Sunday - March 25, 2007
Virginia Deer
Question: what do you get when you (a) discourage people from owning firearms, (b) only allow hunters to hunt during a brief three-week period in the dead of Winter, (c) enact local ordinances all over the state to make it illegal to discharge a firearm within a hundred miles of any whining Liberal, (d) throw together in the state legislature a set of hunting regulations so obtuse and complicated that a New York lawyer would have a major headache figuring it out, and (e) keep building suburban housing further and further out into wilderness areas?
Answer: you end up ass-deep in antlers invading suburbia and carrying ticks with Lyme disease. Then again, all those little kids who watched “Bambi” back in the 1950’s are now grown and in politics and they’re determined to keep anyone from hurting those pretty little deer. As usual, they never stop to consider the implications of their actions. And if you think the problem is bad in Virginia, take a look at really weird states like Kalifornia and MassaTwoShits. Will they never learn ... ?
In Swelling Herds, A Growing Risk
Larger Va. Deer Population Making Lyme Disease a Public Health Issue
(WASHINGTON POST) - Sunday, March 25, 2007
A surge in reported cases of Lyme disease in Fairfax County has prompted an outcry from residents who say the lawns and woodlands surrounding their homes are overrun with infected ticks and the deer that carry them.
The exponential increase has also led county health officials to acknowledge that managing Fairfax’s burgeoning deer population, which in some locations has numbered 400 per square mile, is no longer about nuisance control. It has become a serious public health issue that requires immediate attention, they say.
“Deer are the Metro system for the ticks” that carry Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, said Jorge R. Arias, who manages Fairfax’s disease-carrying-insect program. “The ticks are all over the county. Wherever the deer can go, they will take the ticks with them.”
Confirmed cases of Lyme disease, which is characterized by such varied symptoms as a bull’s-eye-shaped rash, fever and fatigue, rose from three in 2004 to 82 in 2006, according to county data. Much of the increase is due to better reporting of a disease that is often quickly treated with antibiotics without being confirmed by blood tests. Still, public health officials say there is little doubt that case numbers are rising locally and nationally.
According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reported cases rose from 19,800 in 2004 to 23,300 in 2005. Cases remain relatively low in Virginia—274 in 2005 compared with numbers in the thousands in such Northeastern states as Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New York.
But the increase in the Washington region is causing growing concern. Loudoun County claims half of all reported cases in Virginia. In Maryland, Montgomery County has seen confirmed cases grow fivefold since 2004, to 216. And the very neighborhoods where deer are least welcome might be attracting the tick-carrying herds.
“Suburban lots with azaleas and rhododendrons is just like laying out a buffet for deer,” Arias said. “We have created in suburbia what is essentially a perfect habitat for them.” That, in turn, has created the perfect environment for transmitting the bacteria to humans, he said. “The deer population has been out of control for years,” Jakubowski said. “There have been minimal attempts to control it.”
Fairfax launched a deer management program about a decade ago after several traffic accidents involving deer made headlines. The county sponsors managed hunts during the winter months, during which screened applicants participate in a daytime hunt on parkland. Separately, police sharpshooters “cull” herds on overnight expeditions several times a year.
But the results are limited, said Earl L. Hodnett, the county’s wildlife biologist, who noted that most county parks where deer are counted remain far from his goal of no more than 15 to 20 deer per square mile. Officials are limited to parkland where firearms pose little risk to people but where shooters have limited access to deer, which are not constrained by public boundaries. Managed hunts in January and February netted 133 deer. An additional 48 deer have been killed in four sharpshooting events this year.
“We’re starting out with a big problem,” Hodnett said. “There’s no easy way to quickly fix a problem that’s been building since the mid-’80s.” But all agree the problem cannot be erased overnight.
“Eradicating the deer herd is probably not achievable,” said Frey, who counted more than 40 deer on a recent daytime tour of Cub Run Stream Valley Park. “Short of shutting down the parks and hunting 24 hours a day, I’m not sure how much we can do.”
Sunday Funnies
Saturday - March 24, 2007
I HAVE RETURNED!
As for the mission - I managed to foil the evil plot of the dastardly Gorefinger who was planning to drag all the icebergs in Antarctica to the Caribbean and melt them down to make the oceans rise. His plot failed when I used Q’s Oscar-Destructor™ raygun to destroy Gorefinger’s boats (and his Oscar).
Of course, Gorefinger tried to do me in with a ravishing female Russian spy named Olga (from the Volga). I got around this obstacle with my usual charm and good looks, convincing her to switch sides in the Glowbull Warming War. Here is a picture of Olga (below the fold) riding on my dinghy. For Your Eyes Only (NSFW).
More to follow after I get unpacked and sorted out ....
Saturday Blovations
Why does she even get a platform? Jim says: “Not a working brain cell in the whole darned crowd”
Why the Gun is Civilization
Via Lawdog, we find this must-read from Marko.
Why the Gun is Civilization
Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that’s it.
In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.
Go read the rest. It is as simple and complete a dissertation as I have ever read
Friday - March 23, 2007
We Need a Storm
Just saw this over at Kim’s
Help Needed
Reader George K writes:
Kim,
I’m writing you today to ask for your help. Not for money, just to help spread the word about the abuses of the AFT against law abiding gun dealers. We need a “blogburst” or whatever they are called these days.
Red’s Trading Post in Twin Falls, Idaho (Idaho’s oldest gun store) is being shut down by the ATF over minor clerical mistakes. The owners and staff at Red’s are like family to me. They provided a lot of help and advice to me while I was setting up my own business, and continue to help promote my firearms classes. Right now, this is the only way I can help them back.
Red’s has started an online petition asking for fair treatment of FFL dealers by the ATF. As of this time, they have only received about 860 signatures. This is unacceptable. One of the silly “Impeach Bush” petitions that will likely go nowhere has almost 19,000 signatures!
Please understand that this petition is not about Red’s Trading Post. It is about all FFL dealers. Law abiding dealers across the nation are being shut down for trivial issues. Small dealers usually have to close as the legal costs would bankrupt them. (Red’s has already spent $20K in their fight) This also affects the average gun owner. Where will you buy your guns when your local dealer is shut down?
Read about Red’s battle with the ATF here.
Sign the petition Here.
It’s in the upper 900’s now. I want to see at least 3,000 by tonight.
Go.
Now.
on 03/23/2007 at 02:26 PM
Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Insanity • Judges-Courts-Lawyers • Outrageous • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink
Keep the Socks, Send the Jerky
BMEWS Management would like to remind our gentle readers that we need to continue supporting the troops with care packages. Here’s a good piece from the CSM and NewsMax.
Americans Flood Troops with Support
Four years into the war in Iraq, private support for US soldiers looks as strong as ever.
What do U.S. soldiers need in Iraq? Probably not hand-knitted caps and booties.
“We’re running into a lot of knitted items” in care packages, says Marine 1st Lieutenant Barry Edwards, public affairs officer for Regimental Combat Team Six in Fallujah. “Great job on the knitting, but we’re starting to break 85 degrees [F.] ... and in about another month it’s going to be over 100.”[snip]
“The most common thing that we’ve seen in care packages recently and in previous deployments I’ve participated in has been snack items, small hygiene products, reading material, writing material, cards and letters, those kinds of things,” says Edwards.
A number of people like to send candy, but service members ask that people please consider the nutritional value of what they’re sending. “A little [candy] is fine, just not a lot,” wrote hospital corpsman 3rd class Adam Shepherd in an e-mail from Al Taqaddum, Iraq. More popular is beef jerky and low-carb snacks.
Sub Primal
Jayson Javitz, the new guy over at Wizbang, has a great piece explaining the recent bruhaha over sub-prime lending. Yes, the Donks and the MSM seem to be getting the vapors over everything lately, but this one has no legs.
The Media’s Subprime Soliloquy
You’ve been hearing a lot of rancor about subprime mortgages, haven’t you?
Gloom!
Doom!!
Vote Democrat!!!
It so happens I work in that field. I own a mortgage business. I’m a licensed mortgage broker. I have 26 loan agents working under me. I deal with subprime borrowers and lenders every day of the week. Hell, I teach mortgage finance at real estate school.
I can say with certainty that if you actually *believe* the liberal Democrat media’s apocalyptic headlines about subprime mortgages you need to take a step back, take a deep breath, at least postulate taking a Xanax (or two), but most importantly you need a reality check.
Good Show
Right then. The Queen did right by one of our boys yesterday.
Marine Maj. William Chesarek, left, is the first U.S. pilot to earn the British Distinguished Flying Cross since World War II. British army Pvt. Michelle Norris, right, became the first woman ever to be awarded the British Military Cross at the same ceremony
Major gets British Distinguished Flying Cross
England’s Queen Elizabeth II awarded the British Distinguished Flying Cross to a U.S. pilot for the first time since World War II during a ceremony at Buckingham Palace in London on March 21, according to a Corps release.
Marine Maj. William Chesarek was serving as an exchange officer with England’s 847 Naval Air Squadron in Amarah, Iraq, last year when British forces on the ground came under “repeated attack from rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire from insurgents using large, hostile crowds for cover,” the release said.
Chesarek spent five hours flying overhead in a British Lynx helicopter identifying targets and covering the British troops on the ground, the release said.
“Given the serious threat to the forces on the ground, and the inability to return fire given the crowds of protesters, Chesarek elected to fly repeated passes at very low level, under heavy small-arms fire and at least one near-miss from an RPG, in an attempt to distract and disperse the crowds,” according to the release.
Thursday - March 22, 2007
Liars
I know, I know, I should not be surprised....again.
Hoyer Won’t Rule Out Extending War Vote
When Democrats were in the minority, they lambasted Republican tactics on the House floor, reserving particular vitriol for the GOP practice of holding votes open longer than the allotted time in order to round up enough support for victory.
Now in the majority and facing their first close vote with the $124 billion wartime spending bill, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) is leaving open the possibility that Democrats might extend the vote beyond the usual 15 minutes.
Asked Wednesday night whether Democrats would keep to the time limit, Hoyer paused, then pointed out that many votes can run a few minutes longer for various reasons. Pressed further by a reporter who pointed out that Democrats themselves had often criticized Republicans on this very point, Hoyer said, “It won’t be open three hours. How about that?”
“How about 30 minutes?” the reporter asked.
“I won’t guarantee it,” Hoyer replied.
On their first day in the majority in January, Democrats amended the House rules to mandate that a vote “shall not be held open for the sole purpose of reversing the outcome of such vote.”
on 03/22/2007 at 04:38 PM
Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Politics • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink
God, Guns & Glory
I stumbled upon a new (to me) blog today and found this great photo.
-JJ
Go visit JJ at God, Guns, Glory
300
I went and saw 300 last night. Since I had read some reviews, I was expecting a bloodfest, and boy did I get it! To be honest, I did not get the same emotional high as I did with movies like Braveheart, The Patriot and Gladiator, but it was a fun film nonetheless. It was based on a comic book Graphic Novel after all.
Well, apparently there has been no small amount of the vapors because it is not historically accurate. Did I mention it was based on a comic book Graphic Novel?
Victor Davis Hanson speaks to this in his latest article.
‘300’—Fact or Fiction?
Crowds are flocking to see the film “300” about the ancient Spartans’ last stand at the pass at Thermopylae against an invading Persian army. Yet many critics, in panning “300,” have alleged that the film is essentially historically inaccurate. Are they right?
Here are some answers. But first two qualifiers. I wrote an introduction to a book about the making of “300” after being shown a rough cut of the movie in October. And, second, remember that “300” does not claim to follow exactly ancient accounts of the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. Instead, it is an impressionistic take on a graphic novel by Frank Miller, intended to entertain and shock first, and instruct second.
Thompson Slow Motion
With the positive comments about the Glock Full Auto post, I thought you might like to see some battle rifles in slo-mo as well.
Yeah. 
The Surge is Working
Even though its only in the beginning stages. This, according to the NY Post
March 20, 2007—‘I WALKED down the streets of Ramadi a few days ago, in a soft cap eating an ice cream with the mayor on one side of me and the police chief on the other, having a conversation.” This simple act, Gen. David Petraeus told me, would have been “unthinkable” just a few months ago. “And nobody shot at us,” he added.
Petraeus, the new commander managing the “surge” of troops in Iraq, will be the first to caution realism. “Sure we see improvements - major improvements,” he said in our interview, “but we still have a long way to go.”
What tactics are working? “We got down at the people level and are staying,” he said flatly. “Once the people know we are going to be around, then all kinds of things start to happen.”
More intelligence, for example. Where once tactical units were “scraping” for intelligence information, they now have “information overload,” the general said. “After our guys are in the neighborhood for four or five days, the people realize they’re not going to just leave them like we did in the past. Then they begin to come in with so much information on the enemy that we can’t process it fast enough.”
In intelligence work - the key to fighting irregular wars - commanders love excess.
And the tribal leaders in Sunni al Anbar Province, the general reports, “have had enough.” Not only are the al Qaeda fighters causing civil disruption by fomenting sectarian violence and killing civilians, but on a more prosaic but practical side, al Qaeda is bad for business. “All of the sheiks up there are businessmen,” Petraeus said. “They are entrepreneurial and involved in scores of different businesses. The presence of the foreign fighters is hitting them hard in the pocketbook and they are tired of it.”
Ban the Evil Bulb!
Mike at Cold Fury has an outstanding rant at one of his local lawmakers who is intent on keeping us from any harm.
Here’s a sample:
RALEIGH — How many legislators does it take to unscrew an incandescent light bulb?A majority. But it takes one to get it started, and that’s what Greensboro Rep. Pricey Harrison is trying to do.
Harrison, a Democrat,
No. You don’t say.
has authored legislation that would ban the sale of the familiar household bulbs in North Carolina on Jan. 1, 2016. The bulbs, she says, are inefficient energy hogs that can be replaced by more efficient compact fluorescent bulbs.
“I sort of feel like we’re going this way anyway,” Harrison said. “The market may drive this.”
Not if you liberal Commiecrats have anything to say about it, right, Pricey?
God, and right here in my own home state, too. What a perfectly mortifying humiliation. Us rugged, independent Southern types are supposed to be above this sort of thing. We were raised better than to go around legislating every least little thing. Guess not. Guess the yuppie-puppie-pussification of the Old North State is nearing completion.
Bills to take similar steps have been introduced in California, Connecticut and Rhode Island.
Strike that “nearing” bit.
Look, can you liberals not keep your grubby mitts off of ANYTHING? Is there nothing, nothing at all, that you won’t try to micromanage, regulate, prohibit, ration, restrict, proscribe, or otherwise disallow? Do you think you dimestore dictators could maybe get through ONE SINGLE FUCKING DAY without proposing to ban SOMETHING?
Then Mike really gets going, as only he can.
on 03/22/2007 at 05:31 AM
Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink
Wednesday - March 21, 2007
No Way
I’m not agoraphobic at all. In fact, I love being on high places. But there is no way on God’s Green Earth™ that I would get up on this thing.
First steps on skywalk over Grand Canyon
Indian leaders and former astronauts stepped gingerly beyond the Grand Canyon’s rim Tuesday, staring through the glass floor and into the 4,000-foot chasm below during the opening ceremony for a new observation deck.A few members of the Hualapai Indian Tribe, which allowed the Grand Canyon Skywalk to be built, hopped up and down on the horseshoe-shaped structure. At its edge—70 feet beyond the rim—the group peeked over the glass wall.
The tribe will include access to the deck in a variety of tour packages ranging from $49.95 to $199.00. They’ll allow up to 120 people at a time to look down to the canyon floor more than 4,000 feet below, a vantage point more than twice as high as the world’s tallest buildings.
No. Freaking. Way.
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