"No sporting purpose .."

"Actually if you combine the numbers for shotgun and rifle, you are still twice as likely to get get killed by a knife. "- Quote from a fellow gun owner.

All this means is that they will want your pocket knives year 2. This is the s ole s that has been practiced in Western nations the past 20 years. We know that law enforcement is not the reasoning behind disarming people. It is to weaken the will or ability to resist. Especially in a nation which faces long term economic meltdown, the crime it generates and the political idiocy that will surely only deepen the gloom. The shepherds are forcing the sheep in a "new" direction. Socialized this and gov controlled that. And whose finger is on the switch, saying yay or nay to who gets what?

Too fat? Smoker? Does your gene map dictate sickness later down the line? etc........

Tyranny always comes in the form of "something for the children" or some other hogwash.

Damn, and I just bought that SPX too.

Mexico sinking deeper into oblivion

MEXICO CITY — President Felipe Calderon’s war on drug trafficking has led to his own doorstep, with the arrest of a dozen high-ranking officials with alleged ties to Mexico’s most powerful drug gang, the Sinaloa Cartel.

The U.S. praises Calderon for rooting out corruption at the top. But critics say the arrests reveal nothing more than a timeworn government tactic of protecting one cartel and cracking down on others.

Operation Clean House comes just as the U.S. is giving Mexico its first installment of $400 million in equipment and technology to fight drugs. Most will go to a beefed-up federal police agency run by the same people whose top aides have been arrested as alleged Sinaloa spies.

“If there is anything worse than a corrupt and ill-equipped cop, it is a corrupt and well-equipped cop,” said criminal justice expert Jorge Chabat, who studies the drug trade.

U.S. drug enforcement agents say they have no qualms about sending support to Mexico.

“We’ve been working with the Mexican government for decades at the DEA,” said Garrison Courtney, spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration. “Obviously, we ensure that the individuals we work with are vetted.”

Agents who conduct raids have long suspected Mexican government ties to Sinaloa, and rival drug gangs have advertised the alleged connection in banners hung from freeways. While raids against the rival Gulf cartel have netted suspects, those against Sinaloa almost always came up empty — or worse, said Agent Oscar Granados Salero of the Federal Investigative Agency, Mexico’s equivalent of the FBI.

“Whenever we were trying to serve arrest warrants, they were already waiting for us, and a lot of colleagues lost their lives that way,” Salero said.

The U.S. government estimates that the cartels smuggle $15 billion to $20 billion in drug money across the border each year.

Over the last five months, officials from the Mexican Attorney General’s office, the federal police and even Mexico’s representatives to Interpol have been detained on suspicion of acting as spies for Sinaloa or its one-time ally, the Beltran Leyva gang. An officer who served in Calderon’s presidential guard was detained in December on suspicion of spying for Beltran Leyva.

Gerardo Garay, formerly the acting federal police chief, is accused of protecting the Beltran Leyva brothers and stealing money from a mansion during an October drug raid. Former drug czar Noe Ramirez, who was supposed to serve as point man in Calderon’s anti-drug fight, is accused of taking $450,000 from Sinaloa.

Most of such tips are coming from a Mexican federal agent who infiltrated the U.S. embassy for the Beltran Leyva drug cartel. No such infiltrators have been found for the Gulf cartel, which controls most drug shipments in eastern Mexico and Central America. Sinaloa controls Pacific and western routes.

The DEA’s Courtney agrees that there has been a greater crackdown on the Gulf Cartel in both the U.S. and Mexico, with more than 600 members of the gang arrested in September. But he declined to answer questions about Mexico favoring Sinaloa.

Calderon has long acknowledged corruption as an obstacle to his offensive, which involved sending more than 20,000 soldiers to battle drug trafficking throughout the country. The U.S. aid plan includes technology aimed at improving the way Mexico vets and supervises police.

The president vows to create a “new generation of police,” consolidating agencies under Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna, who heads all federal law enforcement.

That’s what worries Granados Salero and other agents. So many of Garcia Luna’s associates are under suspicion of Sinaloa ties that many wonder how he could not have known.

Calderon has publicly backed Garcia Luna, calling him “a man of great capacity.”

“Obviously, if there was any doubt about his honesty, or any evidence that would call into question his honesty, he would certainly no longer be the secretary of public safety,” the president said recently.

But some see the alleged Sinaloa ties with Garcia Luna’s lieutenants as an old tactic used widely under the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico for 71 years with a tight fist. Officials in the past preferred to deal with one strong cartel rather than many warring gangs — what Calderon faces now. More than 5,300 people died in drug-related slayings in 2008.

“I fear that Secretary Garcia Luna ... is working on the idea that once one cartel consolidates itself as the winner, that is, Sinaloa, the violence is going to drop,” said organized crime expert Edgardo Buscaglia, who tracks federal police arrests and has studied law enforcement agencies’ written reports.

Garcia Luna has denied being involved in corruption. He has acknowledged that authorities in the past chose the path of managing cartels. But in an interview with the newspaper El Sol, he said that approach only strengthens the gangs in the long run.

Others say the high number of Sinaloa infiltrators is a reflection of the two cartels’ very different styles.

The Gulf cartel is led by military-trained hit men so violent that they reportedly planned to attack even U.S. law enforcement agencies.

“They don’t necessarily try to build networks of corruption. They prefer networks of intimidation,” said Monte Alejandro Rubido, who leads Mexico’s multi-agency National Security System.

Sinaloa, on the other hand, appears to use bribery and infiltration at least as much as its gunmen. Cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman bribed his way out of a Mexican prison in 2001, provoking suspicions the government was on his side.

Many Mexicans worry about giving so much money and power to a still corrupt force. Of more than 56,000 local and state police officers evaluated between January and October last year, fewer than half met the recommended qualifications, Calderon reported to Congress in early December. No similar numbers are available for federal police.

Agents like Granados Salero wonder who is in charge of police integrity.

“We agents find out about a lot of things,” he said, “but who can we turn to?”

Obama's War: & KIA .. friend or foe?

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Missiles fired from a suspected U.S. spy plane killed seven people Friday on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border, a lawless region where al-Qaida militants are known to hide out, officials said.
The strike was the first on Pakistani territory since the inauguration of President Barrack Obama.
Pakistani leaders had expressed hope Obama would halt the attacks, more than 30 of which have been launched since the middle of last year, reportedly killing several senior militants.
The pro-U.S. government routinely protests them as a violation of the country's sovereignty, but most observers speculate it has an unwritten agreement allowing them to take place.
One drone fired three missiles into the village of Zharki in North Waziristan, hitting two buildings, the intelligence officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
At least seven people were killed, but there identities were not immediately known.

Oh No! Climate change might be natural?

Two separate studies through NASA confirm that since 2003, the world’s oceans have been losing heat. In the peak of the recent warming trend, 1998 actually ranked 2nd to 1934 as the warmest year on record.
John Willis, an oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, published his first report about the warming oceans. The article Correcting Ocean Cooling (see below) published on NASA’s Earth Observatory page this week discussed his and other results. willis used data from1993-2003 that showed the warm-up and followed the Global Warming Theory. In 2006, he co-piloted a follow-up study led by John Lyman at Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle that updated the time series for 2003-2005. Surprisingly, the ocean seemed to have cooled. He was surprised, and called it a ’speed bump’ on the way to global warming.
A second, independent study was conducted. Takmeng Wong and his colleagues at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia came up with the same results. Wong studies net flux of solar energy at the top of our atmosphere. From the 1980s to 1990s his team noticed increased amounts net energy when comparing incoming solar energy to what Earth radiates and reflects. Since then, the solar flux has remained the same. Other studies have suggested that the sun’s output has decreased in the past few years.

Where does gun control fit in?

from: http://people-press.org/report/485/economy-top-policy-priority

As Barack Obama takes office, the public’s focus is overwhelmingly on domestic policy concerns – particularly the economy. Strengthening the nation’s economy and improving the job situation stand at the top of the public’s list of domestic priorities for 2009. Meanwhile, the priority placed on issues such as the environment, crime, illegal immigration and even reducing health care costs has fallen off from a year ago.

While it is not unusual for the public to prioritize domestic over foreign policy, the balance of opinion today is particularly one-sided. Roughly seven-in-ten Americans (71%) say that President Obama should focus on domestic policy, while just 11% prioritize foreign policy. By comparison, last January, 56% cited domestic policy as most important while 31% said Bush should focus on foreign policy.

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Jan. 7-11 among 1,503 adults on cell phones and landlines, finds that strengthening the economy and improving the job situation are higher priorities today than they have been at any point over the past decade, and the recent upward trend has been steep. The share of Americans saying that strengthening the nation’s economy should be a top priority has risen from 68% two years ago to 75% last January to 85% today. Concern about jobs has risen even more sharply. The 82% who rate improving the job situation as a top priority represents a 21-point jump from 61% a year ago.

Of the 20 issues people were asked to rate in both January 2008 and January 2009, five have slipped significantly in importance as attention to the economy has surged. Protecting the environment fell the most precipitously – just 41% rate this as a top priority today, down from 56% a year ago. The percentage rating illegal immigration as a top priority has fallen from 51% to 41% over the past year, and reducing crime has fallen by a similar amount (from 54% to 46%). And while reducing health care costs remains a top priority to 59% of Americans, this is down 10-points from 69% one year ago.

The public’s interest in many other policy areas remains relatively stable, by comparison. Roughly three-quarters (76%) say that defending the country from future terrorist attacks should be a top priority, making it the third highest priority among the 20 issues tested in the survey. As recently as two years ago, terrorism ranked at the top of the list of policy priorities. The share of Americans who rate terrorism as a top priority has not changed substantially in recent years; the issue has simply been leapfrogged by the economy and jobs at the top of the list.

How "Green" is that?

Washington trash trucks hauled away at least 130 tons of garbage after the inauguration of President Obama, with more to go. National Park Service workers picked up almost 100 tons on the Mall and near the White House.
Because most trash cans had been removed for security reasons and a record-breaking crowd gathered downtown, the mountain of rubbish left behind was of historic proportions.
"More than any Fourth of July, more than any event we've seen," Park Service spokesman William Line said.
The detritus included handwarmer packets, bottles, food, newspapers, blankets, gloves, coolers and a table or two, in addition to items bought from street vendors.
"They left behind Obama hats, Obama bags, Obama socks," said Mafara Hobson, spokeswoman for Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D). "People left behind a lot of trash. A lot of it was the vendors along the parade route, too."
About 110 city workers were assembled downtown at 6 p.m. Tuesday, ready to begin their all-night cleanup. But with crowds still thick in the streets, the hardest work had to wait, said Nancee Lyons, a Department of Public Works spokeswoman who watched some of the overnight cleanup.
"There was so much trash left behind. Piles and piles," Lyons said. "When all those people were there, you didn't realize how bad it was. But once they left, we saw the work ahead."

- From various National Newspapers

Oath ... take two!

And this time with NO Bible or Koran ... interesting. Which solemn oath is the real solemn oath?

Its the ecoomy, stoopid?

Barack Obama has named his priorities for rebuilding America as infrastructure and alternative energy. The stimulus supposedly will rebuild the economy by focusing the government spigot towards these two areas. If so, that spigot seems a little narrow. The CBO notes that only $4 billion of the $30 billion for highways gets spent in the first two years. On energy, less than $3 billion of the $18.5 billion will be used before 2011. Only half of the $14 billion budget for school construction and renovations will get spent before then, too.

In other words, the stimulus package appears to be nothing more than a big pork product designed to benefit Congress and Obama much more than the economy. While economists believe that the recession will be long and harsh, few have predicted that it will last for more than two years. And if we need to pass a stimulus bill with such urgency, why does it allocate most of the spending in years 3 and 4 of the Obama administration? The idea of government stimulus packages is to create jobs now, not three and four years from now.

We’d be better off leaving the money in the private sector in the form of massive tax cuts, matched with cuts in government spending. Private capital creates jobs much faster than anything proposed in this package.

Interestingly, the Post ran this on the front page of their business section, page D-1, rather than on the front page of the newspaper. The media keeps telling us that the economic crisis is the most important story at the moment. If so, pushing this highly critical look at the Obama administration’s economic centerpiece to section D makes little sense …

- From an article in "HotAir"

Is Obama listening to our founders?

“The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale” - Thomas Jefferson

Since September the supply of money in our system has increased 70%. Not good news for the value of our dollar. "Fire the presses up boys! We gots bills to pay!" Of course the "buck" will be valueless, but who cares? The adults have left the building and now the kids are in charge.

Now, low and behold the CFR riding to the rescue:
The director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations has launched a scathing attack on sovereignty and national currencies.

Benn Steil, writing in the current issue of CFR's influential Foreign Affairs magazine, says "the world needs to abandon unwanted currencies, replacing them with dollars, euros, and multinational currencies as yet unborn."

Heaven on Earth, well at least in Africa

“This man is Jesus,” shouted one man, spilling his Guinness as Barack Obama began his inaugural address. “When will he come to Kenya to save us?” If Barack Obama’s spin doctors have been trying to lower expectations since his election victory, the message clearly has not reached the land of his father…

“Now he is president we will get food and jobs,” said Ben Ochieng, as he danced to the traditional music that replaced the planned show…

The Kenya National Theatre even revived its hit show Obama The Musical, which wowed sell-out audiences during the US election last year. It uses parallels with the Bible Story and Mr Obama’s own struggles with racism and drugs — documented in his memoir Dreams From My Father - to portray the incoming President as a saviour for downtrodden peoples of the world…

“It is right that when people get power they look after their family, so we know that Obama will build lots of good things for us, like schools and roads and clinics,” said George Opiyo as he left the theatre.

Hamassholes II

Iran has renewed efforts to supply advanced weaponry to Hamas and the IDF is concerned that the terror group will try to smuggle long-range Fajr missiles into the Gaza Strip.

According to the latest intelligence assessments, Iran, which was responsible for writing Hamas’s military doctrine, has already launched an internal probe to determine how the plan it had created for Hamas failed to cause more IDF casualties.

Praise Allah!

An al Qaeda affiliate in Algeria closed a base earlier this month after an experiment with unconventional weapons went awry, a senior U.S. intelligence official said Monday.

The official, who spoke on the condition he not be named because of the sensitive nature of the issue, said he could not confirm press reports that the accident killed at least 40 al Qaeda operatives, but he said the mishap led the militant group to shut down a base in the mountains of Tizi Ouzou province in eastern Algeria.

He said authorities in the first week of January intercepted an urgent communication between the leadership of al Qaeda in the Land of the Maghreb (AQIM) and al Qaeda’s leadership in the tribal region of Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan. The communication suggested that an area sealed to prevent leakage of a biological or chemical substance had been breached, according to the official.

“We don’t know if this is biological or chemical,” the official said.

The story was first reported by the British tabloid the Sun, which said the al Qaeda operatives died after being infected with a strain of bubonic plague, the disease that killed a third of Europe’s population in the 14th century. But the intelligence official dismissed that claim.

Poetry

“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.”

Re-post of some fine words

"As Obama is sworn in, I will be taking the Flag, which has flown in front of my house daily, for years, down.

I may replace it with my “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, I have not decided yet…

But this is no longer the country that I, and 7 Generations of my Ancestors fought for… and it is not the country I hoped to leave my son.

When the supposedly CONSERVATIVE President, goes Socialist… when 50% of the electorate pays no income tax… and when we are putting our children in so much debt that they will never be able to work their way out of it… and when we are no longer willing to enforce our own laws, including the Constitution… and when elections can be so corrupt that you have more votes counted, than voters who signed in that day…

And we elect someone with no experience at anything except running for office… when we have serious problems…

I have sadly come to the conclusion that Democracy is a failed experiment, and our Founding Fathers, who gave us a Republic were absolutely correct when they warned us about the tyranny of the masses.

The rule of law is done in this country… stand by, it may get very very ugly soon."

- Taken comment from HotAir ...

As a 13 generation American, I feel the same. I wanted to post the above words here.

The choice of a whacked generation

http://www.refresheverything.com/



... enjoy!

Here's a group that I could fund with "bailout" bucks ..

A group calling itself the Comando Ciudadano por Juárez, or the Juárez Citizens Command, is claiming it will kill a criminal every 24 hours to bring order to the violent crime-plagued city.

The announcement of the supposed group was the first known case of possible organized vigilantism in Juárez as police and the military have been apparently unable to stop a plague of killings and other crimes.

"Better the death of a bad person than that they continue to contaminating our region," the news release stated in Spanish.

The supposed group issued a news release via e-mail stating it is nonpartisan and funded by businessmen fed up with crime.

The group, also calling itself the CCJ, said it would issue a manifesto in the coming days and would set up a system where residents can electronically send information about criminals.

"Our mission is to terminate the life of a criminal every 24 hours ... The hour has come to stop this disorder in Juárez," the CCJ stated.

The announcement comes as Juárez struggles with a wave of homicides, extortions, carjackings, robberies and other crimes that began last year.

Business people, teachers, medical professionals and others were targeted by extortionists in the last year as crime surged due in a part to a war between drug cartels. There were more than 1,600 homicides in Juárez last year.

There have been more than 40 homicides already this year, including 10 on Wednesday.

Hamassholes

Vid ... pretty well known now, but worth the post ...

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/01/rare-video-hama.html

DC and the slave class

I may be being overly simplistic here, but wouldn’t it be far far cheaper to merely cut checks to every head of household in the US and pay them, say, $125,000, tell them to invest it, save it, spend it or otherwise dispose of it on their own, as they see fit, and eliminate the usual federal funding losses due to admin costs and wages for those doing the admin?

This “save jobs” stimulus package is looking more and more like we are headed directly to government ownership of the means of production in this country, and ownership of labor, as well…hasn’t this been tried once before with glowingly wonderful success? Lenin comes to mind.

Execution

"At about 2:15 a.m. on New Year's Day, Grant, 22, a supermarket worker, was shot by Johannes Mehserle, 27, a transit police officer, at a subway station in Oakland, Calif. Handheld video-enabled cameras and cell phones at the ready, alert witnesses at the scene caught the shooting and the moments that preceded it from different angles. In one of their videos, an onlooker yells at a woman recording the scene: "Put it on YouTube!" Local and national television stations have aired and re-aired excepts from the raw and grainy videos, which have taken on a new life online. They're being commented on, edited and, in one disturbing, stylized, two-minute video, set to music. Uploaded on Jan. 3, that YouTube video has been viewed more than 60,000 times, and drawn nearly 450 comments." - Taken from local news story.

Face down execution. Just a reminder why the 2nd A exists. Gross negligence/Murder by those who are paid by the taxpayers to serve and protect. Protect your Rights.

Nothing but good news as History speaks ...

Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

After scrutinizing Roosevelt’s record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.

“Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump,” said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA’s Department of Economics. “We found that a relapse isn’t likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies.”

1930 through 1932 is similar to 2006 through 2008, the economy goes from bad to worse. Before 1930 and 2006 the Republican congresses were acting like democrats light. After the democrats won the congressional elections in those two years, the economy continued to tank.

Now with the election of a democrat president in 2008, as in 1932, the things that were done to get us into those messes were/will be continued.

Even if you know nothing about economics, history should at least be allowed to be your guide.

Knowledge has never before been more widespread, but where is the wisdom?

Get 'em while you can ...

My new tool in defense of life, limb and Liberty. Thought I might post a pic of the new edition to my collection. We don't know how long semi auto's like the SPX will be available.

Obama ... man of smoke and mirrors ...

It seems that BO, the neo Messiah ... the point guard president ... the Wizard of hope and change ... the everyman international man of leadership ... may have a few problems with his wacky leftist followers who wanted a "Che" but may have only gotten Willy Clinton II.

The Israel v Hamas case:

”The truce Hamas had meticulously upheld was shattered when Israel attacked Gaza, killing six Palestinians, as The Guardian reported on 5 November. A blatant disregard for the facts, it seems, will not leave the White House with George W. Bush on 20 January. Axelrod also recalled Obama’s visit to Israel last July when he ignored Palestinians and visited the Israeli town of Sderot. There, Obama declared: ‘If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.’ This should not surprise anyone. Despite pervasive wishful thinking that Obama would abandon America’s pro-Israel bias, his approach has been almost indistinguishable from the Bush administration’s.” - Electronic Intifada

-”President-elect Barack Obama is getting whacked by the left for declining to comment on Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, but his prudent silence is just as discomfiting to the Israeli government and its allies here in the United States. They wanted a ringing endorsement of their bombardment.” - The First Post, U.K.

-”President-elect Barack Obama and Secretary of State-to-be Hillary Clinton were shamefully silent in the first hours after the attack. Bush’s reaction, and the non-reaction by Obama and Clinton, underscores the point that Hanan Ashrawi made on Saturday. ‘Israel has gotten used to not being held accountable and to being a country that is above the law,’ said the Palestinian legislator and human rights activist. She called the bombings a ‘massacre.’” — The Progressive

-”But some fear that the US president-elect’s reluctance to speak out on the Gaza raids could be sending its own message. ‘Silence sounds like complicity,’ Mark Perry, the Washington Director of the Conflicts Forum group, told Al Jazeera. ‘Obama has said that Israel has the right to defend itself from rocket attacks but my question to him is ‘does he believe that Palestinians also have the right of self-defence?’” AlJazeera.net

-”Former London mayor Ken Livingstone and rights activist Bianca Jagger joined campaigners who have staged a week of rallies, culminating in a demonstration Saturday which will include a symbolic shoe protest outside Downing Street. ‘I would like to make an appeal to president elect Obama to speak up,’ said Jagger. ‘People throughout the world were hopeful when he was elected and we must appeal to him to ask for the immediate cessation of the bombardment of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.’” - AFP

-”This was the time for President Elect Barack Obama to make a strong statement. He has not said anything; he has failed his first test as incoming president abysmally. …Obama has made several statements on the economy, and has even already devised a $750 billion stimulus of his own, in addition to all the programs that have been announced by the Bush Administration. Now when it comes to a vicious and disproportionate attack by Israel that has already claimed the lives of many children and women, the President Elect is not permitted to say a word because of some sort of protocol? What kind of nonsense is this?” - Black Star News

-”Obama and his aides should be openly counseling the Bush administration to use every diplomatic avenue to promote a ceasefire and, above all, to urge against an Israeli invasion and occupation of Gaza. Unfortunately, the president-elect is doing nothing of the sort. Some may imagine that this disengaged approach confirms Obama as a true ‘friend of Israel.’” - The Nation

-”Obama has massive political capital, and could have injected himself into the crisis before it happened. He did so during the beginning of the economic meltdown, and could have lent his credibility to a situation that has spiralled dangerously out of control. Obama has stated that ‘There is only one President at a time’, abdicating responsibility and essentially passing the buck.” - Huffington Post

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh ... how satisfying it is to see the leftists wallow in its own self destructive stupidity.