Monthly Archives: May 2006

Current events - national, General

Don’t try this at home!

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From CSP Gun Talk, a frequent poster, SoCal M1 Shooter, notes and links to this article.

Don’t Try This at Home
Garage chemistry used to be a rite of passage for geeky kids. But in their search for terrorist cells and meth labs, authorities are making a federal case out of DIY science.
By Steve Silberman

The first startling thing Joy White saw out of her bedroom window was a man running toward her door with an M16. White’s husband, a physicist named Bob Lazar, was already outside, awakened by their barking dogs. Suddenly police officers and men in camouflage swarmed up the path, hoisting a battering ram. “Come out with your hands up immediately, Miss White!� one of them yelled through a megaphone, while another handcuffed the physicist in his underwear. Recalling that June morning in 2003, Lazar says, “If they were expecting to find Osama bin Laden, they brought along enough guys.�

The target of this operation, which involved more than two dozen police officers and federal agents, was not an international terrorist ring but the couple’s home business, United Nuclear Scientific Supplies, a mail-order outfit that serves amateur scientists, students, teachers, and law enforcement professionals. From the outside, company headquarters – at the end of a dirt road high in the Sandia Mountains east of Albuquerque – looks like any other ranch house in New Mexico, with three dogs, a barbecue, and an SUV in the driveway. But not every suburban household boasts its own particle accelerator. A stroll through the backyard reveals what looks like a giant Van de Graaff generator with a pipe spiraling out of it, marked with CAUTION: RADIATION signs. A sticker on the SUV reads POWERED BY HYDROGEN, while another sign by the front gate warns, TRESPASSERS WILL BE USED FOR SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS.

It may come a a small surprise to my current circle of acquaintances, but I was a science geek. It’s true. I was a constant tinkerer, and I was fortuante indeed to have high school chemistry teacher who didn’t discourage my quest for knowledge to use in my extra-curricular activities.

A local laboratory supply company compled with a teen-aged boy’s desire to purchase iodine crystals, 40% ammonia solution, fuming nitric acid and concentrated sulfuric acid. An outdoor sink behind the house was often the scene of some really bizarre experiments in amateur pyrotechnics. I suppose that in view of the above article, a kid would find himself the subject of federal prosecution today. The Mommy State wants future scientists and engineers to fertilize their imaginations with much safer pursuits.

…

The lure of do-it-yourself chemistry has always been the most potent recruiting tool science has to offer. Many kids attracted by the promise of filling the garage with clouds of ammonium sulfide – the proverbial stink bomb – went on to brilliant careers in mathematics, biology, programming, and medicine.

Intel cofounder Gordon Moore set off his first boom in Silicon Valley two decades before pioneering the design of the integrated circuit. One afternoon in 1940, near the spot where Interstate 280 intersects Sand Hill Road today, the future father of the semiconductor industry knelt beside a cache of homemade dynamite and lit the fuse. He was 11 years old.

Moore’s pyrotechnic adventures grew out of his experiments with a neighbor’s chemistry set. He turned a shed beside the family house into a lab, stocking it with chemicals mail-ordered from San Francisco and filling an old dresser with beakers and funnels. Now retired, the 77-year-old Moore looks back on his days and nights in the shed as a time when he learned to think and work like a scientist. “The things I made, like nitroglycerin, took a fair amount of lab technique,� he recalls. “I specialized in explosives because they were fun, and I liked doing things that got results in a hurry.�

Many of Moore’s illustrious peers also first got interested in science by performing experiments at home. After reading a book called The Boy Scientist at age 10, Vint Cerf – who became one of the architects of the Internet – spent months blowing up thermite volcanoes and launching backyard rockets. Growing up in Colorado, David Packard – the late cofounder of Hewlett-Packard – concocted new recipes for gunpowder. The neurologist Oliver Sacks writes about his adolescent love affair with “stinks and bangs� in Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood. “There’s no question that stinks and bangs and crystals and colors are what drew kids – particularly boys – to science,� says Roald Hoffmann of Cornell University, who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1981. “Now the potential for stinks and bangs has been legislated out.�

That’s it. To mix a political metaphor, in order for “No Child Left Behind,” we have to make sure that we put a speed limit on the mental racetrack. We did things as kids that would be prosecutable offenses today. Hell, they were probably prosecutable back then, but every adult wasn’t afraid of boys being boys and science wasn’t something that was supposed to take place only in an official laboratory by “knowledgeable persons” with the “proper safeguards” and of course, the caring eye of a government watchdog agency.

Although my career steered pretty far afield from those teenage forays into the world of energetic chemistry, the fact that Dad and Mom and the world at large allowed me to not only HAVE a curiosity but to EXERCISE that curiosity has made me the technical success that I am today.

Popular Science columnist Theodore Gray, who is one of United Nuclear’s regular customers, uses potassium perchlorate to demonstrate the abundance of energy stored in sugar and fat. He chops up Snickers bars, sprinkles in the snowy crystals, and ignites the mixture, which bursts into a tower of flame – the same rapid exothermic reaction that propels model rockets skyward. “Why is it that I can walk into Wal-Mart and buy boxes of bullets and black powder, but I can’t buy potassium perchlorate to do science because it can also be used to make explosives?� he asks. “How many people are injured each year doing extreme sports or playing high school football? But mention mixing up chemicals in your home lab, and people have a much lower index of acceptable risk.�

The push to restrict access to chemicals by those who have no academic or scientific credentials gained momentum in the mid-’90s following the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. In the years since 9/11, the Defense Department, FBI, and other government agencies have strategized ways of tracking even small purchases of potentially dangerous chemicals. “The fact that there are amateurs and retired professors out there who need access to these chemicals is a valid problem,� acknowledges Rice University chemistry professor James Tour, who consulted with the Pentagon and the Justice Department, “but there aren’t many of those guys weighed against the possible dangers.�

Well, let ME have a comment for Mr. James Tour. You’re forgetting a big POSSIBLE DANGER: The danger that by stifling the curiosity of inquiring minds, you’re killing a future Einstein or Nobel. Yeah, I know that it’s heresy to say so, but there’s still a chance that meaningful research CAN take place by private individuals who don’t have “academis or scientific credentials”. Somewhere out there are thoroughbred minds, and America’s “safety” mentality is hitching them to ploughs.

…

“To criminalize the necessary materials of discovery is one of the worst things you can do in a free society,� says Shawn Carlson, a 1999 MacArthur fellow and founder of the Society for Amateur Scientists. “The Mr. Coffee machine that every Texas legislator has near his desk has three violations of the law built into it: a filter funnel, a Pyrex beaker, and a heating element. The laws against meth should be the deterrent to making it – not criminalizing activities that train young people to appreciate science.�

That, my friends, is a very close relative to the anti-gun argument. The crime is the wrongful USE of the object, not the object itself. By criminalizing the object, they make sure that no possible useful function of the object can be explored, unless within the sanctions of the government’s watchdogs. And let me tell you, that’s not the way to foster innovation.

…

Paradoxically, at a time when young people are particularly excited about technology, their enthusiasm for learning about the science behind it is waning. Thirty years ago, the US ranked third in the world in the number of science and engineering degrees awarded in the 18-to-24 age group. Now the country ranks 17th, according to the National Science Board. A 2004 report called Trends in International Mathematics and Science Education Study found that while fourth graders in the US rank sixth in basic science scores when measured against their peers worldwide, by the time they’re in eighth grade, they’ve slipped to ninth place. Prompted by concern that America is falling behind, President Bush proposed a $380 million “competitiveness initiative� this year that promises to train 70,000 new teachers of Advanced Placement science and math. By the time students have the opportunity to enroll in an AP course, however, many have already absorbed the message that science is best left to trained professionals.

“You have to capture kids’ imaginations very young or you lose them forever,� says Steve Spangler, a former protégé of Mr. Wizard who is now a science correspondent for the NBC affiliate in Denver. “But that’s hard when you have teachers required to check out vinegar and baking soda from the front office because something bad might happen in class. Slowly but surely the teaching tools are being taken away, so schools end up saying, ‘Let’s get a college professor to do this demonstration, and kids can watch the streaming video.’�

Yep! That’s sure to stir young minds. You see it on the screen, that’s the same as actually DOING a thing. Education via X-Box. Pursuit of happiness, as long as it fits the bread and circuses of modern Rome.

…

“Kids read about the great scientists and their discoveries throughout history, and marvel that people once did these things,� Lazar says. “But they marvel a little too much. Taking chemicals and lab equipment away from kids who love science is like taking crayons and paints away from a kid who may grow up to be an artist.�

I fear that we’ve gotten so zealous in our pursuit of the safe and normal that we are in real danger of stifling the inconveniently strange and eccentric minds that have propelled manking forward in great leaps.

Ain’t the world I want…

General, Weather

Happy Hurricane Day!

Yep! Tomorrow! It’s the opening day of Hurricane Season 2006! and that’s not counting the last hurricane of last season, Tropical Storm “Zeta”, which was meandering around the mid-Atlanic until the 7th of January, 2006.

The long-range forecasters predict an active season, although not as active as last year. That’s small consolation to somebody whose home sits in the path of ANY hurricane, whether it’s the only one of the year, or one of last year’s thundering herd…

The Gulf of Mexico is heating up rapidly to the point where its warm waters become fertile ground for storm developement. We’ve already gotten one strange set of weather being generated off the Gulf. Might be an interesting year.

Keeping my fingers crossed…

General, Wheels of Industry

Blechhhhh!

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That’s how I feel right now…

I have that strange situation happening in my mouth as I get used to two missing teeth, and the worst of the lingering pain is the sites where the dentist injected the anesthetic…

Work was a series of small disasters. I got out to the jobsite this morning to find that the electrical contractor foremanw as wandering around with two drawings he’d been given to complete his portion of our current project, and those drawings bore only the most vestigial resemblance to the equipment we actually had installed. I started into panic mode, translating the travesty he had into something that would actually work. After about fifteen or twenty minutes of growling to myself and anyone within earshot, I called the next guy up the ladder. That guy said HE had just gotten the REAL drawings in. I hopped in my car and ran up across the plant to the construction compound and grabbed acopy of the NEW “correct” drawings. That’s where I broke for lunch.

Returning from lunch, I started comparing them AGAIN to check the new drawings against the actual installed equipment. You guessed it. Still wrong. An hour and a half later I passed a new list of wires to be installed to make OUR stuff have the capability that the engineers and designers failed to specify in the factory equipment. And I took a copy of my version of the CORRECTED drawing back up front to have it transmitted to the engineer in far-off Illinois…

There’s still a ghost or two that I have to track down in another piece of new gear, something to do with microprocessor devices which are sensitive to very small electrical signals being operated in an environment where hundreds of volts and thousands of amps are the normal operating condition.

We’ll finally get it right. Hell, if it was easy, they’d let ANYBODY do it…

General

Memorial Day – memories

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A Cox & Forkum repeat. From a reminder by Wasted Electrons

Futures

WE are right. the Left is wrong. They’ve BEEN wrong. Horribly and fatally wrong.

They were wrong about Korea and millions have suffered life under an autocratic tyrant.

They were wrong in Viet Nam, and millions died as Communism filled in behind the American departure as Ho Chi Minh “cleansed” the south and Pol Pot’s grand experiment took place in Cambodia.

They’re still wrong today as they promulgate their ideas from the protected halls of academe, “counselling” peace because they fear to call it for what it really is, APPEASEMENT.

And every time they’re wrong, we have more repeats of the scene poignantly depicted above.

Domestic Bliss, General

sunday morning

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Sweet nothing! No kids clamoring to get started on the day’s activities. Nothing past the “Urgent” rung on the “to do” list”. A lower than normal level of aches and pains… So I slept uncharacteristically late. Aside from the fact that I was the sole occupant of the bed, it was nice to be able to re-arrange myself into one comfortable position after another and slide from “barely awake” back in to “full doze” mode.

Finally I got out of bed and went to get the morning paper. No names this morning. Guess they over-did themselves last week. Fear not. You can’t stop stupidity amongst the human race. You do well to remember that half the population has an IQ of less than 100.

Lots of thoughts through my head lately:

The “RACE” thing. You know, I don’t really think it’s RACE. I think it’s culture. You don’t have a choice about race. Your parents more or less decide that one for you. To a certain extent, they decide culture, too.

But you can change culture. I’ve seen many do it, in both directions. There’s a subculture movement today that crosses racial lines. The elements are destructive. They include underachievement in education, breakdown of the family unit, and the flouting of traditional moral values.

There are those who’d like to say that this “culture” is racial, but it wasn’t always, and shouldn’t be now. I am a child of the South in the 1950’s. I remember, because I saw with my own eyes, the “Whites Only” water fountains and “Colored” waiting rooms where black people waited to see the same fine old doctor I was waiting to see, but I was waiting with Mom in the while folks’ waiting room.

When Mom and Dad were BOTH working to gather us a chunk of the American Dream, our babysitter was a kindly and ancient black woman, Sarah Woods, motherly and moral and loving to us as she was to her own family.

I knew black people then, and they were like us, except black, as far as mores and aspirations. Just as the lower end of the “white” socio-economic scale had its lay-abouts and skirt-chasers, the black community had the same thing.

We had music. Hell, I was CAJUN! We have our OWN music tradition. So did the black folks.

Somewhere, though, things broke over. When it became fashionable to turn the public eye on the community in the shadow, the black community, instead of zooming in on the black FAMILY, the lens of the media camera focused on the music and party scene. The black community to the media was portrayed just like New Orleans: Damned little was said about the hard work and the families. It was all party and music and sex.

Somewhere from all this it seems that some in the black community began to believe the propaganda and began to live up to the caricature promulgated by the press as “the Black Experience”. Instead of focusing on the struggles of the black businessman (they DO exist) and the black family, they focused on the profligate lifestyle of the pimp and the pusher and (now) the rap and hip-hop artist.

Now, you seldom hear about the “OTHER” black community. I work with these folks all the time, guys out at the plants who do the same jobs as white people do and who go home ot families just like white people do, because (watch out, this is the MORAL of this diatribe) it’s NOT ABOUT RACE. They have the same CULTURE, where work and family are the fabric of life.

For these people, Martin Luther King’s speech is fulfilled. Only in the farthest, most abscessed corners of white society are there any who would speak against hard-working, moral black people.

The country, however, cannot afford the product of what the media seems to perpetuate as the racial problem. Victimhood is death to a culture, and the media crowns the race issue as a victimhood issue. The victims will perpetuate themselves until some day in the future when the whole system collapses in on itself. The major health problem of America’s POOR, for heaven’s sake, is OBESITY!

Mark my word, the day WILL come when the nation can no longer afford to elevate America’s POOR to a lifestyle that would be extravagantly rich in 95% of the world’s population. I don’t hold a crystal ball here. It just HAS to happen. Every day passing finds the number of non-producers growing in relation to the number of producers. And this isn’t an “employement” issue. Millions are “employed” at jobs which produce nothing but government paperwork. A government that produces mountains of regulations also produces hordes of paper shufflers to keep track of compliance.

It may come in the form of a single precipitating event, a 9/11, if you will, to overuse a symbol. It may be a series of gradually increasing pressures. But just like the illegal immigration issue, it’s already past the point where there will be any easy, even peaceful, fix.

And when the day comes, America as we knew her will no longer exist…

Boating, General

Boatless

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Last week I sold my boat. 30-foot Catalina sailboat, gone, to a fellow sailor who’s very active in the local sailing scene.

The little boat had suffered quite a bit from Hurrican Rita, Mostly cosmetic stuff, but she needed TLC beyond the measure I was able to provide. Sadly, I made the decision in my mind that if an offer came along, I’d have to take it.

The offer came. I took it. I signed the papers Tuesday. I went back home and cried.

She had been a refuge for me. Amazing amounts of stress flow away when you’re putting down the channel, or swinging at anchor, or even better, being pushed along by wind on sails.

I had good times on her with the kids. I had good times on her with the girlfriend. And I had good times on her all by myself.

Thirty feet of boat is a lot more than many folks’ll ever own, but I did. I sailed her in the gulf out of sight of land. If I’d have EVER been able to whangle enough days off in a row, I wanted to take her across the gulf to Mexico, just to say I did…

Now she’s gone. A big piece of me is gone with her.

General, Wheels of Industry

Nobody wins…

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One of our major clients is about to go on strike. The issue is even more focused because I used to work for these people as an hourly worker, and I was a union member.

Every three years the contract between the company and the union is up for re-negotiation. It normally works like this: The union proposes some wildly goofy stuff which would send its members into ecstacy. The company proposes some wildly goofy stuff which, in the minds of the union, would have them working twenty-hour days with no overtime while chained to machines and being whipped by demons. And usually, just before the deadline, the union and company both come off their hallucinations and the union gets a little pay raise and the company gets a little concession on some nickel and dime work rule.

And everybody goes back to work without a day being missed. The union talks rah-rah bullsh*t to its members about how their jobs were protected, and the company continues making the money that the stockholders need, and the country keeps on getting its supplies of noxious but very useful chemicals.

Didn’t happen that way this time. The company came to the table with some real demands and didn’t back down. The union didn’t buy into the bill of goods. And as of today, the picket lines are supposed to go up at 7 PM local time, this after TWO extensions of the contract for more negotiation.

As is the case with many stories, there are a lot of facets to this one. First, we’re not talking about poverty-level wages here. The LOWEST paid hourly worker in the place makes nineteen dollars and change an hour, this for dumping trash and shovelling gravel. Second, this is not a company on the verge of bankruptcy. They’ve posted huge profits for the last couple of years.

The company proposes that the union members pick up a larger portion of the tab for their health insurance. I’ve heard the figure, and I have people working for me who shoulder a larger burden while making the same or less money. The company proposes that people newly hired into the labor pool, people who HAVE NO SKILLS that the company is using, that these people come in at a substantially lower wage, like two-thirds of what is now the lowest rate. It’s still more than you can get flipping burgers or schlepping boxes around Wal-Mart, but it’s less than EVERYBODY else makes.

There are other issues, but you get the picture. Even if the company ended up with ALL these concessions, a job at the big nasty chemical plant would still be one of the PREMIUM slots in the local job market.

Me, I have a difficult time getting my sympathy up for the union. I know there are some positives in the union-company relationship, but I still see union leadership as a bunch of socialists who want equal pay for everybody who shows up. I had many a run-in with my own union leaders about the differences between carrying the title of a craftsman and the ability to DO THE JOB.

Sure, it’s an easy shot for the union to point out that the company is making PLENTY of money and that the worker needs to get his fair share. Back in the eighties, though, when Carter had driven the economy into the crapper and company stock was in the dump, I didn’t see the union stepping up and offering to CUT wages and benefits in order to HELP the company out of its doldrums.

So I suppose they’ll go on strike. We’ll be out of a good client for a while. A lot of our friends are going to be on both sides of the fence in this thing. And it’s the first major strike in this area in decades, so it’ll be interesting to see how the community handles something that divides 900-odd union workers against their emplyer, who will have over 500 of its salaried workers inside the fence to keep the plant in production and safely operating.

This story is to be continued as things develop…

UPDATE: The local boobtoob news says that last time this facility went on strike was 1957.

UPDATE II: They’re out!

Blogging, General

While I wasn’t looking…

You know, I have a lot of blogs on the old blogroll over there. From time to time, some of these folks stop blogging for a while. I understand that. Life intrudes. I wrestle quite often with that blank screen trying to come up with what meager vestiges of wit appear on these pages.

So anyway, after I check a blog on the roll for a few days and nothing new shows up, I file it in my head and I check it less frequently. Well, he who writes ScottishTankerHooligans had hisself a little layoff. Naw, let’s get real. It was a BIG layoff. But he never posted anything that said “forget this sh*t!” and so he stayed on the blogroll.

So tonight I checked him out just to see. And don’t you know, the son-of-a-gun ahs been posting like MAD! Good stuff, too! Like fiction. Articles on the man-wildlife interaction. And food.

So if he’s already on your list but you’ve been waiting to see him post something, well, he’s posted. And if he’s not on your list, maybe he should be…

Current events - national, General, Politics

America’s Own Royalty

Just a few days ago I was posting about how the Kennedy family is like America’s faux royal family. Now, the the WHOLE stinkin’ Congress getting its collective drawers in a wad because the FBI, with a legitimate search warrant, raided the congressional office of a crooked Louisiana politician, it appears that CONGRESS wants royal treatment.

Apparently the fine folks at Cox & Forkum feel as I do:

Our Royal Pain

I’m thinking that government has gotten over that silly “government of the people, by the people, for the people” notion and is on to bigger and better things. Perhaps we are nearing that point in time wherein the tree of Liberty must need re-watering…

General, Recipes and Food

Lentil soup

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You walk in the door almost hungry. The house is empty, and so’s your stomach. You want food, but you don’t want that stuff that comes from ripping the lid off a box of instant something. Here’s a way to a great warm bowl of something:

Lentil soup.

The ingredients:

One pound of lentils. I generally keep a couple of pounds of the common greenish-brown variety in stock. At trip to Whole Foods, though, will get you beautiful pink ones, little round black ones and other shades. Cooking of all of these is similar.

One half a medium yellow onion.

Smoked meat for flavoring. I prefer Rabidoux’s smoked pork sausage, but he’s local. Most localities have ethnic meat markets and smoked sausage is a ubiquitous form of preserved meat, so you should be able to find a good kielbasa or linguica or chorizo or something like that around. Or you can use chunks of country bacon or left-over ham

Salt

Red Pepper

Black pepper.

Options: Depending on availability, you can add chopped celery, chopped bell pepper, chopped shallots, green onions or chives,, maybe a clove or two of chopped garlic. It’s YOUR soup. You get to decide.

The Procedure:

No rocket science here, folks! This is one that you want to get on the stove simmering while you do the tasks to put you home on even footing for the evening.

Chop the meat. I like to cut the sausage into 1/4 inch or so chunks. Once you’ve cut the meat up, dump it into a two-quart saucepan over medium heat. If you meat’s especially lean, add a couple of tablespoons of grease. Bacon drippings are ideal, but a couple of tablespoons full of cooking oil will work. Brown up the meat a bit to give it some little brown crunchies around the edges.

Chop the onion into random chunks in the vicinity of 1/4 to 3/8 inch. Dump the onion into the pan that’s browning off the meat. Stir the onions in with the meat and let the onions gently saute a bit.

Open your pound of lentils and carefully sort through to make sure you haven’t become owner to a chunk or two of stems and gravel. Rinse the lentils under running water to make sure they’re clean. Then dump the lentils into the pot that’s holding everything else. Add enough water to cover the whole mess an inch deep. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and adjust the water level.

While things are simmering, add salt and pepper to taste. Fifteen to twenty minutes later, your soup is done. The lentils are NOT dissolved into and amorphous mass. Each has a delightful toothsome texture. Of course, some people want a creamy thick porridge. In this case, just keep simmering and stirring and adding water until the lentils lose their individual identities.

For the short version, we’re talking thirty minutes from thought to serving. For the porridge version, you can add a half an hour to the time, but either way, you’ve put a home-made hot meal on the table in an hour, and for pennies a serving.

I like the short version as a stand-along dish. For the porridge, the addition of croutons or oyster crackers is a nice touch. For either, a chunk of good bread from you local bakery is a happy addition.

And although HIS recipe probably didn’t require pork sausage, this is the “mess of potage” mentioned in Genesis 25: 30-34 that Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for…

So there you have it: Another easy recipe that doesn’t require a dozen exotic ingredients or a half a day’s prep. Enjoy!

Blogging, Domestic Bliss, General

That which I feared is come upon me…

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At 2 PM I am scheduled to get a tooth pulled. Being among the world’s biggest chickens when it comes to dental work, I required that the dentist provide me with a pill which would sharply lower my “give-a-sh*t” level prior to the procedure. She gave me two. I have taken the first one and will take the second in a few more minutes.

The unique Chrissy, long-time friend and co-worker, has graciously volunteered to drive my drug-addled butt to the dentist and back.

But I just thought you guys might be interested, just in case you see some REALLY strange ramblings on here later…

Current events - national, General, Local politics

Oh, yeah, we’re ready!

4 Comments

From Chad Rogers’ Dead Pelican come this article:

La. to Continue Hurricane Drills, One Parish Cancels After Trailer Park Snafu
Wednesday, May 24, 2006

BATON ROUGE, La.

— A mock evacuation that was supposed to be part of a two-day statewide hurricane preparedness drill was canceled after a misunderstanding about who had jurisdiction over a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer park.

Lemme tell you who’s responsible, in case you haven’t figured it out: The sorry ass who’s gonna DIE if he doesn’t evacuate, THAT’S who’s responsible! Okay, if you’re medically unable to move yourself, well, then maybe there’s room for the government to help, but to sit around and wait for somebody from the Great White Fathers to show up and evacuate my ass? Oh, sorry! That’s how a lot of people ended up here…

The two-day statewide drill that began Tuesday was aimed at avoiding the chaos that followed last year’s deadly Hurricane Katrina, which hit the state Aug. 29 and killed more than 1,000 people. The drill is expected to continue Wednesday.

The mock evacuation was to take place in the state’s largest FEMA trailer park in Baker, 10 miles from Baton Rouge. The park has more than 500 camper-style travel trailers that house about 1,500 people displaced by Katrina.

NOW they’re having drills, after seeing just how wonderfully the “I ain’t got no plan” plan worked. Well, actually, last year’s hurricane problems weren’t the result of having no plan, they were the result of not following plans already on the books, either because following the plan might have business or political repercussions or because the plan was a false front put up to look good.

Call me skeptical, but I still firmly believe that if you’re depending one the government to save your butt from disaster, you’re setting yourself up for failure in a very uncomfortable and possibly fatal way.

Current events - national, General, Politics

Congressmen: They’re better than you and me!

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In the ongoing case of a corrupt (Yes! We have some!) Louisiana politician, Representative William Jefferson, representing the New Orleans area, it seems that our imperial government is upset that they can’t hide their ill-gotten gains and the paper trails of their corruption in their holy congressional offices.

Hastert: FBI ‘took the wrong path’ when searching lawmaker’s office
Majority leader suggests that issue may go to the Supreme Court

Tuesday, May 23, 2006; Posted: 10:40 p.m. EDT (02:40 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN)

You’d think that Congress would be happy to root out the corruption, but apparently actually aloowing criminal investigations to encompass the holy inner sanctum of a congressman’s office is considered too close for comfort.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert said Tuesday that the FBI and the Justice Department “took the wrong path” when they searched a Democratic congressman’s office this weekend as part of an anti-corruption probe.

“We understand that they want to support and pursue the process that the Justice Department is trying to pursue,” Hastert, a Republican from Illinois, said. “But there’s ways to do it, and my opinion is that they took the wrong path.”

The FBI searched the Washington home and office of Rep. William Jefferson, D-Louisiana, and found $90,000 of allegedly ill-gotten funds in the freezer of his home, according to an affidavit.

Yeah, I ALWAYS store my money in the freezer…

Jefferson’s office is in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill.

Leaders from both both parties and both houses of Congress have expressed concern about the search.

On Monday, both Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Hastert said they were “very concerned” about the search, which was conducted under a warrant issued by a federal judge.

Damned right they’re concerned. If a Congressthief can’t hide his bribes in his own office, then what safety IS there?

The FBI can get a warrant to search a church, a school, a ban, a cemetary, a home, or a regular business office, but that Holy of Holies, a congressman’s office, THAT’S supposed to be off limits? Seems to me that denying access to a congressman’s office in bribery cases would be the same as denying access to a crack house in drug abuse cases. You need to have access to the areas where the crime is likely to take place. Congressman = Bribery. Just like ducks and water, they go together.

I’m tired, damned tired, of our government’s increasingly imperial attitude. Congress passes many laws, and in many cases exempts themselves from the very laws it passes. The police have the right, with proper cause, to search every tiny crevice of your private life, but CONGRESS thinks THEY should have areas that are NOT SUBJECT to the same rules they expect US PEASANTS to live under?

Give me a break.

Turn the whole stinkin’ bunch out into the street and dragnet in any selection of 538 random citizens to legislate for American, and you certainly can’t do worse than what we have as “duly elected representatives” of this nation.