Global cooling is killing our sea turtles!

Seriously though, it would be kinda cool to hang out with sea turtles all day.

Complacency. . .

. . .thy name is the Home Alarm System.

"In one event, the homeowner was at work got notification from the alarm company that alarm was going off. He didn't think anything of it and just canceled it. When he got home he saw his home had been broken into," said Friz.

So why even bother having one? Not that I really care about this guy's house per se, it's just that the police get false home alarm calls all the time making the whole home security thing suck for everyone else who actually cares about their property.

Mace: Not always effective against swordsman

A very strange but true tale of one scumbag with a sword attacking two women.

I'm assuming the sword was purchased from an unscrupulous sword dealer at a seedy sword show without a proper background check.

Spree shooter on the loose

The story is still developing, but it looks like some scumbag in St. Louis shot about four people with a "large assault rifle," of course, and is wandering around some where.

I'll post more details when I get them.

Update: FOX News live is saying the shooter is an employee and shot at least three people with an AK 47.

The shooter was on scene for at least a half an hour before the "tactical team" showed up. Looks to me like a standard cordone and wait strategy. The building is ABB Inc. which is a company that has power plants and such, and this building is for the manufacturing of electrical transformers.

The ABB corporate Code of Conduct manual says nothing about being a gun free environment, but it does say that "ABB's ground rules for employees are: work safely and protect yourself, your coworkers. . ." Let's hope some of the employees took this manual seriously and are able and willing to do just that.

Update: Foxs News has reported that three people are dead, the gunman being one of them, and eight wounded. That's about all of the details that are available right now. The gunman is believed to have killed himself. I sat on this update all day in order to gain more detail, but I'm sure we will get those over the weekend.

Message for home invading scumbags:

Don't use a gun against home owners because it will be taken away and used against you!

Sucks that the home owner got shot in the face over it, but he did manage to save his wife and kids. Good job!

John von Brunn dies in prison

The scumbag who shot up the Holocaust Museum and murdered Stephen Johns has died in prison.

Too bad his suffering in there only lasted as long as it did; but it does save the taxpayers from feeding his sorry ass over the next ten years.

Good riddance.

Some of the worlds fastest supercars

To kickstart your imagination this morning.

Check out the video at the end of the Shelby SuperCars Ultimate Aero Twin Turbo hitting 257 mph on what looks like a country road!

Pro-gun media spotlight

Two great articles from the press on firearms that are of note. One from The Washington Times:
EDITORIAL: The forgotten virtue of firearms

The other, covered by Captain of a Crew of One, is from the Richmond Times Dispatch:
A. Barton Hinkle column: Gun-Control Advocates Play Fast and Loose

These are the types of gun related articles that should get read by the masses, and not the factually empty ones that are so common these days. Way to go!

USMC recruiting video

****NSFW - Language****

Found at the Recruiting Advertisement thread at MilitaryPhotos.net.

I detect a pattern

"There has never been a more open process for any legislation,"

"The system worked."

"The reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally."

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman. ."

"I am not a crook."

There seems to be a trend in this country from those who we put in office. I might be going out on a limb here, but I say that they can't be trusted.

You know, with every passing day I'm hoping more and more that some volcano in the middle of the ocean will birth me a new continent so that I can have a place to go to be free.

Everything is cleaner with TIDE!!

Since the attempted attack, the intelligence community has scrubbed the entire Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database of more than 500,000 suspects with the new criteria, adding additional individuals to the U.S. watch lists and no-fly lists as a result. Several visas have also been revoked.

Sweet! That's the way I always get stuff done: by lowering my standards!

"We have a new standard now, which will allow us to capture more people."

As far as I know, nothing in history has ever revealed this timeless tactic to be flawed. It's win win!

As an added bonus, this is the same list that our political creatures would like to use to bar people from buying or owning firearms. This is an exclusive list here folks; all you have to do to get on it is to be one of the lucky 500,000+ people who share the same name as someone else who is on the list! Nothing to it!

So how do you know when you've earned your shot at a surprise trip to a beautiful detention facility (where the bars stay open closed all night) by making it onto that list? Well, when you know, you know. . . . .if you catch my drift. If you're fortunate enough to have a name like Orson Ben Ladden then you have an outstanding chance at landing a years long weekend at a secret resort in some no name third world country where the special treatment never ends!

Don't wait! Go rack up those frequent flyer miles today!

Hey, knock it off over there!!!

Uuum, a little bit too close to home there, sport. Keep the noise down!

Comments and other such things

Hi folks! I just wanted to say I appreciate everyone who comes here for a read, and I thank you for your comments!

No, I'm not going anywhere; it's just that I stumbled upon my spam folder in my email, and for some reason all of my comments have been going there. I thought I had that sorted out.

So, this whole time I haven't been getting my notices that someone had dropped by and left me a message. I thought that it was because of the holidays and all, or that I had been slacking so that nobody was reading.

I have a ton of comments to go through, to say nothing of the Movie Guns comments. I will get to it, but I am in a state of shell shock right now. Sorry about that.

As for Movie Guns, now that it is the new year I am on the hunt for a cheap and reliable computer to hook to my newly repaired Big Ass Monitor. Right now I have to resort to posting on my wife's little laptop, or bringing my work laptop home from time to time. Once I get a new computer, it's game on.

I'm looking forward to it, and I am looking forward to reading all of the stuff y'all have sent me in the past couple months.

Puff the magic adder

I haven't done a post on the assault snake menace for awhile.

Should there be a mandatory ten year sentence for possessing assault style snakes?

I mean, why would anyone neeeeeed a snake that deadly? And how much venom does it hold?

.375 H&H Space Pen

Coooooool.

I want one! Too bad they're sold out.

(Via Ace)

Not a human caused disaster

There's cellphone video footage of the Las Vegas courthouse shooting where you can hear the shots fired. It sounds like a hell of a shootout went down.

For what it's worth these days, the press is reporting that one officer was killed and another wounded, and that seven US Marshals engaged the scumbag before killing him.

The weapon used is mercifully unknown at this time.*

This seems to be the 'Duh' statement in all of this:

The shootings have immediately raised questions about security at public buildings in Las Vegas.

And elsewhere, as time and time again it has been proven that security ain't so secure.

*I see now that CNN is saying that the scumbag used a shotgun.

NBA players have their say about carrying guns

There is some good and bad in this NBC Washington article.

Most of the players interviewed know that they have the right to protect themselves and their families, and that is why they ignore the NBA commissioner's "pleas" to not own or carry firearms.

"We're grown men. We protect our families. We protect our homes," said Knicks guard Larry Hughes, who isn't licensed to own a gun. "Whatever the case may be, whoever is bearing arms, I hope everything is done, you know, legally, but you have that right."

This sentiment seems to be the norm amongst the players.

Well, except this one:

Jackson said he stopped carrying a gun after the trouble it caused.

****

"I have the sense that this is an environment that's come out of a lot of the kids' past," Jackson said. "Not only that, they've had situations that have happened in their own personal lives that makes them feel that it warrants it, but my message is it attracts violence. There's no doubt about it, and the violence that happens around guns is death usually."

"The trouble it caused?" "There's no doubt. . . [it attracts violence]?" Stephen Jackson would know about how a gun could take over your mind and make you do stupid things like attract violence: he's the guy who fired his gun in the air five times in "self defense" at a nightclub.

Pardon me for disregarding all of the advice that comes out of his mouth.

Some more fun stuff here from Knicks president Donnie Walsh:

"You don't need them, and if you have them, you have a better chance of something happening then if you don't have them."

Really? Do you care to back this up with some fact? I doubt that you can considering your team hails from the great New York City where guns are practically illegal to own and prevented from being carried by all but criminals.

Thinking about this for a moment, I'm hard pressed to name more than three people that I personally know who do not carry a gun, and I've never known anyone who has had something happen to them over carrying one. That's personal experience based on fact, but not really a qualifier for this post. No doubt Walsh has experienced, or know someone who has, violence at the end of a gun; but in NYC, what can you expect? There is no legitimate gun ownership there, so I gather that his voice carries little weight.

T.J. Ford seems to be the best voice of reason in this article; and of course he would be the guy raised in Texas and playing for the Indiana Pacers, so he at least is associated with two states known for a solid gun culture:

But Ford says, "You can't tell somebody how to protect their family."

That's it. Simple, ain't it? All the rules and regulations in the world will not stop a reasonable man, or woman, from protecting their family.

The NBA needs to get with the program and stop barring players from exercising their rights. If they act like idiots, then let them face the penalty for it.

*Just found this. Arenas has released his statement about the guns in the Verizon Center, as well as his defense on what happened. A snippet:

As I have said before, I had kept the four unloaded handguns in my house in Virginia, but then moved them over to my locker at the Verizon Center to keep them away from my young kids. I brought them without any ammunition into the District of Columbia, mistakenly believing that the recent change in the DC gun laws allowed a person to store unloaded guns in the District.

On Monday, December 21st, I took the unloaded guns out in a misguided effort to play a joke on a teammate. Contrary to some press accounts, I never threatened or assaulted anyone with the guns and never pointed them at anyone.

It would seem that he's not quite the idiot that I, or anyone else, may have thought. Bringing them out for some sort of joke or intimidation factor wasn't smart, but if he didn't point them at anyone it wasn't reckless either. Perhaps this is another example of the press blowing things out of proportion. Also, this might be an example of how DC's convoluted gun laws have negatively impacted someone's life.

Rubber rifle, you're the one. .. .

. . .you make gun buybacks lots of fun!!!

The VCDL blog The Sentinel is quick to point out that the Assault Thingies turned in during a LA gun buyback program were as fake as fake can be. Good eye!

Also pointed out in comments at the LA Times article is that since the guns are made of rubber and scrap metal, they can't actually be "cleared" because they don't fire cartridges and they don't have removable magazines! What were those deputies thinking?

Nothing like getting $5,800 for some junk!

This story is cross posted at Captain of a Crew of One. Stop by and check it out!

Guns of the NBA

No doubt you've heard about the two Washington Wizards players pulling guns on each other, and if you haven't, then read up here.

To level things out, lets get to the bottom of the details of what's going on here.

Some facts:

1. The NBA Commissioner David Stern doesn't like guns, and the NBA forbids possession of them in any facility where the players are.
2. The former owner, Abe Pollin, said the word "bullet" reminded him of "guns and violence," and this idea was somehow reinforced when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, so he changed the teams name from the Bullets to the Wizards.
3. One of the players who pulled a gun in the locker room, Gilbert Arenas, kept his firearms unloaded, locked in a box, because he had kids at home and wanted to keep his home safe.
4. It is illegal to keep firearms of any kind outside of your private residence in DC.

Now, despite Arenas effort to keep his guns separate from his kids, he is a negligent moron if he really did point a gun at his teamate for any reason except to prevent a violent criminal act. This is not the case; and there seems to be little dispute that the two players pointed guns, so they are both idiots who should be treated as such by the legal system before they are punished by NBA by-laws.

If the NBA is going to continue on with creating and enforcing fascist laws that prevent the thousands of non-negligent players from using firearms to protect themselves, than they need to come up with a way for their players to safely store their guns instead of leaving them with no recourse other than to break said laws and jeopardize their careers. And regardless of David Stern's uneducated opinion, it is not "fact" that guns make people less safe. He announces this opinion without any supporting evidence, which is what is expected from such moral cowards who would prevent players from exercising their basic human rights using fiat laws in their contract. There is substantial Fact showing that gun ownership actually makes people more safe.

Lastly, the family of Abe Pollin seemed to be on the right track with their statement about the two players pulling guns, but then they run right off the rails by stating that "the fact that guns were brought into the Verizon Center is dangerous and disappointing and showed extremely poor judgement," and "Guns have absolutely no place in a workplace environment and we will take further steps to ensure this never happens again." Wow. It would seem that imposing contractual by-laws, not to mention DC code, had no impact whatsoever of preventing two jackasses from bringing firearms into a league arena and pointing them at one another. So I take it they're going to make things illegaller this time. Let's try again!

Down with the sickness

Sorry about the lack of posting lately. One by one, my entire household acquired a nasty flu, and we've been stuck in this house for over a week.

Normally, my awesome immune system would keep me safe and sound, but both of my kids got it and, if you've ever seen how stomach illnesses effect kids, you know how much vomit, poop, and snot can be generated in a very short amount of time. I was bound to fall to it eventually.

Things are looking up though. I may have to call into work sick tomorrow, but probably not. I'll post more when I'm better.