Apparently, for some people, some discrimination is a-ok so long as they disagree with the person being discriminated against but it should be strictly, legally verboten in any situations they feel appropriate (in other words, logical/internal consistency fail), while those those same people (and others) have no problems misrepresenting other people’s positions and words.

This is me, being genuinely more than a little surprised and disappointed at the whole debacle, and specifically at the behavior of folks who, along with me, have been on the receiving end of the exact same behavior from other folks who wish to strip us of other rights. I imagine there is some appropriate quote that could be fielded in this instance (if nothing else, something about staring contests with really deep holes), but I am just not feeling it at the moment.

What I will do is point out two comments from Martha Boggs, the owner of The Bistro at the Bijou, and the first one may surprise her supporters:

Boggs actually agrees with her critics. She says she handled the situation the wrong way.

"It wasn’t really the right way to do it. It wasn’t the best method. But at least it got something that needed to be discussed, discussed," said Boggs.

[Update] Apparently, according to a robo-email MarkofaFreeMan received from Martha Boggs’ email address, the above blockquote is in error or is a misrepresentation of her words: 

Despite what may have been mis-reported in local media I do not regret my actions in the least.

Apparently Martha is content being a hypocritical, discriminatory jackass.  So be it.  I tend not to visit establishments staffed/run by those. [/Update]

"Passionately" and "heatedly" kicking someone out of your establishment does absolutely nothing to alter the differences of opinion you may be having with that person, and the animosity exposed may, in fact, increase whatever chasm separates the two of you. Damned if I am one to lecture someone else about being dispassionate when it comes to dealing with dicks (and mark me: Stacey Campfield falls under that heading), but more often than not, I am not trying to convert them, only ridicule them; I dare say Martha has different goals in mind.

When it comes to achieving those goals, however, it would help her immensely if she knew what she was talking about. Again, courtesy of Rich, we have a wonderful cherry to go on top of this steaming pile of suck and fail, in the form of a direct quote from Martha:

If there was a group of people, it would be discrimination if it was a group of people. But he is an individual. There was a Ku Klux Klan rally outside my front door last year. I had both sides of those people in here.

… *headdesk*.

To begin with, Martha has already admitted it was discrimination, and "unfair" discrimination at that, so backpeddling at this point is just pathetic. I would have significantly more respect for Martha, especially given my position on discrimination in general (which I could swear I had harped on enough in my previous post on the topic, but I guess "TL;DR" is the internet standard now), if she simply owned up to her actions and moved on.

Second, really? You really want to trot out the "some of my friends are black" defense? God help you.

And, finally, let us examine this word everyone keeps yammering about – discrimination:

1. an act or instance of discriminating.
2. treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit: racial and religious intolerance and discrimination.
3. the power of making fine distinctions; discriminating judgment: She chose the colors with great discrimination.
4. Archaic. something that serves to differentiate.

And since that definition links to discriminate, so shall I:

1. to make a distinction in favor of or against a person or thing on the basis of the group, class, or category to which the person or thing belongs rather than according to actual merit; show partiality: The new law discriminates against foreigners. He discriminates in favor of his relatives.
2. to note or observe a difference; distinguish accurately: to discriminate between things.

In other words, discrimination can only be against an individual. Furthermore, while Stacey’s credibility is not exactly something I would bet anything on, apparently only you and he were privy to your conversation, and he contends that your request for him to leave included something approximating, "You are a homophobe. I am not serving you." If this is true – and your later interviews wherein you state you were "standing up" for homosexuals would tend to substantiate it – your behavior unquestionably meets the definition of "discrimination".

Get over it already.

But, then, I am not one who is dedicated to reducing certain types of discrimination – in fact, as I clearly stated, I am quite comfortable with people and businesses discriminating as they see fit – so I am not trapped in your current, hypocritical position of wanting to reduce discrimination for some people by discriminating against other people. Such a predicament certainly does explain your rationalizations, but it does not excuse them.

Apparently, I was too late: 

Alas, I have to get on a plane in the morning and will be working 16 hour days for the next week, so I will not be able to be as lively in this discussion as I would like. But please understand that I didn’t mean any disrespect for the couple dozen real bloggers out there who have been hard charging for many years out there, nor was I suggesting that just us and Jeff Quinn be allowed into media day. Some of the comments about this post came up in my google notifications, and some of the people whining about what I said are just the people who would be included in what I suggested, because they have been blogging for many years and have thousands of readers per month, they attend the blogger conventions and have been active in the gun blogger community. I was talking about the guys who installed wordpress and registered a domain a month before the show, or "blog" three times per year for a print magazine website that has 16 people visiting it every month, and who **will not** post anything about media day or the show. Jeff knows what I am talking about and I am surprised you don’t. I suggested at the end of last year that NSSF google around and see who actually did post blog stuff about the show to qualify them for media day next year.

Please say Hi if you are going to media day, or stop by the booth. If you mention this post you get a t-shirt you can burn in efigy for a youtube video due to your outrage at my inflammatory and just plain not nice comments. We are booth 1925. -ph

Oh, poor Paul, having to work such long hours, in Vegas, of all the horrible places in the world, shooting guns, and playing with guns, and rubbing shoulders, and all that hard work that comes from pimping his own company.  Don’t’cha just feel horrible for him? 

And obviously he was not talking about the “couple dozen real bloggers out there” when he said things like “nobodies” and “wish I were internet journalists” and “wanna be internet media professional”.  I mean, duh. 

And, oh noes, someone said something mean about him and it showed up in teh Googolz!  Whatever shall he do?!

Oh, and if you were one of those people who somehow took offense at what Paul said previously, you are just a whiner, and your opinion is meaningless. 

… *sigh* 

Paul, you are being a dick.  Don’t be a dick. 

Hm… speaking of…  In yet another attempt to show Paul Helinski how the internet works, here is me, throwing down the gauntlet to my readership. 

To all you lucky bastards going to SHOT Show this year, take heed!  I have a few Eastern TN Monster Hunter International patches left, and I will send one patch, free of charge, to the first two people to send me a picture of the following:  you, standing at the edge of the GunsAmerica booth (with their sign/logo visible/legible behind you), holding a sign/placard/piece of paper with “Don’t be a dick, Paul” legibly written upon it.  You can anonymize yourself however you like (I will be posting the pictures here), and be as creative with that as you like, but, hey, free patches! 

You see, Paul, I am very much a “nobody” – my site had all of 15,000 unique hits last month, which, for me, was almost something of a record.  However, I have heard of this thing called “RSS”, and I have heard of this other thing called “Twitter”, and I know how to tinker around with this crazy thing called “metadata”, and, most importantly of all, I know how not to be a dick so people actually read what I write.  And those are skills and abilities that people can learn or have regardless of whether they have been doing this “blogging” thing for 15 days or 15 years. 

So stop being an elitist prick.  Yes, you apparently have an accomplished web business (which very few of the people I read have heard of, but that is a separate problem), and, yes, you have been writing for however many years, but none of that matters if you unnecessarily alienate your readership or your customer base, and none of that grants you the position to justifiably demean up-and-comers… or, better yet, those who will one day replace you. 

Times are changing Paul.  “Nobodies” can create WordPress weblogs yesterday and have enough readership to seriously impact your business.  Time to get with it. 

Oh, and nowhere in that comment did I see an apology. 

(Courtesy of Day By Day.)

Or, as I have been saying on Twitter, why wuss out and vote for Romney when you could just man up, go all the way, and vote for Obama? The only difference between those two men is velocity; they are both headed to the same destination.

Looking back on that, I find myself very happy I did not jump on the “membership” bandwagon too, despite multiple people encouraging me to do so.

Why? Well, the technical aspects of why not joining that particular subnetwork are touched on in the comments here and then explained in detail a few posts later, but, for me, that was just the first strike.

Around the middle of last year, a particularly infantile weblogger writing under the name “Gunmart” stole a picture of Breda, posted it under an intentionally offensive and provocative title, and then refused requests from the copyright holder and originator of the image to take the image down. At the time, Gunmart was a member of the GunUp network, and still is to this day. I am lead to believe that GunUp’s response to this particular situation, which was brought to their attention, was that they are not in the habit of censuring or censoring their webloggers, and while that is strictly true, if that is the type of person they choose to associate with… well, that was strike two.

And, finally, most of my readers are probably more than familiar with the name “Robert Farago“, but did you know that he and his site have been members of GunUp almost since the former’s inception, despite repeatedly stealing other people’s content? Apparently GunUp was all too happy to ignore this nonstop dickery… that is, until it became apparent that the content-stealing hack was probably fabricating his traffic numbers in some half-assed attempt to get sponsors, at which point GunUp decided to pull their sponsorship of “The Truth About Guns”. Or, at least, that was the story until GunUp changed their minds for no apparent good reason. You cannot choose your family, but you can choose your friends, and you can definitely choose your business associates. Strike three, and GunUp is well and truly out of here in my books.

I shall not deny that their GunFinder functionality is pretty damned slick, but even with my shiny-toy-itis, I must confess to having these crazy things called “standards”, anachronistic and outdated though they may be. Such is life, and, personally, I think I am the better for them; your mileage may, of course, vary.

Obviously the records, photographs, and other documentation for the purported hit are classified and will be kept under wraps for the next 50 years, but one has to wonder why. Sure, we do not want to release the identities of the individuals directly responsible for the operation (though Our Glorious President went and did that himself), but I am not really seeing much benefit out of keeping the photograph of a dead scumbag’s body out of the public eye.

To begin with, you need to read this whole article written by the inimitable Larry Correia:

I’ve been told repeatedly by people on Facebook that I am wrong to insult OWS because they have some “good points” and how the Tea Party should totally work with them, because we want “the same thing.”

No. We. Don’t. We can agree that cronyism is bad, but the proposed solutions are completely divergent. The Tea Party wants smaller government. OWS wants (as far as anyone can tell because they still don’t have a coherent message) a government that can do absolutely everything for them. Leave me alone vs. Fix all my bad choices for me. We pay too much in taxes vs. Eat the rich and give me their stuff. Freedom vs. Fairness. These ideals are opposite ends of the spectrum. There is no middle ground here.

The title alone should tell you how it is going to go.

Next up, read this article by Barron Barnett which introduced me to this graphic by the Jawa Report:

… along with this post:

The first and most principled issue is that while I agree that there is a problem, I have a strong disagreement with the proposed solution coming out of those involved in occupy. Their solution to the corruption is more government power and expansion. Completely disregarding the fact that large government provided the power to create this problem in the first place, much less grow it to its current size. Give the more power to the government to regulate industry, never mind that government interference in the market is what allowed the bailouts.

So between that and the type of behavior I see out of occupy, it limits the support I’m willing to give. Instead of fellow protesters acting to remove or turn in those committing crimes, they are acting to shield them from the police. This makes them as guilty as the criminals. See aiding and abetting.

… which introduced me to this graphic by the Greater Boston Tea Party:

And, finally, there is this all-too-poignant image, found at Nobody Asked Me, original source unknown:

With things like that floating around the cortex, what else needs to be said?

The original complaint is on Facebook, but the short story boils down to "Robert Farago is an inveterate thief", or, in his own words:

We used the photo under Fair Use provisions. We do so with thousands of pictures per year. If you’re the snapper, be advised: if it’s on the net it’s fair game.

Obviously, this is not exactly the case, especially if the site in question is making money, which, of course, The Truth About Guns is. Fortunately, Farago realized he was on the losing side of this particular argument, per this update from Harry McNally (who, I guess, knows the photographer, Benjamin Toombs, who runs an awesome site):

Got an e-mail about ten minutes ago from Robert Farago with the subject line "Jaunted image removed" stating that he has "removed the image under dispute to avoid further conflict between [Farago] and its originator" and that he "meant no o…ffense by using it and apologize to anyone who objected to its use on TTAG." That should be that, right?

Not hardly. Next step should be a public apology, an admission of wrongdoing, and an explicit promise to never do anything of this sort again.

Maybe even on essay on what Fair Use actually friggin’ means.

And that case of beer.

Reportedly (I do not grace TTAG with my traffic), the apology has been made (though the majority of it was apparently written by Nick Leghorn, another author at TTAG, and amusingly included yet another copyrighted image that they reposted without permission – apology FAIL), but, in my mind it is completely meaningless. Why?

Unfortunately, this falls under "Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action." By my recollection, this constitutes the fifth time Robert Farago or one of his employed authors have stolen other people’s intellectual property, wholesale or in part, often without providing so much as a "hat tip" link (two entire posts from Tam, my misappropriated Graphics Matter image, SayUncle’s AmericanRifleman.org image, and now this picture from Miso Studios), and that does not even count the number of pictures Farago has… "borrowed"… from Oleg Volk just to lampoon and ridicule. In at least one of those incidents, Farago apologized and promised never to do it again, and here we are again… On the other hand, in at least two of those incidents, he reacted as he first did to this particular incident – bullheaded, rude, and obnoxious.

And then there is that whole "using a copyrighted image in your apology about infringing on copyrights without the permission of the copyright holder" problem… Apologies typically only count when you are not doing the thing you are apologizing for in the actual apology.

Some of the most interesting commentary on this particular self-inflicted disaster come by way the Reddit thread, specifically this comment by rubberbarron:

I’m a writer on the internet (huzzah!) and was approached by Robert Farago to write for TTAG. I did end up writing a few articles for the site, but he and I never clicked. Our email exchanges were rather stupid, with him always asking for my writing to be more confrontational or asking me to make it different in abstract ways, by using buzz words and meaningless adjectives.

… And this comment by foghorn5950, Mr. Leghorn’s Reddit handle:

I’m not happy with the way this was handled. I’ve contacted RF (the editor) and let him know that unless he straightens things out and makes them right with these guys I’m quitting as a writer for the site. I won’t be associated with people who steal content from the creators and claim that they’re in the right. I hope we can resolve this, I really do. Because if you ignore the "spats" that have popped up the site produces some fantastic content and I’d hate to see that go under from something as simple as a pissed off copyright holder.

Both go into further detail over at Reddit. Coincidentally, rubberbarron’s comment echoes some of the sentiments and observations Weer’d Beard passed on to me after meeting Robert Farago and seeing how he handles his authors in public (I will let him tell that story if he is so inclined), so that part does not surprise me greatly, and I would argue that Mr. Leghorn has the best signal-to-noise ratio of any writer at TTAG, which might explain why Farago decided to take the image down.

Offhand, I would say it is time to follow the suggestion that we get in touch with TTAG’s various advertisers and sponsors, alert them to the rampant intellectual property theft transpiring on the site, and inform them that we are not in the habit of frequenting companies that support such behaviors.

Jesus may have said it better, but the honest truth is "Don’t be a dick" is a pretty simple, easy-to-follow rule for getting along with other people; however, it also leaves you in the unfortunate (in Farago’s case) situation of having to succeed – or fail – on your own merits, rather than on the basis of whatever controversy you can manage to drum up through your dickery. One can only hope his lacking traffic numbers will keep him warm after he successfully alienates most of the gunblogging community.

And this is all without delving into the blatantly heinous opinions Farago holds – that if your firearms are stolen from your locked home, it is your fault for not securing them enough (ala "she wore a short skirt" "defense" for rapists); that only "high risk" individuals need to seek training and everyone else should be ridiculed and demeaned for doing so; that anti-rights cultists should be given free reign to malign and personally attack pro-rights activists on his site, even as authors; that firearm owners are largely worthy of disdain; that stealth-edits are a wholly acceptable way to manage comments; etc. etc. If you want an outstanding listing of various pro-rights weblogs that are generally not run by dicks and typically do not fall prey to the above idiocy, though, I know a great place to look (Amusingly, said place would never have existed if Farago had not whinged about it… before it existed. Take that, all you zombies.)

Speaking personally, being a hobbyist photographer and weblogger, I try to go out of my way to give credit where credit is due for everything I copy-paste here from other sources; however, if you feel I have exceeded what you feel to be morally or legally acceptable, please feel free to contact me and I will make it right. For me, this is not a particularly difficult or problematic course of action, but that is because, unlike Robert Farago, I understand at least a glimmer of how intellectual property and the ownership thereof works.

(You can read Weer’d's take on this most-recent idiocy here.)

(Also, "snapper"? What the hell kind of colloquialism is that?)

(Button image blatantly stolen from the inimitable and pantsless Robb Allen, who, I hear, makes some wicked header images. Gun Blog Black List image used with permission.)

It would appear as though wanna-be gunblogger and certified attention whore Robert Farago is still being a dick, and a rather ineffective one at that.

Color me surprised.

Someone who stoops to arbitrarily deleting comments and then lying about the content of those comments, misappropriating and misrepresenting others’ hard work, engaging in pointless smear campaigns against massively successful pro-rights advocates, and fabricating controversies just to bolster his traffic numbers is not exactly going to pause at pointlessly stabbing another weblogger in the back for the gos-se and giggles of it, much less engaging in such ludicrously childish tactics as attempting to make fun of someone for their beard.

As I said before, "Apparently neither Farago’s maturity nor whatever passed for his personal integrity made it off the kindergarten playground."

I brought up an interesting (to me) point over at Weer’d's that I wanted to echo here and see what my readers thought – Say Uncle is widely regarded as the premier firearm-related weblog out there (with good reason… w00t for #23!), but I will be damned if I can see much overlap, if any, between the commenters there and the commenters at Farago’s hole. Granted, I spend very little time at the latter site, but the same could be said when one compares the clientele at View from the Porch and Sharp as a Marble to those at "The Truth About Guns". What does this mean? No idea. But I have to wonder about the discrepancy.

It is fairly unlikely that I could continue this post without devolving into language I generally try to avoid, so follow the links and read for yourself…

Of course, some of the more popular religions out there refuse to claim the title for political reasons, despite sharing some coincidental similarities with the oldies and goldies:

Eventually the Roman Catholics abandoned the ludicrous practice of using Other People’s Money to buy souls into Heaven… Unfortunately, I sincerely doubt our government will ever attain even that level of enlightenment.

Bill Nye, in his narration at 0:48 in the video says:

You can replicate this effect yourself in a simple lab experiment, here’s how.

…and at 1:10 in the video Nye says:

Within minutes you will see the temperature of the bottle with the carbon dioxide in it rising faster and higher.

[...]

Mr. Gore’s Climate 101 experiment is falsified, and could not work given the equipment he specified. If they actually tried to perform the experiment themselves, perhaps this is why they had to resort to stagecraft in the studio to fake the temperature rise on the split screen thermometers.

The experiment as presented by Al Gore and Bill Nye “the science guy” is a failure, and not representative of the greenhouse effect related to CO2 in our atmosphere. The video as presented, is not only faked in post production, the premise is also false and could never work with the equipment they demonstrated. Even with superior measurement equipment it doesn’t work, but more importantly, it couldn’t work as advertised.

My parents and I lived out in Washington State when Bill was getting his start on “Almost Live!” (I still remember his Speedwalker skits, in fact), and thereafter his Science Guy series was one of the few shows they allowed me to watch. It is fair to say that he had a pretty significant influence on my desire to go into engineering fields and tinker around with the things he talked about (of course, life had a funny way of changing that, but that is a topic for another post).

And here he is, lending his name – and credibility – to an obviously flawed and deficient science experiment that not only does not work the way he advertised, but, in fact, does the complete opposite.

Now maybe it is possible he never actually saw the experiment performed (actually, it is fairly likely, given that the experiment does not work). Maybe he was just sent a script for the voice-over-ing and never really demanded to see the documentation to support it. Maybe he just needed to put food on the table.

It still sucks to see a childhood hero come crashing down in a pile of political intrigue, though.

(Courtesy of Les Jones.)

In other words, unsurprisingly, pretty much the same behavior that got him banned on right-wing weblogs is also not tolerated on flamingly "liberal" websites. Go figure.

And speaking of trolls getting what they deserve, Bob S. has done a masterful bit of point-connecting, and may have finally figured out what Mike’s criminal history might actually be. It is all conjecture, but the ducks do seem to line up nicely, and given how Bonomo is willing to use any not-really-transgression, even potential ones, in a person’s history to bar them from exercising their Constitutionally-protected rights (up to and including "getting old" and "negligent discharge"), it is only fair that we know where he is coming from, especially considering how he has abused his Constitutionally-protected rights by vilifying, attacking, and impugning firearm-owners.

Shockingly, criminals support "gun control"; in most cases, it is simply a "job security / self-preservation" reflex, but Mike’s motivations seem to be more along the lines of psychological projection.

(* – You can get banned from DK? Wow. Considering some of the stuff I have seen there over the years, he must have really gone beyond the pale.)

Perturbed by outlandish claims presented without the slightest shred of supporting evidence or documentation? 

Want to be let in on the not-really-“conspiracy” that does not actually exist? 

I now have the full story that some attention-whoring Drama-Llama-herders are unwilling to share with you; however, I am not going to do their work for them – drop me an email (linoge (at) wallsofthecity (dot) net) and I will be happy to fill you in on the not-so-sordid details*. 

Trust me, after all this idiotic hype, it will be something of a letdown. 

(* – Also, I gave a brief synopsis at the beginning of last night’s Vicious Circle.) 

[Update] And in a wholly unnecessary abuse of blogger powers, Weer’d went and stole my thunder. Thanks dude! [/Update]

The not-really-"progressives" of our country were all about blaming President Bush for things that happened "on his watch", regardless of whether or not he had any direct control over the situation (for example, 9/11). Well, folks, the downgrade of America’s credit, the growth of unemployment, the intentional devaluation of the American Dollar, and all the rest of the fun side-effects of this depression/recession happened on President Barack Hussein Obama’s watch, and it is time for him to man up and take the responsibility for it… since it is painfully obvious those self-same "progressives" will not be logically consistent in this Presidential term.

‘Course, the One-Term, Part-Time President is too busy golfing and running late for press conferences he called, so I doubt he will find the time to be… Presidential.

(Found at Instapundit.)

Why? Because I know what my generation and the next are like:

Duane Brooks Jr. defrauded a government – I am not entirely sure if the money for his rent came from the county, state, or federal coffers, but the point is that he took money given to him by one of those entities for the express purpose of paying his rent, and turned around and used it for something else. Fine – that is one thing, and not really my concern given how blatant his actions were.

What really caught my attention in that video was how incapable he was of tracking a logical conversation. He did not comprehend where the money came from. He did not comprehend that it was given to him for a specific purpose. He did not comprehend that his use of it for something else was wrong. And his sole explanation for why he did the things he did was, "I’m me. It’s just how I roll."

Oh. My. God. Here we are, with a prime example of a product of the American educational system (a product we, the taxpayers, are apparently paying somewhere around $22,000 a year to create), and the … individual (I can hardly call him a "man", can I?) cannot even comprehend the nature of a "contract"? Judge Judy is exactly correct – this is what we are creating, and this is why I have absolutely no faith for the future of my country.

A variation of a relatively unsourced (but generally attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler) quote once went,

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.

…but since we all know America is not a democracy, that does not hold entirely true for our current situation. Instead, you have to find the middle ground between that and this famous quote that may or may not be from Alexis de Toqueville:

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.

Remember, Duane up there votes – he is 21, and was eligible to cast a ballot in the last national elections, and possibly even the one before that. And who do you think he voted for – someone who promised to give people like Duane more money "for free", or someone who promised to work towards balancing our budget by cutting back on programs?

… And how much more of a stupid question could I ask?

Judge Judy, much though I despise her show, is right – we have created whole generations of people like Duane, and we are going to suffer miserably for it in the coming decades.

(And do not even get me started on the idiocy of his sugar momma being who-knows-how-many months behind on her rent, but wanting to take him to court for being behind on his…)

(This happy, warm-and-fuzzy-generating post courtesy of Kevin and Weer’d.)

I wonder if Herbert, apparently no stranger to conveniently intolerant double-speak himself, could have ever realized that his goals would be this easy to achieve…

There is no safe level or threshold of ionizing radiation exposure.

… in response to the Thousands of Sexual Assaulters’ new "backscatter scanners" and the x-ray radiation those devices will be flooding users and observers with.

I am not a nuclear engineer. What little knowledge I have on the topic comes from purely recreational reading and no first-hand experience or training. However, it turns out I might have been more right than not:

On June 24, 2011, EPIC released documents obtained from DHS as a result of EPIC’s lawsuit.

The disclosed documents include agency emails, radiation studies, memoranda of agreement concerning radiation testing programs, and results of some radiation tests.

The documents raise new questions concerning the radiation risks posed by the TSA full body scanner program. The records demonstrate:

• TSA employees have identified cancer clusters allegedly linked to radiation exposure while operating body scanners and other screening technology. However, the agency failed to issue employees dosimeters – safety devices that would warn of radiation exposure.
• The DHS has publicly mischaracterized the findings of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, stating that NIST "affirmed the safety" of full body scanners. NIST stated that the Institute did not, in fact, test full body scanners for safety, and that the Institute does not do product testing.
• A Johns Hopkins University study revealed that radiation zones around body scanners could exceed the “General Public Dose Limit.”
• A NIST study warns airport screeners to avoid standing next to full body scanners.

By and large, I generally avoided any kind of nuclear technology during my time in the military; however, the one time I spent any time at all onboard an active nuclear submarine, I was issued a dosimeter that was checked and recorded in my permanent medical file… and I was only on that boat for all of three days (the reading was, for all intents and purposes, 0 – I received less radiation eating, sleeping, and living cuddled up to a hot nuclear reactor (and probable nuclear warheads) than I would have if I spent the same amount of time at the beach). By the same token, consider every time you go to the dentists’/doctors’ and they have to take x-rays of your body – where do the nurses/doctors go? Outside of the room. And what do they give you? A big honkin’ lead-impregnated apron to wear over the parts of you that are not getting irradiated.

Ever notice how the nudity … er … porno … er … backscatter scanners and their operators are completely devoid of shielding (aside from whatever is in those blue boxes, which does not protect people in front of, behind, or above them)?

This is a problem, and this is a problem that has been compounded by gross negligence by the TSA in the past.

And now that this problem has started detrimentally affecting the TSA employees, suddenly people start caring – coincidental that. I, very briefly, started to feel sorry for those TSA agents and employees who have apparently contracted cancer due to their exposure to ionizing radiation scanners – after all, they were not the ones who decided the policy, and the people who did decide the policy are, for the time, escaping both the accountability and consequences of their actions – but then I remembered that those TSA-uniform-wearing individuals chose to work for an agency that has specifically admitted to intentionally violating our Constitutionally-protected rights, and my sympathy kind of evaporates. Radiation is not some unknown, mystical hand-wavery any more. And the TSA… well, everyone knows what the TSA is. Choices were made, and while the TSA as a whole has been grossly negligent in their testing of these porno-scanners, in issuing and tracking dosimeters, and in protecting the health of their employees, those employees did not have to work for such uncaring, authoritarian employers.

If you absolutely have to fly, at this point, I would strongly recommend that you request the "enhanced pat-down" rather than walk through one of those nudity-scanners – the indignity of being sexually assaulted by a complete stranger paid to do exactly that will only last a few minutes, but ionizing-radiation-induced cancer can, quite literally, kill you.

(Courtesy of Traction Control, Say Uncle, and The Everlasting Phelps.)

While the investigation continues into the U.S. operation that helped send thousands of guns south of the border, Mexican lawmakers say they’ll press for extradition and prosecution in Mexico of American officials who authorized and ran the operation.

"I obviously feel violated. I feel my country’s sovereignty was violated," Mexico Sen. Rene Arce Islas told Fox News. "They should be tried in the United States and the Mexican government should also demand that they also be tried in Mexico since the incidents took place here. There should be trials in both places."

[...]

"I think we should at least try to prove that what happened in Mexico must be sanctioned by Mexican laws and under our sovereignty," Creel told us. "What can’t happen is that this now ends on an administrative sanction, or a resignation. No, no, no. Human lives were lost here. A decision was made to carry out an operation that brought very high risk to human lives."

Honestly, I wish the Mexican government the very best of luck for exactly the reasons they mention – crimes, in America and Mexico alike, were committed, aided, and facilitated by the actions of BATFE agents, representatives, and managers who should be brought to justice for their illegal and unlawful actions. Obviously, we cannot reasonably try someone for crimes they committed in another country, so permitting the Mexican government to have their fair crack at those individuals responsible for the gunwalking only seems like an equitable solution.

Do I think the State Department is going to sign those scumbags over to the tender mercies of the Mexican penal system? Probably not. But it is one hell of a pendulum to hang over their heads to… encourage… their cooperation. That is, of course, assuming that anyone in our government gives a damn about the BATFE apparently aiding and abetting criminal organizations on both sides of the border…

*shrug* 

I have repeatedly written in the past that I really did not care about the specifics of his birth certificate (mostly because it would not matter in the end), I just had some very significant suspicions as to why Barry was holding on to it after so many years… but those suspicions were more along the lines of what Robb talks about today, and less in line with the “birthers”.  In the end, it would appear I was wrong. 

That said, why today? 

Out of all the ways President Obama could have used that birth certificate, why did he just drop it in the media’s lap on an otherwise unassuming day?  That was one hell of a political bomb he lobbed into the wild, and so far as I can tell, it fell on a dilapidated, unoccupied goat shed. 

In other words, what are we being (successfully) distracted from, and why? 

Just a thought… 

Yeah, he responded to the email about NPR that I sent back in January:

Dear [NAME],

Thank you for taking the time to contact my office regarding proposals to eliminate funding for NPR and other public broadcasting. Your input is important to me, and I appreciate the time you took to share your thoughts.

Many Tennesseans have expressed deep concern with comments made in recent weeks by NPR executives, and I share those concerns. We have a responsibility to ensure that federal dollars are spent responsibly, and these comments do little to instill confidence in the taxpayers of our country. As you may know, Congress again failed to meet its obligation to pass each appropriations bill independently and before the end of the fiscal year last fall. In fact, none were passed and we have been forced to operate on several short-term continuing resolutions in order to keep the government running.

I cannot express how deeply concerned I am over the dire financial situation of the United States government. Over the coming months and years, we will have to make very difficult decisions about our spending. I feel that our government must reduce its size, spending, and influence in as many areas as possible in order to place our country on the path to fiscal responsibility. As we continue to wrestle with our budget challenges, the insight and information you have provided here will certainly help my staff and me more effectively look into this issue, and I thank you for your input.

Thank you again for your letter. I hope you will continue to share your thoughts with me as I serve you in the United States Senate.

Sincerely,

Bob Corker
United States Senator

Good thing you are not likely to ever have to worry about running against Lamar, Bob – he would have my vote over you in a heartbeat, just thanks to his staff alone.

That said, at least Corker really seems to toe the line of unscrewing the federal deficit, up to and including pointing out just how ludicrous the “cuts” to the current “budget” are when compared to the positively heinous amounts of money being spent. Unfortunately, his is just one voice out of a hundred, and it would seem as though very few of the Senate would be interested in anything even approximating a “balanced” budget… Which leaves us in a situation where politicians are patting themselves on their backs for cutting less than a percentage point off the largest deficit in American history.

*sigh* So, given the choice between real estate and actual precious metals, which way would you leap?