The old “Tuck the ball under your jersey” trick

Posted on July 1, 2014 by Phil Kadath

They’re crafty bastards, I’ll give them that. But sorry, no, the police cannot be a public/private partnership.

Massachusetts SWAT teams claim they’re private corporations, immune from open records law

As part of the American Civil Liberties Union’s recent report on police militarization, the Massachusetts chapter of the organization sent open records requests to SWAT teams across that state. It received an interesting response.

As it turns out, a number of SWAT teams in the Bay State are operated by what are called law enforcement councils, or LECs. These LECs are funded by several police agencies in a given geographic area and overseen by an executive board, which is usually made up of police chiefs from member police departments. In 2012, for example, the Tewksbury Police Department paid about $4,600 in annual membership dues to the North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council, or NEMLEC. (See page 36 of linked PDF.) That LEC has about 50 member agencies. In addition to operating a regional SWAT team, the LECs also facilitate technology and information sharing and oversee other specialized units, such as crime scene investigators and computer crime specialists.

Some of these LECs have also apparently incorporated as 501(c)(3) organizations. And it’s here that we run into problems. According to the ACLU, the LECs are claiming that the 501(c)(3) status means that they’re private corporations, not government agencies. And therefore, they say they’re immune from open records requests. Let’s be clear. These agencies oversee police activities. They employ cops who carry guns, wear badges, collect paychecks provided by taxpayers and have the power to detain, arrest, injure and kill. They operate SWAT teams, which conduct raids on private residences. And yet they say that because they’ve incorporated, they’re immune to Massachusetts open records laws. The state’s residents aren’t permitted to know how often the SWAT teams are used, what they’re used for, what sort of training they get or who they’re primarily used against.

I’m certain that they have many, many firearms that are illegal in the state of Massachusettes. Are the firearms held in the name of the police force? If they are, then can we please see the leasing paperwork from the police chief’s to these LEC’s? If they are not, then there needs to be multiple arrests and convictions.

Also, the funding of these LEC’s, does it come from tax dollars? Can we see there the MA Legislature OK’d the contracting of the LEC’s to the various departments?

Likely as not, none of these questions will be asked. Sometimes, it would be worth it to be an official MA resident for a week.

Posted in Evil walks the earth | Leave a comment

What if?

Posted on July 1, 2014 by Phil Kadath

Some ideas are just silly. Others are dangerous.

This one leans towards being the former.

Oak Cliff musician Barry Kooda has called for an open carry “guitar rally” on July Fourth at Continental Bridge Park. It’s his response to recent open carry gun protestors making headlines.

“I’m not anti-gun at all. I’m a fifth generation Texas veteran. I have guns… leave them at home. You have rights, you just don’t have to express them all the time in people’s faces,” said Kooda.

Kooda posted a message on Facebook that called for a rally where people brought guitars instead of guns. It’s his way of bringing music with a message, and it’s all in good fun.

But, what if I show up with my gun AND a guitar? Do I win a prize for having two hobbies that suck my wallet dry?

Posted in Color me confused | 1 Comment

Acceptable Racism

Posted on July 1, 2014 by Phil Kadath

When someone who is black isn’t “black enough” for someone of the “correct” political bent.

glosmitharticle

A Florida Republican congressional candidate’s campaign sign was vandalized with whiteface paint last week in a district with overwhelmingly Democratic voter registration. The attack follows a string of bias incidents against black Republicans.

Glo Smith, who reports that she has also had a number of signs stolen, tells National Review Online she became aware of the racist defacement of an eight-foot-by-four-foot sign Tuesday. The sign was situated on private property in view of Interstate 10 in Jacksonville.

Normally, disagreeing with the politics of a black person means you’re a racist. I think it was in one of the President’s Executive Orders or something.

Must not count if you’re black AND a Republican.

Posted in Color me confused | Leave a comment

And they wonder why we don’t trust them

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Phil Kadath

Yet another leftist rag examined CDC data and has posted another “study” which portends pretends to tell us all which states have the most “gun violence”.

Apparently, they decided the truth was just too much for them to take, so they lie in the title and bend in the body of the report.

The States With The Most Gun Violence

As mass shootings continue to appear in the news, many Americans and state leaders are asking how to address the problem without restricting constitutional rights.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tracks the number of gun-related fatalities — including homicides, suicides, and accidents — in each state. The frequency of firearm-related deaths varies widely across the U.S. Firearms were associated with just 3.0 deaths per 100,000 residents in Rhode Island in 2011, the lowest gun-related fatality rate of any state. Louisiana, on the other hand, reported 18.8 firearm-related deaths per 100,000 residents, the most of any state. 24/7 Wall St. examined the 10 states with the highest gun-related death rates.

Suicide is the leading cause of gun-related deaths across the nation in recent years. Of the 32,351 firearm deaths in 2011, nearly 20,000 were suicides. In all but one state with the most gun-related deaths, suicide accounted for the majority of fatalities. Six states — Alaska, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Montana, Arkansas, and New Mexico — reported more than 10.0 firearm-related suicides per 100,000 residents, versus the national rate of 6.2.

As you can see, they do not concentrate their ire on the states with the most “gun violence”, they instead list the states with the highest per capita firearms deaths (including self-defense and suicide.

There is no way Alaska has more violent crime that ends in death by firearm than Illinois or New York. Every single state on the Top 10 list are some of the lowest population states in the union.

This meme will filter around the leftosphere this week and it will become gospel for all discussions with gun bigots henceforth. Forewarned is forearmed.

Posted in The Left is Never Right | 1 Comment

Repeat after me

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Phil Kadath

If you cannot see the product, you are the product.

Not even the Pope gives away things for free.

Facebook tinkered with users’ feeds for a massive psychology experiment

Scientists at Facebook have published a paper showing that they manipulated the content seen by more than 600,000 users in an attempt to determine whether this would affect their emotional state. The paper, “Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks,” was published in The Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences. It shows how Facebook data scientists tweaked the algorithm that determines which posts appear on users’ news feeds—specifically, researchers skewed the number of positive or negative terms seen by randomly selected users. Facebook then analyzed the future postings of those users over the course of a week to see if people responded with increased positivity or negativity of their own, thus answering the question of whether emotional states can be transmitted across a social network. Result: They can! Which is great news for Facebook data scientists hoping to prove a point about modern psychology. It’s less great for the people having their emotions secretly manipulated.

If your emotions are manipulated by how many “likes” you get or how many bookface “friends” you have, then your existence is probably pretty damn meaningless already.

The IRL world is disappointing enough already on most days. No need to add another one to let you down.

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | 1 Comment

Sunday Funnies

Posted on June 29, 2014 by Phil Kadath

A Sunday Funnies delayed is not a Sunday Funnies denied. I just couldn’t find anything I liked yet this A.M..

So here is some random content from around the webz.

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n7v547pPpy1rw5dlyo1

n3y0kgHRME1qbr9uyo1

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n6m8l4yd8w1rm0ifdo1

Posted in Kewel! | 1 Comment

If You Like Instrumental Slide Guitar

Posted on June 28, 2014 by Alaska

…that is, sans vocals: check out Torbjorn “Torman” Sorenson. Not on Youtube yet; here’s his Facebook where he has some samples. I downloaded his “Slide Guitar” album on iTunes and it’s worth every penny.

Posted in Kewel! | Leave a comment

I’m glad everyone can agree

Posted on June 27, 2014 by Phil Kadath

With the pair of SCOTUS decisions handed down yesterday I had little interest in reading any of the rightosphere blogs yesterday (and the same will likely happen today with the decisions coming down today).

Instead, after reading the decisions, I went directly to the leftosphere. I did not pass go, nor did I collect $100. Unless you count the laughing spell I had as worth a monetary figure.

The wailing and rending of garments was rife. As were the declarations of national dissolution.

Despite the fact that they were both unanimous decisions, meaning that even their Dear Leader’s handpicked “living document” technicians decided against proclaimed leftist doctrine, it was all hate for Roberts all the time. This hate even flowed over into a discussion of a Constitutional Convention to “fix the problems this bought and paid for Supreme Court is causing with decisions like these”.

Need another example?

Some dork who blogs under the moniker “Rude Pundit” lays out a plan to counter-protest pro-life clinic protesters at their churches.

I seriously doubt that that would end well for him. Part of the reason clinic protesters succeed is that there is usually only clinic staff and a few customers coming in and out in a day. These creeps want to bring a small handful of people to harangue an entire congregation.

Plus, they’ll have all of their pet-hate-speech laws to avoid bumping into. Most small town constables aren’t so obtuse as to let an opportunity to apply bogus hate-speech laws against those who proclaim the necessity of such laws.

I say bring it on.

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Posted in Dare To Be Stupid | 1 Comment

In Humanitarian Crisis News

Posted on June 26, 2014 by Phil Kadath

Alternate title: In Administration caused immigration news

Hopefully you have heard that the Obama Administration finally admitted that their hyping of the D.R.E.A.M. Act was possibly a motivating factor for the increase of illegal immigration by children and families from Mexico and Central and South America.

The White House admitted rumors of free entry to the United States are motivating migrants to risk the trek northward. Officials said they are pushing back against “misinformation,” noting that Vice President Biden’s trip to Guatemala to meet with the leaders of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico is part of that effort.

Actually, Biden’s visit to Honduras will likely begin with him tearing into the President of Honduras for having grabbed the cat by the scruff of the neck and pulling it out of the bag.

The president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, recently said that the tidal wave of illegal immigrants crossing into the U.S. from Central America can be attributed to the fact that many believe they will get amnesty. The Obama Administration’s rhetoric and actions surrounding the immigration surge have led many in Central America to think they will not be deported if they come into the U.S. illegally–and indeed, most of the thousands of children that continue to cross the border will likely get to stay in the country.

Sadly, that last sentence is true. Obama is “yielding to public pressure because of the humanitarian crisis” and having his HHS people override the entity responsible for overseeing immigration and let large numbers of illegal immigrants roam free with little more than a pinky swear to come to a hearing.

The Obama administration has released into the U.S. an untold number of immigrant families caught traveling illegally from Central America in recent months — and although the government knows how many it’s released, it won’t say publicly.

Senior U.S. officials directly familiar with the issue, including at the Homeland Security Department and White House, have so far dodged the answer on at least seven occasions over two weeks, alternately saying that they did not know the figure or didn’t have it immediately at hand. “We will get back to you,” the Homeland Security deputy secretary said Friday.

The figure is widely believed to exceed 40,000 since October. It’s believed to be slightly below the roughly 52,000 children caught traveling illegally from Central America over the same period, an extraordinary increase since last year that is driving a humanitarian crisis at the border.

Despite promises to the contrary, this is how it looks when the image-conscious Obama administration doesn’t want to reveal politically sensitive information that could influence an important policy debate.

Geez, you think so, AP? What finally clued you in? I bet the hard drive that had that memo has already crashed.

Despite what you’d probably like to think about the rhetoric coming from the open borders types on the left, don’t think they actually want to mingle with the newly arrived great unwashed.

New England mayors call for refugee resettlement freeze

The mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts has asked the federal government for a moratorium on sending refugees to the city, claiming that newly arrived families create a strain on city resources and the school system and do not receive sufficient aid from resettlement agencies.

Domenic Sarno, a Democrat, made his request in a letter sent Thursday to Rep. Richard E. Neal, D-Mass. Copies were also sent to Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, as well as Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

“I’m not cold-hearted at all,” Sarno told The Republican newspaper Friday. “I want to help. All I am asking for is accountability from the agencies. You just can’t continue concentrating poverty on top of poverty.”

And

HHS considers Olympia Fields facility for unaccompanied immigrant children

Thousands of children from Central America are entering the United States through the nation’s southern border, overburdening local facilities and resources. The crisis has the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on the search for lodging facilities elsewhere in the states.

One facility being considered is in Chicago’s far southern suburbs – the quiet community of Olympia Fields.

…..

Congressman Randy Hultgren (IL-14) released a statement Saturday morning announcing this week the HHS will be conducting an inspection of a former monastery at 203rd and Governors Highway to be used to house some of the children that were illegally sent to America unaccompanied by their parents.

Hultgren called for the effort to halt, saying moving the children to Olympia Fields will only make matters worse for the children.

Congressional candidate Eric Wallace, who lives near the proposed Olympia Fields housing site, echoed Hultgren’s concerns about the children so far from their homes in Central America, and how would the community absorb them into different school levels when the local schools are already financially strapped and struggling to meet community children’s needs.

Translation: I care about homeless immigrant women and children. But only right before an election. Otherwise, keep them the fuck out of my neighborhood. Can’t they just stay in Texas? Why does this have effect me and my constituents?

Posted in The Government is Not Your Friend | Leave a comment

Cooking the Books

Posted on June 26, 2014 by Phil Kadath

Just like the anti-civil rights gun grabbers, when you have no evidence, you make it up.

When future generations try to understand how the world got carried away around the end of the 20th century by the panic over global warming, few things will amaze them more than the part played in stoking up the scare by the fiddling of official temperature data. There was already much evidence of this seven years ago, when I was writing my history of the scare, The Real Global Warming Disaster. But now another damning example has been uncovered by Steven Goddard’s US blog Real Science, showing how shamelessly manipulated has been one of the world’s most influential climate records, the graph of US surface temperature records published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Goddard shows how, in recent years, NOAA’s US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) has been “adjusting” its record by replacing real temperatures with data “fabricated” by computer models. The effect of this has been to downgrade earlier temperatures and to exaggerate those from recent decades, to give the impression that the Earth has been warming up much more than is justified by the actual data. In several posts headed “Data tampering at USHCN/GISS”, Goddard compares the currently published temperature graphs with those based only on temperatures measured at the time. These show that the US has actually been cooling since the Thirties, the hottest decade on record; whereas the latest graph, nearly half of it based on “fabricated” data, shows it to have been warming at a rate equivalent to more than 3 degrees centigrade per century.

I’m shocked, shocked, that the leftists would like to gain control over our daily lives. And when I say shocked, I mean some people saw this coming decades ago.

Posted in The Global Warming Death Cult | 2 Comments