SC Rep Spratt (D) to actually meet with constituents on ObamaCare.

SC Rep John Spratt (D) to actually meet with constituents on ObamaCare in Sumter today and Rock Hill tomorrow. I am so glad they provided all of the advance notice so constituents could make arrangements to be there.

The York native plans to discuss the health care plans, then take questions. Attendees will be asked to write any questions on a slip of paper at the door and put them in a box that matches their position, whether they're for, against or undecided. A moderator will draw names.

from the Observer

Catching MacThieves

Here's a tale detailing the process of using Back To My Mac to catch the thief who swiped your Mac.

"...the victim used his replacement MacBook Pro to screen share with the stolen device, and even watch as someone filled out an online form to find a job, displaying an address, social security number and phone number."

Dumbass thief took a pic of himself with the iSight too and left it on the desktop.

from TUAW

How Twilight Should Have Ended

I haven't read any of the Twilight books or seen the movie. I have no intention of ever doing so. Most of my attempts to avoid anything Twilight related have been thwarted by relatives and neighbors, to whom I present this:

How Twilight Should Have Ended

OK one real post - Paypal hates not just guns, but soldiers too. Boo.

Online donations through PayPal are a huge part of our fundraising. They shut down our entire account-not just the raffle button—for twelve hours right in the middle of an email fundraising push. Looking at the Terms of Use, we couldn’t understand where we’d gone wrong, but we had to immediately remove the raffle so we could get back online ASAP. This just breaks our hearts because we were so excited about the tremendous fundraising impact the Gun Blogger Rendezvous raffle was already having.

Good grief. Register a protest or something. This is a big deal. Puck Faypal. I'll send a check.

Judiciary Committee Approves Sotomayor for Supreme Court

From Foxnews:

The Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to approve Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor to be the first Hispanic justice.

The committee voted 13-6 Tuesday morning to send Sotomayor's nomination to the full Senate, where she's expected to be confirmed easily next week.

Just one Republican, South Carolina's Lindsey Graham, joined Democrats in voting for President Barack Obama's first high court nominee. The panel's chairman, Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, called Sotomayor a restrained, fair and impartial judge who has not favored any one group of people over another. But the top Republican, Alabama's Jeff Sessions, said her speeches and some rulings revealed beliefs that conflict with the idea of blind justice and fidelity to the law.

I hope SC voters are paying attention.

foil hat alert - GM will be able to turn off your vehicle remotely

at Endgadget

OnStar's already rolled out a method for slowing down stolen vehicles once the cops have 'em in sight, and it looks like it's now come up with a solution for the ones that get away as well. Dubbed Remote Ignition Block, the new sevice does just what it promises and uses GPS to prevent the vehicle from starting again once the ignition has been turned off. As with most of these systems, however, the police will first have to confirm that the vehicle is in fact stolen before OnStar flips the switch, so you'll have to come up with something else for your next grand workplace prank. No word on specifics just, but OnStar says it'll be making the service available on over two million GM 2009 and 2010 model year vehicles.

(puts foil hat on)

Government owns GM, GM owns Onstar, you buy a Camaro instead of a Volt Hybrid Plug In. At some point in the future it is decided that your car is using too much gas/isn't efficient enough/doesn't meet the next round of new CAFE standards. They turn it off. You can't turn it back on.

(takes foil hat off)

More pants-wetting from Josh Sugarmann @ the VPC

In the inbox today...

To Violence Policy Center Action Network Members:

TOMORROW, WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, the U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote on an amendment sponsored by South Dakota Senator John Thune to the defense reathorization bill (S. 1390) that would force our communities to allow dangerous individuals from other states to carry loaded, hidden handguns in public.

ACTION STEP

Call your two U.S. Senators today! Call 202-224-3121 and ask to be connected to your Senators' offices.

Tell your U.S. Senators to vote NO on the Thune gun amendment.


A new VPC study (http://www.vpc.org/studies/ccw2009.pdf) released yesterday and cited in a New York Times editorial (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/opinion/21tue2.html?_r=1&ref=opinion) today shows that in a recent two-year period in only 31 incidents, concealed handgun permit holders killed at least seven law enforcement officers and 44 private citizens. These incidents include five mass shootings resulting in the deaths of 23 victims. Because of the secretive nature of state concealed carry systems, the VPC was forced to rely on news clippings for its research. The actual number of unjustified killings by concealed handgun permit holders is most likely far, far higher.

States currently have the authority to make their own rules about who can carry a concealed weapon (CCW). But the gun lobby's friends in Congress want to dramatically undermine each state's authority to determine who can possess handguns by allowing individuals with concealed carry permits issued by virtually any other state to cross state lines with their deadly weapons and carry loaded guns in public--a policy that will also increase gun trafficking, as well as gun deaths and injuries. This proposal is particularly dangerous for states like California that have tough permitting standards.

o The Thune amendment would dramatically increase the number of individuals carrying concealed handguns in public in your state.

o The Thune amendment would require states to recognize concealed carry permits that are issued by other states. The practical effect of this change would be to establish the lowest common denominator as the general rule for carrying a concealed handgun.

Call your senators NOW and tell them to vote NO on the Thune amendment.

Thank you, as always, for your time and energy to help stop gun violence.

Sincerely,

Josh Sugarmann
Executive Director

I think Uncle has dismantled the "study" that Sugarmann and the time cite as the usual junk we can expect from these people...er this person (is there anyone else at the VPC except Sugarmann?).

The "Irrefutable" is refuted...

Kevin at The Smallest Minority provides 10,000 or so words that I would commit to memory in order to properly prepared for any conversation concerning the 2nd Amendment.

Seriously. I am going to print this out and carry it in my wallet.

Robb at Sharp As a Marble found the original op-ed. My favorite comment from the original is from a guy named Ed who states:

"Propagandist! Parrot! Fool!"

While I hope that some day I will be able to provide a Kevin-Level Dismantling, my attempts at discourse are more like Ed.

Tamsnark on Lautenberg

Frank Lautenberg hasn't had an honest job in years; he's been suckling at the government teat since the current president was a frosh in undergrad. After metastasizing from a mere Port Authority commissar to a senator in 1982, he voted about like you'd expect a Democrat from New Jersey to vote, being generally in favor of taxes and of bribing lower-income voters with other people's money.

Tam is good with the snark.

Big box full O' dumb

Don't call for backup when you're not a real cop.

"This is Fred. Can you have a marked unit meet me at the foot of the bridge?" Heitzman told the dispatcher.

"What police department are you from?" the dispatcher said.

"Um, auxiliary patrol," Heitzman answered.

Oops.

Snarkage

seen @ Tam, re: Pelosi:

That's because the foot in your mouth doesn't get any tastier no matter how much you wiggle the toes.

A note from the Violence Policy Center

This made my brain hurt. No mention of the Mexican gun nonsense though...

Dear Friend of the Violence Policy Center:

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the Columbine shooting. During the past decade, hundreds of thousands of additional lives have been lost to gun violence--in suicides, homicides, and unintentional shootings.

At the same time, horrifying events like Columbine--attacks carried out against fellow students, families, co-workers, worshippers, and complete strangers--have become so familiar to us that they have their own generic name: rampage shootings.

Such shootings are the direct result of the increasing firepower readily available to civilians in the U.S. The reality is that firepower--in the form of semiautomatic assault weapons, 50 caliber sniper rifles, armor-piercing handguns, and high-capacity ammunition magazines--has become the primary product line produced by today's gun industry. The harsh truth is that such carnage can be prevented only when we take steps to control the gun industry. We ask you for your support to help us stop the flood of high-powered guns flooding our neighborhoods. Only then will America begin to gain relief from the relentless onslaught of rampage shootings.

Below please find a Huffington Post blog link to an op-ed I wrote that was published yesterday in the Washington Post.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-sugarmann/mass-shooting-template--r_b_189054.html

The point of the piece is simple. As a nation we must move beyond decrying the predictable end-result of our lax gun laws and begin to take action: demanding more of our elected officials and of those who should be in this battle with us--but who have not yet joined.

As a supporter of the VPC you know this. I ask that you please send this e-mail forward to those who don't--and urge them to join us in our efforts to stop gun violence.

Sincerely,

Josh Sugarmann
Executive Director

***

To contribute to the VPC and help support our important work, please visit https://www.vpc.org/donate.asp.

Visit www.vpc.org to learn more about the VPC's most recent activities.

To remove yourself from this list, please reply to this e-mail with the word "remove" in the subject line.

Government as an embezzler

from the quoteable Mike Folkerth

We find ourselves in the unsavory circumstances of the embezzler who had always promised themselves that they would pay the money back, only to get in deeper and deeper to such time that repayment became impossible.

Fuffled? Fufflery?

Club Orlov continues a pattern of excellence by posting this explanation of the word that perfectly describes...well...the whole damn thing. It's like the The Number 42.

A fuffle is an artful fake, an artifact specifically made to fool, beguile, seduce, or intimidate people into paying for it. Ideally, the initial transaction serves as the basis of a permanent arrangement, with the victim roped into an installment plan, which keeps the payments flowing even after the fuffle itself has crumbled into a pile of dust. An even better fuffle is one that grows over time. Since a fuffle is, in essence, a fake, its useful properties, should it have any, are largely irrelevant, and so its abstract (which is to say, financial) properties come forth as being the essential ones. The most important such property is, quite obviously, size, and indeed fuffles tend to get bigger and bigger over time. This is a telltale feature of fuffles that makes them easier to identify: if something gets bigger and bigger over time while delivering the same or lesser value, then it is quite likely to be a fuffle. Also, fuffles breed: as a fuffle gets larger and larger, it produces offspring of other fuffles, which also grow. Examples come from many realms.

That's it. Fuffle is the word. 

Here a trillion...

There! A Trillion!

How They See It

Hard to believe this is on Time.com

Careful there! Don't go besmirching Him and those He would have Help us.

I like this line about retaining vs. replacing the "key traders and risk managers" at AIGFP :

In other words, the guy who just stabbed the nation in the gut is the only surgeon who can stop the bleeding.

What a mess. I wouldn't be surprised if AIG ends up being ground-zero to The Whole Thing Falling Apart (my new acronym TWTFA - I am not expecting that to catch on or anything).