Now that Channukah, Christmas and New Year’s have come and gone and I’ve recovered sufficiently from a rather active New Year’s Eve to take a poke at this keyboard again with some semblance of coherence…

First, being a smoker, I need to pitch a brief bitch about the no-smoking-in-bars law that was moved up from this coming summer to the day before yesterday (1 January, 2008) here in Illinois. I read all these pieces about fellow smokers facing the tribulations of having to step outside the bar, into the Chicago winter (if I’m not mistaken, it’s less than 10 degrees outside as I type this), to smoke a cigarette. They speak of everything from purchasing ear muffs and extra scarves to giving up the tobacco habit.

For me, this just means I won’t go to any bars other than those in restaurants where I’m having dinner with friends, and I’ll abstain until after I leave the establishment. I simply won’t hang out at my favorite watering hole any more, or any other local drinkeries, for that matter. So I’ll save a couple of hundred bucks a week.

Then there’s this other law that kinda’ sorta’ went into effect without my even knowing about it: I noticed, over the duration of my last carton of Chesterfield Kings, that the durn things kept going out on me when I laid them in the ashtray (more of my cigarettes spend time in the ashtray than they do being smoked, as I light up most while I’m on-line, blogging, reading, commenting, etc). It seemed that there was a problem with the paper — so I called Phillip Morris to inquire, and they informed me that certain states (including Illinois) had adopted a law requiring that all cigarettes sold in them had to have the paper thickened so that they go out when they’re not being smoked. This was explained as a measure to prevent cigarettes from starting fires. Right. Okay. Whatever. I search-engined the law and read all the statistics. Fine. Ram it.

It’s sure nice to have government entities, be they local, state or federal, protecting us from ourselves. I mean, what would we do without intrusive government? Let’s make things really easy: Let’s simply shitcan the Constitution altogether. Who needs it, right? Today’s politicians apparently haven’t read it, anyway, so why bother to perpetuate its existence?

Having gotten that out of the way, let’s move on to the meat of this post:

Just like that–like flipping a switch–Congress and the president banned incandescent light bulbs last month. OK, they did not exactly ban them. But the energy bill passed by Congress and signed by President Bush sets energy-efficiency standards for light bulbs that traditional incandescent bulbs cannot meet.

The new rules phase in starting in 2012, but don’t be lulled by that five-year delay. Whether it’s next week or next decade, you will one day walk into a hardware store looking for a 100-watt bulb–and there won’t be any. By 2014, the new efficiency standards will apply to 75-watt, 60-watt and 40-watt bulbs too.

So now the government is dictating what kind of light bulbs will be available to us, cost be damned.

As a disclaimer, I will say that I use compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) for the simple reason that I dislike pedestrian hassles, especially being a high ceilings kind of guy, and the spiral bulbs mean not having to change a light bulb for a really long time.

However, I don’t believe that CFLs should be forced on the public, like it or not. They are significantly more expensive, for one thing, and for another, as was bandied about the Blogosphere several months ago, they bring a serious element of risk into the household.

Brandy Bridges heard the claims of government officials, environmentalists and retailers like Wal-Mart all pushing the idea of replacing incandescent light bulbs with energy-saving and money-saving compact fluorescent lamps.

So, last month, the Prospect, Maine, resident went out and bought two dozen CFLs and began installing them in her home. One broke. A month later, her daughter’s bedroom remains sealed off with plastic like the site of a hazardous materials accident, while Bridges works on a way to pay off a $2,000 estimate by a company specializing in environmentally sound cleanups of the mercury inside the bulb.

With everyone from Al Gore to Wal-Mart to the Environmental Protection Agency promoting CFLs as the greatest thing since, well, the light bulb, consumers have been left in the dark about a problem they will all face eventually – how to get rid of the darn things when they burn out or, worse yet, break.

So here we’re talking about government regulation requiring families and individuals to purchase and install in their dwellings common objects (unless, of course, they have no problem with living in the dark) that present potential health hazards.

Now, I’m not a litigious person, but…

… if the government can impose this upon the masses, then the masses should, by all means, be able to sue the government, big time, in the event that these CFLs, once they’re the only game in town, present the problem they did for Brandy Bridges. Instead of the citizen with no remaining freedom of choice paying for the clean-up, let Uncle Sam pay for it. After all, Uncle is forcing the situation on us, and doing so by ignoring the Constitution and the very principles of freedom that our founding fathers bestowed upon us.

Here are three factors that contribute to a major imbalance in the very existence of the United States of America:

1. We are exporting our product assembly and customer service/support positions.

2. We are replacing our domestic blue collar employment – that is, depriving Americans of work – with cheap labor from Mexico and other Third World countries (if you don’t, because of its proximity to the U.S., think Mexico is a Third World country, you probably haven’t spent much time there or ventured far from your Mexico City or Cancun hotel room).

What’s wrong with that picture? Well, gee! Jobs are heading out in one direction while illegal immigrants are coming in from the other and snatching up jobs that have been left behind.

Yes, the latter are supplying cheap restaurant help, providing lower tier labor and harvesting various crops for farmers at “affordable” rates. “They are doing,” the liberal mainstream media and Democrat politicians advise us, “the jobs that Americans won’t do.”

What they apparently don’t remember to include among these jobs that Americans won’t do are carpenters, masons, roofers, furniture movers, painters, mechanics, framers, electricians, plumbers, landscapers, cooks, construction laborers and a few other occupations I’ve probably missed.

I have toured more than one “township under development” wherein there was a contingent of illegal Mexican labor ensconced in a dormitory-like living environment at the convenience of local builders, available for whatever work is offered. One such municipality is a mere fifty or so miles from Manhattan, in Putnam County.

Here in Chicago, a federal immigration enforcement agency authorized to enforce the law would have a field day…

However, and I really don’t want to sound “I-told-you-so-ish”, last year before the elections, when the President signed the Border Fence into law, I expressed my doubts that this was anything more than a vote-getting device, and, well, I told you so…

Congress isn’t funding the proposed double fence, wherein vehicle patrols can do their thing, in fact I’d wager that even the single fence among the remains of the broken promise won’t ever be completed.

3. More than ten million people sending half or more of their mostly untaxed wages out of the United States, to support their poverty stricken – at first — families in the old country.

It’s nice (pick some nice flowers) that they do this (insert violin music), but it takes an awfully big bite out of our economy. Do the Math.

Something’s gotta give. If not, well, sayonara America!

In the course of email correspondence with an Angel, she indicated her displeasure (yeah, an understatement, and being a fellow Noo Yawkah –though not dwelling there presently — I share her consternation and disgust) at the thought of an enemy of our very form of civilization being welcomed to New York to speak at the U.N., or for any other reason, for that matter.

This stuck in my mind for a bit, and the result was that every time I’ve come across a link on anything related to the matter, I’ve clicked on it.

Articles like this one.

And Ahmadmanjihad is the enemy.

US-led forces in Iraq say they have arrested an Iranian officer operating in the north of the country.

They say the man was a member of the Quds Force - an elite unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards - and was detained in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya.
“This individual has been involved in transporting improvised explosive devices,” the American military said.

The US has accused the Quds Force of helping arm Shia militias in Iraq. Iran denies any involvement with militants.

A statement by the US military said the arrested man had been involved in the “infiltration and training of foreign terrorists in Iraq”.

Okay…

So, just to show how well the “intellectual elites” (lefteez) have done at taking over academia, the past and present jihadi with nuclear arsenal ambitions is to speak at Columbia U during his visit, by invitation. I wonder if they’ve sent any invitations to Nicholas Sarkozy. Probably not, as he’s a right thinker rather than a malevolent threat to our national security.

This is certainly true.

Meanwhile: As Columbia welcomes Ahmadinejad to campus, Columbia students who want to serve their country cannot enroll in the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) at Columbia. Columbia students who want to enroll in ROTC must travel to other universities to fulfill their obligations. ROTC has been banned from the Columbia campus since 1969. In 2003, a majority of polled Columbia students supported reinstating ROTC on campus. But in 2005, when the Columbia faculty senate debated the issue, President Bollinger joined the opponents in defeating the effort to invite ROTC back on campus.

A perfect synecdoche for too much of American higher education: they are friendlier to Ahmadinejad than to the U.S. military.

The ROTC bit really rankles me as an American: The Democrats have no problem pushing their tax-devouring, vote-chasing, negative-result social agendas at the federal level, but there doesn’t seem to be any sort of patriotic movement afoot among the rest of their political folderol. If they can peddle their socialist wares on a national footing, it seems to me that the Republican side of the political equation could mandate onsite ROTC, which is, after all, one of the building blocks of the future in the national security/defense sector, as a requisite for any federal university tax subsidies. No tickee, no washee, no exceptions.

As far as the Iranian Islamofascist terrorist president’s declared intention of visiting and placing a wreath at Ground Zero is concerned, they’d damn well better not let him. Not only would it be a desecration, of that national shrine, of the highest order (it would be the equivalent of spitting on the graves of all those who perished on, or as a result of, 9/11), but it would also provide Ahmadmanjihad with provender for a veritable feast of propaganda opportunities.

…criminals who are really good at getting away with stuff. Nothing big, you understand, just small things like Whitewater, treason, perjury, you know, just your run-of-the-mill offenses.

Today I received an email invite to check out a website called Wonkosphere.com, which is an extensive reference to affairs concerning the 2008 election.

I followed their link and right off the bat, ran into this:

While the press gyrates in unison over the over-exaggerated scandal of Senator Larry Craig the media pretty much ignores the fact that one of Hillary Clinton’s biggest fundraisers has been a fugitive from justice for 15 years.

“Wow,” I exclaimed, “what’s up with this?”

California authorities have sought businessman Norman Hsu for 15 years. Since 2004, he has carved out a place of honor raising cash for such candidates as Hillary Rodham Clinton.

And then the kicker,

The teaser however is just a small part of the story. The man pleaded guilty to grand theft in a stock swindle before disappearing from the sight of everyone but Democrat politicians who gladly welcomed the man in. I guess he was too busy working for Democrats to serve his time in jail.

Read the rest here.

I suppose that to Bubba and the missus, money from a fellow criminal simply keeps the lucre “in house”.

…”If you’ve got something good, stick with it.” I can’t for the life of me remember whether it was a paper towel commercial or Allison the Plumber in a Comet ad or whatever.

This expression flitted through my mind for some reason when I saw this article.

The U.S. military will move its secure command center from deep inside Cheyenne Mountain even as Russia revives military maneuvers that led America to burrow under the rock almost 50 years ago.

Construction on a new command center 12 miles away at Peterson Air Force Base is well under way despite security concerns that have driven some lawmakers to consider halting funding for the transition.

The move will shift more than 100 people responsible for detecting attacks on North America from a facility that sits under 2,000 feet of granite to a basement in an office building on the base that officials concede offers lower protection.

Having our ultimate military command and control center inside Cheyenne Mountain rather than in a more exposed location is very sensible, but who says bureaucrats, military or civilian, are sensible people? Why, one wonders, can’t they leave what would amount to an enemy’s number one target in its present secure location and just work around it?

Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, the U.S. commander responsible for homeland defense and protecting North American air space, says the switch is worth the risk of leaving a facility built to withstand the indirect effects of a multi-megaton nuclear blast.

It will combine operations now divided between Cheyenne and Peterson, helping the commander to receive information and respond to crises or attacks more quickly, Renuart said. It will not, however, save money as the military promised, congressional investigators have shown.
Renuart said the plan was the best way to make the most of resources currently split between the two Colorado locations.

“We can’t accommodate all of that integrated command and control capability in the mountain,” he said. “And so it makes sense to have that put in place where we can get the best unity of all of that effort, and that really is down here at Peterson.”

He said using communications technologies to link the two centers was no substitute for having everyone in one place.

Now me, I’d rather they dealt with the communications technology and kept the folks who might one day be running the defense of our country against an enemy country as far out of harm’s way as possible, lest our defense structure be decapitated at a highly inconvenient time.

We hear all this yelling from the portside about certain government agencies retaining a “Cold War mentality” when the Cold War is long over. Tell that to the Russian government, who would appear to be stepping back in time to the point of borderline saber rattling in an Americanly direction, or to the Chinese, who are using profits from their relatively recent emergence as a superstar in the global marketplace to build up their military, buy up megabucks’ worth of U.S. Treasuries (an abrupt selloff of which could have immediate and negative consequences for the international buying power of the U.S. dollar) and stockpile Mideast and Southwest Asia oil like water before a drought.

Like I just said…

But those arguments, offered repeatedly by defense officials for more than a year, come against a backdrop of tension between Washington and Moscow and Russia’s decision to resume long-range bomber missions common during the Cold War.

Russia, angered by U.S. plans to place missile defense assets in Eastern Europe, said the flights were resumed on a permanent basis due to security threats. In recent weeks, those flights have come near Alaska and Guam, a U.S. territory.

Those actions, coupled with China’s increasing military capabilities and concerns about the intentions of North Korea and Iran, have led some officials at Cheyenne to oppose the move out of the mountain.

Prior to 19 April, 1985, U.S. federal buildings were built purely on the basis’ of ascetics and bureaucratic convenience. No real attention was payed to any kind of blast resistance. A lesson was learned the hard way, and now structural security is incorporated in the plans for new federal buildings.

That lesson was extremely expensive in terms of lives needlessly lost — the transfer girder system, which essentially placed structural support on top of the first floor (to lend “an air of spaciousness” to the lobby by eliminating any support columns) rather than on the foundation, was directly responsible for the collapse of all the floors above. Assisting the tragedy, well, to a 5,000 F.P.S. explosion, the granite exterior on the ground floor was indistinguishable from flimsy glass.

But as I said, a lesson was learned and we have moved on — learning the same kind of lesson in the heat of, say, a nuclear attack by a hostile nation and having our military command suddenly vaporize might render any prospective lesson completely moot.

Ah, here are some anonymous folks on the inside weighing in:

Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of harm to their careers, they say the new command center at Peterson cannot be protected from nuclear, chemical or biological attack and its systems will not be sufficiently hardened against an electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear blast overhead.

This all sounds very Democrat, if you ask me. Okay, Cold War’s over, folks. No need for any more defensive stuff, let’s just expose the ol’ jugular…

Article link Hat Tip: James Taranto

Whenever I read or hear of a hole in our national security network, I tend to rant about it here, sometimes, depending upon its level on the stupidity scale or the negligence index, rather spiritedly. Often when the flaw involves both the Transportation Security Administration and the protection managers employed by U.S. airports, I can’t help but express some grim humour and/or make sarcastic remarks.

I’ve spoken my piece on chemical plants being located inside population centers, the lackluster realities of nuclear power plant security, airport security vulnerabilities due completely to incompetence and irresponsible management, idiots with federal licenses to possess explosives yet no seriously enforced obligations to ensure the security of same, therefore no security, period, and quite frankly, I can only opine that neither the government nor key private sector firms care even a fraction about security compared to their concerns about the “bottom line”.

One thing I’ve learned on my journey through life is that you can never honestly, or at least accurately, say that you’ve “seen it all”. Just as you utter the words, something rather unexpected comes along.

Unfortunately, this same rule applies to the respective depths of human imperfection. I’d say that this unmitigatedly stupid, negligent, unbelievably boneheaded state of affairs proves that just when you think you’ve seen government incompetence at its worst, you’re proven wrong.

Undercover congressional investigators posing as West Virginia businessmen obtained a license with almost no scrutiny from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that enabled them to buy enough radioactive material from U.S. suppliers to build a “dirty bomb,” a new government report says.

Isn’t that nice to know!

Using a post-office box at Mail Boxes Etc., a telephone and a fax machine, the undercover investigators from the GAO obtained the license “without ever leaving their desks,” the report says.

After counterfeiting copies of the license, the GAO undercover agents ordered portable moisture density gauges, which contain radioactive americium-241 and cesium-137 and are commonly used at construction sites to analyze the properties of soil, water and pavement. The investigators ordered 45 gauges — enough to build a bomb with enough radioactive material to qualify as a level-3 threat on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the most hazardous.

3, on a scale of 1 to 5. At least we’ve achieved the middle ground, here. Whew!

The GAO undertook the sting operation at the request of Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), the top minority member of the Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations, which since 2003 has been examining security gaps at the NRC and other federal agencies that could leave the country vulnerable to biological or nuclear attack.

Thank you, Senator Coleman. It’s good that we have a few Republicans around to mind the shop while all the Democrats in Congress are too busy serving subpoenas and pushing a multitude of Constitutional envelopes in their single-minded endeavors to indict Republicans, from the President to the guy who sweeps, for anything they can sneak through the realms of truth and logic, to donate a few minutes of their time to doing what they’re paid to do and governing the country.

Coleman and other critics say the NRC essentially has ignored warnings for years and has done too little to remedy problems that would make it easier for someone to make a dirty bomb. Coleman called the NRC’s efforts since June 1 “baby steps” that are insufficient and particularly outrageous because the agency has taken so long to act despite having been warned of serious flaws for more than four years.

Not to be outdone,

NRC commissioner Edward McGaffigan Jr. said in an interview yesterday that the agency, while concerned about any security weakness, has had to allocate finite resources to what it thinks are the biggest potential threats to public safety. He said terrorists have looked for relatively simple ways to cause massive death and damage. Devices such as the moisture gauges, he said, pose a relatively low-level risk because they require a vast amount of work to fashion into a dangerous weapon.

The pitiful excuse that “Devices such as the moisture gauges pose a relatively low-level risk because they require a vast amount of work to fashion into a dangerous weapon” is indication enough that the man is nothing more than a career bureaucratic cockroach.

Al-Qaeda has long since proven that it is capable of long-term precision planning (see 11 Sep 01) and more recently we’ve learned that terrorist organizations belonging to the Religion of Peace® are well staffed by professionals with advanced degrees. Applying logic to this, we must conclude that there are also plenty of people in the ranks of the Pedophile’s Disciples who know how to use a soldering iron to technological advantage and/or possess other high-tech skills that can be used, through double or triple staffing and a concentration of combined expertise, to render the “vast amount of work” required a short term job.

Speaking as a security professional (semi-retired), I am most alarmed by the lie — yes, and I mean lie, that has emerged from the mouth of a government agency.

“My sole concern, our sole concern, has been the safety of the American people,” he said.

Bullshit! His sole concern has been keeping his expenses down in order to please the beancounters whose backsides he must sample in order to maintain his own career momentum.

When 50,000 or so of his fellow Americans vaporize and a few hundred thousand more succumb to the horrors of radiation sickness, perhaps he’ll be one of the lucky people who are outside the radius of the event. Good for him. On the other hand, maybe he and his family will be dwelling within the hot-zone.

A little gambling, there…with our lives.

Our own government is going to get us killed.

Here is one idea I think needs to be forgotten about immediately.

Senior Fatah officials in the Gaza Strip have asked Israel to allow them to receive large shipments of arms and ammunition from Arab countries, including Egypt.

The group says it needs the weapons to counter attacks by Hamas, which has an overwhelming advantage in the Gaza Strip.

You mean, allow Palestinians to receive an arsenal and armored mobility?

Israel has not officially responded to the request, which includes dozens of armored cars, hundreds of armor-piercing RPG rockets, thousands of hand grenades and millions of rounds of ammunition for small caliber weapons.

For Palestinians, right?

Under certain circumstances, Israel may allow the transfer of armored vehicles, since they are not considered a threat to its security. In the past, during the Oslo Accords, Israel allowed then-Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat to receive a number of outdated armored vehicles.

When the second intifada began, the armored vehicles were destroyed in air strikes.

On the other hand, Israel is unlikely to allow rockets to enter Gaza, since they may fall into the hands of Hamas and be used against Israeli forces.

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas was quoted as saying during a closed meeting on Wednesday that he is “very frustrated by the fact that Israel is not permitting the transfer of arms and ammunition for his men.”

“The legal organs of the Palestinian Authority have become weaker than the militias due to the lack of equipment,” Abbas added.

Israeli intelligence officials are not unanimous in their assessments of
Fatah’s and Hamas’ strength in Gaza. Most Shin Bet experts and officers in charge of activity in the territories believe that Fatah is on the verge of collapse in the strip ¬and that a future confrontation with Hamas may bring about its final defeat. They argue that there is no point in supporting Fatah, because all the equipment the movement receives will eventually fall into Hamas’ hands.

On the other hand, Military Intelligence and other intelligence experts believe that Fatah is not close to surrendering, and that reinforcing the group with equipment from abroad should be considered seriously.

Wasn’t it Mahmoud Abbas who said not long ago that rather than Palestinians (Hamas and Fatah) fighting among themselves, they should all be turning their guns on Israeli Jews?

Giving guns to the Palestinians?

I’m all for allowing those animals to kill each other off, but I’m against supplying them with more ordinance than they already have. Let either side wipe out the other, then the IDF should take its queue and destroy the surviving faction, root and branch.

The last paragraph of the article drew a good laugh from me.

Also on Wednesday, Palestinian sources in Gaza said the military wing of Hamas has acquiesced to cease firing Qassam rockets at Israel, following intense pressure by the political leadership. Iz al-Din al-Qassam will continue launching attacks, but it will revert to using mortars.

ROTFLMAO!!!!

Whenever I think I’ve seen it all over there on the left, something like this comes along.

H/T James Taranto.

…. proves that this is not the free country intended by our founding fathers, interfering, and not for the first time, with the competitive structure of the marketplace.

Of course, scum sucking, piece of shit, treasonous, commie liberal politicians are at the source of this particular infringement, but what’s new? They always are!

In this case, the victim is a dairy farmer who chose to charge less money for his milk.

Not too long ago, I posted about the coming of the North American Union, an agenda which, much to my chagrin, is being engineered by the man I voted for twice for President and his counterparts in Mexico and Canada.

Some commenters took this either with a grain of salt, some with a degree of alarm, some, I thought, may have humored me with their comments.

As they say, it’s all good. The very concept sounds both farfetched and absurd, like the plot of a Robert Ludlum novel or the fantasies of a serious paranoid.

After all, conspiracy theories abound, right?

I had thought my research on the subject was pretty extensive, in fact, somewhere along the line I was reminded of my ex-wife’s own “ravings”, back in the days of the Carter Administration, when she talked about then National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski’s ambitions toward what was called the Trilateral Commission.

In those days I was still kinda’ sorta’ liberal and pretty laid back, and to tell the truth, couldn’t give the proverbial “flying fuck” about such things. Please excuse mah French (spit!)….

In the comments section of my post on the North American Union ambitions of those involved, the forever awesome Always On Watch suggested that I contact a great blog called Sixth Column, who had been following the NAU proceedings for some time. I did.

We resolved to share information on anything our respective research unearthed on the subject. In that quarter, they have thus far kicked my ass, LOL.

An emailed article I recently received provides the entire history, names, methods, intentions, chronology and all, of events leading up to what is now the plan for the North American Union. It is lengthy and will require some time, but I urge you to read it in its entirety.

It should convince you, in alarming detail, of what is to come in the next four years, no matter what else occurs in the political spectrum of the United States of America.

It is here.

As I said last time out, we are indeed in grave trouble, because our very sovereignty is about to be sacrificed on the altar of corporate expediency. While our future Congresses and POTUSes will govern our country, they will be like state legislatures, while extranational congresses determine the details of our economy (a collective with Mexico and Canada), eventually becoming part of a global collective consisting of the EU, the NAU, the SAU, the AU, etc….

We are in big trouble here, a world government awaits just around the corner, and most unfortunately, the politicians who might be able to prevent it are being kept outside the loop.

As I said in my previous post about this, the involved congresses/parliaments, etc involved herein have been kept in the dark about it, as has the media.

I am wondering whether we are going to wake up and deal with this, or whether we’re simply going to drift into it in blissful ignorance, becoming an entirely different country….

ULTRA-MAJOR and MEGA-GRATEFUL hat tip to CUBED!