Friday, December 13, 2013

Who the Hell are We Anymore?



Eric Cartman Holder - Whatever! I do what I want

The mind boggles:

Aaron Key wasn't sure he wanted a tattoo on his neck. Especially one of a giant squid smoking a joint.
But the guys running Squid's Smoke Shop in Portland, Ore., convinced him: It would be a perfect way to promote their store.
They would even pay him and a friend $150 apiece if they agreed to turn their bodies into walking billboards.
Key, who is mentally disabled, was swayed.
He and his friend, Marquis Glover, liked Squid's. It was their hangout. The 19-year-olds spent many afternoons there playing Xbox and chatting with the owner, "Squid," and the store clerks.
So they took the money and got the ink etched on their necks, tentacles creeping down to their collarbones.
It would be months before the young men learned the whole thing was a setup. The guys running Squid's were actually undercover ATF agents conducting a sting to get guns away from criminals and drugs off the street.
The tattoos had been sponsored by the U.S. government; advertisements for a fake storefront.
The teens found out as they were arrested and booked into jail.
Earlier this year when the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel exposed a botched ATF sting in Milwaukee — that included agents hiring a brain-damaged man to promote an undercover storefront and then arresting him forhis work — ATF officials told Congress the failed Milwaukee operation was an isolated case of inadequate supervision.
It wasn't.
 I still don't understand how the media gave Holder a pass on Fast and Furious. Or how Obama kept him. Heck, I would have been ashamed to be associated with him after he refused to prosecute black on white voter intimidation.

The Journal also found:

Agents with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives employed rogue tactics similar to those used in Milwaukee in every operation, from Portland, Ore., to Pensacola, Fla.
Among the findings:
■ ATF agents befriended mentally disabled people to drum up business and later arrested them in at least four cities in addition to Milwaukee. In Wichita, Kan., ATF agents referred to a man with a low IQ as "slow-headed" before deciding to secretly use him as a key cog in their sting. And agents in Albuquerque, N.M., gave a brain-damaged drug addict with little knowledge of weapons a "tutorial" on machine guns, hoping he could find them one.
■ Agents in several cities opened undercover gun- and drug-buying operations in safe zones near churches and schools, allowed juveniles to come in and play video games and teens to smoke marijuana, and provided alcohol to underage youths. In Portland, attorneys for three teens who were charged said a female agent dressed provocatively, flirted with the boys and encouraged them to bring drugs and weapons to the store to sell.
■ As they did in Milwaukee, agents in other cities offered sky-high prices for guns, leading suspects to buy firearms at stores and turn around and sell them to undercover agents for a quick profit. In other stings, agents ran fake pawnshops and readily bought stolen items, such as electronics and bikes — no questions asked — spurring burglaries and theft. In Atlanta, agents bought guns that had been stolen just hours earlier, several ripped off from police cars.
■ Agents damaged buildings they rented for their operations, tearing out walls and rewiring electricity — then stuck landlords with the repair bills. A property owner in Portland said agents removed a parking lot spotlight,damaging her new $30,000 roof and causing leaks, before they shut down the operation and disappeared without a way for her to contact them.
■ Agents pressed suspects for specific firearms that could fetch tougher penalties in court. They allowed felons to walk out of the stores armed with guns. In Wichita, agents suggested a felon take a shotgun, saw it off and bring it back — and provided instructions on how to do it. The sawed-off gun allowed them to charge the man with a more serious crime.
■ In Pensacola, the ATF hired a felon to run its pawnshop. The move widened the pool of potential targets, boosting arrest numbers.Even those trying to sell guns legally could be charged if they knowingly sold to a felon. The ATF's pawnshop partner was later convicted of pointing a loaded gun at someone outside a bar. Instead of a stiff sentence typically handed down to repeat offenders in federal court, he got six months in jail — and a pat on the back from the prosecutor.
"To say this is just a few people, a few bad apples, I don't buy it," said David Harris, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and an expert on law enforcement tactics and regulation. "If your agency is in good shape with policy, training, supervision and accountability, the bad apples will not be able to take things to this level."

A fish rots from the head down. This isn't a few bad apples; the rot starts with Holder and his boss.



Would the Last Person Out Please Turn Off the Lights?



Well, they've closed down the last remaining primary lead smelter in the United States:

On Dec. 31, 2013, The Doe Run Company’s primary lead smelter in Herculaneum, Mo., which has operated since 1892, will cease operations. As a result of the smelter’s closure, 145 Doe Run employees, and approximately 73 contractors, will lose their jobs. Seventy-five positions will be retained for closure and limited operations. Although the United States is home to a number of secondary lead smelters, which recycle lead from various sources, the Herculaneum facility is the last primary lead smelter in the United States. (Primary smelters produce lead from mined resources.)
In 2010, Doe Run reached a comprehensive settlement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state of Missouri. As part of that settlement, the Company agreed to discontinue its smelting operations in Herculaneum by the end of 2013. Over the operating life of the smelter, the Company spent millions of dollars in environmental and other upgrades. Continuing to upgrade the aging smelter to attempt to meet the increasingly stringent environmental regulations imposed on primary lead smelters was not economically feasible given the many other requirements of our business.* We shared this news in 2010 in a press release available on our website.
What might this do to the price of batteries now that we won't be making any new lead, just recycling what we have now? Think it might go the way of gasoline? Concrete? 

The government does everything it can to restrict the oil we pump from the ground, or transport to refineries. They've doubled the price of gas as a means of forcing us to use less of it. And it's working... for poor people. And it's making life harder for the middle class, who are on their way to the poverty line.

The EPA has caused or will cause the closure of 20% of all concrete plants, and will increase the price of every yard produced by those who survive.

They mandate that an ever increasing percentage of our corn crop be diverted into gasoline production, thereby raising the cost of corn, gasoline, and animal feed. (therefore meat) This, even though even diehard environmentalists now admit that the practice does more harm than good.

God help us if we don't turn this around in the 2014 and 2016 elections. We're on our way down while China is on its way up. My concern isn't for loss of Merica Nummer One status. My concern is for the fate of the country when China is the superpower, and can use its industrial might against us. What do we do when we're no longer capable of building the industry to fight back?



Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Selfie




(clickabiggen)

It's Going to be a Long Flight Back





Sign Language Interpreter at Memorial Service Was Faking It


 The "complete charlatan who had no clue." Next to him
is Mr. Jantjie, the South African sign language interpreter.

From the AP:

JOHANNESBURG (AP) - A man who provided sign language interpretation on stage for Nelson Mandela's memorial service, attended by scores of heads of state, was a "fake," the national director of the Deaf Federation of South Africa said on Tuesday...
 
...Three sign language experts said the man was not signing in South African or American sign languages. South African sign language covers all of the country's 11 official languages, according to the federation. It wasn't immediately clear if the unidentified man was using a different method to communicate...
 
...Nicole Du Toit, an official sign language interpreter who also watched the broadcast, said in a telephone interview that the man on stage purporting to sign was an embarrassment.
"It was horrible, an absolute circus, really really bad," she said. "Only he can understand those gestures."

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Big Brother Approaching


More beware of Google stuff:

KSTP also reports that during the period that HealthCare.gov was hosted by servers owned by Google, the tech giant appeared to be capturing MAC addresses—reporter Nick Winkler characterizes them as “computer fingerprints”—which can identify individual computers.
“It seems weird to me,” Lanterman told KSTP. “I’m a little bit troubled by it. It’s not something that would ordinarily be collected, so someone had to make a decision to collect it.”
Google has been unwilling to speak with KSTP about the collection of MAC addresses.




Monday, December 09, 2013

Seventh-day Adventists Either


Life wasn't easy for outdoor cats on Brewster Street.


Been There


Andrew tried to paint the house. He really did. But every 
time he took out the ladder, life would get marvelous 
and he'd forget what he was supposed to be doing.



From "Smash the State!" to "More Government!"




via

fighting101s.jpg