Surprise!

OK, not so much, really.

Record rise in number of burglars using guns

The number of armed burglaries has risen to record levels, new crime figures show.

Latest statistics from the Home Office reveal 645 cases of burglars using a firearm in the year ending April 2006, a 46 per cent rise on the previous year.

The figures were published in the British Crime Survey, an annual assessment of households that is considered the most accurate indicator of crime as it includes incidents not reported to the police.

It showed overall, guns were used in 4,120 robberies in England and Wales in the year ending April 2006 – a 10 per cent increase on the previous 12 months.

The total number of crimes involving a firearm – 11,084 – had not risen significantly from the previous year. But in a fifth of the crimes the victim was injured and just under 3 per cent resulted in a serious injury or death.

And because I’m feeling particularly giving today, here is another surprise that really isn’t

Congress pushes anti-gun Brady Law expansion bill

The first major anti-gun bill of the new Pelosi-led Congress has already been introduced, and it could prove to be the most serious threat yet to Second Amendment Rights.

On the first full day of the new Congress, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy introduced H.R. 297, the most massive expansion of the Brady law since it passed in 1993. This is a bill that was quashed last year but under the new Pelosi House leadership, the Bill has a higher likelihood of getting passed this time.

(snip)

This draconian Bill also seeks to computerize records of persons merely indicted for a crime, before they even have a fair trial! Under this awful Bill, such persons, though not even convicted of the crime in question, are prohibited from possessing a firearm!

The gun grabbers are seeking to force the states to provide the federal government all of these indictment records, updated quarterly. Given the maxim among those in the legal profession that prosecutors can get a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich,” this, too, is a gun prohibition that should be repealed, not expanded.

As if that wasn’t enough, here is the absolutely worst part of this bill

Mental health records are also covered under the McCarthy bill. To some, this may sound like a great idea. After all, who could argue with the premise of keeping guns away from bona fide paranoid schizophrenic prior offenders who are loose on the streets?

But the insidious part of this proposed Bill is that it could forbid American servicemen from carrying firearms, even though they are trained to use them. Why? Because many servicemen take well meaning advice to see some type of psychiatric care, particularly for those who faced some degree of post-traumatic stress. Under this Bill, these soldiers can kiss their guns goodbye.

I’ve written about this here before in past posts about things people may have forgetton about the original Brady Law.

Are you a Vietnam vet who gets or has gotten PTSD help from the VA. If this passes, please let me know when, where and how much you want for your firearms because they will declare you unfit even though you’ve been hunky-dory for 35-40 years. No appeal, no nothing. You are the equivalent of a felon. Have a nice day and thank you for your service.

Or mayhaps you go off to Iraq or Afghanistan to serve your country and kill jihadis. Upon the end of your deployment, you answer the “Theater Exit Questionaire”. Some stuffed shirt reads it and decides that you need to be diagnosed with PTSD.

Bang!

You are no longer allowed your Second Amendment rights. Have a nice day and thank you for your service.

Returning soldiers are being diagnosed with PTSD at an alarming rate. Most of them are able to turn down the official declaration, but some are being suckered into accepting it with disability bennies.

You might be saying to yourself “But some of them really need the help.”, and I am sure that some of them do. But if you remember, “Baghdad Jim” McDermott was a military head shrinker in San Diego during Vietnam whom I’m sure tagged as many servicemen with PTSD as he could, whether they needed it or not.

Local talk show host on 570 KVI, Bryan Suits, had a head shrinker try and stick him with PTSD when he got back. During the appointment where he told the doc to kindly shove it, the doctor learned that he worked for a right-wing talk radio station and proceeded to berate him about it.

Don’t think that there aren’t more McDermott’s working in the VA today.

Posted in Have Gun, Will Travel | 4 Comments

What’s that sound?

I first thought it could have been fart, but it ends up that it was something called a “War Protest”. It smells exactly like a fart because of all the hippies there, but contains waaaay more hot air.

Seattle being what it is, it had it’s own protest. I didn’t attend, though with my new video camera, I really do need to try and do so. Unfortunately for Seattle leftists, it wasn’t all that it “could have been”.

Lynn Allen from Evergreen Politics talking about her appearance on air with Seattle leftie uber-blogger and part-time radio host, Goldy

The first words out of my mouth on air were that I was disappointed in the turnout and the demographics. There were maybe 3000 people marching and although the age range was pretty broad, the bump was definitely the baby-boomers, the folks who’d done this in the late sixties during the Vietnam War as well. And it looked to me like there were few people of color, although we were in the Central District, There were few traditional suburbanites, few labor folks few kids. There were also very few people that any of us knew which made it harder to gauge who the heck was there.

Geov softened it when he talked right after me. He said, “Building the movement is a work in process.” And he is right of course.

Number 1, the Seattle PI and the Seattle Police put the number at just over 1000. Nowhere near her 3000 figure.

Secondly, and you’ll see this in my comment if you go over to EP, the left has had 6 years to get their “movement” going against Bush and they’ve had almost 4 years to get their “movement” going against the war. What people like Lynn and Geov don’t want to admit is that they cannot get enough people off their butts and interested in marching, even on a reather beautiful non-rain day in Seattle, because their available pool of people are lazy and/or drugged out.

Lynn’s best idea: To make marching “More Fun”.

I don’t know how they could do so with the carny atmosphere that Seattle protests already have. I don’t know; maybe they’ll start hanging Republicans in the public square?

Posted in Freaks, Mutants, and Morons | Leave a comment

Belittling a National Tragedy for their own ends

Rodger linked to the SadOldGothBlog who found this eco-socialist propaganda poster

frogad.jpg

In case you still can’t read it enlarged, the words in the bottom right hand corner say

“For Nature, Everyday Is 9/11”

The Goth says that they’re fwench, but I could really care less about that. What they did is wrong; not only factually, but also morally.

Rodge then posts one of his famous roll-over posts with one of two MTV AIDS posters

terror2.jpg

Besides the disgusting comparison of a terrorist attack and a contagious disease (which is not a terrorist attack), their statement that “The world is united against terrorism” is a lie and they know it.

A goodly number of the EU nations are not “united against terrorism”. Some of them even have popular majorities of their population that think another attack on the US would be a comeuppance of sorts. Cetainly, most of the Muslim world is not “united against terrorism”, so long as said terrorism is against Israel. Hell, most days I wonder if the Democratic Party is “united against terrorism”.

Are they just handing out moral equivalency operator cards these day, or what?

Posted in Color me confused | Leave a comment

At it again

This time in Spain.

A while back, I posted Boston T. Party’s intro to the chapter “Women & Guns” from his book, Boston’s Gun Bible.

In it, one of the things he mentions is about how, if modern feminism got its way as it did in the old Soviet Union, where women were treated as “citizens” just like the men, and how it helped kill civilization by killing beauty.

The Socialist State recognizes only “citizens” and women join men in all the grimy chores. Women fix sewer pipes and change truck transmissions along with the men. And they looked like men because of it. Civilization, random beauty and elegance died there, and that is the vital issue.

It looks as though they are working towards that goal in Spain now

Spanish shop window dummies have been ordered to fatten up after the government and big fashion chains agreed that female dummies should wear size 10 clothes or above.

The agreement between Spanish retail chains such as Zara and Mango and the country’s health ministry came as the fashion trade agreed to a series of measures designed to combat anorexia.

Stick-thin mannequins will be withdrawn from store windows over the next few years as those capable of wearing clothes bearing labels marked European size 38, equivalent to the British size 10, take their place.

I found this link at Right Thinking, where Lee added this one quote from the article

“It is not reasonable for a modern and advanced society to establish stereotypes of beauty that are far removed from social reality,” she said.

And then followed with this very correct point

Of course it is! Christ, that’s what makes beauty desirable.

(snip)

As a guy who used to weigh 430 lbs, I’m acutely aware of the pressures society places on thinness, especially on women and girls. But the answer to this is a societal shift, not some goddamned nanny state intrusion whereby a group of self-anointed experts decide by committee what “beautiful” means.

You keep an eye out on the feminist left, when this plan is fully implemented they will talk about it as if it were manna from “The Goddess”. Guaran-fuckin-teed.

Posted in Too Stupid to Live | 1 Comment

Still at it

This time in Oregon.

Population-wise, Oregon is far overshadowed by its neighbors to the north and south.

But during recent presidential election years, candidates have tended to bypass staunchly blue California and Washington in favor of campaigning and advertising in the Beaver State.

That’s because Oregon is considered one of those magic handfuls of swing states whose electoral votes are up for grabs, a definite second-tier electoral target after voter-rich states like Pennsylvania, Ohio or Florida.

But Oregon’s status could change under a pending bill in the Legislature that would award the state’s seven electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote nationally, regardless of who wins the state. Similar legislation, which is being filed in more than 45 other legislatures around the country, won approval from the members of the Colorado state Senate this past week.

The popular vote movement, coordinated by a California-based group, National Popular Vote, has been picking up steam nationally since the 2000 election came down to some hanging chads in Florida. The idea got another jolt when President Bush handily won the popular vote in 2004 — but could have been forced to yield to Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, had 60,000 votes in Ohio swung the other way.

“I think this is very promising,” said House Majority Leader Dave Hunt, D-Gladstone, a key backer of the popular vote legislation in Oregon. “Clearly, the national electoral college is antiquated. I believe that whoever wins the popular vote should win, whether that is a school board or the U.S. presidency.”

Since every leftist blog I visit has asked it at least once when the Republicans held the majority, I think it would fit right here:

Why do they hate the Constitution?

Posted in The Left is Never Right | 1 Comment

So I was wrong

After I logged out from posting on “Ye Laptop of Olde” yesterday, I noticed a couple of errors that I wanted to correct on the posts here. That is when something very strange happened: I couldn’t log back in to the posting page. I reset the password, and I still couldn’t log back in.

Didn’t matter, I was set on shopping for a new CPU anyway.

Before I went to the store though, I stopped by my work to see if it was the laptop that was giving me the problem or if it was something with the site. It ended up that it was something with the laptop that wouldn’t let me log in, because I could get in and do anything I wanted with my PC at work. Very strange. Very strange indeed.

So anyway, even before Rivrdog’s insistence, I knew there was only one place to go to pick up my new system: Fry’s.

The wife and I rolled into the parking lot just as they were opening the doors at 0900 and went straight back to the corner where they keep the systems.

I was helped by Mrs. Moneybags who had a small stash of cash that bumped up my possibilities considerably.

In the end, I decided on an HP machine. This one, as a matter of fact. Refurbished.

The last RNS Blogstation Tacoma system lasted 3 years and 9 months. The one previous to that was bought in the summer of 2000 and is still going strong as the game system for the neices and nephews. It is an HP machine.

Nonetheless, because all they only had the refirb’d systems there and they were $100 less than the one listed above, I paid for the $89 5-Year Service Warranty Contract w/Loaner and called it even.

Hopefully now, neither I or you, faithful RNS reader, shouldn’t have too much to worry about until January 26th, 2012.

So, if you click on the system description, you’ll see that this is an Athlon machine. I’ve never had one before. In fact, as a confession, none of the RNS machines, except for the laptop, is even a Pentium machine. The laptop is a P3 and the rest have been Celerons. I don’t do too much else besides blogging and music on the computer, so I didn’t really need the speed.

This new machine, on the other hand, is a freaking Ferrari compard to the others and that is wherein my error lies.

I forgot that I am going to have to reset everything with this new piece of equipment: Reinstate favorite links, reinstall drivers after finding the disks or finding them on the web, all the rewiring and re-ziptie-ing. Goodness fuck, there is a lot to do.

So do enjoy today’s light posting. There is a quiz just below this post and then David has another good book review. Feel free to let me know about what I just bought in the comments (lord knows I have very little clue other than it works) and we’ll see you all tomorrow.

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Quiz Time!

I am:

Ayn Rand (Alissa Rosenbaum)

This charismatic cult leader occasionally used science fiction as one of her recruiting tools for new converts.


Which science fiction writer are you?

I don’t really like the tone with this answer, but if you take a looksee through the rest of the possibilities, there are quite a few with which the quiz author doesn’t seem to terribly fond of.

On another note, while I can read her treatises all day long, I can’t stand her fiction. So while this answer does make sense, it doesn’t make me want to read those tales any more than I did before.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Sunday Book Review: The Folk of the Fringe

Folk of the Fringe.jpgOrson Scott Card’s The Folk of the Fringe is an excellent collection of five short stories set in a post-nuclear-war Utah. They’re supplemented by a short essay on how Card created the stories (some at a writers’ conference!).

Card’s Mormon background is put to great use here; the little details of Mormon life and Gentile life among Mormons never get in the way of the stories (although Card apologizes for them in his essay, as a non-Mormon I had no trouble understanding the references).

Card’s new novel about gun confiscation is getting lots of buzz; I read the first chapter and wasn’t that impressed, although I’ll buy the book and read the whole thing when I get around to it. The Folk of the Fringe, by contrast, grabbed me from the beginning. It’s really well done.

Posted in Kewel! | 1 Comment

Ker-Bloowie

The main RNS Blogstation CPU has gone to visit the Great Mainframe in the Sky and we are currently functioning off of the “Backup Laptop of Olde”.

Oh, how I wish I had backed up my links on this thing, but at least I have my blogroll to work from.

Who knew that you have to plug your laptop in every so often to keep the battery charged, otherwise stuff (like “The System Clock”) resets? I’ll tell who knew; I did. But did I do it? Nope. Had to reset my connections at 0600 on a Saturday morn after working 13 hours.

Anyway, I’ll be going shopping from a new and improved CPU this AM. Not really sure that I’ll find something I like for the $$$ I have available, but I’ll at least look around.

Blogging shouldn’t be too overly effected, so no worries there. But if  you could send some of that “Hope Phil finds a sale” juju my way, I’d appreciate it.

God, I already miss having a mouse instead of this lame ass fingerpad.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Voluntary Gravity Testers

We got ’em by the truckload up here

A bridge over Seattle is becoming hazardous to the mental health of the dot-com employees and other office workers below, who keep seeing people jump to their deaths from the span.

Thirty-nine people over the past decade have committed suicide off the 155-foot-high Aurora Bridge _ eight in 2006 alone _ and counselors are regularly brought in to help office workers deal with the shock of seeing the leap or the bloody aftermath.

At least one woman, Sarah Edwards, drives on the left side of the street near her office ever since a body landed on the hood of a co-worker’s car.

City and state officials, meanwhile, are adding suicide-prevention signs and telephones in hopes of reducing the death toll.

The “suicide bridge,” as the half-mile span has been occasionally called since it was built in 1931, carries as many as 45,000 vehicles a day on one of the main north-south highways through Seattle, passing over a narrow channel connecting Lake Washington and Lake Union.

Some jumpers hit the water; others land on the pavement or other solid ground. Either way, they almost always die. (One person is said to have survived after landing in the water.)

The neighborhood beneath the bridge used to be docks and warehouses, and the suicides went largely unnoticed. But during the technology boom of the past two decades, it morphed into a trendy area full of office buildings, shops and restaurants, and the bodies began to fall where people could see them.

You can tell that the City of Seattle doesn’t care about the suicidal or the people who either work or reside under this bridge because they haven’t suspended a net long either side of it’s length.

Think about it; The city is run by uber-liberals and even psuedo liberals want everyone to have a “safety net”, health care safety net, welfare safety net, transportation safety net, retirement safety net, etc.

Posted in Freaks, Mutants, and Morons | 2 Comments