Bummer.

My wife frequently calls me lazy. It’s not because I won’t do stuff but because of how I do stuff. For example, when charged with sweeping, I’ll use the large pushbroom instead of the small one. It covers more surface area and is more efficient. Or, if it’s outside, I use the leaf blower. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing with power tools. Not sure why she says it’s lazy as it takes more effort to get the blower out and all that. And the blower does a better job.

I hear if you look hard enough, there’s a girl in this picture too.

Seems some conservatives no longer think the war was good idea. Der Commissar:

Presuming that overthrowing Saddam was “a good thing” even absent WMDs, we did not commit enough troops to secure and rebuild the country, although plenty of Rumsfeld’s generals said they would be needed. As one of the above authors noted, we didn’t occupy Iraq, we staged a coup. Then having overthrown Saddam, we presided over chaos, disbanded the Iraqi Army, and outlawed the Baathists. To a very large extent, the insurgency is of our own making.

Rick Moran says QUIT OR COMMIT:

Simply put, the reason I have come to this conclusion now is that the enemies of Iraqi democracy have established a clear upper hand in the country and it is uncertain at best whether the situation can be retrieved at this point.

I’ve personally been disappointed with the handling of this whole thing, though I did support it and still do. I am, however, unwilling to throw everything under the bus now for a variety of reasons.

What is a blogger? Well, go answer.

In PA, the one gun a month law misfires:

They’re at it again. Gun-control advocates and their friends in state government are once again trying to nibble away at your right to own firearms. But you’ve got to hand it to them, as they’re quite crafty.

This latest proposal, which is merely a retread of Gov. Ed Rendell’s 2002 campaign proposal to restrict firearm ownership, would limit handgun purchases to one per month.

It all sounds relatively mild. After all, who would want to purchase more than one handgun per month?

Certainly, the anti-gun crowd would lead us to believe, only criminals would.

Well, if they can limit purchases to one a month, why not one a year or once in a lifetime?

I recall when the whole drugs fund terror commercials came out and everyone said, basically, it was bullshit. At the time, I knew those saying it was bullshit were wrong. Drugs make money quickly and easily, if you don’t get killed or arrested. It was only natural to assume terrorists figured that out too.

Any way, now it seems that anti-drug war crowd has realized it wasn’t bullshit too. And they’ve started using the idea to gain support for a serious look at the war on civil liberties err drugs:

On Saturday, Aug. 19, 2006, The Washington Post reported that there is dispute within the drug policy reform community over the veracity of a Drug Enforcement Administration traveling road show that connects the $ 322 annual world wide retail black market for illicit drugs and terrorism. The proliferation of stateless terrorist armies around the world, that are able to thrive and grow independent of national sponsorship in the past twenty years, should alone serve to confirm the connection. There is no other supply of untraceable capital in the world economy able to do this as efficiently as does the U.S. and U.N. imposed prohibition black market economy of the drug war. Drug-Terror Connection Disputed Washington Post.

Not only does the prohibition economy of the drug war fund terrorist armies including, I believe, alQaeda, but it provides underground logistical and tactical resources as well. International smuggling routes. Money laundering. Weapons. Heroin itself is reported to be an asymmetric weapon of bin Laden’s. Heroin that bin Laden has been flooding the west with since the mid 1990’s in order to destabilize what he perceives are decadent western societies.

There’s more. Read it.

And who is armed. Nifty graphic of salaries, who is armed, and relative number of employees. About 1% of us are employed by the federal government.

First, (as mentioned before), the assault weapons ban canard is popping up. While pointing out that in 2005 murder is up, casually mention the assault weapons ban expired. It doesn’t seem to matter that murder is up in places that have a ban or that there is no evidence that murders committed with formerly banned are on the rise or that the preferred and most common weapon used in murder is a handgun. Gunbloggers need to stay on this one.

Second, in South Africa, comes something you’ll never see in the American press:

While the gun control lobby called for the act to be strengthened, the pro-gun groupings argued that the laws were in conflict with the constitutional protection of property and the right to compensation if firearms were forfeited as a result of the act.

Did you catch it? Here in the states, the press never calls an anti-gun group a lobby. They are activists or advocates. Meanwhile, the NRA is always a lobby and never an activist or advocacy group.

Next up, David Hardy smacks down the Daytona Beach News for

As Don Kates has pointed out with regard to another article, “Among the highly misleading things in this article is that the ordinary reader will probably never realize that the retreat rule has always been the minority rule in the U.S. So instead of a horrible earthshaking change taking place, all that is happening is that the legislatures of at most 15 states have adopted what was already the rule in most states.”

The assault on castle doctrine is heating up as well.

Update: regarding the assault weapons canard, pro-gun progressive says:

The article also presents the other staple of the media anti-gun bias playbook: the unrebutted quote from a Bradyite mouthpiece which distorts a key fact

Cool.

Well, the assault weapons ban, Lautenberg amendment and Brady Bill had his name on it so it’s no surprise Clinton had it in for gun makers too:

The “promising idea” identified by Blumenthal involved filing massive product liability and negligence lawsuits against major handgun makers, “the opening salvo in a campaign against the gun industry by an alliance of anti-tobacco attorneys and local governments,” wrote The Los Angeles Times. According to one of the lawyers involved in the lawsuits: “We are going to do to [the gun industry] what we did to tobacco. It’s going to be a very large war.”

Judicial watch has more on Clinton’s war on guns, including some of the documents. Hell, I may have to vote Republican this time around since Bill still has pull and I hear is wife may be running for prez.

Via Jeff.

Radley:

The police watchdog group that revealed how difficult it is to obtain a police complaint form in various South Florida jurisdictions conducted the same investigation in Independence, Missouri.

This time, their investigator was arrested. Rather violently.

Abysmal.

As far as I can tell, the only purpose an indicator light on any electronic device serves is to let you know that the indicator light is broken.

NOLA.com:

A New Orleans Police Department employee and a felon have been indicted for illegally obtaining an AK-47 assault rifle, federal prosecutors said Friday.

U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said Nisheka M. Webb, 21, went to a local gun show July 29 with Wayne C. Jones, 28, to buy a gun for him. Jones, a convicted felon, is prohibited from ever owning or possessing a firearm, Letten said.

The indictment charged both with conspiracy to acquire a firearm by providing a false statement to a federally-licensed firearm dealer.

Yet no one has arrested Bloomberg’s investigators. Via David, who says:

what’s this “federally-licensed firearm dealer” business? Everyone knows gun shows provide loopholes for supplying felons and terrorists with firearms–no questions asked.

Right, GOP presidential hopeful John McCain?

No secret, I’m a fan of Sigs. Check out the torture test of the Sig 226.

Via AD.

The lefty loons at AlterNet went to the Knob Creek machine gun shoot:

The Knob Creek machine gun shoot in Kentucky attracts thousands of neo-Nazis and other extremists. But the orgy of firepower helps everyone get along just fine.

Gene Patterson has a post on his blog reporting that Betty Bean will have a three part series in the Halls Shopper News about the life and times of Tyler Harber.

Patterson writes that Tyler Harber “never worked a single case while employed by Knox County’s Office of Probation and Pre-Trial Release. He worked exclusively for Ragsdale. He called himself “Ragsdale’s body man.””

Is this a case for the Knox County District Attorney? Should Mayor Mike Ragsdale have to pay back Knox County for Tyler Harber’s salary? How much did Harber make in his Knox County job?

More on this story on Gene Patterson’s Sunday talk show “Tennessee This Week” on WATE television and on Lloyd Daughtery’s radio program “The Voice” on AM 1180 on Monday morning. Betty Bean and Frank Cagle will be on the air with Lloyd Daughtery Monday discussing the interesting life of Tyler Harber and the politicians he worked for.

Heh:

Orville Wright did not have a pilot’s license.

Tomorrow a local community is asking for help. The people of the Midway Thorngrove community are having an open house and breakfast so people all over Knox County can learn of the pressure and tactics the Knox Community Development Corporation (aka “The Development Corporation”) is using to railroad and steamroll and industrial park into a rural community.

The breakfast is from 7:00 – 10:00 am at the Thorngrove Odd Fellows Lodge Hall for only $5.00 for adults and $3.00 for children under 12. All kinds of activities are planned at the Thorngrove Ball Field starting at 10:00 am including a Country Market, Cake Walk, Live Entertainment, Horse Drawn Wagon Rides, Auction at 2:30 pm, Drawing for Cash Giveaway, Homemade Ice Cream and more.

The following issues concern me about the benefit to Knox County and the way this has been handled.

First there is no definition of what kind of industrial park this will be. It has been said it would not be heavy manufacturing but there is still much wiggle room. It is most likely a distribution center. The reason Hackney was fought by the community was that it was too close to a school and the traffic from tractor trailers would endanger the school. This project is too close to a school and has the same traffic safety issues.

There are no customers. Stop the “Field of Dreams” madness. If you built it they MAY NOT COME.

The real costs of bringing utilities to this park have not been defined.

The real costs of improving corridor roads leading to the site have not been defined.

The cost of a local sewer plant have not been defined.

This process has been run through the system in record time. There is a fairness issue to the community that has been ignored. A request has been made to Knox County Commission for a thirty day continuance so a traffic study can be done.

Third party intermediaries have been found. There are Realtors, developers, and speculators being used as middlemen between TDC and the land owners. The average cost to TDC is $29,800 per acre but the landowners are getting only $15,000 an acre. That is an outrageous fee just to flip the land. It appears there is serious insider trading occurring with the blessing of TDC. These land owners are not being paid the full value of their property.

Unfair sales pressure is being put on the land owners as they are being told if they don’t sell their land the project will still go through and their land will be worth less so they better sell out now.

MetroPulse writer Rikki Hall is correct that the process is inverted. His comprehensive article is this weeks MetroPulse highlights many of the problems and challenges faced by the local community.

There are specialists that locate distribution centers. Have any experts been contacted about this location? This is a very illogical place for a distribution center. A more successful place would be in Loudon County at the 40-75 split.

The ROI is horrible. Once all costs have been accounted for this project could easily cost over 50 million dollars. So to create 2000 minimum wage jobs that equals $25,000 per job.

What is wrong with MPC and Knox County Commission? Are there any business people that understand ROI?

All of this at a time when six Knox County Schools are critically underfunded. Where is the leadership?

The Iraq invasion was a bad idea poorly executed by incompetents, but at least it comes in handy once in a while. We used our influence in Iraq to deny an Iranian plane permission to fly through Iraqi airspace. We then leaned on Turkey to make sure the plane couldn’t go around Iraq. The plane, which was loaded with missiles destined for Hezbollah in Damascus, was forced to turn around.

• July 15: Three days after the war began, a source tipped off U.S. intelligence about an imminent shipment of missiles from Iran to Hezbollah.
• July 19: A spy satellite photographed Iranian crews loading three missile launchers and eight crates, each normally used to carry a Chinese-designed C-802 Noor missile, aboard a transport plane at Mehrabad air base near Tehran. Israel says Hezbollah fired a C-802, a precision-guided anti-ship cruise missile, at an Israeli warship off Lebanon’s coast on July 14.
• July 20: The Ilyushin Il-76 transport plane left for Damascus, but Iraqi air-traffic controllers denied it permission to enter Iraq’s airspace. The Iranian flight crew then requested permission to fly over Turkey. Turkish controllers granted permission — but only if the plane would land for an inspection. The plane returned to Tehran, where the military cargo was unloaded.
• July 22: The plane flew humanitarian aid to Damascus after stopping for inspection in Turkey.

Stuff like that represents the upside of the invasion– using Iraq to the strategic advantage of America and its allies. Unfortunately, those benefits are dwarfed by the pain and cost Iraq has given us so far.

Via GLN, comes this:

Federal prosecutors in Maine can continue to use gun laws to combat domestic violence, the U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled.

U.S. Circuit Judge Sandra Lynch, sitting in Boston, ruled that John Frechette of Lewiston can be charged with the federal crime of gun possession by a person convicted of a crime of domestic violence, even though his 1996 misdemeanor assault conviction came after he pleaded no contest in a “mass arraignment” in Lewiston District Court.

In 2005, U.S. District Court Judge D. Brock Hornby in Portland had dismissed the indictment against Frechette, saying that his no-contest plea to a misdemeanor domestic violence charge did not qualify as a “knowing and intelligent” waiver of his rights under Maine law. Hornby found that as a result, the 1996 conviction could not be used as the basis of a federal gun-possession case against Frechette.

Via Boots and Sabers, comes this:

You see Mike I don’t care if you own a gun, I really don’t when society falls apart I intend to loot from people like you since you will not be able to defend you or your family

Aversion to punctuation aside, heh.

You may have problems. Seems Guy Montag is having an effect:

Fairbanksing

A gratuitous fabrication in a story when the truth would have served just fine.

If true, Troy Gentry, half of the country group Montgomery Gentry, is a disgusting person:

The indictment alleges that in October 2004 [country star Troy] Gentry paid Greenly $4,650 for Cubby, a tame, trophy-caliber, captive-reared black bear that was the largest bear used by Greenly in his wildlife photography business. After the purchase, the indictment says, Gentry killed Cubby with a bow and arrow while the bear was contained in a pen on Greenly’s property. The indictment does not specify how large the pen was.

Why would he do that? To show off:

The bear’s demise was videotaped, but court documents said the tape was edited later to show that Cubby had been killed in a “fair chase” hunting situation.

So, Gentry buys a domesticated bear that is essentially a pet and has been trained to be comfortable around people. Then kills it and makes it look like it was done in the wild. I suppose to make him look like a sportsman or some such. The newspaper account notes:

On Tuesday, Gentry pleaded not guilty to a charge that he violated the federal Lacey Act by falsely tagging the bear.

…

“Apparently it was perfectly legal to kill that bear since he was the owner,” Meshbesher said. “The government claims that once it was killed, there was mislabeled tagging because apparently the (property) owner indicated that it wasn’t killed on his game farm. It is a highly technical charge. The whole point is, they have to prove that Troy knew it was wrong and willfully went ahead and did it anyhow, and that relates to the tagging, not the killing.”

As a sort-of libertarian, here’s the deal: What Gentry did was cruel, evil and stupid. But I doubt it was illegal. My understanding is that for the Lacey Act to apply, said animal must be transported across state lines. So, they are obviously going after him on a highly technical charge to prove a point. The prosecution is stupid as well. But at least it’s stupid for good as opposed to Gentry being stupid for evil.

Gentry denies the claim:

“Troy is an avid environmentalist and hunter who supports and follows all game laws,” Meshbesher said. “Before he killed the bear, he was told by the bear guide that it was proper and legal to kill the bear, which was not a tamed bear and was never in a pen or cage.”

It’s possible he was lied to but then how does he explain buying the bear?

A man’s home may be his castle in South Carolina but for self-defense purposes, so is his car, his business and the tent he’s pitched in the woods.

The Legal Community Against Gun Violence, who are apparently only against guns and not the violence, have a plan to deal with guns and not gun violence:

“Regulating Guns in America” demonstrates conclusively that gaps in federal policy contribute significantly to the country’s gun violence epidemic. With 100,000 Americans killed or injured by firearms each year, the report puts to rest any notion that federal regulation is adequate.

“In the absence of federal regulation, states and local governments can enact creative laws to address the problem of gun violence in their communities and regions,” noted Nina Vinik, LCAV’s Legal Director. “The gaps in federal policy are an opportunity,” Vinik added.

In addition to identifying the limits of federal law, “Regulating Guns in America” describes state and local laws in each policy area, highlighting innovative measures already in place at the state and local levels.

You can download the report here.

Update: Via Kevin, David Hardy says:

My first thought: one more Joyce Foundation clone, a supposed “grassroots” organization in fact created by Joyce’s millions, and with a membership at best in the dozens. But perhaps I’m too cynical.

Nope. Hop over to Joyce Foundation’s webpage and we find among its grants:

“Legal Community Against Violence
San Francisco, CA $380,000
For general support. (2 yrs.)”

Fun with blogs stats!

This comes up every once in a while in the Tennessee Blogosphere. The latest is from Adam (who I didn’t realize was still blogging at his old site), and he offers objective analysis of dick measuring err blog comparison of the folks listed in AC’s poll by listing sitemeter and technorati stats.

Every time these guys get into the cock appraisal, err, blog comparisons, they always leave off these Tennessee blogs (I put the sitemeter – technorati stats beside their name):

Donald Sensing 2,084 – 4493
Les Jones – 1,889 – 19323
Me – 1,351 – 4723 (mine are a bit inflated due to an instalanche but usually run about 1,100 – 1200)

Yeah, we’re still small compared to Reynolds but bigger than the other blogs listed in terms of pecker assessment, err, objective analysis. And I realize Adam was listing the blogs on AC’s poll. But it begs the question:

Why no love for the second, third and fourth place bloggers in this here state whenever there are man-muscles to be gauged, err, stats to be objectively analyzed?

Don’t get me wrong, we three are still third/fourth tier blogs but, err, we beat the others in terms of traffic and two of us beat the technorati spread. But no love even though our blogs can beat up your blogs?

It’s from the LA Times so it’s probably made up, but regarding the LAPD:

Officers over those years shot themselves or one another nearly as often as they were shot by suspects.

It’s no secret that I hate geese. In Washington, they finally realized that people have had enough of the vile, disgusting creatures:

They tried border collies in Virginia. They tried a stuffed coyote in New Jersey. In fact, officials nationwide have tried just about everything to get rid of large flocks of Canada geese that move in, eat the grass and leave lots of unwanted poop.

Until now, geese foes have had to obtain permits from the government to kill the geese or destroy their nests and eggs, and that hasn’t been easy. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has issued a new rule making it easier for farmers, airports, landowners and public health officials to kill the geese without permits.

The new rule went into effect last week.

Good. Vile, filthy creatures that turn your land into a shit pile. And, if you have water on it that they take a liking to, you just lost your property rights. More:

Animal rights activists say there’s got to be a better way to deal with the birds.

Yes, a suppressed Ruger 10/22. The new rules allow:

_Airports, public health officials and landowners to destroy nests and eggs without federal permits.

_Private and public airports to round up the birds for destruction without federal permits.

_Local governments to round up the birds if they threaten public health by congregating at reservoirs, athletic fields, parks and public beaches.

In an update to the New Orleans gun lawsuit going forward, Reason Engaged:

On the surface, it doesn’t look like gun owners have much to gain by having a 2A case come before the Supremes. Unless you think about what might happen if enough people got riled up about number two…