I lived in New York during the summer described in this article.

At the time, I was employed in the Loss Prevention Department of a national discount department store chain, working directly for the comptroller of loss prevention, a man named Murray. I spent most of my time travelling out of state, but I happened to be in New York at the time of the blackout, and Murray called me at home the morning after the lights went out to ask me to head over to our South Bronx store and see what kind of shape it was in after the looting of the night before.

I called a co-worker and asked him if he’d like to join me, and the two of us drove over to see what we could see.

The store in question was a three storey building that had contained $16,000,000.00 worth of merchandise (this was 1977, so you may well imagine the dollar value back then vs the amount of inventory involved).

When we arrived, we found that the looters had been quite thorough, they had absconded not only with every last piece of merchandise, but they’d also taken the cash registers, the display racks, the mannequins… in fact, the only screw-up we could ascertain was that they had forgotten to take one shoe from one mannequin (we didn’t sell shoes, but where there was one, there was a pair).

We spent the next several hours in the home office dealing with the paperwork necessary to officially close the store — if those animals had to rip us off like that, we certainly weren’t going to restock the store and carry on with “business as usual”.

Then there was the Son of Sam, of course. Some cops stopped me on the way home from work one night — I was doing a week’s relief for the manager of our Fordham Road store, who was on vacation — for a search of my briefcase and I — and I was somehow required to visit Queens Central Homicide the next day, which was based in the Ozone Park precinct, to talk to one of the detectives on the Son of Sam case and look at composite sketches. Yay! One closely resembled a friend of mine who couldn’t possibly have been the psycho SOB, so I kept my own counsel. Good thing, as he wasn’t David Berkowitz.

The NYPD folks were pretty desperate to catch the mutt, and it was indubitably a day of rejoicing for many when they snatched him up on something so mundane as a parking ticket. But at least they got him, and thank G-d for that.

But all in all, it was a summer we New Yorkers won’t completely forget — at least those of us who are old enough to remember…

Yesterday, self styled liberal (I say “self styled” because he is better informed and makes more sense than your average liberal) commenter BB Idaho added a link to a comment he made on my previous post that I thoroughly enjoyed, as usual.

Being me, I ended up following a link from there to a number of YouTube videos featuring my choice candidate for Presidential Election 2008, U.S. Representative from Colorado Tom Tancredo.

Therein, among many other videos, was Tom’s speech at the New Hampshire Republican Party Dinner. For those who haven’t read or heard much of what he is about, the ten minute video is well worth viewing.

…I voted for Arnold.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Latino immigrants who want to learn English more quickly should avoid Spanish-language media.

“You’ve got to turn off the Spanish television set,” Schwarzenegger said at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists convention in San Jose on Wednesday.

“It’s that simple. You’ve got to learn English. I know this sounds odd and this is the politically incorrect thing to say and I’m going to get myself in trouble. But I know that when I came to this country, I very rarely spoke German to anyone.”

Well, I suppose one runs into a lot more German speakers than Austrian speakers here in America, but the Governator’s point is well taken.

Too many immigrants, especially among Latinos and to some extent Chinese, unfortunately, are too lazy (a real shame on Latinos as learning English from Spanish is a lot easier than learning English from most other foreign languages) or aren’t interested enough in assimilating into the U.S. population as Americans to put any serious work into learning English, and instead they bury themselves in like-minded communities. These people are definitely not worthy of U.S. citizenship, in my book. My maternal grandparents, who arrived in America from eastern Europe nearly 80 years ago and met at night school in New York learning English, subsequently permitting only English to be spoken in their home, would agree with me whole-heartedly.

… –remember him, the first Islamic member of the U.S. House of Representatives, as of last November? — didn’t waste any time in buddying blatantly up with the PR firm most favored by Islamic terrorists — the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR, and another advocate of Mohammedan mass murderers, the Muslim American Society of Minnesota.

What is strikingly wrong here is that there is no takiyya involved, Ellison is not attempting to conceal any of his affiliations with supporters of so-called “militant Islam”. Unless he was a total moron, which I don’t believe he is, he would know that because he is a Muslim there will always be concerned infidels watching his every move. You can’t blame them, given the combination of the office he holds and his faith within a religion that just happens to represent not only the worst enemy in the history of the United States, but of the free world as well.

The Muslim congressman from Minnesota who used a Quran for his swearing-in ceremony now is cavorting with the Muslim American Society, and either should distance himself from that group –or resign, say critics.

As WND has reported, Ellison also allowed his election supporters to shout, “Allahu Akbar!,” the same phrase allegedly used by the 9/11 suicide pilots, and he has confirmed to reporters that “in terms of political agenda items, my faith informs these things.”

As the linked article points out, there are many who consider Ellison, as an occupant of his government position and an associate of terrorist supporting Islamic organizations, to be a national security risk.

Founded in 1998, Americans Against Hate is a civil rights organization and terrorism watchdog group whose goal is “to be an active voice against those that spread bigotry and violence.”

The group said just days ago, Ellison gave the keynote address in front of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota at the group’s fourth annual convention
“While Ellison spoke, the group was actively spreading vitriolic hatred and violence aimed at Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims via its website,” Kaufman’s statement said.

He cited the following statements on that group’s Internet site:

“The Holy Prophet (and through him the Muslims) has been reassured that he should not mind the enmity, the evil designs and the machinations of the Jews…”

“In view of the degenerate moral condition of the Jews and the Christians, the Believers have been warned not to make them their friends and confidants.”

“If you gain victory over the men of Jews, kill them.”

“The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say, ‘O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.’”

“May Allah destroy the Jews, because they used the graves of their prophets as places of worship.”

“A Muslim must always worship Allah and wage jihad until death in order to reach his ultimate goal… Regularly make the intention to go on jihad with the ambition to die as a martyr.”

This guy could well prove an even greater threat to our national security than Nancy Pelosi or the New York Times, and a prized asset to al-Qaeda. He is now in the position to vote on security related issues, read classified documents and contribute Muslim biased positions.

“Following the election, Ellison continued to cavort with CAIR, addressing its November 2006 banquet, in addition to speaking at events sponsored by other groups connected to terrorism,” Kaufman said.

Kaufman said the MAS was founded in 1993 and, “today, it mostly acts as an activist organization, holding conferences and youth camps throughout the United States.”
But he said the Minnesota chapter provides information about “waging jihad” against non-Muslims.”

“One [discussion] reads, ‘A Muslim must always worship Allah and wage jihad until death in order to reach his ultimate goal, although the goal is invisible and it takes a long time to achieve,’” Kaufman said.

The website has one section devoted to “Stoning to Death of Jews and other Dhimmis,” Kaufman said.

“Additionally, MAS-Minnesota’s website contains laudatory declarations towards Hamas,” he added, where the organization is called a “steadfast, brave, aware Islamic resistance movement.”

You know, there is a difference in meaning between the terms permissive and tolerant. By allowing an enemy of the state to be a leader of our country, we are being (insanely) permissive, yet if we attempt to deny him such status, him being a Muslim and all, we will be called intolerant (along with racist, of course), by the usual suspects.

It would appear that Islamofascism has its first foot in the door of the United States Congress.

This perspective arrived via link in an email from Ryan Jones at zionist.com.

Israel this week marked 40 years since its stunning victory over vastly superior Arab forces in the 1967 Six Day War. The rest of the world remembered the event by unleashing a flood of criticism over Israel’s continued “occupation” of Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights.
When Israel’s detractors speak of the “illegal occupation” they are basing their position on UN Security Council Resolution 242.

However, an honest examination of the resolution and the subsequent events of of the past four decades reveals that Israel’s control of these territories in fact constitutes a legal occupation.

Read the rest.

…got that right!

The United Nations is increasingly becoming a parody of itself while American taxpayers last year provided $439 million to the regular U.N. budget — plus a headquarters in New York that the U.N. management wants to expand. Not only has this dysfunctional and occasionally corrupt organization failed to stop the genocide in Darfur, but on May 11, the insatiably brutal Robert Mugabe’s government of Zimbabwe was elevated by the United Nations to chair its Commission on Sustainable Development — dealing with land, rural and economic development, and the environment.

Read on…

… over this patently offensive display of what today’s anti-Christian liberals term “art”, I feel it is perfectly in keeping with the rules of civilized conduct that Christians’ response has been objection through speech, emails, letters, calls for a boycott and so forth.

Imagine what the response from believers, world wide, in a certain less civilized religion would have been had the sculpture been of Mohammed….

As many who have been visiting me here for awhile are indubitably aware, one of my occasional pastimes is sitting in front of my computer, sipping something pleasant and listening to music that dredges up memories from the past. Believe me, when you have more than fifty years of past to dwell upon, there’s quite a bit of material upon which to draw for the purpose of reminiscence – especially if you led a restless, wandering younger life that consisted of copious geographic changes and even more occupational endeavors, friendships and adventures.

It’s interesting and in some ways depressing to remember certain periods three decades ago and beyond when the world was such a different place. People say that technology has made Earth much smaller, yet that really doesn’t seem to be the case. My own perception is that it has grown, in the sense that such things as friendliness, warmth, trust and actual communication between the planet’s human inhabitants has come to be divided by ever expanding gulfs, not only between continents, but between the co-inhabitants of individual cities as well.

The people you pass on the sidewalks in nearly any city you care to name seem to be surrounded by invisible force fields, no doubt a defensive reaction to the legions of panhandlers and other human spam that have proliferated in the last couple of decades. These people move about as though no passers-by exist in their respective worlds. What can you do? Spam is everywhere, on your computer, in your mailbox, on television. In the vast gulf of my own memories, I can’t remember any other time when so many people were continuously forcing their unrestricted, morally and otherwise, marketing campaigns down our throats.

What I find most distressing is that there are no limits to what they advertise and how they advertise it. Perhaps it’s because I was raised in a time when intimate venues were kept… intimate. Today, women’s private items are advertised everywhere and of late there are a lot of ads on TV and spams on the WWW for potions that purport to either counteract “erectile disfunction” or enlarge the male member. There is a KY ad on the tube for an intimate lubricant. There are ads for computer dating services, ads for weight loss programs that disclaim any real results while claiming that gorging themselves on the advertisers’ pre-prepared meals (“if you can eat, you can lose weight”) will take off tens of pounds, Girls Gone Wild ads that would never have made it to television when I was growing up, etc, etc. Spams advertising cheap, foolproof methods of becoming as rich as any garden variety sultan without having to put in any real work or otherwise earn the promised fortune are as common as molecules.

How about spam from folks you’ve never heard of that advertises using their pheromone products to make women pant for you, following you home and into your bed as though you were an erotic pied piper, or whose subject lines come across with “Tired of being a needledick?”

At the risk of being cliché, I ask, is nothing sacred anymore?

This is mostly attributable to the effects that liberal thinking, liberal legislation and Hollywood liberalism have engendered in virtually every aspect of every branch of media in our society. If I invent a new breakthrough in vibrating dildo technology and begin mass producing a product based on it, there is probably some way I could run TV commercials to sell it during prime time.

Now, going back to the era (circa 1969 to 1973) of the music I’m listening to at the moment – the playlist is R & B/ Soul (I’ve never learned the difference between the two, but I love ‘em both, so I don’t suppose it matters), all my memories are wholesome in an extreme, our society was completely different – even the extreme liberals who “helped” us lose the Vietnam war at home weren’t nearly as extreme as the leftist assholes (not only Pelosi & Co on the Hill, but the MSM and the many treasonous anti-war activists from Hollywood and elsewhere) we seem forced to endure today.

Wow, the playlist has moved up nearly a decade, to the song I consider to be the Pointer Sisters’ absolute masterpiece. I have never heard this track played on any stateside radio stations, but I was living in Puerto Rico (yeah, I told you I moved around a lot in my younger years) when it was released, and it was really popular in that part of the Caribbean at the time (lots of airplay on WIBS-FM). It was off Sweet and Soulful, and was titled Sweet Lover Man. My second favorite track on that LP was Could I Be Dreaming.

Okay, so now we’re at a stage in our society where socialism seems to be gradually taking over our democracy – we conservatives do what we can to oppose it, do all we can to get our message out… and our Jello-spined, complacent, self seeking senators and representatives on the Hill continuously cede political “territory” to the Democrats. As a result, no matter what we fight for, what we want, what we believe (even as the majority of voters), etc, etc, is obscured by a media that is totally anti-America, representative of socialist ideals and arse creeps the ACLU, CAIR and other enemies of our great nation and its Constitution, constitute a winning faction. There is a leftist revolution in progress, and it is winning.

For my own part, I see the early years of my life as another, better world.

My friend Cubed and I share the concept that was so well phrased in a 1960s Richard Harris film as applied to where our own civilization is headed:

Don’t let it be forgot
That once there was a spot
For one brief shining moment
That was known as Camelot.

To tell the truth, I’m tired. I really am. This world has become a study in idiocy, and that says a lot more than I can say for the state of the United States Government.

I have decided to retire, screw everything!

I have decided to take the clause in a contract for a new offshore job that gives me an out, and have opted to simply drop out of the marketplace entirely, bury myself in a big U.S. city and retire – live off my investments, blog, and work on the manuscript of a novel I’ve been working on for quite sometime. I am blessed with the financial circumstances to do so, and the very idea becomes more attractive by the minute….

One of the most important elements of security is controlling access to information that might be used to expose the principal, whether it is a company, a segment of vital infrastructure or a government entity, to the theft of industrial secrets by a competitor, to a terrorism or criminal act, or to a successful enemy espionage coup. Any security expert, agency or department will tell you this without a second’s thought. At least, any that can truthfully be considered even one iota beyond the level of rank amateur.

Many people whose occupational responsibilities lie outside the protective complain that a number of the time and effort concessions they are compelled to make in order to observe company security proceedures are inconvenieces (who the hell is going to want to steal this stuff, anyway?), yet when they ignore or sluff off on security policies and something goes wrong as a result, they are the first to lay the blame on the very security personnel who created those policies.

Having said that, while information security has always been vital, in today’s atmosphere of global terrorism, especially given the fact that on the terrorist world map the United States appears as a fat round target, any and all infrastructural information that can be of any use to terrorists should be very tightly controlled on a need-to-access basis.

I have posted before on holes in the security at some U.S. airports, but in those previous posts I mainly vented my concern (I fly a lot, you damn well better believe I’m concerned!) about actual physical security discrepancies.

My concern here is rooted in information security:

Orlando International Airport officials already scrambling to plug security gaps had a new concern to explain Friday: how sensitive documents detailing the airport’s layout, fuel-storage facilities, communications systems and power lines wound up in a Dumpster.

The documents, part of an OIA 20-year growth master plan updated in August 2004, are labeled “sensitive security information” that should not be released without a “need to know.” After being shown the documents by an Orlando Sentinel reporter, airport officials vowed to tighten security to prevent a similar mistake.

This is the kind of thing that should never have happened, nor should there have even been any condition or circumstance that allowed it to happen! This business of “…airport officials vowed to tighten security to prevent a similar mistake” is pure and total bullshit. Simply put, had the airport’s security manager been even remotely competent, there would have been safeguards against this happening to begin with. If it was a case of an employee being negligent, that employee needs to be severely disciplined or fired.

There’s another possibility here — one based on timing. What if an employee placed those documents in the dumpster so they could be retrieved later by someone else, and the young man that found them simply beat the intended “finder” to the punch?

One thing we can be certain of is that had the airport authorities learned of this and it had not been reported, they would have kept the affair to themselves and carried on as if nothing had happened, not wishing to “rock the boat” of passenger confidence or spend money on increased vigilance on classified information.

Read the entire article here.

A great big hat tip to my friend Bob for this one, LOL, and soooooo true!

Government Organization

The monkeys on the bottom look up
and see nothing but assholes.