FYI

Something the MSM or the whining leftists didn’t mention when the latest National Intelligence Estimate came out a couple weeks back was that the average citizen has more to worry about from Animal Rights “eco-warriors” than we do from Al Qaeda.

The most dangerous domestic terrorists in the United States may have nothing to do with Islam or Iraq but may be little-known extremists who regard violence against animals as akin to violence against people, according to FBI officials.

This week, a declassified portion of the latest National Intelligence Estimate for the United States warned that Americans can expect attacks from these groups within the next three years.

The estimate refers to “single issue” groups that, according to law enforcement, often include radical environmentalist organizations. Among the most visible: the Animal Liberation Front and allied Earth Liberation Front, and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC).

“When they hear ‘terrorism’ a lot of times people just think al-Qaeda and some of the international extremist groups that pose the real serious risks in national security, and that is not always the case when you’re talking about terrorism,” said FBI Spokesperson Paul Bresson.

Reading the link you’ll see that the spokespeople for these groups don’t recognize what their “warriors” do as “terrorism”. This is only because they they equate any action taken by these “warriors”, whether it be protesting in front of a doctor’s house or burning it to the ground, as just.

For instance, the same week that the NIE came out, Dr. Jerry Vlasak, made a statement about how the methods currently in use, firebombing, etc., are just not enough, and confirmed what the FBI said in the previous link.

Radical animal rights activists will likely use “any means necessary” to stop what they consider the torture of animals, according to one of the movement’s most prominent spokespeople.

“Nothing else works, and these people are torturing animals to death, and they should be stopped,” said Dr. Jerry Vlasak, a press officer with the North American Animal Liberation Press Office. “If they won’t stop after using every other [peaceful means], they should be stopped using any means necessary.”

In what would represent a major departure from the movement’s traditional ban on violence against individuals, Vlasak said Americans can expect to see more violence done against “animal abusers,” including university scientists who participate in animal testing.

….

Until relatively recently, animal liberationists have focused their efforts on economic damage, taking steps to avoid harm to humans or animals. But some activists, like Daniel Andreas San Diego, wanted for two bombings in 2003, are beginning to target individuals.

“Other organizations say the reluctance to use violence is a failed tactic,” said Vlasak. “[African National Congress leader and former South African President] Nelson Mandela said the use of nonviolence is not a moral principle but it’s a strategy, and there’s no moral goodness in using an ineffective strategy.”

It’s rhetoric like that which has observers of the radical animal rights movement growing nervous and demanding action.

 

As I’ve said here a number of times, I’m awaiting this “revolution” for over two decades now. Frankly, I’m a bit bored with these eco-weenies wailing and gnashing their teeth.

So here is to a declaration of open season on these domestic terrorists. Sooner rather than later.

Posted in Rampant Eco Socialism | Leave a comment

How truly sad

A couple weeks back Imentioned that the local SEIU and another leftist pro-tax group had lost their case in trying to keep a Citizen’s Initiative that would have required a supermajority vote of the legislature to raise taxes off the ballot this fall.

It was truly sad that these pukes hate democracy so badly that they would not even let the citizens of this state vote as to whether this needs to happen.

Unfortunately, the sadness continues. They have filed an “emergency motion for accelerated review” with the Washington State Supreme Court in the hopes that they’ll put a wall in front of democracy.

The King County Superior Court’s dismissal of Plaintiffs’ case failed to properly consider the subject matter raised by Appellants. The Court refused to consider whether I-960’s supermajority and voter approval requirements were within the scope of the initiative process.

If I-960 is beyond the scope of the initiative process, it serves the interest of the People, the initiative process, and the judiciary to so rule before the election. Should the measure gain approval of a majority of voters, post-election invalidation would likely cause some voters to feel that their voice was ignored or overruled, and the People disenfranchised, when in fact the measure should never have been placed before them for consideration.

They’re right about the people who voted for it feeling ignored or overruled. The last couple times Citizen Initiatives have been overturned by the courts, we all felt like we’d been screwed. What the group appealing doesn’t know is that if they manage to get the state Supremes to cast a thumbs down judgement before it even gets to the ballot, we’ll feel even worse than if it happens later. As though we can’t even get our issues before the citizenry.

More on this in the future.

Posted in Order of the imperial upraised middle finger. | 3 Comments

What a Novel Idea

And surely one that the modern-day French themselves would have never thought of

France is the country that produced the Enlightenment, Descartes’s one-liner, “I think, therefore I am,” and the solemn pontifications of Jean-Paul Sartre and other celebrity philosophers.

But in the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy, thinking has lost its cachet.

In proposing a tax-cut law last week, Finance Minister Christine Lagarde bluntly advised the French people to abandon their “old national habit.”

“France is a country that thinks,” she told the National Assembly. “There is hardly an ideology that we haven’t turned into a theory. We have in our libraries enough to talk about for centuries to come. This is why I would like to tell you: Enough thinking, already. Roll up your sleeves.”

Citing Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” she said the French should work harder, earn more and be rewarded with lower taxes if they get rich.

Ms. Lagarde knows well the Horatio Alger story of making money through hard work. She looked west to make her fortune, spending much of her career as a lawyer at the firm of Baker & McKenzie, based in the American city identified by its broad shoulders and work ethic: Chicago. She rose to become the first woman to head the firm’s executive committee and was named one of the world’s most powerful women by Forbes magazine.

So now, two years back in France, she is a natural to promote the program of Mr. Sarkozy, whose driving force is doing rather than musing, and whose mantra is “work more to earn more.”

“No, no, no madame. I weel seet on my great fat behind and burn cars vile askeeng for more. How dare you say zat I need to work to make money. I am an aktor. I need to hone my craft because no one ees hiring moi. And to do zat I need government monee, not more work.”

Don’t laugh, I recently had to explain to the wife that a person can get unemployment cash from the French government by saying they are an actor. Just because they can’t act doesn’t mean that their government won’t give them money. It isn’t like LA where every waiter is an out of work actor.

Which is also why I think that French waiters are so rude. They consider themselves professionals.

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | 1 Comment

So that’s what GOOP’s for

Not much of a shadetree mechanic, myself, so I’m pretty unfamiliar with it and always wondered why it was so popular.

It’s all so clear to me now.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Sorry for the absence

As I said last Saturday, I went on down to the gun show last weekend. Sadly for my wallet, I found a couple things I liked. I brought one of the home that day. The other I was doing “extended negotiations” for the duration of the last week, cumlinating with my picking up the new rifle yesterday morning.

Y’all will get the full “Show and Tell” tomorrow. In the mean time, I’m admiring it extensively and am rather enamored with myself for recognizing it for what it was and nailing the guy down to a price I liked.

Anyway, I’ll be catching up on sleep, among other things, today. David and I will see you all tomorrow, hopefully (if I can pull myself out of the Deathly Hallows) with boucou postinos.

Later.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

In Memorium: The Booty Eulogies

John Thomas Booty was a man among men. He was my superman, knowing how to charm this frau while never taking his eyes off tommorrow. His visits while short, were always memorable.

He had a power that could make women wish that it was they, not I, whom he was going home with. I will never forget him as long as I live. That he never submitted to the sitzandpissen, always standing upright, should be an inspiration to all men.

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I will cry at the wall through which I always saw him approach for many a year to come.

Posted in Kewel! | Leave a comment

All they need is more money

That is what you’ll hear the leftist say about why public education is in such a sad state these last couple decades. Of course, this myth is fueled by the teacher’s unions so that they can get more money out of their membership so that they can elect more Democrats so that they can get more moeny.

It is a very ugly vicious circle and it revoloves around your wallet.

But alas, the federal Department of Education has given that circle some very complex geometry

Rural students perform better in science than their urban counterparts, and rural teachers generally are happy with their schools, a federal study finds.

This Education Department study provides a snapshot of what is happening in rural schools. In all, about a third of U.S. public schools are in rural areas. Generally, the Census Bureau considers areas with fewer than 500 people per square mile rural.

When it comes to achievement, the report released Wednesday finds science is a strong subject for rural students. That could be because kids get their education in real-world settings as well as classrooms, said Marty Strange, policy director of the Rural School and Community Trust, an advocacy group.

The report found:

• At all grade levels, rural students did better on national science tests than children in cities and performed about the same as suburban students.

• In math, rural kids did better than urban students at every grade level.

• Rural fourth- and eighth-graders read better than their urban peers. In high school, rural kids read about as well as kids in cities.

Among teachers, rural educators were more likely to report being satisfied with teaching conditions, though salaries are lower than elsewhere.

Rural schools tend to be smaller and have lower student-teacher ratios, which might explain why teachers say conditions are good there, Strange said.

Now, one could also use the excuse that rural students have better home lives and more supportive parents and are more well-behaved.

While that is all usually very true, there is one thing lacking in rural communities. The one thing that the National Education Association say matters most in a child’s education: Money.

Around 15% less per student than suburban and urban schools.

Let’s see the NEA chew on that one for a bit.

Posted in Academia and Other Nonsense | 1 Comment

RNS Quote of the Day: 07/27/07

I found another one from Singer, our notable quotable from yesterday. We’ll just finish out the week with him. 

An animal experiment cannot be justifiable unless the experiment is so important that the use of a brain-damaged human would be justifiable.

Peter Singer in Animal Liberation: A New Ethic for Our Treatment of Animals, 2nd. edition, 1990.

I have no doubt that if he were born a few generations earlier, he would have supported the work of Dr. Mengele.

Posted in Quote of the Day | 1 Comment

Maybe there is too much money in politics

As a Democrat, this guy was against it before he was for it.

Roll Call reports today on the dismissal of Chad Schuldt from an Obama-allied consulting firm for allegedly embezzling more than $100,000.
 
Schuldt had been the left-wing “Clean Cut Kid” blogger in South Dakota, who started up after the 2004 election. At first, he was anonymously attacking Republicans in the state, especially Sen. John Thune (R). Once his identity was revealed, he blogged much less frequently.
 
One of his favorite topics was Republican corruption. (Ahem.)
 
Evidently, Schuldt was as unhappy as I am about the taxes that were being removed from his paycheck. And so he allegedly took matters into his own hands, stealing from his firm the tax withholdings for all of his colleagues, instead of sending them along to the IRS.

He must have been a Kerry voter.

Posted in Dare To Be Stupid | Leave a comment

Charlie Rangel Earmarks a Monument to Himself

h/t: Flashreport. A writeup on this outrageous boondoggle (including a private, well-furnished office for Rangel and a paid “secretary” to “organize his papers”) — and great video of Rangel’s hissy-fit on the floor — is here.

Posted in Order of the imperial upraised middle finger. | 3 Comments