Sunday Stuff

Posted on January 17, 2010 by Phil Kadath

Please excuse me whilst I clear some stuff out the thumbdrive. Clicken to embiggen for all.
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Who says 4Chan isn’t good for anything?

Posted in Kewel! | Leave a comment

Introductions

Posted on January 15, 2010 by Phil Kadath

Today I’d like to welcome Scott to the RNS blog-arena.

Scott and I have worked together for a couple-three years now. But not too long ago, Scott was a Political Science major at the University of Washington, so I know he is no shrinking violet.

I’ve taken good care to raise him up as a good gunnie: 1911’s, Remington shotguns and HK-91 clones (plus a few more that I had little-to-no influence in). If he wasn’t the only one at our place of employ who could do my job when I’m on vacation, he’d have already attended Boomershoot. As it is, we’re in the midst of conspiring to teach someone both our jobs so he can attend this year.

I think that he’ll bring an interesting perspective to the mix, despite him being a regular church-goer (that’s a joke, people!). One hot button issue I may just leave to him is the Teacher’s Unions. You see, his better half is a member of Washington’s.

That’s right! RNS is double covered on the Teamsters, has a mole within the Bar, and is now inside the WEA!

Mmm, sweet lemonade!

Anyway, he’s got the post right below this one. A good first rant. Stop by and say hello.

Posted in Kewel! | Leave a comment

RNS Quote of the Day: 01/15/10

Posted on January 15, 2010 by Scott

We want our money back, and we’re going to get it.

That is what our genius President actually said into a microphone today when he unveiled his plan to tax banks.

First of all, what does he mean by “our money?”  Of course, he wants us to believe that he really means our–the common folks–money that we as good, charitable people loaned to the poor banks. But, we all know that he really means the play money that belongs to himself and Timmy “Turbo Tax.”

The problem is that all of the major banks, except Citigroup, have already paid back their TARP loans with interest. Some of them (BOA) did not want the loans, but were forced to take them anyway because…wait for it…

…they were “too big to fail.

The White House is now complaining that the banks used the loans to make obscene profits (Wasn’t that the whole point?), of which they passed on as huge bonuses to the very employees that made them the profits. Of course, in Obamaland, profit is evil, and bankers are old and evil white guys who won’t lend money to minorities because old white guys are evil, racist, and evil.

Although, the White House keeps putting pressure on banks to make more loans and take greater risk again, the idiocy that is this “tax” will only stifle the process that they proclaim will save the economy.  Anyone who has ever taken a 100 level Economics class, or has owned a small business certainly knows two things: nothing is free and businesses do not pay taxes.  People do.  Banks will just pass on more fees to customers, making the loan process and banking in general more difficult and expensive.  When this happens, the White House will say, “Well, the banks could have just taken 5% less profits, instead of passing the costs on to you little guys.”

The greatest irony of all is that the real culprits are Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, GMAC and Chrysler–all of which are either owned or operated by the government.  They are the ones that actually took bailout money, but haven’t repaid it. So, the White House is essentially askng Congress to pass a bill to recoup from banks the money that the government loaned to itself.

Posted in Quote of the Day, The Left is Never Right | Leave a comment

Holy Crap! They Caught the Tylenol Killer!

Posted on January 14, 2010 by Alaska

Alleged. Alleged.  But still.

h/t: Jerry the Geek, who’s justifiably concentrating on other things right now.

Posted in Evil walks the earth | Leave a comment

Are you smarter than a UW freshman?

Posted on January 14, 2010 by Phil Kadath

On Tuesday I asked a rhetorical question about the math skills of eco-socialist scientists.

It turns out that that the rhetorical question may have been the right one.

Forget 5th graders, Cliff Mass gave the students in his Atmospheric Science 101 class a mathematics diagnostics test. These people are supposed to have passed a full year of algebra before being accepted into college level courses.

Not so much.

The results were stunning, in a very depressing way. This was an easy test, including elementary and middle school math problems. And these are students attending a science class at the State’s flagship university–these should be the creme of the crop of our high school graduates with high GPAs. And yet most of them can’t do essential basic math–operations needed for even the most essential problem solving.

Consider these embarrassing statistics from the exam:

The overall grade was 58%

43% did not know the formula for the area of a circle
86% could not do a simple algebra problem (problem 4b)
75% could not do a simple scientific notation problem (1e)
52% could not deal with a negative exponent (2 to the -2)
43% could not do simple long division problem with no remainder!
47% did not know what a cosine was.

Hit this link to go back to Cliff’s place and see a copy of the test.

Maybe these folks ARE just incompetent and not evil.

Posted in Rampant Eco Socialism, The Global Warming Death Cult | 10 Comments

Passed Hope

Posted on January 14, 2010 by Phil Kadath

From the “You have got to be kidding me” file, we have Tacoma’s own Rosa Franklin

Decades ago, poor children became known as “disadvantaged” to soften the stigma of poverty. Then they were “at risk.” Now, a Washington lawmaker wants to replace those euphemisms with a new one, “at hope.”

Democratic State Sen. Rosa Franklin says negative labels are hurting kids’ chances for success and has proposed rewriting 54 places in state law where words like “at risk” and “disadvantaged” are used.

The bill has gotten a warm welcome among fellow lawmakers, state officials and advocacy groups.

“We really put too many negatives on our kids,” says Franklin, who is the state Senate’s president pro tem. “We need to come up with positive terms.”

No, you need to come up with some positive role-models, because apparently these kid’s parents aren’t filling the slot.

It doesn’t matter if you call a person “midget”, “dwarf” or  “little person”, they’re still going to be “height disadvantaged” and not be able to see over the counter at the bank.

It doesn’t matter if they call these kids “disadvantaged”, “at risk”, “at hope” or “future inmate #304761659”, they’re still going to grow up to be whatever they work to be.
Yet more of doing what feels good instead of what would actually work because doing the latter takes effort.

Oh, and if you want to click this link, you’ll see that Senator Franklin is so involved with keeping her constituents up to date that she hasn’t updated her site since fuckin’ August.

Posted in Useful Idiots | Leave a comment

Apple’s Trackphone

Posted on January 13, 2010 by Alaska

The chick at the Postal Annex and I were chatting the other day as I shipped some stuff, and we got onto the subject of tentacle hentai. (It was a totally innocent conversation, I swear!) Anyway, she mentioned her boyfriend had wanted her to post some (chaste) pix of herself holding her cute little octopus vibrator — on 4chan!.  Oh, no, no no, said I; if the internet is forever, 4chan is doublepluseternity, especially since her pix would immediately be downloaded by every denizen of the tentacle hentai channel — a real live female tentacle hentai enthusiast, they’d say, how rare! I must preserve her, my preciousss! –  and they’d do their best to worship her over the coming decades and centuries by reposting her pix as often as they could. Tam had some similar regrets about a bikini photo, I believe.

Anyway, here’s further proof why you just don’t mess with 4chan. Especially if you’re photographing evidence of drug use with a GPS-enabled iPhone. From the White House.

Continue reading →

Posted in Dare To Be Stupid | 6 Comments

RNS Quote of the Day: 01/13/10

Posted on January 13, 2010 by Phil Kadath

There is no way to pare this down without depleting its excellence. Nor is there a reason to.

On the topic of this post from yesterday.

The lesson here is simple: never call the police. Never. Ever. They would have arrived too late to protect her had it turned violent and in any case Myleene Klass, who acted commendably by making it clear to intruders that she would defend herself and her child, was the only person who actually faced the possibility of arrest when the police did arrive.

If you have to defend yourself, do not call the cops afterwards and if possible leave the scene as soon as you can, no matter how clear it is that you are the aggrieved party. And if worst comes to worse and you get into a violent confrontation in your own home with an intruder, try to make sure your story is the only one the cops will hear (under no circumstances try to detain the scrot for the coppers to collect).

And if the cops do show up, just remember that your statement is not about speaking truth from a position of innocence, it is about not giving the state any pretext to arrest you. Stay nothing about what happened until your lawyer arrives.

Just remember that arresting you for daring to defend yourself is easier than looking for some criminal who attacked you because the police know where you live and getting any arrest shows up as a positive result in their statistics. Ideally just defend yourself and do not call them at all afterwards.

Myleene, you had the right instincts and you have my respect… your only mistake, and it is a big one, is to assume the cops in the UK are on your side and a young mum home alone with her child was legally entitled to defend herself. They ain’t and you are not. You have the moral right to do whatever it takes to defend yourself from intruders, but the police have no interest in such niceties.

The state is not your friend.

Perry de Havilland

You need to keep that last sentence scrolling through your head at all times.

Posted in Quote of the Day | 1 Comment

A good man

Posted on January 13, 2010 by Phil Kadath

From the MadRocketScientist

Maurice Clemmons, who gunned down four Lakewood police officers Nov. 29, was an evil man and no changes in gun laws are going to prevent murders like he committed.

That is a conclusion that Chelan County Sheriff Mike Harum said he came to while serving on a panel of law enforcement officers looking into the shootings.

He was appointed by Gov. Chris Gregoire to a panel that was asked to determine if changes in state laws might have prevented the murders, or if any changes could prevent similar murders in the future.

“Our fear was that if a legislator has a knee-jerk reaction to this whole incident, he might come up with something that we would not be able to work with as a community,” Harum said.

The panel met Dec. 29 in Olympia. Harum was the only law enforcement officer from North Central Washington on the eight-member panel.

How soon will this information be ignored by my Legislators in Olympia?

Too late. They’ve already forgotten every reasonable thing he said.

In other WA gun news, some folks in Oly aren’t waiting for SCOTUS to look at the Montana and Tennesee firearms bills to file their own bill.

HB 2709 – The Washington State Firearms Freedom Act of 2010.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

He’s got fur on his pants

Posted on January 13, 2010 by Phil Kadath

Woof. Slobber. Yip.

Under fire for backing away from a campaign promise to open up health care negotiations to C-SPAN cameras, the White House on Monday highlighted a report from a coalition of watchdog groups awarding the Obama administration an “A” for its openness.

The report — released by the nonprofit groups Common Cause, Democracy 21, the League of Women Voters and U.S. PIRG — gave the administration high marks across the board for its various initiatives to increase transparency and reduce the power of lobbyists, both of which were key elements in candidate Barack Obama’s campaign pledge to change the way Washington works.

“Watchdogs”? More like Lapdogs

Posted in Useful Idiots | 1 Comment