Over?

Posted on April 10, 2009 by Phil Kadath

Small government?

Values?

Strong foreign policy?

All over?

According to Chuckles, yes.

Found via Dan Riehl

Posted in Dare To Be Stupid | Leave a comment

The Soundboard: Working for a Living Edition

Posted on April 9, 2009 by Phil Kadath

No, I’m not going to subject you to any Huey Lewis and the News, though I never really thought they were that bad.

But seeing as how this is the busiest week I’ve had in a while and all I can currently think about is work, today we’ll have a couple work related tunes.

Government Mule covering ZZTop and George Thoroughgood

And David Allan Coe givin folks ideas

Enjoy!
————

Next week’s tracks will be spread over two days, starting on Wednesday. Both from the same artist, but with two decidedly different messages.

Posted in Kewel! | Leave a comment

Starting at the wrong end

Posted on April 9, 2009 by Phil Kadath

With Washington state’s budget shortfall, the legislature is not looking at cutting back on non-essential services like free medical coupons for illegals, and is instead going soft on serious criminals.

Tough-on-crime legislation that has long filled courtrooms, prisons and parole offices across the country has apparently met its match — the economy.

In Washington and other states, lawmakers are considering budget cuts that would close prisons, loosen sentencing guidelines and slash probation terms.

With lawmakers in Olympia looking for nearly $4 billion in spending cuts, several high-ranking Democrats say the recession gives them an opportunity to add compassion to a criminal-justice system they believe has grown too large, too expensive and too harsh for some of the crimes.

OK, i could agree with that. The college kid or the white collar dude who was busted with a eighth of pot should be let go. The former accountant who embezzled a quarter million dollars doesn’t need to spend all five years behind bars.

But is that where they’re going to make the cuts? Not on your life.

Prentice is backing a plan in the Senate’s proposed state budget to close the McNeil Island Correctional Complex, a 1,300-inmate, medium-security island prison in Pierce County.

…
The House, in its proposed budget, would cut probation time for violent felons and sex offenders; allow for home detention instead of incarceration in some cases; close the medium-security Naselle Youth Camp; and eliminate parole for nearly a third of all juvenile offenders.

McNeil Island is where we keep the largest population of violent and habitual sex offenders in Washington. They’re so bad, we put them on our own little Alcatraz. Naselle is where the juvenile gang related violent offenders go.

How ignorant does one have to be to not believe that letting child rapists and gang members go about their merry way in society is a “Bad Thing”?

Posted in Dare To Be Stupid | 2 Comments

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Part 2

Posted on April 9, 2009 by Phil Kadath

Back in February I linked to Jim @ American Mercenary’s post about how the I Corps Commander at Washington’s Fort Lewis was asking him about his firearms.

Now it seems that MauserGirl is having the same issue at Fort Campbell, KY.

What is it with some folks and power?

Absolutely.

Posted in Evil walks the earth | 1 Comment

Our soldiers are easy targets

Posted on April 9, 2009 by Phil Kadath

For academia.

Penn State University has put together an “Instructional Video” on how to recognize and deal with “veterans”.

To my knowledge, Penn didn’t make a video on how to deal with violent eco-terrorists, anti-war protesters, or as mentioned at the SayAnything blog, violent student athletes.

Just how much violence from veterans does Penn have? Can they show that there is a problem with this on campus? Can they prove that there is even a minuscule amount of need for this?

The leftist academics (sorry for repeating myself there) spent the entirety of the Bush-era talking about how much they “cared about the veterans” and how these “kids who only signed up for the college money” were being taken advantage of by sending them off to do what they were trained to do, be it shoot, fix helicopters or build waste water treatment plants.

Now that their guy is in charge we get to see exactly what they think of our returning soldiers by making videos treating them as illiterate barbarians.

Posted in Academia and Other Nonsense, Order of the imperial upraised middle finger. | 6 Comments

Wanna Boomershoot with the RNS Crew?

Posted on April 9, 2009 by Alaska

…and assorted gunbloggers?

Due to cancellations, two contiguous positions have opened up — one under the RNS tent, the other right next to it. Get ’em while they’re hot!

Posted in Boomershoot | 4 Comments

In the mail…

Posted on April 8, 2009 by Alaska

This should be entertaining.

I enjoy pastiches of great character fiction (Sherlock Holmes being the definitive example), but I’ve often wondered what creative mischief could achieve by going back to the original and … editing it. Interleaving new material among the old.

(Ducks the flying chairs amid catcalls of Heresy!)

In this book, “unmentionables” among the British gentility has quite another meaning from “underwear.”

Yes, this should be entertaining indeed.

Posted in Academia and Other Nonsense, Kewel! | Leave a comment

Buy this Book!

Posted on April 8, 2009 by Alaska

Today is Book Bomb Day for the latest edition of James Wesley, Rawles’ novel Patriots. It’s got a spiffy new cover and subtitle.

Much like Atlas Shrugged or Unintended Consequences, if you haven’t read it, you should. None of those three books are great literature by any stretch of the imagination, but all of them share the potential for a life-changing effect on the reader. As far as Patriots is concerned, whatever you may think of the plot (which in the second half devolves into fantasy IMO) the book’s loaded with nugget after nugget of detailed, practical “how-to” information, ideas, and food for serious thought and reflection.

Plus, if you buy it today you’ll help kick the book up Amazon’s sales list. Right now it’s at #7. 

I’ll have a detailed review in a few days.  Get yours now so you can follow along!

Posted in By Ourselves, For Ourselves, Kewel! | 5 Comments

Two! Two!

Posted on April 8, 2009 by Phil Kadath

Two days in one!

Sorry for the lack of posting yesterday, but I was working my way through a 16 hour day trying to get the first reports for last week’s work, the first week under the new “Mega-Muni” contract, out the door.

Told you this weekend that my new name might as well be Bruce Banner.

Hopefully, things will smooth out. We have 80% normalization there now.

Though, since I am involved, the best they can hope to reach is 98%.

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | Leave a comment

Unsurprisingly

Posted on April 8, 2009 by Phil Kadath

NOT found in a paper published in California

Celebrities including Kate Winslett, Dame Helen Mirren, Clive Owen, Sir Michael Caine and the Irish actor Colin Farrell have all fallen victim to legislation that allows California’s state government to take possession of bank accounts, stocks and the contents of security deposit boxes if they are dormant for longer than three years.

…..

State records seen by The Daily Telegraph reveal a number of high-profile names whose property is now in the hands of the state. While the sums lost are not likely to dent the fortunes of their celebrity owners, they have been seized without any notification. If they were property held in deposit boxes, rather than cash, they may have been sold by the state and their value cannot be reclaimed once they discover it is missing.

The actor Clive Owen has had five unclaimed amounts seized, with a total value of $4,658.84 (£3,215), while Colin Farrell has lost $1,113.93 (£769). The British actress Thandie Newton and Americans Angelina Jolie and Reese Witherspoon have also fallen victim to the law.

Bill Palmer, an American lawyer leading a class-action lawsuit against California – which has major financial problems – is representing six million people from around the world who have allegedly had money or stocks seized under the Unclaimed Property Law.

Yes, every state in the union has one of these useless laws (with varying numbers of requirements for “account inspection”), which are passed to “help” ordinary citizens from having these assets “lost” during bankruptcies or mergers or some other type of financial switcheroo.

But the only people these laws “help” are the bureaucrats. What business is it of theirs if I want to let a handful of gold coins collect dust in a safe deposit box for five years?Or if I want to stuff $50K into a low yield savings account?

Sure, it is a bad savings practice, but why should someone be punished for twidling their own money away?

Found via CCinZ

Posted in Order of the imperial upraised middle finger. | 2 Comments