Hurricane Crime

A family the next block over decided to skedaddle during the hurricane, only to come home to a basement window that had been kicked in by some burglar. No word on what was taken. Kinda makes me want to move further south, out of the area, to a safer place like Stafford or Fredericksburg. Oh wait!

Crime is everywhere. There is no such thing as a safe neighborhood.

UPDATE: Checking the local crime report I see this:

Robbery and Malicious Wounding, 306 Hillwood Ave. (Lesley Restaurant).  On Aug. 29, 2:00 a.m., a customer leaving the restaurant was allegedly assaulted by three Hispanic males.  The victim reported his wallet was stolen and he was stabbed during the altercation.  Victim was transported to a local hospital for treatment.

That is one block away from the Red, Hot, and Blue I took my kids to yesterday.

Three Minute Philosophy - John Locke

It's all worth it for the very last 10 seconds...

Disrespecting the Fourth Amendment?

Could be. Or perhaps she gave her consent for the search...

PHOTOS: Uniformed Cop Caught Having Sex With Woman On Hood Of Car | The Smoking Gun

He he he he

Can't wait to put this to use.

Playing Cops and Rosey

DC Officer Accused of Firing Gun During Fight With Group That Included Transgender People

The cop wasn't suppose to have a gun because he was on "sick leave".

The Stuff

1. While the rest of the region is on hurricane watch, I'm on kid watch. My wife is down in Georgia attending a memorial for one of her college friends who passed recently. The kid watch extends into next week. My daughter starts kindergarten, but the first week is only half days and daycare for the crazy one is closed as well. So I'll be working odd hours, 5am to 8am... then during nap time and then some evening time... all of it from home. There is no way I'm gonna get my full 40 in though.

2. We had a planned reorganization and restructuring of our code base, but due to the nature of the beast I ended up pulling an all-nighter followed by a second day of going from 9am until midnight. Not fun.

3. In the middle of that, my top guy turned in his notice so I was scrambling to juggle team resources and make sure we had proper knowledge transfer before he leaves. I'm a little pissed about it considering he only gave two weeks notice. Less than a month ago we sent him to a conference of his asking too. And we instituted flex time this year to keep him happy as well.

And so tonight....

The Busy

... it has hold of me.

Green Belted

Like you actually wanted to see a
picture of a real martial arts green belt!

So, one almost disjointed shoulder, one still smarting twisted foot, a couple of moments of "crushing myself" (it's a guy thing), a bruised bone on my right hip, and six months of having my ass kicked from one end of the dojo to another, twice by girls, and now I have my green belt.

BUT, I can throw you to the ground with a major outside foot reap... as long as you are standing still. I can also use one of the other three standard foot reaps... again as long as you are standing still. I know three ways to throw you over my hip... just don't move while I'm doing it. And there are a couple of other throws I can execute on you, if you stand still... and wear a Judo gi please. OH! And I know how to fall backwards really, really, really well.

Seriously, I'm having a lot of fun with Judo. It's a lot of fun mixed with a good many "Oh shit! That's gonna hurt!" moments. While I am certainly not in it for the belt, it does give me a sense of accomplishment. I wore it out of the dojo with pride.

But six months of learning all sorts of cool throwing techniques makes me appreciate the need for firearms in self defense all the more. I've spent six months just getting my first real ranking. Six months of going to the dojo once or twice a week. I know enough to almost barely get me out of a street brawl with an unexperienced opponent... against an experienced opponent I'd probably still get whooped. There are more years ahead of training for me.

How does somebody without the time to train in a martial art defend themselves? How does somebody half my weight and a foot shorter get to defend themselves? How does somebody with a crippling impediment defend themselves? Quite simple, in self-defense a gun is the great equalizer. That little old lady being set upon by two thugs may be a little too arthritic to execute a foot sweep or a bit too short to get a good throat punch in, but her .357 Magnum can reach out give them each a moment they'll soon not forget -- if they get a chance to remember it at all.

I'm learning Judo because it is a good skill to have (and lots of fun). But not everybody has the luxury.

Keiko Fukuda, 98 Year Old Master of Judo

I'm surprized that this hasn't been more widely reported (even my sensei, a 7th Dan, hadn't heard about it). Keiko Fukuda is a 98 year old Judo Master, and the only woman to ever reach 10th Dan in the art. Only four 10th Dan Judokas are alive today. Master Fukuda is also the last living disciple of Jigoro Kano, the founder of Judo, personally recruited by Kano to help the then-new women's division.

Here's video taken two years ago by Flying Carp Productions, while she was just 9th Dan.

Asking The Important Questions

"If elected president, Rick Perry could still jog with his gun?" Because DC doesn't allow civilians to carry guns.

Jeez! I don't know. If the Attorney General can sell thousands of guns to Mexican drug cartels and that seems hunky-dorey with everybody, then I think the POTUS will have no problem carrying around his itty-bitty .380.

RTD Not Letting It Go

The Richmond Times-Dispatch, fresh from their news breaking story about Virginia's restaurant carry law resulting in lower crime, is not letting the issue the go. Here they are calling out all the fools who predicted the end of the world. Good for them.

If we are all destitute, at least that is fair.

Getting back to Warren Buffett's "mega-stupid" oped:

Since 1992, the I.R.S. has compiled data from the returns of the 400 Americans reporting the largest income. In 1992, the top 400 had aggregate taxable income of $16.9 billion and paid federal taxes of 29.2 percent on that sum. In 2008, the aggregate income of the highest 400 had soared to $90.9 billion — a staggering $227.4 million on average — but the rate paid had fallen to 21.5 percent.

Just doing the calculations here... 29.2% of $16.9B = $4.9348B, 21.5% of $90.9B = $19.5435B.

So, which is more important? That the super-rich paid 8 percentage points less in taxes (but not less actual dollars in taxes), or that the government took in almost FOUR FOLD as much money in taxes? I guess to some people, it is more important that everyone pay a "fair" share of the taxes than we get our country out of this economic quick sand.

Over at the Economic Liberty blog, the question asked is "if Buffet's so rich, how come he's not smart?" There is also this observation about that $90.9 billion mentioned above:

By Buffet's own numbers, if we had confiscated all the top 400's earnings in 2008, it would have raised about $0.09T ($90.9B), or about 0.6% of the 2011 federal deficit.  That's if we take every dollar of it, not just tax it at the highest rate for earned income of 35%, since that would raise only 0.2% of the deficit.

To answer Economic Liberty's title question How Mega-Stupid Does the Left Think We Are? They think we are quite stupid, and that's the problem.

The Drama Llama

I'll say this about Robert Farago and his The Truth About Guns website: he certainly knows how to make a fuss... about himself.

p.s. Somebody shoot me if I ever get that whiney!

Now He's Just Fucking With Us

Liberals, or rather a political and rather partisan segment of our society that wishes to liberate from us our money, are quoting Warren Buffett's oped in the NYT, Stop Coddling the Super-Rich. After five seconds of contemplation on the matter, I conclude that the Shyster Oracle of Omaha is treating us much like that of a well-fed kitten with a mouse: now he's just fucking with us.

From the article:

And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation.

That would be interesting if it weren't misleading. In the 1980's, the income tax rates on individuals dropped... A LOT! It dropped nearly 20 percentage points in 1981, another 12 points in 1986, and another 10 points the year after that. Those numbers are quite a bit more substantial than the 4 point difference between today's rate and that of the Clinton years, which is where a lot of liberals claim we need to be.

This is like one of those sidewalk con games where you have to keep track of your card being shuffled among the others, never noticing the slight of hand. From uber-liberal John Gruber (from where I stumbled upon the NYT oped):

Warren Buffett calls for higher taxes on income — all income — over $1 million per year

Not so fast, skippy! Go back and read Buffett's oped:

But for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains.

Notice that Buffett says "those", referring to a group of people, and "households". That doesn't sound like ALL INCOME, it just sounds like income on individuals. Now why would a super-rich guy like Buffett leave out income from big companies and corporations? As it turns out, Buffett's vast wealth -- to the tune of $38 billion -- is tied up in unrealized gains in his investment company Berkshire Hathaway. Is it not odd that he is not asking for that big pile of cash to be taxed at a higher rate? Beware a super-rich man asking to have taxes raised; he is not talking about his taxes.

And now for a little lesson is spending other people's money:

Another Day

Yes, I'm still alive...

And Still Being Thrown. I'm still taking Judo, twice a week if possible and our sensei informs us that we are qualified to get green belts. He's gonna make it official, its just that there is paperwork involved and some guy we need to meet. In tonight's class we were doing some sacrifice throws and I grabbed my uki's gi in some weird way that twisted my fingernail half of my finger. It didn't hurt but I was spouting blood everywhere. That kinda sucked.

And still shooting. A range report will be coming some day, but the M1 Garand has been out to the range twice now... and is going again this week. It's kinda cool to be on a range with all these hi-speed, low-drag types with the latest plastic guns and rifles with more picatinny rails and tactical doodads than are imaginable... and out pops this M1 Garand. The amount of rubbernecking was amazing... with even the RSO coming over to check things out and regaling us with tails of how the Marines use to bounce the clips off the ground to fool the Japs into popping up.

And buying guns. The M1 Garand already put me over my budget for the year, but still I've got designs on another gun I've found though I've yet to pull the trigger... its something I've been wanting for a long time. My wife is being very gracious about it all. Maybe she figures a bad gun habit is still better than what most politicians spend money on, hookers and blow. I'm just glad she loves me... which at this point is glaringly obvious.

Still Here

Sorry for no posts lately. Last week the family and I were in Canada and Maine, and this week I have been catching up with all that stuff at work I missed while in Canada and Maine. Combined with my playing around with Google+ and my new Galaxy Tab 10.1 and a new but used car that I just acquired, things have been a little busy. Oh yeah, somewhere in there I managed to go to the range.

I hope everyone is OK.

Congrats to CTone

While some of us have been increasing the size of our arsenal, CTone has been doing better... He has been increasing the size of his army.