Month: August 2009

A Blast from the Past

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Back in May of 2007 I wrote Good Guys 1, Bad Guys 0, the story of a defensive gun use by a Cape Coral, Florida man who was accosted in his own front yard by two young men, one armed with a revolver. He resisted and managed to disarm one opponent, who he then shot. That assailant died as a result of his wound. His accomplices, the other young man involved in the assault and a young woman who was acting as the getaway driver, were later caught. They were charged, per Florida’s law, with murder, since a death occurred during the commission of a felony.

One murder trial began yesterday:

The trial of a Fort Myers man charged with murder started this morning with opening statements and the case’s first witness.

Damion Shearod, 22, faces up to life in prison if convicted of second-degree murder with a firearm, attempted armed robbery with a firearm and burglary with a firearm.

Shearod is charged in the killing of John Patrick Moore, who was shot to death by Cape Coral homeowner Jacob Selack at 2125 N.E. 1st Ave. on May 16, 2007, during a botched robbery.

According to police, Shearod, Moore and Jazzmyne Rahshel Carrol-Love drove from Fort Myers to the house occupied by Selack and his fiancee Elizabeth Kachnic.

Moore, who was carrying a weapon, and Shearod walked up to Selack, who was mowing his yard, according to Cape Coral police. They put a gun to his head and demanded he take them into the house. Selack resisted and when Moore dropped the gun, Selack fired it at him, killing him in the driveway. Shearod ran away. Carrol-Love remained in the car during the alleged robbery attempt.

Shearod was convicted of murder in 2005 and sentenced to 30 years in prison, but a judge overturned the conviction because he determined the jury didn’t have enough evidence to convict.

They should now.

Read the original post, it’s pretty interesting. Note that, once again, the media has no qualms about printing the street address of the actual victim here, Jacob Selack. You can look it up on Google Maps and get a damned street view of the place.

But do we get the home addresses of the perps?

(*crickets*)

August 6, 1945

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August 6, 1945


At 08:15 on this date in 1945, an atomic bomb was for the first time used against a wartime target – the city of Hiroshima on the island of Honshu, the largest of the Japanese Home Islands. At the time, the population of Hiroshima is estimated to have been 300-350,000.

Ever since the end of WWII, America has been excoriated for being the only nation to have used nuclear weapons in warfare, especially for using those weapons against civilian targets – cities – rather than strictly military targets. Most recently Jon Stewart expressed such an opinion, and essayist and now video star Bill Whittle took some time to explain to him how many ways he was wrong.

I want to do something similar, but I don’t have days to do interviews, much less access to quality video recording and editing hardware. However, via Blackfive I discovered that the Rome, Georgia Rome News-Tribune had done extensive video interviews with surviving WWII vets in their town, and produced some damned fine documentary shorts of those interviews. Fine enough that they ought to win that publication some prizes. Here are two of them, of survivors from the Pacific Theater. Watch and listen, and hear how these men felt about the atomic bombing of Japan.

http://img.photobucket.com/player.swf?file=http://vidmg.photobucket.com/albums/v99/smallestminority/harrybattle0709b_F8_1Mb.flv

http://img.photobucket.com/player.swf?file=http://vidmg.photobucket.com/albums/v99/smallestminority/atomicbombforweb_F8_1Mb_IVND.flv
The two atomic blasts killed between 250,000 and 300,000 people, but they ended the war. Estimates of American casualties alone, had we invaded the Japanese Home Islands, were on the order of 1 million. Japanese casualties, given the grim statistics of Iwo Jima, Saipan, and Okinawa, would have been at least 3-5 times higher, and would have included women, children, and old men.

My only question is when and where will the third atomic bomb used in war be detonated? Tel Aviv? Los Angeles? Paris? London? New York? Because it is going to happen, sooner or later.

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

AZLibertarian discusses the FedGov’s “Cash for Clunkers” program, reflecting on the experience the Arizona state government had with a similar program aimed at “alternate fuel” conversions a few years ago:

The taxpayers of Arizona bought me a third of my truck. Nice if you can get it, but the state can’t stay in business this way.

So, why is this relevant today?

Here’s why….The Cash for Clunkers program is going broke. They overstimulated. They’re having to add money to keep a program meant to last until October make it last beyond its first week.

In short, the fed.gov is doing today what the Arizona state.gov did 10 years ago. For their own reasons, they believe they’re smarter than the Invisible Hand, and it isn’t working.

Again.

— Alternative Fuel Clunkers, Twenty Miles of Bad Road

So we should obviously put them in charge of our health care.

RTWT.

Mean-Spirited and Dangerous vs. Brilliant and Profound

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Mean-Spirited and Dangerous vs. Brilliant and Profound

Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson is calling the depiction [of Obama as the Joker], politically mean spirited and dangerous.

Hutchinson is challenging the group or individual that put up the poster to have the courage and decency to publicly identify themselves.

“Depicting the president as demonic and a socialist goes beyond political spoofery,” says Hutchinson, “it is mean-spirited and dangerous.”

“We have issued a public challenge to the person or group that put up the poster to come forth and publicly tell why they have used this offensive depiction to ridicule President Obama.”

That would be this poster:


However, when Vanity Fair published this picture of George W. Bush in July of 2008,


basically the instant the movie opened, the comments were somewhat different:

Great stuff from the talented Friedman (as always). As “agents of chaos” go, W’s right up there with the best of ’em.
Posted 7/29/2008 by Frankie5Angels

So true. Only his puppet strings are missing. 🙂
Posted 7/29/2008 by MimiSoleil

Very good!!!
Posted 7/29/2008 by juckto

Poor Joker, he doesn’t deserve this. Bush isn’t good enough to wear his face.
Posted 7/29/2008 by japsmov

Brilliant and profound.
Posted 7/29/2008 by swordofdamocles

We knew who’d done it. It was “brilliant and profound”! No one even thought to ask “why?” No one in media considered it “mean-spirited and dangerous.” Of course, this was back when dissent was the highest form of patriotism. Now that the Left has its hands on the levers of power, we’re supposed to shut up.

Double standard? What double standard?

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

If you’re a journalist, want to help people and want to tell the truth, what truth are you going to tell? Why, the truth you think helps people, of course!

Technically, that’s the truth.

But it’s very different than the truth.

Barbara Oakley, Why Most Journalists are Democrats: A View from the Soviet Socialist Trenches

h/t to Dr. Helen for this one – a definite must-read! And you might want to peruse my January, 2008 essay The Church of the MSM and the New Reformation, too.

Edumacashun

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Ravenwood points to something I hadn’t bothered to follow up on. Last night Instapundit linked to a story about a college graduate who was suing her alma mater because she couldn’t find a job.

The thing Ravenwood noticed? Let’s see if you can determine what it is (PDF document from which I excerpt):


This is a woman with a 4-year Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. Based on her lawsuit, I can imagine what her job applications look like.

I wouldn’t hire her.

Isn’t that N.I.C.E.

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Isn’t that N.I.C.E?

From “Primary Source” commenter “Grumpy Student”:

By the way, anyone who wants to read all about the body set up to ration healthcare in the UK only needs to look up the Wikipedia entry for “NICE”, the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (good name) whose job it is to determine which treatments the NHS will offer based on a cost effectiveness metric. The good thing about this policy (from their point of view) is that patients denied treatment usually die before any court case completes.

It’s important to understand that money the individual has paid in taxes towards healthcare becomes “public money” and therefore they have no right to expect it to be used for their treatment. Therefore the decision becomes “is this treatment in the public interest or could we spend this money doing something else?” not “what are the patient’s needs/is this patient entitled to the treatment?”.

The reason they strike you off if you pay for the treatment yourself is that doing so is seen as using financial wealth to obtain a better standard of care than generally available which is contrary to the philosophy of the NHS (I kid you not).

In the NHS, maintaining socialist dogma is more important than patient care.

Now, go read Neo-neocon’s story of her experience dealing with chronic pain, and what the National Health Service’s National Institute of Clinical Excellence is now, for economic reasons, recommending for people in its system with similar problems.

Then tell me again why nationalized health care is such a rush?

The Parking Ticket

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The Parking Ticket

Working people frequently ask retired people what they do to make their days interesting.

Well, for example, the other day my wife and I went into town and went into a shop.

We were only in there for about 5 minutes. When we came out, there was a cop writing out a parking ticket.

We went up to him and said, ‘Come on man, how about giving a senior citizen a break?’

He ignored us and continued writing the ticket. I called him a Nazi turd. He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn tires.

So my wife called him a shit-head.

He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first. Then he started writing a third ticket.. This went on for about 20 minutes. The more we abused him, the more tickets he wrote.

Personally, we didn’t care. We came into town by bus and the car had an Obama sticker. We try to have a little fun each day now that we’re retired. It’s important at our age.

Stolen shamelessly from Eagle7222 at AR15.com.