Backscatter Image Shenanigans
Remember when they first installed Backscatter X-Ray machines at a few airports as a test run? They told us how safe we would be, and how it was a strictly volunteer-only process so if you didn’t want to use them you would not have to. They also released the first image you see below as an example of what the images would look like. My how times have changed.
One guy with his undies in a bunch and now they want everyone to be forced to use them. And in the mean time the images keep getting better. Check out the middle image, way better than the first. And that third one; hubba hubba! I can’t wait for these babies to be installed at LAX so I can get a good look at all the nekkid celebrities. You know it’s only a matter of time before some TSA dude making ten bucks an hour starts banking the cash by selling backscatter images to some sleazy website. I need to reserve the domain name www.backscatterbabes.com over at GoDaddy today!
But I digress. Has the technology really progressed so far so fast? I admit it is possible, but more likely the first images were simply the ones that would be easier for the traveling public to digest and grow accustomed to. The real question to ask is if spending millions of dollars on machines will really make us safer. I would say no. There is already talk of exempting anyone under 18 from being scanned due to child pornography laws. So if I wanted to blow up a plane with me on it would I really be put off by having to sneak the explosives on the plane using a child or even an infant? How about if I inserted them inside my..um..body. (Like the suicide bomber in Saudi Arabia did very recently.) Would this wonder-tech save us then? So no kids, no bodily orifices and the images are still being viewed by minimum wage TSA flunkies. Heck, I’d get my super hot wife Samara or Jasmin to wear a full burqa to the airport knowing that all the TSA dudes in the booth would be ogling her instead of me. (Saves the problem of a single dude traveling alone too! All I need to do now is buy my ticket ahead of time without using cash and bring some checked baggage!)
I mean seriously, they propose that we simply do away with the whole “unreasonable search and seizure” thing in the name of “safety”. (Unless you think strip-searching doesn’t cross that line. Take a real close look at the third image again and then imagine how clear it will be five years from now.) Yet in the same breath we state that we will not use it on people under the arbitrary age of 18. Does anyone really believe that X-Ray vision specs wielded by the keystone cops of airline security (the TSA) is going to make us safer? I don’t. I think it means I’ll get to see more nekkid chicks on the internet. (As if there weren’t already enough of them there to begin with.) I also think they have been mis-representing (Read: Lying) about the quality of the images from day one.
Topics: In the News | 1 Comment »
Is She the most qualified person for this position?
Turns out President Obama has the honor of appointing the very first trans-gender apointee to the Commerce Department. Yippi! But I have to take a second and ask; Is He She really the most qualified applicant for this position? Really? There wasn’t anyone else in the whole country better qualified to fill this role?
Now don’t get me wrong; I really don’t care what she used to be or who she spends her weekends with. I do care if she can do a good job. My fear is that her trans gender-status has given her an ‘edge’ over other perfectly qualified appointees for no other reason than to promote ‘diversity’ or whatever we are calling it this week.
Given the track record of many Obama appointees so far (Geithner, Napolitano etc.) I have my doubts.
Topics: In the News | No Comments »
Following the Isralie example
First off, yeah I know I suck at updating the blog. I’ll try to do better but I can’t make any promises.
Anyway, I read the following about Israel and not only should we be emulating them in our airport security, but elsewhere too…
Jan. 10 (Bloomberg) — Israel will build a barrier along the entire length of its southern border with Egypt, the Prime Minister’s Office said today in a statement posted on its Web site.
The barrier is meant to keep out “intruders and terrorists,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in the statement, including “illegal workers who try to enter Israel by way of its southern border.”
It’s just crazy enough to work!
Topics: In the News | No Comments »
Upcoming events & Random Thoughts
Remember, Thursday is National Ammo Day!
Be sure to pick up something good from a local business. The big Gun Show in Chantilly, VA is this weekend too. I’ll be going Friday afternoon, and maybe again Saturday since my daughter has a school event near there, so I may drop her off and head back over.
I stopped in the Guns & Ammo Warehouse in Manassas, VA Sunday while I was out for a ride on my motorcycle. One thing I definitely noticed is that the prices are stabilizing since “Gun Salesman of the Year” Barack Obama was elected. It was nice to see a large selection of EBR’s (Evil Black Rifles) without a comma in the price tag. It is still hard to find .380 ammo either in stock or at a reasonable rate.
The VCDL meeting in NoVA is this Thursday (Same day as National Ammo Day!). Not sure if I’ll be attending. I’d like to but this is a busy week for me.
Lets talk about a couple of other things I’ve been rolling around in my head. Fort Hood. When I first heard about it I didn’t know what to think. When I heard the shooters name, I naturally suspected a Jihad motive. Now we come to find out that this guy had a ton of red flags associated with him and his radical idealogy:
A PowerPoint advocating Muslim soldiers be allowed out of military service as “Conscientious Objectors”.
Repeated reprimands for preaching Islam to patients and co-workers.
A business card that declares his allegiance to Islam.
Attendance at a mosque with shady ties to the 9-11 attackers, including emails back and forth with a cleric banned from speaking in the West for his radical views.
Various people within our government, from the military to DHS and the FBI were all aware of these things. and yet we didn’t do anything for fear of the backlash and howls of outrage that would ensue if we “persecuted” a Muslim.
Lets rewind back to the FBI agent that wrote a memo to his superiors saying essentially “Hey, there are a bunch of Arab dudes taking flight lessons and some of them don’t seem really interested in learning to land. Maybe we should look into this. ” Yeah, that memo was ignored for the same reasons.
But if you voted for Ron Paul, or belong to the NRA, or went to a Tea Party then you can bet DHS is all up in your business.
But I digress. After 9-11 we created the DHS to consolidate our intel and streamline the interaction between agencies. Sounds great on paper, right? Has it worked out that way? Maybe it has; after all I am sure there have been some successes that your average Joe hasn’t heard about. (I wonder when the New York Times will do its civic duty and print stories about them, instead of ones about our interrogation techniques?) And yet, we have all these signs and no one made the logical conclusion that we should dig a bit deeper.
My faith in efficient government is at an all-time low. They can’t do the jobs they are supposed to do. (Seen the Post Office lately?) Now they want to be put in charge of ensuring health care for everyone? Sure, right, what could possibly go wrong? We all know it does not take two thousand pages to cover a few million people without health care. This is a power grab, plain and simple. I was mad at George Bush for spending like a drunken sailor, and I held my nose and voted for McCain because I knew Barry O would be worse. Sometimes I hate being right.
I believe the real plan is to keep pushing these insane strategies until America is in such a crisis that we will be (they hope) desperate enough to accept measures that have been wholly unacceptable to the American Public up until this point. This is the wide scale implementation of the Cloward/Piven Strategy. It is not an accident.
The housing crisis was created when we told banks, under threat of government sanction, to loan money to people who should never have gotten them. When we made it profitable to do so, again; because of government partnerships and guarantees, the practice flourished. None of this would have happened if our government had not interviened in the market. Remember when you needed 20% down and good credit to buy a house? I do. Again, as we have seen before with the Fort Hood suspect and the FBI memo about flight school trainees, the very people tasked with oversight willfully looked the other way.
If we can reduce a CEO’s paycheck by 90%, then I say we pay Congress minimum wage until they stop running deficits. That would clear this mess up inside of a few years.
Topics: Government, In the News | No Comments »
Iran taking hostages again.
It seems like every time we get a weak president in office, Iran starts taking hostages.
Iran has charged three hikers they captured a few months ago with espionage.
I wonder what our weakness-in-chief will do about it. I suspect nothing much.
Topics: In the News | No Comments »
Range Report: Wolf Aftermarket Barrel in my .40 Glock
At the last big gun show I purchased a new barrel for my .40 Glock made by Lone Wolf. I dropped about a hundred bucks on it, which was the going rate. (I’d seen a write up on them in an issue of The Blue Press catalog.) Last night I went to the NRA range with a buddy from work who had just purchased a used Sig .45 pistol he wanted to try out.
I went first. After a few ertrant shots I was putting good groups together. On my second or third magazine I pulled the trigger and nothing happened. So I checked the gun and it was *just slightly* out of battery. I dropped the mag and tried to pull the slide back to check the round int he chamber. It didn’t move. I visually inspected the gun closer, checking for any sign of damage or cracks. None. I put a bit more elbow grease into it and managed to get the slide back, ejecting a perfectly good round with no damage or wear to the case or the bullet. I re-loaded the round on the magazine and finshed the mag.
After that I ran two more mags through the gun in rapid succession to give the barrel more of a break in. (I wasn’t even aiming at the target, just the backstop, in a efoort to re-create the failure to feed while also breaking in the new barrel.) No failures. I had one more failure to fully feed later in the evening, but a simple push on the slide caused it to go into battery easily.
I have never had a failure like this with the factory barrel. I surmise that the new barrel needs a good cleaning and a feed-ramp polishing. A few more rounds down the barrel and it should be broken in nicely. As for accuracy I can’t complain. The barrel shot fine and placed groups where I wanted them; the fly aways were my fault, not the guns. After I clean it up and polish it, I’ll post again when I get more rounds through the new pipe. I am happy with the quality, and suspect that breaking in the Lone Wolf barrel and polishing the feed ramp will make it just as reliable as the factory barrel.
Topics: My Life | No Comments »
Random thoughts on stuff
Chicago will lose at the Supreme Court. Incorporation will be…uh..incorporated.
In other news I am thinking of getting an Ultra-Sonic cleaner to help with the chore of gun cleaning. So far I have been reading good things.
Topics: In the News | No Comments »
Sound Financial Advice
I got this in an email today…
“Invest in precious metals; Gold, Silver, Lead”
Topics: Thought for Today | No Comments »
Range Trip Saturday
I left the house early Saturday to meet up with some friends. I picked my buddy up and we headed over the Maryland. After a quick stop at the newly re-opened Walls Bakery in Waldorf we headed to the store for some ammunition. I forget the name of the place, but it’s right on Rt. 5 with a big fake Horse out front. They had a fair selection of stuff, so I asked if they had any .380 target rounds for sale. They did have a box, and it was $29.99. (Ouch! Thirty bucks for a box of target .380!) Well, I decided to go ahead and bite the bullet, so I told the man behind the counter I would take it. He asked me for my license, which I started to fish out assuming he wanted to verify I was…over 18? Wait a sec, I’m 39 and bald. No way this guy thinks I’m 17.
So I ask him “Are you going to log this?” To which the man replies “Yes.” So I say “No thanks, that’s not how I roll.” and put my license away. He says to me that he logs purchases “voluntarily” for the MD State Police in a vain attempt to keep the sale. I say that’s fine but I’m not going to purchase ammunition if he’s going to log me in his book. He knew he’d lost a sale, but was polite and I was firm.
There is no requirement for ammunition logging. I live in VA so my name in his log would not result in State Police goons showing up at night to harass me. But I refuse to support any business that fears the MD State Police more than its customers. Apparently the last time my buddy was in there he wasn’t logged for his ammo purchase. Maybe he just didn’t like my “look” or that guys was the only one who actively logged people. I don’t know. I do know that if you are going to attach extra-legal requirements to my firearms related purchases then you don’t get my hard-earned (and heavily taxed!) money.
We ended up at the Maryland Small Arms Range and I have to say I like that range more and more. Sure, its small and dirty. Sure they use cables and a simple forward/back switch for the target stands instead of the Pentium processor driven programmable ones the NRA range uses. But it’s CHEAP. We spent $16.43 for three of us to go shooting. (We had our own guns, ammo and eye/ear protection, only had to buy one package of squishy ear plugs for the new guy.) Sixteen bucks for three people to shoot for an hour. At the other ranges I go to we would have spent three times that at least.
Topics: My Life | No Comments »
All Your Inernets Are Belong To US [Government].
What’s next, the “Grand army of the Republic?”
A Senate bill would offer President Obama emergency control of the Internet and may give him a “kill switch” to shut down online traffic by seizing private networks — a move cybersecurity experts worry will choke off industry and civil liberties.
Details of a revamped version of the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 emerged late Thursday, months after an initial version authored by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., was blasted in Silicon Valley as dangerous government intrusion.
“In the original bill they empowered the president to essentially turn off the Internet in the case of a ‘cyber-emergency,’ which they didn’t define,” said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which represents the telecommunications industry.
“We think it’s a very bad idea … to put in legislation,” he told FOXNews.com.
Clinton said the new version of the bill that surfaced this week is improved from its first draft, but troubling language that was removed was replaced by vague language that could still offer the same powers to the president in case of an emergency.
“The current language is so unclear that we can’t be confident that the changes have actually been made,” he said.
So what we have here is a bill that would give the US Government the ability to declare a “Cyber Emergency” (without describing exactly what that is) and shut down the internet because of it. (Does Twitter being down count? How about Drudge hosting an unfavorable headline for the administration?) So when all hell breaks lose about the proposal they go back and re-write the bill in such a way that no one can tell if the provision has been removed or left in!
Couple that with the recent Cash for Clunkers program where car dealers connecting the a government website have their computers become Government owned property! To wit:
This application provides access to the DOT CARS system. When logged onto the CARS system, your computer is considered a federal computer system and it is property of the United States government.
Add to that the provision bundled with the massive Obamacare legislation mandating that the IRS hand over your Tax Records to verify your income (and who-knows-what-else) and I think we are seeing the very tip of the iceberg here.
I’ll don my tinfoil hat and hunker down until Order 66 is initiated!
Topics: Government | No Comments »