Saturday - January 31, 2009
Zombies!
A parent in the Clark County School District of Las Vegas, Henderson area reported January 27th that his son, who is in 1st grade, came home yesterday saying that he didn’t want to go back to school anymore.
When asked why, the boy said that during the Pledge of Allegiance the teacher put up a large image of Obama next to the flag.
Thinking that the boy might be exaggerating, the man asked his son if he was sure, and suggested that by “large” he might mean an 8x10 photo of the president. The boy apparently said “No, it is a large picture of Obama and when we are done, the teacher turns off the image.”
The same thing was not done for President Bush last year.
After investigating this morning, the other parent reported that what the boy said was true.
At least three of the five classrooms have an overhead projector and as the children stand to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, the teacher turns on the classroom overhead and a full body image of Obama, with six U.S. flags behind him, comes up about 4 feet away from the flag that hangs on the wall. The screen is apparently around five feet by six feet.
In the image, President Obama appears to be staring straight out with no facial expression, just a serious look. All of the kids in each class faced the President, instead of the flag that hangs in the corner.
Local parents are up in arms over this situation. Teachers clearly do not realize the gravity of what they are doing.
Certain people have said this is a hoax because the paper did not mention the school or the teacher by name. The paper refutes this charge.
Posted by Drew458 on 01/31/2009 at 09:21 PM
Filed Under: • Obama, The One •
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I’m not actually blind
My wife works in an eye doctor’s office. So I tend to hear a lot more about eye diseases and eye problems than the rest of you. There’s this thing called macular degeneration where the eye becomes less efficient with age.
I’ve been having problems driving at night. I just couldn’t seem to see the side of the road as well as I used to. I was having a hard time picking out the stripes on the lanes, especially when they were well worn and a bit glopped over with road salt. Oh gosh, must be getting old, maybe it’s time to get a Buick and a pair of those ultra sunglasses like all the blue haired grannies wear.
Instead I bought a new set of headlights for the car. The last set was about 7 years old. Looking at the blurb on the package, it says headlights get dimmer with age. Really? So I picked up a set of the best and brightest and slapped them in. My car uses the socketed bulbs, so the whole 4 light job took all of 5 minutes. Much easier than changing the old sealed beam lights cars used in my younger days.
And what a difference. Wow. I’m not blind after all.
I did not get a set of those retina burning blue bulbs that some cars have. These are just “regular” bulbs, but the blurb says that they burn at a higher light temperature, 4000K. And that means the light is less yellow. And they are. Nice white light that throws a beam that’s crisp right out to the edge. I’m happy.
These bulbs cost about $34 a pair, but there is an online coupon good for a $10 rebate that’s good until the end of February. My car uses 2 pair, but you only get one rebate per address.
I did a bit of online research on these, and there are some reviews that say the SilverStar bulbs don’t last. Sylvania says the SilverStar Ultras last 25% longer than the regular SilverStars, which are the red colored package sold in Wal-Mart. For $39. For a lower price, you can get the better bulb online, and still get the rebate. If these last 2-3 years I’ll be happy. Because I can see again.
Posted by Drew458 on 01/31/2009 at 04:10 PM
Filed Under: • Daily Life •
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Friday - January 30, 2009
GOP Comeback: A New Beginning
Michael Steele, the former Maryland lieutenant governor, wins the chairmanship after six rounds of voting in which five candidates were competing.
The Republican National Committee has picked Michael Steele, a black man from a traditionally Democratic state, to be the new face of the party as the GOP forges a revival following a second consecutive electoral drubbing.
Steele, the former Maryland lieutenant governor, won the chairmanship Friday after six rounds of voting in which five candidates were competing. He becomes the first black chairman of the Republican Party just days after President Obama became the nation’s first black president.
Steele delivered a rousing speech after winning the hard-fought race, pledging to re-establish the Republican presence in the northeast and win elections in regions across the country.
“It’s time for something completely different, and we’re gonna bring it to them,” he said. “Get ready baby. It’s time to turn it on.”
And Fox News has already blown it. The REAL first step in our new Obama-enlightened post-racial society, is to not ever mention that this person is black. Or even male. None of that matters or needs to be said. Besides, all you need to do is look at the picture to figure that out. The New Conservatives should should a highly diverse front, and not even mention such things. Content of their characters and all that, done honestly, and not as a weapon. Throw out the entire deck of race cards, sex cards, gender alignment cards. We have moved so far beyond that nonsense (that the backwards Dems cling to and carry on about in an infantile way) that we don’t even notice it.
Posted by Drew458 on 01/30/2009 at 09:39 PM
Filed Under: • Republicans • The New Conservatives •
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A TOUCH OF SERIOUS EYE CANDY before leaving for the night.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s Israeli girlfriend, Bar Refaeli
With her fabulous figure and piercing blue eyes, she entranced one of Hollywood’s biggest stars.
Now Bar Refaeli is being paid to work that same magic on British shoppers.
The Israeli model, the girlfriend of Leonardo DiCaprio, is appearing in an advertising campaign for Marks & Spencer.
She will star in their Valentine’s Day advertisements wearing a red silk bra and pants and a pink spotted set.
Miss Refaeli, 23, is thought to be getting a six-figure sum for her services, but the lingerie she is selling comes at much more credit-crunchable prices of £22 and £11.
A spokesman for M&S said: ‘Bar Refaeli has the perfect qualities to show M&S’s Valentine lingerie at its best.’ She will also appear in a summer swimwear campaign, the spokesman said.
Bar started modelling when she was just eight months old and was recently featured in a poll of the world’s most beautiful women.
She’s appeared in campaigns for Victoria’s Secret and Ralph Lauren and was the first Israeli to make the cover of iconic Sports Illustrated magazine. She has also appeared on the cover of Elle and GQ.
More recently she has currently been accompanying di Caprio around the world as he promotes his latest film Revolutionary Road, which also stars Kate Winslet.
The pair met in November 2005 at a party in Las Vegas.
Refaeli is the latest in a string of celebrity signings for M&S and follows in the footsteps of Myleene Klass, Elizabeth Jagger and Antonio Banderas. The company has also invested heavily in TV adverts featuring Take That and Lulu..
However, earlier this month they revealed that the economic crises would result in the closure of almost 30 stores and the loss of more than 1000 jobs.
Got the photos here
Posted by peiper on 01/30/2009 at 05:00 PM
Filed Under: • Eye-Candy •
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OBAMA’S ECONOMIC PLAN ( is a piece of disastrous economic folly) says reporter in London Times.
Oh boy. Does this mean Europe and maybe Brit public might fall out of love with O. and ask for a divorce?
And this is not a conservative paper guys. It isn’t the first I have heard over here, about concern over American “protectionism.” woo-hoo, another “ism” word.
And then there’s China, who own so many dollars. They’ve been buying huge amounts of treasury bills for years now.
Interesting times indeed.
January 30, 2009
Obama’s lethal game of beggar-thy-neighbour
The ‘Buy America’ policy, proposed by the most protectionist Congress in memory, is a piece of disastrous economic folly
By. Rosemary RighterThe talk at Davos is grimmer this year than last - grimmer, but also better focused. The causes and extent of the financial crisis are better understood, though the hunt is still on for ways to stop the rot penetrating the global economy. It helps, too, that some fancy theories have bitten the dust.
Last year’s pet Davos theme, the supposed “decoupling” of China and other emerging titans from the American economy, the idea that they could thrive independently, has been badly mugged by reality. As the US went into a tailspin, so did Chinese exports. China’s growth rate has halved, from more than 12 per cent in 2007 to just over 6 per cent; tens of millions have lost their jobs and China’s (very nouveaux) rich have lost fortunes invested in collapsing housing and stock markets.
The Obama Administration will not tolerate Chinese policies “that put US workers and businesses at a disadvantage”: a conveniently elastic concept that could cover anything from foul play to cheaper wages. They have been told that the new Congress contains strong “anti-trade or anti-China constituencies”. Mr Wen arrives in London tomorrow looking for a stalwart free-trade friend at court, prepared to help Beijing to weather coming storms in the US-China trade relationship.
Politicians are turning protectionist on the sly, slipping manufacturers discriminatory subsidies, dressing up state aid as training, raising tariff barriers and inhibiting global capital flows by encouraging the banks that they now part-own to intervene to concentrate their lending “at home”.
Trade leadership will have to come from Britain because it will not come from the America of Barack Obama. There, “economic patriotism” is the new protectionism, prettily wrapped in stars and stripes but just as damaging to the world’s prospects of recovery as was the 1930s variety.
Is Mr Obama a protectionist? Instinctively, yes; he has never seen a free-trade deal he would actually vote for, and he talks about trade policy as a tool “to support good American jobs”. But as the election campaign wore on, he toned down his invective against foreign competition, and, because his economic team is basically free trade, the jury is still out.
The verdict, however, will be in very soon. At the behest of the most protectionist Congress in memory, Mr Obama may be about to repeat, at the dawn of his presidency, the same historic error that the much derided Herbert Hoover made just before quitting the White House in 1933. In the depths of the Great Depression, he signed into law the innocent-sounding Buy America Act. It required the US Government to use American suppliers in all public contracts. Less notorious than the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, “Buy America” did huge damage. It proved a disaster for US manufacturing exports and the global economy. Other governments followed suit, and it took decades to begin to reverse the closure of markets.
Now, prodded by America’s mighty steel lobby, a key congressional committee has voted, 55-0, to attach a still more rigorous “Buy America” clause to President Obama’s stimulus package. It bars federal funding of any public projects “unless all of the iron and steel used is produced in the United States”. The clause could be extended to asphalt, cement, heavy machinery, you name it. US dollars, the committee intones, must be used to create “American jobs in America, not Chinese jobs in China”.
Leave aside value for money. Pass over the detail that the US does not produce enough steel to meet domestic demand. Admit that, when economic activity evaporates as precipitately as it has this winter, “saving” jobs looks more important than ensuring long-term competitiveness. Admit, further, that all governments are in the hidden subsidy game right now, whether they boast about it, as in France, or deny it as stoutly as Lord Mandelson - whose “this is not a bailout” brings to mind Magritte’s famous “ceci n’est pas une pipe” painting.
(and of course all us elitists speak fluent french and understand that mumbo jumbo.)
Agree, finally, that when you are the newly elected US President and the money you are preparing to print runs into the trillions, the queue at the trough is bound to form pretty fast. But the scale of the temptation is precisely what makes Congress’s populist “Buy America” rider an irresponsible, innumerate, pernicious bit of political and economic folly.
If Mr Obama blocks this clause, he will anger the Left. If he does not, retaliation is inevitable. That will shut American workers out of “hundreds of billions of dollars of new business”. Caterpillar, to take just one example, is actively bidding for big infrastructure projects in China; it reckons that “Buy America” would kill its prospects there.
The truth politicians need to ponder is that the financial crisis has made sophisticates of us all. Most of us understand far more about how globalisation works, how the pieces hang together, than we did before everything went pear-shaped. We have made the connection between prosperity and globalisation - at the simplest level, that cheap T-shirts from Bangladesh leave us with more money for other things. We do worry about our ability to compete; we demand clear and impartial trade rules. But we can see how beggar-thy-neighbour protectionism creates more beggars - costing, not “saving”, jobs. It is time the language of politics caught up with us.
This cartoon appeared in The Telegraph
Posted by peiper on 01/30/2009 at 03:40 PM
Filed Under: • Economics •
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PIRATES, SOMALIA AND LONDON. (readers, I have no idea if those outside UK can listen to this)
Drew did his things on pirates yesterday and I know we all feel the same about those folks.
Because there is more to listen to on radio here then there is in the US, I’m listening to radio more then I ever did back home. And I worked in that medium.
I don’t know if you people outside of the UK will be allowed to listen to what I heard last night. I hope you can. You will get an education and begin to see this problem a bit differently. Which doesn not mean we will change our mind with regard to the solution. Drew spelled it out in plain English but of course his suggestion won’t be applied. Instead, more ships will be taken, more money paid out to pirates and in the end would you like to take a stab at who really ends up paying the freight?
Like most other ppl, I just assumed that the pirates were simply bands of seagoing criminals looking for easy prey and an easy buck. Well folks, apparently the prey was even easier then we may have imagined it.
As well, I would never have guessed how sophisticated the pirates in fact are or the fact that they are receiving intel on ships movements etc, from land based people ON THE INSIDE! And if they aren’t inside, then they sure do know a heck of a lot about the shipping industry, the routes and the cargoes.
I had been under the impression and I bet you have too, that those boats were targets of opportunity. Well guess again because they ARE NOT!
Oh sure, there might be the odd one or two. That’s a given. But this latest modern day scourge is well funded, VERY WELL organized and run by professionals!
Not only that .... and many have already cottoned on to this. A lot of the money goes into the coffers of terror groups. If you already guessed that, you guessed correctly.
Availability:
6 days left to listen
Last broadcast 29 Jan 2009, 20:00 on BBC Radio 4.
Synopsis:Simon Cox investigates modern-day piracy. He talks to some of those involved, reveals the extent of the British connection to the modern kidnap and ransom business and discovers that, far from its popular recent associations with the Somali coast, much of the negotiations to free seized ships actually take place in the world’s maritime law capital, London.
Posted by peiper on 01/30/2009 at 01:10 PM
Filed Under: • Crime • Pirates, aarrgh! • UK •
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Thursday - January 29, 2009
The greenies must be seeing red over this
“Environmentally Friendly” air rifle pellet is lead free ... and actually increases killing power by a large fraction.
The Gamo airgun company has developed a hardened copper based pellet. Called the P.B.A.tm for Performance Ballistic Alloy, the new pellet is much harder and much lighter than regular pellets which are made from lead. The light weight allows it to fly much faster on the same blast of air, and the harder alloy alloys it to penetrate deeper. That ought to make it a superior hunting pellet.
New Raptor Performance Ballistic Alloy, the first non-lead Alloy Airgun Ammunition that increases velocity up to 25% over lead, while maintaining “match grade” accuracy. Specifically designed as a hunting load, the new P.B.A.™ enables airguns which normally shoot 1000 f.p.s. to shoot up to 1200 f.p.s., with tremendous penetration. In fact, the ammunition is 50% harder than lead causing penetration to be enhanced by up to 100% in tests in actual hunting situations as well as ballistic mediums. Raptor P.B.A. test results show ballistic stability at super-sonic speeds and up to 90% weight retention using the new semi-pointed design. Comes in a 100 count .177cal rocket package.
A penny each for the .177 size, two cents each for the .22 size. How powerful can a standard caliber airgun be? How about potent enough to hunt wild hogs with?
Ok, that may be a perfect situation video. I would prefer something with a lot more power just for a bit of margin, even for a head shot. Fair sporting go and all that. But still. Wow.
With very light weight projectiles, velocity really matters, since E=½MV2. And a 25% increase in velocity is pretty impressive. Nice job Gamo; you’ve pushed the 16 lb/ft air rifle power category up to into the 21 lb/ft realm. And done it without polluting the environment!
UPDATE, slightly off topic, but still on topic if the subject is really “hunting big stuff with puny little bullets”
The Aquila ammo company is selling a .22LR round that uses the standard evil lead bullet, regular or extra evil hollowpoint, in the standard 40gr weight. They add a bit more powder or something, as their new ammo, called the Interceptor, shoots at 1450fps instead of the standard 1250fps. Possibly faster, since no two .22 guns will shoot the same ammo at the same speed. But that extra 200-300fps increases the range and power of the old .22LR by nearly half. Cost? About halfway between regular .22LR and “target” .22LR. 10¢ per round. Which is still much less than .22WMR, which won’t work in your regular .22, although it is faster still. Anyway, here’s a watermelon blown apart by a single shot of Interceptor, from 25 meters away. I’d choose this one over the air rifle to take this one pig hunting, though I’d rather take a nice .45-70 instead. No doubts about that one being up to the task, at all, ever, from any angle or at any range.
Posted by Drew458 on 01/29/2009 at 11:32 PM
Filed Under: • Guns and Gun Control •
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Real Winter Driving
Marko from over at The Munchkin Wrangler shows us what a real winter driver looks like. He lives in the tropical sunny climes of northern New Hampshire, so he ought to know.
I want one. Instant vehicle lust, even though I have no place to park it, never have anywhere near enough snow to actually use it, and I couldn’t begin to even afford the insurance on the beast. But, man oh man, what a beast. Ninnyvans would flee in terror!
Posted by Drew458 on 01/29/2009 at 11:11 PM
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather • Fun-Stuff •
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The Amazing Story Behind the Global Warming Scam
Wow. I knew some of this, but Dr. Coleman puts it all together in one neat package.
The Amazing Story Behind Tho Global Warming Scam
The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax we citizens for our carbon footprints. Only two details stand in the way, the faltering economic times and a dramatic turn toward a colder climate. The last two bitter winters have lead to a rise in public awareness that CO2 is not a pollutant and is not a significant greenhouse gas that is triggering runaway global warming.
How did we ever get to this point where bad science is driving big government we have to struggle so to stop it?
Posted by Drew458 on 01/29/2009 at 10:45 PM
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather •
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Leftist Sell Outs!
This is the One Billion Trees group, who always wants you to give them money. “One dollar one tree”. And yet ...
Nature Conservancy to sell Adirondack land
ALBANY NY — The Nature Conservancy plans to sell 93,500 acres of Adirondack timberlands to a private company within the next few weeks and expects within 18 months to sell New York state most of the remaining 161,000 acres of former Finch, Pruyn forests it bought in 2007.
Conservancy officials say they are doing the title work for the sale to a logging company, which they declined to identify, subject to conservation easements that would prevent development and require logging according to certified “green” standards.
The sales are expected to open many of the tracts, including the southwest side of the Hudson River Gorge, to the public. The parcels touch 31 towns in six counties.
Hypocrites. Save the turtles. Save the Everglades. Cap and Trade. Save the whales. Save the trees. Um, except for when we need some money. Then sod ‘em all.
“ ‘green’ standards” my left foot. Yeah, as much green as the loggers can generate as fast as they can. They need some renewable growth in their bank accounts.
Posted by Drew458 on 01/29/2009 at 08:28 PM
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Environment •
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History on the hoof
Heavy horses could be extinct in Britain within a generation, conservationists warned yesterday. Some traditional breeds are under such threat that they are said to be rarer than giant pandas. The Suffolk Punch is listed as ‘ critical’ with only 100 pairs left in the UK. Others including the Clydesdale are listed as ‘vulnerable’ with just a few hundred breeding pairs remaining. Shires - Britain’s best-known working breed - are said to be ‘at risk’. Experts say the huge creatures are dying out before they can be replaced because of a reduction in the number of UK breeders.
Heavy horses have traditionally been used for farm work, pulling wagons and even in warfare where they hauled artillery around the battlefield. But after the Second World War the increasing use of machinery spelled the end of their widespread use on farms and numbers began to drop.
The warning about their decline was issued yesterday by animal charities and by Harry Gotts, 80, one of Britain’s last heavy-horse breeders.
Mr Gotts, of Redruth, Cornwall, says unless drastic action is taken to increase their numbers they could soon become extinct. ‘It is very sad,’ he said. ‘More Suffolk Punch horses die now than are born. They are rarer than giant pandas. If we are not very careful, they will die out.’
At the the Shire Horse Farm and Carriage Museum in Redruth, Mr Gotts has ten Suffolk Punches, seven Clydesdales and six Shires. Dawn Teverson, Head of Conservation at the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, said: ‘A lot of the mares are used as show animals which means they aren’t breeding, and you also can’t guarantee that a mare will produce a foal every year.’
Poetry by Ian Anderson. You really didn’t me to tell you that did you?
Posted by Drew458 on 01/29/2009 at 07:53 PM
Filed Under: • Animals • UK •
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I’m getting sick of writing this post
BURN THESE MOTHER***KERS RIGHT DOWN TO THE GROUND. the whole damn country. Somalia? No, it’s called AshHeap these days.Kill them all, and their goats. Burn their villages to ashes. Poison the wells and salt the ground. Sink every last thing that can float from the south shore of the gulf all the way down to Kenya. What in God’s holy name is wrong with the “Great Nations” of the world, whose taxpayer have spent untold TRILLIONS on fancy navies and all their nifty toys? Use them or lose them boyos. This passive pussy bullshit has to end, and it has to end in rope and fire. Because if it doesn’t end that way for Somalia, it will figuratively end that way for us when the cost of shipping stuff puts another economic hurting on the rest of us. And better them savages than us.
And when you’ve punished this bunch so severely that the few survivors are afraid to even go for a swim, then you chug your little boaty-woaties over to the northwest coast of africa and you do it all over again. Even harder. Then head on over to Indonesia and repeat the process, only 25 times more severely. I am out of patience, and I’m sure that a least a billion other folks feel the same way. Get the job done Mr. World Policeman, or retire and we’ll arm ourselves and solve things our own way. And save another few trillion in taxpayer expense. Oh, and don’t think of it as a war on islam, even though exactly 100% of these pirates are rug kissing pedophiles and goat fuckers like old Mobama Mohamma Mohamhead Mo. Think of it as International Justice. Crime Control as a new aspect of the Global War On Terror. See, a UN resolution already exists. That’s good enough, so pull the trigger.
NAIROBI, Kenya – Somali pirates hijacked a German tanker loaded with liquefied petroleum gas Thursday off the Horn of Africa. The ship’s 13-man crew was reported safe even though gunshots were heard over the ship’s radio. The MV Longchamp is the third ship captured this month in the Gulf of Aden, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
The Longchamp, registered in the Bahamas, is managed by the German firm Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, which said in a statement that seven pirates boarded the tanker early Thursday. Spokesman Andre Delau said the ship’s master had been briefly allowed to communicate with the firm and had said the crew of 12 Filipinos and one Indonesian were safe.
“We think that everything is in order, nobody is injured,” he told The Associated Press.
No ransom demands have been made yet, the company said. Lt. Nathan Christensen, a Bahrain-based spokesman for the U.S. 5th Fleet, said the ship was seized off the southern coast of Yemen, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) from the town of al-Mukalla, the capital of the Hadramaut region. Robin Phillips, deputy director of the Bahamas maritime authority in London, said the Longchamp had been traveling in a corridor secured by EU military forces when it sent a distress signal before dawn.
”Ships and helicopters were dispatched, but they arrived too late,” said Phillips, adding that gunshots could be heard over the radio. He said the ship later set a course for Somalia, to the south
Hey, when seconds count, the navy is just hours away. Maybe international shipping ought to have CCW too? Only make it so they get the really good shit; no weapons under 50 caliber that aren’t capable of shooting down airliners.
Posted by Drew458 on 01/29/2009 at 06:29 PM
Filed Under: • No Shit, Sherlock • Pirates, aarrgh! •
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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
This is another post on my experience of applying for a Pistol Purchase Permit here in the Worker’s Paradise of New Jersey. It’s been a bit over 30 days now, which is what a toothless NJ law says is the allowed time limit for the process to take. By now all the various dark and dusty corners of my life should have had the pure light of investigation shown on them; all my little rocks should have been overturned and the worms underneath accounted for. A decision on my level of sanity and social malfeasance should have been reached. It hasn’t yet, so now it’s up to me to figure out what I should do about that.
In the meantime I’ve done quite a bit of research. Since “ignorance of the law is no excuse” I’ve looked up and read every single law my state has on the books regarding the legal acquisition and legal use of firearms. There are lots of them. It’s been quite the eye opener. NJ even has laws about what questions can and can not be on the application form.
I wish somebody had asked me. I would have asked two questions and that would have covered everything: “1) Are you a nutter? If so tell us about it.” and “2) Have you ever been in trouble with the law? If so, tell us about it”. To which my answers would be 1) NO and 2) I’ve had a few speeding tickets over the years, and I got caught with a shoebox full of fireworks when I was 23 and had to pay a $40 fine. And that would be that. Oh, and in 4th grade I once told the teacher, Mrs. Blair, that I had my trombone lesson when I actually didn’t, and snuck out of class for half an hour. And that got me sent to the principal’s office, although no criminal charges were filed.
But such a simple solution like that would never work, and I’m being naive by assuming that people are as honest an open as I am. So the law is that my background must be investigated by the proper authorities. Ok, fine, have it your way. But after a couple weeks of waiting I started to wonder what that meant, so I started looking for answers. And what I found is pretty amazing. I had no idea just how much investigation is done, and that awareness really opened my eyes to the level of “watchbird"-ism that our government has. On the one hand I can see the need for almost all of it. On the other hand this awareness really gets under my skin because it shows how little freedom we may actually have. Or maybe that “little freedom” just applies to those who have broken the law.
Or are thinking of breaking the law.
This is a (assumed to be partial) list of all the agencies that New Jersey contacts during the firearms application background check process. I also get investigated by the FBI, and I have no idea at all what other things they might do. How do I know this? Because the entire world is online these days, and that includes the background check form that the New Jersey State Police use just for this purpose. Behold, the mighty form SP 407, NJ “FAIR”, the Firearms Applicant Investigation Report, which records the results from contact with these agencies:
- NCIC/SCIC
National Crime Information Center / State Crime Information Center
NCIC is a computerized index of criminal justice information (i.e.- criminal record history information, fugitives, stolen properties, missing persons). It is available to Federal, state, and local law enforcement and other criminal justice agencies and is operational 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
PURPOSE: The purpose for maintaining the NCIC system is to provide a computerized database for ready access by a criminal justice agency making an inquiry and for prompt disclosure of information in the system from other criminal justice agencies about crimes and criminals. This information assists authorized agencies in criminal justice and related law enforcement objectives, such as apprehending fugitives, locating missing persons, locating and returning stolen property, as well as in the protection of the law enforcement officers encountering the individuals described in the system.
NCIC/SCIC checks to see if there are wants or warrants against me, whether I possess a stolen car, boat, or license plate, treasury notes, a violent felon, a missing person, or even hang out in gang areas. Also, am I a terrorist?
This is a fully automated, computerized system. This look-up can also be done from a networked police car, and the results come back in about 8 seconds.
SCIC has largely been replaced by NJWPS, the New Jersey Wanted Persons System. This is all part of the NJCJIS Criminal Justice Information System, which is controlled by the SBI (State Bureau of Investigation) which is part of the NJ State Police.
- Promis/Gavel
The Promis/Gavel system is an automated Criminal case tracking system enhanced and supported by the Criminal Practice Division and the Information System Division (ISD) of the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) in response to the needs of the criminal justice community. It captures information concerning defendants who have been charged with indictable offenses and tracks the processing of those defendants from initial arrest through appellate review. This system provides the function of docketing, indexing, noticing, calendaring, statistical reporting, case management reporting, and so forth. At the present time, 100% of the statewide criminal caseload is handled by Promis/Gavel.
Promis/Gavel checks to see if there are currently charges lodged against me, and gets the status of those charges. Am I currently in the court system? This is a fully automated and computerized system.
- III/212a
“III” stands for Interstate Identification Index, which is the government name for your national rap sheet. The 212a part is totally an INS thing. I looked and looked, and that’s the only time “212a” ever turns up in relation to a government anything. I guess it tells them whether I’m a foreigner, because, hey, my passport that I used for ID could have been a forgery you know. Along with my super-duper NJ driver’s license guaranteed to be forgery proof, because both IDs required quite a bit of proof of birth, proof of address, etc.
So now we know all about my nefarious criminal past, and when I snuck across the border with a knapsack full of beans. III/212a is fully computerized as well.
- NJ Domestic Violence Registry
The Domestic Violence Central Registry is accessible through the Family Division’s Automated Case Tracking System or FACTS. The registry became operational in six of the 21 counties that comprise New Jersey in February of 1999. [it’s operational in all of them by now] ... The registry is accessible to all Superior Court, Family Part and law enforcement officers.
Have I stopped beating my wife recently? Does she have a restraining order out on me? Has she ever? We can thank good old Senator Frank Lautenberg (commie-NJ) for this one, which denys 2A rights to a special class of people convicted of a misdemeanor, and to those even subject to a restraining order, a legal action that is taken without any due process whatsoever for the person subject to it.
Does DYFS get involved here too? I have no idea. I have no children, so that’s a wash for me, but what if some uppity DYFS worker “suspects” that you mistreat your kids? I wouldn’t bet half a stale donut that DYFS doesn’t have access to the FACTS, or that a national DVR doesn’t also exist which they can poke their noses into. Maybe I’m better off not knowing.
NJDVCR/FACTS is another computer system.
- NJ DMV (DWI)
Ever get caught driving drunk? I think it’s interesting to see this one on the form, because your driving record isn’t specifically one of the questions on the application, though it does ask about criminal offenses and alcoholism. And your driving record is almost always considered a separate thing from your actual criminal record, by all cops and courts everywhere. I have no idea why the State Police need to look up my driving record, but since they spend so much of their lives handing out tickets this is probably second nature to them. They may not know how to do an investigation without contacting DMV ... and this is not the only time they make such contact as part of my background investigation. Because my ability to drive a car has soooo much influence on my worthiness to own a firearm.
No question that the DMV has everything on the old computer. No. Sorry, wrong. DMV has everything on the new computer. Even faster!
- State / Federal Fingerprints
Otherwise known as AFIS for all you CSI fans. In NJ the police call it AFIU, probably pronounced Eff You, our own acronym that stands for Automated Fingerprint Identification Unit. “Eff You” has been upgraded to FIFIS, the Fully Integrated Fingerprint Identification System. [has it gone fwench?] And it is zippy quick: less than 10 days for a nationwide check, less than an hour for a statewide check.
The use of new live scan fingerprinting technologies has reduced the ink card process and completes the background check within ten business days for both State and Federal checks. Fingerprints are electronically captured using Live Scan devices, eliminating poor quality submissions and the need to create two sets (state and federal) of fingerprint cards. Submissions are electronically processed using the FIFIS, allowing SBI state checks to be completed in approximately one hour. The fingerprints are also electronically transmitted to the IAFIS if needed, and are processed within twenty-four hours. Submitting state agencies are receiving criminal history record results electronically within one to ten business days.
AFIS is of course connected to III, so this is another way that my past as a crimelord will come to light.
Lucky for me that I had my fingerprints taken digitally, so that will save them lots of time. Another computerized system of course.
- ACS / ATS
This is the Automated Traffic System (ATS) and its criminal component, the Automated Complaint System (ACS)
The cornerstone of the Judiciary’s efforts to modernize and improve the State’s Municipal Courts rests with the development of the Automated Traffic System (ATS) and its criminal component, the Automated Complaint System (ACS). The ATS/ACS system database permits Municipal Court personnel to perform all case management functions—from initial entry, case status updating and case histories to collections, disbursements of monies and case dispositions. Additionally, the system is also designed to accelerate the direct exchange of information between the Division of Motor Vehicle Services (DMV) and the Municipal Courts.
Every Cop Shop in the state has one of these terminals. Another way of checking to see if there are warrants out against me, and also to see how many traffic tickets I’ve had (2 in the past decade). So now the cops are again looking at my driving record, and they’re again seeing what’s in the court system that I’m involved in. But hey, what’s a little redundancy between branches of the government? You wouldn’t want a citizen to slip through the cracks, so let’s check another computer system that does the exact same thing, just in case. So this is yet another process that should take at best a few seconds.
- US DEPT HOMELAND SECURITY
Another way to see if I’m secretly a terrorist, or on a no fly list, or actually named Mohammed. But in theory they only check with this group if it’s already been shown that I’m not a citizen. Don’t bet on that one either, although it may save the NJ State Police a little time by just letting the FBI tell them if I’m a suspected domestic terrorist. The good news is that the FBI only gets 72 hours to return the results of their investigation to the NJSP. The gooder news is that the federal government is even more computerized than the state government, so who knows what they can turn up in a matter of seconds by contacting departments and agencies you and I have never even heard of.
Guaranteed to be fully computerized and run on the latest and greatest computers going. What, you think we spent all that Patriot Act / Homeland Security money on garbage trucks?
- Alien / VISA Registration Number
I guess if all this background checking has shown that my real name is Pedro and there’s no warrant out for me in southern California for Illegal lettuce picking, then I might have a Visa. If so, that number goes here. I guess not being an actual American might preclude me from buying a gun in NJ, but I’m not 100% sure on that. Certainly foreigners can come to the US on hunting vacations, so they must be allowed to bring guns with them. Does that mean that can buy another one while they’re here? I don’t know. And if they’re over here to work or go to school, and maybe apply for citizenship, can they exercise the old 2A while doing so? In NJ?? Again, I don’t know.
Wow. That’s a lot. I feel the need to go take a shower after reading it all. In the dark, to defeat the hidden cameras. And I’m running low on tinfoil, better go to the store after that.
Interestingly, the NICS check that gets run on me, by law, when I actually get the one gun pistol purchase permit and use it before it expires in 90 days, also checks me out with NCIC, III, the NJ Domestic Violence Registry, Mental Health, and DMV all over again. Just in case I’ve turned into Al Capone in the meantime.
The NICS Operation Center transmits a formatted message to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) NICS Operation Center accessing the Interstate Identification Index (III), National Crime Information Center (NCIC) hot files and the NICS Index. In addition to these files the NJSP NICS Operation Center accesses the following New Jersey data bases: the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) Domestic Violence Central Registry, the Division of Mental Health Services (DMHS) Census and USTF databases, the New Jersey Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) files and the NJSP Firearms Investigations Unit files.
The [NJ SBI] Bureau has management responsibility for the following statewide programs:
* Master Name Index
* Computerized Criminal History System
* Noncriminal User Fee System
* Megan’s Law Sex Offender Registry
* Central Drug Registry
* Interstate Identification Index
* Court Disposition Reporting System
* Automated Fingerprint Identification System
* Arrest and Conviction Flag File
* National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS)
* New Jersey Wanted Person System (NJWPS)
* National Crime Information Center (NCIC)
* Criminal Justice Information Systems
* Volunteer Review Operation
* Expungement
Which leads me to wonder, why not just take my fingerprints and run them through AFIS? If they come up clean, run me through NICS right there at the police station. If that clears, I’m good to go. The exact same checks are done at the point of purchase as are done during the application process. NICS takes a minute or two. The application process takes 30 days by law, but no more than 10 days maximum in real life to acquire the data. Most aspects of it take less than 10 minutes, probably less than 10 seconds, and are coordinated by the CIU of the SBI of the NJSP so that they all fire off at the same time. So why is Trooper H telling me this is a 3 to 6 month process, and maybe longer?
The Great And Powerful Oz seems to have the whole world at their fingertips; I think the process should take less time than it takes to even fill out the forms. I must be missing something. Oh yeah. The mental health part. Which is also completely computerized.
Maybe I should take 2 showers, just in case.
Posted by Drew458 on 01/29/2009 at 04:25 PM
Filed Under: • Guns and Gun Control •
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A Post For Peiper
Peiper’s got a bad case of the sniffles. Probably brought on by the terrible cold weather over there in the UK, combined with the traditional English cost saving home construction concept of not building a house with a proper furnace. So he’s offline for a few days, but that isn’t stopping him from reading the daily newspapers. Perhaps he should get some blood pressure meds from National Health as well. So I’ll do a few UK based posts for him until he gets better.
It matters not that endless studies have shown that a “parenting unit” of one man and one woman is the superior way to raise a normal, balanced child. The law is the law, and to prove the law is in effect quotas must be kept.
Two young children are to be adopted by a gay couple, despite the protests of their grandparents. The devastated grandparents were told they would never see the youngsters again unless they dropped their opposition. The couple, who cannot be named, wanted to give the five-year-old boy and his four-year-old sister a loving home themselves. But they were ruled to be too old - at 46 and 59.
For two years they fought for their rights to care for the children, whose 26-year- old mother is a recovering heroin addict. They agreed to an adoption only after they faced being financially crippled by legal bills.
The final blow came when they were told the children were going to a gay household, even though several heterosexual couples wanted them. When the grandfather protested, he was told: ‘You can either accept it, and there’s a chance you’ll see the children twice a year, or you can take that stance and never see them again.’
The man said last night: ‘It breaks my heart to think that our grandchildren are being forced to grow up in an environment without a mother figure. We are not prejudiced, but I defy anyone to explain to us how this can be in their best interests.’
Social workers themselves have admitted that the little girl is ‘more wary’ of men than women.
How’s that for opening a big can of worms? No priority is given to the actual grandparents who were willing to adopt their own grandchildren. So “keeping it in the family” has no weight. No priority was given to any hetero couple willing to adopt the children, because the law says “We’re all equal”. And while we might all be equal as adults out in society, are we really all equal when it comes to raising children? Is this news article, and the major dust-up it’s causing in the UK, just aspects of latent prejudice? What about single parent households? What if the gay couple were both female?
Is this article raising the old canard that male homosexuality implies pedophilia, or is completely normal for any female of any age to be ‘more wary’ of men than women? Maybe this is just sour grapes on the grandparent’s part? On the other hand, why did they have to go to court and fight for years, at a tremendous expense, for the right to legally raise their own kin?
Go read the rest of the article, and also read Melanie Phillips’ take on things, then have your say. There are lots of aspects to this story that are debate worthy.
And another thing ... Hillary be damned, in this case it really is all about the children. And that should be the overwhelming factor. Always.
The prevailing argument that all types of family are as good as each other as far as the children are concerned simply isn’t true. While some children emerge relatively unscathed from irregular households, children need to be brought up by the two people ‘who made me’ - or, in adoptive households, in a family which closely replicates that arrangement. Where that does not happen, the child’s deepest sense of his or her identity as a human being is at some level damaged.
A child needs a mother and father because their roles in bringing that child up, and the way the child sees each of them, are not interchangeable. They are different and complementary, which is why if one of them is absent the child suffers, in many cases very badly indeed. For very young children the absence of a mother, whose nurturing role cannot be replicated even by the most loving and attentive of fathers, is particularly tragic.
Therefore to say that depriving children of a mother figure is in their best interests - as the Edinburgh social workers have said - is clearly ridiculous.
Don’t overlook the state of mind in the UK. Or lack thereof perhaps? To them, it’s a big question worthy of debate, on whether you should let your daughter have her boyfriend sleep with her in her own bed while she’s living in your house. My answer to that one was obvious: if you want the benefits, then take on the responsibilities. Go get your own apartment and a job, then you can shag your ears off whenever.
Posted by Drew458 on 01/29/2009 at 02:48 PM
Filed Under: • Nanny State • UK •
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Oh, and here's some kind of visitor flag counter thingy. Hey, all the cool blogs have one, so I should too. The Visitors Online thingy up at the top doesn't count anything, but it looks neat. It had better, since I paid actual money for it.