serious outbreak of the crazies.
You’ve all seen the massive amount of propaganda Super Douche Bloomberg and his posse have been vomiting up. They want to deny anybody who’s name appears on the “no-fly list” the right to buy firearms. Well let’s look at some of the people on the no-fly list whom Bloomberg wants to strip the rights of for life.
First let’s meet Sam Adams. No not that Sam Adams but a 5 year-old child who is a suspected terrorist:
Saw the article you posted on Boing Boing about the five year old on the no-fly list. My son, also five, is on that same list and it’s a nightmare. Every time we fly with him, we can’t use the computer terminals to check in and the attendant has to call some never named government agency to make sure he’s not a terrorist. Some attendants joke it off but some are insanely serious about it. His seat always goes unassigned (even if it was assigned when the reservation is made) which always causes problems.
I’ve tried everything that anyone has suggested. There’s a TSA form that you can fill out for this situation, which I did, but they won’t tell you if they’ve removed your name. We got him a passport — that didn’t work. We’ve tried booking the tickets with his full name (including middle name), that didn’t work. We tried booking the ticket under Master Samuel Adams, with still no luck.
How about Mickey Hicks? He’s an 8 year-old boy on the no-fly list:
On its website, the TSA specifically denies that there is an 8-year-old on any of its watch lists. But try telling that to Mikey Hicks, who has had problems getting on airplanes his entire life. As a baby, Hicks was denied a seat on a plane because, officials told his mother, his name “was on the list.” He started getting full pat-downs when he was 2, his mom tells the New York Times.
Although arguably deserving Senator Ted Kennedy was also on the list:
U.S. Sen. Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy said yesterday that he was stopped and questioned at airports on the East Coast five times in March because his name appeared on the government’s secret “no-fly” list.
Federal air security officials said the initial error that led to scrutiny of the Massachusetts Democrat should not have happened even though they recognize that the no-fly list is imperfect. But privately they acknowledged being embarrassed that it took the senator and his staff more than three weeks to get his name removed.
Unlike you and me he was probably able to get his name off of the list. Let’s meet Michael Martin a 7 year-old “terrorist” who would be barred from owning firearms for life:
The name of a seven-year-old Coral Springs boy is on the no-fly list.
For the third time in his young life, Michael Martin recently had to check in with an airline agent before flying. His name appears to share a moniker with a suspected or known terrorist.
His mother had to ask an airline agent for help earlier this month when she couldn’t print Michael’s boarding pass from an AirTran kiosk at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
An Write named Chris Kelly notes his 12 year-old daughter is a “terrorist” as well:
My middle daughter’s name seems to be on the No Fly List. Since she’s only twelve years old, and neither practices nor endorses acts of political violence, I can only assume there’s been some kind of mistake.
No one at the airport will tell us how she made the list. They won’t even confirm that she’s on it. Every time we go to the airport, the electronic kiosk simply refuses to issue her a boarding pass, and we’re sent to the ticket counter, where five people look at the whole family’s I.D., and then specifically hers, and then someone calls someone, and they call someone, and that person tells the person on the phone, “No, she’s a little girl.” And eventually we’re allowed to run for our flight.
BoingBoing notes another 5 year-old is getting started in the field of “terrorism” early as well:
A five-year-old boy was taken into custody and thoroughly searched at Sea-Tac because his name is similar to a possible terrorist alias. As the Consumerist reports, “When his mother went to pick him up and hug him and comfort him during the proceedings, she was told not to touch him because he was a national security risk. They also had to frisk her again to make sure the little Dillinger hadn’t passed anything dangerous weapons or materials to his mother when she hugged him.”
This is just a small sample of people Super Douche Bloomberg wants to prohibit from buying firearms for life.
This is why:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dztcsYI3rzs]
Thanks Every Day, No Days Off for the heads up. There isn’t any lower form of life than that which wants to strip your rights from you.
This story can be labeled, “Only in America.” Five kids, California no less, were sent home on Cinco de Mayo for wearing shirts that had the American flag on them:
The five students — Daniel Galli, Austin Carvalho, Matt Dariano, Dominic Maciel and Clayton Howard — were then told they must turn their T-shirts inside-out or be sent home, though it would not be considered a suspension. Rodriguez told the students he did not want any fights to break out between Mexican-American students celebrating their heritage and those wearing American flags.
Galli told NBC Bay Area, “They said we could wear it on any other day, but today is sensitive to Mexican-Americans because it’s supposed to be their holiday so we were not allowed to wear it.”
Yup the kids weren’t allowed to display American colors in America because it might offend the students of Mexican heritage (whom are most likely American citizens and therefore shouldn’t be offended by people taking pride in their country).
Don’t get me wrong if you want to celebrate your heritage on any day by wearing the colors of your ancestor’s country by all means do it. You have that freedom because this country strongly believes in your right to free speech. But realize you are in America and therefore can not be offended by citizens celebrating their heritage of being American.
And for all you mothers out there here is a heart warming story from the UK via Says Uncle:
Schoolboy James Killen, 18, was held by police after next-door neighbour Jonathan London, 46, died of stab wounds.
It is believed Mr London attacked the teenager’s mother, former air stewardess Sandra Crawford, at her home in St Alban’s, Herts on Friday.
Mr Killen was arrested on suspicion of stabbing to death Mr London but later released on bail.
It is believed the teenager, a student at nearby Sandringham School, attacked Mr London after he discovered him slashing his mother.
The kid should have called the police and stood by watching his mother get slashed to death until the cops finally arrived. That way he wouldn’t be sitting in jail. See making self defense illegal is perfectly logical.
I mentioned some time ago about a situation occurring where a school was caught spying on students via webcams built into laptops that were issued to students. Well apparently there is nothing to see here:
An “independent” investigation into the Lower Merion School District laptop scandal has concluded that there’s no evidence that students were being spied on. This is despite the existence of 58,000 photos surreptitiously taken of students on or around their computers and e-mails between district IT people commenting on the entertainment value of the photos. The 72-page report (PDF) from law firm Ballard Spahr claims, however, that most of the photos were not seen by anyone and that the district merely failed to implement proper record-keeping procedures.
Yeah obviously there was no spying. Sure they had 58,000 pictures of kids doing who-knows-what but most of the pictures weren’t actually seen by anybody, scouts promise. After all I’m sure the Ballard Spahr law firm has evidence proving none of the pictures were viewed:
Ballard Spahr admits that there is no way to determine how often the images were viewed, but says it found no evidence that the IT staff had viewed any of the images. Additionally, it says there was no evidence that district administrators knew how TheftTrack worked or even understood that large numbers of images were being collected in the first place.
Oops I guess not. Oh wait there was evidence… of the pictures being viewed:
This, of course, is the problem: because there was very little record-keeping going on and no official policies, there are few ways to know who knew what and when. However, claiming that there’s no evidence whatsoever that IT staff saw the images seems disingenuous, considering the fact that e-mail records were dug up last month that showed at least two IT administrators chatting about the photos. One staffer that has since been put on leave, Carol Cafiero, described the pictures as “a little [Lower Merion School District] soap opera,” while another staffer responded, “I know. I love it!”
Yes the school gave all the students laptops, installed spyware (in the most literal sense) on the machines, but didn’t really document it nor put any polices in place of when the cameras were to be used. That’s doesn’t scream trying to cover your tracks because you knew what you were doing was going to land you in very hot water.
But the fact of the matter is the school went to great lengths to ensure an outside party chose an independent entity to carry out the investigation so no possibility of bias could have entered into the equation:
One detail of note is that Ballard Spahr was hired by the Lower Merion School District itself to carry out the investigation, casting doubts on the true “independent” nature of the report.
Fuck me. I’m still hoping that school district gets sued right into oblivion.
I know quite a few parents who don’t want their kids having a laptop with a webcam because pedophiles may be able to access the camera without anybody’s knowledge and watching everything going on. I usually write such concerns off as over-the-top paranoia but I guess when the school is providing the laptops you should be worried about such things (the cameras being activated remotely without anybody’s knowledge, well and possibly the pedophiles doing it depending on the truth reason for installing that spyware).
My ultimate question here is who requested the installation of the spyware? Did the IT people do it without asking the school administrators or did the school administrators ask the IT people to do it? This will ultimately show the guilty party.
According to the Washington Post members of the NRA are terrorists and should be sent to Gitmo. Uncle sums it up best:
I can see how you would think that. You know, if you were a retard.