NewSpeak Ad

Posted on August 17, 2013 by Alaska

I just find “affordable housing” in this context to be terribly amusing. Click to view the gory details.


– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Once, Twice, 2776 Times a Police State

Posted on August 16, 2013 by Phil Kadath

But hey, look over there! Edward Snowden!

NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, audit finds

The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.

Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by statute and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls.

…..

The NSA audit obtained by The Post, dated May 2012, counted 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications. Most were unintended. Many involved failures of due diligence or violations of standard operating procedure. The most serious incidents included a violation of a court order and unauthorized use of data about more than 3,000 Americans and green-card holders.

…..

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who did not receive a copy of the 2012 audit until The Post asked her staff about it, said in a statement late Thursday that the committee “can and should do more to independently verify that NSA’s operations are appropriate, and its reports of compliance incidents are accurate.”

We’re in the very best of hands.

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And my Remington is in my hands.

Posted in Evil walks the earth | 1 Comment

The Error of Urgency

Posted on August 16, 2013 by Phil Kadath

Alternate title: This is what Fascism looks like

They truly have no shame in showing that they believe they know what is best for us

EPA chief Gina McCarthy said Wednesday that the Obama administration is finished waiting for Congress to act on climate change and plans to bypass the legislative branch in developing a federal response.

Ms. McCarthy, who was confirmed last month as Environmental Protection Agency administrator, cited President Obama’s June 25 speech at Georgetown University, in which he unveiled his Climate Action Plan and vowed to make combatting climate change a priority of his second term.

Mr. Obama gave “what I really think is a most remarkable speech by a president of the United States,” said Ms. McCarthy in remarks at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“Essentially, he said that it is time to act,” she said. “And he said he wasn’t going to wait for Congress, but that he had administrative authorities and that it was time to start utilizing those more effectively and in a more concerted way.”

She insisted that reducing greenhouse-gas emissions could be accomplished without harming economic growth, calling the tension between the two priorities a “false choice.”

Wait…..there is no tension between the economy and the environment BECAUSE we’re going to choose the environment, or….. there is no tension between the economy and the environment BUT, we’re going to choose the environment. She cannot have both interpretations, BUT the WaPo is going to give them to her anyway.

So who is Gina McCarthy? What is her educational speciality? From her Wiki page:

McCarthy graduated from the University of Massachusetts Boston with a Bachelor of Arts in Social Anthropology in 1976. In 1981 she received a joint Master of Science in Environmental Health Engineering and Planning and Policy from Tufts University.

No subjects that would have required her to take a single Economics course above the 100 level. So not even a moderate Economics background, which means she has little to no understanding of the subject. But the WaPo is going to take her word that she knows enough about Economics to say that her and the President’s policies would not harm the economy.

That, my friends, is willful ignorance on both her part and theirs.

Posted in Rampant Eco Socialism, The Global Warming Death Cult | Leave a comment

Federal Detroitism

Posted on August 16, 2013 by Phil Kadath

It has been said that if President Obama had a country, it would look like Detroit.

Ahem

Amid the recent hubbub over municipal bankruptcies and rising public-employee pension costs, pay for state and local government employees has gotten a great deal of publicity. Lost in the press attention, however, is that federal-employee compensation remains a problem, too, and new data again indicate that Washington, D.C., may be overpaying for the two million workers it employs.

In a 2011 AEI paper with Jason Richwine, I concluded that federal workers receive salaries and benefits around 37 percent higher than do private-sector workers with similar levels of education and experience. This prompted congressional requests for the Congressional Budget Office to conduct its own analysis, which, the requesters hoped, would rebut ours. Using slightly different methods, the CBO showed a smaller wage premium for federal workers. They omitted a $2.3 billion per year federal subsidy to government workers’ accounts held by the Thrift Savings Plan, but still reached qualitatively similar conclusions: Federal workers receive pay and benefits 16 percent above private-sector levels.

You cannot incentivise working for the state in this way. Especially not at the lower levels. Government does not need “the best and the brightest” Clerk Typist II.

But when they’re dealing with your money and not their own, anything goes.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

I am missing the “hate” part of this

Posted on August 15, 2013 by Phil Kadath

Someone in Portland, OR is going door-to-door and posting flyers. The police are calling these flyers “hate speech”, but I am having difficulty seeing the connection and am of a mind to believe that they simply do not like the sentiment within and are trumping up charges in the hopes of scaring the guy.

They read as follows:

Dear Reader of This Note,

There is an intersection between those people who vote and those people who receive public assistance. There are sixteen people in this neighborhood who vote and receive cash disability payments. The names of these people are being posted where they can be seen by taxpayers and the neighborhood can decide who is truly disabled. Benjamin Franklin said “When the people can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” Some of us in the neighborhood wish to save this democracy and to stand in the way of those who would destroy it.

Artemis of the Wildland

Do you see a “threat” in there?

Other than exposing who in these neighborhoods is taking some free money, I cannot see where any promise of action exists. Exposure is not violence, hence there is no threat of bodily harm, hence there is no “hate”.

At the most, exposure would simply lead to someone who disapproves notifying the proper authorities to investigate the individual’s disability claim. Sounds to me like a good way to get tips from the public about fraud.

But the local police are instead investigating this as a “hate crime”.

Here is the local news station’s report

Did the definition of hate change on me and I miss it?

Posted in Color me confused | 5 Comments

It really sounds like it is time to move

Posted on August 15, 2013 by Phil Kadath

It probably shouldn’t be too hard to find somewhere in Memphis, TN more “accomodating” to an individual’s 2nd Amendment right.

Shop Owner Facing Eviction After Using Gun to Defend His Cookie Shop

I can’t think of a more idiotic thing to tell your current and future tenants than, “we would rather you suffer financial and/or physical injury, including death, rather than let you defend yourself.”

But hey, it is not my property and I don’t have to shop there, so they can be idiotic right on out of business for all I care.

Posted in Freaks, Mutants, and Morons | 1 Comment

The Natural Progression of Progressivism

Posted on August 15, 2013 by Phil Kadath

They already have it so that people who can’t read get to vote, so why not let non-English speakers serve on juries?

The New Mexico Supreme Court is cautioning trial courts and lawyers that citizens who don’t speak English have the right to serve on juries.

…..

The ruling issued Monday tells judges and lawyers that they must make reasonable efforts to protect the rights of non-English speaking citizens to serve on juries.

And since we’re getting all convenient here, can an 18-21 year old be allowed to sit in the jury box and play on his/her smartphone during the trial? After all, this is how they primarily communicate, and “juries of peers” after all.

The state just wants them found guilty so, how hard can it be?

On a more serious note, I thought that to be able to serve on a jury, you had to be a citizen, and I was also under the impression that in order to be a citizen, you had to have a rather decent degree of competency in the English language.

But I guess that those standards could be slipping as well.

Posted in Dare To Be Stupid | 4 Comments

The Market Works

Posted on August 13, 2013 by Phil Kadath

Much to the President’s dismay

Remington Arms Company, LLC (“Remington”) broke ground today on the expansion of its operations at the Remington Ammunition Plant in Lonoke, Arkansas. Work on the expansion, which will include the construction of a new building, is projected to be in operation by the second quarter of 2014. Speaking at the event alongside Remington officials were Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR) and Governor Mike Beebe (D-AR).

Faster, please!

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Posted in Kewel! | 1 Comment

You’re Misunderstanding Them

Posted on August 13, 2013 by Phil Kadath

They love you and want to give you free healthcare.

Until you become too expensive to the “public resource” coffers. Then you should just go and let them kill you.

Welcome to Oregon. Coming soon the rest of the nation.

Liberal states often preview health-care central planning before the same regulations go national, which ought to make an Oregon cost-control commission especially scary. On Thursday a state board could change Oregon’s Medicaid program to deny costly care to poor patients who need it most.

Like most such panels, including the Affordable Care Act’s Independent Payment Advisory Board, the Oregon Health Evidence Review Commission, or HERC, claims to be merely concerned with what supposedly works and what doesn’t. Their real targets are usually advanced, costly treatments. That’s why HERC, for example, proposed in May that Medicaid should not cover “treatment with intent to prolong survival” for cancer patients who likely have fewer than two years left to live. HERC presents an example to show their reasoning for such a decision: “In no instance can it be justified to spend $100,000 in public resources to increase an individual’s expected survival by three months when hundreds of thousands of Oregonians are without any form of health insurance.”

As the linked article points out, the State of Oregon WILL, however, pay for the chemicals to let you off yourself.

Personally, I am of the thinking that a person should be allowed to end their own suffering and “pull their own plug”, so to speak, if that is what they want. But I understand that not everyone believes that. So while I think that self-euthanasia should be an option, it should not be the ONLY option.

But it happened, and now it is time to tell folks about it.

Posted in Evil walks the earth, The Government is Not Your Friend | 2 Comments

Arts & Crafts

Posted on August 11, 2013 by Phil Kadath

Since I’ll be having a fair amount of free time in the near future, I’ll be making up a wad of these and keeping a few of them in my wallet for those special times when I can put them to good use.

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Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments