One bad turn deserves another

Yesterday, Uncle titled this freak of nature’s rantings as “Insanity”.

But as a progressive, I would sooner lay my child to rest than succumb to the belief that the use of a gun for self-defense is somehow not in itself a gun crime.

But that line doesn’t bother me as much as the prior paragraphs do

Current school security procedures lock down school populations in the event of armed assault. Some advocate abandoning this practice as it holds everyone in place, allowing a shooter easily to find victims.

An alternative to lockdown is immediate exodus via announcement. Although this removes potential hostages and makes it nearly impossible for the shooter to acquire preselected targets, it unfairly rewards resourceful children who move to safety off-site more shrewdly and efficiently than others.

Schools should level playing fields, not intrinsically reward those more resourceful. A level barrel is fair to all fish.

This is so disgusting I’m having difficult believing this is not a parody.

Mr. Van Gorder believes it would be better to hold potential victims in place so as to not be “unfair” to a child who cannot run as fast as the others or who haven’t the wit to decide that kicking out a ground floor window is their best means of escape.

According to the opening line of the screed, Doug Van Gorder is actually in charge of instructing school aged children. By his own statements he is also a parent.

If my saving a life by defending it with a weapon is akin to a criminal act, I’m sure that Mr. Van Gorder won’t mind that I believe him to be lacking a stable enough mental condition to be in charge of other human beings, either in the class room or in his home.

I believe that he needs to lose his job because he would not let a child of mine attempt to escape an oncoming threat. He also needs to be relieved of his offspring because he would rather they die than make an attempt to save their lives.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

What a flake

Here in the Seattle area, we don’t get all that much snow. One or two minor or moderate dumpings every five to six years and then one good one every decade or so.

Minnesota is different. From what I understand, if they don’t get snow, it is considered rather unusual and that Armageddon may be at hand.

So you can probably understand why my brow furrowed a bit when I read this leftist screed from a woman bitching that her local municipality didn’t plow the parking lot of her condo complex.

Which is private property.

When the Seattle/Tacoma area got dumped on last year the local muni never even got around to plowing my street. Which is fine. It is one of the multitude of reasons I bought and built up Buddy the Jeep.

Two weeks of snow so deep that I worried about the structural stability of my deck as I was shoveling it clear on a daily basis, and I didn’t have to rely on government at all because I took care to cover “All the bad things that could go wrong” myself.

And then in the other extreme, we have Phoenix Woman, who is one of the major posters at the hyperleftist FireDogLake blog, wanting her private property plowed so she can go get a Fair Market Bean cappuccino or some such bullshit.

Of course, she blames this on The Republicans in her state, taking money from not feeding the Tiny Tim Cratchett’s of Minnesota (and plowing her private property) so that they can dive into piles of money like Scrooge McDuck (which is exactly how I see her picturing them).

One place I do know a bit about and know that it snows a lot is Montana. My wife was born and raised there. Her uncle used to make extra money in the early AM plowing the parking lots of multiple commercial businesses, and at least one trailer home park, before going of to his regular job.

Because the local muni wouldn’t do it. Too much liability. Too much wasted time spent catering to the strange demands of the various property owners.

In fact, I know of no local munis that will plow private property.

Yet she acts as though it is completely normal and that her locals are derelict in their duties because her property management folks had to hire a privateer.

So, you snowbound types, am I wrong to think she’s a whining screech owl to believe the government should plow her private property?

Please, enlighten me.

Posted in Freaks, Mutants, and Morons | 16 Comments

RNS Quote of the Day: 12/28/09

Hammer = Ride Fast

Nail = Attempted terrorist attack

A Muslim man allegedly acting on Al-Qaida orders smuggles an explosive device on board an airliner headed to the USA and detonates it. The TSA policies of:

*Treating every person (including the crew) as probable terrorists didn’t work.

*Treating every little thing as a weapon didn’t work.

*Using a massive, secret list of suspects didn’t work.

Is anyone really surprised? Has anyone been fired at the TSA?

Ride Fast

The answer to both of those questions is “No, and no one will be.”

In fact, the media has been unwilling to ask why it took three hours to notify the President of the attack or why the DHS didn’t move this guy further up the ladder of their precious lists after them were warned about him only four weeks prior (and, in fact, they obscured this information after publishing it)?

Nor has any of these questions become a meme in the leftosphere where Bush was chided for both sitting in the room with the chilluns a few extra minutes on September 11th (while more information was gathered), while simultaneously being chided for remaining in the air on Air Force One for a few hours (while more information was gathered), and then repeatedly being accused of “Not Doing Anything” and “Letting it happen” because when the idea that terrorists might use commercial airplanes as weapons was mentioned in a briefing months before he didn’t shut down every airport or some such bullshit.

But hey, two standards must be better than one, right?

Posted in Freaks, Mutants, and Morons, Quote of the Day | 1 Comment

Forgetting the narrative

I’m expecting something very bad to happen to the UCLA PoliSci department in the not too distant future. It may just be lack of funding, but it could be something as bad as having the library fall on them.

Media bias is real, finds UCLA Political Scientist

While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper’s news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.

These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.

“I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican,” said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study’s lead author. “But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are.”

“Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left,” said co‑author Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar.

The results appear in the latest issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which will become available in mid-December.

Poor fellows. It is sad to see people sign their own death warrants while living in the ObamaNation.

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | 2 Comments

Christmas Weekend Question

Lex Green over at The Chicago Boys blog asks about the idea of a second Contract with America to help the right retake Congress and what folks on the right would like to see in it.

I’ll go first

1. That they will promote the passage of a Constitutional Amendment expressing the right to own firearms, with a distinct definition that they are vital for self defense of citizens from both criminals and the government.

2. That they will promote the passage of a Constitutional Amendment repealing the Anchor Baby portion of the 14th Amendment. Something that state that at least one of the biological parents must be a citizen for the child to gain citizenship.

3. I’ll take just about anything that reaffirms the 10th Amendment.

4. A national Right to Work law.

OK, that’s enough from me.

Now you.

Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments

I can smell a bad idea

Like a fart in a car.

This is a bad idea

Senator Maria Cantwell calls our attention to a law, signed by President Obama, allowing Cuba to buy U.S. farm produce and pay after the goods are shipped. The law reverses a Treasury ruling during the Bush years that Cuba had to pay in advance — a ruling that stopped the trade altogether.

And until they stop jailing and killing people for asking for free elections, the trade should be stopped.

The Seattle Times editorial board apparently thinks that no free elections in exchange for a promise to pay from Cuba is a fair deal. They attempt a “restriction of rights of free travel” argument.

I can see their point. But it is on the top of their precious little murderous communist dictator supporting heads.

Posted in Evil walks the earth | 1 Comment

SLUTs ain’t cheap

The costs of the South Lake Union Trolley (aka: The SLUT) are finally surfacing

After the South Lake Union streetcar opened two years ago, the city of Seattle spent $4.3 million more on the project — spending it didn’t announce but says it needed, mainly for utility work.

The project ended up costing the city $56.4 million. Most of the additional money went toward power lines, streetlights, wiring splices or drainage systems near the tracks. These were “opportunities to make repairs and upgrades” beyond what the city predicted when the project began, explains Ethan Melone, streetcar project director for the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT).

Shiny red, orange and purple trains ply the 1.3-mile route between Westlake Center and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, carrying just more than 1,300 riders a day. Trains are typically less than half full, but the city expects big ridership growth as new employers arrive in the next decade.

When construction of the streetcar line began in July 2006, the city’s estimate was $50.5 million for construction and trains, including $2.4 million in SDOT money toward utilities. The total rose to $52.1 million by opening day, Dec. 12, 2007, the city acknowledged at the time.

But in the next few weeks, an additional $1.2 million was spent by SDOT and $3.1 million by Seattle Public Utilities (SPU), internal spreadsheets and city-budget line items show.

Numbers like these amount to kibble in a wealthy city that builds some of the world’s most precious highway and rail megaprojects.

Still, the streetcar cost increase is sure to provoke some thought.

Thought about the real cost of a rail system? In Seattle?

Only by those who said it would be expensive and always cost more than it was worth. Rail lovers prefer to call people like that “Haters”. I call them “Me”.

If you plan a trip to Seattle in the future, make sure you take some time to ride our SLUT. We paid for it for you!

Posted in The Left is Never Right | 1 Comment

Merry Christmas

Well, the present I wanted to give y’all got sunk by the after effects of the System Restore fiasco from a couple weeks back.

So, instead, you get this tale (which may in fact be a better gift, depending on how seriously you take your skypixie).

When a parent complained in the fall that putting “Silent Night” on a school’s holiday program was focusing too much on a single religion, Principal Mark Finch scratched the carol.

But after Pioneer School pupils finished their concert Tuesday, members of the audience sang it anyway.

About 100 of the more than 700 people joined in, and applause and cheers followed, the Albany Democrat-Herald reported.

Screw the militant athieists and make your Christmas as merry as you want it to be!

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | Leave a comment

RNS Quote of the Day, 12/24/09

Am I the only person flirting dangerously with thoughts of revolution?
Unfortunately, ACT, I fear you are not these days.
Posted in Quote of the Day | 3 Comments

It ain’t over

Why the health-care bill might still die in the House.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment