Chronicling the depravities of the State.
That was Obama’s message to a group of graduating Michigan high school students:
President Barack Obama is telling high school graduates in Michigan not to make excuses, and to take responsibility for failures as well as successes.
It’s OK I’m sure if this gets taken out of context Obama can just find a way to blame it on Bush.
Yesterday I posted a good article that related to Minnesota’s own “gun show loophole” that isn’t a loophole. Something has been eating at me about that article, namely this:
Paymar has never fired a handgun, nor has he ever attended a gun show. He was moved to act, he says, after seeing a YouTube clip. In it, Colin Goddard, a Virginia Tech massacre survivor who was shot four times, attends gun shows and successfully buys firearms without undergoing a background check or even being asked to show identification.
I touched on it briefly in yesterday’s post but it’s something that has bugged me about government forever. Why do we find it acceptable to allow people with no knowledge or experience in a field to legislate that field? Paymar isn’t the only example. Ted “Series of Tubes” Stevens we put in charge of Internet regulation even though he obviously had no knowledge in the field.
This seems to be a common thing with government. We find the most incompetent people and let them be in charge of something. This kind of incompetence doesn’t fly anywhere else but government (normally). Generally if you’re put in charge of something at a company it’s because you portrayed some kind of competence in the area of concern. If you’re not competent you are eventually fired.
But here Paymar has never been to a gun show in his life yet he feels justified in creating legislation that would affect gun shows. Now his bill was shot down in committee thankfully but he’s vowed to reintroduce the bill at a later time. This raises the question, what the Hell is he thinking? He can’t claim it’s to get voter favor since the bill doesn’t seem to have much traction here in Minnesota. The only people who really seem to care are us pro-gunners and the anti-gunners who generally don’t know what they’re talking about.
We shouldn’t stand for this. Instead we should demand that in order to legislate something the person writing the law much either have direct experience with the topic or have hired independent consultants who have said experience.
Let’s say you want to setup an emergency preparedness drill for a hospital. As part of the planning committee do you:
A – Create a list of potential emergency situations and hold a training day for hospital staff on how to prepare for such situations?
B – High an outside group to prepare a detailed report on mechanisms the hospital can implement to best survive likely emergency situations?
C – Hire an armed man to run into the emergency room one random day to terrorize the staff by aiming a firearm at them?
If you answered C you may be the exact type of person St. Rose Dominican Hospitals-Siena Campus hospital is looking for. Via Bruce Schneier’s blog we learned this was what the above mentioned hospital decided to do for terrorism preparedness:
How’s this for an ill-conceived emergency preparedness drill? An off-duty cop pretending to be a terrorist stormed into a hospital intensive care unit brandishing a handgun, which he pointed at nurses while herding them down a corridor and into a room.
I can’t imagine how this could possible go wrong.
But in Monday’s incident, which occurred in a unit that houses the hospital’s sickest patients, nurses, patients and their families did not know it was a drill, said Renee Ruiz, organizer of the California Nurses Association, which represents staff at the hospital.
So nobody present knew this was a drill. Although it was reported by the Las Vegas Sun the incident took place in Nevada where people are allowed to carry a firearm through licensing. Imagine if one of those doctors or a patient had been carrying a firearm and decided to shoot the person he or she believed was a terrorist (I’d say a man running into a hospital brandishing a firearm at people would be good grounds for a self-defense case).
These kinds of acts have consequences. The hospital which designed and enacted the drill should have thought this through a little more thoroughly. Likewise the off-duty officer they hired should be brought this potential problem to their attention. There are simply layers of stupidity here that can’t be overlooked.
It appears one of Sea Sheppard’s little nitwits is on trial in Japan. Peter Bethune was the former captain of the super high-tech speed boat Ady Gil before he parked it in front of a massive moving harpoon ship thinking the laws of physics could break for his righteous crusade (they didn’t). Well being one to blame other people for his fuck up he decided it would be a good idea to board the harpoon ship (after he was able to get a jet ski, it appears even Sea Sheppard wasn’t dumb enough to give this guy another expensive boat) to make a citizen’s arrest of the captain.
So what happens when one man illegal boards another vessel full of rightfully angry people? He gets arrested himself and sent to Tokyo for trail (he’s lucky if it were a Russian ship they would have probably dropped him in the middle of the sea on an inflatable dingy):
He pleaded guilty to four charges, including trespass and obstructing commercial activities, but denied a fifth charge of assault.
If convicted he could receive a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.
Pro tip: don’t trespass on other peoples’ property. Illegally boarding the Japanese whaling vessel is akin to breaking into somebody’s home. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like what they are doing. If somebody doesn’t like the fact I own firearms they can’t break into my home and try to place me under citizen’s arrest.
We have the selectee list, the no-fly list, and now Dvorak Uncensored reports we have the uncooperative serf list:
Airline passengers who get frustrated and kick a wall, throw a suitcase or make a pithy comment to a screener could find themselves in a little-known Homeland Security database.
The Transportation Security Administration says it is keeping records of people who make its screeners feel threatened as part of an effort to prevent workplace violence.
Now I can understand wanting to deal with customers kicking walls and throwing suitcases (for instance removing them from the airport) but making comments? Seriously? Are the poor wittle TSA agents getting hurt feewings? On a more serious note this list could be used as a sort of “revenge” list:
Privacy advocates fear the database could feed government watch lists and subject innocent people to extra airport screening.
Once again I’ll state that customers who are acting outwardly violent by damaging equipment should be removed from the airport like the tantrum throwing child they are. They still shouldn’t be put on a list that opens them up to additional screening as a form of revenge by untouchable government agents. This goes double for people making rude remarks. But here’s the funniest part:
The database was created in late 2007 as the TSA launched a program to prevent the nation’s 50,000 airport screeners from being attacked or threatened, agency spokeswoman Kristin Lee said. At the time, TSA officials voiced concern about passengers disrespecting screeners, and they began issuing new uniforms with police-style badges pinned to shirts.
Lee said attacks and threats against screeners are “rare” and the database has records from about 240 incidents. Most are screeners in conflict with other screeners. About 30 incidents involve people such as passengers or airport workers attacking or threatening screeners, Lee said.
I don’t know why they put the word rare in quotation marks. Considering the number of people who fly every year having only 30 passenger names in it since 2007 means it’s pretty fucking rare. I do find it funny how 210 of the recorded incidents involved screeners in conflict with their colleague. It shows what happens when you give two morons a little bit of authority, they can’t use it responsibly.
So I’ve noticed a meme going around that is pegging Rand Paul as a racist. I thought that was pretty surprising being he just won the Kentucky Republican nomination and thus coming out as a racist would not seem the wisest political maneuver ever. Needless to say I did a little digging and found out he didn’t say anything racist at all.
What Rand Paul did say was the Civil Rights Act is in direct conflict with private property rights. Of course when he came under fire he went and said the opposite which I think was just plain dumb.
I agree with the fact that private property rights give you the ability to do what you want on your property including being a racist bigot. If you don’t want to allow black, brown, white, or indigo people into your place of business that’s fine it’s your right to determine your clientele. If you want to require all customers of your business to wear red shoes before they walk in that’s your right as well. Likewise if I don’t support your rules of business I can take my money elsewhere.
What the Civil Rights Act should have done is required all facilities receiving public funding to recognize all races and serve them equally. In essence it should have only applied to government and people receiving tax payer money. Our system of laws are supposed to protect us against our government not protect us against idiots who are willing to turn down business from customers who have a different skin color than themselves.
Needless to say Rand Paul doesn’t seem to have quite the backbone as his father but he most certainly is on the right track.
Often times you need to known something so you ask somebody to advice. A lot of the time people ask the wrong person through. For instance if you’re one of the freest countries in the world asking the president of a economically depressed, crime ridden, Hell hole run almost entirely by drug gangs probably isn’t going to net you good advice. Let’s just hope our government doesn’t listen to the President of Mexico’s advice:
On Thursday, Felipe Calderon, the president of Mexico, where prohibitive gun laws prevent good people from having firearms for protection against criminals and governments of dubious legitimacy (historically the norm in Mexico), encouraged Congress to reinstate the federal “assault weapon” ban.
Why the Hell would he care what we do in this country?
Calderon also misinformed Congress, claiming that violence in Mexico rose significantly after the U.S. ban expired in 2004.
Surprisingly enough the president of a corrupt country lied:
In fact, Mexico’s murder rate has been stable since 2003 and remains well below rates recorded previously
Why did we even invite him into the country?
It appears IBM slipped up a little bit:
Delegates to AusCERT, Australia’s premier information security event held this week on the Gold Coast, have taken home a little of the stuff they spent the week agonising over – a virus.
In an email this afternoon, IBM advised visitors to its AusCERT booth that its complimentary USB key was infected with a virus. An IBM spokesman and conference organisers confirmed the email was genuine.
There has to be an award for distributing a virus at a security conference.
Life must be hard for the Police Superintendent of Chicago. You have a gun ban in place to prevent slaves citizens from purchasing handguns and severely restricting the purchase of all other guns. Yet your city has the most shootings. What’s a man to do? Most people would just come out and say the gun ban probably isn’t working so hot and admit they were wrong. But as Every Day, No Days Off points out Police Superintendent Jody Weis has another plan:
He’s creating a new category of “indoor” homicides — and downplaying what police can do about them..
“Those homicides that are outdoors — the ones that I do believe we have a good possibility of preventing — we’re around 98 homicides for Chicago outdoors. That’s as low as it’s ever been, except for 2007, when I believe we had 97 homicides outdoors as of this date,” he said.
98 homicides is considered low? Really? Because according to the FBI Unified Crime Report for 2008 (which Illinois’s statistics are footnoted due to the fact they don’t report in compliance with the FBI Unified Crime Report) Vermont which allows anybody legally capable of owning a gun to carry it around on their person sans any permits only had 17 murders in that year. Hell my home stat of Minnesota only had 106 total for the entire year. Chicago on the other hand has practically passed my state’s yearly total in five months without including the number of shootings that occur indoors!
So even implementing this shitty idea makes Chicago look like a violent Hell hole.
Man it’s not easy for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Civil Rights. First they start a fundraiser to get $10,000 and months in they only have $20.00. Second they can’t seem to get any major gun control legislation through. What’s such an organization to do?
Well according to War on Guns they have decided to jump on bored an almost assured victory so they have something to toss on their resume without having to actually do work or spend money.
The Brady Bunch are signing on to the federal lawsuit against the Firearm Freedom Act. Being this is a case where the federal government is stomping on sovereign states’ rights it’s almost a sure bet the feds will win. I don’t think there has been a huge states’ rights victory since the ending of the Civil War.