The “New Tone” is so last month

Posted on March 15, 2011 by Phil Kadath

Even amongst leftists arguing with each other.

Take, for instance, the hyper-leftist FireDogLake freaks comments about Obama’s OpEd piece on firearms.

I regularly visit gunblogs and gunboards where people regularly say nicer things about the guy than the FDL people.

And speaking of leftists and the topic of firearms, they’re freaking out over the new rules for voter ID in Texas.

Apparently, Texas voter can now use their Concealed Carry Permit as ID at the polling places even though it doesn’t have their picture on it. The leftosphere is hating this and claiming it is a conspiracy to make it easier for Republicans to vote.

I guess, because they don’t believe any self-respecting Democrat would ever exercise their Second Amendment rights?

And lastly, the gun-bigot leftists are upset that the NRA is refusing to meet with the White House to discuss the future restrictions to gun owner rights.

Posted in Freaks, Mutants, and Morons | 4 Comments

A Nudge is as Good as a Wink to a Blind Bat

Posted on March 14, 2011 by Alaska

British sniper team racks up impressive tally in a month, most kills at 1200 meters with a suppressed 7.62mm L96 rifle (.308 Win, pretty impressive). Locals think they’re being hit from helicopters.

Posted in Have Gun, Will Travel, Heroes, Comrades and Brothers | 2 Comments

Something to write your congressman about

Posted on March 14, 2011 by Oscar Gordon

An agency receiving federal dollars that spends that money bringing environmental suits against that same government.

Another layer of stupid from our government.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Oddly analogous

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Oscar Gordon

Strangely, this made me think of guns & restraining orders.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

RNS Quote of the Day: 03/11/11

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Phil Kadath

Seems pertinent

Can the real Constitution be restored? Probably not. Too many Americans depend on government money under programs the Constitution doesn’t authorize, and money talks with an eloquence Shakespeare could only envy. Ignorant people don’t understand The Federalist Papers, but they understand government checks with their names on them.

Joseph Sobran

I would only include that the list he is speaking of should also include on it corporations, as well as the employees of government.

Posted in Quote of the Day, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Our New National Anthem

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Alaska

Not so stirring as the current one, but still pretty cool.

To the tune of the William Tell Overture:

It’s okay if you pray. You can own a gun.

You can say what you may about anyone.

You can meet in the street, you can march and strut.

Been wronged? You can sue his butt.

If you’re popped by a cop, then you get a trial.

Army troops won’t be cooped in your domicile,

When in jail, if there’s bail, it can’t be too high.

‘Gainst yourself … you don’t testify.

etc., etc., RTWT.

Posted in Kewel! | Leave a comment

There are more than five

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Phil Kadath

But this is a good start…

Social Security: 5 Enduring Myths that must go

Social Security isn’t the only cause of America’s fiscal problems, but it is Exhibit A in why it is so hard to fix them. No serious solution to our debt can ignore a program that will tax and spend about 4.8 percent of GDP this year and account for about 20 percent of all federal spending — and that within a few decades will count almost a third of the population as beneficiaries. But it’s maddeningly difficult to have a reasoned conversation about Social Security when policymakers — let alone taxpayers and recipients — can’t agree on the program’s effect on the budget.

A handful of misconceptions tend to crop up repeatedly — often having to do with that fiscal fun-house mirror, the Social Security trust fund.

RTWT

Posted in The Left is Never Right, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Harden the Fuck Up!

Posted on March 9, 2011 by Scott

You all have probably seen the video of the Australian guy. I think that it may have even been posted here a while back.

Well, I found a new blog with an article along the same vein, ranting about how men can’t have a “Man to Man talk” anymore. It is a pretty good read, and I found myself spending too much time today on this site.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The Coming India Crash

Posted on March 8, 2011 by Alaska

You heard it here first, folks. With India’s tech economy built on the export of low-cost IT and clerical-type jobs from the developed world to low-wage high-skilled India, this is not a good portent. Never mind the “computers-replace-lawyers” thrust of the article; the reality is more far-reaching. If computers can do this sort of by-rote-yet-complex litigation support, how long ’till they can do other rote-yet-complex tasks — like, say, programming?

The wife and I met at my first job out of law school in 1995, where we managed cases at a litigation-support tech business that used skilled humans to index, or “code,” millions of pages of documents in complex lawsuits for litigators. We handled all the documents for cases as varied as the infamous Tobacco litigation and the Charles Ng murder trial. The document-indexing tasks of our human coders were somewhat rote but required the “installed database” of a college-educated human brain in order to be completed with little error. Then the lawyers would take the indexed-document database and search it for relevant terms — the process the article says has been replaced by computers. Reading between the lines, it seems both the document-coding and the legal-searching tasks have been computerized.

Frankly, I’m not surprised that computer programs have been able to displace both the human coders and the human lawyers; I am surprised that it happened this quickly. In our day, OCR software had a 10-20% error rate, especially with legalese. That error rate must be close to zero nowadays for these programs to be able to work.

Posted in Academia and Other Nonsense, Armageddon | 8 Comments

Talk about a “Sanctuary City”

Posted on March 8, 2011 by Phil Kadath

Thinking of becoming a landlord within the city limits of Seattle? Know someone who is?

Thinking of opening a business within the city limits of Seattle? Know someone who is?

You’ll want to tell them to hold off for a bit

The Seattle Office of Civil Rights is proposing legislation which would make it illegal to discriminate in employment, contracting and housing based on a person’s criminal history. (Draft proposal is here.) Exceptions would be made for crimes where there is “direct connection” between the conviction and employment and occupancy, but “direction connection” is so vaguely defined that it effectively gives the city final say over decisions to rent or hire. Arrest record could not be used at all in these decisions; only convictions could be considered.

If the council accepts the OCR draft and adds the language to the municipal code, landlords would be required to rent to convicted drug users and sex offenders unless they could prove “occupancy would involve unreasonable risk of substantial harm to property or to the safety of individuals or the public.”

While the Seattle metro area isn’t feeling the unemployment pinch nearly as bad as other urban areas across the country, this could tip those statistics in the “bad” direction.

Posted in Dare To Be Stupid, The Left is Never Right | 3 Comments