- Panama was already better than many countries on guns. A smidge, anyhow. Now, in hopes of combating rising crime, they’re about to get better. Only a little better than the original smidge, but it’s something.
- Even the most worthless of petty bureaucrats now think they deserve to be treated and feted like Oriental pashas. Who are these people, anyhow?
- Once again, at least a few on the fringe are sending the message that they’ve had enough. (Tip o’ hat to jed)
- Yeah, now let’s see if the EPA and its employees get treated like a private corporation and its people would be. Criminal charges. Heads rolling. Monumental fines. Screaming public outcry with environmentalists leading the mob.
- The Atlantic does a provocative takedown of campus speech coddling. Doesn’t address freedom issues much, but focuses on how psychologically unhealthy this BS is.
- I was going to say that this is another tiny house I kinda like. Then I got to the part about a finished one costing $95,000. Ninety-five freakin’ thousand dollars? For a teeny little trailer thingie? Is somebody pulling our collective legs??? (H/T jed)
- A pair of beauties (and I really do mean beauties) via A.G. in comments. Jake Weidmann is one of only 12 master penmen in the world and the youngest by 30 years. Though I may be pretty good at finding stuff in garage sales and second-hand stores, this tops everything I’ve found in my whole life — both for art and for mystery.
- Kardashian overload. It happens to the best of us. Not usually on air, though. (H/T jb)
Now, I hope that keeps you happily busy for a while, ’cause unless Washington, DC, sinks into the ocean, aliens land, or I find the tub from Cabin Sweet Cabin lying at the roadside before Friday, I’m taking a couple of days off. Should be back with you by the weekend, if not before.
It is truly extraordinary that you would glory in the murder of a social worker involved in a child protection case.
The controllers in Panama want it both ways, just like most other governments. They will do a great deal to advance the illusion that the people may/should defend themselves, but it never works out that way if you but scratch the surface.
Oriental pashas probably never “deserved” being treated like royalty… and neither do any of the royals I’ve ever heard of. But then, I’ve never been into that sort of thing anyway. 🙂
As for the penmanship… Very beautiful! I used to have very good penmanship… and then I went into nursing. LOL Now I write with a silly/dumb combination of cursive, printing and nurse shorthand. No problem as long as I can read it.
Have a good rest, or adventure, or whatever it is you plan to do for the next few days. We’ll be ok… we have the alternative Harry Potter to read in the meantime. I’m already hooked. 🙂
“It is truly extraordinary that you would glory in the murder of a social worker involved in a child protection case.”
Who the hell says I “glory” in it? You are doing some major, and entirely unwarranted, conclusion jumping.
I don’t have enough facts to know who was right or wrong in the original child-welfare issue. But I most certainly don’t think killing is a good first resort for anything, and in this case it reinforces the idea that the killer was probably a terrible parent as well as a generally bad or crazy human being.
I do observe that people are generally getting angrier and angrier at government officials, and that some — on the fringe, as I very carefully noted — are getting violent.
As of yesterday, local news was reporting that 3 family members of the woman who killed the DCF worker had been found dead in their home. I’m not hearing anything else so far today.
I’m kind of hoping that every town and state downstream from the EPA’s Big Stinky will sue EPA for cleanup. Make the entire watershed clean again. Professionals – which is what the EPA is supposed to be in all things environmental – aren’t supposed to have accidents. That’s why they are hired, and why they are called ‘professional’.
“While none of the customers actually went forward with building”
No kidding? They’re surprised that people lost interest when they discovered they’d be paying $487/ft^2 for a freaking house trailer?
As I recall, a friend paid $20K for a 27′ trailer with a pop out living room, HVAC, kitchen, bath, separate master bedroom.
K&^%$#@’s- Thanks, Claire. I try — unsuccessfully — to avoid “celebrity” news. If I read science & tech stories, I get K&^%$#@ headlines in the sidebars. Now I get them here?
EPA: Unfortunately, suing the EPA is paying money out of your pocket to take more money out of your pocket. I’d like to see the idiots involved sued and held responsible as individuals. But it won’t happen, and if it did, they don’t have the money to make right the sheer scale of what they did. Oh well; there’s always the Jarbidge treatment.
I guess it’s better that I not hold my breath waiting for the fedgov to be accountable.
My elementary school grading system was H, M. & L (I can’t remember if there was an “F”). I would always get “M’s” on handwriting. One grading period I tried particularly hard; my teacher told me I “almost” got an “H.” I stopped trying, figuring I would get the same grade anyway. In retrospect, with all the information available on handwriting analysis, it’s just as well, for my problems were innate 🙂
I well remember the first time I happened to see Kim Kardashian on TV. I was in an office lounge, and she was in a well furnished room walking toward the camera. I was absolutely transfixed. Every movement was calculated; musing about it now she must have practiced for a lengthy time in front of a mirror to get it down. I can think only of a prisoner in maximum security at Lorton Prison who was dribbling a basketball with similarly intently purposeful motions. My overwhelming impression as I watched her was “she has no soul.”
“Barre City Mayor Thom Lauzon said the worker’s shooting death was a tragedy not just for his city, which has about 10,000 residents, but for the state.”
Or for The State, at any rate. People working in Child Kidnapping Services should beware of moms with deer rifles…
Here’s another article, with a quote:
“Vermont’s child protection agency, like those in many other states, frequently comes under criticism from parents for being too quick to remove children from homes in cases of alleged abuse and neglect; and from the public when children are left in the home and end up dying at the hands of family members.”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/08/09/vermont-woman-goes-on-killing-spree-after-losing-custody-of-9-year-old-child/
BTW it appears this mom’s relatives had called the agency in against her.
Sean, perhaps you are unaware of the abuses by Child “Protection” Agencies. Children stolen from families and adopted out are killed at a much higher rate by their adoptive families, than in the general population. When they come after your family, you are “guilty until proven innocent”. Ever since the Reagan administration these agencies have actually had a financial incentive to kidnap children, as they are paid by the federal government on the basis of the number of children adopted out. They are often (if not always) tools in the hand of a thuggish state government. Innocence will not help you if they show up on your doorstep.
Parents have a duty to defend their families, yes even from the state. When reasonable means to do so are not available, people resort to unreasonable ones. Perhaps such incidents will deter some more kidnappings in the future.
This is not to say there are not evil parents out there. But remember Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy:
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
The people in state government do not give a rat’s ass about children – otherwise they would shut government schools down immediately and permanently.
On the tiny house…
$95,000? Sounds like yuppies are getting in the market for these things, stashing them in their RV garages. The free market does not have to make sense, does it? 🙂
Bear – good point about suing the EPA, but it was the only way I could think of to hold the accountable that doesn’t involve fire and brimstone.
Shel – I doubt anyone EXPECTS fedgov to be held responsible or to hold itself to be. It’s just a footnote on my bucket list.
Now that I’ve waded to the end of the piece in THE ATLANTIC, I feel self-righteous about my decades old campaign against the entire concept of Politically Correct. It’s asinine, dangerous, and what you are when you leave a commie re-education camp. I disrespectfully refuse to comply. I went to college at Screw U, and I’m proud of graduating with honors
I remember listening to some people at work gossip about the Kardashians. I couldn’t figure out why they were so obsessed with those guys from Deep Space 9.
File that under “You know you’re a geek when . . . “
Haha! Thanks for today’s LOL, Ellendra!
I may not personally “glory” in the death of a state bully whose tax junkie “job” involved destroying families (or any other bully), but I certainly won’t shed any tears over it. You stick your nose in enough families, and eventually someone is going to have enough. It’s just nature. Don’t like that- DON’T BECOME A FREAKIN’ STATE PARASITE.
In regard to the Atlantic article. The “zero tolerance” policies that these people have been subjected to as children in the public school system has taught them to have zero tolerance. They have been going around afraid of the school system for years, now they are angry and want payback.