Chicago politics in action..

Ald. Arenda Troutman, under indictment for bribery (shock) and defeated in her district reportedly completely stripped her former office of not only her personal belongings, but the office furniture, computers, and all paperwork.

"Residents, businessmen would come into our office and indicate that they had submitted paperwork for something -- building permits, letters of support, block clubs, any and everything. They were expecting some action on it and the action was not there. There was nothing there for us [to act on]. We had to start the process all over again."

What a class act. I'm sure she's close pals with Mayor Daley.

Think how bad it could of been had he had a gun..

A young man was charged Friday with strangling his half-sisters, ages 6 and 10, and attacking his mother in a rampage at the family home.

Marqueese Lee, 20, was charged with two counts or murder and one count of aggravated assault, said Bernie Weisenfeld, a spokesman for the Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office.

Authorities went to the home Thursday evening when a neighbor reported the girls' mother, Lucille Bevans, had been struck in the head with a hammer. She escaped with her 1-year-old nephew but said the girls were still inside.

One of the neighbors noted:

Lee had dropped out of high school but seemed to have many friends.

Of course he did. I'm betting most of them had special tattoos and hand-signals as well

Official Militia Membership still not good enough for "Collective Rights"

From Armsandthelaw:

Just showing that those who follow such nonsense will go to any lengths even when people follow that interpretation.

Apparently I haven't been keeping up.

Alex seems to have disappeared. Maybe he traveled to Michigan.

Robyn hasn't posted in nearly two months.

"Where did the guns come from?" should be renamed "Where did the comments go?"

Jade is conducting "Reasoned Discourse" by deleting comments as well.

Well, we still have Paul and Josh on Huffington and Bryan Miller.

JadeGold, the Censoring Troll

Before:



And After:



I guess Kevin must have deleted them.

ABC gets it: it's the criminals, not the guns

Finally recognizing that it's not urban white males shooting up their neighborhoods, Englewood and other Chicago residents start looking at the gang-bangers and their lack of mores:

The monthly rallies were of no help to Betty Johnson. On Monday, neighborhood hoodlums, reportedly upset because they could not find a weapon they secretly stashed on her property, fired six .45 caliber bullets into Johnson's house.

"They shot my back bedroom up. My second grandson's room up and they shot my bedroom up. And then they shot this one up," Johnson said.

Her 21-year-old grandson, Steven Lyons, a City College student, was killed in his bedroom.

"They killed my child who was sitting there doing his homework and getting prepared for the next day, to continue to do the right thing," said Sabrina Friends-Lyons, victim's mother.

And the rallies have not paid off in the Back of the Yards neighborhood where a pregnant mother of three children was shot to death Halloween night. Mayor Daley scolded residents for not helping police find the woman's killer.

"You know who did it The police can't find it. It is up to the community," said the mayor.

But police concede many residents are afraid of their own children. And they say parents who need the message spread at anti-violence rallies are not hearing it.

"Unless the parents present it to their children, then I don't think it's going to help. The family. It has to start in the family and the household," said Commander Joe Patterson, Chicago Police Department Englewood District...

People literally are begging the gang members and gun criminals for a ceasefire, but they just keep firing away.

There you go folks, it has nothing to do with people wanting to own firearms for sport, defense, or hunting. It has to do with sociopathic criminals who desire them to commit more violence, not guns making them more violent. They don't care about anyone else but themselves. Not their friends. Not their neighbors. Not their own families. All they care about is their 'cred, their bling, and their ho's and how to get more of it. For the victims and other residents, it comes down to who they are more afraid of, the gang-bangers or the CPD.

BC spinning like a washing machine

They and Gonzo are bragging about how well their endorsed candidates did in Virginia, claiming that the "gun lobby" is losing left and right. Of course the reality is a little different. On the running races, the NRA endorsed candidates won in 23 out of 27 in the Senate and 57 out of 62 in the house if my math is correct. Seems the numbers are a little closer than the PuSH'ers would have you believe. But of course honesty is not one of their strong suits. Notice that they claim that the Democrats are the party of gun control?

Scott Bach has blogged on similar results in NJ.

Update: PN NJ over on SIH notes that the NRA endorsed Stephen Sweeney (D) was elected Senate Majority Leader. So much for the Brady hopes on that one.

So Gonzo, where's your post on that one? Oh, right, nevermind. Your overseers won't let you publish that. Isn't it nice to be a puppet?

VPC regurgitating "goodfacts" on their homepage

Since they're so short of funding , "Armed and Safe" points out that they've not only been relegated to doing Google searches for their "studies" but are now showing some true community values by recycling their old ones in the hopes that repeating themselves makes the nonsense more palatable to those that actually use facts to back themselves up. That of course doesn't include the media, however.

I'm sure this was put back up to give CNN, WaPo, and CBS a little easier time in producing more yellow journalism.

Hah!

And what's JadeTroll's?

Thanks to TOS and Breda

More half-truths from Paul

He's on a roll. So of course he has to mention Feldman w/ the usual ad hominems and little white lies. To bad the truth has already come out on him and his antics resulting in his dismissal.

Here's my response on Huffington. Let's see if it actually gets posted.

Talk about ad hominems. The NRA didn't do anything about the Zumbo affair for nearly a week. Feldman was a paid lobbyist who wasn't doing his job and got canned for it.

Not considering the BC to be one of the groups "strengthened by the NRA" would be a good thing as the BC is at it's weakest position for years.

The NRA isn't interested in "common ground" because the BC supports numerous gun bans and restrictions, including non-grandfathered laws (ie confiscation). None of which make our communities safer.

Love from Gonzo..

45superman gave me the heads up. Apparently Gonzo's several weeks behind the times as he just linked to my Oct 21 piece on how the Roanoke Times is not accepting ads for gun shows due to the VT shootings even though it had nothing to do w/ gun shows.

Sorry Gonzo, you're just upset that DD got tromped even w/ all the endorsements by your associates and you need to try and make yourself feel better. Thanks for the (albeit little) traffic BTW.

Here's a question for you. If you weren't paid by the Joyce Foundation, would you still run your site?

As an aside, I've gotten more hits from the link from Dustin's Gun Blog, another local one run on a free site by an unpaid advocate ( just like mine) than from the one funded and operated by paid lobbyists. Pretty sad.

Wait for the calls for more gun control..

In Finland where there's registration et al as they experience their first school shooting. It won't matter if the shooter had an illegal gun, was an illegal immigrant, criminal, psychotic, or anything else. It will all be blamed on the gun and legal gun owners.

Just wait.

Update:
CNN has a story that the shooter was a Neo-Nazi and the police don't know where the gun came from.

He added that the gunman is thought to have had a fascination with dictatorial figures such as Hitler and Stalin. Sipila said that Finland, which has a population of about five million, has around two million firearms, although gun laws are tough. "We do not know where he got it from," he said.

Update2:

Finnish news is reporting the gunman died of his self-inflicted wounds.

Yesterday's Elections

To JadeTroll, Bryan Miller, Paul Helmke, Sarah Brady, and Bloomburg:

So much for your claims of gun control being popular.

Edit:

Yes Brady's, we know you're checking our sites.

CNN shows no investigative skills again.

except to dig through their files for a Brady news release. Already trashed by Uncle, SIH, Ahab, and I'm sure others, this goes to the point that CNN is either showing a complete lack of integrity, only throwing out sensationalist stories to try and keep up their ratings, or a level of incompetence matched only by government agencies.

So which is it CNN? Are you dishonest or stupid?

Only enough blood to use one at a time..

The curse on men from the beginning.

New scam uses disrobing blonde to trick unsuspecting Internet users

SAN JOSE, Calif. - In a new online striptease, the buxom, beautiful blonde who promises to remove her slinky scraps of lingerie doesn't want your money. She's interested in your brain. Really.
The creation of online scammers, she's trying to trick unsuspecting Internet users into helping the scammers break the online barriers that banks and e-mail services set up to thwart crooks.The striptease is the latest attempt to defeat so-called CAPTCHA systems, which is short for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. Those safeguards require users to prove they are human by reading wavy, oddly shaped jumbles of letters and numbers that appear in an image and typing them out.

In the new scam, an icon of an alluring woman suddenly appears on a Windows computer infected by a virus. After clicking on the icon, the user sees a photo of an attractive woman who vows to take off an article of clothing each time the jumble of figures next to her is entered.

But the woman never fully undresses, and after several passwords are entered the program restarts, possibly enticing unsuspecting users into trying again.

"Don't Taze me Sonny"

Not quite as catchy but Granma was obviously a threat to this "Only One":

Chicago Police Taser 82-Year-Old Woman

Chicago's Police Department is investigating an officer's use of a Taser on an 82-year-old woman who police say was swinging a hammer when they arrived.

Lillian Fletcher was rushed to the hospital after being jolted by the Taser last week, but has since been released, police said Tuesday.

Workers with the city's Department on Aging were making what is called a "well being check" at Fletcher's home on the city's southwest side the afternoon of Oct. 29, police spokeswoman Monique Bond said.

Paul craps himself over WaPo claims on Mexico

To bad the article is just pure PSH that has already been thoroughly fisked by Uncle et al.

Now which side uses fear to promote their agenda again?

Update: In pure "Reasoned Discourse" fashion, three of my comments have failed to appear.

UK schoolchildren now being lowjacked

All for "safety of the children" of course:

RFID Chips in School Uniforms Track Students

Ten students in a secondary school in the United Kingdom are being tracked through RFID implants in their school uniforms in a pilot program. Information Week reports that the kids attend Hungerhill School for ages 11-16 in Edenthorpe, England.

Add the RFID chips to increased video surveillance and fingerprinting of kids, and this is a heavily tracked generation—for safety's sake.

That extra peace of mind for adults comes with a heavy loss of privacy for kids. Do you agree with David Clouter, a parent and founder of the children's advocacy group Leave Them Kids Alone, who says taking all these precautions has the effect of treating kids like criminals? Or do you agree with the parents who have OKed the pilot program who do not find it egregiously intrusive?

One possible side effect: Uniform sales may pick up as kids try to procure extra non-RFID-tagged clothing. As security expert Bruce Schneier writes on his blog: "So now it's easy to cut class; just ask someone to carry your shirt around the building while you're elsewhere."

This news release brought to you by Minitrue.

Students use deadly weapons to learn..

Now this would have kept me more interested in school:

It isn’t often that a tailgating crowd comes out to see a science project.

However, nothing about the project taken on recently by Arthur, Arcola and Villa Grove high schools is ordinary.

The high school students all spent weeks working overtime toward the same goal: to produce a trebuchet capable of catapulting a pumpkin across a field at Rockome Gardens in Arcola.

A trebuchet is a weapon used in medieval times to attack European castles. It is similar to a catapult, except the trebuchet uses weights for launching instead of a spring, said Mike Reynolds, Arthur High School construction teacher.

Now according to the PuSH'ers, this will encourage kids to become violent and lead to an increase of drive buy trebucheting's in Central Illinois. We must ban Assault Catapults and close the Mangonel Loophole.

Increased firearm sales

in a "dying industry" according to Uncle. I can agree with Bitter that a portion of it is due to price inflation, especially in the area of ammunition which have reported an increase of 29.2%. I haven't seen a price increase of 44.8% for handguns or 37% in long guns or their accessories if that's included. Even if you go by the standard deviations of previous v. new buyers (80%), that would show an increase in new purchases alone of over 8% and 7% respectively over last quarter.

Dying industry my pale tuchus. I think I'll contact my financial advisor and tell him to switch some of my portfolio to the armaments industry.

Another "Good Boy" or another "Only One"?

You make the call:

Teenager Accuses School Security Guards Of Abuse

CHICAGO -- A 14-year-old boy said Monday security guards at his school roughed him up because he showed up not wearing his uniform. ..

Griffin's mother filed a complaint at the Office of Professional Standards."I think it's abuse," said Tamika Griffin. "I think it's abuse, because it's in a school and it's a student. It's not me -- he's not my son's father, he shouldn't put his hands on him, no matter what he did. I don't care if he said something to him or did something wrong at school. They're supposed to contact me."..

Shaquille Griffin said the security officer was angry because he wasn't wearing the school uniform required for all students. Griffin added that he suffered bruises, abrasions and a swollen jaw."He came up to me and grabbed me and told me I was walking too slow," Shaquille Griffin said. "Then I told him to let me go, and then after that he head-butted me, then he threw me to the ground."A school spokesman said the incident wasn't just a case of Griffin not wearing the school uniform, Stafford reported. School officials said Griffin and three other boys showed up wearing gang colors, showing gang signs and yelling gang slogans. Just before the tape rolled, a source told the Sun-Times the boys were accused of provoking the confrontation by becoming enraged and tackling an officer.Griffin and his mother denied the allegations."I'm positive he's not," Tamika Griffin said. "I know my kids -- I raise them."

Gun owners should be licensed but none required for breeding

Why are there so few calls for that when child abuse is rampant? Especially in light of this story:

Houston Mother Arrested for Mutilating Her Baby Son

When Katherine "Katie" Nadal took her 5-week old son to the hospital on March 13, 2007, and claimed that the family's Dachshund had attacked her child, the dog was taken into custody by the police and examined by a licensed veterinarian with the City of Houston's Animal Control Department.

Suspicion turned upon Ms. Nadal after the veterinarian examined the dog, "Shorty," and photographs of the baby's grievous injuries. The baby's genitals had been completely severed. The police were advised that no blood or human tissue was on the animal or in its mouth. The doctor concluded that the dog could not have caused the injuries.

The only good news from this:

The puppy that Nadal blamed for the attack has since been released and adopted.

9/11 Memorial & Museum

Over the weekend, my company did a road trip to see the traveling 9/11 memorial exibit. It's purpose is to gather funds for the site to be developed at the location of the World Trade Center. It brought back some sobering memories. I have a slightly different perspective on it than others as I had just lost my father several days before to an industrial accident so was already in a state of numbed shock. Still, it made me feel similar to my visits to the Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor.

While there, we met a woman named Nikki who is a hard-core pro-soldier advocate. She asked us if she could take a photo of us for her Myspace page. Here's the photo:

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That's only about half our people. The rest were out on missions.

Fight and Vote, but not hunt in Ohio

According to some Democrats in Ohio, individuals between the ages of 18 and 20 are old enough to fight and die for their country as well as participate in the electoral process to decide the future of the country but hunting is apparently a more severe and complicated affair requiring supervision of "real" adults over the age of 21.

House Bill 354, sponsored by Rep. Barbara Boyd, D-Cleveland Heights, and Sandra Williams, D-Cleveland, prohibits anyone under 21-years-old from possessing a firearm. Under the bill, if an adult or youth who does not meet the age requirement plans to handle a firearm, he or she must do so in the presence of someone 21 or over. Licensed hunters who now take to the woods solo will have to bring a supervisor if the bill passes.

And of course it's all to "save the children", children being defined by the Brady Bunch.

From the US Sportsman's Alliance