RNS Quote of the Day: 04/15/08

London Police are engaging in some of the most intrusive “Security Theater” imaginable. Sadly for them, they pulled over a UK Samidat this weekend.

This is what has been called “security theatre”: lots of action signifying little. Even the copper who carried out the search had the good grace to look slightly embarrassed.

Johnathan Pearce

Hit the link for the recap. Then go here for further thoughts.
In just the last several months, as DUI’s increased during the end of year holidays, the Democrat controlled Washington State Legislature was set to begin talking about writing a law that would legalize a genre of Security Theater skit called “DUI Roadblocks” so as to look like they were being “hard on drunk driving criminals”. Never mind that back when we had a sane state Supreme Court, the justices ruled that these roadblocks infringed on the free movement of citizens by violating their Fourth Amendment Rights.

The local press even joined in the act, getting the legislators plenty of film footage of grieving family members of DUI victims.

Then resistance built against the diea, and once again the local media went back out to the grieving family members to get them to say stupid things like “These are public roads and if you want to use them, you need to give up some of your privacy rights and let the police stop you so that other people can be safe.” Basically, the old “If you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about” argument, wrapped up in automotive guise.

I lost the link, but the Seattle Times even published a letter from one of these grieving family members which stated that if you refused to sign away your Fourth Amendment right when you renewed your drivers license, then you deserved to lose your driving privileges.

And that is where it ended. Oddly enough, I saw not one word about these roadblocks after that. Strangest damn thing. There must have been a public outcry somewhere that I missed, because there wasn’t one single Letter to the Editor, newspaper editorial, or even a blog post that I could find after that which promoted the idea “DUI Roadblocks”.

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I hope this works

You see your taxes go up every year, or month in some instances.

Yet, you see less and less of what those ever increasing tax dollars are doing for you.

Government never stops growing, never stops intruding, no matter how much Danegeld you pay to keep them away.

But now someone in Missouri has thought up a way to punish government for growing in the exact same way they punish you for being successful, and I for one am hoping it becomes law.

A Missouri state Senate panel last week endorsed a plan to tap a new source of revenue to pay for repairs to the state’s crumbling infrastructure: tax the growth in government itself. State Senator John Loudon (R-Chesterfield) came up with the idea to use a state constitutional amendment to force lawmakers to adjust their budget priorities.

“This much-needed investment in fixing and expanding Missouri’s roads and bridges will provide a bounty of economic activity as new businesses are attracted to Missouri, adding thousands of jobs while increasing safety on state highways,” Loudon said in a statement on the amendment’s introduction.

Based on historical averages, the amount of money Missouri treasury collects from citizens grows at a rate of 4.5 percent each year. Loudon’s proposal would siphon off ten percent of the money generated from the year-to-year increase in government revenue. The amount would then be dedicated to the state transportation fund where no more than five percent of the new funding could be diverted to mass transit or other purposes unrelated to the construction and maintenance of roads and bridges.

If ratified, the amendment would direct an estimated $34 million to road maintenance and $2 million to transit in fiscal 2010. By 2012 it would bring $109 million more to roads and $6 million to transit. For this to happen, the General Assembly would have to pass the measure and it would have to be approved by voters in November.

Forcing the government to use the money for actual Constitutional mandates (infrastructure promotes the general welfare for commerce), instead of the cause du jour (aka: Global Warming).

Beautiful.

Hit the above link to find the pdf of the bill.

Posted in Kewel! | 1 Comment

RNS Quote of the Day: 04/14/08

“So I got that gong for me, which is nice”

The Dalai Lama has been in Seattle for the past few days. He hasn’t been playing a lot of golf, just giving speeches and holding forums.

Oddly enough wherever the guys goes though, piles of trash mysteriously form. I know, I’ve been having to follow his road show around the different venues in town (Key Arena, Safeco Field, and I’ll be at the University of Washington today) picking up after him. Or, I guess to be more accurate, his followers and hangers on.

All this is really so sad because, if I didn’t have to be involved via my employer, it might just be funny to make up a sign reminding those who leave behind so much trash that self-defense is a human right.

If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.

The Dalai Lama – May 15, 2001, The Seattle Times – Speaking at the “Educating Heart Summit” in Portland, Oregon, when asked by a girl how to react when a shooter takes aim at a classmate

Oh, the “Special Editorials” and all the annoying news coverage with the media interviewing the people as they exit the venues and their “We can always talk it out” drone and their “violence is never the answer” pap. Its almost enough to make guy want to take up mugging people just to get them back into reality.

In fact, the only reason I torture myself watching the coverage of the developmentally disabled who speak the “Peace is the Answer” crap is that I hope I get to hear one try and stick Gun Control bigotry on the Lama’s robes, only so that I can laugh, sure that that person will never know Nirvana (and not just because Cobain is dead).

Yeah, I know that attitude won’t get me there either, but I admit that that is not my plan.

Posted in Quote of the Day | 2 Comments

Lovely Thing, That Socialized Medicine

Got a toothache? Well, if you’re in the UK, you might just want to wander on down to the hardwares store and buy a shiny new set of pliers.

It’ll be cheaper and definitely faster than waiting for the NHS.

Some English people have resorted to pulling out their own teeth because they cannot find — or cannot afford — a dentist, a major study has revealed.

Six percent of those questioned in a survey of 5,000 patients admitted they had resorted to self-treatment using pliers and glue, the UK’s Press Association reported.

England has a two-tier dental care system with some dentists offering publicly subsidized treatment through the National Health Service and others performing more expensive private work.

But more than three-quarters of those polled said they had been forced to pay for private treatment because they had been unable to find an NHS dentist. Almost a fifth said they had refused dental treatment because of the cost.

One respondent in Lancashire, northern England, claimed to have extracted 14 of their own teeth with a pair of pliers. In Liverpool, one of those collecting data for the survey interviewed three people who had pulled out their own teeth in one morning.

But if you want the perfect accessory to your life, by which I mean screening your embryos to make sure that your child has the exact characteristics you like, well then, they’ll have an appointment open next week, love.

And if you want a physically disabled child, that isn’t a problem. You see, the right people have been complaining of discrimination

Deaf couples could be allowed to use embryo-screening technology and choose to have a deaf child, after a climb-down by the Government in the face of campaigning.

Under the proposed Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, using embryo-screening deliberately to create a child with a serious medical condition – which officials had said includes being deaf – would be illegal.

Now, however, the Department of Health has agreed to cut from the Bill any reference to deafness as a serious medical condition.

The move could pave the way for the Bill to be amended, when it passes through the Commons later this year, permitting a challenge over whether deafness should be classed as a serious medical condition for the purposes of the bill and allowing parents to pick an embryo, using IVF treatment, that will develop into a deaf child.

Not being able to hear a bus lumbering in your general direction is NOT a serious medical condition?

Let me get this straight: A physical condition that requires electronic modification of your body in order to correct it, otherwise a Led Zepplin concert would sound the same as a walk in the park, is NOT considered serious?

Not being able to communicate with your fellow human being unless you learn to read lips or they learn a new fucking gesture language ISN’T serious?

I worked with a guy who was “Hearing Impared and Proud” in my wayback years. The guy thought deaf people who got implants were “sell outs”. Yeah, “sell outs” who could finish a Master’s Degree and work in an environment where the non-deaf didn’t have to conform to someone else’s impairment.

That is why the call it “Hearing Impaired”. Because it is an undesirable condition.

I’m only unhappy about this development because in 10 years, it is going to make its way over here and I’m gonna be made to pay for it out my paycheck.

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I’m having fun with pictures this weekend

Boston Globe Editorial Staff: Please, turn in your PC/Mac and all electronic writing programs. You have lost your privileges to write editorials.

Cause for cessation of privileges: You’re too fucking stoopid for your own good and dangerous to the public.

FOR MANY people with simple finances, filing a federal tax return is an unnecessary chore. Employers report workers’ income to the Internal Revenue Service. And perhaps 9 million taxpayers claim no dependents or major credits, opt not to itemize deductions, and have little or no interest or capital gains income. So why make them fill out paperwork, which still has to be checked against the government’s own figures?

Senator Barack Obama would eliminate millions of hours of such forced labor. The IRS would use its records to generate a so-called simple return for qualifying taxpayers. A filer who disagreed with the agency’s numbers could fill out a standard return. Otherwise, a taxpayer would sign it and send in a check or wait for a refund. This automatic tax return proposal is a winner, no matter who is elected in November.

Boston Globe Editorial Staff, you earned this

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Posted in Too Stupid to Live | 2 Comments

Your Sanity Has a Flavur

Of Double Decker Taco Bell Tacos

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Posted in Kewel! | 2 Comments

I’m Just Kickin’ Back, Enjoyin’ the Show

Really, the Dems’ discombobulation is tremendously amusing.

Tom Meyer encapsulates it with a great cartoon.

Continue reading →

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I was hoping

That I could work my schedule around my employer’s gaffe yesterday

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Back tomorrow.

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You won’t be hearing this on CNN

And no one on the left will link to it. They’re all convinced that Iran had little if nothing to do with Basra and that Maliki was the aggressor in the situation.

A gamble that proved too costly.

That’s how analysts in Tehran describe events last month in Basra. Iran’s state-run media have de facto confirmed that this was no spontaneous “uprising.” Rather, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) tried to seize control of Iraq’s second-largest city using local Shiite militias as a Trojan horse.

Tehran’s decision to make the gamble was based on three assumptions:

* Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki wouldn’t have the courage to defend Basra at the risk of burning his bridges with the Islamic Republic in Iran.

* The international force would be in no position to intervene in the Basra battle. The British, who controlled Basra until last December, had no desire to return, especially if this meant getting involved in fighting. The Americans, meanwhile, never had enough troops to finish off al-Qaeda-in-Iraq, let alone fight Iran and its local militias on a new front.

* The Shiite clerical leadership in Najaf would oppose intervention by the new Iraqi security forces in a battle that could lead to heavy Shiite casualties.

The Iranian plan – developed by Revolutionary Guard’s Quds (Jerusalem) unit, which is in charge of “exporting the Islamic Revolution” – aimed at a quick victory. To achieve that, Tehran spent vast sums persuading local Iraqi security personnel to switch sides or to remain neutral.

The hoped-for victory was to be achieved as part of a massive Shiite uprising spreading from Baghdad to the south via heartland cities such as Karbala, Kut and al-Amarah. A barrage of rockets and missiles against the “Green Zone” in Baghdad and armed attacks on a dozen police stations and Iraqi army barracks in the Shiite heartland were designed to keep the Maliki government under pressure.

To seize control of Basra, Quds commanders used units known as Special Groups. These consist of individuals recruited from among the estimated 1.8 million Iraqi refugees who spent more than two decades in Iran during Saddam Hussein’s reign. They returned to Iraq shortly after Saddam’s fall and started to act as liaisons between Quds and local Shiite militias.

In last month’s operation, Quds commanders used the name and insignia of the Mahdi Army, a militia originally created by the maverick cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, as a cover for the Special Groups.

RTWT

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Grumble

Can’t I have just one damn normal work week? Please?

The last couple weeks, doctor’s visits have taken up my time and wrapped my usual schedule around a swizelstick.

In the weeks before that, as it is today, either my employer’s national or regional IT crew have decided that my Friday shift is a damn good time to fiddle with the system. Not Saturday day or Sunday day, but fuckin’ Friday night.

And this time, it’ll be through Sunday at approximately noon, meaning I have to show up early on the dreaded Monday.
So I’ll be arriving at the work place, sunglasses on and slathered in sunscreen (it actually stopped raining for a couple days in April) at 1500 instead of my normal 2100. Pray I don’t ignite.

See you all tomorrow.

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