Month: December 2009

They would have never bothered her if she were on welfare

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They Would Have Never Bothered Her if She Were on Welfare

Unbelievable. No, actually, too believable. I found this at AR15.com. The title of this post comes from the first response to the original post:

$10 an hour with 2 kids? IRS pounces

Rachel Porcaro knows she’s hardly rich. When you’re a single mom making 10 bucks an hour, you don’t need government experts to tell you how broke you are.

Rachel Porcaro knows she’s hardly rich. When you’re a single mom making 10 bucks an hour, you don’t need government experts to tell you how broke you are.

But that’s what happened. The government not only told Porcaro she was poor. They said she was too poor to make it in Seattle.

It all started a year ago, when Porcaro, a 32-year-old mom with two boys, was summoned to the Seattle office of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). She had been flagged for an audit.

She couldn’t believe it. She made $18,992 the previous year cutting hair at Supercuts. A few hundred of that she spent to have her taxes prepared by H&R Block.

“I asked the IRS lady straight upfront — ‘I don’t have anything, why are you auditing me?’ ” Porcaro recalled. “I said, ‘Why me, when I don’t own a home, a business, a car?’ “

The answer stunned both Porcaro and the private tax specialist her dad had gotten to help her.

“They showed us a spreadsheet of incomes in the Seattle area,” says Dante Driver, an accountant at Seattle’s G.A. Michael and Co. “The auditor said, ‘You made eighteen thousand, and our data show a family of three needs at least thirty-six thousand to get by in Seattle.”

“They thought she must have unreported income. That she was hiding something. Basically they were auditing her for not making enough money.”

RTWT. It gets worse.

But I’ll skip to the dénouement:

Rachel says an irony of her year in tax hell is that the IRS is right about one thing — you can’t get by in Seattle on what she makes. That’s why she’s living with her parents. To try to make a life in our shimmering city without relying on welfare, food stamps or other public assistance.

“We’re an Italian family,” she said. “We’re surviving as a tribe. It seems like we got punished for that.”

Of course you did. Can’t have the plebes fending for themselves. The next thing you know, they’ll start thinking that they don’t need government.

At the time of this posting, there are 420 comments on the original story. The natives seem restless.

A Gun and the Willingness to Use It

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A Gun and the Willingness to Use It

Vanderleun has the sound track of a 911 call from a woman in Lincoln County, Oklahoma. Donna Jackson had a home intruder who would not stop trying to get in. Listen to the whole thing.

She had a gun. She was willing to use it to defend herself – “I have a shotgun, and I will use it.”

“He’s breaking the window, I’m going to kill him.”

“He looks like an older man. I don’t want to kill him.”

She was calm, clear and collected until after she pulled the trigger.

Having a gun doesn’t mean you’re safe. As Col. Cooper put it, owning a guitar doesn’t make you a musician, either. You need to be willing and able. Donna Jackson met all three conditions. She survived the confrontation. Too many don’t.

The perp was Billy Dean Riley, and was apparently high or drunk. He had a fairly long record of drug and alcohol abuse.

Remember this tape the next time someone tells you that people don’t need guns for self defense and can depend on the State to save them.

AZ Blogmeet & Range Trip – It’s Still On

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AZ Blogmeet & Range Trip – It’s Still On!

Despite my change in employment status, the Saturday, December 12 range trip and blogmeet are still a go, and I hope to see all six or eight of you there. It looks like Saturday is going to be a bit chilly and possibly damp, so dress warmly. This is still Arizona, so bring plenty to drink (non-alcoholic, of course). Since we’re going to shoot until about 1:00PM or so, you might also want to bring a snack of some kind.

For those who have never been there, the Elsy Pearson Public Shooting Range is quite easy to get to:

From either the direction of Phoenix or Tucson, take I-10 towards the I-8 interchange.

Take Exit 199 to I-8 West

The first exit you come to on I-8 is Exit 174 for Trekell Rd. Exit there.

Turn left and go about 2-3 minutes. (Note, the speed limit through the residential area there is 25.) Proceed on through the first minor intersection, and keep your eyes on the left side of the road for a sign for the Casa Grande Trap Club.

Turn left again at W. Arica Rd. The road turns to dirt here, so your vehicle will get dirty. Go for another 2-3 minutes. W. Arica Rd. intersects Isom Rd. at the trap range.

Turn right on S. Isom Rd. Go for a minute or two, and you will pass the Casa Grande police range on your left, and immediately after that will be the Public range.

Here’s a picture of how to get there:


And one showing the three ranges a bit better:


The range opens at 7:00AM. As I said, it is my intention to be there when it opens so I can set up my steel targets.

One further note: While the range has some very nice concrete shooting benches, there are NO CHAIRS. If you want to sit down, BRING A CHAIR or something to sit on.

Edited to add: Here’s my previous list of things-to-bring-&-do:

1) It is an unsupervised range – there are no Range Officers, so we have to do that ourselves. I expect everyone to be familiar with the Four Rules. I also expect everyone to be familiar with firing range etiquette.

2) There is no potable water at the range. Bring fluids. (But no alcohol.)

3) There is, at least, a Porta-Potty on site now. There didn’t used to be. I suggest that someone bring some toilet paper, just in case. And hand-sanitizer, too.

4) Even though it’s late fall, and the firing line is covered, Mr. Sun is nasty. Bring sunscreen.

5) There are no targets nor target stands at this range. You can bring anything you’re willing to clean up as a target (exceptions being glass and explosive targets – that’s posted). As I said, I’ll be bringing my steel targets, and everyone is welcome to shoot them. I’ll also be bringing a target stand for paper targets. If you go out to pick something up, don’t get the “stick in the ground” type target stands. The ground out there is caliche, and about as hard as cement.

6) There are three ranges to shoot from, a 100 yard range with covered shooting benches, a 300 yard range with covered benches, and a 25 yard range with no benches, but the firing line is covered too. I figure we’ll take up one end of the 300 yard range. In addition, the backstop is a range of mountains. About 600 yards downrange on the side of the mountain someone has put some steel targets, so if you bring something with some reach, you have something to shoot at.

7) Sorry, but they don’t allow .50BMG at this range. I suppose it’s just slightly possible to loft a 750 grain .50 caliber projectile over the mountain range backstop and drop it onto Interstate 8, so they’re verboten.

End edit.

At about 1:00 we will pack it in and head to Ochoa’s. It’s just off Trekell Rd. The address is 512 East Cottonwood Lane. Get back to Trekell Rd., turn right (North) and drive until you hit Cottonwood Ln. Turn left and if you get to Casa Grande Ave., you went too far. It’s back a bit off the road on the North (right) side of the street just before Casa Grande Ave.

Hope to see you there!

Well, THAT Sucks

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Oh Boy! I’ve just joined the ranks of the unemployed. Due to lack of work, the entire Controls staff of my office (all three of us) just got laid off.

However, I do have an interview tomorrow morning. I’m not all that concerned about getting another job, but you have to admit, the timing SUCKS.

Hopenchangen Hopenhagen Carbonhagen

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Hopenchangen Hopenhagen Carbonhagen

So Obamateur is flying to Carbonhagen on his way to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize to inspire other World Leaders™ to Do the Right Thing© and cut per capita CO2 emissions back to 19th Century levels in order to Save the Planet!©™® In the mean time, the Imperial Senate Democrats are preparing to throw their female constituency under the bus® by prohibiting Federal funds from being used to pay for abortions just so they can get Health Care Reform©™® passed and fvck the rest of us, too.

Just when do the actions of our Congressweasels fall to the level of “a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object…a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism”?

Just askin’.

UPDATE: Who needs Carbonhagen? The EPA can just make sh!t up as they go!

Remembering Pearl Harbor Day

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Sixty-eight years ago today, Japanese Naval aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor and surrounding Army and Marine air bases on the islands of Hawaii, precipitating America’s entry into World War II. From an article in Sunday’s Houston Chronicle about the addition of a Japanese Navy mini-sub to the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredricksburg, Texas (birthplace of Adm. Chester Nimitz):

The youngest of the World War II veterans are now in their 80s and it’s estimated less than 1 million Pacific war combatants, primarily from the Navy and Marine Corps, are alive.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgdVyukGIOA&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&w=640&h=505]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stNJmeiDQro&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&w=640&h=505]
I think I’d like to visit that museum.

Quote of the Day – Chicken Little Edition

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This time it’s me, paraphrasing what I’ve seen in several places recently:

“Environmentalism” is all about CONTROL. You can tell because no matter what the dire warning is – “Climate Change” (née Anthropogenic Global Warming), Global Cooling (The coming Ice Age), the Population Bomb (which Ehrlich is still not ashamed of [read that – how can someone be so wrong for so long and still hold a professorship?]), Nuclear Winter, and to a lesser extent Silent Spring and the Ozone Hole – the solution is ALWAYS THE SAME: CONTROL OF OUR LIVES AND CONTROL OF OUR MONEY BY OUR “INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORS,” THE MORONS WE PUT IN PUBLIC OFFICE AND THE “EXPERTS” THEY APPOINT.