Jul 23 2012
Fly By: Sorry For No Posts
My apologies to everyone who looks forward to reading my trivial thoughts on the great issues of the day. This has been a brutal week of meetings, a big corporate function, ferrying kids across the state, a family reunion and a bad cold that turned into an infection. I have been operating on the very edge, and all down time was dedicated to getting some needed sleep.
I hope to post again today, though it will be later since the day job’s fire-drills are just beginning to pop.
But here is a quick Fly-By of some topics I would have posted on if I had had the time.
First up: The Norfolk Police n the UK ended their investigation into the publication of FOIA related CRU emails and data that are known today as Climategate. The information released so far does impart one important detail which shows ALL the information released to actually be CRU information:
… The second was entitled FOIA 2011 and contained 23 documents, 5292 e-mails and 220,000 files.
… the data was taken between September 2009 and November 2009 during a series of remote attacks via the Internet, which accessed an internal back-up server.
The information collected off the CRU back up server still looks to be carefully culled information focused on a few well known issues with CRU. It is specific to FOIA requests pending at CRU over many years of trying to hide the decline and other crap. In the brief period over which the data was ‘stolen’ off the CRU server, there was no time to screen a larger random set of data and be left with Climategate information and its level of focus. We know CRU has a lot more information in its servers and email logs than just this. So while the ‘theft’ of the data is not resolved, the content is clear. This data was a vast amount of FOIA data collected by CRU (and blocked) in response to FOIA requests. Thankfully, CRU compiled all this in one location so someone who apparently knew about it could go collect it and make it public.
Next up, Obama’s bad polls against Romney. This one must of scared the daylights out of the Dems:
According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney remain in a deadlocked contest, tied at 47 percent among registered voters and basically where they stood in late May.
If Obama is at 47% among ‘registered voters‘, he should see around 44% in the election with real ones. This is confirmed at RCP, which has the President today at 45.9% (basically 46%). This is dead-lame-duck region for any sitting President. And I know he is desperately flailing away to find some way to regain support (e.g., the moronic claim people who build businesses don’t actually do it themselves). My prediction is this will be another epic wipe out for the Dems, who will of course go insane trying to deny the fact they have been complete disasters – and they ended support for government solutions in general. It will take a series of elections to right this mess, so don’t believe it will all be peachy in 2013. But as long as the GOP starts cutting back the oppressive government and set the people free to invent and invest, we will get back on track.
Finally, I have to address the massacre in Aurora, CO. This level of horror, suffering and selfless acts of bravery always result in people pretending more restrictions on the behavior of normal citizens will stop the insane from doing damage.
Three survivors of the Colorado movie-theater massacre escaped with minor wounds, but were left with broken hearts because their heroic boyfriends died saving them.
In final acts of valor, Jon Blunk, Matt McQuinn and Alex Teves used their bodies to shield their girlfriends as accused madman James Holmes turned the Aurora cineplex into a shooting gallery.
If we could control events, we would not need heroes like the ones we saw in Aurora. I think Adolf Hitler and Stalin put the nonsense of state control equaling peace and serenity to rest. But many will always want to pretend we can stop the randomness of nature (both natural and human) by controlling the individuals. It does not work.
When someone goes off and kills their kids, or someone else’s kids, it is always horrible – but never avoidable. Fate has a way of creating random conditions that are explosive and deadly. While most of the time we are able to stabilize and isolate inherent random behavior (Dahmer comes to mind) we cannot stamp it all out without having everyone on house arrest and 24×7 surveillance. So forget about turning the incidents like this to zero. As we strive for more and more benign behavior over time, we will necessarily have the occasional horror-filled event pop up.
And while the horror of the event is devastating, the upside is these are very, very rare (one of 300 million or more) and most of the time we live happy and fruitful lives. In other words, it ain’t heaven, but isolated eruptions of hell does not mean we are going the way of Hades.
AJ: Take care of yourself and get well.
The Aurora shooting puts on display for us the indiotic thought processes of the Left and the Main Stream Media (one in the same?).
Brian Ross of ABC demonstrated for us perfectly the bias of the media. His first inclination was to look for a Tea Party connection. He did not look for a Obama Campaign connection or an Occupy Wall Street Connection, or an Environmental Activist connection. The thing to take away here is not his reporting but the thought process behind his reporting.
Bloomberg and other lefties have called for more gun control. A simple Google search yields dozens of stories of people deliberately driving their cars into pedestrians. I never hear these same lefties calling for “Car Control”.
Alternative news sources are now telling us about another Aurora shooting that occured this past April. http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/12175-two-aurora-shootings-one-widely-known-the-other-ignored
Note how we never heard of this shooting before. Why? Because an armed civilian used a gun to stop a madman on a murderous rampage. Guess that doesn’t fit the media stereotype and narrative.
Anyone who thinks that we can stop disturbed individuals from doing stupid, crazy, or heinous acts by passing a law needs to reassess their underlying thoughts and assumptions. Murder has been against the law going back to Cain and Abel and yet we still have murders. A fist, a knife, a car, or gun can all be used for good or evil. Let’s not forget the weapons of mass destruction used on 9-11 were commercial airliners. No law can prevent someone intent on doing evil from doing so.
It may sound like a trite bumper expression but it is true: Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
Layman,
Thanks, working on it.
And thanks for the link. As you may have deduced my fear about supporting GZ is he is not the responsible gun owner who should be defended.
Will definitely note the media’s duplicity
I don’t think that the Colorado cinema killings was anymore a freak accident than the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords.
I accuse that this is teamo; the timing is too coincedental
Fast and Furious didn’t work
Who is signing some Useless Nobodys treaty against gun ownership
this week?
That would be teamo!
Lack of proof is not lack of common sense.
“As you may have deduced my fear about supporting GZ is he is not the responsible gun owner who should be defended.”
Strange. I would think it was the ideal example of responsible gun carriers. He kept his weapon properly concealed until he was in danger of dying then changed the outcome. He kept his weapon concealed as long as possible while contacting the police. Had they arrived in time, he would not have had to use it.
one of those two guys was gonna die that night, the one with the concealed weapon didn’t.
RT: It can be argued, and I tend to agree, that GZ only got into the situation he was in because of his gun. Had he been unarmed he probably would have stayed in his truck until the police arrived. However, knowing that he had “backup” for whatever he encountered he went ahead and followed TM. After that its all specualtion and he said/they said and we won’t know until the trial what actually went down in that deadly confrontation.
However, there is a difference between: 1) responding to a life threatening situation that occurs out of the blue and, 2) walking directly into one because you know you’re packing heat.
I don’t think the differnce is a subtle one either. Hence my position since day one that GZ should not get off scott-free.
It will be up to the jury to decide which of the above situations actually took place.
I feel a little more that a person has the right to protect their home and neighborhood and if there is a rash of criminal activities in a neighborhood and the police will not provide adequate coverage then the people in the neighborhood have the right to protect themselves against these criminal activities. Let’s say that if the would be criminals knew that everyone in the neighborhood is armed there would be a whole lot less criminal activities taking place. A city in Georgia, (Kennesaw) a few years back, passed a local law that required all citizens to have a firearm for protection. (They didn’t actually charge citizens if they didn’t buy one) When this law went into effect, the crime rate went to virtually zero. Had TM known, or suspected, that GZ was packing, I suspect he would have gone straight home. So there is certainly two perspectives. However, I don’t really think anyone should need to carry a weapon to keep thugs from attacking them, i think they should be able to walk anywhere in their own neighborhood without having to worry about being attacked. That wasn’t the case with GZ, he was walking in his neighborhood and got attacked. The fact that he suspected TM’s motives and the subsequent attack by TM pretty well verified that he was correct in his suspicions.
RT: That’s taking GZ totally 100% at his word – that everything occured as he described. But given some of the contradictions in his statements I’m not ready to go there until all the evidence is out (at trial). This case is probably going to hinge some on physical evidence and mostly on GZ’s credibility.
The case has been made by others that TM was hiding from GZ because he was afraid and that when he came out from hiding GZ confronted him. Who know’s what GZ actually said? TM also had a right to self defense. Perhaps he attacked GZ because he was afraid for his life. Perhaps GZ actually started the physical confrontation. We don’t know because right now all we have are GZ’s statements. And you have to admit that (even if they are the truth) they are self-serving. I could take your last couple sentences and apply them directly to TM. Your quote, slightly modified:
“However, I don’t really think anyone should need to carry a weapon to keep thugs from attacking them, i think they should be able to walk anywhere in their own neighborhood without having to worry about being attacked. That wasn’t the case with TM, he was walking in his neighborhood and got attacked. The fact that he suspected GZ’s motives and the subsequent attack by GZ pretty well verified that he was correct in his suspicions.”
OMG
Layman, what you says makes sense, but I have seen no evidence or heard any that proves that GZ attacked TM. I have seen evidence (a broken nose and evidence of head bashing on concrete) that GZ was attacked. If GZ was the sucker puncher, would TM have a broken nose? If GZ was bashing TM’s head, wouldn’t he(TM) have lacerations on the back of his head? If TM feared GZ, would he have hung around and waited for GZ to catch up? Of course all these things could be either way, but having a broken nose is evidence of violence by TM not by GZ. Lacerations on GZ’s head is evidence of violence by TM not by GZ. Battered knuckles is evidence of violence by TM, not GZ. So it is fairly evident that TM did a minimum of two acts of violence before GZ did one. If GZ had committed his violent act first, there would not have been other acts of violence. The only person that tested positive for drugs was TM. The only person that called the police because of what was going on was GZ and he called them long before TM punched him. If there had been multiple reports of thugs in my neighborhood, I would hope we had a neighborhood watch that is armed (Note: I would prefer that uniformed police patrol the neighborhood enough to keep the thugs out, but lacking that, someone with a gun (that’s the basic reason for the right to bear arms (self preservation).