Random Nuclear Strikes

Sunday Funnies

Posted on January 11, 2015 by Phil Kadath

Using the line of thought that any editorial cartoon that doesn’t offend someone isn’t a very good editorial cartoon

Also, there will be a game tomorrow. Be sure to stop by sometime this week and play along.

Posted in Kewel! | Leave a comment

Police Just Can Not Handle Criticism

Posted on January 9, 2015 by Oscar Gordon

A few days ago, I found this article on Calibre Press, which is critical of Radley Balko.Â I don’t recommend the article itself, but at the time, the commenters were having a field day taking the author’s arguments apart, and from what I saw, they were being generally very respectful of it (no name calling or trash talking, etc).

Today, all those comments are down the memory hole & comments are closed.Â Totally their right to do so, but I find it telling.Â Police & their supporters are not helping their case by silencing critics, ignoring criticism, or labeling critics as bad people.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

RNS Quote of the Week: 01/04/15 thru 01/10/15

Posted on January 9, 2015 by Phil Kadath

Pieced together from an old interview

Let’s do a brief thought experiment. I tell you the following: On New Year’s Eve, a man in his mid-seventies is having his granddaughter over for a sleep-over, his five-year old granddaughter. He is attacked in his own home by an axe-wielding maniac with homicidal intent. Your mammalian reaction, your reaction as a primate, is one of revulsion. I’m trusting you on this.

Then you pick up yesterday’s Guardian, one of the most liberal newspapers in the Western world, and there’s a long article that says, ah, that picture, that moral picture, that instinct to protect the old and the young doesn’t apply in this case. The man asked for it. He drew a cartoon that upset some people. We aren’t at all entitled to use our moral instincts in the correct way.

…..

These people are saying the grandfather and granddaughter were the authors of their own attempted assassinations. These are some of the same people who say that if I don’t believe in God I can’t know what morality is. They’ve just dissolved morality completely into relativism by saying actually, occasionally, carving up grandfathers and granddaughters with an axe on New Year’s Eve can be okay if it’s done to protect the reputation of a seventh century Arabian man who heard voices.

Christopher Hitchens

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

High Praise Indeed

Posted on January 8, 2015 by Phil Kadath

It’s almost as though a challenge has been issued.

At The Washington Monthly, liberal legal pundit Michael Oâ€™Donnell has a review of my new book Overruled: The Long War for Control of the U.S. Supreme Court. According to O’Donnell, Overruled “is a sober, well-researched, and thoughtful case for the libertarian point of view on judicial issues ranging from gun control to economic regulation.” What can I say? Iâ€™m grateful for those kind words. But in fairness to O’Donnell, he also added the following caveat: “Like most libertarians, Root cares more about principle than orthodoxy; hence his book is no partisan screed. Yet he is representative of libertarians in another way as well. His positions sound reasonable until you begin thinking through their implications, at which point you realize just how radical they are.”

How radical are my positions? According to O’Donnell, Overruled threatens to tear the very fabric of civilized life.

It sounds to me like I am being challenged to buy the book.

Accepted!

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Coming Soon

Posted on January 7, 2015 by Phil Kadath

To a state near you, courtesy of the Democratic Party’s “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” that enough Republicans will support to get it to pass.

Refugees Protest Rural Sweden Relocation

Some 40 asylum-seekers refused to leave the bus when they arrived at their destination in rural northern Sweden, demanding that they be taken back to MalmÃ¶ or “some big city”.

When the transport arrived at a housing centre in Grytan south of Ã–stersund the asylum-seekers didn’t like the look of what they saw.

“I am 75-years-old and come from the Middle East. Then I get sent to a place that looks like this,” said a man from Syria to the local Ã–stersunds-Posten daily, pointing to the icy road.

“It is dangerous for me to be here,” he said.

The asylum-seekers, who originate from several countries, refused to leave the bus when it arrived at the small Swedish town. The police were called to assist at the scene but declined to help in escorting the group from the bus.

The group is demanding that they be returned to MalmÃ¶ or some other bigger city.

How can I be even just a little bit sure of this?

Well…….

State officials hope a new law that offers California driverâ€™s licenses to immigrants in the country illegally will also spur them to buy insurance.

To encourage the practice, the California Department of Insurance is aggressively marketing its Low Cost Auto Insurance program to the large pool of immigrants projected to seek licenses under the AB 60 law taking effect Jan. 1.

â€œIt would be a tragedy if after all this effort, the 1.4 million people who are getting driverâ€™s licenses for the first time donâ€™t have auto insurance,â€ said Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones.

Jones and others recognized that the cost of getting licensed â€” $33 â€” is a lot cheaper than buying insurance for hundreds of dollars a year. So, Jones, working with Senator Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, got the state Legislature to open up the low-cost insurance program to the new category of immigrant drivers.

â€œThe price will be less than $450 a year, which is less than $38 a month,â€ Jones said. He said thatâ€™s about a third of what it costs to get private auto insurance in many markets across California.

I wonder if they also ran the numbers to see how much more it would have cost the state to just be the insurance agents for illegal immigrants?

Posted in Order of the imperial upraised middle finger. | 1 Comment

The Beginning of the End

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Phil Kadath

Today is the first day of my last quarter in school. I very likely won’t finish this quarter as an active, full-time student. I’ll hopefully be done with the welding portion around the beginning of March.

I have my Certifications course, which is all day M-F. I have my Fabrication Shop course evening two days a week. I also have two online course: Psychology 100 and Speech Communications 101, which are both a couple of hours a day, M-F (I need them for the degree).

And you thought I couldn’t blog any less.

I will seriously do my very best to get on here every day. But if I miss a day or two, don’t hate me because I’m beautiful(ly studious).

I’m going for three more Certifications this quarter: SMAW (Stick/Arc heavy plate), GMAW (MIG heavy plate), and Reinforcing Steel (MIG medium plate + rebar).

Oh, the adventures we’re going to have!

If I get all of those done and still have time, I’m going to practice for whatever job I’m interviewing for. Say, I want to work on in aluminum boat manufacturing. I’ll hop into the aluminum MIG booth and run some beads.

On a different note, I got “accepted” by an honor society affiliated with the school called Phi Theta Kappa. From their About page:

The purpose of Phi Theta Kappa shall be to recognize and encourage scholarship among two-year college students. To achieve this purpose, Phi Theta Kappa shall provide opportunity for the development of leadership and service, for an intellectual climate for exchange of ideas and ideals, for lively fellowship for scholars, and for stimulation of interest in continuing academic excellence.

Anyone heard of/about these guys? They want my money, which sets off my alarms, but the school really likes them and won’t leave me alone about joining.

Posted in Phil Goes to College | 3 Comments

Run before you start screaming

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Phil Kadath

Standing in one spot and screaming before you start running won’t get you out of the state any faster.

The University of Californiaâ€™s Board of Regents recently voted to increase student tuition up to 25 percent over the next five years. UC president Janet Napolitano said the tuition hike was necessary â€œto maintain the University of California in terms of academic excellence.â€ But the real reason for the tuition increase is that the UC system needs funds to bail out the mismanaged pension system that covers retired employees of its ten campuses.

…..

The UC Board of Regents governs the UCRP, which has assets worth $53 billion and pension liabilities of at least $61 billion.

UC admits that it should have at least $8 billion more in the bank today to pay for the pensions it has promised to retirees. Other independent estimates put the unfunded liability as high as $16 billion. Either way, UC is scrambling to fill a massive hole and hitting up students for the money.

According to numbers supplied by UCRPâ€™s actuarial consulting firm, Segal, UC needs to inject $1 billion more each year into the pension system for it to be fully funded in 20 years or so. The tuition increase will produce at least $100 million a year in new money, all of which will be swallowed up by the pension fund.

So, they are at least $8 billion dollars short, and their tuition increase will possibly cover 10% of what they actually NEED to be putting in there per year. AND, the leftists that run the state believe that tuition should actually be free for residents.

Either they are going to go bankrupt, or your property taxes are going to go up and your services are going to decline.

Run, then start screaming.

Posted in The Left is Never Right | 1 Comment

Will 2015 be better than 2014, politically?

Posted on January 5, 2015 by Phil Kadath

Magic 8 Ball says “Signs Point to Yes”

Government (and the creatures who infest its rotten carcass) was the most important problem facing the United States in 2014, Americans tell Gallup pollsters. That’s up from being the second most serious problem in 2013, and the third-ranker in 2012.

Who says the American political system is stuck? This is progress!

The news that Americans are un-fond of government, Congress, the president, and politicians in general comes from an average of monthly survey results throughout the year. Given officialdom’s litany of stupid government tricks, the elevation of America’s own flavor of Leviathan to public enemy numero uno may seem like nothing more than good common sense to many observers. Perhaps an expression of collective survival instinct. Or, at least, mass revulsion.

Magic 8 Ball, were you made in China?

“Reply Hazy. Try Again Later.”

Shit.

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | Leave a comment

Installed

Posted on January 3, 2015 by Phil Kadath

Been busy working on taking some camera shy newbies to the range the past couple days, so if you can excuse the absence, here is an update on on a project I thought I had mentioned a while back but now can’t find anywhere on the site.

I left one of my parts tables at the Renton Fish & Game rifle range with some cards that had my phone number on them. I got a call from a local general contractor about some metal work he needed done for a house he was working on.

More specifically, he needed someone to build a fascia for a large gas fireplace. After working with him and the interior designer, I whipped up a drawing and a quote, and got it approved.

The gas fireplace is approximately 6ft long, but the interior designer wanted it to look 8ft long with the addition of the fascia.

Four pieces of 1.5in x 1.5in by 1/8in angle and two 24in x 15in pieces of 1/4in sheet got welded together (with no exposed weld showing) and powder coated in a 25% gloss black.

With the few minutes of free time I had yesterday I traveled up to the house to take a look at the finished product in the not yet finished dining room.

Here is a full view with a less than decent shot of the fascia

After the piece on the floor in front of the fireplace is installed on the ceiling and the marble mantle installed, everything below the level of the mantle will be covered in Venetian plaster to finish off the room.

Not my style, but it’ll look classy as hell.

Posted in Kewel! | 3 Comments