Armored Facilities Manager

Keene PD Ridealong...

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:52:25 GMT

This is pretty interesting. It's a highlights of a ridealong with an Lt Police Officer in Keene, NH by some folks arguing free market forces. I don't really know the OTN folks that are doing this but it seems interesting.

A Feminist on Gov Palin

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:53:25 GMT

This is a rather interesting and well thought out article on Gov Sara Palin and her 'fans'.

One of the more interesting bits...

Besides, I know for a fact that the feminists spreading the lies about Palin knew they were spreading lies. Not to tell tales out of school, but: they knew. They were supplied with the correct information, and they chose to lie anyway. Why?

Was it just about electing Obama? Were feminists simply willing to commit any slander necessary to elect the Chosen One? That’s a likely explanation, but here again: we’re talking about feminists. Feminists doing this — slandering a woman, and doing so in unmistakably sexist terms. After all, caricaturing Palin as a purity queen (Bible Spice, Sexy Puritan) is just the flip side of caricaturing her as a porn queen. As I’ve said before, it’s like the NAACP sponsoring a lynching. The mind boggles.

Even more mind-boggling are the attacks that don’t even bother with false claims about policy or beliefs, but just go straight for free-floating misogynistic rage. Ridiculing her hair, clothes, makeup, voice, body, womb. “Sarah Palin is a cunt” — good one! Calling her a bimbo — good one! Calling her a fucking whore — good one! Fantasizing about her being gang-raped — good one! And all this from feminists. Forget the NAACP sponsoring a lynching; this is like the NAACP ripping off their masks to reveal that they’ve been replaced by white supremacist pod people.

What's pathetic is we have a governor who clearly improved her state's condition where it concerns government corruption and energy policy and she was hounded out of office by a combination of unfounded ethics complaints, vitriolic personal attacks and even more vitriolic attacks in the media directed towards her family. All this from people who are supposed to be the kinder and gentler side of US politics.

Hattip to lblanchard

Scary unemployment graphs...

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 01:49:42 GMT

Over at Business Insider there's this article and there's a graph which shows the current rate of job loss as graphed from the last point of peak employment.

That is most disturbing.

Oh, a bit over one year...

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:35:03 GMT

So, just over 1 Year ago, House Bill 89 came into effect in Georgia. We had dire predictions of gunfights in restaurants that sell alcohol between patrons who had Georgia Firearms Licenses (aka CCW permits...). There were also predictions of MARTA staff being shot by the same sorts of people. You know, people who'd never been convicted of felonies or violent misdemeanors. Here's an admittedly partisan article.

Ironic Moment of the Year...

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:12:09 GMT

On the 4th I spent a bit of time doing a bit of chores around the house, ran over to hand freakchylde some of her mail and went to a party at a co-worker's home. I split out of there at 6:30pm to go to the Atlanta TEA party at the State Capitol. I had a nice sign that I'd printed up good 84 point text on and cemented to the foam board. The foam boards were then attached to a piece of scrap wood from my workshop with a pair of brass machine screws, fender washers and nuts. The wooden handle was a nice 4' long so I could set the sign on the ground and lean on it or hold it up nice and high.

At the TEA party I stood on the edge of the crowd in front of the capitol on the edge of the gathering and listen to the speakers on the podium. It was a pretty quiet affair. I expect the larger balance of people were at the event up in Cobb Co. Anyhow, very quiet, very calm, most folks were sitting down in lawn chairs they'd brought with them and the crowd was very mellow. At some point, about 30 minutes in, a Capitol Police officer walks up to me and explains that she needs to take the stick for my sign. I blink, look at her and ask why. She says it's because it can be used as a weapon, it's happened before and sticks aren't allowed. I blink again and start to remove the hardware from the 'stick cum weapon'. I expressed my displeasure with the policy. Her basic response was that the police were there to make everyone safer.

After this little interlude, I was struck by the utter irony of the whole encounter. Here, on the 4th, where people are celebrating the independence from a government which went to take arms from the people, at a protest where people are upset at too much TAKING of property from people, a state officer is walking up and taking my property, however inexpensive, with no clear legal justification on why. I can probably presume that she's implementing policy trenched on the Jim Crow era law that bans weapons from political rallies here in Georgia, but I fail to see how a pole holding up a sign is automatically a weapon.

She tried to justify her taking of the 'stick cum weapon' and making people safe as similar to seeing someone walking down the street with a gun and her taking that. Of course that's another legal fail in both state and federal law.

I think I'm going to have to test the waters on this. Next TEA party, I'm taking a nice 8 foot wooden pole with a good sized 4x6 US Flag on it. We'll see if they try to take that.

Anger at the Cap and Trade bill

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:36:11 GMT

You know, distilling it down, I'm just utterly fed up with the basic implication of Cap and Trade.

We're in a recession. We're looking at double digit unemployment, companies wanting to move over seas and a lot of slow down in most of the big industrial sectors.

What's the answer, RAISE energy costs? That's exactly the OPPOSITE of what you want to do to promote industry growth. All the federal government spending aside, the mandates for me and you and everyone else to upgrade our homes with expensive projects, we're not going to be able to AFFORD to live in our homes as it is if the economy keeps spiraling down.

Unintended consequences...and the road to hell.

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 02:47:01 GMT

It just occurred to me. People who own older homes and are looking to sell them are going to be forced to more or less upgrade the entire insulation/window/door/roof system of their homes, the appliance fit and install a gaudy assed solar reflective roof in order to comply with the Cap and Trade home energy standards. Not cheap. Go to home depot and price replacement windows that have some of the fancy energy saving bits on them. Now, multiply that by the number of double hung windows in the average house. How many thousands of dollars is that?

OR they can sell their house to a developer who bulldozes the property and then builds a McMansion with all of the new gee-gaws and doo-dads built right in. That's just ducky.

Canada Day...

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:05:47 GMT

Oh, happy Dominion Day to our friends to the north.

Cap and Tax....

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:57:56 GMT

So I called my Representative's office about this last before they voted on it. I was told by the staffer that the bill would ONLY cost me what a stamp costs per day per year. That amounts to $124 or so. This is clearly not the case. There's 1300 pages of text to the bill. Some of that bill has energy standards that look to be rather expensive for both state governments to implement and enforce (unfunded mandates) and more expensive things for home owners to implement before they can sell their home. How much do you think a solar reflective roof would cost you to install on your home? Somehow I doubt that a couple of rolls of foil would meet the standards for roofing.

Looking at Jaime Dupree's blog I find this interesting tidbit.

Oh yeah, other stuff caught my eye as well, like on page 473, "Bounties for Replacement, Retirement, and Recycling of Existing Low-Efficiency Products."
You read that right - under this bill, the Secretary of Energy would pay money to retailers that get rid of older appliances and machines that use extra energy.
In the same section, the bill lays out "Premium Awards" that would be paid to the manufacturers of new energy efficient appliances.
From what I can make of the legislative gobbledygook on page 479 of the bill, it looks like the feds would pay the manufacturers of "Superefficient Best In Class Products" for each unit that they produce.
* $75 for each dishwasher
* $250 for each clothes washer
* $200 for each refrigerator or refrigerator-freezer
* $250 for each clothes dryer
* $200 for each cooking product
* $300 for each water heater

What's that going to cost me as a taxpayer? I'll bet that's a bit more.

Then there's this from the Washington Times via John Lott.

They finally secured the vote of one Ohioan, veteran Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Toledo, the old-fashioned way. They gave her what she wanted - a new federal power authority, similar to Washington state's Bonneville Power Administration, stocked with up to $3.5 billion in taxpayer money available for lending to renewable energy and economic development projects in Ohio and other Midwestern states.

$3.5 Billion for one vote on the bill. ONE Vote.

Plus there's more earmarks in addition to that one single 310 page earmark.

One postage stamp per day eh? What are postal rates going to be raised to again?

Cat stuff...

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 02:35:01 GMT

So it seems several friends are all having issues with their feline friends. I'm grossly sympathetic. I have three of the little critters at my home. Lovable things they are.

If you have a cat and there's problems, you have my quiet good cat thoughts.

June 22, 1944.

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:42:38 GMT

US forces have cut of the German defenders on the north end of the Cottetin peninsula. The US 9th, 79th and 4th Infantry Divisions under VII Corps have started beating back German Defenders and are pressing close to prepatory to taking the fortified port, deemed necessary for the exploitation of the invasion. The final cut was made on the 18th of June.

The following day, the 19th, a very large gale blows up over the channel. This beaches hundreds of larger craft, destroys many smaller craft and destroys the Mulberry harbor at Omaha. Supplies slow to a trickle. The Mulberry Harbors were massive feats of engineering with numerous parts assembled in the UK and floated across the channel to provide breakwaters, piers, docks and roadways (7 miles!) for unloading ships. This allowed both conventional cargo ships and landing ships which could normally beach to unload, all as quickly as possible and all outside of the timing of the tides.

The 82nd Airborne, 101st Airborne and 90th Infantry Divisions under VIII Corps are holding the line from Carentan to Saint Sauveur le Vicomte and thence to the western coast of the peninsula. The British continue to hold off 4 Panzer Divisons on the Allied Left Flank. Due to the gale, few other units have landed. The US 3rd Armored Division is trying to get it's vehicles and men ashore in the residue of the gale along with the British 43rd Wessex Infantry Division and Guards Armored Division.

Shifty Powers...RIP

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:33:13 GMT

Shifty Powers, E/506 PIR passed away on 17 June, 2009.

I had occasion to hear him speak at VMMV in 2003.

Rest in Peace sir.

Villers Bocage....

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:51:21 GMT

Most people realize that D-Day was June 6, 1944. However most don't realize that even prior to D-Day the Allies had been fighting in Italy for since September 1943 (Operation Avalanche). It started off with landings on Sicility and then a jop across the straits to the To. THEN Salerno with landings there and in Calabria and Taranto. Then there was the move across Sicily and then further up Italy with LOTS of hard fighting the whole way.

By the 13th The British 7th Armoured Division had had it's nose bloodied in Villers Bocage.

Don't let the various operations lead one to believe that combat was confined to those operations. Divisions and Brigades in most of their areas were constantly patrolling and pushing the German line and looking for openings to maneuver into. There were numerous German Divisions fed into the fight as the beach head was being constantly expanded.

Here's the situation map for June 16, 1944. (More situation maps here)

Solid icons are US. Shaded Icons are Germans. Dashed icons are British/Commonwealth. You can see how 7th Armoured Division (British) has been pushed back from Villers Bocage by Panzer Lehr. The 3rd Canadian Infantry, 11th Armoured, 3rd British Infantry and 51st Highland Infantry Divisions are all trying to get in and around CAEN but failing to do so due to the high density of of Panzer units from the 21sst Panzer Division in and around Caen.

Note that along the frontage, the British are facing no fewer than 4 Panzer Divisions. The US has a mixed bag of varous smaller Heer and Airborne units with one Panzer Grenadier unit in their front. Most of those are in poor supply because the VAST bulk of their supplies have to transit St Lo which is heavily threatened by the US 28th Infantry, 2nd Infantry and 2nd Armoured Divisions. The german supplies more or less having to travel ONLY at night and the whole front of their routes being under Allied guns directed by light aircraft spotters or worse for the germans, under aerial bombardment from Allied Fighters and bombers interdicting their supply routes. Being a French Railroad man would have been a VERY bad thing at this time.

Wojciech Kilar

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:19:21 GMT

I saw this over on Ghost of a Flea. It's so bloody calming and terribly wonderful that I had to repost it and make special note. I've never heard of Wojciech Kilar, but this is a wonderful piece. The addition of Gustav Klimt to the visuals is that much more wonderful.

Wojciech Kilar is apparently a Polish composer. Clearly I'm going to have to look for more of his works. In looking him up, I began to wonder if perhaps he'd done the music for Tmavomodry Svet (Dark Blue World), apparently not. If you ahven't seen Tmavomodry Svet, it's a good move. That and a few others really illustrate how our eastern European Allies got such a raw deal at the end of WWII at the hands of our erstwhile ally, the USSR.

Knives? Trying to ban importation of folding knives?

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:10:44 GMT

Apparently the US Customs folks are looking to slip through a rule change in the CFRs that would ban the importation of "one handed opening folding knives". I carry one of these in my pocket. MOST people I know have these sorts of knives. They sell them at those horrible places that gang members congregate, you know, like REI. In fact, BOTH of the folding knives I have came from there. They're incredibly USEFUL tools for every day life any self defense functionality aside.

Hey DC, we're not Europe, GET IT?

Molle Corset..?

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:09:43 GMT

So I wander over to Mike Bane's Blog to see what's up in the gun world and what do I see but this.

Mind you, I have some Evil Black Rifles. I even have some Molle Gear, but not a lot and I have far more old fashioned cotton webbing at the house than anything else. And the Molle vest that I do have was bought as the foundation for a misbegotten Harry Tuttle Costume.

But a Molle Corset...? How odd.

Not even close.....

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:36:54 GMT

Kevin at TSM has an interesting graph that shows the direction that the un-employment numbers for the US. President Obama's team wasn't even close and the graph doesn't show that it's nosed over yet.

Definately looking like Carter II - High Unemployment, high cost of living, and High Inflation. Not good, not good at all.

vacation...

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 03:37:00 GMT

I'm in Richmond right now at Fallout. Its such a nice convivial space. Atlanta would so benefit from a club like this one. think of a clean well appointed nocturnia that is open every night.

Ratbastard is supposed to be around here somewhere....

I got out of atlanta later than I wanted. I missed getting to richmond in time for dinner a Cafe Gutenberg. So its a Normandy Wrap at fallout. Yes, they serve food here til 2 am!!

Oh in other news I was pulled over on the way up here in NC. first time in something like 10 years or more. I guess I was due. I was cooking along at 80 mph in very light traffic, just evenly clearing a couple of cars in the right lane and suddenly there was a state trooper on my six with blue lights flashing. I imediately signaled, started coasting to a slower speed, and once I had a clear spot picked pulled into it just past a guard rail so he had room. Dome and map lights on, parking brake on, stereo off, diggout the license CCW, insurance card and roll down the left window put both hands on the wheel and wait... he naturally comes up on the right side.

I lean over so he can see my face and hands and offer up the permit while he's doing the speech on " I stopped you for speeding sir". I side step that and bring the GFL/CCW permit up to the top and politly inform him I'm armed as I hand the card over. He asks where it is, I tell him and say that I'll keep my hands away from it. He hands me my GFL back and takes my license and insurance card back to his cruiser.

Not 5 min later he comes back with my DL and ins card, hands me a warning and asks meto slow down. :-) I thank him and and promise to keep it slower....

90 minutes later I'm enjoying goth/darkwave at retrolution. so far its a good vacation.

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 03:33:05 GMT

I'm in Richmond right now at Fallout. Its such a nice convivi space. Atlanta would so benefit from a club like this one. think of a clean well appointed nocturnia that is open every night.

Ratbastard is supposed to be around here somewhere....

I got out of atlanta later than I wanted. I missed getting to richmond in time for dinner a Cafe Gutenberg. So its a Normandy Wrap at fallout. Yes, they serve food here til 2 am!!

Oh in other news I was pulled over on the way up here in NC. first time in something like 10 years or more. I guess I was due. I was cooking along at 80 mph in very light traffic, just evenly clearing a couple of cars in the right lane and suddenly there was a state trooper on my six with blue lights flashing. I imediately signaled, started coasting to a slower speed, and once I had a clear spot picked pulled into it just past a guard rail so he had room. Dome and map lights on, parking brake on, stereo off, diggout the license CCW, insurance card and roll down the left window put both hands on the wheel and wait... he naturally comes up on the right side.

I lean over so he can see my face and hands and offer up the permit while he's doing the speech on " I stopped you for speeding sir". I side step that and bring the GFL/CCW permit up to the top and politly inform him I'm armed as I hand the card over. He asks where it is, I tell him and say that I'll keep my hands away from it. He hands me my GFL back and takes my license and insurance card back to his cruiser.

Not 5 min later he comes back with my DL and ins card, hands me a warning and asks meto slow down. :-) I thank him and and promise to keep it slower....

90 minutes later I'm enjoying goth/darkwave at retrolution. so far its a good vacation.

MY Grandfather would be chuffed...

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:42:26 GMT

One of my cousins is playing for a Major League Baseball team.

Little bit of aviation nostalgia....

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:02:56 GMT

Note the pressure suit which is pretty much what astro-naughts wear.

Kein Zurück

Fri, 29 May 2009 15:10:02 GMT

Hattip to Nick, aka the Flea...

On second thought, I think this fits my mood a bit more based upon tempo and the like.

Hey Kisa!

Thu, 28 May 2009 17:25:37 GMT

Click here!

Change...

Wed, 27 May 2009 20:44:50 GMT

According to James Burke 15 years ago....

More on Sotomeyer

Wed, 27 May 2009 15:01:43 GMT

There are more examples and points on cases which the SCOTUS nominee has opined/decided upon described over at Volokh regarding Business law. Interestingly more one unverified comment over at TSM states that "she's been overturned by the Supreme Court 60% of the time on opinions she's written[EDIT...which were appealed to the Supreme Court, (_{Important detail!})] in her role as as judge for the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals"

EDIT:
Here's a Washington Times article supporting the 60% number.