Guard Dog

Kind of a big day today. I met my ex-wife for lunch to discuss the sale of the house. I made it easy for her and told her I'd pay all the closing costs. It was a lot friendlier than I expected. When we were married we were like two scorpions in a jar. She was asking a lot about the new place, where, how big, how much. I really did not want to answer but wanted to be polite. She seems to be afraid after I move she will never see me again (she won't). I wonder why that bothers her. Construction began on my new place today. Yea! Tentatively the walk down will be 9/1/08. Closing on my S Florida house is next week. I can't wait to get all my dogs back together in their new house. This will be my last weekend in the S Florida place. I'm here with just one dog, one chair, my computer, and a cooler full of beer and stuff to cook on my portable weber.

Night I once went to an interview with two other offers in my hand. I ALWAYS ask for at least 24 hours to make a desicion on an offer. I'd ask for more if I had to travel for another interview. Never accept an offer the moment it's tendered. Who knows, if they start to sweat they may offer more. It's never happened to me but I have heard of it.

True enough. During a conversation about conductive materials I told someone once that with sufficient EMF anything is a conductor.

I am a little dismayed that so many of you have no trouble with this. The example trotted out earlier was that teaching fundamentalist christiatinity was akin to child abuse and many of you would have no problem with children in such a household being removed to "save" them. Here is the problem. When a government assigns itself the duty of "thought police" and that is EXACTLY what this is, then it also becomes the final arbiter of what is or is not acceptable thoughts or beliefs. Granted the policy of the body politic usually reflects the mood of the citizenry but I would remind you all that what is acceptable beliefs today may not be tomorrow and any government once it gains a power lawfully or otherwise never lets it go. Suppose a plurality of citizens embraces fundamentalist christianity and uses this same power you appluad today to eradicate all non christian thought by seizing the children of parents they deem not devout enough? Political correctness is a highly impermanent thing but government power is forever. The next time you see a government agency strong arming citizens who comitted no crime in this way, ask yourself if you would like to be on the receiveing end before you applaud or support the action.

Interesting stuff, I did not know that.

Here is an odd case. The current martime law does not cover disputes at sea? How has this not come up by now?

I know for a fact that is coming. They are fairly crappy and use a stripped down version of Linux but they are fully internet capable and ar coming soon (like 2009-2010) from a big US wireless company with a short name.

Fair enough. Let me throw this one at you then, if the same decision was made in 1944 what effect would it have had on all the German POWs in Arizona, or Japanese POWs in Texas? They were protected by the Geneva Convention that is true but it does not allow a POW to legally challenge their custody. Does that still hold true now? Has the Court granted protections that supersede Geneva? Here is my analysis. The Geneva Convention applies to uniformed service members of signatory nations. Ex-Taliban soldiers who were identified as Tajik or Pashtun were treated as POWs and all have been released I believe despite the fact that Afghanistan was not a signatory. Prisoners at Gitmo were all known AQ or foreign (not Tajik or Pashtun or Iraqi) fighters captured on the battle field. Since they are not the soldiers of any nation they could be called mercenaries or spies and enjoy no protections under Geneva. In other words, the US would have been in our rights to simply shoot them. Here is what I'm getting at, by inserting itself onto the battlefield the Court has granted rights to those never protected by Geneva and discouraged the practice of capturing such people alive in the process. They have either encouraged a Take-No-Prisoners stance or given the US a heck of a good reason to simply turn the custody of such prisoners over to nations that have no qualms about savage treatment. I realize this is OT and I'm not trying to provoke a debate. I'm just curious what your take is.

I don't know if I would trot that one out Laz. The violation of Article 2 of the constitution by the Florida Supreme Court in it's recount decision was so heinious that it was stuck down by a vote of 7-2. And remember, the SCOTUS was much more liberal in 2000. If even liberal regulars such as Stevens and Souter think the lower court went too far you can bet it was true. The 5-4 decision held that the Florida State Constituiton required the electors to be chosen by X date and there was insufficient time for any other remedy to be employed before that date. That is what ended the recount. I strongly disagree with the majority on that point. The electors could have been chosen within 24 hours. That left several days IIRC for the individual counties to conduct a recount. As a point of law they were probably right, but in practical application recounts could be done fairly quickly. And history has since shown it would not have mattered anyway. In all of the recounts conducted by the Miami Herald and other news agencies, Bush won every time. Anyway, I don't want to dig those skeletons back up so I'll drop it here.

You Are A: Neutral Good Human Ranger (6th Level) Ability Scores: Strength- 15 Dexterity- 15 Constitution- 17 Intelligence- 17 Wisdom- 18 Charisma- 11 Makes sense I guess...

The President will pick judicial appointees whose philosophy matches their own. That is just how it's done. As a rule Liberals prefer judges who interperet the law as tool to empower the state over the individual, Conservatives prefer judges who see the law as a limit on the power of the state.

The thing that disturbs me most about the 4 liberals on the court are in one weeks time they granted constitutional rights to foreign nationals fighting on foreign battlefields and at the same time tried to deny American citizens a right that is spelled out in black and white on the very document that sets down the foremost law of the land. John Paul Stevens even stated outright that the Constitution does not grant any abolute right. Scary stuff. That is why I absolutely will not vote for Obama. He would put more of Stevens, Breyer, Souter, and Ginsberg on the court. God help us all if they ever gained a clear majority.

Here is a pretty good and level headed (like most things printed by the Wall Street Journal) take on the debate. I completely agree with the four points they bring up. The big fear of reasonable gun restrictions has always been that it would be the first step in a sequence of events that lead to armed men kicking down your door and confiscating your legally owned firearms. The SCOTUS has taken that off the table so as I stated earlier we can see some common sense restrictions without fear of the domino effect. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1214782836...in_commentaries

Not to nitpick details here, but I do have a question. If the the manufacter (Ruger in this case) sells to a dealer that has a valid license but that dealer does not practice due dilligence (i.e. background checks and waiting periods as required by state law) how does civil liability extend beyond the dealer who sold the gun to the mentally ill buyer withput a background check? In other words, if the dealer has a state license in good standing how could Ruger be blamed even in civil court for the bad business practice of another party? Or could they? What I'm getting at here is can civil liability be assigned to a party that did no wrong?

I'm taking the day off. I just woke up an hour ago. Fed the dogs, cracked open a Flying Dog IPA, and sat down at the computer to talk to you guys and the losers over on LP. Next I think I'll get another Flying Dog and fire up Medevial TW. The Spanish are besieging Jerusalem and Egyptian reinforcement are coming up from the south. Im dying to see how it turns out.

No I totally disagree. If the someone uses a hammer to kill someone is the company who made the hammer liable? Responsibility begin and ends with the individual. I don't give a damn about economic circumstances, or if your dad beat you as a kid. Everyone knows you are not supposed to kill other people. If you know that and do it anyway it does not matter what weapon you used, everything that transpired resulted from a choice YOU made. If I got drunk and hit and killed a pedestrian while driving home who is to blame for their death? Knob Creek for making the booze I drank? They did not put it in my glass or put the glass in my hand. Ford Motors for making my truck? How can they be responsible if I misuse their product by doing something the owners manual tells you not to do (it's on page 2 of the Mercury Mountaineer book). Is the bar I drank in responsible? They would have been glad to call a cab if I asked. And as I walked out the door how do they know I was not getting a cab, or getting on a bus? So who is ultimately responsible for the pedestrians death? I am. Everything that happened resulted from choices only I made. Does it really make sense to apply collective responsibility here? I don't think so. To answer Laozi's point; suppose a company like Ruger makes a lot of say 100 handguns to fulfill an order from a gun store. The serial numbers of all of them are recorded along with the invoice number of the transaction and the gun store they are sold to. Once they are delivered they are now the legal property of the store that bought them. Suppose they sell one of them to me. They record the transaction and register their invoice and serial number with the state. Ruger hears nothing about this and why would they? It's not their property any more. Suppose after a few years I sell the gun to someone else. I keep a receipt for my records but I don't tell the state because its a private transaction and I don't tell the gun store or Ruger because why would I? It's not their property. Now suppose the gun is stolen from the new owner and is then used by the thief to rob and kill someone else. Who is to blame here? Ruger? The gun store? Me? The guy who had the gun stolen from him? How about the only one in this chain who actually did something wrong, the P.O.S. who stole a gun and used it to kill someone. Applying criminal penalties to parties who did no wrong is totally unjust. Moreover, seeking to spread the blame away from the people who deserve 100% of it is more than a little dumb. It is tantamount to saying you are not really responsible for you actions if you used a gun to murder someone. Logic does not support it.

Wireless/Celluar is going to see a massive change in the next 5 years. We just have UMTS working in most places now and we are already planning on rolling out LTE in 2009. That will be as big a change over UMTS as GSM was over IS-136 or as you guys call it "digital". We are already hitting wireless speeds of 1 Mbs everywhere now and sometimes as high as 3.6 Mbps. LTE will allow us to pool channels so we'll see channels that are 15 MHz wide with HSDPA so data rates will be around 60 Mbps plus with full implementation of VoIP it will be the end of surface circuit switching. Coupled with direct to cell fiber optic access we will see the beginning of the end of wire line telephony.

I fired the M-16 in the Marines... a lot. A whole heck of a lot. I was the Platoon M-60 gunner in MCT (infantry school that comes after boot camp). I also qualified with the Beretta 9mm, and got time on the M-2 .50, the M249 SAW, fired a dummy rocket from an AT4, and like every Marine who has ever done guard duty, the 12 GA shotgun. I own a Ruger P90 .45, a Winchester .300, and a 20 GA shotgun. I take the rifle to the range frequently, the .45 not so much. The shotgun is strictly for home defense and it has not been fired in years. But it is ready to go if the need ever arises. I hope it is never fired again.

I spent most of the last two weeks in Tennessee working. There is so much to learn for the new job. Closing on the new place is Friday and construction starts the following week if all goes well. The deal on my place in WPB fell apart so it's back on the market. The dogs were really happy to see me when I got home.

Right, thus creating the idea in American's heads guns = freedom. Without a gun how are you to keep the King of England out of your face? My father in a lifelong member of the NRA and we've talked about how gun company's interest put gun ownership right in danger, while at the same time controlling the debate in Congress. My father, like most members of the NRA, supports some time restrictions on "assault weapons" and things of that nature, but are fearful of giving up any type of freedom because such a thing would set a precedence to take greater freedom away. I don't like the idea of punishing a company for the bad acts of individuals who happen to end up with their products. If I were to rob a bank and in the process shoot a guard with a Ruger pistol, fining Sturm-Ruger would make as much sense as fining Chevrolet if I used one of their cars as a get away, or Nike if I was wearing their shoes as I ran out. I do think you hit on something big in ths post though, and Enoch alluded to it earlier. Now that the spectre of total bans and confiscation of firearms (always the stated goal of the gun-control fanatics) has been removed I think you will see less opposition to reasonable restrictions such as banning hi-cap magazines, waiting periods, and assault weapon bans.

I signed the contract with the builder for my new place yesterday. I'm meeting the well company tomorrow. Today I got an offer for my West Palm Beach house. It's $17k below the asking price but I'm sort of inclined to take it if they can do it. I've gotta convince my ex though, she gets half of whatever it's sold for.

Sort of like Miami Beach!

Yes, in fact I am still working on my election handicap for Liberty Post (I missed the June 1 publication because I have..you know.. a job, a life) but it will be done for the July one. I'll have it up here for free before that. I go state by state and predict who will win and analyze why. I also predict who the running mates will be, why, and what effect they will have on the election. The joke on Obama and McCain is no matter who wins we will have a democrat in the White House.

Man goes bloody nuts on his co-workers. http://view.break.com/513310