A dragon on the wing

VERY well said.

In Arlington we lay to rest our bravest and our very best...

With all the hoopla over the Blair Holt gun control bill, and gun control in general, I thought I'd share a few of these comments and quotes that a former dojo-mate and student sent to me tonight.

( Cut for those not interested )

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, nineteen hundred and eighteen... precisely ninety years ago.

In honor of those who have sacrificed so much, in that war and all the others before and since, I humbly offer this small haiku, along with the much more polished "In Flanders Fields"

( Haiku )

( In Flanders Fields )

To all of you who went out there, braved the crowds, and cast your ballot -- hopefully after doing some research and making an informed decision -- I thank you. It's none of my business who you voted for, I'm just glad that you did.

Now I just pray that the votes be tallied accurately, and that whatever Powers there might be will guide the populace of this country to select as its next leader the candidate that will be best for us as a nation. I know which one I believe that to be, but my crystal ball still hasn't come back from the shop.

Good luck, and God(s) bless...

... to all of us.

In honor of tonight's Vice Presidential drubbing Debate, I give you...

( The Sarah Palin Drinking Game! )

In which we discover that the depths of stupidity within certain member of my family apparently have no bottom.

( The Stoooopid, it burns! )

Gakked from radarrider:

This extract from the Huffington Post:

The Pardon/commutation power should not be withdrawn completely, but itshould be amended: Pardons and commutations should be overturnable by a2/3 vote of both Houses, just like a veto (imagine how much moreattention the Libby situation would be getting right now if Congresshad the option of voting on it), and absolutely no pardons in the last90 days of a President's terms so he has to get them out BEFORE theNovember election when his Party can pay a price for illegitimate ones.

has some intriguing possibilities. What do you think?

You might not after you read this article about a couple in Decatur, IL who got a visit from two Dept of Revenue agents because of his alternative-fuel car.

Apparently David Wetzel converted his 1986 Volkswagon Golf to run primarily on used vegetable oil, and partly on diesel. The Revenue agents told him he would have to pay a motor fuel tax, and that it would be retroactive.

Quote from the article, attributed to State Rep. Bob Flider:

"The people at the department of revenue apparently feel they need to regulate him in some way. We want to make sure that he is as free as he can be to use vegetable oil. He's an example of ingenuity. Instead of being whacked on the head, he should be encouraged."

Not only do I agree with Mr. Flider, I think the Dept of Revenue needs to be whacked on the head!

According to this article, our esteemed Attorney General of these United States is both ignorant of the US Constitution and incapable of following basic logic.
( Cut for those who don't feel like reading a political rant )

Looks like the shenanigans with the voting machines are starting already, according to this article.

To be a Republican:

( You need to believe... )

The widow of a soldier killed in Afghanistan won state approval Wednesday to place a Wiccan religious symbol on his memorial plaque, something the US Dept of Veterans Affairs had refused.

Full article here.

According to this article from CNN, a federal judge has ruled that "the U.S. government's domestic eavesdropping program is unconstitutional and ordered it ended immediately."

I wonder how long it will take before she's denounced as an "activist judge"? (probably before I can even finish typing this, unfortunately)

Clearly some people can't be bothere to look at how the laws are written, such as these people in Bergen County, NJ. A librarian there is now under threat of disciplinary action for following the NJ state statutes governing access of private information. The police wanted some information, she said she'd provide it as soon as they showed her the proper legal documentation, and now she's being accused of "deliberately stonewalling a police investigation."

Sheesh!

and no, that's not a typo.

I love it when people continue to try to tell me I'm wrong, even when I offer them facts and they have nothing to back up their position.

I just had a long debate with one of my cow-orkers about whether or not International Law was considered part of US Law. I pointed out that the US Supreme Court had repeatedly ruled that International Law was a component of US Domestic Law. He denied that this had ever occured, even when I offered to show him copies of the rulings from those cases.

I only had the information from one of those cases from my International Law course last summer, which I sent to him. I'll be very curious to see what response I get, if any.

Oh, well... just further proof that there's no shortage of idiots in the world.

New evidence indicates that Carl Rove was the one who leaked CIA operative Valeria Plame. At the time of the incident, the Bush administration said that if anyone in the administration was involved in leaking the information, that they would no longer be a part of the administration. Now they seem to be strangely mute on the subject, according to yahoo news

Warning: Political Stuff Ahead

First, let me start by saying that I am NOT one of these people who sees conspiracies in every anomaly. And before you dismiss me as a "yellow dog Democrat," I have never been affiliated with any political party. I evaluate each candidate at each election, regardless of his/her party affiliations. As a result, I have voted for Repulican, Democratic, and independent candidates, in accordance with my assessment of each one.

But I keep finding things that just don't add up for this election.

And this just makes my skin crawl.

I make no secret of the fact that I don't like Bush, and never have. I was less than thrilled with the reported outcome of this election. However, part of the implied contract of living in a democracy is that you accept and abide by the majority rule, even when you're not in the majority, and I was willing to "lick my wounds" and go on, and hope for (and work towards) more palatable results the next time around.

But the more I think about it, the less comfortable I am with the information that's been surfacing.

The exit polls predicted a landslide Democratic victory. Yay, Democrats.

The actually tallied votes resulted in a slim-but-significant victory for the Republicans. Yay, Republicans.

Since then, pollsters and statisticians have been scrambling like mad to explain how the polls could have been off by such a huge margin. There have been a vast array of theories, none of them very satisfying.

Based on what I've seen/heard, I can see five possibilities to explain the discrepancy between the polls (Kerry winning by a landslide) and the results (Bush winning by a narrow but definite margin).

1. There was a vast conspiracy among voters across the polled districts to deliberately mislead the pollsters. Probability of this happening without it becoming public knowledge a long time ago: Microscopic.


2. The polls themselves were conducted -- either deliberately or through incompetence among the pollsters -- in such a way as that the results gained were invalid. Definitely possible, although again it would either require someone deliberately composing the surveys in such a way as to render false results without being noticed, or coordination among the majority of the pollsters, again with no one letting it slip. Probability: Very low, either way.


3. The vote-recording machines at the various polling places were tampered with. While this is a non-zero probability, the sheer number of machines that would have to be hacked renders it unfeasible from a practical standpoint. Probability: Microscopic.


4. The laws of statistics have somehow been suspended, bent, or broken in this instance. I'm actually taking a Stats class this semester, and one of the things that we have shown repeatedly is that the higher the number of samples you take, and the greater the size of each sample, the closer you come to the true parameter of the overall population. IF the polls were conducted properly (sufficient # of samples, and sufficient size per sample) then it should be statistically impossible for the results to have been off by such a huge margin. Probability: approaches 0.


5. The tallying process was somehow hacked further "up the line" -- i.e. at a more central tallying-point than at the individual polling places. That seems to be the position put forth here. It took ~90 seconds, and that was with the person taking the time to explain what they were doing as they went along. Unfortunately, this one has the highest probability, although not one that I am qualified to compute.

I think one of the biggest warning flags for me is that in areas where the optical scanning machines were NOT used, the results were pretty much exactly as predicted. The only districts that showed significant deviation from the norm were those districts where the machines were in use, and where there is no paper-trail to double-check the results. So far, I have not heard a single theory to explain how that could be the case and still have everything be legitimate. Why would so many voters go against both the predictions and the exit polls only in those districts?

What scares me spitless is that this could very well destroy public confidence in the electoral process as a whole. One thing that we've always been able to count on in this country is the knowledge that if we don't like someone in office, we can always vote them out the next time around -- 6 years at most. If people start getting the idea that they no longer have that safety valve, I *really* don't like the thought of what might happen as a result.

I sincerely hope that these allegations will be investigated and correctly proven groundless, and proven to the satisfaction of the general populace. If they are not groundless, then IMO there is not a circle of Hell into which the perpetrator(s) can be cast that would match the depths of their crime.

Sorry for the rant, I'll get off my soapbox now.

I saw this question in Rhi's LJ, and it made me think... and I think I'm going to piss off a lot of people. ::G::

"If you could go back and take 'the right to bear arms' out of the American Constitution back when it was written, would you?"

No.

I realize that improper use of firearms has caused problems. However, I think that the gentlemen who wrote the Bill of Rights had *very* good reasons for putting that one in. Among other things, according to various papers published at the time, they intended it as a last-resort means of the people to protect themselves from the government, should said government ever become too intolerable to them.

I realize that improper use of firearms has caused a considerable amount of trouble. I do not attempt to dispute this in any way. However, I will point out that this has been the *improper* use. I'm sure there *are* instances where a firearm being used properly has caused wrongful injury/death, but off hand I can't think of a single one that I've heard of up to now.

Unfortunately, I no longer recall the names of the two towns, but I remember coming across a study several years ago which looked at two towns, approximately 3 miles apart. Same size towns, same region -- except Town A has a statute requiring that each household have at least one working firearm. The difference in the crime levels between the cities is significant -- Town B's crime levels are several times higher than those of Town A.

Rather than removing the 2nd Amendment, or trying to remove all the guns from the hands of the criminals (like *that's* going to work!), I'd be more inclined to require every able-bodied adult, male *and* female, to do at least one 2-year term of military service, during the course of which they would (of course) be taught proper use and care of personal weaponry. If they are honorably discharged, they are entitled (not sure about *required*, I'll have to think more on that one) to keep a firearm in their home or on their person. If they are dishonorably discharged, it becomes illegal for them to own or carry a firearm.

Would it solve all the problems? No. It wouldn't get guns out of the hands of criminals, nor would it prevent some idiot from turning his brains to mush via his favorite chemical substance and doing something stupid.

On the other hand, how often do you think you would see someone walk into a bank and pull out a gun to rob the place, if he knew every other person in the bank was going to pull out their own weapons and point them at him?

(Yes, this really happened. Some genius pulled a gun in a Federal Savings & Loan in DC, just around the corner from the FBI office, at noon on payday. The place was full of agents. He apparently pulled his gun and announded that this was a stickup, and the rest of them drew theirs and informed him that no, as a matter of fact, it wasn't!)

As much as I hate to say it, to a certain extent I do have to agree with the old adage about an armed society being a polite society.

I would say this has been my .02 worth, but I think I passed that mark quite some time ago. ::G::