Recently in Crime Category

The WP Dad forwarded this to me, an e-mail he wrote to the pastor of our local church. To say my father and the pastor do not see eye to eye politically would not be an untruth by any means. However it is illustrative of the chasm that can exist between friends, at least when it comes to politics.

I cannot say with any certainty how much history the pastor has studied, remembers, or understands. But it appears to me that he does have blind spots when it comes to the actions of those who do not hold freedom dear and would prefer to run things, even if it means killing millions in order to enforce their will.

This e-mail has not been changed other than some formatting and corrections made to some typos.

I apologize for labeling Pres Obama as a Fascist. I should have done that only after presenting arguments that satisfy me that he deserves the label. I have listed below a variety of reasons I have for believing he is a socialist and will become a Fascist.

1. The President's major political asset is his charisma. Polls show that more often than not voters disapprove of his policies, yet he has a high personal approval rating. His accomplishments are meager other than getting elected. Even there his foray into local Chicago politics succeeded because his opponents for the nomination were mistakenly omitted from the ballot.

2. His cabinet appointments have been disappointing. I think that Eric Holder's major accomplishment has been to shield the President. Prior to his appointment his only noted achievement was to obtain a pardon for a major donor who had fled the country after conviction. He slipped the pardon into the list of Pres. Clinton's last day pardons as if it had been vetted and approved in the normal manner by the justice department. His appointee to the Energy Department, as late as two weeks ago was that it was necessary to drive up fossil fuel costs to make green energy more attractive.

3. Assistant Cabinet members require approval from the Senate. Rather than follow the Constitutional requirement, The Pres. appointed numerous Czars who became de facto Assistants without approval. We got ideologues who were avowed communists or revolutionaries.

4. Under Pres. Obama's stewardship, the nation is being reshaped into a secular society. There has been an increasing effort to drive religion from our society. Witness eliminating prayer from our schools, removal of any religious overtones (like the Ten Commandments) from public buildings. Morality is officially suspect, to be replaced by legality and regulation. Each year we add multiple thousands of pages of regulations to control behavior and Congress feels they have accomplished nothing if they haven't passed batches of laws. Is all of this to replace what was once accepted as morals and ethics.

It is documented that those that call themselves liberals do far less charitable work and give far less to charity. I suppose if Government is responsible for the welfare of every individual, then I have met my obligation to my fellow man if I simply pay my taxes That looks to me as an inducement to accept socialism. Socialism always fails because as Margret Thatcher said, "Eventually you run out of other people's money." When Socialism fails the most common result is despotism.

5. Charismatic leaders tend to have cadres of militant supporters. Cuba and Venezuela, Castro and Chavez have co-opted their armies. Mussolini, Hitler and Lenin/Stalin had Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, and Red Shirts. Pres. Obama has Purple Shirted goons. How else would you identify the mobs of union members who descended on Wisconsin in an attempt to over throw the duly elected Governor. They claim that the Tea Party is violent and racist. Not as violent as the Purple Shirts.

6. Pres. Obama and his administration have diligently worked to expand their natural base. We are reaching a point where too great a portion of the voting populace either work for or are married to someone working for a government. Their unions negotiate for improved pay and perks. On the other side of the bargaining table are the unborn generations who will have to pay the wages and perks "someday".

Another huge constituency are the poor. If we are in danger of running out of poor people we simply change the threshold. Of course we have always had a very mobile society. Thomas Sowell had a very revealing essay about mobility. Many of those who are poor were wealthy less than a decade ago. Many recent graduates from high schools and universities are poor until they get work and earn promotions. Many of the wealthy are recipients of one time windfalls and they won't be wealthy ten years from now.

Once you start subsidizing poverty you get more poverty. Much of what we give the poor is not counted as income - food stamps, rent subsidies, unemployment is counted. I've often wondered how many of those who collected unemployment for the full ninety-nine weeks had a working spouse and the unemployment benefit amounts to wages for staying home and being a house husband/wife.

7. The stimulus package was going to 'kick start' projects that were 'shovel ready', but a very large portion of the money went to state and local governments to cover their shortfalls. Instead of shrinking payrolls, these government employees were shielded while productive workers in private employment were laid off or downsized. In particular the stimulus money went to Unions, specifically the teacher's and autoworkers unions. In the case of both Chrysler and GM the bond holders who were legally entitled to protection got cents on the dollar and were not allowed to reorganize the companies. I don't understand why there weren't lawsuits. By the way, it is my contention that the UAW created the Asian and European invasion of our market. Every increase in productivity went to overpaid employees and never to the consumer. Eventually prices for domestic cars were so high that they created a spacious umbrella for competitors to emerge.

There was a time when our technology improvements helped us to protect our markets. The unions couldn't organize the Asian companies, but technology is easily exported. It was thought that the Asian workers were not capable of utilizing our technology, but in reality the 'worker bees' were better educated and better motivated than our domestic scholars.

8. The President has been decrying the Do Nothing Congress, but it is the Democrat controlled Senate that is doing nothing. Pres. Obama is complaining that the days of cooperation and compromise have gone away. In those good old days there was a fair consensus about where the country should go and the compromise was about the best way to get there. Today, there are two opposing ideas about where to go. One side says a democratic capitalist society has served us well and the opposing side says the wave of the future is European style socialism. Compromise is seen by both sides as surrender. Progress will hinge on the will of the people. Even if Pres. Obama is reelected, I'm betting that the Tea party will control both houses.

9. Education has been in decline for decades. The only country that spends more per pupil is Switzerland, but the U.S. has continually slipped in the hard sciences. I believe the Universities have become the home of Lenin's 'useful fools' Government subsidized Universities and tuition increases matched the subsidies. Government began to guarantee student loans and in response to fairness dicta Universities began admitting unqualified student and the dumbing down curricula. Lots of students took gut courses and many flunked out. When these ungraduated student began reneging on the loans, government made student loans ineligible for bankruptcy. One drag on the housing industry has been the large numbers of graduates who owe so much that they are not able to get mortgages. They move in with Mom and Dad, don't get married but they do have children. The government subsidizes unwed mothers.

We castigate greedy Wall Street, but Wall Street can't hold a candle to institutes of higher learning. Too many classes are taught by itinerant instructors that move from campus to campus teaching for meager wages without benefits, while professors retire handsomely. There was a recent article by a retired Sociology professor that recounted his perceptions. There are excessive classrooms and laboratories because neither students nor professors want to start work before 9:00 or work after 3:00, The facilities are less than 50% utilized. Administration used to account for about 20% of payroll and today it is closer to 50%. Part of the reason for this is the excessive regulations impose by government.

Colleges aren't the only culprits. Public schools are also overloaded with administrators. My speculation is that teachers who fail in the class room can't be fired, so to protect the students the under-performing teacher become part of the administration.

In the meantime 'shop' has virtually disappeared from high schools. We now have VoTech. Let me tell you of a recent family experience. One of my grandsons had perception problem that made book learning very difficult, but he was good with mechanical tasks, particularly small engines. He was denied access to a Vocational school because the classes he wanted were over-subscribed by college bound kids that wanted easy courses to improve their GPA. Naturally we now have a shortage of skilled mechanics, carpenters, electricians and plumbers. My son has a neighbor that drives his high school kids around Concord and points out the best houses. He tells them that is where my plumber lives...

Goodness gracious. That certainly enough and I really want to go to bed. I have to add, I am slightly optimistic about the future. Life is going to be difficult for a while but the nation will survive even if Obama is reelected.

Indeed.

You should have fled to Peru, your mother's home country, when you had the chance, George.

The cops who investigated the shooting death of Trayvon Martin didn't even conclude the evidence warranted manslaughter. Witnesses corroborated your testimony. The district attorney general's office believed it could not meet the burden of proof.

Now you're being charged by a politically minded special prosecutor interloper with second degree murder. Second. Degree. Murder.

It's here, for anyone interested. I did it on the fly while visiting a local library during my lunch break last Wednesday, and I wasn't entirely sure how it turned out. As my wife warns me, it's dangerous to do things on the fly.

It's a good thing she doesn't know how much I do that way.

But the evidence is conclusive of the utter corruption of the corrupt media in reporting this incident. Some things are so obvious it's difficult to notice. And I don't know how Zimmerman would be able to receive a fair trial if it came to that.

He writes in a superb FoxNews piece that he has done the only study of the Castle Docrtine's effectiveness:

I have conducted the only published, refereed academic study on these laws, and I found that states adopting "Castle doctrine" laws reduced murder rates by 9 percent and overall violent crime by 8 percent.

I'm getting tired of the whiny police chiefs of NH joining with Gov. John Lynch, in thwarting the rising tide of gun freedom. Richard Crate, the chief of Enfield, is particularly odious, as he pushed in 2007 to vastly reduce NH's liberty in making the state "may-issue" rather than a "shall-issue" for concealed carry. He was on NHPR's The Exchange again recently discussing Stand Your Ground. (And the chief came from Vermont which is a "no-issue" state. Anyone can carry concealed there, baring a felony conviction.)

We live in a world where newspaper circulations are tepid at best. They occasionally spread lies that can easily be fact-checked thanks to the internet.

I can understand the liberal sentiment in the Concord Monitor editorial--which uses the well-publicized Trayvon Martin shooting to advance an ancillary point: tilting against the Castle Doctrine--but it persists in getting its facts wrong.

The castle doctrine is the common sense notion that an individual doesn't have a duty to make a reasonable effort to retreat when facing deadly force in an area where he has a legal right to be without first himself responding with deadly force. Over half U.S. states have it. It puts the burden of proof where it belongs, on the bad guy.

But in its deceitful description of the Florida shooting the Monitor shows its liberal colors. Describing the encounter where the evidence points to (an apparently politically liberal) Zimmerman being attacked, knocked to the pavement by an unexpected blow, with the 6'-6' 2" perpetrator on top of a 5' 8-9" Zimmerman and slamming his head against the concrete, with Zimmerman screaming, "Help!" as...WAIT FOR IT..."a wrestling-match scuffle," third paragraph, is simply deceptive journalism.

I know what a wrestling-match encounter is, having wrestled competitively from junior high in Okemos, Michigan, through to intramurals at West Point, where I was pinned in a match by a former NJ state champion, the memory of which still galls.

But what would the liberal rag call an assault? Something like happened to the black knight in Monty Python?

There has been complete media saturation of Gabrielle Giffords and the mass shooting by a deranged individual that the Slime Lib Media tried its best to turn into a political vendetta against talk radio. Also of the Trayvon Martin "No Limit Nigga" in which a white guy shot down an innocent youth in cold blood for no reason at all.

The responding cop on the scene, however, has provided corroboration of Jorge Martin's allegation--exactly what was in the police report that was released a week ago. Hello, anyone home ABC News, et al?

But the story that has been buried like the burning man in Keene is Omar Thornton who, again, killed eight innocents in Aug. 2010 after video had conclusively shown him stealing beer from the distributor he worked for in Manchester, Connecticut. Google News has just one hit on the fairly recent story.

Do your homework, boy and girls. And in response to Gabby Giffords all sorts of precautions have been put in place for the pols meeting the hayseeds. Remember going to see the dreadful Carol Shea-Porter inside a federal building in which everyone had to first proceed through the metal detector? But the Teamster warehouse--exactly like the one I work for in Laconia--was and is a gun-free zone. An employee will be terminated for bringing a firearm onto the company parking lot, even if it were locked away in a lock box inside a locked car.

The inalienable right to self-protection the Teamsters don't recognize.

Any policy changes since Omar Thornton? Who's he?

According to Pat Buchanan's latest book, using FBI crime statistics, blacks are much more likely to commit crimes against whites than vice versa. His latest column references Heather MacDonald's piece that I have repeated done that 98 percent of all gun assaults in NYC are done by blacks or hispanics. (Liberals are up in arms  that 67 percent of all stop and frisks are done on the same groups.)

Here's an example of a terrible black-on-white crime that, if the races had been reversed, would have been national news.

A man in North Carolina leaves an Applebee's late at night when he is accosted by a group of blacks who call him a "tree honkey." Funny, that.

When he asked for a clarification, he was brutally attacked. Here, see for yourself. Isn't it reasonable to ask why some interracial stories become national stories and some don't?

Let me be as frank as I think I need to be: It's open season on whitey. If the usual script isn't followed, and a white is described as attacking or killing a black, then Matt  Lauer will be all over it.

It's one of the reasons I don't get my news from the TV. It's astonishing what doesn't get national play. And I'm supposed to sit back and pretend it's not happening? Because most people have been conditioned by liberal TV and liberal schooling and liberal Hollywood?

I don't think so. Some of us are still individualists, not amenable to be liberal.  I've lived in some of these hellholes where the racism of blacks against whites was a jaw-dropping phenomena.

Here's an example from the family lore.

The cultural significance of the media's despicable coverage, saturated with the racial politics of the Left, cannot be overstated.

I congratulate blogger OneSTDV for laying it out in its unvarnished ugliness.

The question that needs to be asked is this: How can this anti-white liberalism be combated? The escalation of the deceit--notice the games the media has played with the photos--means that Yankee shyness of sensitive, even troubling racial topics can no longer be avoided.

The war, if there is one, can be more accurately described in ways diametrically opposite what the Shallow Stream Media would have you believe.

As a side note, the crime rate of the 260-unit complex is certainly noteworthy. Taking a stand against thuggery is as American as baseball.

The next thug may think twice about his deviant behavior if more virile and vigorous men acted like George Zimmerman. EDIT: Assuming of course that the recently reported injuries of George Zimmerman--a broken nose and bruising on the back of his head--consistent with Zimmerman's being vigorously attacked and legitimately fearing for his well-being.

How is Democrats can claim to be the "friends of the working man" when legislation they pass make thousands of good paying jobs disappear? In this case the 16 Democrats in the Wisconsin Senate shot down a bill that would have brought over 3000 mining jobs to their state and given an economic boost to related businesses also located in their state.

How did these supposed "friends of the working man" justify killing this bill?

They did it at the behest of the public employee unions (SEIU, etc) because they wanted to make sure that Governor Scott Walker wouldn't get a 'win' that might make him even more popular with Wisconsin voters. So these corrupt public employee unions urged their bought-and-paid-for Senate puppets to sacrifice jobs their union brethren wanted and needed. The labor unions supported the bill, showing up to rally at the state house rotunda to plead their case. But their supposed public union allies shafted them all in order to 'get' Scott Walker.

With the failure of the bill, a new $1.5 billion (that's "billion" with a "b") iron ore mine operation disappeared as the owners of the company wishing to open the mine decided to take their money and their jobs and go someplace more inviting. Yet somehow the public employee unions see this as yet another win for their cause. These are the same folks whose bought-and-paid-for Democrats in the Wisconsin legislature have created an increasingly hostile business environment. Is it any wonder jobs have been leaving the state? You'd think these fools would learn the lessons of California, Illinois, and New Jersey and do everything they can to promote more business and jobs in their state.

If this isn't a good reason to bust the public employee unions then I don't know what is. This action shows the these unions are nothing more than corrupt influence peddling criminal organizations using taxpayer dollars to to bribe Democrats at all levels of government to ensure they maintain control of the public purse and their ever less sustainable benefits packages, and the taxpayers be damned. Perhaps a few RICO prosecutions might help break their hold on the legislature.

Some times great minds think alike.

In this case Gerard Vanderleun attacks one of the "insidiously deceptive lines of the socialist-liberal agenda" which is "Violence doesn't solve anything." As the story he links to states:

Pacifism is a sickness, an actual moral perversity, and dangerous when its effects spread to anyone else beside the pacifist. You may choose to walk to the cattle car, but damn you if you let your children be led up the ramp. You must never allow any group or government to steal your right to exercise armed lethal force in a just situation.

This is a subject I've covered in the past, showing the old leftist saw to be nothing more than a pipe dream.

Violence does solve things. It has ended brutal dictatorships, saved citizens from the predation of criminals, prevented injustices on a small and large scale, and prevented wars.

Perhaps the old saying needs to be modified. Instead, it should be "Violence never solves anything if it is used at the wrong time in the wrong place." Violence in and of itself solves nothing. It is the proper use of violence under the right circumstances that solves problems.

Indeed.

We've all heard news reports about thieves stealing things like copper pipes and wiring from empty or abandoned buildings. It's not all that surprising considering the price of scrap copper and other metals. (Some thieves have gone so far as to steal bronze plaques from grave yards and buildings.) We've heard about Darwin Award nominees trying to steal electrical cables from power poles (usually frying themselves in the process). But this bunch of thieves have taken it to a higher level by stealing an entire building.

(The thieves] first apparently called the owner of a business next to 18400 Frontage Road along I-55 and told him the structure was being dismantled that day because the property had been sold, the Will County Sheriff's office says.

They then pulled up two semi-trucks to the building -- and tore it down. They removed the steel from the structure and then carted it away in the trucks.

The audacity of this crew! This is a crime that took a lot of planning. It was not a spur of the moment "Gee, that building is mostly metal, let's steal it!" kind of plan. They pulled off this large scale theft in less than a day and got away clean. That means a lot of organization and the use of an experienced crew.

While still a crime, it's success has me admiring the crew that pulled it off.

(H/T Scary Yankee Chick)

Way to go, Mister Hoffa! Let's see about bringing the unions back to their head-bashing, leg-breaking hey-days, shall we?

I guess he didn't get the memo about being more civil during political discourse. But then the unions are on the ropes and not finding much in the way of support from the public these days, so perhaps violent rhetoric is the only tool he and other union leaders have left.

It didn't help that Obama's Labor Day speechifying took place in that bastion of decades long Democrat machine politics and union hegemony, Detroit. As one wag put it, it appears Obama wants to do for the rest of the country what has been done for/to Detroit.

Thanks, but no thanks. I think we'll do much better without that kind of help.

A follow on to yesterday's cartoon rant about the riots in England is this video rant by one of my favorite Brits, Pat Condell. For those of you who have never seen any of his video pieces I must warn you that he does not pull any punches and calls it exactly like he sees it.

I think this cartoon illustrates the thinking of those rioting in the UK all too well.


For more head to Spider and Scorpion.

Last month I mentioned doing battle with a pernicious bit of computer malware that wanted money in order to make it go away, conning the unwary computer owner by offering to clean the list of viruses its 'free' scan showed were infecting the computer. I called it an extortion virus because its creators wanted money in order to make it go away.

Now I hear about yet another extortion virus out there doing something very similar, but this time the malware mimics a progressive hard drive failure and offers to 'fix' it...for a fee.

Gee, isn't owning a computer fun?

The battle between Wisconsin Republican lawmakers (including governor Scott Walker) and the public sector unions continue.

It seems the unions have decided to borrow a page or two out of old-time union playbook by sending letters to small businesses that, in effect, tell them "Support us and our cause...or else." Gee, it didn't take them long to resort to extortion to get their way, did it? While the unions could have claimed there was a misunderstanding, the union executive who sent the letters says he means what he wrote, so there's no possibility they can claim such a misunderstanding. The gist of the letter:

Dated March 28, 2011, the letter is addressed to "DEAR UNION GROVE AREA BUSINESS OWNER/MANAGER," in Racine County. And it begins with this warm greeting: "It is unfortunate that you have chosen 'not' to support public workers rights in Wisconsin. In recent past weeks you have been offered a sign(s) by a public employee(s) who works in one of the state facilities in the Union Grove area. These signs simply said 'This Business Supports Workers Rights,' a simple, subtle and we feel non-controversial statement given the facts at this time."

We doubt "subtle" is the word a business owner would use to describe this offer he is being told he can't refuse.

The missive concludes by noting that, "With that we'd ask that you reconsider taking a sign and stance to support public employees in this community. Failure to do so will leave us no choice but do [sic] a public boycott of your business. And sorry, neutral means 'no' to those who work for the largest employer in the area and are union members."

The threat is implicit: put a sign supporting us in your window or we'll make sure it will negatively affect your business.

How...how...mob like. Vito Corleone would be proud.

Are we sure we want people like this to be working for us? Better yet, do we want them to have this kind of power over us?

Since this 'incident' the union has been back-peddling, removing signs from the businesses that knuckled under to the union extortion. But that doesn't undo the fact that they threatened business owners into 'supporting' them, meaning they've lost any credibility or moral high ground. They proven themselves be nothing more than thugs.

It wouldn't surprise me to find they've opened themselves to prosecution under RICO statutes. But somehow I doubt the US Attorney General will direct federal prosecutors to investigate such matters, considering his track record when it comes to dealing with corruption and coercion.

Blonde likely abducted and killed by a black man. News conference by cold-case team Wednesday. Story here.

They're using sonar equipment this spring at several properties to solve what looks like a hideous, Hollywood-style abduction, rape, and murder. But the story didn't get any kind of play outside of Lansing for reasons I don't want to go into.

I don't want to say that the perp likely being black and the victim an attractive blonde that goes against the "whites are racist" meme and thus gets spiked from expanded news coverage. I don't want to say that, it's not approved by NPR.

This ought to make us feel our privacy is in good hands:

Confidential data found on junked New Jersey Computers.

Taxpayers' Social Security numbers, confidential child abuse reports and personnel reviews of New Jersey workers nearly went to the highest bidder after the state sent surplus computers out for auction.

Nearly 80 percent of surplus computers in a comptroller's office sample had not been scrubbed of data before being shipped to a warehouse, according to an audit released Wednesday.

"At a time when identity theft is all too common, the state must take better precautions so it doesn't end up auctioning off taxpayers' Social Security numbers and health records," Comptroller Matthew Boxer said.

Ya think?

This type of equipment requires careful handing to make sure all the confidential data on the hard drives has been erased or otherwise destroyed. Just hitting the 'Delete' key doesn't do the trick. A program like File Shredder or Shredit should be used to ensure all deleted data is truly gone for good. Or the drives should be destroyed by using a drill press to drill through them (and the internal platters), making sure the data cannot be read.

Someone got sloppy, lazy, or stupid, allowing state-owned computers to go up for sale without making sure the drives had been wiped clean. Identity theft is tough enough to deal with without state government making it easy for the bad guys to get that kind of information.

There's an excellent Cato Institute instructive video about recording the police with cameras, including relevant recent examples of police excess and even brutality.

I believe that in NH police may be audio or video recorded only with their consent--even when they are on duty in a public place. I don't think that's liberal enough.

Cameras are everywhere. They can be used to enforce accountability and promote transparency. Certainly not bad things.

Some folks are just too mean and ornery to be allowed out in public without someone watching them.

A case in point: a nut with a rifle walks onto a man's property in Swanzey, New Hampshire and shoots the man's sleeping dog. Then, when confronted by the dog's owner, makes a claim "It's only a pellet gun," as if that's the only explanation needed. He then runs away. The gun was not a pellet gun as claimed, but a hunting rifle (the shell casings recovered by the police prove that).

The dog was shot in the leg and badly wounded, requiring the vet to amputate the injured leg in order to save the dog's life.

What type of a sick, twisted a**hole does something like that?