Today’s Posts 12-18-07

Normandale Community College gets Islamicized (12/18/2007 12:04)

Time to cut off all of Normandale’s State funding. Our Minnesota tax dollars are funding this nonsense, anyone, particularly the ACLU care to comment about this? Or are you all a bunch of chickenshits?

This story has a moral: Aggression works. And aggression works best among pacified people who consider themselves liberal and enlightened.

Last week, I visited a Muslim place of worship. A schedule for Islam’s five daily prayers was posted at the entrance, near a sign requesting that shoes be removed. Inside, a barrier divided men’s and women’s prayer space, an arrow informed worshippers of the direction of Mecca, and literature urged women to cover their faces.

Sound like a mosque?

The place I’m describing is the “meditation room” at Normandale Community College, a 9,200-student public institution in Bloomington.

I openly challenge the ACLU to put there money where there mouth is, and file suit against Normandale, and add Minneapolis CC in their as well. I do not give this god forsaken liberal State permission to use my money to fund the Islamic religion. I am “offended.” Where the hell are my “rights?” This is a clear cut violation of the 1st Amendment.

Pardon the language you are about to witness, but I am sick and tired of this stupid fucking bullshit. There is no way the majority needs to surrender rights to the minority. That’s not how it works, and fuck your “accomodation.”

I really don’t expect a favorable reply, but I am going to contact the ACLU, both the local and national offices, let’s see if they’ll put their money where there mouth is. I’m also going to email State Senator Gen Olson, State Rep. Steve Smith, and the Thomas Moore Law Center. I’ve had enough of this shit.

Democrats & Age Discrimination: Getting ready to boot Klansman Bobby Byrd (D-WV) (12/18/2007 12:03)

The party that is supposed to be the great savior of Social Injustice really doesn’t follow their own rules. But then again, we all know that. What’s good for the goose isn’t necessarily good for the gander. And they have the audacity to stand on a soapbox and lecture us about discrimination?

A group of Senate Democrats has begun quietly exploring ways to replace the venerable Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) as chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, believing he’s no longer physically up to the job, according to Democrat senators and leadership aides familiar with the discussions.

I agree, Klansman and career politician Bobby-boy Byrd’s time has come and gone and it’s well beyond time the old fossil left the senate, the people of West Virginia however, don’t agree. They keep sending him back. Then again, it is West Virginia, home of the hillbilly.

Fargo Bank Gives Employees $1,000 to Spend on Needy (12/18/2007 12:02)

I wonder how many employee’s “don’t have a video camera,” or “my battery died”? State Bank & Trust of Fargo, N.D. gave each employee a thousand bucks on the condition they spend it on the needy. I wonder how many employee’s will consider themselves needy?

State Bank & Trust Chief Operating Officer Michael Solberg said each full-time employee will receive $1,000 and each part-time employee will receive $500, as part of a $502,000 “Pay it Forward” initiative.

“We’re going to really see some huge impact on our community,” Solberg said.

Employees were told not to use the money for themselves, their families or families of other bank employees. The bank asked each employee to document the good deed with a video camera. The deadline is June 30.

The employees were told they may choose an individual cause, pool their money for a larger project or collaborate with donors outside the bank. The privately owned bank has more than 500 employees, he said.

The bank made the announcement over the weekend.

In previous years, the Fargo-based bank has taken 5 percent of the company earnings and divided it up at holiday time among employees.

The bank dictates how your profit sharing check gets spent? I’d be pissed. Just another form of a liberal (Michael Solberg) redistributing the wealth. Good ‘ol communism is alive and well!

Source: Fox News

House guts border fence (12/18/2007 12:01)

The fence gets robbed, but the spending bill gives $10 million in “emergency” funding for attorneys of illegal immigrants?!!?! Michelle Malkin has the lowdown.

Regarding yesterdays Daily Letter (12/18/2007 12:00)

I’m going to take a minute here to refer to Michael La Faves Daily Letter which I posted yesterday. He wrote me an email with the story reference to his post about waterboarding. He really didn’t get the straight info, he got a version of it which I believe, led him to believe, atrocities were being committed by Americans.Before I go any further, I would like to sincerely apologize to Michael La Fave for calling him a liar. That was wrong of me, and I assure you it won’t happen again.The article in question tells the truth, but not the whole truth as the current situation is. It’s a lot like the Rodney King video. We all saw what the media wanted us to see. We didn’t get to see the whole video. The jury did, hence, the not guilty verdict of the police officers.

…Japan’s military and government elite were charged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct that we would now call waterboarding.

This is blatantly false, as I will point out.

A towel was fixed under the chin and down over the face. Then many buckets of water were poured into the towel so that the water gradually reached the mouth and rising further eventually also the nostrils, which resulted in his becoming unconscious and collapsing like a person drowned. This procedure was sometimes repeated 5-6 times in succession.

The average time an average person usually becomes cooperative during waterboarding is between 20-45 seconds. This technique is stopped, and intelligence is usually obtained at this time.

Khalid Sheik Muhammad is known to have held out the longest using this technique. It was about 2 and a half minutes.

We stop well short of the “torture line.” We don’t do it 5 or 6 times in succession, nor has it been done until someone collapses or vomits, so comparing Imperial Japan’s use of water torture to our modern day waterboarding is ludicrous. Particularly when the average person gives it up after 20 or 30 seconds, there’s no need to continue. Continuing on, as described above would be torture.

The WaPo story can be found here.

Our recent experience using waterboarding have found it to be 100% effective and reliable. For anyone to suggest taking this valuable tool off the table, I do, without hesitation or apology, question your patriotism.

A little common sense is required when tasering somebody (12/18/2007 10:14)

Police fired a 50,000-volt Taser into the head of a 45-year-old company director who later proved to be unarmed and innocent. Daniel Sylvester, the owner of an east London security firm employing 65 staff to guard council offices, pubs and nightclubs, was driving home on October 20 when he was stopped by armed police because of “firearms related intelligence”. According to Sylvester, he got out of his car and was surrounded by officers, at least two of whom were carrying automatic weapons. Without warning, one officer fired a Taser into the back of his head which made him drop to his knees, he said. A second shock caused him to fall on his face, breaking a front tooth. A further six shocks made him wet himself and left him lying in the road in pain while the officers and sniffer dogs searched the car and found nothing.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission has started an investigation and David Lammy, Sylvester’s MP in Tottenham, north London, has written to Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner, to say he is “deeply concerned”.

The incident was part of Operation Neon, a crackdown on guns on London’s streets by using armed response units to stop and search cars. Sylvester said the incident had left him traumatised and he now suffered from short-term memory loss. He doubts the police would have stopped him had he not been black. A spokesman for the Met said: “Just after midnight, officers on an intelligence-led operation stopped a car in Bounces Road, N9. The driver got out of the vehicle and was subsequently Tasered. Our information is the Taser was deployed once.”

Sylvester had been followed by police cars for about three miles through Tottenham before they boxed him in.

“Armed police jumped out and opened my car door,” he said. “I said OK, I’m coming. I asked what was going on and as soon as I stepped out of the car I felt something touch me on the back of the head and then I was on my knees. Then it happened again and I was on my face and I felt somebody pressing my head down with their foot. By the fifth time I realised officers were pinning my arms together. It was like they were trying to break my arms and I was in pain, screaming out.

“I was shocked eight times altogether and I had urinated on the floor. It was like being tortured. It went on and on and I felt they were going to kill me.”

According to guidelines set by the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers, Tasers should be deployed “where officers are facing violence or threats of violence of such severity that they would need to use force to protect the public, themselves and/or the subject(s) of their action”. Tasers have been used 47 times in London this year, with black people accounting for almost two-thirds of those stunned.

Now I’m going to reserve judgment until the official report comes out and says how many times this man was tasered. Eight does seem like a little bit of an overreaction to this person if it is true.

I fail to see “where officers are facing violence or threats of violence of such severity that they would need to use force to protect the public, themselves and/or the subject(s) of their action” according to the story above. A guy gets out of his car, isn’t making any threatening gestures and gets shot with a Taser in the back of his head. What, having electricity interfere with the neurons of the brain a half second later wasn’t good enough if he was shot in the back? Then like I said, eight times? What the Christmas Trees weren’t giving off enough light, so the cops had to try and turn him Supernova?

Like I have said before, Tasers have their place, but it seems like more and more police officers are going with the Wild West motto of shoot first, ask questions later. When you become a law enforcement officer, you should have to show some common sense and exercise it as well. All the apologies in the world don’t matter when you get Tasered. As an advocate of personal responsibility, I think that each time a police officer fires his Taser gun and hits an individual that is innocent and without cause should have the following punishment: The innocent individual gets to fire two Taser guns at the officer from 20 feet away. Might rein in some of these cowboys.

China will probably be upset (12/18/2007 01:54)

China doesn’t like Japan. They’re still smarting over getting their asses kicked during World War II. And let’s face it, the Japanese invaders weren’t very nice. I have a feeling things are going to get a little heated in the orient, fairly soon.

HONOLULU — The Japanese military destroyed a mid-range ballistic missile in space with an interceptor fired from a ship off Hawaii in a test on Monday.The U.S. military has conducted similar successful tests in the past, but it is the first time a U.S. ally has shot down a ballistic missile from a ship at sea.

The interceptor fired by the JS Kongo knocked out the target warhead about 100 miles above the Pacific Ocean, said the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, which carried out the test together with the Japanese and U.S. navies.

Tokyo has invested heavily in missile defense since North Korea test-fired a long-range missile over northern Japan in 1998. It has installed missile tracking technology on several navy ships and has plans to equip them with interceptors.

Experts say the test will likely strengthen the U.S.-Japan defense alliance. The Missile Defense Agency called the test “a major milestone in the growing cooperation between Japan and the U.S.”

That in turn, will likely upset both China and Russia. There most likely will be the blame America for provoking China crowd, forgetting that China has been on a massive military build up for the last 15 years, with the goal of dominating Asia. And let’s not forget their new found military alliance with Russia, which recently postured it’s military into Cold War status. Let us not forget nuclear armed North Korea.

I take a keen interest in this from a personal level. My step son is in the military, stationed in Okinawa, and he is involved with Missle Defense.

Following Guns, Smokes, and Fat (12/18/2007 01:46)

BaddaBlog: Following Guns, Smokes, and Fat

The Daily Letter: I like this guy’s thinking (12/18/2007 12:02)

Every once in a blue moon, the Strib prints its token conservative letter that’s a bit bold, and this is it for this month anyhow. Written by CRAIG CHRISTENSEN, MINNEAPOLIS. What a great letter!

Stephen Sarvi’s Dec. 14 Counterpoint “Not all federal earmarks are bad” misses the point of Rep. John Kline’s principled stand against earmarks. The earmark system is corrupt and without transparency.Neither party takes the lead in reforming earmarks, because its main attraction to lawmakers is that it promotes their incumbency. Bringing home the bacon (which is pork, of course) helps get them reelected. The most powerful lawmakers deliver the most, and if you dare to criticize a wasteful earmark, your own earmarks will be threatened.

Opting out of the game takes political courage and principle. Candidate Sarvi would not be part of the solution to the mess in Washington, he’d be just another pig at the trough.

CRAIG CHRISTENSEN, MINNEAPOLIS

 

Craig, take the rest of the week off with pay! You’ve earned it for writing that very truthful letter. Great job!

Naval History – Dec. 18 (12/18/2007 12:01)

• 1902 – Admiral of the Navy George Dewey receives orders to send his battleship to Trinidad and then to Venezuela to make sure Great Britain and Germany’s dispute with Venezuela was settled by peaceful arbitration not force.

• 1944 – Adm. William Halsey’s 3rd Fleet encounters a typhoon northeast of Samar. Destroyers USS Hull (DD 350), USS Monaghan (DD 354) and USS Spence (DD 512) sink, while 21 other ships are damaged.

• 1965 – The River Patrol Force is established in Vietnam.

• 1965 – Helicopters from Helicopter Squadron 11 on USS Wasp (CVS 18) pick up crew and capsule of Gemini 7 after picking up the crew and capsule of Gemini 6 two days earlier.

• 1967 – Operation Preakness II begins in Mekong Delta.

• 1972 – Mining and bombing of North Vietnam resumes with Linebacker II Operation.

Daily Navy Photo for 12-18-07 (12/18/2007 12:00)

In 1907, Theodore Roosevelt, 26th president of the United States, sent a portion of the Atlantic fleet on a world tour to test naval readiness, establish global presence and generate international goodwill.