When I do my research for posting, I need absolute silence. If my Conures yak too much, they end up in the bedroom. I have re-acquired my taste for Glenn Beck so I have spent my mornings tuned into him. Like I said, I can’t stand distraction, so I can’t concentrate on my research. I’ll try to do some research for something to blog after I walk down the street and pick up some things.

That was a lot for me. Read and enjoy.

This was a preventable tragedy. Concealed Carry Permits Fire up Debate Over Workplace Shootings

Javelle distinguished himself that day by trying to delay and disarm the gunman, 42-year-old Michael McDermott, before being killed. But Javelle might have saved his own life and at least four others if the concealed handgun permit he held in New Hampshire had allowed him to carry a weapon on his job in neighboring Massachusetts, according to one of Javelle’s friends and numerous firearms policy experts.

If this citizen had been legally armed, the incident would have stopped, before as many people died as there was.

Let me say this again: this was preventable. If the shooter was confronted by a legally armed citizen ready to stop this rampaging madman, less people would have died. Either the madman would have laid down his weapons and surrendered, or he would have been shot by the legally armed citizen.

This is a classic case that 911 is a government sponsored Dial-A-Prayer. Don’t let this happen to you. If you are of the mind that you will do anything necessary to protect yourself and your family, I suggest you explore this option. It is better to have and not need than to need and not have.

There ain’t no such thing folks. Candidates Confused on Gun Ban show that the Democratic candidates are trying to blow smoke up your butt.

The bans have now been in effect for almost a decade, without any evidence of any benefits. Increased crime is not the biggest danger arising from not extending the law. Politicians who have claimed such dire consequence from these mislabeled “assault weapons” have put their reputations on the line. If the extension fails, a year after that voters will wonder what all the hysteria was about.

I have already brought this up here. But it’s time to go over it again.

The Assault Weapons law banned a specific list of “evil looking” weapons by manufacturer and model number, and any weapon that has certain cosmetic features, such as a separate handgrip or a bayonet lug. All manufacturers had to do is change one cosmetic feature and their weapons were legal again. When a law can be as easily circumvented as this one is, it is a classic example of bad lawmaking. This law was passed to make everybody look good for having passed such a law, but it really does nothing.

Stuff like this makes me sick.

I am no conspiracy nut, but I found this interesting: Some Relevant Facts About the JFK Assassination.

I read a book some years ago, called Mortal Error in which only the ballistic forensic evidence is examined. The book is out of print, so let me summarize the findings:

• First shot: By Oswald. It misses, hits a curb and the bullet fragments, one part of which hits JFK. (“I’m hit” he says)
• Second Shot: By Oswald. It hits the President in the back, causing a fatal wound. He wouldn’t have died right away, but it was fatal.
• Third Shot: By a Secret Service Agent in the car behind the President. This was the head shot that sealed JFK’s fate.

In the book, the shot by the Agent was deemed accidental, since no Agent could even be considered to have done this on purpose. Again, the book only looks at the ballistic evidence, it doesn’t get into why the shots were fired, only where and when.

With this information out, it re-opens some questions as to the motivations of the shooters, or LBJ was the luckiest SOB on the planet.

I’ll leave it up to you.

Well, it looks like somebody is taking action on this. Congress Targets the Patriot Act and it looks like they are tightening it up. I have already spoken on this, here and here.

The Craig-Durbin act, dubbed Security and Freedom Ensured (SAFE), focuses on four issues: wiretaps, access to library records, surveillance of citizens and multi-jurisdictional warrants.

One of the things that I like to collect is the little witticisms that put essential truths of life into few words. Here are a couple on this subject:

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal. Well meaning but without understanding. – Justice Louis Brandeis

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined. — Patrick Henry

These comments seems to be spot on concerning the Patriot Act. I’ll let their words stand by themselves, because I doubt I can say anything as profound as these men.

I thought it was time for me to weigh in on this again. Same-Sex Ruling Causes Democratic ‘Heartburn,’ Says Political Analyst is going to definitely cause some tap-dancing to be done for the Democrats. I have already spoken on this subject here.

“Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to gay marriage. Democrats, many of whom are opposed to gay marriage, [still] favor [same-sex] civil unions, and most Americans don’t see the difference between the two,” Sabato added.

According to Sabato, the eventual Democratic presidential nominee will have to try and parse the difference between support of homosexual civil unions and the more comprehensive issue of same-sex marriage. The Democratic candidate will also have to balance the support of homosexual lobbying groups with the views of the general electorate, Sabato predicted.

This decision has opened a rather large can of worms for every state across the nation. The other 49 states will now have to make the decision to support or deny recognition of Massachusetts gay marriage licenses. This is a polarizing issue for the American people. It’s not a subject for the single issue voter, but it is enough to push an undecided voter one way or the other. And while you can’t necessarily say the Republicans win, but the Democrats will lose for sure.

I seem to have developed a weird side-effect of my Abilify. I keep waking up throughout the night. Before I started this drug, I would wake up once about 2:30 am, roll over and go back to sleep. Now I seem to wake up every 30-45 minutes and not fully fall back to sleep.

I’m still getting up at 8:40 and feeling okay (other than my normal side-effects) but this sleep thing is really starting to get me upset. I like to sleep. It gives me a break from all of the obsessive thinking I do about all of the problems in my life.

Let me clarify what obsessive thinking is. When you are presented with a problem, you define the problem, think about some general possibilities for a solution, then work within the general solutions to make the specific solution that addresses the problem you defined. Then you go out and fix the problem. You do a lot of this process unconsciously.*

Well, I get stuck in the “define the problem” stage. I am up to my eyeballs in this problem and all I can do is spin around in circles like a dog chasing its tail. This is where I’m in the closet crying and banging my head on the wall. I spend a lot of the time in my closet.

*It was part of my Navy training as an Electronics Technician to be a problem solver. I carried that system throughout my life and it has always served me well. Before I was sick, I used to be the “go-to” guy when tough problems came up. I usually solved the problem with a subtle, inventive solution. At work.

At home I used the brute force approach and upset my wife to no end. She knows how inventive I can be, especially at work, but when it comes to personal problems I act like a bull. Head down and charge forward. “If brute force doesn’t work, you’re not using enough” and all that.

I don’t know what to do. I’ve gone through this at a low level of Abilify (10mg/day). Now I just started 15mg/day and I am wondering if this sleep problem will get better or worse. Maybe it will stabilize in a week or two, I don’t know. I’m stuck with it for at least another 3 weeks.

Here is a wonderful example that the Democrat party truly is the party of diversity. Why Dems borked Estrada, in their own words.

For those who don’t remember, when the 1964 Civil Rights Act was being voted on in the Congress, Democrats were against the bill. The party of diversity, the party the Blacks suck up to, wanted to keep them in their place. Never forget that.

November 7, 2001/To: Senator Durbin
“…They also identified Miguel Estrada (D.C. Circuit) as especially dangerous, because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment. They want to hold Estrada off as long as possible. [emphasis mine]”

There is a major difference between the Conservative and Liberal appointees that are or have been filibustered. Liberal judges look to furthering Liberal agendas that can’t pass the legislature. Conservative judges look to interpreting the law and nothing more. Personally, I like judges that interpret the law as it stands instead of drawing on their own views to impose on the rest of us.

This article, Dems Tout Second Amendment, but Voting Records Show Hostility shows the contempt Liberals have for citizens.

Here are a couple of facts for your consumption:

• There are bad people that want to do bad things to you and your family.
• The police have no obligation to protect you.
• Armed citizens prevent 2,500,000 crimes a year.

Now, the leaders of the anti-gun movement aren’t out to get rid of guns, they are just against you having guns. They have armed guards wherever they go. They are important enough to need firearms for protection, but you aren’t. Don’t you find that hypocritical?

It shows that liberals don’t trust you. The liberal reporters try to feed you your opinion by shaving news pieces. Liberal politicians don’t trust you to vote for them. Liberal anti-gunners don’t trust you with the power to protect yourself. And so on, ad nauseam. They try to sway you by appealing to your emotions and ignoring facts.

Conservatives, on the other hand, appeal to you by presenting you facts and then trust you to make the decision that fits you by yourself.

Who would you rather trust?

I must be more careful about who I watch on the Sunday morning news shows. General Wes Clark was on MTP this morning, and I spent a good part of the show yelling at the TV. There was so much garbage coming out of his mouth I’m surprised it didn’t pile up to his chin.

He made a big deal of WMD, again. Let’s revisit that subject and see why the democrats are dead wrong on this issue.

There are four facts in evidence:

• Saddam had chemical weapons at one time.
• Saddam had used said chemical weapons.
• Communication intercepts indicated that permission was granted to field commanders to use chemical weapons.
• There exists no evidence that he got rid of any of his WMD.

Given the above facts, taking the position that Saddam did not have WMD would have gone beyond stupid, it would have been suicidal. When you are talking about the lives of up to 50,000 American citizens, how can you not take the position that he continues to have WMD and is willing to use them, or give it to people who are willing to use them against us?

There was several reasons we took on Iraq. WMD made it a #1 priority. It was easy to take out. It is the central Arab state. By setting up a free democracy in Iraq, we start knocking over a long line of dominoes that will cause a large scale positive change in all of the Arab states. We are seeing that change even today. This change will not happen overnight, it may have a few speed bumps, but it will become a large force in almost no time.

Clark also accused the President of not having a plan. You need to keep your plans close to your chest. Talking about what you want to do and how you’re going to do it will give the enemy the information they need to defeat you. So apparently not having a plan is good. That means we are keeping the enemy off balance and guessing at us and our plans. The strategic plan is working. We have our tactical objectives, but there’s a few bumps along the way.

If we do not defeat the Baathists, I give the new democracy a maximum of six months. Just because the US is no longer in Iraq does not mean the violence will end. In fact, it will increase until the new government becomes unstable, whereupon Saddam will surface, the Baathists will rise behind him and he will retake control of the country. The people who are in the uprising are all united, not against the US, but for Saddam to return to power.

Bookmark this entry and look at it in a year to see if my prediction is right or not.

I’m doing some heavy duty maintenance on my computer, so I probably won’t post again until Monday afternoon or so. I have to wipe my primary drive and reinstall everything. [sarcasm] I am so looking forward to this. [/sarcasm]

I had two references to Babylon 5 tonight. There was a reference to “doing the right thing for the right/wrong reasons” on Joan of Arcadia, then Jerry Doyle (who played Garibaldi) had a small part on JAG.

I’ve been thinking about talking on this very issue for a while, and this kind of cemented it for me.

Conservatives control both Congress and the White House because they started doing the right things for the right reasons. So far, this has paid off handsomely. But there are several crises that face the government and it is becoming easy to do the right thing for the wrong reasons. They have done very well in this post 9/11 world, but I (and all of us) have a personal stake in making sure they continue on the correct path.

This is all about doing the right thing for the right reasons. Babylon 5 is a great show for two reasons. The direction of the show was determined before the show was shot and it addresses such philosophical subjects. Every episode is great, and every episode ties into the bigger story. Usually in a series, the first 2-3 seasons suck as the writers, cast and crew try to find their identity and positions in how things work. Not so here. The producer wrote the show as one big epic story and used the individual episodes to fill in everything. At the end of the series, everything was sewn up nice and tidy. There was one exception, a hook to get you interested in the spin-off that didn’t go very far. It lacked the vision of the original series.

Here’s the bare bones setup: There are three sides, the Shadows (old race bad guys, want chaos and war in the sector), the Vorlons (old race neutrals, but lending help to the good guys) and the “young” races, Earth included. There needs to be one leader for the young races war effort, and Delenn volunteers. Before the Vorlons approve her, she must face their Inquisitor. It turns out his job is to find out why she wants the job. So the Inquisitor tries his best to break her, to determine her motivations. It is imperative to the Vorlons that she do the right thing for the right reasons. To do the right thing, but for corrupt reasons would corrupt and destroy any hope of the good guys defeating the bad guys, because the bad guys could use the corrupt reasons against them.

It turns out Delenn is doing the right thing for the right reasons. She believes she is in a position to do the most good, she is qualified and (most importantly) she is not in it for personal glory. If she falls, someone will take her place and continue on the fight.

Before you volunteer or start a project, examine yourself and determine your motivations. Make sure you are doing this for the right reasons. Once you know that, you can either continue with the project or beg off. I promise you will feel a lot better making decisions after introspection rather than before.

I can’t tell you how important it is to do the right thing for the right reasons. Let’s say you volunteer for Habitats for Humanity. A good and noble cause. But are you doing it to help, or are you in it to assuage your own guilt over something? Are you doing it for face time for the cameras, or so you can add this to your resume? Both of my examples are right thing/wrong reasons. In both of these instances, something will come back and bite you over it. It might take years, you might forget all about it, but you will get a chunk taken out of your behind over it, I promise you.

Every time you get bit by something for no apparent reason, that’s what you get for doing something for the wrong reasons.

Take this advice to heart and you will go far.

This article, Local News, Shameful Tactics, shows everything that’s wrong with “sweeps week.”

If I was a watcher of this station, I would have immediately written them a letter telling them I would never watch their station ever again. I would determine what local merchants were advertising on their station and write them as well, advising them to pull all advertising. In this case, the station was WABC, which is directly owned by the network, so sending a letter to the network would have been a duplicate effort.

This effort to boost ratings would backfire big time with me, and with permanent consequences. I can’t tell you how enraged I am over this. I am glad the only ABC I watch is Monday Night Football, and I am considering stopping that because of this incident.

A major trust was broken. I hope they lose big time over it.

Here is a followup to a comment that I posted here. Allegedly Starved Boy Did Have Eating Disorder makes you wonder who is covering their tracks and why.

There were four children (actually, 3 and an adult, Bruce is 19) who are at deaths door due to malnutrition. You can’t tell me that all of them have the same or a similar eating disorder. What puts the final nail in the coffin is the fact that now all of them are in different care, all of them are gaining weight.

Somebody is trying to cover their ass and it won’t hold water. Sure you got medical records on Bruce, but the treatment stopped seven years ago. Either Bruce was cured or the new parents didn’t want to pay for it. And again, the other three had no records of any such disorder. Why are they underweight?

The most damming evidence of all is the fact that all of them are gaining weight now. There was neglect that the NJ DHS, and there was abuse at the hands of the parents. I think the “parents” should go up for attempted murder. Slowly starving children to death is heinous in the extreme.

Well, well, well. For once I’m on the same side of an issue with Al Gore. Both of us are against the Patriot Act. Well, maybe. If you read the accompanying article, Patriot Act Attacked by Gore Mirrors His Own Plan, you see that he’s being a two faced liberal. My prior comments are here and here.

Good old Al called for a consolidation of federal law-enforcement back in 1993. Of course, now that this has been made public, Al has two choices: Either ignore questions on this subject entirely, or say something on the order of “Sure the plans are similar, but I wouldn’t have done it THAT [Bush’s] way.”

Scripps-Howard News Service reported on Aug. 11, 1993, that Gore had “drafted a proposal to transfer all federal law enforcement activities to the Justice Department. The new ‘Directorate of Central Law Enforcement,’ headed by the attorney general, would oversee the FBI, the DEA, Secret Service, Customs Service, Internal Revenue Service, Postal Service and BATF.'”

So the “oppose Bush” idea is still in effect, even when you agree with him.

If the Democrats hope to win by confusing the hell out of us, it’s working. Oh, wait a minute. That’s right, logic never was a strong component to Liberal arguments. In fact, they regularly contradict themselves. All we have to do to win is point out where they contradicted themselves and they get apoplectic, ruining any chance of winning the undecided vote. Who wants to vote for somebody who not only contradicts themselves, but who foams at the mouth and screams when caught at it?

I think I lost my family. I walked up last week to pick up the wifes prescriptions so I could have them filled, and an argument ensued. The details are unimportant, but during the course of events I was insulted rather severely and unnecessarily. In the few emails that followed, she said things that reinforced the insult.

So, I wrote her an email plainly explaining how she insulted me, as well as several other things that again reinforced the insult. I told her I would not do anything for them until I received an apology. She responded, calling into question my remembrance of the facts and basically called me crazy.

What really hurt was the fact that she picked this fight, no doubt about it. I think I had access to them just because I had the vehicle, so I could be their on-demand transportation. Now that the vehicle is dead, I am worthless, so she drives me away to make sure I won’t bother them any more.

While I have told most of this to my case manager today, (he’ll read the rest of it tonight when he visits here), you are the only people whom I can tell this to.

Thanks for letting me cry on your shoulder, I’ll try not to do it again.

This article, Campus left silences opposing views exposes who we are dealing with.

This is the vocal, radicalized minority who will do anything to push their agenda. These people will continue down their path, ignoring facts (after all, if you ignore facts hard enough, they go away) and becoming more shrill as you contest their positions.

There can be no dialog with these people, because no amount of verifiable facts can get them to change their position. All you can do is convince those who are able to be swayed by the facts that these people are full of garbage. Of course, this will raise cries of “censorship” from the leftists, and all you can do is ignore it.

What you must not do is be silenced by these leftists. They know on some level that their ideology is nothing more than blue smoke and mirrors. They can gather people to their cause only as long as you are not out there refuting their positions with facts and the truth. So they will do anything to silence you. And I do mean anything.

Now go forth and give them no quarter, no mercy. Because they will do the same to you.

Think about the brave men and women who have served this great country for today. Thank them for their sacrifice.

I served in the Navy for 13 years and am still proud to have served.

Cox and Forkum

“It is the soldier, not the reporter,
Who has given us freedom of the press.

“It is the soldier, not the poet,
Who has given us freedom of speech.

“It is the soldier, not the campus organizer,
Who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.

“It is the soldier, who salutes the flag,
Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag,
Who allows the protester to burn the flag.”
–Charles M. Province

Hat tip to American Realpolitik

I visited my medication nurse today, and voiced concerns about the side-effect problems I have alluded to you before. She responded by cutting my Geodon by 2/3rds and starting my on another anti-psychotic, Abilify. While I don’t have schizophrenia, it does have properties useful in treating biploar disorder as well. I hope it addresses the issues so I can get a modicum of normalcy back in my life.

While the urge to blow my brains out is taken care of, the cost in side effects is a serious life-impacting problem that calls into question why I am going through the effort in the first place.

Living with mental illness is like being in recovery. You have to beat it every day, it’s never far from your thoughts and your life is forever changed because of it. The cost if you fail can be catastrophic, not only for yourself but your family as well.

Lying Scholars Fuel Anti-gun Court Verdicts warns of a significant danger to your rights.

The Second Amendment was clearly meant for individuals to own arms for possible use against the Federal government. Reading the papers of our founding fathers makes that very clear. They had just fought a revolution against an oppressive government and they wanted the citizens to be able to do that again, if the day ever came.

The “collective right” about the National Guard is a fallacy. Get the anti-gunner to agree on the fact that the militia/NG is supposed to overthrow the federal government if necessary, then explain to them the president can federalize the NG with the stroke of a pen. Short of widespread revolt in the ranks, there isn’t anything anybody can do about it. That presents a rather thorny conflict of interest. How can you overthrow an oppressive government if you take your orders from it?

It has also been case law since 1856 that the police cannot be held liable for not protecting citizens. That’s not the job of the police. Personal protection has always rested on the person, and the best and the most effective way to do that is by force of arms. 2,500,000 crimes are prevented every year by armed citizens. in 98% of those cases, once the citizen shows he has a firearm, the bad guys run away. You never hear about this in the news because nothing newsworthy happened. Bad guy threatens, good guy pulls out his weapon, bad guy runs away. End of story.

Don’t expect the police to be there in time if someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night. The best the police can do is gather evidence and catch the criminals for the crimes committed. That will be little comfort to you if it includes your murder.

This is not a good sign. Illegal Immigrant Workers Sue Wal-Mart is set to create a very bad precedent.

To give illegal immigrants legal standing is going to open a floodgate of lawsuits. Illegals accept below scale wages because they know they are illegal and can’t complain about substandard wages. This lawsuit (if successful) would give them standing to do such a thing. Businesses take advantage of illegals, that’s a fact. But if the illegals can sue over low wages, the risk becomes too great for the businesses and they would have to start hiring legal workers at legal wages, freezing the illegals out. After all, if illegals can sue over substandard pay, who says they won’t sue over minimum wage? Or the illegals can sue over just being employed by the business in the first place. That way they get money without the backbreaking labor.

Maybe this won’t be such a bad thing after all.

If we want to stop the flood of illegals, we need to freeze them out of any financial gain. No jobs, housing, public assistance. As long as they can get some money of some kind, they will come.

I heard this on Rush’s show Friday, and I even wrote a note to myself about it, then promptly forgot about the note. Well, I found it today and remembered to bring it home.

Walter E. Williams was interviewing Bernard Goldberg. They were discussing Mr. Goldbergs book (whose title escapes me). Search Amazon if you want to.

Anyhow, Mr. Goldberg mentioned three rules for young adults:

• Graduate High School
• Don’t have a child before you turn 20
• Don’t have a child before you get married.

If you followed these simple rules, you had a 94% chance of staying above the poverty line.

If you broke even one of these rules, you had a 79% of ending up below the poverty line. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

Beat these rules into your kids, by whatever means necessary. Their future is too important.

I got mad when I read this, Citizens ‘Mugged’ by the State.

These stories and the others documented in Readers Digest are abominable. It isn’t quite as bad here in the Memphis area. Although in one suburb the land developers are on the city council. They managed to convert a large forested semi-swampland into 2 million square feet of mall and multiple strip malls. Then the suburb promptly lost the tax money when Memphis annexed the area.

These stories are a prime example as to why there should be limited government. The scope of government was properly (and narrowly) defined when the Constitution was drafted, and the state Constitutions were similarly narrowly defined. Then everybody started on that slippery slope into doing more to ‘help’ the people. Now we have stories like this.

I do not have an answer for the solution. Armed rebellion seems a tad too much, but it might become a more popular option as things go from bad to worse. Don’t load up on ammunition just yet, I’ll let you know when it’s time. For the moment, the ballot box is still a better option than the ammunition box.

Sorry for the lack of bloggidy goodness, but this morning was a real problem getting out of bed. I got up 40 minutes late, did minimum morning stuff, then climbed back into bed to cower until the last possible moment to go to work.

Nothing tonight because there was some rule changes to MechWarrior:Dark Age that affect the metagame (certain tactics that take advantage of game mechanics are no longer viable, things like that) and I’ve been thinking about them and how to keep an effective army in the face of these changes. I’ve been asked by the game designers (well, everybody has) to play with these new rules and BattleMasters are supposed to report on the effectiveness of these rules on Monday, so I’ve got to develop an army (actually two) for Sunday so I can give a learned opinion.

Posting will also be spotty for the weekend, but will be back on track on Monday.