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Labels: gun technology Angela Trizuto is a diagnosed schizophrenic. She hears voices, thinks terrorists are spying on her and lashes out violently. She spent Thursday, her 25th birthday, in a San Francisco jail cell on suspicion of assaulting a person this week on Van Ness Avenue. On Friday, she was transferred to Marin to face an outstanding arrest warrant for separate assault and battery charges. "Please help my daughter," her mother said Friday. "She is dangerous to herself and to others, obviously. At what point do people see that she's gravely disabled and needs to be in a locked unit?" The problem is that California law makes that incredibly difficult. Laura's Law, under which patients can be required to take their medications, is so expensive and cumbersome that it is rarely used. And a conservatorship, in which a judge orders someone to be kept in a locked setting against their will, can be a legal nightmare. Now, mental health advocates worry that a proposition included in May's special statewide election will further hinder efforts to help people like Angela Trizuto. Proposition 1E would redirect $460 million from mental health services to help balance the state budget. San Francisco has also cut its mental health services in light of the looming deficit here. As local health services decline, the state must step up and deal with the tragedy of uncontrollable mental illness. "It's a mess," said Paul Linde, who has been a psychiatrist at San Francisco General Hospital's Psych Emergency Services unit since 1992. "We all want to protect civil liberties, but because of the way the laws are structured, we have to say someone is a danger to others 'at this time.' They almost literally have to have a knife to someone's neck to be able to say they are dangerous." Labels: deinstitutionalization Labels: deinstitutionalization, my books Labels: humor Technology Alignment Inc. of Laramie, Wyo., has relocated to Nampa, and Horn Plastics of Fargo, N.D., has opened a sales and manufacturing operation in Boise. Technology Alignment develops and distributes high-end computer routers, office telephone systems and Linux operating systems. It competes with companies like Cisco and IBM and has offices in major cities around the country, said Dianne Ursini, the chief executive officer. Ursini opened her Nampa office at 1109 14th St. S. two weeks ago and is busy interviewing prospective salespeople. She has five full-time employees now and hopes to grow to 150. She said she moved the 9-year-old company from Wyoming because she couldn't find enough qualified workers in Laramie. It all started, innocently enough, in 1994 with President Clinton's rewrite of the Carter-era Community Reinvestment Act. Ostensibly intended to help deserving minority families afford homes — a noble idea — it instead led to a reckless surge in mortgage lending that has pushed our financial system to the brink of chaos. Subprime's Mentors Fannie and Freddie, the main vehicle for Clinton's multicultural housing policy, drove the explosion of the subprime housing market by buying up literally hundreds of billions of dollars in substandard loans — funding loans that ordinarily wouldn't have been made based on such time-honored notions as putting money down, having sufficient income, and maintaining a payment record indicating creditworthiness. With all the old rules out the window, Fannie and Freddie gobbled up the market. Using extraordinary leverage, they eventually controlled 90% of the secondary market mortgages. Their total portfolio of loans topped $5.4 trillion — half of all U.S. mortgage lending. They borrowed $1.5 trillion from U.S. capital markets with — wink, wink — an "implicit" government guarantee of the debts. In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders. The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring. Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits. In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans. ... In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's. ''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.'' Labels: economics The U.S. Census is supposed to be free of politics, but one group with a history of voter fraud, ACORN, is participating in next year's count, raising concerns about the politicization of the decennial survey. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now signed on as a national partner with the U.S. Census Bureau in February 2009 to assist with the recruitment of the 1.4 million temporary workers needed to go door-to-door to count every person in the United States -- currently believed to be more than 306 million people. A U.S. Census "sell sheet," an advertisement used to recruit national partners, says partnerships with groups like ACORN "play an important role in making the 2010 Census successful," including by "help[ing] recruit census workers." The bureau is currently employing help from more than 250 national partners, including TARGET and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), to assist in the hiring effort. But ACORN's partnership with the 2010 Census is worrisome to lawmakers who say past allegations of fraud should raise concerns about the organization. "It's a concern, especially when you look at all the different charges of voter fraud. And it's not just the lawmakers' concern. It should be the concern of every citizen in the country," Rep. Lynn A. Westmoreland, R-Ga., vice ranking member of the subcommittee for the U.S. Census, told FOXNews.com. "We want an enumeration. We don't want to have any false numbers." - Prior to 11/2008, Demil B items required no mutilation for sale to the public. That policy changed in November, but several exceptions were granted. Expended munitions brass was one of those given a waiver. There you have it. The policy change was simply the result of some n00b administrator attempting to close a perceived “national security” loophole and brass got caught up in the snare. There was no political motivation behind the policy change, but it is good that people like us were suspicious, got involved, and helped bring about a resolution. Labels: immigration “We get any coyotes today?” a woman shouted from across the street. Mr. Stewart shook his head no, tugged at his camouflage cap and headed for the old trailer cluttered with the varmint traps he hauls with him everywhere he goes. Since a recent rash of coyote attacks on pets in Greenwood Village, an affluent suburb of Denver, Mr. Stewart, the owner and primary employee of Animal Damage Control Wildlife Management Services, has been on the hunt. When he comes across a coyote after being dispatched by the city, he closely observes its behavior until he has judged whether it is aggressive. Those he deems a threat to humans or pets he shoots with one of his .22-caliber guns. Renowned for their adaptability, coyotes have been showing up with brazen frequency in the suburbs of Denver and in populated areas across the country. They have been spotted hanging out in local parks, trotting down city streets and lounging in backyards, content and seemingly unafraid of humans. Dr. Gehrt, who studies coyotes in the Chicago area, said most coyotes that moved into urban areas remained fearful of humans and could coexist peacefully with them. “We do know that when coyotes start to flip over to the dark side, it is almost always because of human feeding,” he said. “They become more comfortable, and then they become aggressive.” His observation is little comfort to Debbie Scheper, the mother of the 14-year-old who was attacked. The boy, Matthew, managed to swipe the animal away with an elbow to the snout and was not seriously harmed. The attack led some residents to carry horns or golf clubs. Others have built fences around their properties, and still others do not venture out at night. “It’s like something out of a Stephen King novel,” said Ms. Scheper, who hears the coyotes wailing outside her window at night. “It’s kind of like we’re being held captive by these things. They have no fear.” Nicole Rosmarino, the wildlife program director with the environmental group WildEarth Guardians, said that accounts of attacks had been exaggerated and that most of the injured pets had been off their leash or unattended. “We think Greenwood Village is operating in an utterly irrational manner,” Ms. Rosmarino said. “It is not going to help their citizens. Clearly, they have panicked.” Labels: history, movie reviews Labels: house project Labels: global warming “It’s scary when ammunition is sold out and you don’t know how you’re going to get any,” said Ben Fox of Santa Rosa, a disabled single father with three young children. “It’s nerve-wracking. It’s my home defense.” Ammunition for firearms including pistols and rifles is exploding off store shelves in Sonoma County, where gun shop owners said they can’t keep bullets in stock. Various explanations have been given for the shortage, from rising material costs, increased demand due to military uses, and people stocking up as federal legislative proposals requiring ammunition to be engraved with a serial number move forward. “Folks have been experiencing shortages all over the country,” said Rachel Parsons, spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association. “Since the election there has been a great increase in firearms sales as well. Background checks are up, enrollment in training and safety classes is up, concealed weapons permits are up, gun sales are up. And ammo manufacturers can’t keep up with demand.” While not all police agencies report problems stocking ammunition, the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department does. Sheriff’s Sgt. Rob Douglas said that availability and delivery are concerns. “We’re still waiting on a bunch of stuff that was supposed to be coming in August or September,” he said of department’s ammunition order. “We have some empty shelves.” he said. The 29-year-old Boise man who was killed outside a pool hall early Saturday morning while reportedly breaking up a fight was shot five times, according to Ada County Coroner’s reports. Those five shots, which hit Ahmed Cepalo on his side and back, caused fatal internal bleeding which led to his death in a parking lot, Ada County Coroner Erwin Sonnenberg said Monday. Shooting suspect Jeremy J. Hobbs, 27, told Boise police the shooting was done in self-defense, according to court testimony Monday Hobbs is being held in the Ada County Jail on a $1 million bond for charges of second degree murder and using a gun in the commission of a felony. Witnesses told police Cepalo was shot by Hobbs about 2 a.m. — a short time after Hobbs and another man started arguing inside Southwest Boise's Backstreet Billiards, which is on Overland Road near the Five Mile Road intersection. Officers arrived at the pool hall moments after getting a 911 call and found that Hobbs had put his gun away. He was arrested without incident. Boise police and Ada County Sheriff’s officials say Hobbs had a valid concealed weapons permit at the time of the shooting. [emphasis added] While witnesses told police Cepalo was trying to calm down an argument Saturday morning, he was arrested at the same pool hall in November and charged with misdemeanor battery after being accused of attacking a patron over issues about his ethnicity. That man told police that Cepalo, who is from Bosnia, attacked him at Southwest Boise's Backstreet Billiards after a verbal altercation turned violent. That man told police Cepalo first pushed him and then punched him with a closed fist several times. Cepalo told police he was shoved first before hitting the other man, according to police reports. Only Cepalo was charged in that fight. Cepalo was scheduled to begin a jury trial on the misdemeanor charge of battery in May. Labels: concealed carry Labels: 2008 presidential candidates, gun rights, terrorism But in a much anticipated court filing, the Justice Department argued that the president has the authority to detain terrorism suspects there without criminal charges, much as the Bush administration had asserted. It provided a broad definition of those who can be held, which was not significantly different from the one used by the Bush administration. The filing signaled that, as long as Guantánamo remains open, the new administration will aggressively defend its ability to hold some detainees there. “The president has the authority to detain persons” who planned or aided the 2001 terrorist attacks as well as those “who were part of, or substantially supported, Taliban or Al Qaeda forces,” administration lawyers wrote. The Obama administration said it was relying on existing principles of the international law of war. A public statement indicated that the government was moving away from claims of expansive executive power often used by the Bush administration to justify Guantánamo. Labels: terrorism A California attorney lobbying the U.S. Supreme Court for a review of Barack Obama's qualifications to be president confronted the chief justice yesterday with legal briefs and a WND petition bearing names of over 325,000 people asking the court to rule on whether or not the sitting president fulfills the Constitution's "natural-born citizen" clause. According to Orly Taitz, the attorney who confronted Chief Justice John Roberts at a lecture at the University of Idaho, the judge promised before the gathered crowd that he would, indeed, read and review the briefs and petition. "I addressed him in front of 800 people in the audience," Taitz told WND, "including university officials, the president of the Idaho State Bar and the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Idaho, and in front of all them, [Roberts] promised to read my papers." At the lecture in Idaho, Taitz grabbed the attention of Justice Roberts by boldly addressing her allegation that a clerk had buried the case. Taitz told WND that the forum rules required that those questioning Roberts announce their relationship to the University of Idaho and refrain from talking about cases currently before or likely to appear before the court. "I said, 'Justice Roberts, my name is Orly Taitz. I'm an attorney from California, and I got up at 3 o'clock in the middle of the night, flew and drove thousands of miles just to ask you a question. So please give me some leeway,'" Taitz told WND. "My question is, do you know there is illegal activity going on in the Supreme Court of the United States?" According to Taitz, the room was stunned silent as she continued, "I have presented my case to you, and you personally agreed to hear this case in conference. But your clerk refused to forward a supplemental brief to you. He has hidden this brief from you. He refused to put it on the docket. Additionally, my case was erased from the docket one day after the Inauguration, two days before my case was to be heard. "Outraged citizens and members of the media and state representatives are calling the Supreme Court, demanding to have the case reentered on the docket," Taitz told Roberts. Then she held up the WND petition and continued, "Moreover, here are the names of U.S. citizens who signed this petition and who sent individual letters to individual justices, including you, Justice Roberts, all of them demanding the same thing – that you hear my case in regards to Barack Hussein Obama's eligibility for presidency." According to Taitz, Roberts approached the microphone and said, "I see you have papers. I promise you I will read all your papers, I will review them. Please give them to my Secret Service and I will review all of them." Shortly thereafter, Taitz told WND, a Secret Service agent identified by his badge as Gilbert Shaw accepted two suitcases of documents and pledged to deliver them to Roberts. Roberts spoke before a packed house of some 1,200 people at the annual Bellwood Memorial Lecture Series at the University of Idaho. At one point during the audience question period, Orly Taitz, a woman from Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., said she had documents proving that President Obama was not born in the United States and thus could not be president. While audience members laughed, she said she had half a million signatures of people demanding the Supreme Court hear the matter. Roberts cut her off by saying that if she had documents with her, she should give them to security officers. He also said he could not discuss the issue. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Labels: house project
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The American Steyr AUG
The Steyr AUG is one of those rifles that looks like something out Star Wars.
And it wasn't just futuristic looking; it was a very clever, very forward looking battle rifle--and one that was extremely compact: only 27" long with a 16" barrel. It turns out that very, very few of them were ever imported into the United States, and at least partly because they were incredibly expensive. This didn't prevent California from including it on the 1989 Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act list of banned weapons. It is hard to imagine that there had ever been a criminal misuse of one at the time. Since President Bush banned them from import at about that same time, I would even more surprised if there had been any subsequent criminal misuses.
Still, the design was so cool that filmmakers couldn't resist it. I recall seeing one film in which a sniper uses a Steyr AUG because the barrel is easily removed, making the whole package even more compact--enough to fit into a briefcase.
Well, the patents underlying the AUG finally expired--and an American company, Microtech Small Arms Research, is building a somewhat modified version called the STG-556. Peter Kokalis has a review of it in the March 20, 2009 Shotgun News. Among other interesting aspects of it: a 0.6 minute of arc group at 100 meters with the 16" barrel. That's extraordinary for a battle rifle.
The price tag is, as you might expect, absurdly high: $1953.86. But if you are one of those people who always wanted a Steyr AUG for its unique design, and have that kind of money lying around with nothing better to do with it (like some of you AIG executives who are now getting death threats because Senator Dodd wanted to make sure that you weren't suffering), I can think of worse ways to spend it! Here's their website. And here it is being offered at what I guess is the dealer cost of $1645--and as you might expect, out of stock!
Budgets Are Tight; This Still Seems Like a Mistake
From C.V. Nevius' March 21, 2009 San Francisco Chronicle column:Rozelle Trizuto always takes her glasses off when she sees her daughter. She's resigned to the fact that Angela may punch her at any moment and doesn't want to keep replacing broken glasses.
Reading the comments on the article is also quite depressing, and a reminder of why I am glad to be far away from San Francisco:If I see an obviously crazy person coming towards me on the street (which happens usually at least once every single day), I will cross over. I have had two acquaintances murdered by insane people in SF, and I will not be one of them. I don't care how insensitive this sounds. There is no room for sensitivity when you have dangerous, violent people roaming freely on the streets. I will probably vote against 1E, though I am suspicious at the "concern" of mental health advocates, who should be really called mental illness advocates. Governor Schwarzenegger's cuts to the mental health system are a huge mistake, and even as a Republican I can't get behind them. Judges are clearly pat of the problem, but we as a society must realize that we are not helping anyone by letting crazy people loose. Bring back asylums.
Good News! A Publisher Asked To See The Manuscript
Okay, not a huge publisher, but it's a start. Remember that the first few chapters are visible here.
Calling All VPN Experts
I use a VPN connection to telecommute. A couple of days ago, my wireless internet provider switched me from one radio to another. I didn't bother to get all the details; I just know that the IP address of the WAN side of my router had to change.
Ever since, my VPN connection has become very frustrating. It used to be that I would lose the connection perhaps once or twice a day--and it usually reconnected pretty quickly. Now it is dropping the connection like clockwork--in fact, every four minutes. (The regularity of it alone is curious.) It eventually comes back, but since it typically takes 20-30 seconds to do so--and it happens every four minutes--this is a major frustration.
With VPN disabled, everything works just fine--no problems.
I have whined to my wireless internet provider--and reminded them that they aren't the only game in town. (Even out here.) But I would prefer not to go through the aggravation of switching right now if I can avoid it. I have VPN client logs, if there is anyone out there who is sufficiently knowledgeable to tell me what these interesting complaints mean.
My guess is that the failure of these ISAKMP message (which provide authentication and security keys) is related to corruption or loss of packets--but I would think that the contents of these packets would be passed right through TCP/IP. They should just be data inside the data packets.
2009/03/20 15:20:13:593 Information 216.228.186.4 Starting aggressive mode phase 1 exchange.
2009/03/20 15:20:13:593 Information 216.228.186.4 Ignoring unsupported vendor ID -1.
2009/03/20 15:20:13:593 Information 216.228.186.4 NAT Detected: Local host is behind a NAT device.
2009/03/20 15:20:13:593 Information 216.228.186.4 The SA lifetime for phase 1 is 28800 seconds.
2009/03/20 15:20:13:593 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: EXCH=OAK AG, ICOOK=0x7F929B126DA22A86, RCOOK=0x72D53A4C55B602BD, MSGID=0x00000000, SIZE=124
2009/03/20 15:20:13:593 Information 216.228.186.4 Phase 1 has completed.
2009/03/20 15:20:13:718 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP RECV: EXCH=MODE CFG, ICOOK=0x7F929B126DA22A86, RCOOK=0x72D53A4C55B602BD, MSGID=0x82C0FFA4, SIZE=76
2009/03/20 15:20:13:718 Information 216.228.186.4 Received XAuth request.
2009/03/20 15:20:13:718 Information 216.228.186.4 Sending XAuth reply.
2009/03/20 15:20:13:718 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: EXCH=MODE CFG, ICOOK=0x7F929B126DA22A86, RCOOK=0x72D53A4C55B602BD, MSGID=0x82C0FFA4, SIZE=92
2009/03/20 15:20:13:859 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP RECV: EXCH=MODE CFG, ICOOK=0x7F929B126DA22A86, RCOOK=0x72D53A4C55B602BD, MSGID=0xFB04F23A, SIZE=68
2009/03/20 15:20:13:859 Information 216.228.186.4 Received XAuth status.
2009/03/20 15:20:13:859 Information 216.228.186.4 Sending XAuth acknowledgement.
2009/03/20 15:20:13:859 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: EXCH=MODE CFG, ICOOK=0x7F929B126DA22A86, RCOOK=0x72D53A4C55B602BD, MSGID=0xFB04F23A, SIZE=68
2009/03/20 15:20:13:859 Information 216.228.186.4 User authentication has succeeded.
2009/03/20 15:20:14:000 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP RECV: EXCH=MODE CFG, ICOOK=0x7F929B126DA22A86, RCOOK=0x72D53A4C55B602BD, MSGID=0xDA1CD1F7, SIZE=92
2009/03/20 15:20:14:000 Information 216.228.186.4 Received request for policy version.
2009/03/20 15:20:14:000 Information 216.228.186.4 Sending policy version reply.
2009/03/20 15:20:14:000 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: EXCH=MODE CFG, ICOOK=0x7F929B126DA22A86, RCOOK=0x72D53A4C55B602BD, MSGID=0xDA1CD1F7, SIZE=116
2009/03/20 15:20:14:140 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP RECV: EXCH=MODE CFG, ICOOK=0x7F929B126DA22A86, RCOOK=0x72D53A4C55B602BD, MSGID=0xDA1CD1F7, SIZE=68
2009/03/20 15:20:14:156 Information 216.228.186.4 Received policy change is not required.
2009/03/20 15:20:14:156 Information 216.228.186.4 Sending policy acknowledgement.
2009/03/20 15:20:14:156 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: EXCH=MODE CFG, ICOOK=0x7F929B126DA22A86, RCOOK=0x72D53A4C55B602BD, MSGID=0xDA1CD1F7, SIZE=76
2009/03/20 15:20:14:156 Information 216.228.186.4 The configuration for the connection is up to date.
2009/03/20 15:20:14:187 Information 216.228.186.4 Starting ISAKMP phase 2 negotiation with 0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0:BOOTPC:BOOTPS:UDP.
2009/03/20 15:20:14:187 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: EXCH=OAK QM, ICOOK=0x7F929B126DA22A86, RCOOK=0x72D53A4C55B602BD, MSGID=0xE6511F9E, SIZE=164
2009/03/20 15:20:14:187 Information 216.228.186.4 Starting quick mode phase 2 exchange.
2009/03/20 15:20:14:312 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP RECV: EXCH=OAK QM, ICOOK=0x7F929B126DA22A86, RCOOK=0x72D53A4C55B602BD, MSGID=0xE6511F9E, SIZE=164
2009/03/20 15:20:14:312 Information 216.228.186.4 The SA lifetime for phase 2 is 28800 seconds.
2009/03/20 15:20:14:312 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: EXCH=OAK QM, ICOOK=0x7F929B126DA22A86, RCOOK=0x72D53A4C55B602BD, MSGID=0xE6511F9E, SIZE=84
2009/03/20 15:20:14:312 Information 216.228.186.4 Phase 2 with 0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0:BOOTPC:BOOTPS:UDP has completed.
2009/03/20 15:20:14:312 Information
2009/03/20 15:20:19:406 Information
2009/03/20 15:20:19:453 Information
2009/03/20 15:20:19:453 Information 216.228.186.4 NetWkstaUserGetInfo returned: user: Clayton Cramer, logon domain: CLAYTONLAPTOP, logon server: CLAYTONLAPTOP
2009/03/20 15:20:23:656 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:20:23:953 Information 216.228.186.4 NetGetDCName failed: Could not find domain controller for this domain.
2009/03/20 15:20:23:953 Information 216.228.186.4 calling NetUserGetInfo: Server: \\CLAYTONLAPTOP, User: Clayton Cramer, level: 3
2009/03/20 15:20:23:968 Information 216.228.186.4 NetUserGetInfo returned: home dir: , remote dir: , logon script:
2009/03/20 15:20:28:656 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: EXCH=ISA INFO, ICOOK=0x7F929B126DA22A86, RCOOK=0x72D53A4C55B602BD, MSGID=0x65F05CFC, SIZE=84
2009/03/20 15:20:28:656 Information 216.228.186.4 Sending dead peer detection request.
2009/03/20 15:20:28:812 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP RECV: EXCH=ISA INFO, ICOOK=0x7F929B126DA22A86, RCOOK=0x72D53A4C55B602BD, MSGID=0x11E9BC14, SIZE=84
2009/03/20 15:20:28:812 Information 216.228.186.4 Received dead peer detection acknowledgement.
2009/03/20 15:20:33:656 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:20:43:671 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:20:53:906 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:21:03:906 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:21:13:906 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:21:23:906 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:21:33:906 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:21:43:906 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:21:53:906 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:22:03:906 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:22:13:906 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:22:23:906 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:22:33:906 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:22:43:906 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:22:53:906 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:23:03:906 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:23:13:906 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:23:23:906 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:23:33:906 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:23:43:906 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:23:48:906 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: EXCH=ISA INFO, ICOOK=0x7F929B126DA22A86, RCOOK=0x72D53A4C55B602BD, MSGID=0x721706CD, SIZE=84
2009/03/20 15:23:48:906 Information 216.228.186.4 Sending dead peer detection request.
2009/03/20 15:23:53:906 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:23:53:906 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: EXCH=ISA INFO, ICOOK=0x7F929B126DA22A86, RCOOK=0x72D53A4C55B602BD, MSGID=0x547EAFA9, SIZE=84
2009/03/20 15:23:53:906 Information 216.228.186.4 Sending dead peer detection request.
2009/03/20 15:23:54:046 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP RECV: EXCH=ISA INFO, ICOOK=0x7F929B126DA22A86, RCOOK=0x72D53A4C55B602BD, MSGID=0x7BB66179, SIZE=168
2009/03/20 15:23:54:046 Warning 216.228.186.4 Received an unencrypted packet but encryption keys have already been established.
2009/03/20 15:23:54:046 Error 216.228.186.4 Failed to decrypt buffer.
2009/03/20 15:23:54:046 Information
2009/03/20 15:23:59:031 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: EXCH=ISA INFO, ICOOK=0x7F929B126DA22A86, RCOOK=0x72D53A4C55B602BD, MSGID=0x59A2626D, SIZE=84
2009/03/20 15:23:59:031 Information 216.228.186.4 Sending dead peer detection request.
2009/03/20 15:23:59:171 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP RECV: EXCH=ISA INFO, ICOOK=0x7F929B126DA22A86, RCOOK=0x72D53A4C55B602BD, MSGID=0x5E8DD5D5, SIZE=168
2009/03/20 15:23:59:171 Warning 216.228.186.4 Received an unencrypted packet but encryption keys have already been established.
2009/03/20 15:23:59:171 Error 216.228.186.4 Failed to decrypt buffer.
2009/03/20 15:23:59:171 Information
2009/03/20 15:24:04:031 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:24:04:031 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: EXCH=ISA INFO, ICOOK=0x7F929B126DA22A86, RCOOK=0x72D53A4C55B602BD, MSGID=0x1E017212, SIZE=84
2009/03/20 15:24:04:031 Information 216.228.186.4 Sending dead peer detection request.
2009/03/20 15:24:04:156 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP RECV: EXCH=ISA INFO, ICOOK=0x7F929B126DA22A86, RCOOK=0x72D53A4C55B602BD, MSGID=0x1B94935E, SIZE=168
2009/03/20 15:24:04:156 Warning 216.228.186.4 Received an unencrypted packet but encryption keys have already been established.
2009/03/20 15:24:04:156 Error 216.228.186.4 Failed to decrypt buffer.
2009/03/20 15:24:04:156 Information
2009/03/20 15:24:09:031 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: EXCH=ISA INFO, ICOOK=0x7F929B126DA22A86, RCOOK=0x72D53A4C55B602BD, MSGID=0x340D45A3, SIZE=84
2009/03/20 15:24:09:031 Information 216.228.186.4 Sending dead peer detection request.
2009/03/20 15:24:09:156 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP RECV: EXCH=ISA INFO, ICOOK=0x7F929B126DA22A86, RCOOK=0x72D53A4C55B602BD, MSGID=0x63C6BC53, SIZE=168
2009/03/20 15:24:09:156 Warning 216.228.186.4 Received an unencrypted packet but encryption keys have already been established.
2009/03/20 15:24:09:156 Error 216.228.186.4 Failed to decrypt buffer.
2009/03/20 15:24:09:156 Information
2009/03/20 15:24:13:531 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:24:14:031 Information 216.228.186.4 ISAKMP SEND: NAT KEEP ALIVE
2009/03/20 15:24:14:031 Information
We Can't Be Serious All The Time
I found a few amusing pictures to share with you, mostly several years old.
The Boise are seems to have a lot of rather odd street names. Just southwest of the Boise limits there are such odd street names as Easyjet and Brandi's Jewels. Out along the road that leads to Jordan Valley is this memorable street name:
Click to enlarge
I think this must have been in Reno--for when pigs fly!
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I suspect that this sign is even more disturbing at night, when the neon lights up:
Click to enlarge
UPDATE: A reader tells me the origin of Easyjet and Brandi's Jewels:Easyjet and Brandi's Jewels are, or were, race horses from the Boise area. My folks raised quarterhorses and bred one of their horses to EasyJet. EasyJet's prime time would have been in the 70's or early 80's I think. My folks horse had a couple babies that did fairly well in the racing environment.
And that fits with the age of this subdivision, which looks to be 1980s.
Companies Moving To Boise Area
The March 18, 2009 Idaho Statesman mentioned that a couple of companies were moving into the area:
Technology Alignment does IP router sort of stuff, so I immediately contacted them. Right now, they are looking to hire salespeople--to get enough revenue stream to hire more engineers--but there might be some hope for the future. In the meantime, technology salespeople might want to contact them.
Lack of Reaction
I put together what I thought was a very thoughtful and complete discussion of the current crisis--one that even caused my very liberal Obama voting brother-in-law to admit that Democrats were at least as responsible for this disaster as Republicans, mailed it off to the most important bloggers that I knew--and no one linked to it!
What Went Wrong
My father used to keep old newspapers (truly enormous numbers of them) because he said that, "Newspapers are the first draft of history." It's true. Regular readers of my blog have seen a number of items over the last year or so about the economic disaster that we are now suffering. I had occasion to write up a summary of the disaster for a relative.
Think of this as the second draft of history.
What caused the economic disaster that we are now facing? While there are a number of factors, the core of the disaster was the expansion of the subprime mortgage market. Lenders, left to their own devices, tend not to make highly risky loans. These highly risky loans are called subprime mortgages (because the borrowers are below what the lender considers optimum credit rating). These loans are to people with poor or no credit history, or who cannot document their earnings (you know, like with paycheck stubs or statements from their business's accountant).
In 1977, something called the Community Reinvestment Act was passed by Congress to deal with the claim of "redlining"--that lenders were reluctant to lend money in minority neighborhoods. It wasn't that the lenders were racists; they looked at the value of homes in the poorest neighborhoods and were reluctant to take risks. The CRA, however, had little in the way of teeth.
In 1992, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston released a study that claimed that there was lending discrimination against blacks going on, because they compared lending rates for whites and blacks with equivalent incomes, and found that blacks were less likely to get loans. But other economists have since pointed out that whites and blacks with equivalent incomes have very different net worths. Whites with the same income tend to have much higher net worth than blacks at that level.
Throughout the 1990s, ACORN pressured banks throughout the Chicago area to get more lending to subprime borrowers. As Stanley Kurtz's October 7, 2008 National Review Online article explains:Critics of the notion that CRA had a major impact on the subprime crisis ask how a law passed in 1977 could have caused a crisis in 2008? The answer has a lot to do with ACORN — and the critical years of 1990-1995. While the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act did call on banks to increase lending in poor and minority neighborhoods, its exact requirements were vague, and therefore open to a good deal of regulatory interpretation. Banks merger or expansion plans were rarely held up under CRA until the late 1980s, when ACORN perfected its technique of filing CRA complaints in tandem with the sort of intimidation tactics perfected by that original “community organizer” (and Obama idol), Saul Alinsky.
The Clinton Administration's efforts to expand lending to blacks and Hispanics, while well intentioned, required more subprime mortgage lending. The most effective way to do this was to change Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's underwriting rules. This September 22, 2008 Investor's Business Daily editorial explains:
At first, ACORN’s anti-bank actions were relatively few in number. However, under a provision of the 1989 savings and loan bailout pushed by liberal Democratic legislators, like Massachusetts Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy, lenders were required to compile public records of mortgage applicants by race, gender, and income. Although the statistics produced by these studies were presented in highly misleading ways, groups like ACORN were able to use them to embarrass banks into lowering credit standards. At the same time, a wave of banking mergers in the early 1990's provided an opening for ACORN to use CRA to force lending changes. Any merger could be blocked under CRA, and once ACORN began systematically filing protests over minority lending, a formerly toothless set of regulations began to bite.
ACORN’s efforts to undermine credit standards in the late 1980s taught it a valuable lesson. However much pressure ACORN put on banks to lower credit standards, tough requirements in the “secondary market” run by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac served as a barrier to change. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy up mortgages en masse, bundle them, and sell them to investors on the world market. Back then, Fannie and Freddie refused to buy loans that failed to meet high credit standards. If, for example, a local bank buckled to ACORN pressure and agreed to offer poor or minority applicants a 5-percent down-payment rate, instead of the normal 10-20 percent, Fannie and Freddie would refuse to buy up those mortgages. That would leave all the risk of these shaky loans with the local bank. So again and again, local banks would tell ACORN that, because of standards imposed by Fannie and Freddie, they could lower their credit standards by only a little.
These two GSEs (government sponsored enterprises), because they buy a big chunk of privately originated mortgages, are in a position to substantially change the risk equation. If Bank of America knows that a $720,000 mortgage to a guy making $14,000 a year is so risky that Fannie Mae isn't going to buy this mortgage, then they have to carry the risk on this paper--and they won't do very many such mortgages. If they know that Fannie Mae likely will buy it, why not? They make some money on the loan origination, they earn interest as long as they carry the paper--and then they can sell it to Fannie Mae. And the change in underwriting rules did change the equation--dramatically.
There were warnings at the time. This September 30, 1999 New York Times article about the Clinton Administration's leaning on Fannie Mae tells us what happened, and included a very prescient warning:
So now, all sorts of people were able to get mortgages that could not do so before. Some estimates are that five million illegal aliens obtained mortgages. This January 12, 2006 KSFN-TV report discusses how illegal aliens were now getting mortgages--and lenders were jumping at the chance. And how likely is that you will make your payments if you get arrested and deported--or even just the economy slows down, and your job disappears? Even lawful residents can get hit by this, but an illegal alien is even more likely to flake out on mortgage under those conditions.
What happens when you dramatically expand the number of people buying homes? It drives up prices. What happens prices of houses start rising? Why, people start speculating--and not millionaires who can afford to make six mortgages while a house sits vacant, but people who were told that they could buy a house, wait three months, and resell it for $40,000 more. Some did, at the start of this tulip bulb mania. And those at the end discovered what happens when the boom slows even a little--you end up a with a house you paid too much for, and that you can't sell for what you paid, and you can't rent it for enough to cover the mortgage.
The separation of loan origination from long-term loan servicing created an incentive to make a lot of loans--then sell them to someone else while the potato was still hot. Golden West S&L, for example, was sold by Herbert and Marion Sandler to Wachovia for $24.2 billion just as the bubble was hitting its peak. (The details are in this May 9, 2006 San Francisco Chronicle article.) They then took their $2.4 billion that they personal received, and used it to fund Democratic activities.
There were some other things going on here as well. Back about 2000, a clever Chinese grad student named David X. Li came up with a brilliant equation for calculating the risk relationship between a group of mortgages. You see, when mortgages get bought and sold on Wall Street, they don't buy and sell one mortgage. They bundle up a bunch of them in order to spread the risk around. What you end up with are called collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs). This clever equation provided this wonderful method of figuring out the risk that if one of the mortgages failed to perform, what was the risk of others failing? Beautiful formula--based on a limited set of data. So naturally, everyone in the CMO business started using this formula as a way of making the risk acceptable. You can read a lot more about it in the February 23, 2009 Wired.
But that limited set of data didn't include any housing market downturns. Whoops! Guess what happened when the housing market started to cool off? The equation didn't work, especially if many of the houses that those involved were in the same overheated--now supercooled--housing market (such as Los Angeles, Atlanta, or DC). And a lot of those CMOs were suddenly worth a fraction of what some idiot paid for them.
There's plenty of mistakes that were made here, but the core problem was the rapid expansion of the subprime housing mortgage market. And that's got a straightforward cause: the desire to make housing available to people with lousy or non-existent credit histories. After foreclosure, those people have much worse credit histories.
We're all on the hook now. The bad news, we were warned. As I mentioned, that first warning was the September 30, 1999 New York Times article. Second warning: September 11, 2003, again in the New York Times, detailing how Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae had manipulated accounting and taken risks. Treasury Secretary Snow said that more supervision was necessary. And who argued against? Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Melvin L. Watt (D-NC). Republicans were for regulation and Democrats were against. Surprised?
Third warning: a November 11, 2003 Wall Street Journal editorial about the housing finance market. White House chief economist N. Gregory Mankiw argued for stronger regulation of Fannie Mae, because of the risks to taxpayers. And who argued against? “Congressman Barney Frank criticized Mr. Mankiw because he is worried about the tiny little matter of safety and soundness rather than ‘concern about housing.’ But as Mr. Mankiw pointed out, most of the federal subsidy for the companies goes to enrich private investors and executives, not poor home-owners.”
The following sentence from that 2003 editorial is especially prescient: “One weakness of democracy is that it tends to ignore problems before they erupt into crises. The risk portfolios of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are a classic example.”
We must understand what went wrong so that we don’t repeat those mistakes. It was not Republican laissez faire that caused this. A Democratic President imposed regulation that ballooned the subprime mortgage market in the interests of making housing affordable. When Bush Administration officials said that more supervision was needed because of the risk, the most liberal Democrats in Congress defended the status quo.
Senator McCain (R-AZ) sponsored corrective legislation in 2005 and 2007—which went nowhere. A bipartisan group of Congressmen, mostly Democrats but with just enough Republicans to prevent a Republican-controlled Congress from passing it, blocked the bill when the alarm bells were ringing, but before the fire was out of control.
We were warned. And those who foolishly defended these policies now control Congress and the White House.
Propane Tank vs. Natural Gas
A reader is considering buying a home in an area where some homes have piped natural gas, and some have liquified propane. He asked me about the downside of propane, and its expense. My response (which I suspect that others might find useful) is below.
I'm not persuaded that propane is that much different in price than natural gas. You can't really compare the price very usefully; one is sold in cubic feet at a particular pressure; the other is sold by the gallon. Even more complex is that LP gas has more energy than natural gas. Our backup generation produces six kilowatts on natural gas, and seven kilowatts on LP gas.
In Boise, we had a 2755 square foot house, two story (which is very wasteful, because the heat goes upstairs, even when no one is there) and we had only two appliances that used natural gas: the furnace and the water heater. The house was also not as well insulated (R-38 in ceilings and walls). We typically spent about $150-$200 a month in winter, and about $40 a month in summer. I would guess that our annual natural gas bill was about $1200-$1400 a year.
Our new house is in a far colder environment. It is also smaller (2304 sq. ft.), and better insulated (R-50 in the ceiling, R-38 in the walls, and insulation under the floor). We also have, in addition to a furnace and water heater, a propane cooktop, dryer, backup generator and barbecue powered by the propane--and the backup generator and barbecue run a lot. (We have unreliable electric power here, and the generator runs for fifteen minutes every week to keep the battery charged and everything lubricated and in working order.) We fill the tank about twice a year, typically spending about $1000 to $1200 to do so each time, so not quite twice what we were spending in Boise--and operating a lot more appliances.
On the plus side: if all heck broke loose, we could go a couple of months in winter and four or five months in summer without outside utilities. (We would be running the backup generator to keep the furnace fan, well pump, and kitchen electrical systems operating.)
If you own the tank, you can normally get it filled by any available propane vendor, which gives you some flexibility. If you rent the tank (as we do), you normally can only get it filled by the tank's owner.
Remote Control Snowplow
A reader sent me this "suggestion" for solving my snowplow issues:Evatech's latest and greatest R/C "hybrid" mower can be manned from up to 2,000 feet away as it takes on 70-degree slopes at 8MPH. Its track system not only creates stability—it's perfect for winter traction as you can plow your driveway with a shovel attachment. Keep in mind, since the 22T can both cut grass and plow snow, you're really only paying about $6,000 per function—that's like half the listed price!
Sorry, for that price, it needs an unexploded bomb handler and remote control M1A attachment, too!
I Was Lying Awake At Night Worrying About This
Arms and the Law pointed me to this very important study, just released:Providing very young children with swimming lessons appears to have a protective effect against drowning....
Really! I never would have guessed that teaching young children to swim would make them less likely to drown. I just assumed that it increased the risk.
What Next? Mexican Mafia Partnering With DEA?
The Census Bureau has a new "partner" to assist them. Yes--the organization notable for filing vast numbers of clearly false voter registration cards! From March 17, 2009 Fox News:
I would compare this to putting the fox in charge of the henhouse, except the farmer has a pretty good idea how many hens he had when he started.
DLA Reverses Brass Mutilation Policy
It appears to have been some sort of bureaucratic screwup, and according to this report, has been reversed:
Good. My wife has next week off. Not a good week to overthrow the government!
- Enter the new administration. Since Demil B category items had been given a broad, general label as “national security sensitive” someone above the DRMS (likely in the DLA) reviewed the policy and immediately went with a CYA policy and yanked all exemptions. No thoughts or considerations were given to the implications of this policy change, but this directive was issued to DOD Surplus effective immediately last week.
- [smelly stuff] storm blows up as a result. In particular, the letters, phone calls, and emails to our legislators, the media, and anyone else who would listen caused this policy to be review post haste.
- As of this morning our company was informed that expended munitions brass will now be reclassified as Demil Q –– which requires no mutilation unless sold to a foreign country.
Mexico's Drug Cartels & Their Weapons
I'm pleased to see that this March 15, 2009 Los Angeles Times article admits that the escalation of the fight in Mexico involves weapons that aren't coming from U.S. gun stores:It was a brazen assault, not just because it targeted the city's police station, but for the choice of weapon: grenades.
Now, the article does say that more conventional weapons are coming in from the U.S., but it is pretty clear what the real danger is:
The Feb. 21 attack on police headquarters in coastal Zihuatanejo, which injured four people, fit a disturbing trend of Mexico's drug wars. Traffickers have escalated their arms race, acquiring military-grade weapons, including hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets with firepower far beyond the assault rifles and pistols that have dominated their arsenals.
Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semiauto- matic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.
The proliferation of heavier armaments points to a menacing new stage in the Mexican government's 2-year-old war against drug organizations, which are evolving into a more militarized force prepared to take on Mexican army troops, deployed by the thousands, as well as to attack each other.
These groups appear to be taking advantage of a robust global black market and porous borders, especially between Mexico and Guatemala. Some of the weapons are left over from the wars that the United States helped fight in Central America, U.S. officials said.Grenades or military-grade weapons have been reported in at least 10 Mexican states during the last six months, used against police headquarters, city halls, a U.S. consulate, TV stations and senior Mexican officials. In a three-week period ended March 6, five grenade attacks were launched on police patrols and stations and the home of a commander in the south-central state of Michoacan. Other such attacks occurred in five other states during the same period.
It would be silly to claim that there are no weapons being smuggled into Mexico from the U.S. I don't doubt this at all. But the great escalation involves weapons that aren't even legal to sell in the U.S.--like grenades!
At least one grenade attack north of the border, at a Texas nightclub frequented by U.S. police officers, has been tied to Mexican traffickers.
How many weapons have been smuggled into Mexico from Central America is not known, and the military-grade munitions are still a small fraction of the larger arsenal in the hands of narcotics traffickers. Mexican officials continue to push Washington to stem the well-documented flow of conventional weapons from the United States, as Congress holds hearings on the role those smuggled guns play in arming Mexican drug cartels.
If Mexico has a problem with "undocumented weapons" (no weapon is truly illegal) entering Mexico, then they can do what we need to do: make this into a real border, where we stop smuggling and unlawful entry. Fewer illegal drugs moving north means less money for the drug cartels to use to buy weapons moving south. Having a real border is a win-win situation.
Thanks to Arms and the Law for bringing this to my attention.
Coyotes
This March 15, 2009 New York Times article must confirm all those views of New Yorkers about flyover country satirized in this classic, 1976 New Yorker cover:
GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo. — Jay Stewart lumbered down the driveway, past the Mercedes and away from the home overlooking Westlands Park near the southern edge of Denver.
I occasionally coyotes on my land. I'm not afraid of them, but then again, I usually carry a gun for this sort of problem, and I don't have any pets outside or small children:
The article of course has to interview some bunny huggers:
Yeah, I'm sure Matthew Scheper was "exaggerating."
Bonhoeffer: Man of Grace
My wife and I watched this last night. If you don't know who Dietrich Bonhoeffer is--well, you should. He was a prominent Protestant theologian who was executed by the Nazis a few weeks before the end of the war for his involvement with the von Stauffenberg plot against Hitler.
This is an important story--but I confess that this film left much to be desired. First of all, it was a bit choppy--seeming to jump from scene to scene with insufficient explanation.
Secondly, nearly every actor in it is German, speaking English--and some of them, I fear, didn't do a great job because they were acting in a language not their own. The temptation to use an entirely German cast was strong, but I think the production suffered for it.
Third, the script left far too much unexplained. I didn't have a problem with it, because I have read extensively about the various plots against Hitler. I knew, for example, that Admiral Canaris, who head the Naval Intelligence Service, provided documents for a number of Jews that let them leave Germany with papers that claimed that they were German spies. (The irony!) But if you don't know a good bit about the internal opposition to Hitler within the military and intelligence services, there will be much that will be mystifying.
Still, it is an inspiring story, one that survives even the weaknesses of this production. It is also an important and sobering lesson for anyone who thinks that they may need to take action against a totalitarian government: be prepared to die, because decency lacks survival value against monsters.
The other lesson is that you can't spend too much winning the battle against monsters through the electoral process. If it comes to warfare, the costs will be far higher than any amount of money or time.
Spring Is Coming!
I can see it! It rained heavily and almost continuously today, but then, this!
Click to enlarge
And instead of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, there's a not quite leprechaun green transformer box.
Global Cooling
From March 16, 2009 WISN Milwaukee:The climate is known to be variable and, in recent years, more scientific thought and research has been focused on the global temperature and how humanity might be influencing it.
However, a new study by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee could turn the climate change world upside down.
Scientists at the university used a math application known as synchronized chaos and applied it to climate data taken over the past 100 years."
Imagine that you have four synchronized swimmers and they are not holding hands and they do their program and everything is fine; now, if they begin to hold hands and hold hands tightly, most likely a slight error will destroy the synchronization. Well, we applied the same analogy to climate," researcher Dr. Anastasios Tsonis said.
Scientists said that the air and ocean systems of the earth are now showing signs of synchronizing with each other.
Eventually, the systems begin to couple and the synchronous state is destroyed, leading to a climate shift."
In climate, when this happens, the climate state changes. You go from a cooling regime to a warming regime or a warming regime to a cooling regime. This way we were able to explain all the fluctuations in the global temperature trend in the past century," Tsonis said. "The research team has found the warming trend of the past 30 years has stopped and in fact global temperatures have leveled off since 2001.
"The most recent climate shift probably occurred at about the year 2000.Now the question is how has warming slowed and how much influence does human activity have?"
But if we don't understand what is natural, I don't think we can say much about what the humans are doing. So our interest is to understand -- first the natural variability of climate -- and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural," Tsonis said.
Tsonis said he thinks the current trend of steady or even cooling earth temps may last a couple of decades or until the next climate shift occurs.
Ammunition Shortage Everywhere
This account is from the March 14, 2009 Santa Rosa (Cal.) Press-Democrat:Local sportsmen and gun enthusiasts looking for ammunition are coming up empty handed, as a national ammunition shortage leaves gun barrels and shop shelves empty.
"Exploding"? Well, that explains the shortage!
Even police departments are coming up short:
Rob was my concealed weapons instructor, by the way.
Troubling News Story
In the March 16, 2009 Idaho Statesman:
This doesn't happen a lot in Boise, but it does happen. What makes this worrisome:
Now, there's a bit more to the story which means that it is possible that Hobbs was engaged in a lawful act of self-defense:
What's troubling is that someone with the same name as Hobbs shows up in the criminal records here in Ada County with misdemeanor convictions including unlawful entry, and withheld judgments (which I think is something like a suspended sentence) for resisting a police officer, drug paraphernalia possession and concealed carry without a license.
Like most states, Idaho's statute a list of misdemeanors that will prevent you from obtaining a concealed carry permit for several years. The theory is that if you made one mistake, and manage to stay out of trouble thereafter, they won't hold it against you. I think there is merit to this--but I have been concerned since 2003 that the disqualifying misdemeanor list is a bit short, and may need some correcting.
Don't misunderstand; the number of people with concealed carry permits who commit a felony is astonishingly small--and often, those felonies don't even involve violence or guns. But they do happen. Idaho's law, like many of the earlier adopters of shall-issue concealed weapon permit laws, was less restrictive concerning previous misdemeanor convictions than the laws adopted in the mid-1990s and later. If it needs a little fine tuning at the edges, I would not be surprised.
UPDATE: This morning's Idaho Statesman story about this reports that Hobbs was awaiting trial on battery charges. Idaho Code 18-3302(m) provides that if you are awaiting trial on a disqualifying crime (as is any misdemeanor crime of violence, like battery), you are ineligible. So I called up the reporter, and asked him about this. He indicated that Ada County Sheriff's Department staff thought that they couldn't revoke Hobbs' permit because his previous misdemeanor convictions were too far back. Well, yes, but a current charge was enough to revoke.
The DLA Rule Change: Real Or Rumor?
I mentioned this early this morning. Is it real? Or rumor? This DLA document would seem to indicate that mutilation is not required (see page S2C1-61). Here are current auctions that specifically say that mutilation is not required. And they have changed since I posted this originally so that they now say:ALL SCRAP UNDER THIS CONTRACT REQUIRES MUTILATION BY THE BUYER PRIOR TO REMOVAL IF ALLOWED BY THE INSTALLATION OR MUTILATION MUST BE WITNESSED AND CERTIFIED BY DOD SURPLUS PERSONNEL AT ANOTHER FACILITY.
On the other hand, over at The Shootist they reproduce an email that would seem to suggest that it's real:Here are copies of two letters sent to Georgia Arms just Thursday evening--effectively cancelling a contract he had to purchase 30,000 pounds of expended military brass in .223, 7.62mm, and .50 caliber:
I really don't know. Perhaps someone, somewhere, misread a requirement about a mixed metal load, and thought that because some types of scrap metal requires mutilation, that all of it did.
Dear Valued Customer:
Please take a moment to note important changes set forth by the Defense Logistics Agency:
Recently it has been determined that fired munitions of all calibers, shapes and sizes have been designated to be Demil code B. As a result and in conjunction with DLA's current Demil code B policy, this notice will serve as official notification which requires Scrap Venture (SV) to implement mutilation as a condition of sale for all sales of fired munitions effective immediately. This notice also requires SV to immediately cease delivery of any fired munitions that have been recently sold or on active term contracts, unless the material has been mutilated prior to sale or SV personnel can attest to the mutilation after delivery. A certificate of destruction is required in either case.
Thank you,
DOD Surplus
15051 N Kierland Blvd # 300
Scottsdale, AZ 85254
March 12, 2009
Larry Haynie
Georgia Arms
PO Box 238
Villa Rica, GA 30180
Re: Event 7084-6200:
Dear Larry Haynie,
Effective immediately DOD Surplus, LLC, will be implementing new requirements for mutilation of fired shell casings. The new DRMS requirement calls for DOD Surplus personnel to witness the mutilation of the property and sign the Certificate of Destruction. Mutilation of the property can be done at the DRMO, if permitted by the Government, or it may be mutilated at a site chosen by the buyer. Mutilation means that the property will be destroyed to the extent prevents its reuse or reconstruction. DOD Surplus personnel will determine when property has been sufficiently mutilated to meet the requirements of the Government.
If you do not agree with the new conditions of your spot sale, please sign the appropriate box provided below stating that you do not agree to the new terms and would like to cancel your purchase effective immediately. If you do agree to the new terms please sign in the appropriate box provided below to acknowledge your understanding and agreement with the new requirements relating to your purchase. Fax the signed document back to (480) 367-1450, emailed responses are not acceptable.
Please respond to this request no later than close of business Monday, March 16th, 2009.
Sincerely,
Government Liquidation.
The Significance of the DLA Rule Change
I have had a reader or two ask what is the significance of this new DLA policy prohibiting sale of fired brass. In combination with the Obama Administration's clear-cut goal of disarming Americans, I would say that it may be comparable to the arms and gunpowder embargo imposed by the Crown on the American colonies after the Boston Tea Party.
Unlike laws that were ostensibly aimed at disarming criminals (such as the Brady Law), or paternalistic attempts where the goal was to disarm law-abiding Americans because we were too stupid to know what was in our own best interest--this looks like the Obama Administration is seriously worried about the peasants getting uppity. Since one of Obama's associates was part of an organization that at one point was seriously discussing how they were going to have to "eliminate" 25 million Americans who couldn't be re-educated, this is quite worrisome.
Gitmo Prisoners No Longer "Enemy Combatants"
The Obama Administration is saying that the Gitmo prisoners are no longer "unlawful combatants"--but the actual change in position is so small that it is just symbolism. From the March 13, 2009 New York Times:The Obama administration said Friday that it would abandon the Bush administration’s term “enemy combatant” as it argues in court for the continued detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in a move that seemed intended to symbolically separate the new administration from Bush detention policies.
For all those people who were just furious at the Bush Administration for its contempt for civil liberties and international law, and voted Democratic because of it. What really changed? A label. Because the Obama Administration knows that those remaining are dangerous, bad people.
Confronting the Chief Justice
I always find myself wondering how much to trust World Net Daily. No other news source seems to be reporting what should be a real big news story:...
UPDATE: Here's confirmation that the confrontation took place, but it doesn't put Taitz in quite such a positive light:
Is Winter Almost Over?
I like to think so. Last Monday we had this beautiful rainbow.
Click to enlarge
But we still have these amazing icicles on the north side of the house.
Click to enlarge
We've got quite a storm going out there right now, but it's rain, not snow.
