Hey I found the truck I want - let's go get it.

So DHS shows up with seven vehicles, takes the homeowner's Range Rover Defender.  This is absurd on so many levels.

They claim there's a problem with the VIN numbers.   Okay - since when does  a mismatch VIN become a Homeland Security Issue?    The local cops?  Sure.  The State Patrol? Okay - the FEDS?  not.   

My bet - some DHS asshat wanted a Defender and found one, figures he'll get it at auction cheap.

Science is DEAD, long live Politics

The trend continues, any scientist who disagrees with the political agenda get's silenced.  Borepatch has some info on one of the more recent assaults on science.   If you sometimes wonder about Climate Science - just keep following the links on his site.   You will rapidly come to the conclusion that there is something going on - but it's NOT SCIENCE.

From Joanne Nova - http://joannenova.com.au

Want some more - go check out You Tube.  First look at the TED channel, there are some very interesting talks - there's also a LOT of social engineering going on - no big surprise, most of them are believers in the Leftist Agenda.

 Now search for Banned from TED talks.   Yeah there's quite a few of them, if you listen to them you'll find that they mostly talk about things that are counter to the Leftist Agenda.

One I can't quite figure out is this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKCvf8E7V1g - Look at my previous post - it's basically a Rich Guy saying we need to Tax Rich Guys.  Well that fits with the Leftist agenda - except that they KNOW they're not going to do it, because THEY don't pay taxes.

What Rich People Don't Understand

I'm going to assume it's a lack of understanding, because I find it difficult to fathom what other possible reason the rich could have to recommend taxing the rich.

This TED talk is a good example.   Everything he says sounds really good.  In some respects, he is correct - the rich don't create jobs, that's done mostly by small business and the middle class.  Where they always go WRONG and I mean Horribly WRONG is in two areas.

First - It's not the Rich spending - it's their access to CAPITAL that makes job creation possible. It's making capital available to entrepreneurs that makes jobs.

The second is that Transferring that capital to the government in ANY form will change anything.  It won't. Government creates jobs, but those jobs are fed by taxes of the middle class,  all that happens when government creates jobs is and increased tax burden.    What about all those government employee's paying taxes?   - They're paying it with YOUR tax money.   They PRODUCE nothing.  Can they increase private sector spending in the short run - Yes, but with out adding anything to the GDP there is NO growth.  Ultimately you simply increase the tax burden and put it on even fewer people.    That's what's been happing for the last 20 years - see the big improvement?  No?  Surprise!

If the rich really want to give away their money out of guilt and have it do some good - create interest free small business loans  - not big business, SMALL business.  Big business has access to capital they always have and until things collapse they always will.   It's small business that's being strangled by taxation and regulation - as is the middle class.   Stop taxing the crap out of us to buy votes.

The Last Generation

Parents and teachers will be the death of the country, but before that happens I figured out how you can all get rich.   Invest in Bubbles.  Mexican's aren't stupid they're not going to send their army up to start the Reconquista, no need.  They come, they take over all those dirty jobs no one want's their kids doing.  They learn to become the perfect helicopter nannies, now mom can stop hovering and go back to work - awesome.   I figure two more generations of public school and helicopter moms should about do it.  The entire generation will grow up in bubbles. The Mexicans will be there, waiting patently for the senile old assholes to need spoon feeding, then Boom!  "Sign the deed bubble boy, then you get fed."  Poof - they own the country.  

LibProg doing that Cannibal Thing

For some reason - I suspect it's the total lack of ability to process logic, accept facts, and the absolute assumption of moral superiority - the LibProgs just love to turn on each other and eat their own.

Trans-gender is a big LibProg issue, must respect the rights of Trans-genders, must Celebrate Trans-genders - hell why aren't YOU a trans-gender, you hater.

Unless apparently you're a  radFem (or Feminazi) which I think is probably the better term.

So this article brings up some of the conflict between radFem and TransGen.

Nope can't have those whiney TransGen assholes trying to muscle in on our Misandry - no, it's ours we Earned It.  

So apparently if you trans from Fem to Patriarchy you're a traitor, and if you Trans from Patriarchy to Fem, you just an upstart late comer bitch muscling in on their Victimhood.

Oh so very logical.

Chalk full of Irony

The People's Cube has some awesome irony - but this recent post is awesome, go check out the rest.

Californification

There was a period in WA history that we talked about the Californification of Washington.  You don't here much about that anymore - I think we've been overrun.  I'm starting to wonder if there are more native Californians here than native Washingtonians.

Reading the news - Okay, I don't read the news I read select websites - one of which is Lawrence Person's Battleswarm.  He often talks about how many businesses are moving from CA to Texas.  He talks about this in terms of how bad CA is for business (which it is) and how much better TX is - which it is.   Sadly - I think they're gonna regret the Californification of Texas - Just look at Austin.

It does tend to show the rather hypocritical nature of libprogs,  they've screwed up CA now they're moving to Texas - a state, who say five years ago would have been considered a Conservative gun toting Hell on Earth.   Apparently Gun Toting Conservative is better than Ruined LibProg - even in a LibProg's mind.

Thinking out loud

Rand Paul in 2010: "The average federal employee makes $120,000 a year," Paul said. "The average private employee makes $60,000 a year." 

Politifact cries foul  saying that it's comparing apples and oranges.  I've got some other issues with both of them.  The census puts the average MEDIAN FAMILY income for 2011 @ $51,374

From Politifact:
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, a federal statistics-gathering agency, federal worker compensation in 2009 averaged $123,049, which was double the private-sector average of $61,051. That's a gap of almost $62,000 -- and is pretty close to what Paul said on This Week.

Next they say - wait a second:

That said, there's still a gap between federal and private-sector pay if you strip out the portion that's in the form of benefits. BEA found that federal civilian employees earned $81,258 in salary, compared to $50,464 for private-sector workers. That cuts the federal pay advantage almost exactly in half, to nearly $31,000.

Cool - I wouldn't mind and extra $31,000 a year - You?    So, now that's closer to what I'd think might match the Census data.   It's still not clear if their talking Mean or Median averages (or some other weighted average). 

Then they go on to complain that, well government folks tend to have Degrees and such - the don't mention the fact that most of those degrees would get them a job flipping burgers at minimum wage - but what ever. 

So the fairer way to compare pay is by an apples-to-apples comparison of equivalent jobs. A widely referenced study by USA Today attempted to do this.

The newspaper found that "overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,046 in 2008, the most recent data available." Doing this calculation reduces the federal pay lead over the private sector even further, to $7,645.

Great, so even after all the - but waits, Government jobs still pay better, and have had more growth than private sector - then there's the MUCH better benefits, oh yeah and the JOB SECURITY. - All of which comes out of the TAXES paid by the Private Sector Salaries. 

But wait you say - Government employee's pay taxes too.  Yeah they do - they pay them with TAX MONEY taken from the Private Sector - so at best it's a discount on their salary costs.   They also do NOTHING to help GDP.

So WHY do they have UNIONS?  What the hell - when did the government EVER have unfair labor practices?  What possible excuse do these people have for needing a Union?  Oh, right - because the Union takes their money - which comes from our taxes, to support Democrats, so they can have a Bigger Government and take More Taxes. 

What I see here is a Conflict of Interest - on a HUGE scale.   

Solution - If your income is derived from taxes - you don't get to vote.  You don't get to contribute to campaigns.  That should solve the conflict of interest problem. 

More States, better representation?

This article references a current attempt to split up California.   There has been a State of Jefferson movement for years, I’ve heard of plans for three states, this is the first I’ve heard of six.  

There is I think a need to re-evaluate the boundaries of several states as populations centralized in to fewer bigger cities.  Cities tend for a number of reasons to head down the path of Socialism - it never works, but they keep trying.  I’ve felt for a while now that Splitting eastern and western Washington, and Oregon would be beneficial to some extent.  The downsides need to be examined in some considerable detail before that happens.  As things stand, in WA there are seven counties around Puget Sound that control the fate of 39.  To say that most of counties outside the Puget area are getting represented by their government is either terribly ignorant or disingenuous.  California is much worse.   

While I don’t think the split will succeed - it might, things are bad -business are moving out as fast as they can, looking for tax relief and slightly less insane regulatory restrictions.  

You can tell that the plan was developed by a Silicon Vally type, they’ve taken the most expensive, and most financially powerful section of the state and spit it off on it’s own.   The upside, is that they will get to pay for their own social engineering experiments.  Sadly, it leaves one city to wag each state, except Jefferson, and wag them they will.  Bakersfield/Fresno are similar enough that they’ll act in concert, it’s possible that they’re small enough still to realize they’re only there because of the surrounding agriculture. Sadly, they’re going to be in a financial tight spot, yes, they can dump all of the Socialist crap, but they’re going to have a fight on their hands with illegal aliens. 

Jefferson would have opportunity to become the free state that a lot of people dream about.  They’ll have a hard start but with the right laws and tax structure, I could see a lot of companies moving in that direction.  They’ll just need to be careful about which they allow in. 

Ultimately, they may end up with more conservative (red) states than they think.  

iPhone back doors - Apple supplies the tools to hack your phone, and you'll never know.

While I believe the iPhone is more secure than android, that's sort of damming with faint praise.  Neither phone is secure.

Here's a recent article by a computer forensics guy about the API in iOS that let's people with the know how, log into your phone and download - well pretty much everything, including stuff you can't access yourself - all with out a password.

So how does apple protect this rather massive security hole in their system - which they put there, on purpose - they don't document it.  Yeah, that helped a lot.  

What we need is a new OS, open sourced, built with the following priorities.

Security
Portability
Cross Platform development tools
Size/Speed
Extensibility

I'm not sure if you could start with any existing OS, as none of them were designed with Security as the primary design criteria.

Each and every decision made needs to be evaluated for potential security issues.  There are hurdles, big ones.   I'm not sure it's possible given the linkages between existing processors, bluetooth, and wifi.  Starting with a new hardware platform would be better, but unless someone has a few spare billion laying around to start a new phone company....  You'd have to source a processor from your own manufacturing to be sure they didn't build back doors into the chip itself, and work your way up. No Chinese made processors, or hardware.  No NSA involvement - and how do you filter out the NSA spies from the development team?   Yeah, I'm not sure either.

Sadly, security ultimately relies on human beings an frankly - that's not a very trustworthy foundation to build anything on.

Note to self - Never hire a U of Wisconsin Grad

Never hire anyone who went to school at the University of Wisconsin - Madison (probably any U of Wisconsin school)

Gaystapo strikes again

Looks like the Gaystapo is at it again.   Why is it that the perpetually offended insist that every one celebrate their life choices.   They're offended by a Christian College having an anti-gay stance - well no shit, and so what.  Let me see... constitution.... bill of rights... Ah there it is,  1st Amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibition the free exercise thereof; ....

Okay, let's review how this works....

If congress can't do it because it's unconstitutional then guess what - neither can a state, or a county or a city.   Oh, and neither can the Gaystapo. 

Sorry folks, you are provided equal rights - not superior rights, you don't get to determine how religions run their institutions.  

Screwed up terminology

Illegal immigration - no such thing.  If you're not here legally, it's not immigration, might be occupation, but it's not immigration.

Illegal alien - someone in the country illegally.  Specifically the crossed the border with out a visa  - and I don't mean the credit card, or their visa has expired.

It's impossible to grant immigration amnesty to someone who isn't a criminal.

I'm getting tired of the media switching terms around trying to make criminals sound good.  

U.S. Attempts to create a Zombie Army

I can't think of a single other reason why The US sends 14,000 draft notices to men born in 1800s

Oh -wait - complete and utter incompetence might explain it.

Arming Police with Cameras

It's a simple solution, and one early experiment seems to show some positive results.

Realto, CA has attached video cameras to it's officers in an attempt to reduce the unnecessary use of force and complaints associated with that abuse of power.  Abuse of power has reached epidemic proportions from the federal level all the way down to the locals.  It must stop.  

I would take the process one step further and  require all the footage to be available to the public 24/7 on the web.  I'd also look for a volunteer group to review the video from all personal interactions between officers and the public for say two years, then cut back to just interactions that resulted in anything more than a simple citation.  Why?  simple, I want the sheep to have some control over the wolves - we've seen what happens when the police police themselves - it's rarely justice for the public.

Privacy concerns need to be addressed before any video is made available to the general public. I would want the non-officer identity protected - blurred images, names redacted from the sound track.  The police, as a public employee don't get a claim on privacy when operating in the public.  The original versions must still be available.  I'd be will to say that only video covering contacts that resulted in a complaint by the public should make it to the web, just to save costs.

Facebook Delete

Well I finally got around to deleting my Facebook account.

The reasons are legion - the most recent - is this crap  (From the PA Gun Blog - thanks Bitter)

One of the things that brought on my recent frustration with the issue is the Facebook scandal involving Kendall Jones, a young female hunter. She posted pictures from lawful hunts, and Facebook took them down for violating community standards. However, the “Kill Kendall Jones” page is allowed to remain because Facebook says that doesn’t violate any community standards. Now, a Democratic former Congressional candidate is offering$100,000 to anyone who will publish naked pictures of Kendall Jones simply because he doesn’t like that she hunts and wants to see her personally destroyed.

Oh, and this   The Facebook Listening Feature 

Oh, and this:  Facebook sued for invading users’ privacy

And This: 

A whole new invasion of privacy: Facebook can identify your face 97% of the time

And This:  

You Thought You Had Privacy Before the NSA Leak? What About Facebook?

And This:  

Why Graph Search Could Be Facebook's Largest Privacy Invasion Ever

And This:  

Iran Spies on U.S. Officials By Facebook Friending Them

And This:

3 Ridiculous Ways the FDA Is Policing Social Media

And This:

Facebook admits manipulating 689,003 users’ emotions in psychology experiment

Ok, I can go on and on and on and on and...............  But if you have't figured it out by now, then you either just don't care, or you think you're getting more from the experience than they are (their stock price would indicate you're probably wrong)  or maybe you're just... bhaaaah