Current Events – Page 56 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Their Blood is On Your Hands, Bloomberg

Most of us have heard by now about this:

Nicholas Todd Pekearo and Eugene Marshalik, two of the city’s nearly 4,500 auxiliary police officers, responded to the shooting and approached Gavin, who crossed the street and fired at them. Auxiliary officers are civilian volunteers who wear uniforms, are unarmed and help patrol streets.

The volunteer auxiliary officers were hit, and died in the line of duty. I have to hand it to any man or woman who would risk their lives like this in an attempt to save others, and these two officers should be regarded as heroic for what they did.

In Bloomberg’s response to this whole thing:

He also called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Thursday to urge her to act – and said that if she didn’t she’d have blood on her hands, the mayor said.

No, I’m sorry, this is pissing me off, Mike. If anyone has blood on their hands it’s you. That’s right you, you prat. I whole heartedly support the idea of volunteer auxiliary police, but you do not put people in to harm’s way by asking them to put themselves into a position to confront violent criminals without having the proper tools to defend themselves. Firearms are not mystical devices that take years of proper training to master. I could teach your volunteer police officers to shoot competently enough in a weekend to deal with an armed crazy walking the streets of your city shooting at people.

No, it’s not Nancy Pelosi who has blood on her hands for ignoring the gun issue, it’s people in positions of power like Mayor Bloomberg who refuse to accept that his city’s gun control laws are an abject failure, and have only chosen to disarm the innocent and leave them easy prey for people like David Garvin.

Those two brave auxillary officers can be counted as two more victims that have been sacrificed at the altar of Bloomberg’s religious beliefs on gun control.

World War I Now Officially History

From Leaning Towards the Dark Side, we learn that the last World War I combat veteran died on February 22nd, 2007.

The last American combat veteran of World War I recently passed away, on February 22nd. Howard V. Ramsey was 109 years old and lived in Oregon. He was corporal, and arrived in France two months before the war ended in 1918. Ramsey drove trucks and cars, which brought him under enemy artillery fire as he delivered supplies to the front lines, or drove an ambulance up to retrieve wounded troops. After the war ended on November 11, 1918, Ramsey spent seven months recovering the bodies of dead American soldiers. Ramsey was born in Colorado, and volunteered for service, as he was too young for the draft. There are still seven American World War I veterans, but none of them went overseas.

A sad milestone, for sure. But there are currently hundreds of thousands of folks out there following in Mr. Ramsey’s footsteps, of whom we should be justly proud.

An Open Request to Ruth Ann Minner

Dear Governor,

If you’re going to charge $2.00 to drive through the 20 miles of I95 that span the State of Delaware, it would be nice to ensure the road is clear of ice, and the Delaware Service Station has an ample supply of gasoline and has walkways mostly clear of ice.

Thanks,

An Annoying Pennsylvanian

Car Survival

As the incident in Pennsylvania should remind us, we must always be prepared when venturing out in inclimate weather in our vehicles. I won’t say I’m always perfect in this regard, but there are several things every car should have when traveling, IMHO:

Sufficient drinking water
Some kind of emergency ration. Could just be some power bars or something
Something to keep warm, you never know when you will be exposed for prolonged periods of time
Some means of making fire
Some means of extinguishing fire
Cell phone
Decent set of walking shoes if you have to wear heels or dress shoes
Change of clothes if you’re in dress clothing.
A rifle and spare ammunition, where legal

This is probably preaching to the choir a bit, since we gun nuts generally give more thought to this kind of thing than the average person, and are thus better prepared. The last entry will probably give non-gun folks the willies, but too bad. Most of them wouldn’t blink over my suggestion to have a fire extinguisher in the car, and having a rifle is really no different. A pistol could be substituted for a rifle, but rifles really are better for extreme circumstances, and they don’t take up much room in the car. For a car or truck gun, I think you can’t really beat the Kel-Tec SU-16 or SUB-2000 series. I wish they made the SUB-2000 in .45ACP though, because the great thing about the SUB-2000 is it takes the same ammo you carry in your pistol. A lot of people like to carry .45, and given that advantage, you’d think they’d want it available in all three of the common pistol calibers rather than just two.

Get Ready

The Brady’s and their ilk are sure to jump on this tragedy before the bodies are even cold.Â The press will want to play this up for the new Congress as well.

This highlights the importance of being armed where you’re legally able to be.Â Details aren’t coming out yet, but it looks like an armed off-duty police officer may have saved a lot of lives.

If you want to get into law school….

but can’t pass the LSATs?Â Â Well, don’t try to bribe the LSAC employees for a copy of it.

Court Martial Begins

The court martial for Ehren Watada, who refused orders to ship out to Iraq, begins today, and it seems the judge isn’t allowing testimony about the legality of the war:

1st Lt. Ehren Watada, 28, of Honolulu is charged with missing movement for refusing to ship out with his unit, the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. He also faces charges of conduct unbecoming an officer for accusing the Army of war crimes and denouncing the administration for conducting an “illegal war” founded on “lies.”

As his court-martial got under way, military judge Lt. Col. John Head refused to allow almost all defense witnesses to take the stand. Head previously ruled that Watada’s attorney, Eric Seitz, could not debate the legality of the Iraq war in court.

It seems to me this is appropriate, since this war was approved by Congress, it is constitutional and the orders to ship out lawful.Â Watada’s attorney seems to be unhappy so far:

“If you are going to tie my hands and you are going to script these proceedings, then in my view we’re all wasting our time,” Seitz said.

This will definitely get me kicked out of the Libertarian Club to say this, but Watada is lucky he’s only facing prison time and a dishonorable discharge.Â In wars past, he would have been lined up in front of a firing squad and shot.Â When you join the military, you don’t get to pick and choose when you fight, or refuse orders to make political statements about the war.Â It would be one thing if he refused orders to machine gun down a crowd of women and children, but sorry Ehren, you’re not a hero for refusing deployment orders because you don’t like the war, you’re a worm.

“He betrayed his fellow soldiers who are now serving in Iraq,” Capt. Dan Kuecker said at one hearing.

Yup!

“I feel that my hair is safe at the moment.â€

I found some better video of the Boston Bomb Scare press conference in case anyone missed it:

** The video which once appeared here was removed by youtube. **

The Making of a Dictator

It’s been interesting to watch what’s been going on in Venezuela. It’s not often we get to see a socialist dictatorship emerge right before our own eyes. Today, Hugo Chavez was given the power to make laws unilaterally, so that he may “impose the dictatorship of a true democracy.” That is, a socialist “democracy”.

Just to give you an example of why I will never be elected president, I don’t see why the proper response to this isn’t to just say nothing, but to frame the noose that Saddam was hung with, and send it to Hugo, with a note attached saying:

Comrade Chavez,

Congratulations on your newfound power. I hope will will take this gift as congratulations, and as a reminder that I really do not like dictators, and those who have decided to cause trouble for us often find their lifespans severly shortened. But seriously, congratulations, destroying five decades of democratic rule in Venezuela is quite an accomplishment. Rest assured that the US stands ready to offer assistance to your country after you destroy its economy, and we’re forced to remove you from power.

Sincerely,

El Diablo

I mean, how could you resist that. Especially when you read stuff like this:

The law also allows Chavez to dictate unspecified measures to transform state institutions; reform banking, tax, insurance and financial regulations; decide on security and defense matters such as gun regulations and military organization; and “adapt” legislation to ensure “the equal distribution of wealth” as part of a new “social and economic model.”

I’ll bet Comrade Chavez is going to be making healthy use of that particular power. Remember folks, you have to disarm people before you can subjugate them. Let’s not help make it happen here too. Oh, but it gets better:

Chavez plans to reorganize regional territories and carry out reforms aimed at bringing “power to the people” through thousands of newly formed Communal Councils designed to give Venezuelans a say on spending an increasing flow of state money on projects in their neighborhoods, from public housing to potholes.

It’s good to see that Chavez has been reading his Lenin. You know what the Russian word for council is? That’s right, Soviet. If the Venezuelans know what’s good for them, they’ll put a bullet in this commie rat’s head before he can do too much damage.

Global Warming

The traffic whore in me is noticing that you seem to be able to get a lot of attention by denying global warming. So I’ll offer a bit of my perspective. I work in a business where we attempt to model very complex systems. We don’t do it very well, but it’s enough that billions of dollars are chasing after ideas which look really good when presented to outsiders who don’t know science as well. Climate is a very complex system, and a lot of the claims that climatologists make do not pass the smell test as far as I’m concerned. I will remain very skeptical of many claims regarding global warming.

I should point out that I think global warming is probably happening, and that we’re probably contributing something to it. The evidence here seems pretty solid. But I don’t find the science convincing enough to start shaping public policy around it, because I don’t think we can really know enough to do it. How much CO₂ to we need to stop emitting to make a difference? How much exactly are we contributing vs. natural contributions? How much can we expect sea level to rise? Temperature to go up? I don’t believe anyone who claims they can answer these questions with any accuracy.

I’ve seen way too many scientists claim to be able to model complex systems, who turn out to be wrong or misleading, to lend too much credence to wild claims. And if you don’t think scientists chase after grant money, you haven’t been around them enough. Don’t get me wrong, we need to keep the process going, keep learning, and keep trying to understand. But let’s not get all chicken little just yet. If we can do easy things to reduce our carbon footprint, let’s do it, but let’s not start talking about restructuring civilization just yet.